How does that exclude each other? There is no rule that DLC are content, either. In best-practices, it won't be, but 'cosmetic' customization. I understand the 'shut up and take my money!!!11' crowd (I'm poor, lol), but please, could you be a little bit more sober? Or ask for a Patreon account?
I was just working on a huge custom scenario with lots of new weapons, laser colors, mighty explosions, attack fridges, multi-kilometer-wide POIs with ghosts and scary music, blue alien bacon, custom planets with waterfalls and quicksands, active volanoes and earthquakes, giant desert worms, a galactic politics system, smiling NPCs, etc. But if you guys don't stop asking money for the devs I will just drop it.
Another one of these odd posts. Last week we had one who actually vouched for monthly subscriptions! Believe it or not... Why would anyone try to turn an indie dev with a good reputation into another Microsoft or Electronic Arts? A "sense of honour" and respect for their customers is the one big advantage indies have over their corporatist AAA counterparts. Why take that away? Perhaps I'm just not "modern" enough to understand docile consumerism but, it is such DLC scumming and dishonest microtransactions that drove me to indie games in the first place. Now there's no problem with the idea of future expansions or DLC but, finish the game first and address the numerous outstanding concerns. Slapping a 1.0 on an unfinished game for the sake of DLC scumming is what the greedy AAA greysuits do, not honest indie devs. Maybe it will be more viable next Christmas but, right now is far too early. Sometimes small devs do struggle to pay bills but, there are other ways to get support without destroying the confidence and trust that your fanbase place in you. Run a kickstarter or open a Patreon page, or allow simple donations. It is not a lost monetisation opportunity, it's a won trust building opportunity. And last but not least. Just because it's Christmas doesn't mean we're all suddenly on holiday.
Merch is whole other kettle of fish. It's more acceptable to fans, but you gotta put up money to get the stuff actually made first, and then you might not even sell enough to make it worth the trouble. Plus you gotta make sure you own ALL the IP rights needed to make and sell the stuff. For the sake of theory crafting, one could probably imagine DLC that could work. Picture a version of Empyrion with a finished main quest. It's great fun, touches a lot of aspect of the game, and gives players a pretty good grand tour of the possibilities. Picture also some decent modding options that leta players add content to the vanilla game, stuff like blocks and missions. As a flagship for this system, Eleon makes a cheap module with new missions and some cosmetic features. They ask about two or three euros for it, and tie it to servers rather than clients so everyone has access to it in multiplayer. That's a pretty far off scenario, though. The game would have to already be a state such that Eleon could walk away and leave the lion's share of players satisfied. Even then, it might be a bad look.
Because we as gamers of this era are very very spoiled. We keep wanting stuff long after release. This was never a thing in the past. Games were released, had two or three patches and that was it. More content? The developers would release and expansion and again - that was it. I'm against the trail of thought that we payed for something incomplete. Many finished games like Age of Empires, C&C, in the past were incomplete in some gameplay aspects. This game is almost free for its price. People have been wanting the walk-on-moving-ships thingy already mentioned here for ages. At some point, we need to accept some of this as a predefined limitation. Like in every Windows version where you can't rename multiple files at once using explorer. If you go to every community post about this, people will answer that it's a known limitation and it's "by design". So we accept this and find a workaround (using powershell or cmd). It's been like this for decades. We need to accept that many of the features we label as "missing" may in fact never be possible or desirable by the team behind the software. And move on.
I would be sad to see anyone discouraged by anything they read on the forums. But I think everyone here needs to learn to disagree with people without making personal attacks or making a bunch of assumptions about the motives or stupidity of other people. There's nothing stopping anyone from putting their case across politely. If someone says something you totally disagree with, you're a lot less convincing when you attack them personally instead of addressing their argument, eg. by saying "how could anyone possibly believe this???", or try to construct a "gotya" interpretation of something you think they've said to "prove them wrong". That just looks like a weak argument to an intelligent observer. It's not easy, but it's always best to show patience and respect, it's the optimal way to get your perspective across. I don't think it matters what people are asking for. You should make your custom scenario. I know you've been around Empy for a long time and I'm sure it would be awesome.
I think there are some reasons why some posts attract overheated discussion. 1. Some of us (me included) don't speak English as their native language so some comments may seem too harsh for their own good. 2. The developers already explained their reasons and perspective many times. 3. No offense but I read some posts (not yours or the OP's) where they seem a lot like some stranger visiting a company and stating to the CEO that they know how to do business more effectively than the guy in charge.
True, but I suppose that like me, you will think that bugs are not included in the "the game is complete" right? So, yes, the game maybe it is complete and many lacking features are...errrrr.... by design, but bugs should be fixed. No questions here, I think.
Sure, and developers should put their work where his mouth is when listing features, content and, a consistent and bug free experience. It is very easy, I give you the money that you have asked for, and you give me the game that you told you would give me. And here I always suppose that the promised game should work like a charm, because when they ask $20 I do not give to them $18.5 or $19, you know. Again, I am not against payed DLCs adding content, but give us a complete and bug free game first. We should not finance with more money the bug fixing or lacking implementations that were included in the features list as part of the game marketing.
Regarding what @byo13 wrote previously : I did buy an "incomplete" game and despites the game being out of Early Access the developers clearly stated that the game was not "complete" they only stated that "most of the game-breaking code is finished" and that they would now focus on other things, like bug fixing and better sounds, placeholder replacement, etc. They also mentioned in august that they would provide us with some kind of "roadmap" at some point, and this also points to an "unfinished game". There are tons of little things that could be done to make the game even more cool, especially regarding providing us with more "handles" to manage events like capture keypresses from the player, or giving us some kind of audio interface for custom ambiant sounds and dialogs, having some in-game closed-circuit camera system to show animated textures/ gifs, these kinds of things. The "core" of the game might be "completed" but there are still many "branches" that can be developed, and if the developers are passionate about their game they can keep on adding stuff as long as they want, I'm not going to complain. And if at the same time they can work a bit on optimisation, then it's a bonus. .
The reason I mention the past ways of game development is to bring to light some discussion about if the ways we see today are the right ways of doing it. People stay away from buying and supporting EA games for a reason. Are small team game developers prepared for this long time commitment to a project? If they release no DLCs and keep the project alive, they'll starve. If they release a handful of DLCs to survive the community will hate the move and say "fix the game before releasing new content". They could do both but... bigger team, less money. Empyrion is one of the few roses in the Early Access desert right now. And I like what I see here. The community is great (and we see so many toxic communities around) with talented content creators. The developers are close to us on Discord and the forums. I guess I got aboard and trust the captain without making questions on where we're going because the ride is great.
With the due respect, I will be very clear here, anyway this is not the absolute true, only my thought: -DLCs adding new content and cool features that never were disclosed before: YES -DLCs adding this that already was advertised as being in the game, or that enhances this that was advertised, is there but it is not working, or enhancing not working systems to working condition: NO, NO and NO. And about this Games as Service train: Absolutely NOT. I run from models like this as from the fire. Do you know why? Because I do not like any dependency on anyone. I am bored of wasting my money on something that stops working only because somebody decided for me that I used the product enough time, and that I should move on and buy the next installment. I want value for my money, and Games as Service bring me the less value, to be honest. Sorry, but I am enough old as to remember when we were buying a game and it was working for ever, while you have a computer an OS capable of run it. I hate the programmed obsolescence that Games as Service is, where the developer / publisher decides when enough is enough, and push the kill switch. This is why I normally buy Indie games that rely on private servers for the multiplayer part. Yes, I know that you will say now... that Steam itself is a service, that would push this kill switch anyway, and you are right, and do you know what?... buying there was something that never was pleasing to me, but is this or not gaming at all, and I am a gamer up to the bottom of my heart. I love games and I agree that, technically, we are living in a gold age now, but it is the ways, the respect for the gamer this that is worst now that never before.
I will wait before commenting your video. There are lots I could say, and I think you are leaving aside a lot of players that are not native English speakers by making a video in English ( native French speaker here). In any event, I made a transcript of your video, and I would recommend you read it while listening to your video, just to make sure everything is in there. I think that if you deem what you say in there is important, then the german developers will not benefit from it, hence why I made a transcript. Now I also hope that this will help you understand that some people also read each and every word written in short forum posts. I have things to do for now, but I will comment later on your video.
Wow, I have to look it over, that's Awesome . after you have done the transcript what are your thoughts?
Notepad, my ears and my laptop. I did some small transcript and translation contracts in the past for about a year where I used voice recognition to dictate what I was listening to, but that was for longer audio files with many people talking at the same time. At average speed a normal discourse will take approx. 1 page for 1 minute of speech (double interline - easier to read). People often don't realise how much they say in a short time, compared to writing it, where we tend to be much more focused and concise.
