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General Discussion / Re: Is this game dead?
« 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.
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.
