Hello Alex,
I adore your game, and I've spread the news about it for a couple of weeks now, always so impressed with it all, especially the modding community!
I just wanted to try my hand at making one request: I have been involved in game development before, and I just want to make one suggestion to you, as I really care about your game and want it to be succesful! I have read in many places that some people often think the development of the game is dead because of the long period between updates.
Now, I am not suggesting that you "work faster", but that you break up releases to be more often, as to remind people that the game is still moving. I know that this can be a problem for modders if it occurs too often, but I have read that some updates were almost an entire year apart. That's all I mean to talk about.
Thanks again, and thanks AGAIN!
Thank you, I appreciate the support, and am happy to hear you're enjoying the game! I do think that part of being able to enjoy the game comes from making sure updates are... coherent, I guess, is the word I'm looking for. I'm always aiming to put an update out as quickly as possible, but oftentimes features need other features to lean on, and just wouldn't work well without them. Just one example from this update is trade and faction relationships - they really, dare I say it, synergize well, while releasing either feature on its own just wouldn't be that good.
May I add my humble input?
But of course
... You add the features etc, then have the community members who want to help hunt bugs hunt those bugs and provide bug reports and feedback, in addition to your own play.
I see what you're saying, and it might work. The trouble, as I'm seeing it now, is that a lot of the tuning and making things fun/into an actual game takes place during the playtesting phase, which is also where I find a lot of the bugs. So, if this "experimental" release came out before then, it might just make things more chaotic, the game isn't really long-term playable at that point, and feedback on a half-baked version (aside from actual bug reports)
isn't actually very valuable, because it's on something that's not in good enough shape to begin with. After the playtesting phase? It's pretty much time to release the game. If you think about it, I suppose, then 0.65a *is* in a way the experimental release.
Plus, it feels wrong to ask people that are the most enthusiastic about the game to burn themselves out on a sub-par version, even if they might be so inclined. That's part of why I've been thinking about this in the context of modders, where that isn't so much of an issue since the innards of the game probably matter more than the final coats of paint.
Still, something to think about, for sure.
Edit: adjusted for clarity.
