I asked these exact same questions in the past, and if I had many hours to waste I could try finding the thread where I posted these. You could then see how it was received with widely different reactions. Ironically I have been called a "fanboy" a few times recently, and at that time saying the same thing I was told that if not happy I could leave and take a break. And not by players... hem... See ? But at that time, the "small team" excuse was used and abused by players to justify all and everything, and I showed the numbers I mentioned in an earlier post here. Some players reacted strongly to this and thought exactly the same you are thinking now : why not hire more ? And some left the forum because of this, although they were good contributors and cool players. I made a different choice to stay and try to understand. Why they did not spend more ? That's a good question. I had to run a small office at some point in my life, and from experience things can get crazy pretty fast if not holding tight all aspects of the business. Here Eleon obviously had to keep an eye on a budget, and hiring "developers" and "animators" and "modelers" is not like hiring day jobbers or clerks. Specialised employees have to be given some time to show what they can do with the actual game, which can differ from their experience and resume. And if the result is below expectations, that's wasted money. Same for all "art" aspects. So short answer is : they are surely careful about who they hire, and they surely try to be involved as much as possible in what content they produce, because of possible negative outcomes. We might never know all the stories about the "small team and hired skills" but anything, bad and good, can have happened. Now scale up the number of employees, you have to proportionally scale down the amount of control you have on what they do. On a limited but adequate budget, it's not a good risk to take.
I don't know much about software development and even less about the "gaming" world, but from what I have observed these past few years the issue of "1.0" seems pretty meaningless. The program I use professionally came out a few years ago in version 1.0 and it was pretty useless for anything (Dorico, think of it as a word processor for music) and the reviews were appalling! Few years later and it's leading the industry and it's the talk of the town. It's up to 3.5.something and they have revolutionised how music is notated. In games I saw the whole NMS debacle and again, it's the talk of the town these days. Elite, until very recently, had an average of "mixed" reviews in Steam and it's still one of the top best sellers. Now please be aware, I am not making any claims here, I'm just pointing out a few observations that make me think that Eleon's strategy is rather inconsequential in the long term.... My 2p.
Here, my "Daily Pick"... This ones shows blatantly how much "negative reviews" reflect butt-hurt player's vengeance for not being "listened to" by the developers. Take a close look at this : This is why many people on the Steam general forums say that Steam reviews are BS. And examples like this abound. Moreso, the same morons can vote on all negative reviews just because it makes them feel good to bash the game a little more.
I accepted this during the Pre-Alpha stage, but can no longer since they have all the "core" aspects in the game now. I don't need a specific, time-table, roadmap. I don't want a series of time-stamped goals. What I desire as a player is to have some inkling about where the developers see the game progressing. Give me a direction, and some things to anticipate. I believe that's what people are asking for when they say, "roadmap." We don't need/want a spreadsheet, but some clue about the future development. At this stage, for there to be no roadmap of any kind tells me the developers aren't sure themselves. It's the opposite of the "No Man's Sky" problem (the dev there promised far too much), where they are promising very little and hoping we will be pleasantly surprised. Now that the game is out of Pre-Alpha and is christened version 1.0, there needs to be some sort of public plan, or new players will not be interested. I'm worried that we will lose what we love in this game.
Hummel had a word on this: https://empyriononline.com/threads/leaving-alpha-early-access-some-clarifications.94900/ "(...) But we of course know that giving no info is as bad as giving false leading info. So we are currently trying hard to carve out a development plan and a rough “feature list” for the next content update after the version change - as the anniversary release, being so close to Alpha 12, will be merely gadgets and fixing stuff."
Erm, yes. That is the principle behind being transparent and accountable. What I read here basically sounds like, "I don't make a todo list for my work week, because my boss might ask me about how much of it I actually managed to do, and why the rest didn't get done." Either this, or they don't even *have* a plan, and just run with what feels cool in the moment. I am self-employed. I need to justify every hour I bill a client. If I take too long because of unforeseen circumstances, I bill more. If I take too long because I fuck up royally and need to redo large parts of my work due to nobody's fault but my own stupidity, and if it could be reasonably expected for me to not make that dumb a mistake...guess what, I can't bill that full time. I need to be transparent, and accountable. Which earns trust, and creates an image of honesty and reliability. In short, it gets clients to stick around, even when mistakes are made sometimes.
I really hate this argument and I see it a lot here. If I like the game that automatically makes me a fanboy or a brainwashed cult member or something. I could just as easily say. "Some people in this thread seem to insist on putting the game down, no matter what the Devs say or do, as if a rival developer is paying them to" There you go. Do I get my money now Eleon? All hail our overlords EGS!
No mate, thats being a fanboy of Spanj. I don't have the mug but I do have ELEON PLEASE FIX tattooed on my forehead..... but i'm not a fanboy...
Agreed your not a fanboy for doing that. You will just be added to the bug threads as a Known issues or maybe in the Currently not reproducible. OH! I just saw the new one Alpha 11 - Backlog. But in the end someone will come along and just say working as intended. Not a bug.
In all seriousness, I like Spanj and his videos. I am new to Empyrion (Alpha 12) and it's because of him and his videos that I bought it.
Yes I have been enjoying his shows. I'm really hoping he will try his hand at Eden reforged. I would love to see it in action before I decide if I want to take the plunge into reforged. I saw the wall's of text about all the changes in it. If there is one thing you can say about Vermillion, is the man can write.
OMG there are so many phrases uttered on these forums that I've wanted on T-shirts or mugs. I'd love to have a phrase for each Alpha that sums up that release that only people who use these forums will understand
I really like this game and have had many hours of fun playing it. The reason I am writing this is because I care about the game, not because I want to trash it.Moving out of early access worries me because I want the game and the dev team to do well so development can continue and I can keep enjoying the game as it gains features and refinement. Why am I worried that it won't do well? It is not because the game isn't 100% complete, as I have seen mentioned in several posts. Many successful games release then continue development. I worry because early access is judged by very different standards than release, and the level of quality for some of the bigger features is not really up to par with what I (and probably many people) expect at 1.0. The type of players who play early access games are probably more willing to fiddle with things, tolerate issues (myself included), and be active in the forums. The players you're not going to hear from are those who buy the game, lose interest because of an issue early in the game, then shelve the game (or even go for a refund). They won't complain here, and they won't tell their friends about the game. Some examples of things I consider perfectly acceptable in early access, but not in release. These aren't really bugs, but more like features with partial, strange, or not user-friendly implementations: Robinson Protocol - This will have a big effect on the first impression new players get. Steps/Checkpoints - I have run through this a few times in the past month, and each time through there have been issues with the steps not completing when they should, issues with event triggers in general, and some instructions being difficult to follow (often you can't view the instructions while trying to do the thing, and navigating the menus is pretty tough at first). The thing that is intended to help new get players into the game often feels like a stubbed out placeholder. I like this game enough that I got one of my friends to get the game and join me, but as we went through this we said several times "yeah, early access" then shrugged it off. Cryptic choices - Early on there are a couple of choices, one of them is IDA asking if you want to play all the logs or something similar. If you say no, it seems the tutorial ends and you are prompted to start the solo mission, but it's not really clear that that is what is happening. Just now I tried to restart it, but it is no longer available. It has one objective now, "BACK TO MAIN MENU (ESC)", which is either telling me to go to the menu screen that has options, video, etc. and press that button (I don't see it) or telling me to start a new game. It needs to be more clear, or even better, make the option for skipping the tutorial more clear ("Do you want follow the tutorial, or skip it for now?"), and allow the player to restart it at any time in that same game. Motorcycle - it looks cool, but riding it doesn't leave a good impression. My first time on it I wondered if that was a sign of what to expect from vehicles in general. Vehicles are awesome, but the motorcycle might make people lose interest before they get to them. Missions/Quests in general Checkpoints/Triggers - They aren't very robust. Fore example, my 2nd time through the solo missions I was on the planetary remnant and already knew I needed to go down into the shaft, get the thing, then get back out to my ship. I exited the area a bit too quickly though, and apparently passed by the trigger point for getting credit for escaping. I was already in my ship, but still hadn't escaped. So I got out, went back in toward the mine until I got the completion message, then went back out to my ship. I'm guessing this is why the ability to complete checkpoints manually exists, which is an acknowledgement that these types of issues exist and a quick workaround to keep things going. "Me 9/10, 8/10, 7/10" is so strange, there are better ways to do this. In multiple places, a message pops up on the screen that locks the controls up right in the middle of a fight that is part of the mission/story. Each time I scramble to escape out of it so I don't die, then after the battle, I sometimes can't pull all/some of the text back up to read it. Some stuff goes into the log, some doesn't. I don't remember the name of it, but there is a mission where you teleport to or from the little control thingy in the middle of the mine field. Before I got to that mission, I was flying around, scanning, exploring, and found the legacy ship that has a teleporter. I didn't know what it was, but I took the teleporter, because that's what we do right? I ended up several kilometers away on the station in the middle of the minefield, and had no way to teleport back to my ship, because the mission was not active. Depth NPC Traders - There are a few different trader models, and all traders that have the same model have the same stuff. It would be nice if it varied some based on location and other factors. NPC Settlements - There are many NPC buildings (mostly Polaris from what I have seen so far) but not much to do with them (except look at those trader inventories). They are just scenery at this point, but could/should be more. Exploration - Exploration seems like one of the biggest selling points of a game like this, but after leaving the starting system, there doesn't seem to be much reason to explore. There's a huge galaxy, but in my experience, all other systems feel pretty empty. Same crashed ships, same POIs (love the POIs though), same empty settlements. I admit I only visited 5-6 systems and a few planets in each system before I lost interest, so I may be missing something. And if I am, it would be nice to have something in game at least giving a hint of what might be out there to find. As it is, it seems it is up to players to make their own goals, find their own reasons. Story/situation/narrative - We have the beginnings of a storyline, but aside from that, I don't get any feeling about what is going on in the galaxy. There needs to be some tension, and ways for players to get involved in that tension, separate from the storyline. The NPC factions don't talk about each other, they don't interact with each other, and they seem to ignore each others territory and just move right in. If I am attacked by Zirax while docking at a Polaris trade station, the Polaris don't react at all. It's just weird and empty. I'm playing through the Project Eden scenario, and it fills in some of what is missing, which is awesome, but the base game needs more here. Features that have an interface, but don't work - an example is on the color and texture tool. It has a menu for defining colors and saving color palettes, but it does not seem to completely work. I defined a color, followed the instructions on the tool tip, but the button mentioned (set current?) is not active so I can't make use of the color I defined. This is a feature that would be really awesome, but it's no big deal if it's not in 1.0. It just shouldn't have a menu or anything until it's working. Edit - I just looked at it again after a fresh log in and the "set current" button was active. I was able to define a color, hit that button, then use it. So it seems like this just might have a bug or two. Also, in testing what the "+" button does I created more tabs that I don't expect to use, but can't find a way to delete them.
Is there a way to edit the text in the Missions.. Tutorial..etc? I want to correct all of the horrendous spelling and grammar mistakes.
As an aside, and just for reference, can you please link to an example of another video game laying out detailed plans for their future expansions.
