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

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Author Topic: Is this game dead?  (Read 39549 times)

Linnis

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Re: Is this game dead?
« Reply #90 on: February 21, 2021, 09:06:51 PM »

Fractal Softworks is not a publicly traded nor a subsidiary company (Is it even a company?).

There never was a Kickstarter with promises of dates or content.

How ever long the creators want to take is however long it will be.

In Albero's experience. Starsector dies when Java dies.
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Locklave

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Re: Is this game dead?
« Reply #91 on: February 22, 2021, 02:37:12 AM »

Yeah nice, quote this specific part of my post without the context of my first paragraph
Don't hyper simplify things where it suits you and people won't do the same in return.
« Last Edit: February 22, 2021, 02:39:24 AM by Locklave »
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Cyan Leader

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Re: Is this game dead?
« Reply #92 on: February 22, 2021, 03:38:19 AM »

Like I said, I don't know what the specific issue is causing the dev to work so slowly, hiring more people was just an example, of the three games I mentioned, Daikatana, Yandere Simulator, Star Citizen, was there really nothing more or different any of them could have done

I'd just like to interject to say that the examples you picked have very little to do with Starsector and are not even that accurate. Daikatana and Star Citizen had directors with unrealistic expectations which made some really dubious decisions through development that added a lot of time to their project (eg. SC choosing CryEngine for an MMO styled game). Yandere Simulator which you called failing had just a big demo release a few months ago, and calling the Love Sick project "caught up to it" is extremely disingenuous.

Alex has always been very open to everyone about what we should expect of the game, when we should expect it and has his sights set on very realistic goals. "Working slowly" is also entirely relative, for a small team project such as this one the pace hasn't been that bad at all. Considering all the difficult systems in the game such as simulating an economy, a well balanced combat system, procedurally generated universe, etc. Not to mention all the planning, playtesting and R&D that you have to do on what systems to implement and deciding on what changes to make, I bet this has taken Alex a considerable amount of time.
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DatonKallandor

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Re: Is this game dead?
« Reply #93 on: February 22, 2021, 04:30:05 AM »

No, that was not what I was saying, Star Citizen is a prime example of why mountains of money doesn't make a project go any faster, following on from my previous question, is it completely out of Chris Roberts hands to speed up development of his game? Or is there something he could do to improve the development process?

Well in that specific case the way to make Chris Roberts speed up development is to fire Chris Roberts, because he's the problem.

But in general, the important thing to keep in mind is "9 women can't make a baby in 1 month". Throwing more dev-hours at a problem does not mean it gets solved faster. Not to mention the cost of even one extra developer is a *lot* and you've already bought starsector, so where is that money supposed to come from? There's no extra revenue stream, DLC or MTX. We already paid, got a (extremely fun) game. Hell we got several extremely fun games, with every new version being the equivalent of a sequel or expansion pack. Everything else is bonus.
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uk_john

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Re: Is this game dead?
« Reply #94 on: February 22, 2021, 07:29:16 AM »

I just know when I checked, it seemed the next update would be sooner than 5 months time. I can see why he didn't go through Steam or GOG that have refund options.

It's such a shame that there are indie games like Stellar Tactics, an open world (200 galaxies sort of thing) sci-fi cRPG, being made by one guy, that can get 6-8 updates a year, and have an alpha version with 100x the content of this game. I can't help but think it's about productivity being easier the more sales you get. Stellar Tactics on Steam seems to have sold well. This game on BMTMicro not so much so, I reckon.
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Grievous69

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Re: Is this game dead?
« Reply #95 on: February 22, 2021, 07:44:13 AM »

It's such a shame that there are indie games like Stellar Tactics, an open world (200 galaxies sort of thing) sci-fi cRPG, being made by one guy, that can get 6-8 updates a year, and have an alpha version with 100x the content of this game. I can't help but think it's about productivity being easier the more sales you get. Stellar Tactics on Steam seems to have sold well. This game on BMTMicro not so much so, I reckon.
I mean you're not wrong saying the development is glacially slow, but each update is so much bigger than anything else I know of. Every game on Steam (including the game you mentioned) has like a page of bugfixes, bits of new content and that's it. Rinse and repeat every 2 months. And they have no choice because everyone would be screaming "dead game" if the updates had longer pauses.

I almost feel like Starsector updates don't deserve to be called just updates because every other example of them is so much smaller in scope.
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Flying Dice

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Re: Is this game dead?
« Reply #96 on: February 22, 2021, 12:18:41 PM »

I just know when I checked, it seemed the next update would be sooner than 5 months time. I can see why he didn't go through Steam or GOG that have refund options.

It's such a shame that there are indie games like Stellar Tactics, an open world (200 galaxies sort of thing) sci-fi cRPG, being made by one guy, that can get 6-8 updates a year, and have an alpha version with 100x the content of this game. I can't help but think it's about productivity being easier the more sales you get. Stellar Tactics on Steam seems to have sold well. This game on BMTMicro not so much so, I reckon.

Dunno about that, man. I've never even heard of that other game, but I've heard about Starsector unprompted from ~6 major content creators and maybe twenty internet randos since 2013. I don't want to be rude and assume you're shilling for that dude, but...

Frankly, as I and others have said, I'd rather have a dev focused on quality and coherent design than on cranking out updates because they're beholden to the "why is alpha/beta build alpha/beta" whiners who threaten to refund and negative review if they don't get their demands met. More than one decent-looking game has been ruined because the devs were too hasty about pushing early access sales. I'd also rather have updates every year or two that are substantial expansions of game content than a million tiny "lol added three new items" updates. The expansion of scope in Starsector from the first public release to now is astounding.

Like, hell, look at Starbound and how that suffered from feature creep, community whining, &c.
« Last Edit: February 22, 2021, 12:20:58 PM by Flying Dice »
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JensMackine

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Re: Is this game dead?
« Reply #97 on: February 22, 2021, 12:28:33 PM »

Pssh, nope. It’s still going strong!
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Locklave

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Re: Is this game dead?
« Reply #98 on: February 22, 2021, 01:03:19 PM »

But in general, the important thing to keep in mind is "9 women can't make a baby in 1 month".

omg I love that. I'm gonna remember that one. 10/10, 100% on point.
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devurandom

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Re: Is this game dead?
« Reply #99 on: February 22, 2021, 04:17:20 PM »

But in general, the important thing to keep in mind is "9 women can't make a baby in 1 month". Throwing more dev-hours at a problem does not mean it gets solved faster.
While this is generally true, pipelining does exist and bigger projects can accomplish more. If you give them an 8 month lead time, 9 women *can* make 1 baby a month. The issue is the lead time and the difficulties of making it work in practice.
I mean you're not wrong saying the development is glacially slow, but each update is so much bigger than anything else I know of. Every game on Steam (including the game you mentioned) has like a page of bugfixes, bits of new content and that's it. Rinse and repeat every 2 months. And they have no choice because everyone would be screaming "dead game" if the updates had longer pauses.

I almost feel like Starsector updates don't deserve to be called just updates because every other example of them is so much smaller in scope.
Starsector follows the older style release cadence in which each major version is a year or more in-between, with minor versions mostly containing fixes. Meanwhile, large parts of the industry have moved to very rapid release cycles which are only feasible due to modern tooling and distribution environments. e.g. Instead of Windows 11, we get endless semi-annual updates to 10 so we can beta test for Enterprise users. (Isn't it funny how Enterprise is always allowed to stay at least one version behind home/pro users?)
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Tartiflette

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Re: Is this game dead?
« Reply #100 on: February 22, 2021, 11:29:15 PM »

I just know when I checked, it seemed the next update would be sooner than 5 months time. I can see why he didn't go through Steam or GOG that have refund options.
They offer refunds: you just have to ask. And therefore those refunds are not constrained by 1 month or 2h of play so it's way better than Steam or GOG.
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SCC

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Re: Is this game dead?
« Reply #101 on: February 23, 2021, 10:03:20 AM »

I think Steam and GoG also offer refunds that exceed those limits, it just doesn't happen automatically.
I also want to point out that SS development is taking a long time for a limited scope game. Since frequency of updates dropped as time went on, I wonder if it's just that updates got bigger, Alex got somewhat tired of developing the game, or it's the maintenance piling up.

Eji1700

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Re: Is this game dead?
« Reply #102 on: February 23, 2021, 11:38:10 AM »

I think Steam and GoG also offer refunds that exceed those limits, it just doesn't happen automatically.
I also want to point out that SS development is taking a long time for a limited scope game. Since frequency of updates dropped as time went on, I wonder if it's just that updates got bigger, Alex got somewhat tired of developing the game, or it's the maintenance piling up.
Some portion of this is that updates aren't just "new ships/weapons" content packs.  They're entire systems....or another economy rework.  It's important these things are thought through and tested properly, especially because the game doesn't often just lift from what's popular.  The skill system is on its 2nd major overhaul since i started playing and I'm pretty sure there were a few more before that.  They could get away with a MMO style tree and be done with it but a lot of what makes this game great is real time put into figuring out what systems are fun and what aren't rather than just dropping in what's easy.

Ultimately though these conversations always boil down to the same arguments.  Someone thinks updates should be faster/better/stronger, someone else thinks that in their dev environment/personal setting/workplace it would be faster, and maybe that's true, but at the end of the day small projects like this have things like this happen.

Star sector sure as *** isn't churning out junk updates, which I am happy for, and whatever the reasons for the frequency of the updates (code debt, burnout, personal life) I frankly don't care.  I do wish we could get more info/content on upcoming updates but I understand the hell that is unfulfilled promises in code dev because something you thought might be cool got everyone excited and turned out to be an unreasonable hell to implement and now that's all you hear about.

Its been stated a few times that part of the silence on this new patch relates to it having a lot of content that's in flux(my take on that being some because they're unsure it will make it and some just because they're unsure it'll make it this patch) mixed with "spoilers/surprises".  Based on just what we know (story points/skill rework, new weapons/ships, some stuff related to planetary systems/missions/story) it makes sense that this isn't just some numbers tweaks, and god knows what we don't know, because at the end of the day it's a very small team doing quite a lot of work with god knows what going on outside of it.

I don't think the development has ever been cagey/dismissive about any of this, so while i can understand the frustration for people who might want it to be faster, i think it's pretty lame to compare this to some of the other clusterfucks that have come out of the gaming industry.  If the game never updated again i'd be sad but I still wouldn't regret buying it in the slightest, especially with how much has already been able to be done through mods.
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Harmful Mechanic

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Re: Is this game dead?
« Reply #103 on: February 23, 2021, 12:18:44 PM »

I'm still giggling at the assumption that putting pressure on a small developer is going to lead to 'hiring another full-time junior dev @ $60-80k/yr' vs. 'throwing a few more bucks at David + mmmaybe hiring a part-time $18k/yr community manager, and making some minor content updates every three months'.

There's a lot that Alex could do to placate this kind of sentiment with busywork updates that would actually increase the total dev time and make finishing the project more precarious. Star Citizen has raked in an absolute buttload of cash by building the infrastructure for making those kinds of trivial, frequent updates over a bare skeleton of actual development - sometimes no development; count the ships that have been sold to players and still can't be flown - and there are single Star Citizen ship purchases that handily outstrip the amount everybody even reading this thread has paid Alex for Starsector.

Which game would you rather play?
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DancingMonkey

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Re: Is this game dead?
« Reply #104 on: February 23, 2021, 02:44:06 PM »

Honestly I long got my money's worth and while I really do want to play the 1.0 release I am fine with waiting cause I played this game enough already haha.
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