Current state of game development

#1

Hello,
I just purcahsed this game a couple of days ago and played around 10 hours of it. Its fun and addictive but its full of bugs, incomplete features and from what i see a verry slow pace of development (patches come after months apart).
Its been more then 1 year and a half and this game is still in alpha stage. So my questions to the devs are the following:

  1. Are you going to finish this game any time soon? Because at the current rate of development i dont see this happening this year (at least to beta stage)…
  2. what is the purpose of buildings? I mean other then boosting your money score to get more citizens what is the point of them? They only require beds to sleep in and not buildings right?
  3. The building UI and edit are horrible … hopefully you will be able to make it more easy and intuitive.

I have a lot of other features and bugs but at the moment these are my only big concerns at the moment. Im worried that this game wont be developed further since its still in beta after such a long time and some people even said that at the beginning the patching was done at higher rate but lately they slowed down a lot raising the question if they will finish it or not …

#2

So… you bought a game still in the alpha stages of development, and are now complaining it’s full of bugs and incomplete features?

Huh.

= + =

Anyway…

  1. Can’t speak as to how long development will take, but there’s at least one other faction to add to the game.
  2. It’s a town management / building game. If all you care for is hearthling happiness min/maxing then sure, you don’t need anything more than a big old barracks, but that’s a pretty soulless view of the game.
  3. In what way they (a) horrible, and (b) not intuitive? I mean, I’ve been playing a long time so I know the ins and outs of it, but as a new player, detailed feedback would be very useful to the dev team.
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#3

Well it kinda of speeks of the game since its in alfa for such a long period of time. The game feels shallow at the moment. I really want for this game to be finished but at the current pace i have huge doubot …

#4

I have no doupts at all at this phase. Better even i think this is one of the few developers who take the time for the game and will take somewhat longer then average game to develop but the result will be 10 times better.

And secondly i strongly disagree that the game feels shallow. Even back when there was far less in the game i could entertain me for a long time slowly building a town. Caring about every hearthling and making costum houses, workshops and protecting my town with my personally selected warriors.

If you are looking for a large scale place, build and conqeur game this game is not what you are looking for. Stonehearth will have much larger town capicitys and larger scale events and stuff but its a game about slowly building a hamlet from scratch and growing to a full grown city. currently the size available is about a town but i know for sure that large citys will be posible in the future.

For me (and i think also the developers intention) stonehearth is a game of slow paced town building. Give care to every small part of your town. Giving every hearthling a personal bed and creating houses for them. Yes you can put 20 beds and chairs in a row outside of your farm and that will do the trick but by doing that you take away what stonehearth makes stonehearth.

If this does not sound apealing to you i think stonehaerth is not the game you are looking for. And that is perfectly fine. But do not expect stonehearth to become a game like that.

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#5

That’s what happens in Alpha games. It used to be a lot worse.

Which, when you think about it, is actually pretty fast. For instance, Destiny, a AAA game only gets updates around drops of DLC, or for free events. Last year (hey its 2017 now), Destiny had 4-5 updates (If you consider the update to turn on the hard mode of the raid an “update”).

According to Wikipedia (take it with salt), Halo 5 started development in late 2012, then released on October 27 2015. That’s about 3 years from start to finish. It would make sense they’d still be in Alpha at 1 1/2 years.

That depends. Do you want them to rush it because of the title of Beta? Or do you want it to be finished?

Well of course if you decide to not build buildings, which is like 75% of the game, it’s going to feel incomplete and shallow. The whole point is to build a lively town, but how is a town to be lively without cozy, well-designed buildings that please the eye and function?

I would disagree that it’s horrible, and I found it to be pretty intuitive. However, if you disagree, you should be specific as to why. They did just recently acquire a new UI designer (@Sweet), and so to help her out you describe your issues with it, not simply state that there are issues.

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#6

While one alpha does tend to last 2 - 3 months there are no releases for about a month of that, once they start pushing out builds to the unstable branch I’ve seen times when there were daily updates and bugfixes.

I hate to mention this, but… it’s actually 3 years and 2 days from Alpha 1 now.

They last updated the development roadmap during Alpha 16, and since they’re reworking systems right now I think they’re not actually quite this complete, but here’s the official roadmap:

[quote=“sharkyzafish, post:1, topic:27309”]
2) what is the purpose of buildings? I mean other then boosting your money score to get more citizens what is the point of them? They only require beds to sleep in and not buildings right?
[/quote]I know at one point they wanted to make Hearthlings be happier sleeping inside buildings, and they’re currently doing a happiness rework, so that may come. They definitely seem to want to make buildings more useful.

They got a professional designer to work on the UX (user experience) recently, and the building menu is definitely one of the major priorities. As with @Teleros, I (and probably most of the long-time players) have gotten used to all the quirks of the game, so we really don’t notice how bad the interfaces are. The team would definitely appreciate feedback from new players.

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#7

yes we long term players have.

#8

Yeah except it hasnt been 1 1/2 years, its been four years.

SH was kickstarted in Dec 2013

#9

Well now, this once dead topic has arisen! I was basing that original number off of it’s Steam release date I do believe. Also, that was a year ago. Whatever. Numbers.

#10

I also am one of the long term players that started during the time it went to steam. Back then it was alpha 10.5. The dev team had only a few people then. They were on twitch three times a week. Now there are at least 15 members. They are now streaming only once a week now and when my internet is not so slow I check out the streams and give my input. It is a way that they keep in touch with the community. It is also a way for the community to help the developers make the game the best it can be. They are refocusing on the inner workings of the hearthlings and how they are interacting with each other and growing together as a community. You can see a roadmap here. http://www.stonehearth.net/stonehearth-development-roadmap/

They are also redoing the building editor and AI to be better than it was. :smiley: Last I heard the roofs need to be worked on more and the furniture need to be placed into the new editor. Correct me if I am wrong but I think three devs are working on this project alone. There are other people working in the background with the water and making hearthlings a little brighter than they are. This will be where the hearthlings will finish doing one thing then go on to do the next thing. In a desktop Tuesday Stephanie talked about this.

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