This game is in beta, even though it isn't listed as beta
- Thread starter Nementh
- Start date
People should be able to express their disappointment in something they paid money for, when it doesn't work. Nementh is under no obligation to provide feedback or provide QA to Frontier.
Except that hes in the feedback forum, so he should be giving constructive feedback, not, "gaem bad fdev lol also fdev is dumb and i dont like themPeople should be able to express their disappointment in something they paid money for, when it doesn't work. Nementh is under no obligation to provide feedback or provide QA to Frontier.
". Reviews should go on the steam review page.Except that hes in the feedback forum, so he should be giving constructive feedback, not, "gaem bad fdev lol also fdev is dumb and i dont like them
I'd say it's easy to infer the feedback, summed up, reads as: Start testing your patches before you release them.
I can't help but feel a bit bad for Frontier. It's abundantly clear to me at this point that the PZ team was hit by crunch to reach some kind of superfluous deadline. Maybe they wanted to/needed to get the game out ahead of the usual Christmastime releases?
And now that they've had to rush the game to market they're rushing patches to fix what's broken and unfinished, but don't have the time to test those patches and they end up causing even more problems. Awful situation all around for the team, but consumers/players are right to be angry and upset with the state of the game regardless.
And now that they've had to rush the game to market they're rushing patches to fix what's broken and unfinished, but don't have the time to test those patches and they end up causing even more problems. Awful situation all around for the team, but consumers/players are right to be angry and upset with the state of the game regardless.
I agree.
Releasing patches and having them wreck zoos is so bad that it should have been an immediate hotfix. Instead, they allowed it to cause havoc for a week.
The last week was basically spent fixing what they did the week before. There are so many bugs in this game right now that it feels very much like a beta game.
The most easy thing is to give constructive feedback. Of course you can say "but this reads as this", but that's not the point. Even if I'm ed, it's my intention to give the best feedback as possible, so the devs can work with that. "Game's , test your " is not the feedback that helps at all. Just my 2 cents.
All IT projects have deadlines. All IT projects have limited resources. All IT projects have bugs. Beta is just an internal software schedule label not an international standard backed up by law. Sure be disappointed or frustrated by some niche game mechanic but do you want innovation and concepts pushed to their limit? If so then wait for issues to be ironed out rather than throwing around meaningless slogans like beta.
IMHO, I think they should have at least pushed the release back a few more months. Maybe release in January, gives them a few extra months to tackle the problems. I had this weird thought at the beginning of release when everything wasn't going too well that they would lock the game where no one could play it so they could work on it a bit more and everyone would have accepted that. ROFL. Totally random thought. 
When the game released fully and after a few hours of playing, It honestly felt like I was still playing the beta. The only difference was we had more stuff in it. It has improved a bit but update 1.0.3 has reaaalllyy messed it up. Over 400 fixes and updates created a bunch of bugs. My game crashed 4 times withing 20 minutes and all I was doing was making a giant hole....One of them crashed my freakin computer.
They still haven't fully fixed the texture bug for scenery and some objects. The animals were what people mostly cared about when it came to the texture bug and we're all definitely glad they look normal now and not ugly blurs...But the scenery, i.e plants, are choppy looking... Sigh
When the game released fully and after a few hours of playing, It honestly felt like I was still playing the beta. The only difference was we had more stuff in it. It has improved a bit but update 1.0.3 has reaaalllyy messed it up. Over 400 fixes and updates created a bunch of bugs. My game crashed 4 times withing 20 minutes and all I was doing was making a giant hole....One of them crashed my freakin computer.
They still haven't fully fixed the texture bug for scenery and some objects. The animals were what people mostly cared about when it came to the texture bug and we're all definitely glad they look normal now and not ugly blurs...But the scenery, i.e plants, are choppy looking... Sigh
IMHO, I think they should have at least pushed the release back a few more months. Maybe release in January, gives them a few extra months to tackle the problems. I had this weird thought at the beginning of release when everything wasn't going too well that they would lock the game where no one could play it so they could work on it a bit more and everyone would have accepted that. ROFL. Totally random thought.
I'm not sure people would've accepted a different release date. Doesn't happen that much anymore except for the triple-AAA games like GTA or RDR2.. And they push back dates a lot if needed.
Sadly, nowadays releasing broken/ bugged games happens too much..
Pushing it back to January wouldve been the best option imo....
It makes me think of what happened recently-ish with Metroid Prime 4. Nintendo announced it too early and the project was later scrapped and started again with a new dev team. Nintendo immediately published a video on YouTube explaining the situation in a very straight forward way and then apologised. A free lesson in PR and how to handle games that are not finished baking yet, for the whole industry.
I wish more companies were able to follow Nintendo's example.
I wish more companies were able to follow Nintendo's example.
Just looking at their own bug tracker easily suggests that this game needs a lot of work.
I take from your signature that you are an experienced Planet Coaster player. What has been your experience regarding that one?
I didn't get Planet Coaster until about....a year after it was released. Maybe two. But I haven't experienced any bugs or they were just so mild I never noticed them. Besides the damn lag after having my park get to a certain size....
I heard that PlanCo was in the same state as PZ in the beginning?
If only they did that for Pokemon Sword & Shield. It's not a bad game in my opinion but I understand where the haters were coming from. It's good but considering how well Zelda came out they honestly could have done better and spent a few more years on it. People would have gladly waited.
Not to get off topic. LOL.
You're right I could have given more "contructive" feedback, I was upset that a game I have 142 hours of play time on was made unplayable. I'm still very upset. I've personally submitted, contributed or voted on 27 issues in the tracker, and am sharing vote links in the discord channel \ encouraging people to leave accurate reviews on steam.
Feedback for the developers:
I really enjoyed playing your game, I enjoyed the discord community, and working towards goals in and out of game. Your 1.0.3 and 1.0.4 patches however have made the game unplayable. Please rollback to 1.0.2. We don't care if you fix 10, 100 or 400 bugs in a patch, we care about being able to play the game you built.
If you're going to change a mechanic, that's 100% fine if it makes sense, but tell us how to update our zoos that have 60+ hours of work in them so we can keep them and not start from scratch.
Please know that any communication when loads of problems are being reported is better than no communication at all. Also timing matters for much of your player base is in the US, you really shot yourself in the foot by releasing a game breaking patch on what was a long holiday for most players, continue to do so without monitoring for issues by your players, if you cannot test internally and you'll end up with a really expensive box of code that flamed out before you were able to move it out of "beta" status.
What's the mechanic that has been changed that makes the game unplayable for you if I may ask?
@Luuknoord
The continued loss of revenue. I was making 60-100k a year, with 1.0.3 I was loosing 100-400k a year. with 1.0.4 I'm loosing 30-50k a year. Food costs are still broken afaik. https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/10791
I'm fine with rebuilding parts of my zoo, I have 16 species and 190 animals, 6k-7.5k guests, with average satisfaction of 85%. I'm not sure what else changed with the patches to cause a continued loss.
I raised my ticket prices from 45 to 85 for adults and children, which should be generating enough by itself to cover spikes and other costs, but it's not.
The continued loss of revenue. I was making 60-100k a year, with 1.0.3 I was loosing 100-400k a year. with 1.0.4 I'm loosing 30-50k a year. Food costs are still broken afaik. https://issues.frontierstore.net/issue-detail/10791
I'm fine with rebuilding parts of my zoo, I have 16 species and 190 animals, 6k-7.5k guests, with average satisfaction of 85%. I'm not sure what else changed with the patches to cause a continued loss.
I raised my ticket prices from 45 to 85 for adults and children, which should be generating enough by itself to cover spikes and other costs, but it's not.