I think you would state something entirely different if you purchase a new and shiny word processor by a promising small dev team, discover the spellcheck only worked with 4 words, bold was not yet available, the total number of current fonts was 2 and then going to the forms find out that they are still working on those features but decided the 'base' of the program was in place so it was worthy of release. Most would never even visit the forms before returning an obviously incomplete program and go purchase Microsoft Word because they know it will actually be complete. More importantly, most would tell others to not bother purchasing it or future products from them. There are companies that I no longer make purchase with because they have released garbage products in the past. I know I would immediately return the product and go buy a finished word processor. The only reason that I believe you see this as minor rather than 'blaringly horrid' is that you are here on these forums as part of the alpha phase. A tiny tiny fraction of the player base comes here. Virtually no one actually purchasing the game from this day forward will ever see the devs state they are continuing to work on the game. The fact that it is a small dev team makes their reputation FAR more important as well. Large companies like EA can afford several disasters. Small dev teams cannot because I can easily ignore every future product they make. The might behind more established game producers gives them much more room.
I read your steam review and i agree with most of it. Your complaints about the game are mostly legitimate. https://steamcommunity.com/id/chimosh/recommended/383120/ Don't let this loud minority who are part of the problem why this game is in such a bad state and the bad apples who try to defend instantly anything the developers change, do, or say like mindless rabid dogs just to criticize you with nothing substantial but "insults" dismay you from the better and more civilized part of our Empyrion community. Instead of these players listening to your legitimate complaints which i have heard countless times from old and new players who have left the game, and from those who still play; this game would be in much better shape. I wish you the best sir, and hopefully "when" and "if" the game changes for the better, and worth playing again, you may consider changing your review to positive, and maybe recommend this game to countless other people which will make Eleon tons of more money...$$$$.
Moronic. Look at some arbitrary number like hours played as some justification that I have got my monies worth? 1. When you play co-op that the server runs in the background. It counts as open 2. When you play the game you have to visit wiki or forums often to solve issues or obtain information 3. Its a building game, meaning you can spend many hours in game designing a ship or building. Which I did do to test the features properly both in base building and ship building. 4. Spent countless hours trying to solve bugs, like ships vanishing etc. So after taking all the other variables into account. My actual play time is probably more in the 30-40 hours range. Do the maths not the muff.
If and when the game reaches a state of a finished product. I will absolutely come back to play and amend my review to reflect.
I don't know about you but I play games for what they are and not for what I want them to be. If you play old point-and-click adventure games you'll see that most highly praised games have clunky controls, confusing resolution issues, UI issues and game breaking bugs. But they are still excellent for what they offer. It's Eleon's child, their vision and creation and they won't just change their craft because we say so. Consider that this game is too cheap, has no DLCs yet and people have played it for several hours. The negative reviews because a feature one would like to see is not fixed or included seems unfair to me. Especially in games that are still being developed. It hurts sales. And we're not talking about money grabbers that we see on Steam. We're talking about devs who answer forum posts.
Which is about the same time range of many "complete" games, but I agree that it's not the same experience. Also Empyrion has excellent replay value, and it's very customisable with values adjustment, scenarios, custom playfields, etc. You have total rights to write the review you want to write, not arguing this. My take on reviews, specifically for Empyrion, is that if players wish the game to move forward, they can either recommend it, even if they write the brute facts in their reviews, but warn potential buyers what they are getting into. Or they can join the forums where the developers will take their input into account, to some extent. But the developers mentioned twice now recently that they are continuing to work on the game despites it moving out of Early Acess, and that money is not an issue. But not recommending a game, not contributing to the dynamic of the forums and having a negative attitude are not ways to help the game move forward. In all honesty. If someone thinks that the developers are relying on income to pursue development, trying to deter players from buying the game and wishing for the game to "move forwards" despites this is an obvious contradiction, and looks more like "punishment" for X reasons. I have had my "bad times" here, and this did not deter me from trying to help even if I often feel insignificant in the process. We may only add one drop of color in a big bowl of water, but it's still a bit of color added to the bowl.
Maybe if Steam had a five star review system, it'd be more fair than having like or unlike buttons. You are not able to give three stars if you're not totally satisfied with a game and will have to unlike it/not recommend it. This is the same as marking the game as one star.
Personally, I am enjoying some of the 'unrealistic' parts of the game...I play video games as an escape from a hectic life. Last thing I need is more and more realism that mimics my normal day ok
It is a self-fulfilling prophecy that many outraged players will write negative reviews, but here's the lame part : these are not "new players" as can be seen upfront in the recent negative reviews, like what some players here on the forum are warning Eleon about (new players will feel robbed and write negative reviews). Truth is that some players want to have an effect on the game, and if the developers do not satisfy them in a timely fashion they will then try to "influence" development by ways of not recommending the game. And that will only last for a time. The developers rely on what is happening here on forums, it's clear from their "clarifications". The "supportive community" is here, not in angry entitled Steam reviews. And I bet some new players will like the game and understand it's still being worked on, and some of them will come here and help shape the game with the others.
I am really enjoying those reviews and the comments here on the forums. For the first time, at least that I know of, the developer is not being fraudulent, the players are. So much unthinking, rigid, stupidity. Those reviews should be flipped from: "Warning, stay away from this game it says it is 1.0 but it really isn't!" to "The developers are interpreting the concepts of alpha and release as meaning different phases and we are trying to manipulate your perceptions by leading you to false conclusions based on out-dated decades old standards that aren't even really followed any more by many game developer studios. We're the bad guys who cannot take the new flexibility and because of our unfair aggression we think we can band together and be in the right!" I have yet to write a review for this game(I have only written a small handful of reviews total) but I think I will in this instance. This is an Indie game, it has always been an Indie game, and will remain so. The developers get to chart their own path and try new things. If they sell out, THEN you can skewer. Until that theoretical point, it is just hurtful and cruel. Edit: There we go, review posted(I copied some of this into the steam function.)
This is true but it has been half a day. I hope it will not have a negative effect on the game, I like it and really want to see continued development. I fear it will have a negative effect. It is all academic at this point though, it already happened and it is not going back.
Bad reviews come and go, they get buried in the positive after a while. Some bad reviews address real problems, but that is not stopping the developers from going forward. It practically never did, and time proved them right : reviews still hold in the 1/4 - 1/5 negative, with about 50% negatives being irrelevant, like I showed on a thread recently. If players buy this game expecting polished features and seamless gameplay, without reading about the "latest news" or reading equally positive/ negative reviews, maybe they are not the kind of players needed on these forums to help shape the game. Do we really need a dozen more "Eleon fix this" players around here ? Like we're too dumb to notice the obvious and are satisfied with bugs ? Will this "hurt the game" that negative reviews peak at some point ? What will "hurt" this game is if the community goes silent, when the developers rely on us for feedback and bugfixes... and suggestions! Ideas for scenarios and builds! Content made by generous players (even if I want procedural, but I can't be against virtue either!). Like I wrote somewhere recently : fear kills creativity. And we need creativity to make relevant and interesting suggestions and generate ideas. The developers are making a "leap of faith" and asking us to jump with them. We need faith, not fear. And those who do not understand this may not be here to help shape the game, and they are not necessary to the process, especially if the developers don't rely on income to continue. I may be totally, utterly wrong, and the developers are nothing but hideous liars and thieves. If future proves this to be the case, you are allowed to throw me as many tomatoes as you want. But I will still play Empyrion.
If you don't believe what the developers have been repeating for days, why are you still here ? I know your commentary is aimed at me. You think we're all dumb to take the dive with them? Tell us why.
I disagree quite vehemently with that sentiment. What players we need here is not really relevant. The community is strong enough as it is and more here is not really all that necessary. What the game does, in fact, need is MORE players period. That is what keeps the money coming in and the devs do not (and certainly should not) continue working on a project that no longer brings home the bacon. Like I have been saying, I really am not concerned with the angry forum guy that runs and leaves a negative review - we represent a fraction of a fraction of the players necessary to carry the game forward and will be drowned out by the masses almost instantly. The only concern of mine is of new players purchasing a product that they were not properly informed of and how that impacts both reputation and future profits. This is not an idle speculation. I may be unique in this but I have run into other games that may have very well done what Elon just did, all I know is that they were not complete projects, and I know what I did in those instances. I refund the game if possible and leave a negative review because the advertised product was not what I received. When I buy an EA title I KNOW what I am getting into and accept that. When I buy a released product I have an entirely different set of expectations and I think I am justified in that expectation. I may be wrong. I may not represent the average here but I think that I do in this regard. Like I said, there is no way anyone would have accepted the word processor in my example. Making this software different is silly. Released MEANS something to most players and it appears to mean something entirely different to the dev team. That is a marketing problem in my eyes and lets be honest here - marketing means more than almost anything when the point here is to sell copies. I certainly don't think the dev team are liars and thieves and even if development ceases in 6 months I don't think it would be because they lied at all. It would be, IMHO, because the game stops selling and you do not develop a product that brings no value to the table. Don't get me wrong though, I want to reiterate that I hope I am totally wrong and I am not upset, angry or otherwise hold any ill will whatsoever to the dev team, this game or the direction they are going. I just think this was a really bad idea, may hurt the game overall and I like to converse about such things
They clarified that point : they are not doing it for money. They even politely refused the DLC proposal some have put forward. Same point as above. Better yet : https://steamspy.com/app/383120 They sold between 500 000 and 1 000 000 copies - in Early Access. Even at 10$ each, we pick the middle figure, that's 7,5 millions. This is just a rough estimate, but it's still double of what I estimated in 2018 (345 000 sales at 10$ at that time). Now adjust numbers for some reasonable % of sales at 20$. They kept staff very small, you can check salaries averages in the industry and do the math. For a small team that expected to finish the game with 50 000$ from their Kickstarter failed venture, they got way more than what they hoped for. If they kept the same original plan regarding expenses, they're good to go for a while even with bad sales from now on. I think that if they made the move despites all, since they know the real numbers and they have been following this closely for 5 years, I'm confident that they care more about their game than about potential review flaming.
