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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: When are you going to finish this game or even release a new patch?  (Read 29538 times)

Displasma

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I want my money back. This is taking WAY too long.
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Midnight Kitsune

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Starsector's releases have always been long waits. Alex prefers quality updates, that are damn near expansions in my book, than buggy as hell quantity updates like what 98% of games devs prefer these days. And Alex IS working on the game, it is just taking a bit longer than what most people are use to.
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Thaago

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Hi! While we all want updates, please look at previous threads to see the reasons why updates are spaced far apart. To summarize: Development is faster without needing to make clean releases more often, and usually there are related features that all need to be added together to make something good.

If you want to see the progress, check out the blog posts and Alex's many posts on the forum. Development has certainly not stopped.

As it stands, releases for this game are more stable than most complete games, and that takes effort.  But because of that effort, and because of our nice community, we have a large number of high quality mods, which if you haven't already you should check out.
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Piemanlives

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Afternoon, we've had plenty of dev updates and blogs about what Alex has been working on these past few months. Please be patient.
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Alex

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Hi - sorry to hear you're disappointed! I think other replies have covered it already, but yeah, the pace of releases is the way it is for a reason, though I'd love for it to be faster. I just can't do it without sacrificing quality. The actual pace of development, though, is I think good - there's just a lot to do.

(I do want to apologize for not responding to your initial post on the forum, btw. I try to do that as much as possible, and just to keep an eye on everything here, but somethings things fall through the cracks. I do remember seeing it back then, oddly enough.)
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arcibalde

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@Displasma you can look at it from different perspective: product is finished and dev team is making totally free expansion  ;D  What i wanted to say is that, probably, non of us ever did complex project like this alone, code vise, (i'm almost 100% sure that Alex is coding this beast alone) and only that kind of first hand experience could give you true insight into time needed for it to be done.

Imagine someone pushing broken car and someone else walking next to him nagging about low speed  ;D
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gozer

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I want my money back. This is taking WAY too long.

I bought the game back in 2011 for 10$ and since then, in total I spent absolutely ridiculous ammount of time playing it. All the different builds released over the years, crazy ammount of mods for the various builds I tried ... and I had tons of fun playing. Did I expect back in 2011 that it still won't be finished in 2018? Not really. But does that bother me today? Hell no! Compared to many other games I bought over the years and then barely even played, those 10$ I spend on Starfarer (as it was named back then) was the best spent money ever ... and the "bang per buck" value is totally of the charts. The game is being developed, updates are still coming and the improvements and content has so far always been worth the (sometimes pretty long) wait.
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Cosmitz

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Each build of the game release plus its one or two hotfixes that come right after are completely playable and 'whole' experiences. They don't have 'loose ends' or blatantly missing features, and each of them can be played for their own value integrally. So technically, you bought the original game at 15$ or whatever it goes for nowadays, and have ever since gotten free expansion packs. This is not an 'early access' kind of deal, since while i'm sure Alex has a roadmap in his mind for what he wants in, i don't think there ever was a 'cut off' point for the game where it's 'totally completed, done, and out of my hands'.

In short, there is no 'game is finished', it's as much of a living work as it would get, only with a hell of a lot of respect for each proper release as to feel complete each time. I've been playing ever since the game had just the missions and every new release has added a ton of things on top. And today it's for the same price tag that it was on when it came out. I'm sure Alex would entertain a refund, and we'll still welcome you in the future to repurchase it when the game receives whatever features you consider the 'full game' to have.
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xenoargh

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Totally agreed with what Cosmitz said above; each time, we've ended up with, well, a huge new expansion on what is already a fun game.  Is it feature-complete?  Nope; that's why it's Alpha, in the classic sense.  But each release has been polished, relatively free of bugs, and full of new things to explore.  I've never ever regretted spending money on this game and I've referred it to a lot of people. 

Moreover, Alex has never succumbed to the kind of hubris that typifies projects like these, which is always pretty amazing; usually projects that go this long go into some flavor of Developer Hell and die.  Most of us who've been here forever regard the game as partially our own, in a sense; we've all had a chance to participate and shape it to a degree that's pretty remarkable.  So, stick around, join our endless debates, enjoy the current release, and, when the next build is out, enjoy the experiences!
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BillyRueben

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Oh, fun, it's this thread again.... You could write a research paper on the timing and content of these threads.

Suspected reason for timing of OP's posting:    Recent blog post about UI isn't very "sexy", and is annoyed that is what is being worked on instead of something else.
Content of OP's post:                                         Unusually light in content, but it is essentially the same.
Follow up comments by other people:               Exactly the same as previous threads. I do applaud the restraint though.
Follow up by Alex:                                              Could almost be a copy/paste from previous threads. In fact, I think it would be funny if it was.
Follow up by some smartass:                             You're reading it.

And there you have it. I'll take my "A" please.
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arwan

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Re: When are you going to finish this game or even release a new patch?
« Reply #10 on: May 09, 2018, 07:11:17 AM »

you get a B for forgetting the potato and a banana for scale.

that being said, i also echo the comments of gozer as my own as well.

I want my money back. This is taking WAY too long.

I bought the game back in 2011 for 10$ and since then, in total I spent absolutely ridiculous ammount of time playing it. All the different builds released over the years, crazy ammount of mods for the various builds I tried ... and I had tons of fun playing. Did I expect back in 2011 that it still won't be finished in 2018? Not really. But does that bother me today? Hell no! Compared to many other games I bought over the years and then barely even played, those 10$ I spend on Starfarer (as it was named back then) was the best spent money ever ... and the "bang per buck" value is totally of the charts. The game is being developed, updates are still coming and the improvements and content has so far always been worth the (sometimes pretty long) wait.

i remember way back then when the game was literally just 1 system with a couple planets that you flew back and forth from. and supply fleets came into the map from the top left edge. also remember when fighters were more "ships" in how they worked. i have put more hours into the game then i could reasonably count. and have got my value out of the money i paid numerous times over. and every update is truly more like an expansion with all the content they bring than a patch like most development of games.
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You won't be able to refit fighters and bombers at all. They're designed/balanced around having a particular set of weapons and would be very broken if you could change it. Which ones you pick for your fleet -out of quite a few that are available- is the choice here, not how they're outfitted.

Sutopia

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Re: When are you going to finish this game or even release a new patch?
« Reply #11 on: May 09, 2018, 07:39:02 AM »

So you prefer having something like weekly update with tiny changes?
This is not a cheap free (and charge you 100 USD per month in microtransaction) smart phone game, either is it an on-line game.
It's stated clearly that this is a W I P project so it's offering some discount for ALPHA access.
If you EVER looked at the patch note HISTORY, you should find it always has a long update period BUT every update is IMPRESSIVE.
It's almost like having a BRAND NEW GAME every update for so much juicy things adding in each and every major patch(I mean something like 0.7 to 0.8).
What's even better you don't PAY a dime to receive your update. There are also tons of modders constantly contributing their effort and update mods so you can always have very different game experience just playing with all kinds of mods.

If you're still not persuaded I suggest you try even make a mod. You'll see how MUCH effort needed for just some simple functions to work nicely.
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frogbones

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Re: When are you going to finish this game or even release a new patch?
« Reply #12 on: May 12, 2018, 12:18:49 PM »

I totally understand you OP, I've been following and playing this game since 2011ish.  I've been frustrated, I've been elated. I've been "just release already!!"    This is  a cool game....nothing much else like it out there at all. This is a Gem...which is being cut into a beautiful jewel ever so slowly, but boy, will it shine when it's done.
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Harmful Mechanic

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Re: When are you going to finish this game or even release a new patch?
« Reply #13 on: May 12, 2018, 03:09:58 PM »

Points to this latest guy for not whining 'broooooo', I guess.
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jn_xyp

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Re: When are you going to finish this game or even release a new patch?
« Reply #14 on: May 16, 2018, 06:18:04 PM »

The longer after you brought this game, the more effective it will be: you will get a whole new game in each year, with tons of new features and contents. ;D ;D
And I think even the alpha of the Starsector already had an above average degree of completion than many other "completed" games on Steam and other platforms 8)
Just be patient, I believe Alex will finally provide everyone a satisfactory result.
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