Cosmetic DLCs and DLC information handling on steam platform
Latest information on steam platform regarding future dlc was handling in surprisingly awful manner.
Basically, for weeks there were "mysterious" posts titled "Hi!", "You know what time it is", "It is almost there" and so on.
This is not informative, and is downright insulting. The game is about engineering, and I'd imagine that the userbase is not the kind of gullible crowd that would drool at the hint of the first letter of planned feature.
Examples:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/244850/eventcomments/2440336074950280727/
https://steamcommunity.com/app/244850/eventcomments/2273701484005682077/
https://steamcommunity.com/app/244850/eventcomments/2243301553207213300/
https://steamcommunity.com/app/244850/eventcomments/4241773359636736555/
And so on.
For comparison, this is a good informational page:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/244850/eventcomments/1862741826497776263/
Factorio also provides good summaries, which are pages long.
Would be nice to have more transparency, also "mysterious" posts build negative expectations. Because when there's no information given, one can only assume that there's going to be two cosmetic blocks total, there will be nothing else, and it will be $20.
Additionally, there seems to be increased resentment towards cosmetic DLCs on steam which appears more and more often. The problem is not DLCs but DLCs not providing substantial improvements to gameplay. Some of the desired features include wildlife, humanoid npcs, living world, water, and many other things. I'm certain that people wouldn't mind if those desired featurs were released as DLCs, even if each DLC was separate and cost more than another cosmetics.
In Marek's blog article posted in April of 2019, there was mention of those features being possibly planned:
https://blog.marekrosa.org/2019/04/
But since then, there was no information on them being developed, and overall lack of information creates impression that no work is being done on the feature, and the game being abandoned and slowly dying.
Would be nice if something was done about that. The game has potential, but currently only 25% of said potential was realized at best. Would be sad to see it fizzle out.
Have fun.
I like this feedback
Agree with all of the above. Keen also seems to have issues with censorship. They ban steam members under very false reasons (including myself), and there are reports of wiping the negative reviews on the xbox - which looking at them, seems to be true.
You are damaging the potential for further DLC/base game sales as well as reputation which will affect any further titles. This is very short term game with the current state of DLCs and game stability.
If you take time to look into the steam forums, and ignore the likely biased reports from Dan2D3D, you'll see how people are annoyed.
Agree with all of the above. Keen also seems to have issues with censorship. They ban steam members under very false reasons (including myself), and there are reports of wiping the negative reviews on the xbox - which looking at them, seems to be true.
You are damaging the potential for further DLC/base game sales as well as reputation which will affect any further titles. This is very short term game with the current state of DLCs and game stability.
If you take time to look into the steam forums, and ignore the likely biased reports from Dan2D3D, you'll see how people are annoyed.
I like the teasers. Its like a riddle. You know something is coming but you don't know what exactly. And for a "short term game" an awful lot of people seem to have spent over 1000 hours. That is not short term. It just isn't for you!
And the steam forums are toxic as f for almost every game I know. including SE. The YouTube comment section and the comments during release streams paint a very different picture from what you describe.
Just saying. Usually people get banned because they deserve it. Have seen your kind. The only valid opinion is yours yada yada yada and as soon as someone tells you to shut the f up you get insulted and start threatening people. And afterwards you complain that the world is unfair and you got banned for no reason at all. The story is always the same...
I like the teasers. Its like a riddle. You know something is coming but you don't know what exactly. And for a "short term game" an awful lot of people seem to have spent over 1000 hours. That is not short term. It just isn't for you!
And the steam forums are toxic as f for almost every game I know. including SE. The YouTube comment section and the comments during release streams paint a very different picture from what you describe.
Just saying. Usually people get banned because they deserve it. Have seen your kind. The only valid opinion is yours yada yada yada and as soon as someone tells you to shut the f up you get insulted and start threatening people. And afterwards you complain that the world is unfair and you got banned for no reason at all. The story is always the same...
Seen my kind? So you're not aware of the many others who have been banned for invalid reasons. They speak better than many of the ones promoting the game who simply insult people. Want to see why I got banned? It's this post, which ironically was also asking people not to moan about the optimisation and give right feedback.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/244850/discussions/3/2273701484025101669/
Probably best you have the full story before saying you know my kind. If you actually took the time to read my posts, you will see I ALWAYS say people are entitled to their opinions. I deal in facts, that's what got me banned.
Feel free to search my posts and come back to me on why I should be banned, and I'll show you plenty of worse posts from the promoters. While your at it, take a look at the xbox reviews. You'll see the negative ones have been wiped at least twice. But don't take my word for it, look yourself.
Seen my kind? So you're not aware of the many others who have been banned for invalid reasons. They speak better than many of the ones promoting the game who simply insult people. Want to see why I got banned? It's this post, which ironically was also asking people not to moan about the optimisation and give right feedback.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/244850/discussions/3/2273701484025101669/
Probably best you have the full story before saying you know my kind. If you actually took the time to read my posts, you will see I ALWAYS say people are entitled to their opinions. I deal in facts, that's what got me banned.
Feel free to search my posts and come back to me on why I should be banned, and I'll show you plenty of worse posts from the promoters. While your at it, take a look at the xbox reviews. You'll see the negative ones have been wiped at least twice. But don't take my word for it, look yourself.
So this site has zero moderation tools. Just amazing.
So this site has zero moderation tools. Just amazing.
Apologies doom, if you like I can delete my comments.
Apologies doom, if you like I can delete my comments.
Building hype has become all-important in the games industry, hence the mysterious posts. They are different by nature from the update summary for Frostbite you linked. One of those posts at least tells you that there will be a free small grid door, you can see a button panel with LCD screens, a new block texture, another new block, 3D letters and ~60 bug fixes. A public roadmap like Star Citizen has - as much as I wish it existed - is not on the table for Keen, because they don't want to raise expectations they cannot meet.
The DLC situation is simple and highly emotional at the same time mostly due to some other companies' policies. DLC will always be cosmetic in nature in SE and there wont be all new functionality behind a "paywall". What precisely is new functionality is sometimes figured out after the fact, as for example transparent LCDs have a unique niche as HUDs for cameras, but NPCs clearly are.
From what I gathered Marek would really like to see a living, breathing world, but I haven't got word on any particular plans, same for water. It looks like from that blog post, "Rewrite our game engine VRAGE with parallelism in mind, being more asynchronous in its nature (parallelism by design)" is in progress. We have background loading in the main menu and player joining in multiplayer off the main thread IIRC. I too hope that SE is once again going to inspire us with a well thought out and implemented feature update now that the XBox release is out of the way.
Building hype has become all-important in the games industry, hence the mysterious posts. They are different by nature from the update summary for Frostbite you linked. One of those posts at least tells you that there will be a free small grid door, you can see a button panel with LCD screens, a new block texture, another new block, 3D letters and ~60 bug fixes. A public roadmap like Star Citizen has - as much as I wish it existed - is not on the table for Keen, because they don't want to raise expectations they cannot meet.
The DLC situation is simple and highly emotional at the same time mostly due to some other companies' policies. DLC will always be cosmetic in nature in SE and there wont be all new functionality behind a "paywall". What precisely is new functionality is sometimes figured out after the fact, as for example transparent LCDs have a unique niche as HUDs for cameras, but NPCs clearly are.
From what I gathered Marek would really like to see a living, breathing world, but I haven't got word on any particular plans, same for water. It looks like from that blog post, "Rewrite our game engine VRAGE with parallelism in mind, being more asynchronous in its nature (parallelism by design)" is in progress. We have background loading in the main menu and player joining in multiplayer off the main thread IIRC. I too hope that SE is once again going to inspire us with a well thought out and implemented feature update now that the XBox release is out of the way.
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