Thanks for the clarifications. I am glad to hear that even if we disagree with the readiness of the game, you guys are doing it on your own volition, and its not being done from a financial standpoint. It really does put me more at ease to know that, as many similar projects were not in such a position and are essentially dead games as a result. I only brought up my previous concerns as perception is everything. And I worry that many folks who may buy this game seeing it as "1.0" (my friends especially, I know... I'm being selfish) may not enjoy the game as they will see the game in its current state as not worth the purchase of a full release. I mean, it took a clarification post from you guys to even convince a sizable portion of your dedicated playerbase. Hearing that you guys can do this for years, I implore you to take a more strategic approach on the versioning. You are not in a position where you need to rush. You have a strong set of features that when properly polished, can certainly be seen as "1.0" material. Even if this 1.0 deal is just a symbolic checking of a box for you guys, I feel the negative perception of it overrides any benefits you may feel you are getting. Plainly put, doing this really only confuses folks and has a high likelihood of turning off new potential players, and, from your perspective, customers. I want to invite my more critical friends (as you suggest in your post) to play this game. But as it stands right now, I know that if I do right now, they will not like the game, and quit. But if you polish what you have, properly market the state of the game, and impress new players, you will succeed, and I can make Empyrion the go to game for my friend group on game nights. Personally, I'm still going to play and I'm still going to go along with whatever you guys are planning. I just hope you do so while fully understanding the points above and the risks you're taking as a result.
In fact it's possible that it's all the same guy, but he has many many accounts, so it's not too bad. He's easy to recognize since he always say the same stuff under all his profiles...
I can see this happening in a very high likelihood which is what worries me. I too have friends who have played this game, have left, and many who want to come back, but its just so unfinished and with so many bugs that i'm not even going to try to recommend this game anymore because i understand their legitimate problems with it. Yes thats a great point. I really think they should wait because the developers of this game and the veterans over the years who have stuck with this game through the good, the bad, and the ugly deserve better. I can already see the mostly legitimate reviews picking apart the good, the bad, and the ugly in this game and i don't think it has to be that way.
So you Eleon stick to Alpha but do not want it be called Alpha anymore ? It's like my wife on diet ! But she's great ! and you're too ! Make happen a proper color palette management please Cheers !
Hey everyone, do we have an official answer if our full release saves will be safe/compatible with future changes/patches? Sry i ask again and if i missed the answer, thank you, super excited for the release, few days to go!
Any kind of New Structure, revamped, updated or entirely new, any change with Blocks, NPC's, Devices and so on will require a fresh game to find into your PC as the Data Base would only partially be able to replace/overwrite your files. Otherwise you will have only parts of the new stuff and, maybe, it wont work properly. V1.0 will only have the foundational structures of the game features.
I'm presuming we will have to do a restart for then they release it to 1.0 on the 5th August. I may be wrong.
I'd presume on staying used to constant restarts- if the devs are true to their word about the continued development and expansion, the changes will require it. "Release" is just a synonym for "Alpha", apparently
I am sorry but i do not see how a full released open world game can be in a constant need to wipe/restart to get future major/minor patches. If its true its disappointing, at least for me(i get attached a lot in my saves). Hopefully thats not the case but i do not see any official reply the three times i asked(two here and one time on steam) i am gonna take a wild guess and say its a matter they do not want to discuss. (Except if this was answered at some point and i missed it, then i apologize)
Let me show you something - > Those are e-mails from the Devs of SWTOR while it was in open BETA (Messages are from BIOWARE) Thank you for your participation in the Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ Game Testing Program. In preparation for the game's official release, if you are receiving this email, you must uninstall the game-testing client before installing the launch game client. This had to be done after each Testing - besides of Downloading Clients of 15-20 GB each. So, the only thing that is ASKED from you, for being Part of the Tester-Community of EGS, to do a fresh Start from time to time. Pretty hard, isn't it?
Copy your entire Empyrion folder somewhere else on your hard drive and this version will never be updated. When you want to play, simply start Steam, then start your "copied" version either from a desktop shortcut or by double-clicking on the exe directly. Only the version in the original Steam folder will get updates - if to begin with you chose this option. At the very least, players can still opt-out from Steam's auto update for each game, but I guess everyone knows that.
Right click the game in your library and select Properties. There is a tab called Betas in which one can select from a variety of past recent builds of the game, as well as experimental builds and the current stable build. ADDIT: And BTW, Big Kudos to Eleon for continuing to support this! Far too many publishers/developers fail to provide this service to end-users, i.e., the capacity to select from a variety of stable past builds of a product; whether because they do not know that Steam allows this sort of configuration or because they don't know how to use it or they just plain don't want to offer their users more options. Only other studio I can think of which I've seen do it consistently is Paradox. I've seen some studios harp on about "only supporting most recent stable build" as some sort of cop out on this topic, but that is a straw man. Of course, no one "supports" past builds! That doesn't mean you cannot make them available to end-users to install! I'm not entirely sure that is going to work for all games, though it may work fine or this one. Certainly it doesn't work with Fallout 4. For that game, it seems that activating any instance of the .exe will prompt the "checking for updates" functionality which will lead to that instance being updated. The way around this for that game though, is to use Fallout 4 Script Extender which somehow skips past the auto-update functionality and launches the game in its present state. Using this gambit, I am still running a legacy version of Fallout 4 from before the introduction of Creation Club in about Fall of 2016 I think.
I am talking about the saves created after full release, not now(except if you meant something else) Thats good info(you can also choose previous versions with steam as dichebach said) but then you will miss every future update/improvement, and most times those are significant. Cant imagine playing a more outdated and buggy game while there is a more polished version. (not to mention if there is a DLC at some point).
I mentioned "opt-out from Steam's auto update for each game" and this is done by clicking the little gear Icon in Empyrion: This opens "options" and in the 2nd tab there are the updates options for each game - you can choose to never update, or update only at first start, or always keep updated. It's up to you, but you are warned that updates can bug savegames. Even after 1.0 comes out I would not be surprised if some fixes require to start a new game to get the new content. But you can run your preferred version of the game from another folder, and your savegames will be ok there. So you can use this as a back up in case the "main" game gets an update that breaks savegames, and it will give you a chance to salvage some things or be able to play while waiting for a fix. When a fix comes in, just copy the "new" latest game version to your other folder and you have your backup for future updates. I use to run 3 versions of the game like that at some point, just to keep playing with some features that are not there anymore (legacy terrain).
This is probably why they are confused. There is no option to "never update" with Steam. The options are "always keep this game up to date", "only update when I launch it", and "high priority". Steam doesn't allow you to "never update". You have to copy the folder outside of Steam to have it never update, but it's not an option from within Steam. I do realize you told them about copying the folder as well. I think that part just got lost in the confusion.
You're right. I must have dreamed that... I avoid updates by choosing "only update at game launch" and only play offline. For Empyrion I copy to a folder but not presently, running experimental with all updates on "auto"...
That is fine for Early Access/Alpha/Beta Its not fine for a full released game and thats the point i am trying to make.
