Hey everyone, just curious if there has been an official stance on being allowed to do lets plays and/or live steams once the Alpha is out. Tried a search, couldn't find anything. Thanks!
Work In Progress
V Butthurt at 6'clock! :3
WIP stands for "work in progress".
Edit: beaten.
WIP = Work in progress
-D
ParagonRenegade - stealing glory from under your nose at least since 2012.
The problem isn't testers. It's people who don't know about the game seeing alpha footage and not knowing its alpha.
Currently being in the Planetary Annihilation Beta, where it flatly says (twice) "this is a beta!" and has a gigantic "Beta" symbol on the main menu, people say almost every game something along the lines of "Dude, Uber really screwed up this game" or "Balance sux".
The problem is with the testers, but seeing as TBS games tend to attract more analytical players, I have misplaced hope this will be the first Alpha/Beta in the history of the universe where every other player isn't a walking lobotomy.
Umm. Thanks. I should have known that.
In a thread about lets play videos, it's pretty clear the target is people who don't have the alpha.
Once the alpha comes out, THEN it'll be time to deal with all the people complaining about the alpha.
I'd say that given Stardock is taking a page out of the Klei handbook of only releasing 'early access' to really hard core fans who actually understnad wtf is going on is a good one. It should limit the amount of 'omg the game sux' comments.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRDwA3cQmlc
It's interesting to see the different approaches to Early Access. It's worth a wtch even to just watch the Uber and Klei guys spar over their various decisiosn concerning Early Access.
I'm part of Klei's "Invisible Inc" alpha as well as Prison Architect. I think the concept of doing Early access to yoru core fanbase first, works great to iron out a lot of the egregous stuff and the hard core fans will be more forgiving and understanding of the state of teh game. Then as you get a really solid workng game, to go to "Steam retail" early access. Klei's Invisible Inc alpha is still distributed by Steam only, even though you can't buy it on Early Access on Steam itself, only via their Humble Store where you get a Steam key.
This "Hidden Early Access" model I think would work great for GalCiv3. Rather than releasing an Early access with a $100 and $40 price point package, which inevitably will draw the ire of Steam idiots who will re-hash the arguments that Planetary Annihilation had with their game pricing on Steam. And god I do not want to go through that idioicy.
Idiots are geniuses at being idiots.
You cannot stomp stupid out, stupid always finds a way. Accept this truth, and take solace in the fact that you're probably ten times better at everything than the practitioners of this vile art.
Pictured: Stupid Woman
Wacky Insane Person WIP
"ATTENTION: BIG MT. THIS IS AN URGENT MESSAGE. THE LOBOTOMITE IS ASKING ME THINGS!"
Problem is with the people, not testers, testers are usually aware they are testing (unless it is testers who are being tested), even transferring games from Early Access into specialized "area" was not helping. Probably same problem why people touch recently painted benches with "Fresh paint" signs on them.
It's simple:
They need to have a pre-Beta Beta to make sure the game is ready for the general public for Beta release. A Gamma, if you will.
Duh!
It sorta depends. Even Prison Architect in Alpha 1 was 'playable' just not really complete and such. Each update adns more and more content and complexity. It's hard to say when in that process Prison Architect goes from alpha/beta really.
I think games from Amplitude (Endless space/dungeons) are pretty well-made in their "Alpha" status. Some big companies should learn how to make their "stable release candidates" that stable as Amplitude's alpha's were.
It's kind of sad that they put out alpha games that are running so well, then put out a hot mess of WTF in the release version of Disharmony.
Good to know I am sure all 7 of my youtube subscribers would love seeing some alpha game play.
Weren't they using different approach with Disharmony development? I simply don't remember release version of Disharmony well - didn't have time to test it thoroughly.
Hey, you popular! I don't have that many subscribers.
The story I've heard from some of Amplitude's VIPs is that Disharmony was a rush job. They went between their internal alpha and release in a matter of weeks. Most likely a large part of the staff was already on Dungeon of the Endless or Endless Legend.
They clearly underestimated how much work an expansion is, and it showed in the final product. I mean the UI design failure that could block you from building certain classes of ship parts entirely if you lost the resources for one of them could be game breaking on its own, and it was only the first in a long list of issues. The massive drop in Metacritic scores between vanilla ES and Disharmony tells the story.
Performance sucked horrifically on release too, and that was really surprising considering how good Endless Space performance was. It's the rare expansion where turning it off and playing the original version makes the game better.
Sadly, the experience really soured me on Amplitude.
WIP = Work in Progress, or work in process. AWOL = how many brain cells can go absent without leave, and still leave enough for the brain to work. <could not resist Rudy!>
We'll definitely need an overlay on the alpha.
The biggest problem I see in alphas is people will find them boring. Alphas ARE boring.
Take your favorite game, doesn't matter which game, change the balance a little and it's terrible. Imagine Civilization IV if it took 50 turns to build a settler. That one change would ruin it. An alpha of a 4X game is like that. It'll be horribly boring to play and if people try to judge "fun" on an alpha it takes us all to a very bad place.
The Alpha exists for these reasons:
1) Compatibility (it's a 64-bit, DirectX 11 game, there's going to be problems)
2) Game mechanics. What gotchas do you imagine seeing going forward?
3) Game ideas. What things would you like to see in there?
Sadly there will always be one person who do not understand this and make a mess. For exemple, the game 7 days to die. You can have access to the Alpha by pre-purchasing it on Steam. The problem is that you can leave Reviews on Steam.
Since Steam is a mainstream mean to access games for people, you end up with people trashing the game in reviews, seemingly uncuncerned about the fact that it is an ALPHA!!
And then the most bashing review found its way to the "most recommended" review of all time for the game. A pretty sad story. You should not even be allowed to leave reviews for an Alpha game. But that is a sad side effect of using Steam for crowd funding.
Is this a change in the requirements? Many people expect it to work with graphics cards that support DirectX 10.
Bah.
I shall defy you and find myself enjoying the alpha with a sense of happy curiousity and discovery.
Then I'll take delight in screwin' the mechanics up as hard as possible.
If you sell a game for real money on a platform where public reviews are allowed and where it doesn't do a particularly good job of screaming at people "this game may not work very well when you first get it", that is the inevitable outcome.
It's not a surprise at this point when it happens. Steam is not the best place to put something up that doesn't have the "fun" part nailed down yet, alpha label or not.
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