The Steam Store page has now hit “Mixed” for reviews. I just thought I’d let everyone know, because it’s really bothering me.
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Im impressed its that high TBH. We live in a time where gamers feel entitled to everything, they are entitled to game for free or for a low price, so when they buy the game they feel entitled to a full game and when they realize it is early access (Surprise!) they get upset with stuff like ‘‘hurr durr not alot to do’’ ‘‘Hurr durr there are bugs’’
over time it should even out, more features will allow people to change their opinion, to be entirely honest i recommend the game for everybody as a way to support the developers and for what the game is planning otu to be, but i wouldnt recommend the game just for the game in this state, not even on my worst enemy (sorry devs!)
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Hopefully we can nudge that back up with the next release 
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hmm, I just read a story about a game studio that changed the name of their game after they patched it so that it would have a new entry on Metacritic (and therefore leave behind the mass of negative reviews that were on their pre-patched/broken game) I don’t know if steam works the same way but it could be a argument for changing the name 
I already posted my good review. But strange thing I saw: good reviews with bad description and bad reviews with good description.
To be fair, Steam doesn’t make it very clear that you are buying the potential of a game (e.g. early access), rather than paying for a game outright.
Most people (rightly) assume that they’re paying for a mostly complete experience - 'cause that’s how it works for all the regular games they’ve bought (e.g. most of the games they’ve gotten via Steam)
I wish Steam went with a Patreon style model for early access games, honestly (but that’d be a huge can of worms for them)
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Except this
and this
and this
sorry but that is just not an argument, steam makes it extremely clear that you are buying an early access game also with the new refund system, you can buy and try it, if you dont like it you can refund it, but a bummer is that they can review it BEFORE they refund it. the main complaints are valid just saying ‘‘not a lot to do atm, cant recommend game in current stage’’ that is fair, what bothers me are those saying ‘‘Omg there isnt anything to do i feel lied to’’
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I’m not trying to excuse these reviews, just trying to rationalize why we’re seeing them.
A rule of thumb with people in general: If it’s more than a sentence long, a large number of people won’t read it.
And in this case, because a lot of people are not really paying attention to those notices, they’re buying the game with the wrong expectations. When it doesn’t meet those, they complain about it.
We’re irrational creatures ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Those people are morons and there is no excusing it, at all, ever.
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There’s a real question of how you deal with that psychology, though:
- Dramatically lower the price during early access?
- This better matches the expectations of the player community
- More players are likely to pick the game up
- Fewer players will be as invested in the game (they paid less; it’s easier to move on to another game)
- It’ll probably result in less money raised
- Defer early access (doubt Steam allows this) until the game is more rounded out
- Prevents reviews until expectations are better met
- Probably less critical due to the upcoming update
- ???
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If you want a successful product, you’ve gotta deal with it
I would suggest that with the new update, also comes a 15% discount to push more people into the game. I feel it’s time.
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This is quite simple, you are correct but i dont think that is the reaction they are going for, let me make an analogy
Imagine you can get a car which is getting built, there are some of them which is so cheap that you buy it just because why not, and as you said, people wont care about it then and then there is a car which is more expensive than the rest, this will mean that only people who are truly interested will buy it, they will look around and come with suggestions to how the car is made and they wont discard it so easily.
that is the situation, lower price ? less caring and more sales, yeah obviously, but that is not always what early access devs wants i reckon.
Another thing is that the high price tends to keep out trolls which is nice, lower the price and you will see griefers appearing in floods, what do you think is the most important if you had to pick, the quantity of the players? or the quality of the players?
If they just wanted more sales without caring about anything else then sure they could put it down to 5 dollars, except it doesnt, more sales doesnt = more money and more people doesnt = better community.
it is a hard line though.
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Thats the logic of americans cause of all the suing which is why they need labels for everything, such as ‘‘dont iron your shirt with it on’’ because if you dont, then they will sue you. there is NO possible way, at all, that steam or anybody else could make it so morons not appear, no way. it says early access so much and again if they dont like the product then they can refund it now with ease, its that simple. to completely remention my previous point ''the problem are not the people who buy it, the problem are the people who buy it and either 1) keep the game just to have a rage reason or 2)the people who buy it accepting that it is empty atm, but expect there to be a massive update every week.
Right, that came off rude. apologies. all i wanted to say is ‘‘Yes there will be negative reviews, some are fair, some arent, quite a bit of gamers are entitled and think that games can be just be made in days by click a few keys and suddenly you have a game’’
also it is also very much about attitude, it doesnt bother me to get burnt once in a while on failing early access games, there are always the chance of failing or slow developement, im generally in it for the ride (although ofc i would prefer to see it succed) while some have a very limited gaming budget and might use all of it on an early access game, i think it is completely fair that they feel angry for using the money on a developing game, however i dont think it is fair that they use their feelings as an argument saying i want the game developement to be faster sometimes it takes longer than expected, for example killing floor 2 maps they went out and said that one of the maps took 800 man days to make, so its a big job.
Will stop editing now
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Yeah, I agree with you wholeheartedly: at this stage of the game’s development, having quality (invested) players is far more important than having a large volume of semi-interested players.
To me, it seems like being on Early Access might have been the wrong choice for recruiting invested players. Steam is the very definition of a large volume of semi-interested players, unfortunately.
On the flip side, there aren’t that many other advertising mechanisms out there that would have been as effective (I found the game via Steam, I suspect that’s true for many/most of us).
Too bad there’s no way to turn off reviews when in early access, or be able to clear them between major milestones. (I’m assuming)
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Oort is one of the most expensive early access games I know and there is still the same flaming as in any other early access game. So that argument is pretty invalid.
The community is pretty much the same no matter if a game is free to play or costs 60€. What makes the community of a game is not the price but the gameplay (which is pretty much not-existent atm).
This reminds me of he early(ier) days of rust, where the first thing you read on the homepage of the devs was “don’t buy this game, we wouldn’t even recommend it” and yet there was ‘early access flame’ on steam. I think you just have to have a thick skin as a game developer and expect things like this if you want to found your game with crowdfunding/early access.
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It wasnt supposed to be on steam but it was asked for alot, so it got realeased on steam 9 - 10 months earlier than expected, that fact that it got greenlit in 6 days also shows the interest for the game, but its a matter of attitude, because the devs do use a long time between updates, no doubt, some other early access games throw out every week because they release small and buggy features, another important thing which is a problem for early access is the different kinds off early acces.
ATM using the Car analogy again, there are multiple types of cars
Some which are almost done and just need the fancy stuff, only in early access for PR while some like oort entered early acess with nothing but a carbody that only slightly resembles a car, the hidden fundamentals of the game are what matters but not what people care about, they only want the fancy stuff which can be seen on the forums where they are like ‘‘stop doing bugfixes add something new’’
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I’m not sure that’s true. Showing continuous incremental progress is generally received well. Starbound’s nightly builds (and the community’s involvement in them) are a good example of that. It took them a good while to get to that point, though
Now this is something i love and find amazing, the whole ‘‘this game is too expensive’’ most of what flaming you see comes from the people who doesnt own the game, which counts as invalid, if it was cheaper alot more flaming would come from people who own the game.
but back to point, the ‘‘oh my god 35 dollars’’ yeah, thats great, 1) nobody is FORCING you to buy it, 2) i paid 95 dollars you should be happy with 1/3 of the price 3) have you met my friend @Havok40k now you can talk about pricy
Nightly builds?