SoTA Early Access

I have been playing every release of Shroud of the Avatar since the first version, and I am happy with the progress it has made since then. That said, this game is far from playable to a point where there aren't many things to do and most of the game systems aren't up. I understand this because it is still early in development and doesn't bother me. BUT I know for a fact when this is released on Steam's Early Access that this game is gonna get ripped a new one. I have seen many games get horrible reviews because the game is simply too early to be released. Anybody else thought about this?

 

Uninformed people having misguided opinions and then swaying other uninformed people with that opinion is sadly all to common. If potential backers or players are not willing to put in a few minutes of time to educate themselves about the game and move on as a result I say to bad for them.

 

OP, i would bet the farm that you are absolutely right. R11 seems like its less than %10 of a complete product. On the other hand last I heard the Portalarium staff has been beefed up as of late, so development should be accelerating exponentially.

The biggest unknown in this whole development process is how well the portalarium servers will handle the game if it is a raging success (1 mil + users). Having Early access available to the masses on Steam will provide a very necessary stress test. It is probably worth the impending storm of nay-saying and disappointment and a couple of bad blog posts. Its better to get those issues out of the way early on, than have a disaster on launch day after the game has "gone gold". Who cares about those steamy weenie game whores anyway? Guinea pigs!

Also look at the complaints on the forum already. There's a lot more of "this is so horrible i am going to sell my pledge" than "upon testing this release i present to you these findings and suggestions"

 

It's really a catch 22 for Port. If they don't do early access on Steam they won't make money to develop a better game, if they do, they will get the great unwashed criticising them. I'm hoping that if us, the loyal backers, each write a great review, we may be able to flood the damn wall with positiveness!

 

I think this is the point where the community has to stand up against those flamers that will come. I never used steam and will avoid it when possible, but those who are there can now be a great help with informing the people, be it over the videos of TheMadHermit or Hangouts, links to SotA wiki or the forum and what else can help.

We are already a great community which can't be destroyed, if we help those outlanders from steam to see the beauty and uniqueness of this game.

 

Start of Early Access is going to be a difficult time with lots of people voicing disappointment, or even open hostility by people hating the Early Access-System ("they are ripping of people for an unfinished product"). This will happen with near certainty and there are a lot of bad apples out there (sadly even Tim Schafer, whose games I love, but who has major problems with managing finances).

In my opinion it's important to make it as clear as possible (the first thing on the Early Access page, so nobody can say he didn't see it), that at this point there isn't much fun to be found in SotA, and Early Access is only for people who are willing to help working on this product, so in the end a finished and fleshed out product emerges (positive examples: Wasteland 2, Shovel Knight, or even small games like Ziggurat)

 

It really depends on how fun the game is starting out. DayZ literally had nothing when it launched and was a massive success. The issue is that the updates are very slow. SotA seems to have a much stricter table for updatws and the devs seem to be making strides with every release. There will always be the ones who complain but that's just the nature of the beast. I think overall with the updates people will see how much potential this game has and hopefully contribute in a meaningful way for the developers to make the necessary changes.