Please DO HAVE EARLY ACCESS for X4 paying Customers

[Sandalpocalypse]

x2 had a garbage release. x3 had a garbage release. XR had a garbage release. It would be surprising if x4 did better.

I guess early access would at least calm things down a little.

I do think they should do boutique pricing, higher cost for EA/Beta access.

[StoneLegionYT]

But instead of just out right releasing it they could EA the title now.

Now?
We have no insight how much is done yet. And remember the few insight we got were just footages. So it is likely the shown gameplay is not stable or not connected with other gameplay features.

I agree they should go in early access. But it is important having a "game" first.

Edit: My fault.
By "now" you mean now after the experience with X-Rebirths release.

My Insight is like 15 Years of X Games? Egosoft are amazing Developers. But they tend to release games in a Early and buggy state. By going from my years of insight and tend on this including Rebirth I would say that a game released as Early Access would be a bit better Image wise. I'm not asking them to release the game next week or early. I just think when they think it's ready to release the game then they call it Early Access If they do go down that Path they could consider to release it even earlier but my point is when the game is ready in their image like the past then call it EA

[LittleBird]

@Kane Hart
I think you focus to much on a bug free release.

Early access can do more.
X-Rebirths minigames would have never survived an early access programm. We would have never seen infopoint scanning on stations in this extent.
And that is the reason why I think an EA is very important for X4. To give feedback on game features that are still in developement.
Also with EA they put there cards on the table. That is honest and should bring back trust.

[Karvat]

Thanks to what we saw in the streams, we don't need an early access to believe it will be a magnificent game, it will surely be

[LittleBird]

Thanks to what we saw in the streams, we don't need an early access to believe it will be a magnificent game, it will surely be

Like X-Rebirth?
Yea I know. Open wounds.
But by ignoring what went wrong with X-Rebirth we will just repeat it. X-Rebirths game presentations looked stunning... yes they did.
Now we have game footage that looks stunning... yes it does.

[StoneLegionYT]

@Kane Hart
I think you focus to much on a bug free release.

Early access can do more.
X-Rebirths minigames would have never survived an early access programm. We would have never seen infopoint scanning on stations in this extent.
And that is the reason why I think an EA is very important for X4. To give feedback on game features that are still in developement.
Also with EA they put there cards on the table. That is honest and should bring back trust.

Are you newer to other X releases outside of Rebirth? It's not about being bug free it's about actually lacking a lot of features and more features added overtime. This is why I advocate for EA release rather then release because their releases have really only been EA style.

Just imagine if Rebirth was released as a EA game instead of a Release game. It might of let them offer bigger changes to Rebirth due to the fact it being EA but I doubt much would of change at least it would of not been massive downvoted or at least can claim was due to being early access a alpha/beta.

[Karvat]

Thanks to what we saw in the streams, we don't need an early access to believe it will be a magnificent game, it will surely be

Like X-Rebirth?
Yea I know. Open wounds.
But by ignoring what went wrong with X-Rebirth we will just repeat it. X-Rebirths game presentations looked stunning... yes they did.
Now we have game footage that looks stunning... yes it does.

In XR I really appreciated the huge step forward from the graphical point of view
I found the map too small
The ship management system did not work
And the possibility of piloting a ship only very restrictive
But even before it came out I knew very well that it would not be a real x4, I've always seen it as a sort of transaction from x3 to x4

[adeine]

I don't think lack of testing was the problem with X:R. The scope and direction of the game as well as a rushed release were really the issue.

X4 has been widely marketed by Egosoft as having listened and getting it right this time, delivering a 'true' successor. Another bad launch would be disastrous for the franchise.

Early access does not solve any of the issues that plagued X:R, if anything it exacerbates them. Having to finish developing and fixing the game while end users are actively playing it (and yes, early access customers are end users) is restrictive and inefficient. Do you casually nuke all players' data because you made a change to the universe simulation or save format? How do you even begin to keep track of what issues started where when it comes to reports of corrupted games? How easy is it to tweak, add or change core mechanics when you have to maintain a 'working' version that can continue to be played? etc.

Players will invariably get frustrated with this and (since it's open to the public) vent on the internet, and you'll find footage of a broken mess on your favourite streaming sites. 'Reviews' or discussion will be a complete chaos with contradictory and obsolete info everywhere. It's a terrible first impression for people looking up X4 or thinking about picking up an X game again after X:R. By the time you 'release' the game, let's for the sake of the argument say in a fun and enjoyable state without any major issues, it will already have been panned as a failure and even people who were willing to forgive its shortcomings will be thoroughly burnt out by it.

You can solve many problem with a high access price. That guarantees you get people who care about the game. People who are willing to "test" it and have an interest in improvements.

It would certainly 'solve' the problem of public opinion, but not in a good way.

[LittleBird]

Are you newer to other X releases outside of Rebirth?

Started with patched X2 and bought X3 Reunion blind at release day.

It's not about being bug free it's about actually lacking a lot of features and more features added overtime.

I only can work with what you write:
"My Insight is like 15 Years of X Games? Egosoft are amazing Developers. But they tend to release games in a Early and buggy state."
So I thought you focus on bugs.

Just imagine if Rebirth was released as a EA game instead of a Release game. It might of let them offer bigger changes to Rebirth due to the fact it being EA but I doubt much would of change at least it would of not been massive downvoted or at least can claim was due to being early access a alpha/beta.

I think so too.
But I would like to see the early access phase before the early access "release" you described.
What bothered me about X-Rebirths release were not the bugs. For comparison X3 Reunion was broken at release and crashed after 3 gates. But after fixing most crucial bugs it worked. Not just in a technically way but also its core features.
Now imagine X-Rebirth was released without any bugs. But with tedious mingames, with useless air wents, annoying station running etc. etc. Thinks that were bad by design from the start on. And finally thinks that would have never survived an early access phase.

Combining both our points how early access could work out we would have a long EA phase. One part that covers core features early and one part that covers bugs and new features.

You can solve many problem with a high access price. That guarantees you get people who care about the game. People who are willing to "test" it and have an interest in improvements.

It would certainly 'solve' the problem of public opinion, but not in a good way.

That idea is not new. Games like Elite: Dangerous and Kingdome Come Deliverance used a high access price.
Sure you have the risk that people say you are just greedy. I think that is what you mean.

Early access does not solve any of the issues that plagued X:R, if anything it exacerbates them. Having to finish developing and fixing the game while end users are actively playing it (and yes, early access customers are end users) is restrictive and inefficient. Do you casually nuke all players' data because you made a change to the universe simulation or save format? How do you even begin to keep track of what issues started where when it comes to reports of corrupted games? How easy is it to tweak, add or change core mechanics when you have to maintain a 'working' version that can continue to be played? etc.

By running two version. The stable one and the dev one.
The stable one remains untouched until a new stable is ready.
The dev one is used to experiment with changes and new features.

We are not talking about a new developement method. Solutions for the problems you described exist allready.
For example a big watermark for both versions to reduce the impact of unjustified slams.
Roll backs if a new stable shows unexpected errors.

[Vandragorax]

@ adeine and TonyEvans: That's pretty much the private beta strategy Egosoft used for X Rebirth but you cannot in all fairness not consider trying out other keen newer volunteers within the testing team too.

It is hard to believe that X-Rebirth ever had beta tester.

@adeine
You can solve many problem with a high access price. That guarantees you get people who care about the game. People who are willing to "test" it and have an interest in improvements.

Price doesn't make a difference if it's Early Access on Steam. All that will happen is people will still buy it, play it for 1.5 hrs, think "this is full of bugs and crashes all the time" then refund and place a negative review like "Game sucks" and drag down all the review averages because they don't understand that Early Access doesn't always mean a functioning complete game.

Too many people DO expect a functioning complete game under the Early Access flag for it to be worthwhile anymore these days, if you ask me.

[Alan Phipps]

One of the other real problems with a purely public beta or Early Access approach is that third parties usually quickly develop and publicise scripts, mods, cheats or exploits that change the nature of the gameplay or game environment.

Many of the public 'testers' then use these, but that makes their feedback and bug reporting pretty useless. It also wastes the devs' precious time if they end up going down investigation rabbit holes because of 3rd party changes they were unaware of in terms of their presence and/or effects.

An approach somehow combining the best of public and controlled private testing is probably optimum.

[Vandragorax]

Agreed Alan, this is what Subnautica did as they had a QA lead, employed by Unknown Worlds itself, bringing together the public beta testers on a weekly basis, focusing their testing efforts around specific areas of code that had been touched by the devs that week, and filtering their feedback into something more useful for their defect ticketing system (Trello).

It's a lot of extra work that I'm not sure Egosoft has resources for, but definitely helped them with the 'stable' and 'invite-only experimental' branch method of early access. A fully open public beta with forum feedback usually devolves extremely quickly into a form that is useless to the devs, so ultimately doesn't help anyone!

[adeine]

That idea is not new. Games like Elite: Dangerous and Kingdome Come Deliverance used a high access price.
Sure you have the risk that people say you are just greedy. I think that is what you mean.

Yes, charging people an exaggerated cost to do your testing work for you is not the kind of charm offensive Egosoft needs to see X4 succeed.

Even if you made it very clear the game will not launch at this price it'd be called out as a scam.

By running two version. The stable one and the dev one.
The stable one remains untouched until a new stable is ready.
The dev one is used to experiment with changes and new features.

We are not talking about a new developement method. Solutions for the problems you described exist allready.
For example a big watermark for both versions to reduce the impact of unjustified slams.
Roll backs if a new stable shows unexpected errors.

Solutions which have left many a game in perpetual early access limbo, or 'launch' years down the line when no-one was playing the game anymore because they got burnt out on it in its broken alpha stages, and reviews to this extent are all the information that's out there.

Maintaining and patching multiple versions is exactly the kind of overhead I was talking about. If you think about the ideal outcome of what you're suggesting you have a stripped-down 'release ready' version (the stable) and what is in essence a closed beta with the dev version.

Compared to just waiting until the game is ready, the only thing this kind of early access achieves is get a worse game to more people, sooner. All the while taking significant time and work hours away from finishing and improving the game.

I understand your point about how unwanted gameplay elements could possibly be removed or refactored through mass outrage in early access (walking sections, etc.) but consider that Egosoft did in fact receive critical feedback on X:R's shortcomings when they sent it out to testers. And I'd bet it was more coordinated, useful and productive than an angry mob of early access players with a million different opinions on what should or should not be removed or kept in the game could ever hope to be, with outrage over any change regardless of which way the decision goes.

[Ketraar]

I understand your point about how unwanted gameplay elements could possibly be removed or refactored through mass outrage in early access (walking sections, etc.)

I'm rather sceptic to how much "power" players have in EA games to warrant significant impact in structural design choices. Granted I have not gone the EA route for many games myself and only follow the development of a few more, but in no case did I find any indication that devs made changes to their core game design. What I see is what usually happens through patches and updates in X games, balancing and polishing existing features and adding "quality of life" ones, while expanding on "levels" and assets.

If there are examples of games that indeed had these major changes, I'll gladly read up on them.

MFG

Ketraar

[LittleBird]

Yes, charging people an exaggerated cost to do your testing work for you is not the kind of charm offensive Egosoft needs to see X4 succeed.

Even if you made it very clear the game will not launch at this price it'd be called out as a scam.

What makes you so sure? Both examples did well with high access prices.

What bothers me a little is Vandragorax objection with the refund on Steam. High price? Nobody cares. Play, hate, review, refund and moving on. And there is everytime the risk for review bombing. I think X is to much niche to undergo such a fate but still.... bothersome.

We are not talking about a new developement method. Solutions for the problems you described exist allready.

Solutions which have left many a game in perpetual early access limbo, or 'launch' years down the line when no-one was playing the game anymore because they got burnt out on it in its broken alpha stages, and reviews to this extent are all the information that's out there.

Possible but not certain.
You can not argue with worst case szenarios only.
Some EA games were bad in the first place, some were scams, some devs were unlucky. Yes EA can fail but it also can succeed. I hardly can count that as an argument.

Maintaining and patching multiple versions is exactly the kind of overhead I was talking about. If you think about the ideal outcome of what you're suggesting you have a stripped-down 'release ready' version (the stable) and what is in essence a closed beta with the dev version.

Compared to just waiting until the game is ready, the only thing this kind of early access achieves is get a worse game to more people, sooner.

That is just a logical consequence. Game in developement is worse compared to the same game in a future point. If you are waiting you just "skip" the worse game.
What is different that EA allows testing it and:

I understand your point about how unwanted gameplay elements could possibly be removed or refactored through mass outrage in early access (walking sections, etc.) but consider that Egosoft did in fact receive critical feedback on X:R's shortcomings when they sent it out to testers.

That is the point!
Something went terrible wrong because we got X-Rebirth with unwanted gameplay elements. Be it because the testers had no chance to evaluate them or the devs ignored it due lack of time or what ever the reason may was.
With EA this can not have happened.

All the while taking significant time and work hours away from finishing and improving the game.

I can not see that in such an extend.
The stable builds are just well stable. You collect feedback and that is it.
While the dev build is where the devs are sinking "significant time and work hours" in it. The same what they currently do.
Besides. Having multiple builds is standard for every software developement.
What increases the workload is the communication with the testers and the analyzing of there feedback. But that are just the basics of an early access concept. If Egosoft can not handle this we can stop the discussion immediately.

And I'd bet it was more coordinated, useful and productive than an angry mob of early access players with a million different opinions on what should or should not be removed or kept in the game could ever hope to be, with outrage over any change regardless of which way the decision goes.

Therefore comes the high access price for testers who care.
With high access price we get few players willing to test and improve the game. Not a mob nobody can handle.

One of the other real problems with a purely public beta or Early Access approach is that third parties usually quickly develop and publicise scripts, mods, cheats or exploits that change the nature of the gameplay or game environment.

The devs can prevent this. Modified data => no game start and no support.


@Ketraar
Ad-hoc: The devs of Subnautica removed a terraformer tool that had a major impact in gameplay (that is why it was removed^^)

[Ketraar]

@Ketraar
Ad-hoc: The devs of Subnautica removed a terraformer tool that had a major impact in gameplay (that is why it was removed^^)

Can you elaborate for someone that did not follow subnautica or has no clue what a terraformer tool in that game is? Also what parts of that games core design were changed for it or due to its removal?

Without context it means little towards my point of rebalancing being a normal thing games do well after their release and how that would be different and/or better in EA instead.

MFG

Ketraar

[sd_jasper]

A quick google search turned up this:

https://forums.unknownworlds.com/discus ... er-digging

Where it looks like this feature was removed for performance reasons. And other results are mostly fans NOT wanting it removed.

The argument over if EA is responsible for the discovery of the performance issues is probably not one that can be proved one way or the other. But in any case, I would not mark this down as fans demanding a bad feature be removed.

Also, developers have to take the sort of feedback from EA/Beta with a grain of salt. No matter what form of customer feedback you take, the folks that tend to gravitate toward such systems do not always reflect the majority opinion of the game's fans.

[adeine]

What makes you so sure? Both examples did well with high access prices.

Both Elite: Dangerous and Kingdom Come Deliverance have mixed reviews on Steam, and from what I see the most common complaints are development hell, a rushed release, bugs, and lack of polish/gameplay depth.

You can not argue with worst case szenarios only.
Some EA games were bad in the first place, some were scams, some devs were unlucky. Yes EA can fail but it also can succeed. I hardly can count that as an argument.

There's a case to be made for early access in the final days of testing, well beyond the phase you're suggesting where core features are still being decided on and developed. The true early access success stories I've seen launched in a state that was basically a full featured, well working release that could be added to during this period.

Say for instance X4 was done, and only the plot missions were missing.

That is just a logical consequence. Game in developement is worse compared to the same game in a future point. If you are waiting you just "skip" the worse game.

Precisely. What the X series really needs at this point if it wants to move past X:R is a game that comes out and wows old and new players alike.

What is different that EA allows testing it and:

I understand your point about how unwanted gameplay elements could possibly be removed or refactored through mass outrage in early access (walking sections, etc.) but consider that Egosoft did in fact receive critical feedback on X:R's shortcomings when they sent it out to testers.

That is the point!
Something went terrible wrong because we got X-Rebirth with unwanted gameplay elements. Be it because the testers had no chance to evaluate them or the devs ignored it due lack of time or what ever the reason may was.
With EA this can not have happened.

How would early access have changed things, if the feedback was received with X:R? Like Ketraar said, there is only so much a developer is able and willing to do if the problems are fundamentally with the scope and vision of the game, as well the roadmap to release. I doubt if X:R had been in early access, Egosoft would have scrapped their ideas for the game and started over (or if they had, it would have been early access development hell).

I can not see that in such an extend.
The stable builds are just well stable. You collect feedback and that is it.
While the dev build is where the devs are sinking "significant time and work hours" in it. The same what they currently do.
Besides. Having multiple builds is standard for every software developement.
What increases the workload is the communication with the testers and the analyzing of there feedback. But that are just the basics of an early access concept. If Egosoft can not handle this we can stop the discussion immediately.

In a lot of cases it's a necessity to some degree, but there is a reason major companies are pushing people towards consolidated platforms. Maintaining legacy code and prior versions is a major pain; Egosoft is not a AAA studio with virtually unlimited resources. They might well be able to 'handle' it, but make no mistake: it would be at the cost of development time.

And of course it's not as simple as just having a stable version lying around that you're in the process of adding to - the game is not out yet. You'd have to polish up a version for early access 'release' and then continue developing the project.

And I'd bet it was more coordinated, useful and productive than an angry mob of early access players with a million different opinions on what should or should not be removed or kept in the game could ever hope to be, with outrage over any change regardless of which way the decision goes.

Therefore comes the high access price for testers who care.
With high access price we get few players willing to test and improve the game. Not a mob nobody can handle.

Having money to waste =/= a person who is qualified to or should be testing code and gameplay mechanics

The only advantage to early access is sheer numbers, for better or worse. Even by what you said, how would early access push for changes any more strongly than a closed beta if the numbers were small?

[spankahontis]

It is hard to believe that X-Rebirth ever had beta tester.

@adeine
You can solve many problem with a high access price. That guarantees you get people who care about the game. People who are willing to "test" it and have an interest in improvements.

+1

Because of the beta testers of X-rebirth is that I think X4 needs to be released in early access. X-rebirth beta testers must have played another game.

Beta Testers like myself didn't get to test the game until it's release, And yeah many of us tested the game painstakingly for over a year as far as 4.30. We persevered despite it's faults, X:Rebirth is a fun game to play, I personally stuck with it allot longer than X3 in game time.

You can not argue with worst case szenarios only.
Some EA games were bad in the first place, some were scams, some devs were unlucky. Yes EA can fail but it also can succeed. I hardly can count that as an argument.

We don't want EA anywhere near Egosoft, they have a long LONG list of Game companies that they've asset stripped, many promising franchises that they Loot Boxed, Pay to Winned to buggery.
Egosoft become one with EA and Egosoft will be gone in 10 years, just another carcass EA devoured, it's staff broken up and passed along to other companies and it's name and assets sold off.

[sd_jasper]

We don't want EA anywhere near Egosoft, they have a long LONG list of Game companies that they've asset stripped, many promising franchises that they Loot Boxed, Pay to Winned to buggery.
Egosoft become one with EA and Egosoft will be gone in 10 years, just another carcass EA devoured, it's staff broken up and passed along to other companies and it's name and assets sold off.

Um, in this discussion EA = Early Access, not Electronic Arts.