Why is game dev so slow? Subnautica is just as old and now it has full release

Well now i HAVE to go and look on steam haha :smile:

A quick comment to all this yay sayers versus nay sayers

There can be no light without darkness


In my worldview, you have a solid foundation for your presence SA :wink:

Thanks.

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That is a lot to cover, I am going to take my sweet time responding to this. :slight_smile:

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Ok, I accept your decision and judgement.

As for your question: It was honestly no more than curiosity. You refered to it as your opinion, and i wanted to know what that opinion was, that was it. :slight_smile:

Ok, thanks for the clarification.

Look, this is stuff we can have productive conversations about. I will respond to these in a separate post later. Thanks for bringing them up.

I acknowledge the existence of those threads, thanks for reminding me, and I take those sentences back. I can’t exactly remember what they were called, so I have trouble finding them to come back at the nuances of why and how the were shut down, (which I’d like to look at for myself). I will reply to this topic when/if I find them.

This also measn that I will adress the following point in general, and not in this specific case. Feel free to ignore it if it doesn’t apply.

It depends on how these ‘still n development’-comments were made. It is normal, after all, in normal discourse that people try to convince others with differing opinion with facts and arguments. Just the fact that someone counters your statements doesn’t mean that what you said is now gone or ignored (it only might, and then only to some, depending on how factually well-founded the couter was), but that you’ve engaged in a healthy discussion where facts like these are supposed to be weighed. If instead the comments were like, it is still in development so shut up, then you are completely in your right.

Without the threads to look up I can’t completely determine whether this point is apt in the discussion, but I wanted to mention it because I feel it is sometimes forgotten by people in the current internet landscape.

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Now, this is where I don’t understand some people. It has been demonstrated by the dev comments in multiple places that they do indeed LISTEN to all the comments @SirAstrix, even yours. Just because they do listen does NOT mean that they are REQUIRED to do it. Just maybe they don’t agree, or maybe more players than just a couple have shown that they don’t either, or maybe it is something that may come in the future. Listening to SUGGESTIONS is not the same thing as agreeing to add them.

Personally I do not want pvp in this game. I don’t want my town and buildings and hearthlings destroyed by another player. I have no problem with those that do, though, and even if it is not added in to the main game, it would probably be relatively easy to add through mods once the multiplayer is up and running.

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At that same point it may very well be added as an option for those that do want pvp. :slight_smile: I think the argument of the dev’s don’t listen to the community or that they say one thing and then months later do something else is childish at it’s core. Some things may not be possible with what they currently have to work with, maybe in the future it will be. We’re just going to have to wait and see.

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I supposed if I say this it’s not secret but here goes! Various engineers (Tony, Carl, Angelo) have actually tried this in the last year. The diagnosis is that it’s currently death-by-1000-C+±related-papercuts. Like, C++ is supposed to work the same on windows and on mac but
 it doesn’t. So it just involves like, finding a bunch of errors and then fixing them so the code still works on both platforms. Unfortunately, C++ is at the heart of a bunch of systems so it would require a lot of testing.

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I myself don’t care about multi-player but I do care about needing mods to enjoy playing the game.

I have played normal with both RC and Asendancy. I have watched a footman having been fully healed by the cleric, pick up another footman that needs to be taken back to town and placed in a bed for the herbalist. Drop the footman and run back to the cleric while he finishes healing the other footmen. I watched the footman drop the comatose footman three times after being fully healed. I couldn’t tell you if the comatose footman ever made it back to town because I quit and deleted the save from pure frustration.

I have horrible luck with the RNG. I’m always getting 1 mind, 1 body, and 6 spirit when new hearthlings join the town. I see mods that fix the poor stats but I don’t play with mods.

I wonder if this game is only going to be enjoyable with mods.

I play all Bethesda games without mods and they are fun to play mod free. I’ve had the experience where a game needs mods to be enjoyed. Fallout 3 New Vegas is boring without mods. I had someone on steam who tried F3NV without mods and that person came back and agreed with me that the game was no fun without mods.

So my worry is, are the devs going to depend on mods to make their game fun to play?

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It’s not quite that
It is a game that fun to play to certain people and not so others with some middleground, that’s pretty much every game that’s ever made

The whole thing with making mods is there for two reasons

  1. Adding content for people that DO enjoy the fame
  2. Changing the content to suite prople with a different taste of game

A good example is Minecraft, it’s enjoyable on it’s own and you may not even know that mods exist, you play the game with mods and now it’s unplayable without them same goes for multiplayer for MC

They didn’t exclude guns from Minecraft because they depended on modders to add them, it was that Minecraft doesn’t need/fit with guns,
Guns don’t belong there

The reason SH wouldn’t have things like PvP is not because they depend on modders to add them, it’s that PvP is Not something that is fitting.
A setting where players fight and the town building is something competitive and intense does not belong in SH that the devs vision, and even if that vision is different from yours or someone els’s it’s still a valid and strong point to make

They don’t want SH to be a PvP game, so they don’t add them themselvs, only players that will to get them will get them through mods, normal people that enjoy the experience will not feel like they’re missing out ehen they don’t click the ‘turn on PvP’ button

Though i do agree that we need more general content in furniture and such, the game’s core Design is something the Devs decide on, and it is absolute, you can give feedback, but it is their call in the end

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So what you’re saying is the game is only for some players? Not for RTS players, not for time management city builders, and not for people looking to enjoy the game without multi-player or mods. That cuts out a lot of people which would put a large dent in the game’s selling points.

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Lets put it another way, Some of the charm of some games is the ability for the community to add in their own content. Games like that appeal to a wider player base because they’re flexible enough to see that not everyone will enjoy the stock game. I personally Love stonehearth without mods. I love it with mods. I love making models and seeing how all the nuts and bolts of the game work, but that’s my tastes, for you, you don’t like mods and that’s ok, but it might mean you never have access to say pvp or maybe a playable race of fox people, but that’s ok too.

But honestly i think we have lost sight of the OP topic. Maybe it’s time to close this discussion eh?

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To try and not beat a dead horse here, let me ask about the situation of diagonal walls with the new editor. When the majority of people were asking about it, and we get a response of deal with it, how’s that listening? You’re correct that they aren’t required to do what we say, but at the same time, review anything from 2017, especially the second half, and there’s multiple upon times where user’s comments weren’t taken into consideration.

And there it is people. the statement we get over and over again when something is said against the development.

I pray to Rayya that they don’t as that’s what Minecraft did. I can’t say now, but back when this was asked a couple years ago, we were told they wouldn’t go down that route.

My only argument to this is that the original pitch had PvP in it. It didn’t get removed till later.

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That it did, player vs player city raids.

Do note however, that doesn’t mean there will be direct pvp, if you read the fine print it clearly outlines the conditions of said pvp.

Will the PvP be opt-in?
Yes. You absolutely do not have to participate in PvP if you don’t want to. Also, even if you do participate, only a copy of your city gets uploaded for other people to play in. Life in your local city goes on as normal.

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Repeatedly brushing it under the carpet isn’t going to provide a solution. Porting is going to require a lot of testing, like everything else in the game. Isn’t that why there was a stretch goal?

It seems it’s unlikely to get any easier, so kicking the ports further down an already unknown length of road isn’t a solution it’s a cop out.

This is a problem of Team Radiant’s creation when the decision was made to accept pledges from macOS and Linux backers.

At some point development of the Windows version is going to slow because of the ports. After nearly five years, why not now?

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I get waht you mean, but really is there another way? Lets say they said they wanted a peacful city builder, and the players say they want PvP, but if the game’s core values were to to focus on the town, people in it and the community, adding any sort of violant competition would compromise that value, and what can you do? Change the core values of the game? But that’d be a different game.
They are ultimately making StoneHearth the StoneHearth that is true to it’s creators, thus meaning some suggestions and ideas will have to be answered with an absolue No, such as blood, violant interaction with other players, children, ect

And it isn’t ignoring the player, even if you listen your answer can still be No, all you need to let the players know is that it either doesn’t match with what the game is, or that it compromises it’s core values.

Well, pretty much Yes (except the multi-player part, they mean to make the single-player experience as gokd as it can be) i’d say it’s the same way you don’t make a city builder for FPS players, RTS and SH might look similar, but they’re not the same type of game, it doesn’t mean that the RTS playstyle is inherently bad, or that it’s just ignored.
if you’re looking for a game where you use tactical and fast-pased thinking to beat your enemy, you’re in the wrong place - if you’re looking to manage and automate every pary of your town and make your citizens super efficient machines, you’re in the wrong place.

What is True however is that IF you want to play it that way, get some handy mods and you’ll have the customized gaming experience you wanted, and THAT’S why they say it’d be a good mod, but not good for the game

Give you an example?
I love city building games and i really like Minecraft
Guess what? There’s a mod that makes Minecraft into a city builder (it actually exists) and i loved it!
BUT, does this mean Minecraft should’ve been a City builder? Absolutely not right?
Minecraft is Minecraft and it stands as it is
The Mod’s job is to change Minecraft into a city builder, something that is NOT inherently Minecraft

This is how it is with mods for SH
Needing mods to enjoy SH doesn’t mean that SH needs thise in its base game, it’s that YOU need it, and that’s why it exists out of the base game, that’s why it’s made by the players and not the developers

This is an extremely important thing to be aware of.
The Mod is NOT part of the game, by adding the mod you are not upgrading or enhancing the game, you are enhancing the Experience by Changing the game, by adding a mod, you are no longer playeing the game, you are playing the modifyed version made by the mod
And if that experience is the base YOU can have from it? then that is YOUR StoneHearth, not inherently More Valuable nor is It Less valuable, it is the experience you wanted out of the game that was different from what you wanted

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Um
they did do exactly that, with exactly PVP. Compare their current direction to the Kickstarter campaign. On top of that, these were topics that started:

  • “What do you think of this?”
  • Is argued by many people and posts.
  • Decided no one wants it.
  • “Ok, we’re going to try it, possibly do it, anyway.”

This wasn’t one incident or a misunderstanding, And yeah, they’ve changed their direction a couple times. So why stop now?

But as far as whether they’re listening to us or not, I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree or this argument will continue forever.

It’s kinda one of the genres the developers labeled the game with. Kinda hard to say it isn’t that then.

This was actually argued a few months ago when a player asked for a definitive way to beat Ogo. Again, that’s exactly what this game is, as there isn’t a set way to defeat the game due to the RNG. So with the random generator, you have to be tactical and think on your feet as things can change randomly.

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I agree the game is labeled as a RTS. The devs can’t just randomly give labels and not have those elements in the game.

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well i’d argue that the ‘why stop now?’ is a pretty bad argument (no offense of-course) it is true that the game is plenty different from what we started with in some regards, but that doesn’t mean that they Have to change it again.
i will bet even if the Entire community wanted SH to be a more bloody and violent game, they’d say a firm No
for the cases above the reasoning could be that the argument against the idea weren’t compelling enough to go against the plan, as i said this isn’t a place where we truly vote for features to be in or out, we give our opinions and it can be shot down however strong the following. we all wanted to see children and marriages in the game, but then the edge-case of children dying became an issue that halted this movement, that issue could’ve been a core value of the game that was decided to be kept
just to add in my view here
SH has always been a city builder game that’s more or less slow paced and peaceful even with occasional goblins and kobolds invading, the Devs decided that the focus of the game was the town that the players build and the people inside it, and also that it’d be a family-friendly game for the most part.
the problem with PvP would be that the player who has built this town and made connections can be and could be encouraged to destroy someone els’s town, their people and the stories they built, and that was against their core value and it promotes the player to consider Hearthlings as things to kill and troops to attack with, and this again would collide with the idea that Hearthlings are people to connect to and care for

this may seem like a bad argument but i’d say the entire notion of labeling games a genre is in many ways problematic and misleading, as so many games cross the boarder and have to be fit into an odd genre that doesn’t really represent what the game does
example : Portal
often Portal (and 2) is labeled an FPS game, but if you ask the players many of them would say it’s a puzzle game, yet many people still label it as an FPS game purely based on the fact that it’s in first person and it has something that shoots things. the problem is not that the game has that label as much as the image it provokes, as the ‘FPS’ title often brings the image of a game where you shoot enemies to kill them in some setting, yet portal is really anything but that.

i think SH suffers the same problem, as technically it’s not turn based or card based, so it’s real time
it’s somewhat tactical so it is a tactics game, but it definitely doesn’t fit in the common sense of an RTS which would bring up games like StarCraft and stuff like Supreme commander or C&C
if someone says “The RTS audience” technically speaking you’re referring to players that play games that are real-time and strategic this would include games like Clash Royale and i’d even say that MOBA games fit into this category

long story short i would argue that SH does not have a Genra, it barely has a control scheme genre that can fit aside form city builder and the RTS label might as well just be a label that represents how the camera moves
the comment that “Because it’s an RTS game” has as much power as saying the reason is that it has a high up camera view

i mean i’m not here to put stops on all your arguments or naything but there’s an argument to be had so i’ll keep it up as i still stand for it.
it is true that the Ogo fight(an the other org chief fights for that matter) have a lot of tactical thinking to do
but i don’t think you can disagree that those tactical decisions are far different from the typical idea of an RTS game like the ones i stated above, it is tactical, but the thing i want to put emphasis on is ‘Fast-Paced’ because i’d say SH can have some intense moments, but overall it is not a game that is ‘Fast-Paced’ even if you try to pick every single part of it that is fast.
the Ogo and Chief battles are more of a test of your understanding of the game than your split-second tactical reactions, as if you start to understand how your military works you can pretty much leave them to fight and come out victorious 9 out of 10 times and even that’s putting it lowly

not to offend you but i would say that the arguments you brought up here hold little strength to me since they try to focus on a ‘part’ of the game more than the whole
because “but THIS part is violent” , “But THIS part is called this!” , “But THIS is how the camera is held!”
it almost like how you could argue that the Earth is flat it you sat it’s accelerating upwards at a rate of 9.8 and completely ignore things like time zones and seasons

i think the real question we should have is “What is StoneHearth” as that is the question that will define everything, as it is the only way to judge a game at it’s best, not as an RTS not as a CityBuilder, but as a game of it’s own, what is it

as i stated above i agree that it’s extremely misleading but i’d say they have little choice?
because even though if between RTS and CityBuilder i’d say it’s a CityBuilder more than an RTS
but if you asked me if it’s a CityBuilder i’d say it’s not really that, Ant-Farm seems to be the closest? but even that isn’t really it since we have a lot more focus on individual Hearthlings and they aren’t suppose to be just simple worker-Bees

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and once again the insults start. I hate this community anymore.

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what no i didn’t mean it like that, i’m trying to say that i think we’re tackling this the wrong way.
i feel like we need to give more respect to the developers (not that we disrespect them now)
and understand that our job is to provide ideas for improvements that is Chosen by the devs

and also the whole genre thing i feel like is just
 not right.
not wrong per-say, but not
 accurate

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I think you’re being over sensitive, you’re being disagreed with, not insulted.

I do agree that PVP was a core element of the KickStarter, one of the major stretch goals ($300K). Came after Mac and Linux ports ($200K) :slightly_smiling_face:

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