Early access doesn’t really work for me. I’ll pick it up, play at half-baked game until I run out of content, then never touch it again. I’m sure Valheim and 7 Days to Die are really good now, but my initial pass wasn’t good enough for me to ever say “Ah, let’s spend more time on another playthrough!”
Valheim hasn’t really changed much at all since it got super popular. It’s added some stuff, sure. But not a lot. And it is still horribly balanced and all over the place with what it wants to be.
Early access can be great. DayZ spent years in early access and was at the time an incredibly fun janky experience that myself and a lot of other players have fond, chaotic memories of. It’s neat to see how far it came, and the game that exists today wouldn’t be here without that process. Those memories of exploding legs and invisible zombies are worth something.
If you absolutely must have a finished game when you spend money, don’t pay for early access. Nobody’s forcing it on you. But for those who like the look of a project and want to help get it off the ground while also getting to participate in its early stages, it can be rewarding.
And yeah, there are going to be games that flop in early access, but there are also plenty of games that flop on official release. I’d take some unique and interesting jank over something polished but boring and uninspired any day.
It honestly turned out great, it just took a while. The clients and servers both run pretty smoothly these days and the modding potential is crazy. Hands down the best game for voice RP just because of how expressive the body language is.
I was happy when they had a free weekend of No Rest For The Wicked. My wife and I are always looking for good co-op games. This one wasn’t for us. It was almost fun, but not quite. Definitely glad we didn’t shell out for the early access.
It would be nice if players caught on and ditched every avenue of playing unfinished games. Redemption arcs are pathetic. Again players let these companies off the hook.
Neither of these are redemption arcs where a company was let off the hook. They’re using early access the way it’s intended. The biggest thing stopping me from playing early access games is the deluge of finished games coming out all the time.
Hmm… this is a little too extreme, I think. Some niche indies need to start making money quick to keep going. Some are solo developers, and risk burn out working on a project for years without seeing any reward.
Accountability is necessary, but a total boycott of anything early access doesn’t come without negative consequences. Moderation is key, I think.
Also, this is a fringe case, and I keep bringing this up here but I have to because it’s often overlooked: some genres can’t afford to pick because they’re so niche. We got only 2 finished proper action games last year: Ninja Gaiden 4 and Lost Soul Aside, everything else is in early access. I can’t fault the consumer for picking up Genokids or Spirit X Strike because there isn’t many new options on the market.
Early Access works when you have a clear and concise roadmap in where you want a game to go.
It becomes a grifting operation when you have a game that has no direction. 7 Days to Die comes to mind. That game spent so many years in early access, I don't think it even left alpha stages. The developers basically went "yeaaaaaahhhh it's been a while, we got their money, so we're gonna release it". I truly don't think the developers really knew what to do with that game because every update they made, they'd take away something that was a good idea, next update, re-tool it, next update, fuck with something else.
While 7 days was tumultous at best, they’ve reached a pretty good point by now.
I do agree with you though, that having a proper direction and being clear about that direction to your fanbase makes for a much better early access period.
Like The Culling which completely ruined their own game because the devs thought they should move in one direction, but their fans and players thought the plan was completely different, having bought the game with a completely different direction in mind.
In the end though, having played quite a few good early access games, releasing a game in early access by Larian is fucking cheap. They have plenty money to make a full release without the early access injection. I see no reason why a succesfull studio like them would need it. Early access is fine for smaller devs. For some it could mean the difference between a hobby project and a full time job.
Ah it’s a <make up weird quotes that don’t reflect the general feedback and then react to that> episode. I too remember people in the street shouting “you never should’ve tried something new BioWare!” after making that memory up.
In truth the biggest criticism they got was when they released it unfinished, promised a bunch of content and then let it die because they smashed the numbers into a calculator and came to the conclusion it’ll not be worth it. No fucking shit. Fixing the mess you sold people for full price won’t make you a lot of profit, it’s something you do to make up for delivering unfinished crap in the first place.
Imagine a plumber who does pipe work in your house and when you call them because they did a shoddy job and it’s leaking they say “Nah, wouldn’t be worth it to fix this. I’ll rather go do a different project for more money.”
To Bioware’s credit, Anthem was a completely different game 18 months before release and EA came in and forced an entirely new concept, story and title on them.
I would be at least curious to see what Bioware would have done with the IP without EA flipping the table on them.
Probably more floundering. An EA exec told them at one point that their demo was crap (and based on word from other devs, he was probably right), so they reintroduced flight, which IMO was one of the best aspects of the game. EA didn’t force a new story or concept on Bioware, though. All that was Bioware’s own fault between lack of leadership and staff burnout.
Honestly Anthem was so fucking good. It’s a victim of the internet hate machine.
My hobby is video games, but some people’s hobby is hating things, and those people decided that Anthem was the next thing to hate. The hate was insanely disproportionate to the actual problems that Anthem had.
The endgame grind needed some work, but that’s always the case with a live service game. Comparing it to Destiny, which had been out for five years at that point, there wasn’t a lot of content. Comparing it to video games in general, it was fine. Easily worth the cost of a new game.
Graphics-wise? Top notch, triple-A.
And as far as gameplay, the actual most important part of a game? Anthem was a fucking masterpiece. The combat was fun and varied. Classes were distinct.
And the traversal was the best I’ve ever played. Soaring through the air like Iron Man and dipping into a waterfall so my suit doesn’t overheat is one of the video game highlights of my life.
But the internet ruined it. The same outrage machine that was built to respond to things like “a sense of pride and accomplishment” was turned on Anthem, not because it was that bad, but because there wasn’t anything else particularly hate-worthy that week.
It’s got a 61 on OpenCritic, and Brad Shoemaker of NextLander said he thought long and hard about giving it 1/5 stars at the time (ultimately giving it a 2/5) because the game didn’t even really work when it launched. That wouldn’t really indicate it was just something the internet wanted to hate that week.
I don’t think we played the game because Anthem was boring. I enjoyed being Iron Man but after an hour. But after that, it was kinda same ol’ for the next few hours.
I had more fun with Suicide Squad, because the city was awesome and the story was at least passable.
I did like the first hour - no question. But I think Anthem needed to cook some more. A lot more.
I think the worst thing BioWare did was ban people for loot exploiting when all they were doing was flying around in a loop collecting chests as they spawned. The players weren’t doing anything the game didn’t allow and banning them really created vitriol in the community. When added to the lack of end game, the player base just never got any growth momentum. It was really sad, because I was a huge BW fan and that game plus the loss of the Doctors really wrecked them (thanks EA /s). You could see the potential in Anthem, but it felt like a a great game engine waiting for the game to be written for it (honestly similar to pre-Forsaken Destiny 2, but even that had more content).
I remember watching an interview of one of the developers of DA2 and I could tell that he had no idea what people liked in video games. It killed my interest.
I mean, the first one was good. It was all downhill from there, sadly. The second was decent, but suffered from a ton of re-used assets and a dumbed-down combat system. By the third, it seemed like they were trying to make a single-player MMO, which just made no damned sense to me. Never played the 4th. Maybe I’ll get it for free at some point and check it out.
I’ve watched a few videos on the game and with this claim, I think they would have needed the ten years that NMS had, but there just isn’t as much of a unique idea underneath. Unless I was missing something Anthem was just a really pretty looter shooter with a cool suit.
It’s a pretty game, I’ll give it that, but they would have had to strip and rebuild the gameplay loop pretty much from scratch to make it that much of a success story.
NMS kept listening to feedback for years before it turned around, slowly building up good faith with each free release.
But let’s say Anthem Next magically turned it around. All that good faith will be gone when EA will try to shoehorn more looter shooter microtransaction BS and fuck everything up over and over again.
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Aktywne