Some thoughts on early access, release dates, the big 1.0

21 pages so far. There isn't much more to say that hasn't been said. But I will say this. Your post is exactly the kind of fuel that feeds the plethora of early access / never ending development developers that have infested the world of gaming and PC gaming in particular. It's only X dollars. Get over it. That, my friend, is what devalues software.

• You got a game that has tons of incomplete and missing features.
• It's development time has entered the stage from Long-Winded to... Is it possible that this game might actually NOT be finished?
• The features we do have, even the most basic ones, are currently undergoing such complete changes that it makes playing this version of the game more of a spoiler than an experience.

But it was only $15? So get over it? I don't really think this is about how much it costs as opposed to meeting expectations that were set. They got their money. Great for them. But I am not in the market of philantropy (sp) based on how much time I got out of the beta. This IS STILL A BETA.

I have been, like many, following Starbound from its infancy. I have all but lost hope that this game will ever be complete, regardless of how someone might define it. The way it is now, by my definition, is that it is a testing zone for beta testers. Nothing more. I even remember a post where Tiy was describing the way progression would be overhauled and he even said that the current progression was ONLY THE WAY IT WAS to give beta testers an opportunity to test gameplay. Fine. I am down with that. This is one of the longest beta tests I have been a part of. But I am fine with it as a beta. If you start calling this a finished product or throwing around terms like "as is", well that will just tick some people off. I am one of those people who have stopped playing just because I don't want to play the game as a beta. I want to play it as a released game.

Posts like Tiys give me that really bad feeling that they are running out of resources for this game and are finding a round about way of saying.... if we don't actually live up to the expectations that WE set, then atleast we can still call it "as is".

Anyway, my two cents. Probably already been stated. I was just such a huge fan. Got a bunch of my friends into a 4-pack, and now I am sad that the interest is dying.

It's just sad. Not all hope is lost, but for the time being, my interest is. So... I guess have a good go with my X dollars, after all, it was only X dollars. I don't need a refund. I am just very likely to never buy in to a prepurchase, especially from Chucklefish, again.

 

Can you do me a favor and list everything that they said would be in the game? Let's see what they have right now, and what they have left to do to meet the original set of features, and let's see if they've added anything into the game that wasn't on that original list.

 

Not treating us like filthy plebs, just showing us what half baked, broken features they worked on that day (And the privilege of trying the broken piece of crap) would be a start.

Oh, and cut down on promoting other (FINISHED) games on the Starbound front page would be ever so nice.

 

Unfortunately, programming really isn't that simple. Too many people on a project can be just as disastrous as not enough people. Development needs to follow a pattern, a set out plan, or you get chaos. In big budget development, that can some times be a problem - 50 to 100 people chugging away at the same set of tasks, and one flaw throws the whole train off. Especially where you're optimizing and changing fundamental features of the engine.

The problem also tends to be once one person screws up, all of his compatriots may accidentally step on his toes to find workarounds, making the whole bug fix harder. As a programmer, you stumble across these things in code sometimes, where the last poor guy chose to leave the helpful comment: "/*Don't change it. It works somehow. Just leave it alone.*/" Being there, you just have to push the button and see what happens as everything fails to compile for no describable reason.

Content is not really as much the problem as the amount of implementations they have to do. From the outside, looking in, throwing more artists, scripters and writers may seem like a good idea, but the fact of the matter is the larger amount of completed content, the larger the amount of stuff that has to be revised when the scripting sources are optimized.

 

Seems we've been over all of this many times...

 

It is the Year of Our Lord 2014.

2013 has already been here and gone over half a year ago. It didn't happen as planned, they apologized for it and dedicated themselves to pushing on in spite of the setback. Get over it already. Dragging up some shit from their website over a year ago that has came and went, been talked about to death and explained at inhuman lengths is just childish whining at this point.

 

Really? a 15 dollar game compared to a multi-thousand dollar purchase? I now see the disconnect.
EDIT - so a Ferrari (I assume)i no less, make that a quarter of a million dollars compared to 15 bucks. It is not just a disconnect, but a massive gap of a terragoogleplex. Why stay in reality when you could go to space!!!!​

 

No offense man, but I don't think you have a very good grasp on how analogies work. If something is incomplete it's incomplete, regardless of how much it costs. Focusing on the objects themselves as opposed to the attributes they share is completely missing the point.

 

When making comparisons at least be in the ballpark, or you just look silly, and invalidates your point all together.

 

Best thing they can probably do is make a patch that's worth the wait. I've waited longer for less in terms of content patches. Putting out anything sub-standard is just going to rev the "we waited 3, (or 5, or 7, or whatever people are saying these days) months for this?" engines. Trust me, I know it'll happen. We all know it'll happen. "What were they doing for X months if the patch isn't even that great!?" I want them to release a patch that's worth waiting for. Shoveling out something half-assed because people are getting impatient / upset / discontent is not the answer. Rushing to toss out some random crap just because people are under the impression the game is a scam, that you're not working hard, that you've taken the money and run is not the answer. Polish it up, make it look nice, make it "change the face of Starbound as we know it", etc. (or something equally cheesy.)When it comes down to it, almost everyone wants the same thing, regardless of how tenaciously they want to discuss / argue.

If people have to wait for quality, it's probably for the best. If people want unpolished, random tiddle bits, there's nightlies. But this patch is supposed to revamp a lot of core systems, and it's important to build a solid foundation. I don't think future stable updates are going to take as long as this one, simply for the "reconstructed" core systems / features. Like progression and such. I'd rather them work hard to release this update when it's ready, (When it's...you know...stable) than have them rush it just because people are getting upset.

Trust me, I get that waiting sucks. Even if I'm very patient, I'm empathetic to people that don't like waiting so long. I get that X months of waiting sucks, but most of us can agree we want good, solid content that'll vastly expand upon the game. People are getting antsy, and it's understandable, really.

In the end, and I want to stress that this is just my opinion, but I feel like they should work on making this patch as good as possible. I'm not gonna say the "1.0" word, but I feel like this patch can definitely be a new beginning and a great future for the game. Turning out anything other than their absolute best work would probably be a huge mistake.

And no, I don't need to hear "It's a beta, it's supposed to be messy, quick, and broken," especially when I can peruse around and have people criticizing the nightlies for just that. If anything, a nice compromise would be more frequent unstable updates, as a medium between "Lightning fast nightlies" and "methodical, polished stable updates."

Keep in mind this is just my own personal little musings and opinion.

Also, great job for keeping it...relatively civil. I'm pretty happy with that.

 

Oh well, I tried.

 

Now that the admin posted, i guess its time for me to start rockin gold teeth and fang.

This post is like comparing a diamond to a potato

 

But the devs show their progress on their front page. They haven't abandoned the game.

I really hate to use this excuse...but it's still in beta (or alpha, if you prefer to call it that). Features will be missing. That should be expected. Until they brand the game as out of early access, I don't think people should still be using this as an argument.

Don't think of that possibility yet. Until they stop updating us at the end of the day of their progress, it's pointless to think that the game won't be finished.

Well...that's kind of the thing they warned about in the beginning of this early access period. If you don't want to be spoiled, then you should stay away from this stage of development.

And they aren't just going to leave the game at this point. They're still working on it.

They aren't calling it a released game.

I never got the impression that they're running out of resources. However, you make a fairly good point about your last part. I still have trust in Chucklefish that they won't do that.

 

I thought you were the OP of that message....so that is the response. I edited out once I saw you were not the OP.

 

Nothing to be said that hasn't already been said several times before, besides the fact that defensive posts like the one Tiy made just serve to reinforce my decision to never support Chucklefish financially again. I enjoy Starbound, I've had plenty of fun with it for what I paid, but that doesn't change the fact that promises haven't been delivered and that the development of this game has been and continues to be insanely disorganized.

I'm looking forward to playing the game when it's finished, but with the prevalence of feature creep and the constant delays, I'm not holding my breath anymore.

 

And I agree with that, but Tiy's post was making it sound like the game was in a release-able state, which it isn't.

I don't need the next update to be soon, I'd just like to have a rough idea of when it would be and what it would entail. I guess what I'm looking for is some sort of reassurance that there still is any kind of game plan. Because the devs are posting a lot of interesting snippets, but where does that fit into the bigger picture, exactly? Maybe I just have an odd psychology, but if I don't know how individual steps relate to the larger whole, I don't feel like it counts as progress. (This goes for my own projects too BTW.)

And again, I was quite OK with sitting back and letting everything happen in its own time, until Tiy's post. Maybe this is just the mother of all huge miscommunications, but if so, I'm not the only one who got all the wrong impressions here. If the next Stable update only gets here in the third quarter of 2016, then that's when it gets here, fine; I'll do something else with my life until then. But right now we're seeing something new being added every day and have no idea if it's going to mean that we've got a new version in Stable, or if we're just getting a random screenshot of something that only half-exists at this point. We don't know whether it's something that gets us closer to release, or whether it's an added roadblock that has to be developed first. Without a larger context, it's really hard to know how to feel about these things. And then Tiy (perhaps unwittingly?) implied that all of these things are a bonus and we ought to be grateful that we're getting anything at all. That just doesn't sit right with me. And I'm not a "hater" or whatever other labels the rabid fanboys use to deflect any and all criticism.

 

Not everything is about the money. If you go to a restaurant and order steak but but get a hot dog instead, yes you got a meal, but not what you paid for. I personally understand that it takes time as a Harvest Moon fan I am used to waiting years for a game to actually be released. My personal issue is that a lot of new stuff is being added almost every week when the CORE game isn't complete as promised. That in my opinion is the hold up. I don't feel cheated since they are still working, but the game coming out now isn't the Starbound originally promised and some of that is for the better.

I don't think Tiy meant or suggested that they would release the game as is. People misread that. He was merely saying we could have screwed you over but we aren't so give us some time. Over all I have less than 10 hours game play because it doesn't resemble what I was promised.

Give Tiy a break. The team is working on it. I know if they screw me over with this I won't buy any game connected to this company again. By screw me over I mean it is missing promised material.

 

I think this is a misunderstanding. Here's what he said:

I think what he's trying to say is that, if they hadn't stated what they wanted to implement, they believe they could call it 1.0. But they haven't added in all they've wanted, so they aren't calling it 1.0.

They aren't saying "We could call it 1.0 right now". I think they're even saying the opposite, because they mentioned those features not being implemented as what was holding the game back from being called a 1.0 release.

 

I still do not believe it is miscommunication from the devs. How I see it it's more people misreading and adding interpretations to what was said.

It shows every now and again in some posts where people basically set their minds on the concept of being poor scam victims abused by the evil CF and interpret everything said to match that idea.

Even if they are being eloquent and civil in writing, that is what it seems.

 

I agree with everything you said in response to my post.

My question for you with regard to all of it is a simple one: Are you sure?