Fractal Softworks Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

News:

Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

Pages: 1 [2] 3 4 ... 12

Author Topic: Is this game dead?  (Read 39561 times)

SCC

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 4112
    • View Profile
Re: Is this game dead?
« Reply #15 on: January 24, 2021, 10:35:51 AM »

And especially the QoL-changes and bug-fixes are such a big thing for me, that I prefer to wait for this update before buying and playing the game. Knowing that these things are missing in the current version would otherwise negativly affect my view of the game. And why burden your experinece of a game made with such dedication, if just waiting some weeks or months solves the issue?
How do you know how important this are without having played the game? Heh.

As far as I am concerned SS is currently still a paid demo that becomes a game only by piling mods made by passionate, unpaid heroes who add crucial elements missing from the game like faction dynamics.
Without the base game combat, Nex wouldn't be worth playing (it also likely wouldn't have been created), though if you don't play SS for its combat (why?), it's probably much more important to you.

(or, indeed, one's forum account creation date).
My di- date is bigger than yours!

If you're gonna wait until something is completely done and polished so you don't experience "flawed" things, you're going to miss out a lot in life. Even with super clear goals and promises, you don't know how exactly will the final product look like, or if it'll even see the light of day. If something seems interesting, try it, you can always come back to it if it ever improves. What you can't do is bring back time. With some multiplayer games I seriously had more fun in their alpha/beta phases, even though that game is now much more complete and has more content.
Game industry isn't exactly small, so it can be viable to choose to wait with playing games until they're finished. For some more niche genres, though, you don't get as much freedom of choice as you would wish.

Flying Birdy

  • Commander
  • ***
  • Posts: 165
    • View Profile
Re: Is this game dead?
« Reply #16 on: January 24, 2021, 11:29:09 AM »

I'll say, while I appreciate people jumping in to (correctly!) point out that development is very much active, I'd also really appreciate if that didn't come with a side of putting down people that are dissatisfied with some aspect of development. It's entirely possible to have different opinions here, and a conversation about it without attacks on one's person (or, indeed, one's forum account creation date).

Alex I appreciate how, in spite of negative comments towards you as a developer, you are trying your best to keep the forum positive and discussion on track!

I have to say though, I hope you can ignore the negativity and complaints about the development timeline! You are making my childhood's dream game! I've never ever imagined that a total internet stranger would be able to so perfectly encapsulate my childhood dream of starships, trading, and empires and distill it in a tiny package of pure nostalgia. Take as much time as you need to get it right! (no pressure or anything, its just my childhood dreams we're talking about here  ;D)
Logged

Alex

  • Administrator
  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 23988
    • View Profile
Re: Is this game dead?
« Reply #17 on: January 24, 2021, 12:04:50 PM »

Alex I appreciate how, in spite of negative comments towards you as a developer, you are trying your best to keep the forum positive and discussion on track!

I have to say though, I hope you can ignore the negativity and complaints about the development timeline! You are making my childhood's dream game! I've never ever imagined that a total internet stranger would be able to so perfectly encapsulate my childhood dream of starships, trading, and empires and distill it in a tiny package of pure nostalgia. Take as much time as you need to get it right! (no pressure or anything, its just my childhood dreams we're talking about here  ;D)

I don't think anything here was all that negative, really! And, thank you for your kind words - it's very much my childhood dream, too, so that it's shared by, as you say, a total internet stranger, really means something :D
Logged

Dread Lord Murubarda

  • Commander
  • ***
  • Posts: 105
    • View Profile
Re: Is this game dead?
« Reply #18 on: January 24, 2021, 12:33:06 PM »

alex is way too "positive", he won't let me swear at all. I feel like I am suffocating on this forum, but w/e. j/k

to the OP: you should check out the mods, most are updated pretty often, every few months I re-install and check out all the mod updates. it really feels like game is changing quite often because of all the wonderful mods.

you could also try modding some stuff yourself, I have, and I'm a complete amateur + really lazy.

also, ignore grevious, he likes to bait people and then report if you tell it to F off.

I guarantee you this game's not dead, too much work has been put into it by too many people.
Logged

Morrokain

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 2143
  • Megalith Dreadnought - Archean Order
    • View Profile
Re: Is this game dead?
« Reply #19 on: January 24, 2021, 01:11:20 PM »

Alex I appreciate how, in spite of negative comments towards you as a developer, you are trying your best to keep the forum positive and discussion on track!

This is pretty much why I stick around and put effort towards modding and the modding community. I've tried to have honest discussions on other game forums in the past and at this point I don't even bother anymore.

They almost always devolve into tantrums and insults within the first couple of posts. Alex takes time out of his day despite being the sole dev to do this, and that's a feat of strength that few can equal imo.

Try going on the SC2 forums and talking about faction balance. Or heaven forbid you speak of class balance on the World of Warcraft forums. You will be devoured whole. :P A truly soul-sucking experience that you can see affect long-term moderators who eventually just stop posting altogether.

Alex is practically a saint in my book. Especially with all the whining I personally do in an effort to help make the game better. Heh.
Logged

Mortrag

  • Commander
  • ***
  • Posts: 226
    • View Profile
Re: Is this game dead?
« Reply #20 on: January 24, 2021, 01:55:30 PM »

And especially the QoL-changes and bug-fixes are such a big thing for me, that I prefer to wait for this update before buying and playing the game. Knowing that these things are missing in the current version would otherwise negativly affect my view of the game. And why burden your experinece of a game made with such dedication, if just waiting some weeks or months solves the issue?
How do you know how important this are without having played the game? Heh.

Truth, but that's simply how I am: If I know that there is something missing, it's difficult to overlook it, even if the rest of the product is still (very) good. And so I prefer to wait.
This decision also varies with some other factors like how strongly they are advertised (Twitter-screenshots, i.D. patch-notes vs. nebulous mentioned things), the estimated time left until the release (0.95 vs. 1.0 vs 1.5 and so on) and how important they are to my style of play (that's the point you mentioned, which right now affects my decision only minor).
So, your point is relevant, but it isn't the only one.
Logged

Kpop

  • Lieutenant
  • **
  • Posts: 87
    • View Profile
Re: Is this game dead?
« Reply #21 on: January 24, 2021, 02:32:24 PM »

Alex I appreciate how, in spite of negative comments towards you as a developer, you are trying your best to keep the forum positive and discussion on track!

This is pretty much why I stick around and put effort towards modding and the modding community. I've tried to have honest discussions on other game forums in the past and at this point I don't even bother anymore.

They almost always devolve into tantrums and insults within the first couple of posts. Alex takes time out of his day despite being the sole dev to do this, and that's a feat of strength that few can equal imo.

Try going on the SC2 forums and talking about faction balance. Or heaven forbid you speak of class balance on the World of Warcraft forums. You will be devoured whole. :P A truly soul-sucking experience that you can see affect long-term moderators who eventually just stop posting altogether.

Alex is practically a saint in my book. Especially with all the whining I personally do in an effort to help make the game better. Heh.

Ban alex from looking at the forums so he can work on the game more  :P

///IRRELEVANT TANGENT///

On a serious note, I worked on a private server for a game that got shutdown awhile ago(the original game) as a dev for about 6 months. It was volunteer work, lots of fun though. As someone who played the game a lot(it was a pvp centric game) I had some very strong opinions on balance. I played almost every class and would try to listen to every criticism. Even though I did, I could easily separate who were the sweaty nerds trying to min/max from the casuals.

Before I was even on the project I had many arguments over balance around the game. The dichotomy of what makes the casual player enjoy things versus what the hardcore nerd that plays enjoys is something to consider. Trying to pander to both is a fine line that realistically is hard to achieve. Moreso with multiplayer games but I digress.

You can't please everyone. You either find a niche that people enjoy or you pander to everyone and please no-one.

///IRRELEVANT TANGENT OVER///               

Alex has done a damn fine job setting out to what he wants his product to be. No clown fiesta of an AAA game dev studio. Just one dude and his passion project. That is respectable. If OP followed the blogposts semi-regularly it would be pretty clear this game is the furthest from being abandoned.
Logged

facc00

  • Commander
  • ***
  • Posts: 110
    • View Profile
Re: Is this game dead?
« Reply #22 on: January 24, 2021, 02:54:16 PM »

Steam forums aren't any better.  You cant please everyone.  I see people post on sins of a solar empire that the devs abandoned it all the time when they have put their hearts into for years.
Logged

FooF

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 1378
    • View Profile
Re: Is this game dead?
« Reply #23 on: January 24, 2021, 04:29:27 PM »

Every community has its die-hards and to the degree that "good" communities have some self-awareness that they've been drinking the Kool-Aid for awhile, it's still rarely a good idea to dog-pile on legitimate concerns. I've been a forum moderator for other "vocal" game communities and a great indicator of forum "maturity" is how the community treats new members and how they deal with age-old issues.

Fact: The game has a long development cycle. This is a truly legitimate complaint. There's no way around it and if I'm a paying customer that feels this is unacceptable, I have a right to voice my displeasure.

Now, this complaint is oft-heard, which makes those of us who have grown accustomed to the development cycle groan a little. However, to be frank, it's not my fight: I'm not the developer. Alex can defend himself and he has (successfully, IMO) more often than not. But, I'm not going to pretend that waiting 10 years for a game is normal. I can empathize with those unwilling to wait any more but I'm not among them because everything Alex has put out has been phenomenal.

I just don't think it's productive to shoot down the "this is taking forever" argument. It is taking forever...but the flip side of that is that it's worth waiting for. Not everyone will agree with that statement but they're entitled to how they feel about it.
Logged

Locklave

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 631
    • View Profile
Re: Is this game dead?
« Reply #24 on: January 24, 2021, 05:11:23 PM »

I'll say, while I appreciate people jumping in to (correctly!) point out that development is very much active, I'd also really appreciate if that didn't come with a side of putting down people that are dissatisfied with some aspect of development. It's entirely possible to have different opinions here, and a conversation about it without attacks on one's person (or, indeed, one's forum account creation date).

^^ this is not really the dev interacting with us, it's a Alpha core, Alex is an Alpha core.

Praise the AI overlords.

On a serious note Alex stepping forward in the forums all the time, like this, is immeasurably valuable to the health of the community. 
« Last Edit: January 24, 2021, 05:14:35 PM by Locklave »
Logged

Tempest

  • Lieutenant
  • **
  • Posts: 98
    • View Profile
Re: Is this game dead?
« Reply #25 on: January 24, 2021, 05:40:22 PM »


^^ this is not really the dev interacting with us, it's a Alpha core, Alex is an Alpha core.

Can we sell him then?
Logged

sector_terror

  • Commander
  • ***
  • Posts: 195
    • View Profile
Re: Is this game dead?
« Reply #26 on: January 25, 2021, 02:05:55 AM »

I'll jump in for a comment. No, it's not dead. And let's not try to be "nice" for it's own sake here. I originally wrote this as a steel manning to ponder for it's own sake but I honestly do think I see where the OP is coming from here.

Edit: A correction to make is that Alex is the prime developer on this. Thus the statement that this is done by the small group I originally pondered with is inaccurate. That only makes my conclusion stronger so....damn good work Alex. You're an inspiration.

Let's start with the premise, that the game is dead. While given that we saw a development blog just last month, and during a holiday no less, calling development dead must be a hyperbole. I won't assume malice of the OP since doing so would require assuming he isn't even looking into the blog on the main site. The only hyperbole I can see it being is that development is so slow it's never really going to come out and we will just get endless promises forever. That I think deserves some examination, if not just to discuss the case since it should always be kept in mind that sometimes you do need to output results. And hell, I feel like playing a steel man since this is an interesting question to ponder.

For now let's look at the history we have. I don't have the time or energy to read and detail every single blog for full examination. And as we'll see in this post, I don't think I need to. But let's be honest, not seeing major development for months on end is not a minor thing, and nor should it be ignored. Here's what I mean. There is a lot of time between each of these development blogs, more than the usual. Up until 2019 the most skipped is one month. Now I'm seeing two-three months of silence followed by another silence in march, then into 3 more months. That's concerning a sign of drastic change in development, and I think we as fans need to look into if that's justified by the difference in content of the development cycle. So now we can pose a key question, is what is being added and altered so significant that it justifies these differences.

Starting with July, we got a blog post regarding this new story point system. Given this was directly after v.9.1 and there haven't been any hotfixes or the like I can find(I cam in around szeth's review) we can reasonably assume development started shortly after on v.95. In the blog we have a visual on at least some screenshots or the like. Looking at it we only have some demo or concept menus combined with already existing assets. Now, we have no idea how far these new screens have been in development, since it might have been created -before- v.9.1 and only released once other important concepts were set to come out, or could just be outright mock-ups. Hell, let's take it further and say the team got this working enough to show a menu through debug commands  on their own system and is still working on other systems. And these are only UI screens, they don't show these screen doing anything, just showing up to be worked with. the only conclusion I think I can come to is that development is pretty active during this period. For this to be finished enough for 4 people to show this much in two month is far from even slow. It also seems a bit too clean for mock-ups if you ask me.

Following that, I think I can also say similar to the November 2019 and August 2020 blogs. Both show a lot of similar aspects. We see screenshots or mock-ups of menus and screens that could be in the game. These not only have the same clean look to them, as if screenshots from the game itself, but also bring something new. Both of these blogs show screenshots that just don't exist otherwise. This raid thing has to be from outright scratch, as do contacts. There isn't a general structure as to those these should exist and how to get to them. Skills and some of the earlier story point menus you can bring up a menu and get into them right away, with the only change being a matter of formatting. But these would have to appear in entirely menus using entirely new system. Unless these really are hard mock-ups, it does show development increasing. A final thing to note here leads into another thing I notice, and that would be some of the writing.

I skipped over three of the blogs, two of them being the ones discussing art, and the third being the latest. Looking at the contacts screen especially, there's a hint a lot of new material. As in, not just a ship or a visual map. Look at the concept work, there's a pretty large chunk of visual material. And these aren't new stars or something they can re-use. This isn't what Stellaris did with some of it's art where they repeated a lot of images while they added new mechanics and events, these are the kinds of thing that are very unlikely to be used repeatedly and even suggest there's outright repetition going on, showing revision. Why bother showing any of this if it's just some individual new red shield quest we've seen before. It's the same with the weapon effects, why show these if they are just a single new weapon or the like? The only thing that makes sense to me is if that writing StarSector post was made because there has been a -lot- of writing and they wanted to drop hints of what to come, which would match up with the screenshots having entirely new menus that would need at least a handful of different quotes based on facts like the faction giving it out. It suggests a lot of density.

And to end this all off, here's the work I did do in detail. We only got the actual development list of exactly what's going to be in the next update mid october. And all of it looks entirely in-line with what we've been seeing in the blogs. Nothing is left without some mention, and nothing is added that wasnt brought up before. It shows development being well structured, retaining development goals, and keeping a stable project line. If that wasn't enough, the time scale between when these patch notes comes out and when the thing is finished is still in line. Last one was January when the notes were posted and came out in May. And the one before that was even longer(as have most others.) So it won't even been off-speed until after April.

With all this said, there is a question I can't ask, and what's how much content has been added previously. I have no interest in pondering so far that I start digging into the full history of the blog and development status down to individual posts to make a full pattern. More veteran fans than I will have to use their memory to decide if what I'm bringing up seems significantly more complex and dense to justify the silence or if the blogs are just longer and significantly more detailed so less needs to be said month to month.

If none of that made sense, that's fine. I honestly thought of deleting this for being way off topic, but I figure sharing my thoughts on the proposed question holds some worth. All in all, i remain recklessly excited for the next update and confident in the developer's ability to get it finished without breaking their own drive or losing control of their direction into feature creep. From what -I- see there is a wealth of content here which justifies the time taken, and the general development time doesn't even show a sign of slowing down. The blog posts do but that could be there's just more in each of them then before and thus done with a new style, since the shift in time between blogs is consistent. Thus I don't think the game is even slightly slow, and have no reason to lose my patience here. Thanks for coming to my ted talk.
« Last Edit: January 25, 2021, 04:13:26 PM by sector_terror »
Logged

Morrokain

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 2143
  • Megalith Dreadnought - Archean Order
    • View Profile
Re: Is this game dead?
« Reply #27 on: January 25, 2021, 12:35:23 PM »

I'll jump in for a comment. No, it's not dead. And let's not try to be "nice" for it's own sake here. I originally wrote this as a steel manning to ponder for it's own sake but I honestly do think I see where the OP is coming from here.

First, a small correction: there are not 4 people on the dev "team" for this project. There is 1.5 in that Alex is full time and David is part time. I don't believe David codes at all - that is strictly Alex. David does all the art and most of the writing iirc. Coming to the party when you did I'm not sure there is any way to know that as I don't know the last time Alex mentioned it, but just so you are aware.

Second, at least for me, being nice isn't necessarily for its own sake - though I am an advocate of kindness for kindness' sake just in general. Not enough of it in the world. Anyway, the more important reason to be nice from a forum standpoint is actually the power of your argument. At the end of the day, if your argument is filled with personal attacks, sarcastic ranting at what you disagree with and other such scorn, you only look weak (at best) and your argument (if you even had one to begin with) loses much of its validity. There is a reason why logic is often paired with a lack of emotion in fiction.

Bullying other people you disagree with only shows your own insecurity and immaturity because you are having to resort to that tactic to be "effective" at getting your point across. The vast majority of the time such posts are only there to distract from the actual conversation whether that was the intent of the poster or not. There isn't any substance to the argument and so the actual benefit that comes from getting different opinions is muddied down with ineffectual red herrings.

So those advocating decorum and respect are doing so not just from the moral standpoint but from the simple fact that we are trying to actually get things done if that makes sense. Having arguments devolve into ego shouting matches rarely results in anything substantially useful. Its harmful to literally everyone involved and will never actually result in a better game.
Logged

Warnoise

  • Commander
  • ***
  • Posts: 206
    • View Profile
Re: Is this game dead?
« Reply #28 on: January 25, 2021, 04:49:20 PM »

@Helldiver

Don't know what kind of games you play but calling Starsector a "paid demo" is hilarious to me. Sure it has issues and holes to fill, but it's straight up more polished than most big budget games I played in the last couple of years. Also what's the logic behind it being free lmao? So what it takes a long time, there's plenty of similar games like it and the devs surely aren't just gonna give their hard work away. If you don't like waiting then play live service games with monthly updates that break more things than they fix.

Why are you automatically jumping to the other extreme?

It is either 2 years per update with no bugs (which is not real since bugs will always be there) or 1 month with game breaking update?

There are games that have steady updates that don't break the game. People are not asking for a monthly update after all.
Logged

Grievous69

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 2980
    • View Profile
Re: Is this game dead?
« Reply #29 on: January 26, 2021, 01:57:10 AM »

Why are you automatically jumping to the other extreme?
I only deal in absolutes.

EDIT: /s since people will get the wrong idea
Logged
Please don't take me too seriously.
Pages: 1 [2] 3 4 ... 12