2 months to release and the game feels like pre-alpha and is a letdown. Please delay the release.

A.k.a team fortress two (I miss vanilla)


I feel like this thread is secretly a lightning rod for all of those who want to say this game is a let down... Maybe it helps prevent the forum from being spammed with a ton of these "type" of threads.

Again, its still in beta and a lot can still be done to help get it finished before launch. The release date isn't a set date.

Usually a game's launch tend to become a huge dissapointment if you have heard "it's still in Beta" too many times. Hope this won't be the case for PA, it's not in a real Beta anyway.

I personally don't believe this. I know patches will be forth-coming after release, and that is very much a modern mentality.
Fact is that many people still are not used to playing games that aren't finished yet. This all started not very long ago. And ever since the internet became bigger and faster, there have been dev's that figure that "it's not done yet but no worries, we'll patch it later" and they release a broken game at worst, or a game missing the dots on the i's at best.

Now eventually this might get patched (and it might not be), but that doesn't matter. Your product went gold and was released. Not too long ago that meant the game was done. People who are not as into videogames as we are will buy the game all excited, they will see the flaws and/or broken systems and be disappointed. Patches might be coming daily or weekly, but first impressions have been made: the game is broken, and that is the memory that people will have of your game no matter what you do with it.

For example, ArmA 1 and ArmA 2 both run very smooth nowadays (at least in my experience, and knowing the platform's limitations (that being you can make a scenario as big as you want that will bring any computer to it's knees, including NASA's)), but they ran like complete and utter **** when they were first released.
ArmA 2's campaign was broken like all hell, and was completely unenjoyable until two years later when BIS finally caught up with patching it and fixing it to a playable state. It happened, but that matters little now: first impressions have been made, and when ArmA 3 released many people's expectations (those who didn't follow the game's development blogs, people's user video's etc.) were "meh, it'll run like **** most likely. I'll wait a year or two, or I'll never buy it at all."

It does not matter what you do in the future. What matters is the state your game is in when it officially releases, because that is what reviews and most of people's reactions that you'll read later on will be based on.
Nobody re-reviews a game unless he's a fan, and that might not get enough exposure to change the world's view on your game. You'll shoot yourself in the foot by releasing too early.


EDIT:
Just to clarify, ArmA 3 is ******* awesome. Runs as well for me as ArmA 2 does, with MUCh better graphics and more detail in the simulation than ever before. More over, the gameplay has hit a sweet spot between gameplay and simulation, without dumbing down.
Go buy the **** out of it.

I remember I have seen this:

It leaves a question, what are Uber's standards for a unfinished but releasable game?

When i played the game couple days ago it feld like it made a huge process in a very low time. However, the game feels way too slow. It takes too much time to get into space, doing actual stuff. They should remove the Idea of ressource based stuff, only timebased. This game has a horrible ressourcemanagement, this is focused on building huge armies composed of orbital, naval, air and groundunits, but you just cant because the ressources cannot keep up. you have to decide on few.

And yeah, i was one of the guys that said this game wont be finished this year like 2 month ago.
This game needs some major improvements that cant happen in the time left. Some automatics you can set up while focusing on other stuff, otherwise things will get out of hand too quickly.

and
evolvexxx:

There were people like me here, posting messages in the forums before this like-sh** took place.

Bloody hell this thread has lots of panicking to it.

To start off, I agree with this 100%. I've been quite vocal about this here and there before, and I still believe this to be something that can make or break a game.

The only thing I'd like to add is that we have no idea where the internal version is compared to the beta we are given. They might be way ahead of us, they might not be, we have no idea at this point. I personally just trust them, as the developers ain't new to the scene, they know what they're doing.

When i buy a game the first impact ,its the most important .
On me iff i like i keep play and with atencion on future patches.
Iff i dont like i dont care any moore iff will be patches to improve or not,i just wont play it again ,and iff any one ask me iff i think the game good to they buy, i say no its a crap.

So yes ,you guys totaly right,not matters after game being released ,will be a bit bether or not with some future patches.
On this industry, the released impressions now, its the maintance off the game.

Before i buy a game i see 1 the gameplay reviews and thoughts.
An ex: i was worry before i buy Saints row 4 ,but when i saw review gameplay on gamespot,i decided buy and im super happy with it,its a great game.
i never buy a game when i see some % off ppl say bad things.

And most times games are good but ,things are like this ...

PA is currently in Top 50 best sellers (43rd) on Steam. Can it be considered as good ?

2 things are true.

No one person is as dumb as all of us.
and
No one person is as smart as all of us.


The community here makes a lot of suggestions, some good, mostly dumb.
There is no way Uber can please everybody, we rarely speak with a collective voice.
You know the old say about "too many chefs in the kitchen will spoil a broth", well, the clamor on the forums is really, really loud and very disjointed. Its very difficult to wade through all of the suggestions, especially when it's going through a landfill to find a small nugget of gold.
No offense to the community, but almost none of us have any involvement working on software creation or game design. Most of our comments are just silly and not feasible.


On the other hand...
When you can finally do see the community come together, it's a rather big deal.
I can count on one hand the number of issues and respective threads where this has happened.
I'm sure I won't need to list them out for you all.

No. You don't know if a game is good or bad until you played it.

You have hopes for a game. And those hopes makes you buying a game.
Maybe your friends told you that the game is awesome. Or you have read some positive reviews on the internet. Hopes and positive affirmations.

If you played the game before you buy it and are happy with it... well that's different. But I think this is the exception.

I think the question was more about how many sales that means. Afaik sadly steam does not share that kind information.

That's a very good indicator.

One more reason Hawken is doing better than MWO

And most than likely, these count the backer key activation on steam too.

I doubt that actually.

Man I haven't played Hawken in AGES.

Love that game. :3

Okay. I just wanted to say that "sales" doesn't say anything about the quality of a game. But it says much about the prominence. Prominence can result in more sales.

Random fact: As of today in early access on steam visit the seven game in top sellers category.
P.S. don't trust metacritic

So hearing a phrase from forum goers saying "it's still in Beta" means the game is doomed to have a crappy launch?
What other games have had this in their forums and followed these premonitions?

Whats a real beta and a fake beta? From your sentence you are stating that PA is in a fake beta. Well can you define for me what each entail?

How I understand Beta's.
Closed Beta
Typically invite only after you sign up and get lucky to join.
The latest trend in industry is that if you customer really wants to play... they might pay.. so here we are.

There are bugs and crashes that are prevalent and design that is constantly evolving.. units being edited in real time [as in patched to be updated and neat] and it doesn't work for every system. Usually a hammered out idea of the game but has the back bone of the system in place. PA is a sort of special case since they have really given the community a chance to join the ride from concept art and videos outlining their cool stuff to a working beta in little over a year. I can then say you can argue that this is where PA is in fake beta because they have opened it up so early with units still pouring in and a lot more being hammered out but really... its still a beta since its a working build that the closed public can play.

Open Beta
Open to everyone and is free. Come and test it.
This is where the game gets a lot more polish and really starts to shine as a game. The graphics get tuned up, the last of the optimization starts setting in as the servers get truly loaded up and the final bug fixes are hopefully found.

Nothing fancy and nothing more that I can think of.

Traditionally, Beta means the game is more or less feature complete, so the development team can focus on performance and balancing. the game isn't feature complete. There's a whole load of performance stuff which is being added to make the game playable, and the user interface is only a placeholder of the real thing. and so on.

Essentially people are still applying the old labels of "alpha" and "beta" despite a vastly different game industry than when those terms were originally created.

People are playing games in rougher states, and earlier in the game's development cycle. Games are even being launched in horribly unfinished states. Why they would do that, I have no idea, but the corporate types must think it makes business sense even if it seems to us to be an incredible waste of customer goodwill for no legitimate reason. Of course, those corporate types also think other ridiculous things like "DRM works" and "online multiplayer is the new 'in' thing" among other nonsense.

Uber is in the marvelous position of being able to basically whatever they want, with no corporate overlords. Their objective is to make a game they love, and which hopefully we will love too.

Therefore, I think it doesn't really matter whether the game is technically in state A or state B. What is really important is the goodwill of the player base. If the player base wants the game to be technically 'released' then fine. And if the player base wants the game to be technically 'not released' then that's fine too. It makes no effective difference. But it may make a difference in public perception, including when the cloud of reviewer piranha paparazzi descends and when the gaming press decides to put the game under the microscope for all of three minutes.

The real player base will still play, of course, whether the game is 'released' yet or not. And if the game is as good as I am hoping we may still be playing five years from now or more. But releasing is a large and public event and has significance for everyone else.