But isn't this an assumption on your part? And doesn't this depend on the game in question and how the devs think? Isn't all honest feedback pretty much the same, regardless of whether it comes from official testers or players on early access? I've participated on various forums for various different games over the years. And the level of interest and attention the devs for EGS seem to give towards players seems way above average. It's pretty clear to me just from the questions on the 2017 Survey and from the new features that have been added the last few months that they listen to what players say. And this makes me tremendously hopeful for this game. Such things are enough to encourage patience and keep many players interested in the game as it goes through the development cycle of early access and beyond. In contrast, when devs seem to mostly ignore players during early access, the players feel left out. And, speaking for myself anyway, such makes me worry that a game project will flounder - as Steam early access games are known to do - instead of being polished properly.
Yes, it's complete assumption. But it's tempered by what I have learned about software development over the last ~20 years. If a developer could have a dedicated team of testers 200 large, or 1,000 players, they'd take the team of testers every time over the players. Players complain about bugs and imbalance only when it affects them. If only everyone purchasing a game in Early Access admitted and accepted that they were in it as testers... the game would be soo much further along. It is high, you're right. Very high. In my opinion, almost too high. Valuing community input is one thing, but Eleon allows it to change the game's direction sometimes too. And when that happens from players (not testers) giving critical feedback, as we see in the topic of "frequent re-balancing", it can hurt the game's development schedule. Part of differentiating testers from players, is that testers know a game will be completely balanced when it needs to be - during Beta. Even if it's "released" during Early Access, there still isn't any true balance or fine-tuning until end of Beta. Players want that right now - and it is a total disconnect from reality. There are soooooo many other game systems needing attention, I can't even begin to list them. But we're spending time adding 5 pts of damage here, speeding up fire rate by 1 per second there, fiddling with range and ammo stack size.... you can see how this delays the real game for everyone. What we're seeing in this topic here, is an attempt to get a more firm grasp on different weapon types, ranges, and general balance. It's necessary, no doubt about it. But it's rudimentary balance, and other game systems will end up changing it, perhaps even completely.
If you just want testers, then you hire testers. You don't sell the game in an alpha or pre-alpha or even beta state. Games used to be a finished product when you bought them. Minecraft changed everything. Yes, I accept that I help development along by looking for and reporting bugs when I find them, along with giving feedback, but I didn't pay for the "privilege" of being a tester; I payed for a game, even if it was in only a rudimentary state (and you look at my join date - it was in a very rudimentary state then). If Eleon didn't take our feedback and engage with the community I certainly wouldn't waste my time giving any. That is their end of the bargain, and they do it very well. Yes, you are right sometimes you should listen to your customers and sometimes you shouldn't and it's a fine line to walk. I think the surveys are spot on and I wish more developers would do them, and the same way Eleon does. "This is alpha" wears thin after a while. The minute the hype starts for a game the clock starts ticking. Considering the amount of games that never get finished, especially very ambitious sandbox games like this, they need to have some play value in the here and now. If Empyrion got abandoned today I certainly wouldn't be happy, but I can't say I didn't get a lot of enjoyment out of it, which is more than I can say about a lot of other games lately. Anyway, it's late and I'm probably rambling.
From my experience, the devs of Empyrion have been very responsive to the playerbase, with numerous balance tweaks, content changes, bug fixes, and feature additions put forth by the community. I could list them, but you can trawl the forums for early threads and find them- there's a lot of them. tldr The devs listen, just be patient enough for them to code the stuff.
