I am really interested in your game, and it look so awesome! Even right now in alpha, but what I’m worried about is that there’s a chance that you guys will abandon this game, like many other alphas, and I just want to know if you guys think that will happen?
There’s been nothing to suggest that they aren’t. They’re 19 Alphas in, I don’t think they’re gonna stop now!
Of all the early access games I’ve been a part of, this team seems the most dedicated. I understand your worry, but I don’t think you have much to fear with the stonehearth team
I bought the game at a point where most features I wanted were in and I enjoyed it so far. The team seems determined to finish this game and puts a lot of effort into it.
I understand your point about alphas though. There are several developers taking the money and running off with it- unpunished. “Stardrive” is a good example for that. The creator even did the cash and abandon thing on the sequel “Stardrive 2” AS WELL. And the games are still on steam.
Oh! No! In fact they have been on the ball! Working hard to fix bugs while balancing it with new content! And with the introduction of RIOT I think that it’ll be even better!
Plus they have great modding community support. The modding community has made many great mods, that add additional biomes, furniture, classes, races, UI, and other things.
Yeah, ever since Radiant was acquired by Riot (the makers of League of Legends) I’ve been if anything even more confident about development for this game. With such a large and successful company behind them, they should continue developing their game for a long tine to come. I have very high hopes for this one, and recent alpha updates have been really promising. With some luck we should even see the game move into beta soon. :o
I can understand your concern though, especially when similar titles (cough Timber and Stone cough) had development stopped abruptly.
They’ve put far too much work into it to abandon at this point. Unlike other “Early Release”, they funded first, and opened it up for others later. These two brothers have also proven themselves trustworthy before, so I got hopes.
I don’t know about dedication, but…
- The last major gameplay update (the Engineer) was six months ago
- If Tom and Tony are working on the game at all, it is no longer noticeable
- Radiant appears to be getting smaller rather than expanding to finish the game and move on to new projects
- The initial release was meant for Sept 2014. It is now almost 2017, and the game seems no closer to completion
especially when similar titles (cough Timber and Stone cough) had development stopped abruptly.
Interesting. I looked up Timber and Stone, and saw this in the update log:
A ton of work has gone into the last few updates, but the content seems superficial, cosmetic, underwhelming.
I feel this is an apt description of Stonehearth’s current state. I’ve been watching cosmetic-oriented Desktop Tuesdays for months now, believing that somewhere in the background, the serious Stonehearth brains are working on optimization, or maybe the next big gameplay feature, or maybe the next major class. Now, on the cusp of the new year, I don’t think I believe that anymore.
A while back, either Tony or Tom posted an update regarding their September 2014 ship date, and how it’s unrealistic and they’ll keep working on the game “when it’s done”. When what is done? Where is the game heading? Tony and Tom had the vision for the game. I don’t think I’ve seen a word out of either of those visionaries since after Radiant was acquired.
Everything feels like it’s “winding down”. I’ve been wondering when people are going to start leaving, and there we go – goodbye, Yang and Doug. From where I’m sitting, we’re going to get another few departure related updates, and then we’ll have the “regretful post” regarding cessation of development, and a JOYFUL update about Tony and Tom’s new Riot based Fighting Game that they’re so very excited and proud to reveal! Yay!
Still gonna hope SH is an exception to the Early Access curse, but that hope’s getting real dim now. Good luck, Radiant.
I personally feel the devs are still dedicated, point taken that both Doug and Yang have left, but on the last stream Sdee did mention all this, I believe they’re looking into getting new developers soon.
I really don’t believe the teams getting smaller, we’ve had a few new designers around and different faces. I don’t think that devs leaving will effect if the games going to be completed or not, As they’re now owned by Riot they could easily at any given point just get new devs to take over.
Although I don’t really comment around the forums anymore, I still play from time to time and I pretty much always still follow the devs progress, I would like to think alpha 20 is going to include a really big game play features. The past few have been big in there own right, but it comes to a point some alphas are going to need to be smaller so they can work on other things(performance, bugs, and game engine stuff).
I can’t tell the future, I don’t see the game not being complete at this point, Theres so much in the game already, I don’t regret buying it and feel buying the game has brought hours of entertainment, anyway that’s my feeling of the situation. Everyone has a different view, this is mine
Right now it feels almost like a F2P game where they slowly trickle in updates to try and draw in new people. Even as the game stands now it’s incredibly enjoyable and I’ve logged over 400 hours into this game since its release. I understand people’s concerns over it being abandoned but truth be told even that doesn’t bother me. Reason why? The modding community.
Take a game like Torchlight 2, fun at release, but still missing some things. Thanks to a huge mod release it’s really enjoyable and plays like a completely different game. even if they give up on this game tomorrow, there’s enough people modding to keep adding stuff to make it enjoyable for quite some time.
If your looking for a building game that’s fun, builds block by block instead of a cloud of dust then “poof” you have a building, then hop on board. if not, check back in 6 months during the summer sale and you may be able to pick the game up for a couple bucks.
When I joined the Stonehearth-Fans updates where coming every few days, but after the GameCon or what was there nearly nothing has come. I too fear that development has bogged down, but well, maybe we will be positively surprised.
been like 4 or 5 new hires in the last 4-5 months so on that account i would say not a chance.
They’ve only ever done weekly Desktop Tuesday posts, and while there’s sometimes a flurry of updates at the peak of an alpha release there’s always a few weeks lull while they’re heavily developing amongst themselves and the game is in too broken of a state to release publicly.
Where as this use to be true, how long has it been since we’ve seen an unstable build release? Personally, that’s worrying me in this thread’s respect.
Alpha comes every 2 or 3 months. Last alpha was at the end of october, so we could be getting a new version in the next days, except we probably will not cause all the holidays. So we probably get new versions in january.
Just to let you guys know, I actually bought the game! Altho I’ve only played for about over 2 hours, it’s pretty fun! I will still have to play more to really experience everything. The only problems I have is bugs and some features that would be awesome in a game like this (unless if some features I want is already in the game but just haven’t found it yet).