7D2D do videos of what they are working on, which is good to see. Minecraft suggest to their players what features should be added/worked on. Ok they give 4 or 5 options and you vote on one. Whichever wins gets updated/worked on. Again, this is a good idea.
I don’t disagree it’s a good idea. Point is, I’ve read what Eleon has posted here that they are working on and seen “what would you like to see in the game” threads to which they are actively involved in. The concept of accountability as the gentlemen I was responding to was describing is absolutely true. However it is based on an ongoing fiscal relationship. Having to account for ones time to a paying client is par for the course. However we are not “paying clients”. We paid our pittance. Our fiscal relationship is over until they decide to move to a subscription plan of some sort. We didn’t “hire” or “contract” Eleon to build us a game. We paid a one time admission for a ticket into their theme park.
This 'transparency' issue that some are on about I can well understand. The problem is that some want total transparency. As the devs have said, this is not good. What would be a good idea is we had some sort of clue as to what features/bugs they are working on now. They can't possibly be working on all bugs at the same time. A 'guideline' of what is coming up and an approx time, as in what quarter/half of the year it will come out. (Of course with a disclaimer that it's not a guaranteed date). I am new to the game but as other have mentioned, some of the bugs have been going on for years. As I have pointed out in the post above, other open world games do it and it's great to see that.
No, but personal/professional integrity plays into it. I don't expect a detailed roadmap with every little feature or bug on it. But a regular "Top Three/Five/Ten Hot List" of features and bugs that are in their focus at any point in time, with some explanations for when some of these vanish without having been implented/resolved, would be great. Especially cool if it were always in the same place and kept reasonably up to date. Or, in the words of a friend of mine: do what you say you're going to do, when you say you're going to do it. Sure, never committing to anything is one way to avoid getting nailed to the board on them, but if you ever met someone who never commits to anything, you know how frustrating it can be to deal with the sort. By the way: a clear "not going to be done" or "not in the next two years" is very much an acceptable response. I wish they'd just outright go and say it about some of the things the community keeps clamoring about (moving around on moving ships is a frequent one).
To be clear, I don’t disagree with you. It totally would be nice if they did all of those things. My issue is more that I don’t feel that my fiscal relationship with them warrants any real >need< for them to do anything for me anymore, and some here seem to have an attitude that they are entitled to something because they bought the game. They go from it would be nice to have this” to “I demand this”. As far as video game design, I see it more in an aesthetic light than pure nuts and bolts business. I liken it more to my favorite band releasing an album, I purchase it and enjoy it. I don’t demand they get back to the studio and record songs that >I want< them to. I don’t feel entitled to know what their recording schedule is or any details on their songs. The lead singer coming out saying “Yeah guys, we are back to writing new songs and will be hitting the recording studio soon, hope to have an album out by the end of the year.”
If they fix the bug that makes the motorcycle turning ability inversely proportional to fps, it would be much better. Are you seriously trying to compare music albums to game development?
Well that's kinda proving a point that so many are making, and maybe not the point you are trying to make (apologies if I have got this wrong). When you consider that nothing has changed in the game, and the only change is the announcement of removing the EA tag then what are these negative reviews for? It can't be gameplay if the gameplay hasn't changed, so this has to be people reacting to the EA news. That doesn't make sense. Why leave a negative review for game because you disagree with a decision by the developers and not a review based on gameplay? Otherwise that is just a hate review . In fact, the strong positive reviews right up to that point say more about the game than anything else. I would love to see the stats now for this game in 3 months time. I would predict that that spike in hate reviews will be an anomaly overall. I'm reminded of a real life review I once read for a holiday resort that still makes me laugh when I think of it: "1 out of 5 stars - REASON: it rained the whole time". PS: I'm sure I broke several ten commandments of logic/argument here
I obviously did. I was comparing the creative and artistic aspect of it as well as the end user relationship with the creator. Not with the nuts and bolts behind the scenes of what goes on in creating the actual product. I am more than able to hold this opinion and view on the matter, and you are more than able to hold your own, and neither are invalid.
When I refer to 'nothing has changed in the game' I am of course referring to the sudden surge in negative comments, which I am fairly sure was what you were highlighting and your intention for posting the image in the first place (again, apologies if I have misunderstood here). To clarify; just before and after the announcement there were no significant changes to the game, so why the sudden spike in negative reviews? Yes, players have left over the years. New players have joined. Players have left, joined and then left again. Some have stayed. Some have found features vastly improved. Other have found loved features missing. Some bugs persist. Others have been fixed. I've had a hiatus from this game since about A9 I think and I can see the differences and the issues that are still there. I've seen far worse bugs and issues from developers with much more money, staff, experience and status than Eleon. I'm not saying that this is ok or an excuse only that if you look around it's all like this. I'll judge Eleon based on their track record and so far I've not seen anything to make me doubt them when they say they are still working on it and that the issues will be resolved.
Totally agree with this. Imagine if we could demand a guitar solo in the middle of a song or "I am gonna write everywhere that I don't recommend your album. Thank you very much. Band please fix this."
You can find all the text in each scenario's folder, in Content\Scenarios\(any scenario)\Extras\PDA\PDA.csv You can edit the csv files in Excel, but it's a bit tricky. There are many tools for this: https://thegeekpage.com/best-free-csv-editor-for-windows-10/ The 1st column is the "key" (identifier for each string), and what you need to edit is in the next columns, with the language shown at the top (English, French, German, etc). That's what they usually do - and even with more details for "walk on moving ship" - but some players will only ask for more and the next week they ask the same questions again. Usually some community member remembers and answers or links to the answer... and they're not satisfied most of the time : they demand an answer from the Boss...
got DCed with stuff in my connected toolbar and poof it is gone. Things are much better now that the alpha tag is gone. Yes just here to complain. No not going to write a bug report.
Oh, we can be in agreement there, too. But while our "fiscal relationship" with the devs is done, their fiscal relationship with those who read Steam reviews to make an informed decision on whether to buy or not, does go on.
What has changed is what the customer can expect from the game. EA comes with a warning tag specifically for this - there is a separate set of expectation a customer has when purchasing a game that says right up front this game is not complete, may have serious bugs and is guaranteed to have incomplete systems from a game that is claiming to be complete. I would leave a negative review of a restaurant if they brought me a big mac too - there are different expectations with differing levels of product. If I purchased this game today there is zero chance I would not leave a negative review and get a refund. Because I have been part of alpha, have more information on the fact the team released to 1.0 without a good reason and I had accepted this particular purchase in an incomplete state I will not. Those expectations are vital - they are what define your experience with a particular title.
Regarding the chart from Chimosh - what do the numbers along the left represent? At first I thought it was negative posts were negative numbers, but it says red/orange is negative. Then most red is on the bottom, but little bits are on the top. I am confused!
It depends on who the negative reviews are from, so it might be difficult to make conclusions from that. The ones from people who played it only after the change from early access to release represent a negative impact on growth (of the number of people who like the game and will say nice things about it to other people) from those who are judging the game only on its current state - they don't know how big the changes were, and it probably doesn't matter to them. It might send a stronger message to Eleon than forum posts. But I don't know what the motivations of the people who are long-time players leaving negative reviews might be.
