Okay, I bought Sins online with my CC the day I saw it won Game of the Year. Must be decent + Stardock look after customers so bingo - got my xmas money. And the award (and Stardock's rep) proved well founded. Everything about it was very impressive. Long download for me but worth it and grand game.
Then soon after on New Years Eve I see Entrenchment listed for sale as micro-expansion. I buy it cos my experience in this short time with Sins and Stardock combo has been great. Unfortunately, I don't see the word BETA anywhere until after my purchase, after downloading, afterinstalling, when first running the game it says WARNING BETA. Great - paid to be a BETA tester. Very annoying start but I think maybe the game is nearly finished.
But not so. Worse than this hoodwinking, I start playing, same exact game but you got Starbases and Mines now is only difference I notice. Starbases cost too much and dont do crap - better to have put a fleet there for 20k instead of upgrading this mini-turret to cover one corner that they all fly past anyway. And Mines - Yay - stupidiest inclusion I can imagine. Someone forgot to ask themselves "is this actually fun?" as they looked at 5000 mines surrounding every single enemy planet now. Not really mines cos in my limited understanding, mines are dangerous but these are magical mines that only bother me and dont bother the enemy their ships immune to the explosions engulfing my whole fleet.
And still even worse, my game lugs to a grinding crawl... on a super computer I just bought 3 weeks ago, presumably cos there are 500000000000000 magical mines across the universe.
So I say goddam I got tricked by stardock into being a BETA TESTER and even paying for the privelage. Very well done, kudos to you business types but leaves pissed off customer whose experience is no so keen as when I entered into this relationship.
Worse, I think it is time we broke up cos I thought fine - wasted my money, I'll just uninstall the BETA I paid for but Sins doesn't have uninstall in launcher or start. So I use windows remove prgrams to remove Entrenchment but guess what now Sins dont even work. I got lots of files and a big mess and two games I paid for, well one game and one beta, and nothing works.
So, all that irritation needs to go somewhere so here it is. My feedback - if something is a BETA test that may completely ruin customer experience and completely ruin customer original gameand not even be uninstallable, perhaps DONT SELL IT YET!!!!
Ta. And now, unable to even play Sins, I am off to shops to buy the other game of the year Fallout in hopes the shop will not have a BETA version like your sneaky impulse does!
Original game was good, but overall experience is now much bittered. I hope someone who makes this decisions reads this. Thanks but no thanks.
my only experience with beta testing was warcraft III and everything I did with that beta related to providing my thoughts on balancing the game's functional multiplayer. But fair enough... any chance of some insight regarding what is being done to resolve the desyncs, if a hotfix is due out anytime soon, and if the desyncing issue is due to a very large amount of mines? I love the game and anxiously await a playable multiplayer experience.
I bet that the game is going to be delayed another month or two, something just doesn't feel right I mean they have had a lot of problems with this beta, and from my time talking with my freind who works with valve at doing the programing and beta testing that all these problems always take an additional 1 or two months two fix at least. Some of the fixs will require whole rescripting to make it work and when that happens then other things get messed up and they have to rehash it to get those problems fixed. So I hope I am wrong but I don't think I am, then stardock needs to stand up and say something rather than himhawing and jerking the customers around. (Maybe it wasn't their intent at first but problems do creep up and well if you need too restart from scratch.)
What, this topic resolved already..........Oh well. Hi mom, (wave)
Aye, I kinfa get that feeling as well, but honestly it doesn't bother me a bit. I'd rather they delay offical launch until they've got a finished product then shove 1/2 finished crap out the door like UBi Soft and EA love doing. (I remember a few of EA's games had patches nearly as big as the installation)
I agree with you though, a small update on the relase date would be nice.
They won't give any update on a release date because there is none They're going by "it'll be out when it's ready" mantra. They only gave a day's notice for the beta start, since they got a bunch of crap when they said November 16th but delayed later
Just to join my voice here and say that I too bought and installed Entrenchment (along with the normal game) without realizing it's a beta. I only figured it out from the loading screen. Fortunately for me there haven't been many bugs, Starbases and mines seem to work and game does not crash. It does feel a bit unbalanced though (mainly because I'm a newb and I keep getting my arse kicked by 5 AIs together)
I'll probably uninstall and reinstall in order to play a beta-less game. Let's hope that works.
I agree that BETA should be pointed out with very large warnings when someone tries to buy and/or install the game and also warned that this will not allow them to play the normal SoaSE without a complete uninstall/reinstall.
Several monthly wages in underdeveloped countries
I pre-bought Entrenchment before it came out, so, I had No idea it would even be displayed for your "average" customer; it really does not say "beta" anywhere where you can get it/buy it?
I don't mind them working on it to have a finished polished product, but I don't like to spend money on something when they said it was going to be released in dec. I mean don't mention something is going to be released when you know its no where even completly finished. What they should've done is say here is a beta preorder if you want to become a tester for the final release then give a release date six months out.
Where have you been hiding under the last decades? It's very common for games to be delayed. It's not a biggie. Think of it as you having more time to provide input to make the final result better.
Maybe, but that doesn't make it right, either. Everybody who was following the game knew in december that there was no way it'd be released as a final product by January 1, so why was that date in the store? Somebody coming in who hasn't been actively following it is going to have no idea the date was completely and totally wrong (and indeed as a placeholder date, totally made up and knowingly false).
That's why Impulse needs "unknown" as a release date.
I pre-ordered it yesterday on Impulse, and when it showed up in the Games tab under downloadable, I thought maybe the release date was wrong, unfortunately that's because being the idiot I am, I forgot to check the version # of the downloadable (0.95.. release versions are always at least 1.0).
Oh well, I'm enjoying it aside from a minor hiccup whenever I've finished playing, and the mines... LOVE starbases, Vasari bases are utter behemoths!
I admit it's a shame that I can't choose to between Sins vanilla and Entrenchment beta which to play though (especially as it means I obv. can't play MP with my mates until they get it)
I have to agree with you on that, I don't know if anyone remembers this but back in sept when I first heard of this expansion. I went to gamespot and other video gaming sites and the release date they had was actually sometime in november. So actually they have delayed this game at least 3 times that I know of, and sorry to say this but doing it this way is also a delaying tactic. What better way to cover up a mistake than to say hey guys we opened a beta tester just so you guys can tell us what we need to fix. Walla they keep doing this until they are done with the game which may be months from now. But hey who cares its only your hard earned money that you worked at least 40 hours for. Even if its just 10 bucks, next they will charge you 50 then more and say oops sorry we delayed the release date but here you go kiddo heres a beta test you can play then let us know what we need to fix and then we will release the full product that you bought 6 months ago.
LOL... dude, fuck your job, I am SO sorry.
Really comared to the continual release date mayhem of other games, like Starcraft II, Entrenchment's relase date changes aren't so bad. Besides, having the beta test run like this for so long prevents 20+ patches changing game blance issues and other bugs in the final product. (downloading a game balance patch every week gets old fast, C&C tiberium wars anyone?)
I think the other reason the beta is running so long is they are trying to find a way to eliminate the mines swallowing resources so the lower end pcs that could run Sins can still run Entrenchment.
If the mines can slow down dual core systems to almost a crawl I'm pretty sure it utterly locks up/blue screen of deaths older single core systems that barely exceed minimum specs.
My objection to the release date problem isn't that they're moving the date. I agree, a quality release later is better then a poor release now.
But the difference between Starcraft 2 and Entrenchment is that Starcraft 2 never had a date. Entrenchment has had several, and they were all wrong. I mean right now "next week" is showing up on the front page of this site, and that's probably wrong too.
That's the motivation for my suggestion above to have "unknown" as a valid date in Impulse. If they don't know when it's coming out, just be honest about it. Gamers are forgiving. If it's good, we'll wait. But people who buy expecting a final release next week (or in November) and then don't get it for who knows how long tend to be more negative about it.
(Maybe a quarter estimate would be okay. "Release date: Q1 2009" gives an indication of how far along it is, but is also vague enough that people shouldn't mistake it for a fixed date.)
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