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Developer Discussions: Alpha 17


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Developer Discussions: Alpha 17  

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  1. 1. Developer Discussions: Alpha 17

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Look at prominent EA examples like PubG or DayZ (or Ark, Rust and others). An EA game is hyped so you will find 80% of those buying will be early adopters buying right in the first weeks. That's where the cash flow is. Further development down the line will only see comparably little money trickling in and actually further development might even be a loss business.

 

"hype" is sometimes just a synonym for "word of mouth". People buy X because their friends play it and recommend it. And these people recommend it to other friends ...

 

Many of the games mentioned above probably sold really well only after reaching a level where you got enough fun out of them for the money they cost.

 

PubG probably is such a case, AFAIK it was in a pretty good shape already when the hype started. And when a friend recommended 7D2D to me, it was at version A15 and I really can't complain about having payed too much (I did back it on kickstarter but until A15 never tried it out).

 

Factorio is a case where I know (from an interview with the developers) that their sales in the first year of EA were negligible. Only after some improvements (one was just redoing the graphics of trees after a friend told them how terrible they looked) did word of mouth multiply the userbase. And it needed further versions with major improvements to make it into the a bestseller.

 

I really doubt your "80% buy it in the first 4 weeks" is generally true. EA works (mostly for PvP games though) and it is an interesting development model if you want to make a game without any big money behind you. If you produce a bad game, your cash reserves will soon dry out as there is no word-of-mouth generated for it. If you produce an excellent game word-of-mouth will provide a steady income to finance the development.

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"hype" is sometimes just a synonym for "word of mouth". People buy X because their friends play it and recommend it. And these people recommend it to other friends ...

 

Many of the games mentioned above probably sold really well only after reaching a level where you got enough fun out of them for the money they cost.

 

PubG probably is such a case, AFAIK it was in a pretty good shape already when the hype started. And when a friend recommended 7D2D to me, it was at version A15 and I really can't complain about having payed too much (I did back it on kickstarter but until A15 never tried it out).

 

Factorio is a case where I know (from an interview with the developers) that their sales in the first year of EA were negligible. Only after some improvements (one was just redoing the graphics of trees after a friend told them how terrible they looked) did word of mouth multiply the userbase. And it needed further versions with major improvements to make it into the a bestseller.

 

I really doubt your "80% buy it in the first 4 weeks" is generally true. EA works (mostly for PvP games though) and it is an interesting development model if you want to make a game without any big money behind you. If you produce a bad game, your cash reserves will soon dry out as there is no word-of-mouth generated for it. If you produce an excellent game word-of-mouth will provide a steady income to finance the development.

 

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Bahaha whom told you of our secret face to face meetings lol.. this was spose to be SECRET......KNEW WE COULDNT TRUST guppy lol

 

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Because then modders could go to town and make things before tfp get to haha .... I joke I joke lol.

 

I mean, I could have asked another, more relevant question instead. For example: Why do the zombie strippers have perky nipples? Are the cold or something?

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Council_of_Elrond.jpg

 

Everything was going well with the Fellowship of the Frame, until they all gazed at the small, precious, item between them...

 

THE ONE FRAME!!!

[ATTACH=CONFIG]23510[/ATTACH]

 

They could hear a dark voice speak in their ears:

"One Frame to Rule them all, One Frame to bind them,

one frame to save some space and in immersion die them!!"

 

They began to fight over who would say its immersive or immersion breaking!

 

All except Aldranon the grey (and wise... and amazingly handsome for his age)

 

He said... Fames srames, I want a STORY LINE! and smashed the One Frame with his steel pickaxe of doom!

and they lived hapi... no no, the ensuing explosion killed them all.

The end.

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Everything was going well with the Fellowship of the Frame, until they all gazed at the small, precious, item between them...

 

THE ONE FRAME!!!

[ATTACH=CONFIG]23510[/ATTACH]

 

They could hear a dark voice speak in their ears:

"One Frame to Rule them all, One Frame to bind them,

one frame to save some space and in immersion die them!!"

 

They began to fight over who would say its immersive or immersion breaking!

 

All except Aldranon the grey (and wise... and amazingly handsome for his age)

 

He said... Fames srames, I want a STORY LINE! and smashed the One Frame with his steel pickaxe of doom!

and they lived hapi... no no, the ensuing explosion killed them all.

The end.

LOL,

smitten.gif

 

 

Madmole, could we please have some Galadriel-length (loose) hair on the next character overhaul? :tickled_pink: tyty

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I swore one of MM's videos said earlier than expected and well before either March maybe may or something.

 

I never heard before any date? I did hear him say he wanted to have a quicker release but no where did he 'promise' it so take it with a pinch of salt and if we get more content then great. Patience.

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

 

I really doubt your "80% buy it in the first 4 weeks" is generally true.

 

I bought this game when it was on alpha 15 also.

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I never heard before any date? I did hear him say he wanted to have a quicker release but no where did he 'promise' it so take it with a pinch of salt and if we get more content then great. Patience.

 

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I bought this game when it was on alpha 15 also.

 

It depends on the game:

Need I speak the name?? No Mans Sky.

Or the almost as bad: Mass Effect 4 - Andromeda.

 

There are others, too many others. But it does depend on the game and if the devs fix the mistakes and add some good content.

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It depends on the game:

Need I speak the name?? No Mans Sky.

Or the almost as bad: Mass Effect 4 - Andromeda.

 

There are others, too many others. But it does depend on the game and if the devs fix the mistakes and add some good content.

 

Its actually possible that Fallout 4 might be the best. Only because they will monetize successful modders. That's got to be a huge improvement. More cost to the end users, but hopefully worth it.

 

Edit: oops, meant to edit prior post. Scusami.

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I think that shape selection is great!

 

You have a bunch of shapes and a bunch of materials and any combination of the two is valid.

 

What this does is when devs introduce a new material, all the shapes for that material are ready and when they create a new shape, it is immediately available for all materials.

 

Such system would be much simpler and neat that what we currently have. Construction would be simplified a lot.

 

No more missing shapes for some materials. Like "Why is there no rebar frame for that shape?"

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It depends on the game:

Need I speak the name?? No Mans Sky.

Or the almost as bad: Mass Effect 4 - Andromeda.

 

There are others, too many others. But it does depend on the game and if the devs fix the mistakes and add some good content.

 

Bit harsh to associate TFP with Electronic arts and hello games... this team has far more integrity than that.

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more flexibility for Switches and Motion Sencors

 

Would be great if could use more than one motion sensor for one object. Ex would be:

 

1. ability to have more than one 'switch' to activate same set of lights as in a bigger room, like an living room, with 2 entrances to this room but want to turn on the group of lights with switch at either entrance.

 

2. Motion Sensor: ability to place 2 or more around an object, warning light, alarm or what ever, that would go off no matter what direction Zombies come for instance.

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It depends on the game:

Need I speak the name?? No Mans Sky.

Or the almost as bad: Mass Effect 4 - Andromeda.

 

There are others, too many others. But it does depend on the game and if the devs fix the mistakes and add some good content.

 

But, wasn't the topic about EA pros and cons with EA == Early Access, not EA, the cursed company from hell?

 

Neither NMS nor ME4 were early access, even though their release versions were arguably in a state comparable to that. And both, especially NMS, generated hype through advertising and promoting it on gaming sites instead of word-of-mouth (except for word-of-mouth that spread unsupported claims of what the games would do if they were actually good). Both already had publishers behind them who didn't need EA but had a marketing machinery running at full speed.

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It depends on the game:

Need I speak the name?? No Mans Sky.

Or the almost as bad: Mass Effect 4 - Andromeda.

 

There are others, too many others. But it does depend on the game and if the devs fix the mistakes and add some good content.

 

No Mans Sky should have released as an Early Access game. It was not really in a finished state when it first came out. There were several bug fixing patches in the first few weeks, and now more than a year later they still put out a major content patch every few months. I occasionally go back to it, and it's fun if you're into single player exploration/survival. It wouldn't have gotten the bad rap if it had been advertised as what it actually is. They never should have tried to get away with calling it multiplayer, and they shouldn't have gone gold when the game was barely playable.

 

7DTD, on the other hand, has developers that don't try to advertise their game as something it is not. They are honest about the fact that everything is a work in progress.

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I really doubt your "80% buy it in the first 4 weeks" is generally true. EA works (mostly for PvP games though) and it is an interesting development model if you want to make a game without any big money behind you. If you produce a bad game, your cash reserves will soon dry out as there is no word-of-mouth generated for it. If you produce an excellent game word-of-mouth will provide a steady income to finance the development.

 

80% in the first 4 weeks might be actually true for companies like Electronic Arts (avoiding the "EA gate" here) because they spend half of the money on advertising. Instead of using that money to make a good game they make them look as shiny as possible so people would pre order or buy at launch.

 

It clearly is different with Early Access. You "buy in" when you see potential or when you feel developers have proven themselves or simply decide the game already has enough content for the money. The profit is earned on much longer period. You see what you get instead of rely on cherry picked PR eye candy.

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