Does anybody else hate this, or is it just me?

[TurboJoe]

With the release of The Engineers getting close, the constant flow of threads about ED lacking content and people complaining that FD ripped them off with Horizons, it got me thinking. Does anybody else hate the fact that most games are now released in stages, instead of just the complete game being released when it's finished? I understand that games need to be tested, but that should be done by a team of testers employed by the game developer, not by the player base. The combination of broadband internet and the gaming community's (constantly increasing) impatience, has created this horrible system where you pay for a game that doesn't exist yet, you play
it as it's being built so it's full of bugs and things that don't work, and then you get the finished version for free when it's ready. The only problem being that most of them never reach the finished stage.
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Personally, I don't play pre alpha builds, alpha builds, beta builds etc. of any game, because by the time the final version is released I'd have become bored of it and wouldn't want to play it anymore. In my opinion FD should have just spent six to eight years building a complete version of ED with all the features they wanted included, and then just released it as a finished game. Imagine buying a copy of ED, and straight out of the box you can land on any planet you like, modify your ship modules, carry fighter ships, have a crew on board, encounter alien races, explore flora and fauna down on planets with various types of SRV etc. There would be so much to do you wouldn't know where to turn.
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I can understand why developers have adopted this method because they get the money upfront to develop the game. But in the long term I think the developer is shooting themselves in the foot, because people start forming opinions about the game before its finished, and then they start getting frustrated because they want the things they were promised, and then they write bad reviews on Steam and damaging comments on reddit etc.
This also puts pressure on the developer, because they are constantly being asked when are you releasing this, or that, so things get rushed and as a result you end up with a poor game feature or mechanic.
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As I get older there are very few games that get me excited anymore, but ED is one of the games that does. I just can't help thinking it would have been ten times better if it had been released as a finished game.

TLDR
Do you hate the fact that modern games are released in various stages of completion, instead of being released as a finished game?

 

[Surly_Badger]

Does anybody else hate the fact that most games are now released in stages, instead of just the complete game being released when it's finished?

I hate the way it's often done. But when it's done right, I love it.

Consider DOOM. They released the first level as a marketing lead-in so that everyone could go "WOW! THIS IS AWESOME!" and buy the rest. That gave them some window of time in which to add levels and tweaks, but the game engine was complete and game-play was what it was. For some games that's perfectly reasonable.

Consider Halo 2, 3, 4, 5 etc as "expansion packs" of a sort on top of the basic concept from Halo 1, which was awesome.

Really, the issue is that there are some games released piecemeal because of deadline pressure and the game isn't really ready for prime time - like Elite Dangerous - and the add ons and patches will eventually (hopefully) make the game what it's supposed to be. I don't mind that if it lets me bail out of a game entirely when I conclude it's just not that interesting. For example, Blizzard could come out with another 1,000 World of Warcraft expansions and I still won't bother playing any of them, because it's not evolving in an interesting direction and it started off at a place that wasn't interesting either.

I suppose I agree, in other words: too often it's schedule pressure and that the game developers bit off more than they could chew. I can envision times where even that's OK, as long as it's managed well. It just, so often, isn't. Skyrim did OK. Bungie's Destiny did not. Elite Dangerous isn't too bad, but I'm certainly not handing out ringing praise regarding how FD does some of their designs and I'm generally unimpressed with their priorities. Those, of course, are my personal aesthetics and it's their game and my opinion counts exactly as much as everyone else who plunked down some money for the game: zero.

I'm also OK with having my opinion count for nothing. I've been a gamer for a very long time and I have seldom seen a game where players opinions count for anything at all. I sometimes think players' opinions shouldn't count for anything at all - given some of the opinions I see on various forums in various games. With a game like Elite Dangerous you've got a tension between PVE/simulation players and PVP players and end-game content lovers and grinders. That tension is not manageable: someone is going to be unhappy. So I'm comfortable sitting back and letting the game designers decide what matters more to them, because - hey - Xcom 2 is out, and I just got the remastered version of Valkyria and if 'Engineers' turns out to be grindy (I don't like games that encourage grinding behavior) then I have loads of other stuff to do.

 

[Ian Skippy]

It depends. Massive projects, like Eve, ED and SC, could never work on a 'release when finished' basis, unless you're willing to wait a decade and the company can somehow keep a full staff on hand for ten years without income.

 

[babelfisch]

It depends. Massive projects, like Eve, ED and SC, could never work on a 'release when finished' basis, unless you're willing to wait a decade and the company can somehow keep a full staff on hand for ten years without income.

And after 10 years they come up with something like Duke Nukem Forever...

 

[Robert Maynard]

Moved to General Gaming Discussion.

 

[Oogie Boogie]

If you don't like to play alpha, beta or like with Horizons pay to have a sneak peak of the future features - just don't buy it!

Of course I would love to play Elite today with Thargoids, planetary landings on huge cities, clan&group features and many, many more things. But this is a real world here and Frontier has to pay real salaries towards their employees. An employee costs appr. between $ 50'000 and $ 100'000 including all costs. Frontier has let's say 250 employees. If you calculate the figure with the assumed minimum wages (50/-) Frontier has a real cash out of around $ 1 mio. per month. You can figure out, how many paint jobs or games licenses they need to sell constantly for that. The longer a development is going on, without actual cash-in for this project, the higher the risk they have to take.

So it makes totally sense that Frontier and other development companies are reducing there financial risks by "building the bridge as they are walking on it".

 

[cmdr_Havalok]

I don't mind but I think that's because I understand the dilemma. E: D is massive. It would've been in development for 4-8 years, with no $$s coming in. On top of that it's Sci-Fi/Space-sim property. Considered a specialty sub-genre that doesn't always have the biggest sales on release. No Backer was willing to put up that much cash for so long a time with low prospects on a good return. Crowd funding to the Rescue!

This has caused Fdev to take a different development approach from the norm, releasing in stages. They are off to a good start but the finish line isn't even in sight yet. There are many, like you, that dislike this method. Only time will show us if it is viable. Personally, I have my fingers crossed. I'm in it for the long run and kind of enjoying watching the game grow and change.

 

[TurboJoe]

If you don't like to play alpha, beta or like with Horizons pay to have a sneak peak of the future features - just don't buy it!

Of course I would love to play Elite today with Thargoids, planetary landings on huge cities, clan&group features and many, many more things. But this is a real world here and Frontier has to pay real salaries towards their employees. An employee costs appr. between $ 50'000 and $ 100'000 including all costs. Frontier has let's say 250 employees. If you calculate the figure with the assumed minimum wages (50/-) Frontier has a real cash out of around $ 1 mio. per month. You can figure out, how many paint jobs or games licenses they need to sell constantly for that. The longer a development is going on, without actual cash-in for this project, the higher the risk they have to take.

So it makes totally sense that Frontier and other development companies are reducing there financial risks by "building the bridge as they are walking on it".

Yeah I can understand that, particularly now that games are costing more than ever to make. I suppose I just miss buying a game and knowing that I've got a complete game. I don't mind paying for things like Horizons because it helps develop the game further as you mentioned, and I'm not one of the people who feel like they've been ripped off because I've put more hours into ED that any other game I've owned. (I'm not saying you were accusing me of that, I just wanted to be clear).

 

[Oogie Boogie]

Yeah I can understand that, particularly now that games are costing more than ever to make. I suppose I just miss buying a game and knowing that I've got a complete game. I don't mind paying for things like Horizons because it helps develop the game further as you mentioned, and I'm not one of the people who feel like they've been ripped off because I've put more hours into ED that any other game I've owned. (I'm not saying you were accusing me of that, I just wanted to be clear).

Same here - put probably over 2'000 hours into this game. That's why every once a while I buy a paint job or some other stuff. Of course those are just drops in the sea, but this game is just amazing and I'd love to see the end of a 10 year journey some day - or at least the Thargoids..

 

[Robert Maynard]

Winter is coming.

I wonder if they meant this winter....?

 

[TurboJoe]

I don't mind but I think that's because I understand the dilemma. E: D is massive. It would've been in development for 4-8 years, with no $$s coming in. On top of that it's Sci-Fi/Space-sim property. Considered a specialty sub-genre that doesn't always have the biggest sales on release. No Backer was willing to put up that much cash for so long a time with low prospects on a good return. Crowd funding to the Rescue!

This has caused Fdev to take a different development approach from the norm, releasing in stages. They are off to a good start but the finish line isn't even in sight yet. There are many, like you, that dislike this method. Only time will show us if it is viable. Personally, I have my fingers crossed. I'm in it for the long run and kind of enjoying watching the game grow and change.

Yeah I agree, I just think releasing a game like ED in stages doesn't do the game justice. I'm still in it for the long run though, like you.

 

[goemon]

i can't see a game above a certain scale being developed without income from sales and "beta-testing" from players.

same goes for TV-shows, btw. you can throw out a tv-series with 8 episodes at once (like BBC does), but nobody will shoot 5 seasons with 15 episodes before having an idea, whether the show has some success.

same goes even for books to some extend (potter, got).

that is bad for some (firefly, the middleman...), but an effect of producing costs/investment.

it also opens up for "risky" things to get produced at all, if they show some success (elite...)

i personally want games/shows/books above some scale, so i can live with how it is done.

 

[Mephane]

With the release of The Engineers getting close, the constant flow of threads about ED lacking content and people complaining that FD ripped them off with Horizons, it got me thinking. Does anybody else hate the fact that most games are now released in stages, instead of just the complete game being released when it's finished?

I don't mind that at all.

What grinds my gears instead is how games nowadays are released in tiers of exclusiveness. Collector's Edition, Special Edition, Deluxe Edition, Ultimate Collector's Edition, Preorder Edition - with exclusive ingame extras ranging from titles, cosmetics, to actual gear, vehicles, even entire levels or maps.

While the ED Deluxe Edition is just three paintjob packs bundled into the game, which I approve of, I still detest that Cobra MK IV exclusivity deal. I still think this is a mistake and should be reverted, the ship made available to anyone who owns Horizons regardless when, how or where they bought it.

 

[Beans]

I think there is a massive difference in why various games are released in stages.

FDev chose to use this method because they did not have the financial backing to work for 8 years before producing the results, even if they had sought a publisher none of them would accept those timescales... and they would have likely insisted upon more predatory monetisation such as Pay2Win, microtransactions etc. This is the decision all independent developers face, try to work with the community to realise their dream or sell out to one of the big publishers and accept they are cooking their own goose.

Many other games use periodic releases to lever more money for less work and before people can complain, trying to jump on the gravy train they see in crowd-sourcing and Early Access. Despite the fact that EA created an early access scheme to screw more money for a couple of weeks access the worst culprit is actually Square Enix, who first tried (and failed) to create their own crowd-sourcing/approval scheme to fund future development and more recently have        *d all over the Hitman franchise by making it periodical, simply to prevent the public reviewing it and because they want the money before they've even finished it. FDev did it because there was no backing, Square have done it because they'd rather screw over gamers than face legal issues from proper financiers.

TLDR
Yes, I hate the fact that it seems to have become "trendy" even for those who have the money to fund a complete game, a way to prevent informed choice and scrape even more profit, but no, I actually like being party to FDev's development.

 

[milligna]

Obviously they didn't have the funds to spend "six to eight years" working on ED off in some ivory tower, they had to see if there was an audience for it through the Kickstarter. There was and is and I love their pricing model, $45 a year to update the best damn VR experience on the planet is fine by me. Vote with your wallet.

 

[Oogie Boogie]

And in general I don't see that Frontier letting us beta testing - with the goal to fix issues and bugs during beta. It is probably more a "balance" testing, to see how the game balance changed with their new weapons or mechanics the game is bringing in. Probably only if there is a huge problem e.g. "Cutter couldn't enter the Coriolis letterbox with landing gear retracted in beta 1.5 - only with landing gear out!".

The the major part nobody was able to test was actually looking for materials related to the engineer upgrade. So I imagine that tomorrow once 2.1 goes live, the collecting of material will be too easy or too hard.

 

[deathcoy]

Hate or no hate we all have no choice but to adapt. Its unfortunate that the gaming scene evolves this way, well at least as a consumer its not good for us but again just bite the bullet and go. Look at the DLC scene, despite the poor reception to it, it is now the mainstream of game products.

 

[lysan]

People need to understand what they are buying, I'm perfectly ok with it, that is why I got the lifetime expansion card

 

[dannysquid]

ELITE is the only game I've ever thrown money at quite so haphazardly, but it's a special sentimental case, and I trusted them. I think I would have felt guilty if I hadn't backed it.

There are a couple of other games where I've considered getting involved in Kickstarters or Early Access and in both cases I'm glad I didn't. One seems to have been abandoned and I suspect the other will go on for years and years without any tangible results (and no, it's not Star Citizen!).

It won't take many failures before people start disliking the funding model.

I think you're right that the disadvantage of drip-feeding content every few months is that it's inevitably a small amount of content, so it feels like not much is happening. But to put that in perspective, there are very few games I've played as much as ELITE.

 

[Lobstris]

ELITE is the only game I've ever thrown money at quite so haphazardly, but it's a special sentimental case, and I trusted them. I think I would have felt guilty if I hadn't backed it.

Indeed. There's no way I'd put as much money as I did to any other game... (well maybe is someone actually did Falcon V...)

There are a couple of other games where I've considered getting involved in Kickstarters or Early Access and in both cases I'm glad I didn't.

<Cough> Hello DayZ! </Cough>