How is a Game

[Feniks]

Hello capitans!

I'm Feniks and I run series called Early Access Monitor in which I look at games that has been in Early Access for a while and check how developers conduct themselves and if they deliver on promises.

I have noticed a huge difference between initial reviews the game was getting and recent reviews that are more negative. I try to be as objective in my series as possible so I would like to hear your opinion as veterans of the game.

[Mirones]

most negativ reviews are from ones that are unable to read thinking that buyed (not even planned to have one in long time) premium vessels are better than normaly crafted ones, wich is absolutly not the case i.e  Boarding Bucentaure that was gifted to everyone because of servercrash wich wasnt even our fault, had less upgrade slots than an regular build one. and the yach wich is most of the time been live oak wich is rather bad for any for and aft rigged vessel. 

over the years alot of things were tryed out experimented and removed again wich also caused some up roar these reviews were not updated either.

and alot of reviews with less than 10-20hours have not even scratshed the surface of the game mechanics.

then there are alot of trolls running around and dont bother about steam forum we abandoned that one mostly for good reasons.

[Captiva]

Hello, Feniks,

The game initially started out solely as an age of sail fighting game. Since those early Sea Trials days the developers have tried to add as many player requests into the game as possible or feasible. The additions since Sea Trials includes; an Open World environment, ship crafting ability for all players, new ships added periodically, an economy of sorts, Admiralty missions, port battles, ambient sounds and more. 

Yes, players have at various times become frustrated with the developers. There is a language barrier that is partly to blame for this. You add on to this the fact that players have differing views on what should or should not be added to, or subtracted from the game, and the frustration level rises - again, directed toward the developers.

All in all the developers have done an admirable job in trying to implement most - not all - player wishes into the game. And at it's core the game is still amazing. 

[z4ys]

They posted on facebook 3.3.2017:

Hello Captains. 

This is an information post as we are getting questions in private messages and in posts to a page about the updates. For quality assurance reasons all patches and changes in 2017 are first deployed to testbed before going out to user version.

Since beginning of 2017 more than 5 updates of varied size were deployed to testbed including Admiralty store, changes to durability, changes to perks with fleets, structural damage and many other features based on your feedback. 

We are currently finishing the feature allowing you to use cargo hold of your fleet and once its done the patch will be sent out to the main servers. We just did not want to spam you with unnecessary messages before the work was actually done and deployed to main server.

You can play on the testbed server yourself. Here is the link explaining how you can join and participate 
http://forum.game-labs.net/index.php?/topic/18684-test-server-branch-opens-today/

P.S From now on we will try to post more about what is going on with coding of the game and modelling of the new vessels.

[Ned Loe]

I will try to be short here. From what I can tell, NA is about half way buried in the ground as of now. The coffin is moving down and not up. Additional test server was made to extend development times. Why now and not year ago when it was suggested? anyway.. So, if you want new content go and test, but if you don't want to test Patch will be late. (It's now players fault and not Devs). The only way to bring NA back up is to introduce addictive content, new UI and rewards. These 3 things will push the coffin up in the opposite direction, but it does not mean they will be able to move it out of the hole. If we won't see something awesome in the next month or so, unfortunately it will be the end of great population plans and as we know NA can not exist with 500 people online. 

I still keep my fingers crossed, but they start to hurt and I am afraid many won't be able to hold on for any longer. This simply means money meant for NA will go into someone else pockets and bad reviews will keep coming swiftly marking Game Labs as untrustworthy company. 

Hurry up Devs, it's about time you show us something new. 

Edited March 6, 2017 by Ned Loe

[Anne Wildcat]

NA gets negative reviews bc it is really a niche game. It is not for anyone that wants to hop on and do a quick battle. Battles take time to find, battles themselves can last thirty plus minutes. The combat mechanics are awesome but unless you have at least an hour or more each session, there is not much to do.  I love the open world and the PVP but if you do not have time and patience, this game is not for you. 

[Batman]

A game is no one.

[Feniks]

Thanks everyone for the answers I will leave this thread for a bit longer in case there is more people who want to speak out or you can contact me via pm or at writetofeniks@gmail.com if you don't want to speak publicly. 

[fox2run]

Something ain't right. Too high expectations maybe? The games biggest asset is it's potential which is worrisome after so long.

[The Spud]

I have played this game for over a year and like many here have been closely watching the development and have played almost daily.

First off, the combat mechanics are spot on perfect (only the boarding needs a rework but the devs are working on this), I couldn't imagine the battle mechanics to be any better. Its slow but not too slow, its tactical one mistake can make the difference in outcome, its just one thing we all agree on its awesome. The ship details, the smoke, crew sounds, etc... for me its spot on, and its the backbone of the game so thats definitely sorted.

Now the biggest challenge for the dev team is that they had no games to look at in terms of do's and don'ts, Survival games, FPS games, Racing games, they all have plenty of examples of what was succesfull and why, and what became a huge failure and why. So on this the devs had to realy use trial and error, as some of the ideas put forward both by the devs and the players sounded good on paper but in the end turned out to be killing the fun once implemented. Now they solved that recently by opening a testbed server, where new patches are tested and well discussed and when they are spot on they will be implemented on the main server. So people saying that there is no progress since beginning of this year are not playing the testbed server or just don't know about the testbed server.

What also caused some problems is the open development and communication used by the devs, the devs used to be out there and going into discussions with the players why a certain feature was implemented etc. and in some situations it kinda blew up in their face. Part of that I also blame on English not being their native language, dispite being realy good at writing in English, some things probably were phrased a bit more agressive then they intended it to be. In some situations information was mis interpreted and kinda started living its own life, people said there would be a shipwipe soon, or there would be premium ships, and pay 2 play stuff, which I have never seen written down as being a fact.

Because the genre is so unique, it attracts both age of sail fanatics for whom it can't be historicaly accurate enough, and then we have the people who are realy into RvR stuff and they want to keep the gameplay fast and streamlined. These are a bit the two extremes you can find in this game and one new feature favours the one side, another new feature favours the other side and it often causes a bit of frustration.

To conclude its a great game with a ton of potential, and the devs will get the game where they want it to be. The playerbase is slowly rising again and with the stuff i have seen in the testbed I'm sure it will continue in the same direction.

EDIT: If you like I (or we) can go in debth as to what the current "workpoints" should be from a player perspective, but it would probably require you to have played the game to explain it in a way that is more or less understandable for you.

 

 

Edited March 7, 2017 by The Spud

[Feniks]

Okay thanks for your input I think that from this post, steam review, Reddit and checking the rest of the forums I have a good picture. It will take few days until I collect everything, write it into script and make a video. I would be happy to share it with you when it's done. 

[Hethwill]

17 minutes ago, Feniks said:

Okay thanks for your input I think that from this post, steam review, Reddit and checking the rest of the forums I have a good picture. It will take few days until I collect everything, write it into script and make a video. I would be happy to share it with you when it's done. 

Feniks, can you link Early Access Monitor main content page ? Articles ? Thank you.

[Feniks]

I am YouTuber. You can find me on https://www.youtube.com/c/Feniks_Gaming and actual series is at  http://bit.ly/Early_Access_Monitor  so far I have covered Project Zomboid and Medieval Engineers in it. 

[Pad Seayew]

For all it's flaws, the game is a minor miracle, only ten developers.  

We need to remember that. 

[admin]

On 13.03.2017 at 0:26 PM, rediii said:

A game has no solid patch intervalls anymore

5 patches deployed on testbed since dec.. what are you talking about? One more coming soon

we said long ago.. no updates to live .. only test bed is updated until its ready and works properly. 

 

[Cmdr RideZ]

Just now, admin said:

5 patches deployed on testbed since dec.. what are you talking about? One more coming soon

we said long ago.. no updates to live .. only test bed is updated until its ready and works properly. 

 

I have to admit that I missed this one as well.  Good that you clarified.  Makes sense now.

Not sure tho if you should just update the live instead.

[Koltes]

On 3/7/2017 at 5:32 AM, Ned Loe said:

I will try to be short here. From what I can tell, NA is about half way buried in the ground as of now. The coffin is moving down and not up. Additional test server was made to extend development times. Why now and not year ago when it was suggested? anyway.. So, if you want new content go and test, but if you don't want to test Patch will be late. (It's now players fault and not Devs). The only way to bring NA back up is to introduce addictive content, new UI and rewards. These 3 things will push the coffin up in the opposite direction, but it does not mean they will be able to move it out of the hole. If we won't see something awesome in the next month or so, unfortunately it will be the end of great population plans and as we know NA can not exist with 500 people online. 

I still keep my fingers crossed, but they start to hurt and I am afraid many won't be able to hold on for any longer. This simply means money meant for NA will go into someone else pockets and bad reviews will keep coming swiftly marking Game Labs as untrustworthy company. 

Hurry up Devs, it's about time you show us something new. 

I will try to be short here.

I think you are tired and need to take a break mate

 

[Neptune]

I Think the problem is the test servers gets all of the patches and yet no one is on it to test the new content properly. After all is this not early access? We are suppose to be testing the new content and we cannot do that properly on the test server with a maximum of 10 people on at a time. 

[The Spud]

As things are going on PvP1 atm, I might be going for the Testbed server for some time. Dispite it being almost a PvE server with that amount of players, but there's no point in doing anything on PvP1 atm, people are waiting out the patch.

[Sir Texas Sir]

18 hours ago, admin said:

5 patches deployed on testbed since dec.. what are you talking about? One more coming soon

we said long ago.. no updates to live .. only test bed is updated until its ready and works properly. 

 

And when are you going to push it to live?  It's been over a month since the last patch that you put on testbed.  Some of those things can prob go to live, but yet we are goign to wait another month for you to do another patch on testbed and than give us a BIG PATCH....maybe when you say you will.  Instead of making a big patch once every 4-6 months it's been said over and over you need to do small patches every other month or something.

12 hours ago, Neptune said:

I Think the problem is the test servers gets all of the patches and yet no one is on it to test the new content properly. After all is this not early access? We are suppose to be testing the new content and we cannot do that properly on the test server with a maximum of 10 people on at a time. 

Yah I don't see why the ship structure, Pirate vs Pirate and even the admiralty store can't get moved to live.   Some change is better than NO CHANGE.  Hell this ship crafting stoff was announced last year and was suppose to come Dec/Jan but they put it off....put it off so that means it's a concept they had for well over 4-5 months now.

4 hours ago, The Spud said:

As things are going on PvP1 atm, I might be going for the Testbed server for some time. Dispite it being almost a PvE server with that amount of players, but there's no point in doing anything on PvP1 atm, people are waiting out the patch.

To be honest I actually been feeling this way too, I just hate using there ships though and wish they gave us some crafting levels and mats to build ships we want to run and not the ones they give us or we capture.

[Smithy]

I always thought the test bed was a strange set up, how will the changes implemented be fully tested if they don't get "used and abused" in mass by a lot of people. which I expect is not the case for the non existent test bed population. Given the current state the game is still at Alpha these changes should be getting implemented to the main servers and if there is issues with them its no big deal to hotfix as has been the case up to this.

The only place I see a testbed useful is for testing of changes or large patches prior to implementation when the game is officially release. Its unnecessary currently IMHO

Edited March 30, 2017 by Smithy

[The Spud]

9 minutes ago, Smithy said:

I always thought the test bed was a strange set up, how will the changes implemented be fully tested if they don't get "used and abused" in mass by a lot of people. which I expect is not the case for the non existent test bed population. Given the current state the game is still at Alpha these changes should be getting implemented to the main servers and if there is issues with them its no big deal to hotfix as has been the case up to this.

The only place I see a testbed useful is for testing of changes or large patches prior to implementation when the game is officially release. Its unnecessary currently IMHO

I think its a good thing, its there to take the rough edges off, if for instance they would want us to test crafting etc. they could test it way faster in the tesbed server, they could just give us all level 50 crafting, some materials and some blueprints. Some goes for trading etc.

Like you say the main server should be the testbed, but since theres such a big community playing this game nearly every day its a bit tricky to put out wonky patches. We have seen the whole fine woods thing go down, it took out half the players probably. With a testbed test it could have been avoided maybe.

I'm going to be logging some testbed hours the comming days, if we all go to play the testbed server we can make sure that next patch is exactly like we need it.

[Mrdoomed]

I won'tgive my OP of the game in its current state and you ask how the dev team is and responds and reacts anyways.

Regardless of my OP of the game now i will say this Dev team (admin especially ) is really good at reading and reacting to the testers wheather good or bad, and seem like they really have thier hearts in the right place.

Most games ive tested thier is little direct communication between player and devs and little to know give and take on imput. Maybe ive been unlucky with games ive tried but these guys seem very open and tolerant to most opinions.