Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
V Rising Continues Its Success, Now Marks 1.5 Million Copies Sold Since Early Access Launch
System
Member UncommonPosts: 12,599
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
System
Member UncommonPosts: 12,599
Comments
"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
Valheim, Satisfactory, Ready or Not, and countless others never left early access yet millions of people spent hundreds (and sometimes thousands) of hours in the game work enjoying it. Does it really matter if it officially leaves "early access" if people enjoy the game?
Some games enter early access in a better state than some release titles (and naturally vice versa). My point is, leaving "early access" is a very poor indicator of quality or amount of content game has.
It also does nothing to benefit those titles whose quality would catapult them to the top regardless of the EA label or not. Nobody bought Valheim because it was EA; they bought it because they were told or read or heard it seemed fun.
It's become a crutch and nothing more. A crutch that does nothing but enable poor games to putter along until abandoned.
You sound like a Star Citizen backer
Treat every Early Access game as a fully released game, and you won't have any problems. If the foundation isn't fun, nothing else in the game will be. As for being a "crutch"... Oh well. Plenty of shit games get released every day without the Early Access title attached to them. I'll let the fun ones that stand out have that crutch.
It does it for some, but not for others.
Look at BG3; when it first hit EA it was very barebones. However what it had was good. Now almost 2 years later it is actually full of content.
EA indicates to people that what they get is an incomplete experience; and thus should be treated more of a "buy at your own risk".
Is it sad that I remember games on cassette and 5.25 floppy disk? Hell, I remember games that gave you a program to manually type into your computer before you could play.
I bought 7 Days to Die on a big Steam sale like 4 or 5 years ago, set it aside to play once the game finally releases.
Still waiting....
Me on my high horse
"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
Well, to play C2077 I waited 1 full year AFTER release
I loved 7 days to die as well HIGH Horse man!
Proud MMORPG.com member since March 2004! Make PvE GREAT Again!
Anyone that bothers to read the EA disclaimer/legal jargon, would realize that they have zero options if one day the devs decide to drop a patch to make the game unplayable,
Games that have "released" have a duty to be at least marginally playable, or customers have SOME legal option they might be able to pursue. Totally not the case with ANY EA game.
Granted that not many would bother....but that EA title covers the dev's completely.
This reminds me of what happened to the game Dark and Light that went into early access in 2017 (and is still in Early Access, yet hasn't received any updates in about 2020, I think they officially sent notice that they were abandoning it or something).
Where you are right is the launch itself had become not as good an indicator of quality as it used to be, BC alludes above how that started with the internet. Once games could be patched online companies did not feel the need to get them as launch ready as they used to. That laxity for launch increased over the years until you had fiascos like EA's Railway Tycoon launch.
Early access has moved the goal posts on what was already a problematic area for players, namely when is the game ready to play? We should as a customer be able to expect the best product for our money, you don't buy half built mobiles and cars do you? I notice as well that apologists for early access are changing their reasons for why early access is fine. We used to hear about how it is essential for the game to be developed "we would not even get a launch" is what we used to be told. Now we are being told "well if players are enjoying it isn't that aright?"
I am really not sure what studios now have to do for players to realise they are being taken for a ride. If a gaming studio offered a half built real world glider to players, would they buy it and jump of a cliff? Maybe.
After all that I have great hopes for this game, we are taking a pot shot at early access here, not V Rising.