SylenThunder
Community Moderator / IT Guru
I think Star Citizen is more likely to.
PC A deep appreciation that the pimps aren't afraid to scrap and rebuild a game system
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stupid
New member
Most games made it on that list because of unfortunate circumstances(devs quitting, companies reorganizing, platform changes, lawsuits, etc).
But this game could make this list for different reasons(indecisiveness and dedication). Sounds like the perfect formula to make players frustrated, but also the possibility of it becoming massively successful like TF2.
AtomicUs5000
New member
TFP is not much different.
The team is larger now, but before, if one programmer quit working on it, it would have been equivalent to losing a whole department for a large AAA team. Just a few people moving in and out of the team becomes a company reorganization.
The Unity upgrade was probably not far off of a complete platform change.
They likely have several lawyers. TFP probably has one working on the console issue.
My only point is that even AAA teams do sometimes take a long time to get a game out. I can guarantee most of the games on that list were unavailable for public consumption until they were ready. TFP while facing the same issues at their scale have managed to present their product to us for the entire duration. There's a lot to be said about that. To me, it negates every single complaint about the duration of the alpha stages.
The team is larger now, but before, if one programmer quit working on it, it would have been equivalent to losing a whole department for a large AAA team. Just a few people moving in and out of the team becomes a company reorganization.
The Unity upgrade was probably not far off of a complete platform change.
They likely have several lawyers. TFP probably has one working on the console issue.
My only point is that even AAA teams do sometimes take a long time to get a game out. I can guarantee most of the games on that list were unavailable for public consumption until they were ready. TFP while facing the same issues at their scale have managed to present their product to us for the entire duration. There's a lot to be said about that. To me, it negates every single complaint about the duration of the alpha stages.
Very true. Also there is the matter of EA being a new development model available to developers.
Previously a publisher had the money and sent the developer regular payments when he was satisfied with the game. Since the publisher gets no upfront money from any sales (he was really betting money on an unknown success) he naturally got nervous when the game approached unusual development durations. He would finally force the developer to release the game. This was also the case when the developer was just a subdivision of the publisher
A developer without a publisher seldom had enough money to even pay for 7 years of development and if he had he risked bankruptcy on a failure because then there was no money left for the development of the next game.
With EA a developer has financial independence, always knows how long he can continue development, gets a steady trickle of new sales that tells him if the game has potential or not. The success of a game and the time a developer has for developing it are directly linked.
If nobody wants the game the developer can stop development long before it really hurts. It will damage his reputation but the company would be still able to try another project.
TFP obviously got enough sales to keep a small team fueled for >7 years. Without EA this simply wouldn't have happened and 7D2D would not exist or be already released and definitely a very different game.
Katitof
New member
That is also a massive problem nowadays.
So many shady devs made shovelware and abandoned it, cashed in and bailed that people have no longer any trust for EA titles, unless its really unique thing adored by its fanboy crowd.
Nowadays however? People see EA as a tag on steam and instantly ignore the game or just put it on wishlist, hoping one day it'll be ready.
EA started as a noble intention, but became equivalent to rotten developers trying to score easy buck for hardly any work.
Roland
Moderator
I’ve had a very good experience with Early Access. I’ve seen a couple projects flounder due to mismanagement but outright intentional deception to take the crowd funding money and run? I haven’t encountered it myself.
Massive Problem? Maybe on Gofundme.com but not a big problem on Steam as far as I can tell. I’m sure it exists though.
Massive Problem? Maybe on Gofundme.com but not a big problem on Steam as far as I can tell. I’m sure it exists though.
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ZombieSurvivor
Banned
Personally I disagree with everything you have stated in this thread, I also believe you are just trolling everyone.
This is for EVERYONE. "The Fun Pimps" could decide to end all direct communications with us players here on the forum and not bother listening to any one of our opinions.
Madmole could even wake up tomorrow and decide, ok A18 is going gold and we will be ending any further work on this game.
Then what?
This whole argument I've seen over the years regarding the topic of "7D2D has been in alpha to long", I have not heard 1 single logical reason behind such an un-educated statement by players.
They could decide to go gold tonight....what the heck does that accomplish? The finale release of an unfinished product, ridiculous.
I'm sure I'm not coming across clear because I'm honestly annoyed by most of what I read today in the forums lol.
This is why i try my hardest never to post except when talking to the devs.
hmmm... now i feel better lol
ZombieSurvivor
Banned
Funny i looked in to this a few months back. The minute steam determines that a company is releasing a game on there platform just for "moneygrab" That studio gets blacklisted and banned for life from ever releasing another product on the steam platform. If I remember correctly only a hand full of studios have been black listed due to this problem. For the most part its a very rare event. Props to steam for there swift action against these studios, at least from what i read in that article.
OzHawkeye
Community Moderator
It's not just moral highhandedness from Steam (nor, perhaps not even, would say the cynic) - blatant cash-grab-and-run dev studios could present a serious reputational risk to Steam itself, hence why Steam has a direct vested interest in shutting them down when they do occur.
About half of the titles in my steam library, of 140 or so games, are Early Access. Of those, about a dzoen I consider failures, however, of those only 2 or 3 are where the games just absolutely stopped dead in its tracks with no further development taking place. There's probably 2 or 3 more where the Devs, for whatever reason, simply slapped a "It's Version 1.0!" sticker on the title and called it a day, so the game is ok, playable, but not what was promised, and the rest of the ones I consider "failures" are just where the game went in a direction I just couldn't follow.
All in all, that still means that 4 out of 5 of my Early Access purchases either are in a good condition right now, or ended up in one when they reached Gold. I consider that a reasonable return for taking a punt on Early Access titles.
Katitof
New member
I guess 7d made you sleep through "zombie survival pvp" shovelware phase them.
Good for you, I was unlucky enough to fell into one of these traps.
I have became extremely picky about EA games since then.
Current me wouldn't touch 7d after development research before release.
Game being 7 years in EA is already a red flag.
Rust and Ark leaving EA and becoming "complete" was actually a welcome sight as these are the only ones from the "crafting survival etc" genre I'm aware of that released and still, it didn't took them a decade to do so, yet somehow I can't really imagine 7d being "ready" in less then 3 years from now.
So did you follow news about multiple games even though you didn't buy them? You seem to have been victim of only one game.
Are you just assuming many games in that phase tried a cash grab because you never heard of them again? I find it more likely that many of those games were just not good enough to generate positive word-of-mouth, especially in the very crowded zombie PvP subgenre. With no money of their own and sales drying up the only solution is to give up or release an unfinished version. In general quite a good thing that such projects fail early instead of wasting more time and money (of gamers) than necessary.
7 years means the game was so successful that they could afford 7 years in development. It also means that sales never dried up so the game must have generated positive word-of-mouth over all that time.
I only know two games with a 7 year long EA development, 7D2D and Factorio. Both are in my personal top 5. Do you have any counter-examples?
My guess is if you want to avoid risk, don't buy EA games before they aren't at least 3 years in EA or alternatively entered EA just for BETA development (and have a positive rating, naturally)
To get back to the original topic, I just read an article in a games magazine about famous games that changed massively in development. If anyone thinks the rebuild of the skill system is indication of "missing direction", well, read about these examples:
* Borderlands was developed as a serious shooter with a grey in grey color pallete. After the game was 75% finished (and somewhat lackluster) a small team made a version of the game with the cell-shading look as an experiment. That spurned further changes until they had a colorful over-the-top loot-shooter.
* Bioshock's first prototype put the player on a space station. 2 years later the head developer talks to journalists about nazi-bunkers, a tropical island and military experiments. Without any art-deco naturally. The little sisters were first dogs in wheelchairs and little moles
* Borderlands was developed as a serious shooter with a grey in grey color pallete. After the game was 75% finished (and somewhat lackluster) a small team made a version of the game with the cell-shading look as an experiment. That spurned further changes until they had a colorful over-the-top loot-shooter.
* Bioshock's first prototype put the player on a space station. 2 years later the head developer talks to journalists about nazi-bunkers, a tropical island and military experiments. Without any art-deco naturally. The little sisters were first dogs in wheelchairs and little moles
AtomicUs5000
New member
Yes, when choosing EA games, it tends to be a better gamble to go with one that has had constant development over years as opposed to one that has just arrived. 7 years in development would only tell me that a lot of time and effort has gone into it, provided that it has had several updates. If no updates, then it's just been sitting there gathering dust.
hotpoon
New member
I agree. As long as they are still working on it, then that is what matters. Abandonware is the real risk with early access games, and devs like that get a reputation that follows them from game to game, like the guys that did Romero's Aftermath. Even their Shattered Skies game after that didn't have a chance to take off the ground because the angry gamers that were shafted in their previous games made it well known what the modus operandi of these devs was like.
It just looks that way when you don't like the stuff implemented. A17 saw a new buff system that makes modding a lot easier and also is the basis of many of the stuff included in A18. It also got a weapon mod system and an upgraded quest system.
Some of us just want a finished, polished game. This dev period has gone on way too long. I don't care what the people on this forum with 15,000 posts have to say about it. Where is the roadmap with ETA to game completion? A game with no vision of what it is supposed to be from the beginning is doomed to an eternity of perpetual change and upset players.