I'm really happy for Eleon that their creation is coming together. Am I happy myself? I'm trying to be. It kinda feels like you have decided to become a single parent at the age of 16. Some of us are telling you straight up how crazy this is. Others are showing you smiles and support. But when you are out of the room we're all talking about how young you are and how hard it will be. Not saying it can't work or won't, just having those concerns. Or to put it another way...
So why come out of Alpha. I don't see what you are trying to gain by going into Beta, if as you say you are still going to add more features. Surely it's better to add features in experimental so they can be tested before release.
Yea it is premature but I'm sure there are business reasons behind the decisions, not design reasons. Wish we knew what it was just out of curiousity. Maybe another project is needing more attention, maybe the well is running dry. Last night one of our players logged in to our base and like on other occasions.........half the base was not there. Just empty space where several thousand cubic meters of base should be and a core hanging in the air mid way. Sometimes it happens to POI's which is always hilarious. This game is fun, but it feels like it might be barely ready for Beta, not release. Oh well, obviously going to happen regardless. Wish we knew the reason.
You Eleon have done an overall good job so far, small team as You are!!! Hope You really understand what peoples in general anticipate for a release of a Game V1.0!! Good luck with after 20200805!
I think you're right with this but even if this was part of the motivation (the marketing, not the bad impact on veteran players) -I could understand that. Eleon have deserved their harvesting season. If not after 5 years, then when? It's their decision to call their product finished (which they haven't!) as it was ours to buy it as WIP. I clocked 1k hours some months ago and would feel really, really bad to complain now about anything that might happen to this game in the future...
Yes, this is very much my worry too. I think people are generally more enthusiastic and forgiving when a title is in early-access, and perhaps they've picked it up at a discount price (£7.50) like I did, which was a total bargain. I don't consider Empyrion 1.0 to be a fully released title - though I'd see why new buyers would assume it was - rather we're entering Beta now...but then why call it 1.0? I'd like to add that I've no doubt that Eleon will be one of those developers, like Egosoft, that continue to add content way after release. I just hope we NEVER see the likes of "Walking around on ships DLC", or "Proper Factories DLC" or anything like that... a "Crouch DLC" would be worse than horse armour! Scoob.
I must admit, I'm hard pressed to think of any additional features the existing game really needs. There's a blueprint factory, and that's about it. Anything else I could think of would be lesser tweaks and reworks of existing systems, feature creep, or changes/expansions that already planned (like story stuff). So yeah, feels weird, but makes sense.
not beta, not alpha, but immediately release? I'm not arguing, but are you sure the game is ready to be called a release? Added all the features and other content that was planned? Does this mean that this is the end of development? Like the whole game is ready to play and don't touch us, are we going to get cash? News taken out of context!
More and more I feel game development cycles are going to stop using the old Pre-Alpha/Alpha (closed and open)/Beta (closed and open)/Release labels. There'll be Early Access and Release. "Release" will basically mean it's ready enough for mass consumption and sales, but still may or may not be changed and/or added to going forward. That's pretty much been the business model of a large number of games in the last few years, including AAA titles. Welcome to the age of the internet and having thousands of "testers" (people buying your game, creating content for it, etc) instead of a small group of developers working inside a vacuum until the product is put on store shelves and hoping for the best. Just think of how many games you wouldn't have enjoyed over the last X years if it was still the old way. So many games wouldn't have even started development.
The wording is just confusing to me, they're taking away the Early Access and Alpha tags, but the game isn't feature complete. Instead, they're going to continue what they've been doing, with a greater focus on optimization and bug fixes? That is needlessly confusing, and maybe it would've been better if these extra details Hummel teased were released at the same time. Of course this may not be a design decision, Eleon might be running out of cash. It would be a shame if the game had to be rushed to 'completion' because the developers had no more funds to work on it. Maybe this transition is a way to attract some sort of investors, a larger team, or even a bigger company to come help Eleon out. I think just getting the word out that the game exists would be great, because very few people I talk to seem to know it even exists.
I think what most folks on this forum are misunderstanding is that just because they are entering 1.0 doesn't mean they are stopping development on a large scale or game-changing features. What this indicates is that the game has reached a point where baseline gameplay has been established. This can be compared to Minecraft back when it left its beta. Not all of the features were there, but it was enough to say it was a full game that was playable, to which I would agree Empyrion has reached that state. It still needs some refinement, but at its core it has established a line of gameplay that can be expanded upon. 1.0 just indicates that the foundations have been laid and a frame has been built. By the sound of it, they are still adding in everything to flush things out. I find it admirable that this has all been done by a team of 7. If I were to give any advice to the team it's to make marketing a higher priority now that we're at 1.0 and iron out some of the more undefined elements (Ai, sound). This game have immense potential and with a good first introduction to more folks it could garner a huge following and help expand the team. Well done Eleon
Hi, first post here. I came back to EGS only recently with the promise of A12 giving us a whole galaxy to explore and have spent > 600 hours in this game by now. I've had the feeling of EGS being a great game with a unique, unrefined but otherwise rather complete and interesting feature set. I even thought about posting something like "I feel its time to stop adding new features and instead working on refining the existing ones". Funny coincidence that this seems to be happening now. I think it's great for (scenario) builders to know their creations won't break in the future, at least not like it happened with the introduction of the CPU system. It's great for me as a (PVE) player to know that Eleon will now be able to optimize the game for better performance and hopefully be able to add more varied content. I don't care if they call it Alpha or Beta or whatnot. Noone seems to care nowadays anyway, I'm constantly struggling with games and software riddled with bugs but lacking a Alpha/Beta tag. Good move Eleon! You've created an interesting, captivating game regarding the current feature set which imho would profit alot more from refining and optimizing the existing features than from adding more.
Happy, yes Worried........yes Do hope that content list of "larger features left and there is a long list of quality-of-life changes" contains...content.
In all seriousness, the gaming industry has gone through many changes. Some for the good, some for the bad. It was once an absurd thought to suggest advertisements in a video game. When EA stated they were potentially putting ad billboards up in BF2142, there was nearly another tea party started. Now it is surprising when you find a game on the google play store that does not constantly ask for your money. This just seems like another backpedal for prior mistakes rather than actually resolving any issues. Perhaps if there was a bit more light shed on the reasons, there wouldn't be so much speculation. Would be nice to get an actual honest answer to the many concerns we all have.
