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"Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Alpha anymore."


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Considering HALFLIFE 3 and NoMansSky situations,

vs TFPimps giving us access to very playable alphas and posting weekly progress vids and Q+A vids,

I think we got it pretty good

 

Heck, we can even access the Experimental builds and live on the bleeding edge of what they are working on.

 

I'm old.

The very idea of accepting money to let folks simply buy into being alpha testers use to be unethical.

But that has become acceptable, and even considered standard business. However, by doing so the line between Tester and Customer has become blurred: The testers want the rights of customers, and its hard not to agree since they were charged for their access. Yet what the gave money for is an Alpha, no mistaking it for anything else.

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Considering HALFLIFE 3 and NoMansSky situations,

vs TFPimps giving us access to very playable alphas and posting weekly progress vids and Q+A vids,

I think we got it pretty good

 

Heck, we can even access the Experimental builds and live on the bleeding edge of what they are working on.

 

I'm old.

The very idea of accepting money to let folks simply buy into being alpha testers use to be unethical.

But that has become acceptable, and even considered standard business. However, by doing so the line between Tester and Customer has become blurred: The testers want the rights of customers, and its hard not to agree since they were charged for their access. Yet what the gave money for is an Alpha, no mistaking it for anything else.

 

Wow, what a great way to state it!

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Considering HALFLIFE 3 and NoMansSky situations,

vs TFPimps giving us access to very playable alphas and posting weekly progress vids and Q+A vids,

I think we got it pretty good

 

Heck, we can even access the Experimental builds and live on the bleeding edge of what they are working on.

 

I'm old.

The very idea of accepting money to let folks simply buy into being alpha testers use to be unethical.

But that has become acceptable, and even considered standard business. However, by doing so the line between Tester and Customer has become blurred: The testers want the rights of customers, and its hard not to agree since they were charged for their access. Yet what the gave money for is an Alpha, no mistaking it for anything else.

 

 

Yeah, well put.

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Go visit Star Citizen to see what a never done game looks like. Over 100 million raised to date and no alpha in sight.

 

I guess the motto of that company is: "Never give a fanboy an even break!"

 

I mean $15,000 (real money) to buy an upper end ship that, so far, cant do a lot??? Do they work with the No Mans Sky team???

 

lmao!

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I guess the motto of that company is: "Never give a fanboy an even break!"

 

I mean $15,000 (real money) to buy an upper end ship that, so far, cant do a lot??? Do they work with the No Mans Sky team???

 

lmao!

If there's one thing I learned over the years of hanging out in Steam is that ppl will literally buy or invest a lot of money into anything even when it's blatantly obvious that it's terrible. Those are probably the same ppl who spend a lot of time in front of the TV killing their brain cells.

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Considering HALFLIFE 3 and NoMansSky situations,

vs TFPimps giving us access to very playable alphas and posting weekly progress vids and Q+A vids,

I think we got it pretty good

 

Heck, we can even access the Experimental builds and live on the bleeding edge of what they are working on.

 

I'm old.

The very idea of accepting money to let folks simply buy into being alpha testers use to be unethical.

But that has become acceptable, and even considered standard business. However, by doing so the line between Tester and Customer has become blurred: The testers want the rights of customers, and its hard not to agree since they were charged for their access. Yet what the gave money for is an Alpha, no mistaking it for anything else.

 

The problem is: Most indy developers are into early access. It's not about giving people the awesome falvour of an even more awesome, mindbreaking game and it's work in progress. It's about gaining money. When you put a product on the market for cash, you have to deliver. That's the point of early access.

 

Otherwise I could ask: Hey TFP you want to "test" me this game? Give me a copy! (I did put the test exclamation marks because I've been told that we're not playing, we're testing) :)

 

I don't want to talk about the "good old times" beause they're simply gone but this "you should be gratefull to pay for a game beeing in progress and feel like utter sht in terms of criticism because of...alpha" is the next level to me.

 

EDIT:

Ok, I'm "testing" in 2016, when can I start to play?

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Again, I never asked for specific features to be put in or left out, so no need for fictional voting contests. I'm just arguing that I think 7DtD runs the risk of being in permanent alpha state until the Pimps realize there's just too much to fix and lose interest in, and/or control over the project. It's happened to other titles, it would be a shame if it happened to 7 Days to Die.

One way I think this could be avoided is to have a development "pause" where new features are pushed back and the team focuses on working out and optimizing the current systems. When that is done, there will be a solid foundation on which to add new functionality, provided the Pimps are still interested in working on the project by then and new cash keeps flowing in to support them doing so.

 

 

They did this in A14. It was the cleanup alpha. It wasn't done because it was a good idea. It was done so they could sell the console port.

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In the end it doesn't matter what you want or even what you think. An alpha is not the place for widescale bug fixes and optimization. Whether you think they should or shouldn't be optimizing more is irrelevant.

 

It's common practice to not optimize until beta because when you try to optimize while significantly changing the code you end up undoing a lot of the work you spent optimizing resulting wasted time.

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The problem is: Most indy developers are into early access. It's not about giving people the awesome falvour of an even more awesome, mindbreaking game and it's work in progress. It's about gaining money. When you put a product on the market for cash, you have to deliver. That's the point of early access.

 

Otherwise I could ask: Hey TFP you want to "test" me this game? Give me a copy! (I did put the test exclamation marks because I've been told that we're not playing, we're testing) :)

 

I don't want to talk about the "good old times" beause they're simply gone but this "you should be gratefull to pay for a game beeing in progress and feel like utter sht in terms of criticism because of...alpha" is the next level to me.

 

EDIT:

Ok, I'm "testing" in 2016, when can I start to play?

 

There was no disclaimer that purchasing this game obligated us to provide any feedback at all, let alone bug reports, or any other responsibility of a "tester." So we are merely customers playing an unfinished game. Those that do provide feedback are utilizing an informal relationship with the developers in the hopes of improving the game, but anyone claiming that we are anything other than customers are just overzealous.

 

However, as customers, it's our responsibility to be informed of what we are purchasing. This game is already a product, with the hopes that it will still become a better product. There's enough material on youtube and through reviews to see what the current state of this product is. Criticism can be good, as long as it's developed with the understanding that this game is still a Work in Progress, aka Alpha. If the point of the criticism seems to forget that, then it's the first thing that gets pointed out.

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Considering I spent $12 or something close to it 3 years ago when it was in Alpha 6 and looks like blocky minecraft. Fast forward 150 hours of game play later I'm still really excited about new features and improvements, that has been some of the best money I've ever spent on software period. Even Skyrim lost my interest at hour 80.

 

I'm also an artist and I'm done when I say I'm done because no one has the scope of the vision I do in my head.

 

Have you ever heard of UnRealWorld? They hold the world record for the longest update support 24 years and counting. URW is without a doubt the most in depth survival sim I've ever played.

 

Let TFP do what they are good at, which is make the best damn zombie survival sim out there. They can work on it for another 10 years for all I care. Games like this are like wine. Let the damn thing age. It will get better!

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Isnt UnRealWorld one of the Rogue-like games?

Considering changelogs say last Ubuntu Rogue update was last year, and the most recent BSD Rogue change was this year... I gotta say Rogue is probably the longest updated Rogue-like dungeon sim survival game.

 

Over the decades it has bloated to over 258 kilobytes of disk space required to install

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When you put a product on the market for cash, you have to deliver.

 

Your theory only works if they are charging the price of a Gold status game.

 

You got charged the price of early access.

What do you expect? TFP is going to rub your feet too?

 

Companies allowing early access provides testing, gaining product promotion, and generates capital.

 

It's not the same as what you are claiming, however.

 

If TFP charged you $100 bucks I could see your complaint having merit.

As it stands...... man you have got to be kidding!

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Or: like a lot of "early access" titles, this game has stretched the limits of what "alpha" means way beyond any useful definition. So many games out there seem to be stuck in some kind of permanent testing phase, with the actual finished, fleshed out product always a little beyond the horizon.

 

I don't mind early access in general, since I like the interaction between consumers and developers, but I think both of them need to be honest and practical about this new reality. Ironically, the developers of the game that kicked off the whole early access trend seem to understand this better than most. Mojang isn't working under the assumption that Minecraft will ever be finished. They did have a 1.0 release a few years back, but rather than being an end point, it signaled a shift in development focus: instead of adding features and worrying about balance and bugs later, they've moved towards adding more or less coherent sets of features and optimizing them (both bug- and balance-wise) straight away, before starting work on the next update.

 

In my humble opinion, the Pimps come across as unfocused and unsure of the future of their own game. I understand their reluctance to communicate clear goals and road maps up to a point, what with the general sense of entitlement among gaming audiences, but I think it's a bit naive to just say "it's done when it's done", when for so many games out there, that basically turned out to mean "it'll never be done".

With A16 on the horizon, I think it's time for the Pimps to start thinking about optimizing/polishing what they have, before coming up with new features to be added while a lot of the basic systems aren't working properly yet. Personally, I could do without bandits and electricity for a while, if it means trying to hit zombies spinning in one place or weather being pointless coat-on/off-micromanagement will finally be dealt with. Just to name a few examples of stuff that's hampering my enjoyment of the game.

 

And just in case people feel the need to point it out: yes, I have enjoyed a great many hours of this game already and in terms of fun per € it has already been a good investment. But it was always under the assumption that the many problems in the game would be dealt with in the foreseeable future, and after a few years of hearing "we're in alpha", I'm starting to doubt that will actually happen before everyone just quietly moves on to other titles out there. And that would be a huge waste for a game that has so much potential. And in time it would be bad for the Fun Pimps too, since working on 7DtD infinitely isn't going to work, and people won't be as enthusiastic about new projects when the old ones are so obviously not finished.

 

Anyhow, that was a bit more text than I intended, but in short I hope that the Pimps are working on this and that people will stop using "we're in alpha" to explain away obvious shortcomings of a title that has the player base and commercial succes of a lot of actually finished titles out there.

 

I don't know why you think they're unfocused or the like. Broadly speaking (and as I understand things), the alpha stage is where the planned features of the product are still in development and are not yet complete, and one reaches the beta testing stage when the product is feature complete but where there are known software defects that are significant enough to require correction before the product can be said to be a release candidate.

 

There are features they plan to include in the release product that are not yet finished, so following the standard definition, this is still an alpha product.

 

Personally, I don't care if they call it an epsilon product. It's fun, playable, well written, and they're very responsive to customer requests. I'm not sure we could ask for a lot more from a dev team. Heck, I like this game more than I do FO4...and that's really saying something. :)

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I don't know why you think they're unfocused or the like. Broadly speaking (and as I understand things), the alpha stage is where the planned features of the product are still in development and are not yet complete, and one reaches the beta testing stage when the product is feature complete but where there are known software defects that are significant enough to require correction before the product can be said to be a release candidate.

 

There are features they plan to include in the release product that are not yet finished, so following the standard definition, this is still an alpha product.

 

Personally, I don't care if they call it an epsilon product. It's fun, playable, well written, and they're very responsive to customer requests. I'm not sure we could ask for a lot more from a dev team. Heck, I like this game more than I do FO4...and that's really saying something. :)

 

If you take a look at the Wikipedia's definition of what alpha phase is, you'll see one little note there - "In general, external availability of alpha software is uncommon in proprietary software". TFP can indeed call it whatever they like, it is their game after all, but the term "alpha" carries certain expectations, whether they accept it or not.

 

I am happy they released their game when they did, since I enjoy it greatly in its current state. I personally don't care what they call it, but I have to agree with this particular point of the OP - the word "alpha" may be a bit off. I am a software engineer myself and I cringe every time I read something like "well, it doesn't have all the features yet, so it must be an alpha release".

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'06 Toyota 4sale. As is, new tires, cold AC, bad head gasket. $850 *

 

You have to ask yourself if you are willing to put up with the headaches of a car with a bad head gasket. If you accept the terms, then go ahead and complete the deal. But you dont later get to complain the seller cheated you because the car has a bad head gasket.

If you dont want a bad head gasket car,

dont buy a car advertised as bad head gasket.

 

If you dont want an Alpha stage game, dont buy an alpha stage game.

Doesnt matter if it was $2, $20, or $200.... if its something you dont want then dont buy it.

 

 

* Not really selling, context purpose only

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Do you guys get goosebumps when you copy paste some definition of Alpha on to these threads? This is like the 5th thread in the last month where everyone just writes everything off, and people start spamming websters.

 

Called it whatever you like, at this point it's just being used as a shield.

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Do you guys get goosebumps when you copy paste some definition of Alpha on to these threads? This is like the 5th thread in the last month where everyone just writes everything off, and people start spamming websters.

 

Called it whatever you like, at this point it's just being used as a shield.

 

So the alternative, is that some random player gets to arbitrarily decide when a game has moved from Alpha to Beta, right?

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It is only used for good though....

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]18215[/ATTACH]

 

You know they should put in Airships into the game, in your honor! Maybe an endgame find where you need an airship to travel across the radiation zones and find an intact town with people and begin Part 2.

 

Yeah, for you! :)

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Umm, I paid $35 for Alpha 1. Right now, the game is priced at $11 even though it's still in Alpha. So your statement is flawed.

 

 

nope. you supported the kickstarter campaign. while you get an alpha version for it, it´s something different than people who bought it later.

(also the 11$ is a steam sale. it´s around 25 usually i think?) so the price argument is still there.

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