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Are soft releases a good idea ?
delete5230
Member EpicPosts: 7,081
To elaborate more allowing people to "publicly" play before it's time.
I so no, worst thing a developer can do. I've seen several kick starters fail completely because of this. Most fail before release.
1) It's in peoples nature to slander.
2) It shows the mess with bugs and refinement. Most people are not open to future change.
3) It exposes core problems, and word spreads fast.
4) Uneven advantage of the game.
5) Uneven advancement on servers.
6) People simply don't come back.
7) Bad memories stick.
Good or bad game, it's besides the point !!!!
This post was inspired by Legends of Aria.....
The game is a hot steamy mess for EVERY reason above. It had a promise of release on Steam for January, then April, then end of Spring but has yet to be released. HOWEVER it can be openly purchased on their web site for months.
The public slander of the game is unbearable on Steam, yet it's not on Steam yet.... People will go out of the way to destroy a game, again it's in our nature.
Is the game good "no",
I had a positive attitude for months, along with a great Guild. I tricked myself into looking past all above.
The end result ?...... I will never play this game again, I have a bad taste, even with an entire overhaul THE BAD FEELING WILL NEVER GO AWAY. Good or bad is besides the point !
Never a soft release, of any game..... Just saying !
I so no, worst thing a developer can do. I've seen several kick starters fail completely because of this. Most fail before release.
1) It's in peoples nature to slander.
2) It shows the mess with bugs and refinement. Most people are not open to future change.
3) It exposes core problems, and word spreads fast.
4) Uneven advantage of the game.
5) Uneven advancement on servers.
6) People simply don't come back.
7) Bad memories stick.
Good or bad game, it's besides the point !!!!
This post was inspired by Legends of Aria.....
The game is a hot steamy mess for EVERY reason above. It had a promise of release on Steam for January, then April, then end of Spring but has yet to be released. HOWEVER it can be openly purchased on their web site for months.
The public slander of the game is unbearable on Steam, yet it's not on Steam yet.... People will go out of the way to destroy a game, again it's in our nature.
Is the game good "no",
I had a positive attitude for months, along with a great Guild. I tricked myself into looking past all above.
The end result ?...... I will never play this game again, I have a bad taste, even with an entire overhaul THE BAD FEELING WILL NEVER GO AWAY. Good or bad is besides the point !
Never a soft release, of any game..... Just saying !
Comments
"The Society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting by fools."
Currently: Games Audio Engineer, you didn't hear what I heard, you heard what I wanted you to hear.
Nowadays betas are called alphas and positions are for sale to the highest bidder.
It's also much more favourable to launch with 'good' first impression... perfect example being WoW, which despite having 'bad' expansions for years has seen off many arguably better competitors and is only now finally dying (with its original 'good' self possibly being the final nail)
As was mentioned by Centkin, what was once a way games were tested pre-release has become a fund raiser and in some cases is a method for whales to establish dominance in game. We once saw fair play as hallmark of gaming, now it is just part of gaming history.
Closed testing was always play-the-game-before-it-will-be-released and only tiny % of 'testers' were actually testing anything.
Thus, it makes sense to monetize pre-release access.
Other games not so much, but perhaps their lack of success in generating support is more from they aren't very good and not so much due to how rough they are in early release.
Bless proved it's best (for devs, players not so much) to get all you can out of gamers in early access before they learn how bad it is post release.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Tell me when you are no longer going to wipe progression, at that point the game is "launched" regardless of platform, and I will judge it accordingly.
As mentioned by the OP, if the product is not of good content and quality at this point they will almost certainly lose me permanently as I never go back and give a bad game another try.
All future content is an expansion, not a marketing release (CF weasel term), Steam launch or whatever BS term Devs come up with.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
No fate but what we make, so make me a ham sandwich please.
They are better then soft shits..... What a mess this morning
Aloha Mr Hand !
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
I also don't see early progression as a problem because it's a norm in games. Players are continually starting to play a game at different times. No matter what they do there will be players who start playing a game sometimes years after it's release. So early start is no big deal to me.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
If you are in the beta where the server is only up on weekends and the devs aren't around much then you are not in the actual beta. A lot of games ran things that way -- they had a couple of tiers of beta access. If the server is up 24/7 except for maints and the devs are around and kidding around with the beta players as well as providing things they want tested etc. then you are in the "real" beta.
I remember Wawker Thestwian Ranger in the early Vanguard betas played out by Aradune.
It is also by timing -- if you are in beta over 6 months before the game releases and especially 12 months before the game releases then you are in the actual beta and things that you say actually have some meaning. Once you reach 3-4 months before the game releases then they are mainly looking for performance issues, typos, and exploits.
What the devs are doing is set an allotted time and expenditure and once that is met,not a single dime is spent until they see money coming in.They spend so little and so little time,it is more like a test to see if the game will sell or not,if not,simply shut it down or go into maintenance mode and rip off anyone dumb enough to give them money.
This is what i would call a win win for the developer and mostly a lose lose for the consumer.Even if things go well,they get more sales than expected,there is still a very good chance they do very little after the fact.
A very noticeable case in point was H1Z1,that was simply Smedley's scam job to generate cash before selling out or as a selling point,he had no intention of doing much to the game afterwards.I was actually surprised to see the release was way back in early 2015,VERY little work was done to the game in the following years.
The core profits are in the first 2 weeks of sales,the devs know that after that very little money will come in,so they act accordingly.
Point being that i wouldn't call these a SOFT release,one that is expected to see a lot of change and additional work in the following months,years,this is almost never the case.Since we see almost no work done afterwards,these are FINAL sales,a RIP OFF,unfinished buggy mess..final sale.
Legit businesses that do honor a final sale with no misleading early access tags,always do more work than these EA games.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
The hot topic there is some God awful Asian grinder and some kind of cash shop dungeon thing. The topic is brought up by some Asian avatar poster that promotes a different Asian grinder that no one cares about every three days.
Developers destroyed the mmorpg market.
To make matters worst, "posters here" are clueless and think people don't want them anymore. Thats another topic there.
Two promising games left is Pantheon and Saga of Lucimia that had gone completely underground for now. Believe me their is a following for that game, I know for sure. I shouldn't be selfish by not bringing up Ashes of Creation. It seems somewhat reputable but many people will be let down when they find it will be pure PvP. Good for the PvPers, however their are many games for them already.
Why bring up soft release topic here ?
With the one in a million chance worthwhile developers will see this and not risk their game.
Few to none ever survived an undone soft release.
I don't mind EA on Single Player games, but applied to MMORPGs is just a recipe for disaster.
When you have a soft launch like SOTA, you have small chunk of players joining at any given time.
When those players realize the game is empty, they quit.
When the next influx of players join in, the previous ones quit already, so they eventually quit too.
Rinse and repeat.
Pantheon need to launch old style.
It should have few weeks of Open Beta and then a proper launch. Its servers should explode if necessary. But that's the only way to go.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests