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

*reads*

That's fair enough at some level. I do think that the philosophizing on "what 1.0 really means" is a bit unnecessary though. If there's been some point-missing going on between Tiy and some customers like me, I think it's mutual. Why, because:

"So I think 1.0 being a checklist for plans that were mentioned at some point is just as arbitrary. The game is 1.0 when the developers are happy with it. [...] This all ties back into the discussion about judging our success and our competency on hitting 1.0, claiming that they paid for 1.0 and anything less, regardless of how much is there, is an unfair transaction. 1.0 has to be defined by the developer." (Tiy)

This misses the point, I think; hence the miscommunication. We're not asking them to change a version number. As far as I can tell, "1.0" was being used as a synonym for being feature complete as per the original spec. I know that there are different philosophies about which version numbers to use when and for what, but that's not really the point here.

So yes, as far as that goes, "1.0" is defined by the devs, no contest. In which case, let me rephrase the worry that people have. We're not wondering when someone will change an arbitrary version number in a settings file somewhere to say "1.0" in the corner of the screen when you launch the game. We're wondering when the game will be "feature complete as per the original spec." I know I said that already, but I don't want to be quoted out of context and told "it's done when the devs say it's done, and they'll keep supporting and updating it for a long time, so you'd better hope they're not done with it soon" or what have you.

The reason why people are wondering that is because the original deadline has come and gone, and we have no replacement schedule, not even a rough indication of one. If people ask when it will be done and you don't know, don't start going off at them about how your game could be considered complete in some abstract sense. Rather, tell them: "we don't know." Easy.

 

This is a story of community called Starville Citizens, and Starville itself in game, called by its maker ready for 1.0.

Everything started, when we found our motherland. Alpha Celestia III. Our forum brony decided, that it'll be great, that we settled there. Nobody complained, and for me personally, its better name, than some random bullcrap, so why not?

We started to grow up our community. Started building things. We've spend quite a lot time in there. Some of the other folks decided, that they'll join us. We were happy and safe far away from everyone. But then... Wipe came in. Oh well. It was supposed to be the last wipe, don't it? We grabbed our stuff and waited. New Starville was born. Starville 2.



We decided to reborn in our motherland. Few good weeks we've spend on simply living. Building, talking, playing music. All kinds of stuff. We had kind of jobs. Scavegers, Lumberjacks, Miners, Crafters. We worked together. That was something! We spend lots and lots of hours just sitting together. And then... Planet got eaten. Just like that. Nobody knew what happened. Day like any other. We're joining and poof. Everything's gone. Happened once, we said. We can rebuild once again we said. And you know what?

Starville 3 was born!

(Yes. You can click it to zoom in.)

Alpha Pegasi. We didn't gave up. We lived on, and grew up stronger than ever. With over 12 people we builded a new village. For us it was something geat. Something beautiful. We were proud. Almost everyone wanted to join us. And guess what... Yeah. Our planet got eaten. Again. People were pissed. I was pissed! Everyone! And the biggest bullshit is, that only our planet got eaten. Not our sector. Nah. Only ours damn planet! Not even the moon. How shittier can it get? Just wait. We were trying to get our planet back. But guess what. It's impossible. It's not server fault. It's fucking game fault. To prevent massive lag and space absorbing it supposed to eat unused planets. Too bad it ain't working like it should.

Some of us just gave up. We've put so much work into it. And now... It's gone. But most of us didn't wanted to leave. Why should we? Sure game hates us, but oh well!
We might got some of the ,,illegalish'' mods and started to build. Bigger. Better. Fuck resources. We were tired of pointless digging over and over again. Game doesn't wanna keep it cool. Why should we? And so on everyone started his big project. Mine was this: http://worldofsven.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/SnapshotTemple.png in scale 1:1. Soon Starville 5 filled with beautifull constructs. With unlimited power we could do everything!
(Where's Starville 4? Got blown up by giant meteor. Oh well. I guess Alpha Luna doesn't want us on her planet)

We even had skyrail all over the planet. Metro with stations in every important place! All over the globe! But game don't wanna be nice. It doesn't wanna keep it clean. No. After a week or so it just eaten our planet. We lost another couple of us. Dudes, that doesn't wanna anything to do with this game.

Most of us lost hope. Starville 6 has been filled with sadness, and tiredness.

That's how I lost faith. I heard that after me, it was pretty quick. Everyone just stoped. We're waiting. For stage 2. Tiy. Don't let us down.

 

Michael Abrash

 

Honestly you dont seem to think about People like me who are waiting for the next stage release and dont want to play a half finished arcade game... Yeah there are people who already invested a lot of time into starbound but that doesnt make it better for me or other ppls who
cared about your tip to wait until next stage of beta.

 

Well that explains a lot of things to me, thanks! Also thanks to Wolfie Inu for reminding me that it was actually Re-Logic making Terraria.
I'm still disappointed by Chucklefish and Tiyuri, though. Following their news feeds isn't fun at all.

I hope they somehow learn to manage the project and don't give up on the game, so it will probably become what they initially announced.
Personally I don't want to hear any more excuses from them. They should take their time just finish what they once promised.

 

You're right, of course. And what I learned is that I hate this new trend of every game going Early Access before sale.

At least half the time, the devs bail out with the money half way and never finish the game. Towns is probably a good example of this. The rest of the time they twist their goals and promises to new definitions in order to call it 'finished' before it is. I'm just waiting for Starbound to hit option 2, since I doubt Chucklefish will do option 1 to us.

I personally think gamers should boycott further Early Access games, since they are flooding the industry with games that nobody intends on actually finishing and damaging consumer confidence in gaming.

 

I do not usually post in forums but, I felt the need to put in my two cent's worth, right or wrong. Saying something is version 1.0, 2.0, or the like is more symbolic. Those numbers represent major or minor milestones in a program or system's history. Indeed, there is not a lot of content in the way of major battles or story lines outside of the books one finds. But for the moment, exploring the universe in the way the game has allowed, I have found, is just incredible. And I am still finding content I never thought I would see. Just recently, I found some Apex buildings taken over by the fungoid npc race, complete with strange ominous pods. The thought hit me, what if these goofy fungus people held a darker secret ... A possible story point the could be added later.

Then there is the nightly builds. Granted I have not used that feature, myself, just the fact that the developers have basically opened the doors of their offices, metaphorically speaking, to give us a preview of what is to come, beside the daily blogs, shows how much they also seem to want to include the players to some degree in the creative process.

As well, sometimes the plans laid out for a game may not be feasible immediately or ever or the plan takes on a different route than first intended (Bioshock Ininite as example), one must admit that what they HAVE put out already is quite incredible, playable, and in my opinion fun and well worth the early access price. - just my couple of mental coppers' worth.

 

Sure is a sad story.
But thats one of the reasons, i am currently not playing much starbound at all.
Because, despite the devs saying there wont be wipes, i acknowledge the fact that stuff still might go wrong. Horribly wrong.
I dont blame anyone for this, because its beta. Beta contains bugs. Maybe planet eating bugs, locker-eating bugs, other bugs.
There may be no more planned char/universe wipes, but that doesnt necessary mean stuff cant go horribly wrong due to a bug.

Also, i would take "no more wipes" with a grain of salt too, because with all the new stuff theyre doing, i think its quite possible for wipes to happen.
Not because they want them, or planned this from the beginning, but maybe due to compatibility issues between all the old stuff, and the new stuff.

Just a suggestion, even though it might not matter now: Regularily backup your servers world-stuff etc. Maybe that way you could have restored your world to its former state.

 

@tinkeryellowmane That's fair enough, and going by the hours I've put into the game so far, I don't think that I haven't arguably gotten $15 worth of fun. Which is why I'm not asking for a refund. I'd just be super disappointed if the plans they had for Starbound (when they started the project - not necessarily all the random ideas they had since then) don't pan out. And I'd reconsider supporting any Early Access titles in general, and from CF in particular.

See, that's the problem with creating expectations. You need to fulfill them. And I don't doubt that CF will do so. I'd just appreciate having a tentative schedule for the next Stable release, not accurate to the day, just a general idea of when we can expect it - next month, next year, next decade? Or, failing that, an acknowledgement from CF that they have no idea when it will be, with ideally some sort of acknowledgement that this isn't an ideal situation (if not an actual apology). Rather than trying to blame consumers for attempting to hold them to some loose version of their initial lofty promises (even without stretch goals and extra ideas added since then). We didn't create these expectations - they did - so I think it's somewhat unfair of them to blame us for it.

 

I don't agree with this sentiment, manly because this plays into the "patch it later" atitude so many game companies have, and teeters dangerously close to DLCville. Look at state of Decay - It was shipped under this same theory, and then the developers went back and added in extra content like "survival" mode as DLC. It's a disgraceful practice.

No, if there's a design problem right now, it's feature creep. No matter what you're building, you'll always have a form of feature creep, where you start dreaming up use cases that either weren't covered in the original design document or that have negligible connection. Feature creep isn't always a bad thing, but it's responsible for over half of the projects either canceled, derailed, or put on indefinite hiatus. It kills projects and puts people out of work, and it's prevalent throughout the industry.

 

A hero to the company, but if you put large parts of disc content behind a paywall or forgo them altogether in regions, you will be DESPISED by the audience. I have refused to buy games because of practices like that.

 

I have but three words to sum up my feelings about the Starbound devs they may not be the best words but they are good ones "You do good"

 

Since I happen to be on the other side of the spectrum from you in terms of State of Decay, I think you're being unfair. That was a game that shipped a fully-functional game. You had a story mode, with characters and interaction and events and everything. It was finished. Later, they went back in and added a survival/sandbox mode as DLC (not expensive at all). So, for about $25, you could have a full game plus survival mode. Or, you could just get the game for $20.

If you think that adding extra DLC that is not part of a standalone, finished game is "disgraceful" then I think you need to re-evaluate your expectations for games. Simply because other games have shipped with survival mode at day 1 does not mean every game must do it, or that any game that adds survival mode as DLC is "disgraceful".

 

Thank you for the good discussion so far guys.

 

This is what was posted.

Nothing more nothing less, posting a quote of what was previously promised != "-Wah Wah 2013 release crying-". If anything you're the one who is whining about other people posting negative feedback about your "Lord".

 

It reminds me a lot of neopets, how they had plots and wars and other things in order to keep people interested in playing. Maybe Starbound should consider that kind of a venue, make it so that you will keep adding new and interesting things to keep players interested. Look at how the whole derrick thing ended up? Lots of people found something to look for and play the game looking for it. So long as Starbound has interesting things in it that will keep people interested, it may never have to be a 1.0 game. It can essentially just keep going until you're done putting updates up and want to move on to a new game.

 

For me, the game is at ALPHA STAGE.

Lot of features are missing.(Like the DELETE SAVEGAME FEATURE)

I paid for the early access to help them.

I spend 10 hours few months ago to try the game and now, i will wait for the official release to start a new game.

The game is still full of bugs and a lot of features are missing.

Early access = Open alpha/beta

 

I am really concerned with your statement that you would be comfortable releasing the product as-is at 1.0 when the expectation is that 1.0 should be a completed, polished product.

I am a software project manager for a fortune 100 company, and also an avid gamer, so please don't think that I am being naive in my statements. Though you might think that version 1.0 is arbitrary, it is not to your potential customers. You pitched the product and your customers purchased the software based on what you said it would be. You cant just throw a big "EVENTUALLY" at the end of everything you say, and expect your paying customers to be fine with it.

You obviously have adopted a modified agile method of development, which is great when it comes to these frequent updates and communications, however, nearly every benchmark you set is lost in a fog of ambiguous dev posts teasing images and snippets of "things to come" while providing very little substance over the course of a very long time. You sold us a product, not a proof of concept, and it is not unreasonable for us to ask you to deliver, or ask what is taking so long.

TL;DR version: Most of your playerbase may be too starry-eyed and disillusioned to offer realistic feedback, but many of us are legitimately (in my opinion) concerned with the increasingly "PR" posts and ambiguous goals.

You obviously have no idea what a beta version is or what it is used for. What Starbound currently is, is alpha.

Per Wiki:

Beta, named after the second letter of the Greek alphabet, is the software development phase following alpha. It generally begins when the software is feature complete. Software in the beta phase will generally have many more bugs in it than completed software, as well as speed/performance issues and may still cause crashes or data loss. The focus of beta testing is reducing impacts to users, often incorporating usability testing. The process of delivering a beta version to the users is called beta release and this is typically the first time that the software is available outside of the organization that developed it.

The users of a beta version are called beta testers. They are usually customers or prospective customers of the organization that develops the software, willing to test the software without charge, often receiving the final software free of charge or for a reduced price. Beta version software is often useful for demonstrations and previews within an organization and to prospective customers. Some developers refer to this stage as a preview, prototype, technical preview / technology preview (TP), or early access. Some software is kept in perpetual beta—where new features and functionality are continually added to the software without establishing a firm "final" release.

 

"The year of our Lord ..." is a phrase often times used by old religeous types, and refers to the Lord of their actual beliefs. Not Tiyuri of Chucklefish Games.

 

Need I remind you that Wikipedia had listed Hitler's final year as 1941 numerous different times. It's not exactly the Gospel. Quoting Wikipedia for a strict definition of such a broadly-used term is silly. If college campuses can ban Wikipedia as a legitimate reference, so can we.
Also, I'm merging your two consecutive posts into one. Quality over quantity, please!