shareware - I mean they probably didn't make much money.
But apogee, epic, id all came fom releasing shareware initially.
but also nethack and all that stuff.
I can't really remeber how it worked, but i think you got these bundles of paper stapled pamphlets for free with hundreds of shareware packages listed with a few lines of text describing each one.
If you didn't have BBS, you sent a real mail back to a distributor and they send you disks in the post ffor a fairly small charge.
Some shareware was so good the magazines had to cover it (for example, doom)
Also i think there just werent as many big budget titles back then (on PC),
Consoles probably had most of the money.
elite 2 was massive, but still only 1 bloke i think.
I don't know if it was really worse, but magazines did cost money.
Most magazines that I used to buy had coverdisks with demo versions.
If the demo was no good it didn't matter what the review said. And they can't really get away with describing things that are proven false in the demo.
Worst thing would be a great demo but very little more in the main game.
But I wasn't going to pay a lot for a game if I'd not played the demo a lot.
Frankly that also proved it'd run ok on my usually very old HW.
As for getting lots of other peoples opinions - not as important if you have a decent demo.
or they could offer people a discount to sign up to use an 'unstable' branch, release stuff there for a couple of weeks to prove it before inflicting untested updates on the unsuspecting full price customers.
I just hope they've put in a testing procedure.
i don't understand how they can be releasing updates so frequently.
the game wont get less bugged if they're just playing whack-a-mole.
relying on user testing is okay when its in pre-release. but by now they should be testing properly before releasing updates.
yeah, i like the game and even i can see its hyped in articles and on forums.
every time someone article has the word "polished".
it has tonnes of quest bugs, these type of games always do.
the ui is remarkably good - for this type of game, on steamdeck controller; but it's not a slick ui.
there's always tradeoffs and compromises. complexity of quests leads to bugs, complexity of player choices leads to analysis paralysis/tyranny of choice and cumbersome ui.
if by better you mean, more fun, i think that's slightly up to you.
you can have just as much fun with a more constrained character who keeps losing dice rolls - it might be harder work though.