When Does The " ALPHA!" Excuse End?

[iongaming33@aim.com 137]

Just typing out the title of this topic makes me shutter at what the "fanboys" are going to say about this. So, before I get to this, I'll have everybody know that I have played DayZ since January* 2012, and recognize the mod as one of the greatest gaming experiences I've ever been a part of.

So If you do some browsing through the forums you will indefinately see some posts from impatient people saying things like "when are cars coming when are tents coming zomggggg ur soo slowww rocket". And then if you scroll down a bit you will see a post from somebody else, maybe a mod, saying "The game is in ALPHA, you were warned of all the bugs etc...", which is a valid excuse. When we bought the alpha version of the game it did warn all players that the game was incomplete and lacking content.

So, what I'm here to discuss is, when does that excuse stop being valid. Now, some people will undoubtedly throw out the "Beta" answer, but I'm looking for a bit more then that.

I personally think that when you release an early access game in the alpha state, which is becoming quite the trend now, you have a certain responsibility to at least make the game playable. Bugs and such are obviously expected, but I don't think you can just toss out a game like DayZ, to a community like DayZ's, and have it not be in a playable state. Obvously unplayable is a bit of an exagerration, but there are some serious issues with this game. Patches that take months in "testing" should not be released to stable with huge imbalance issues like fists being more efficient than axes, and then not even a hotfix in weeks? Nobody can deny the extremely slow development of this game, but I 'm not even asking for more content, the core gameplay is just not there. I don't know how someone could release a game like DayZ to a fanbase as massive as DayZ's, in such a broken state (zombies being the attrocity that they are etc..), and not expect everybody to be pissed. The fact that the ALPHA excuse has to be thrown around so much should point out that something is wrong.

I went on a bit of a rant there and I guess what I'm trying to say maybe the "alpha" excuse isn't always the way to go. Instead of constantly reminding people that they bought an early access game, maybe we should try to examine and fix these core problems.

What do you think? Should the game have been released? Was it the responsible and right thing to do to give this incomplete game to the DayZ fanbase?

EDIT: I'd like to clarify that I am not sitting here begging for more content, I am simply examining the development strategy and community reaction to it . I have other games to play, and still enjoy the mod, so don't confuse my motives here. I want to see DayZ grow and succeed, I just don't see the alpha release as the right move in the game 's current state. I am not saying an alpha shouldn't of happened, just that some of the core gameplay mechanics should've been in working order before even an alpha release. Constructive criticism should not be met by "ITS AN ALPHA!!!". As I said before there are many instances where this response is warranted, yet I have seen many valid posts met with nothing but early access reminders.

 

EDIT #2: Okay, people are really missing what I'm saying here. I'm NOT saying "This game blows why does it suck make it better now plz". I bought the game, I knew what I was buying, I have played many alphas. What I AM saying is that constructive criticism on these forums shouldn't be answered by 'Its in ALPHA". If somebody has a valid complaint, their voice should be heard. There will always be ignorant people who do not know the meaning of alpha, but if somebody has a valid comment to make about the game that isn't completely absurd, read it, discuss it, that's what these forums are partially for, trying to make a better gaming experience with the beauty that is DayZ. 

Edited April 30, 2014 by Jigsaw115

[elLoCo 154]

When it's BETA

 

edit: it's insane!

So much beans for a joke ^^

Edited April 30, 2014 by elLoCo

[Dchil 829]

When it's BETA

That's when we play the "Beta" card.

 

When does that finish? When we are released.

 

Then we play the "Just released" card.

 

When does that finish, 3 or more patches are released or 1 year. Which ever one is shortest.

[Timewarp (DayZ) 32]

my thoughts exactly.

Edited April 30, 2014 by Timewarp

[teapot156 79]

It's not so much as should it have been released. It's more of a factor of should you've bought it.

 

Nothing about this game is deceiving, you're just impatient. It's okay though, so am I. The difference being as I see no reason to whine.

[preacherlr 614]

I see you don't follow the dev tracker.

Zombies are placeholder while the new studio works on them, Vehicles are coming.. blah blah, I can go on all day, The point I'm hinting at is, Guess what? It's alpha.

Beta scheduled for 2015, That's when, As the other 2 poster have pointed out, It's beta begins.

[xalienax 621]

What do you think? Should the game have been released? Was it the responsible and right think to do to give this incomplete game to the DayZ fanbase?

First +1 for diving into this can of worms. im sure you'll get flamed to hell before long and i fully expect this to get closed knowing how devided people are thses days.

 

any ways, Having worked on Mod/comunity projects myself i can attest to the fact that you CAN NOT WIN when you have an enthusiastic/dedicated fanbase.

 

-If you have no early release, then release in beta or final with "fixed" gameplay more or less- everyone whose not 100% satisfied will accuse you of deliberately not letting them have input.

-If you do do early access, well dayZ SA is pretty much what happens. community becomes strongly divided about direction and time table. when devs dont live up to neither sides expectation they generally turn on eachother.

 

Another can of worms that dean and the team have to contend with is that the mod was played by a devoted fanbase for over 2 years straight! This unfortunately means that many people here have a very clear vision for what they believe dayZ to be, Dean/rockett obviously wants to push the tech and be more ambitious with features, but considerable contingenet of us (including myself) just want the minimilist feel of the early mod with some polish! The design decisions made pretty much mean the SA and mod will be night and day, apples to oranges different in mechanics and gameplay. again, this is a HIGHLY devisive topic for members of the comunity.

 

At the end of the day tho, All we can ask and demand is a solid working product for our money. When you bought it so early you perpetuated the Early access craze, and gave your money to rocket/BIS without having any set-in-stone time table or roadmap. (many of deans' roadmap interviews and discussions came to be AFTER SA went live on steam).

 

I sympathize with the devs because its an impossible position to be in really. there is no way to ahandle it woithout recieveing flack from one side or another. At the same time, i do feel that a considerable contingent of people who bought the SA based on thier experiences in the MOD will gro from "its alpha" then the excuse will becme "its beta" then when it's rleased many will be standing there going "WTF THATS WHAT WE WAITED FOR!? THIS IS NOTHING LIKE THE ORIGINAL!"

[101anavirn 36]

[tommy290 941]

I think we can all agree that WarZ is a much better game and DayZ should've followed in its footsteps.

[Poindexter 11]

I see no problems with the wait... Its a bind but thats the way an Alpha runs. I've done these before and the usual problem is the creators run out of funds and have to release it too early and then they are forever fiddling with it. So what if the Alpha runs 2 years and the Beta another year? You are still playing the game, No?

[Zedertone 378]

I think we can all agree that WarZ is a much better game and DayZ should've followed in its footsteps.

DayZ was made before WarZ, and WarZ is a fucking joke, please leave these forums.

Back to the OP, when Alpha is over?

[Inception. 9443]

I think we can all agree that WarZ is a much better game and DayZ should've followed in its footsteps.

 

Wise words.

[tommy290 941]

DayZ was made before WarZ, and WarZ is a fucking joke, please leave these forums.

Back to the OP, when Alpha is over?

 

DayZ may have originally been created before WarZ, but you have to admit that a lot has been copied from WarZ to be put into DayZ, once the devs saw how good WarZ was.

[alsmir 255]

As long as the game is in such a poor state they this is the only excuse fanboys can offer (God forbid questioning devs work).

[Zedertone 378]

DayZ may have originally been created before WarZ, but you have to admit that a lot has been copied from WarZ to be put into DayZ, once the devs saw how good WarZ was.

No I don't because it hasn't. Most of the stuff WarZ has was copied from DayZ, with the exception of some containers and some different guns. And hell, they were obviously trying to copy DayZ, I mean WarZ, really? 

Infestation Survival Stories* for all the fanboys.

[calabam 55]

I think over the next few months we should see some fairly big improvements to the game but for me its really took the success of the initial sales to really spark some real life into the project prior to that i was thinking this could turn out a real turkey but finally i think the project has a a decent amout of resources ( hands on deck ) to deliver this game the next 3-6 months cant come quick enough. 

[agouti 105]

Back in my day, you had to torrent a leaked copy of an alpha to play it, which is to say, steal it. Are you going to complain about the thing you stole? And when you pre-ordered a game, if it was available, you still didn't get alpha access. You're a bunch of ungrateful little shits.

[nautic 40]

alpha and beta is a flawed concept in general. 

 

it allows a pretty stupid excuse to leave known issues open, and defer them to a later stage of the project. what this creates is a huge amount of backlog, and a broken state for a long time. i see many problems with this approach

 

- you are not really evolving your game in iterations. in an optimal scenario you make design decisions based on what is already there. but in an alpha you have to make design decisions based on a broken shape, while imaging how it would be. but you'll never know if it will ever become how it should be in the first place. how are you supposed to design without a real feedback? it is like balancing zombies while they are still running through walls - ridiculous

 

- a game usually has a limited budget. what happens if the size of the backlog gets too long, and extends the planned budget/time. are you gonna cut stabilizing/fixing/balancing your game at this point, in order to meet the budget/deadline?

 

- in most scenarios it is exponentially harder to solve 10 issues instead of 1 issue, because the solving of a single one could affect another. leading to a rat-tail of changes, and a never-ending debugging/bugfixing/changing. this is the  1bug solved, 10 new bugs scenario.

 

- defering stabilization is a pretty big risk. it is basically intentionally creating technical debt. it increases development costs overall, slows down development until stagnation, and is a potential project killer.

 

in my opinion, a game project should be like every other modern professional software project. you should keep it stable and well crafted from the very beginning and for every feature you add. this way, you create a game that 

- actually evolves

- you can make design decisions for, based on real feedback

- is stable enough to be released to the community at any version

- keeps changing at a steady pace

 

 

of course dayz is a different scenario. they are not starting from scratch, but with an already broken engine...

Edited April 30, 2014 by nautic

[Element47 2481]

No I don't because it hasn't. Most of the stuff WarZ has was copied from DayZ, with the exception of some containers and some different guns. And hell, they were obviously trying to copy DayZ, I mean WarZ, really? 

Infestation Survival Stories* for all the fanboys.

 

this had me laugh out so loud that my boss came over from his office next door, probably in anticipation of a hilarious cat video that usually make me spouting my tea during crunch time...

Edited April 30, 2014 by e47

[brumey 116]

beta in early 2016

[leviaxxan 39]

What do you think? Should the game have been released? Was it the responsible and right think to do to give this incomplete game to the DayZ fanbase?

 

The *game* hasn't been released. Simple as that. 

[jameslennoxhood 74]

NEVER! NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER!!!!!! I luv you DayZ and i luv you Rocket!!! ALPHA FOREVER!!!

Edited April 30, 2014 by JamesLennoxHood

[weedmasta 784]

O look ma, another "Alpha is no excuse" thread  <_<

 

They had to release it this early, there was the potential of competition (which turned out to be a farce) and the impatience of the community with regards to delays on the release date. Now was that a valid reason, I'd say so, if they had lingered any longer they were faced with possibly losing the interest of a good chunk of their potential player base for SA.

I agree the progress is slow but it is not like they are taking their time on purpose. Also with regards to people claiming the team having too few developers working on the game, there is something called diminishing returns, I suggest you look it up if you are not familiar with the term.

 

Think of something as basic as an assembly line, lets say it was built for 10 people to work on it. Maybe you can increase that number to 12 and still increase production successfully but if you increase it to lets say 15 workers, they will get in each others way, production will decrease and cost incurred will increase both because of the slower production and the additional manpower who have to be paid, so adding more people actually becomes counter-productive. 

 

I personally don't know if the current size is the optimal size for a team to work on this game, nor does anyone else in the community and yet people claim that more devs should be hired and keep comparing the game to other projects like Star Citizen which is silly to say the least. However I'd imagine that a company like BIS, who have been holding the leash on this project to some extend, who have decades of experience in military sim development, would know better than a regular gamer or the self-proclaimed know-it-all "fellow-developers" as they keep popping up on these forums from time to time.

Having said that, the development of SA does appear to be a mess, whoever is in charge of planning the project is not doing a good job. We are supposed to help test the game and yet some changelogs are not even posted on the forums and others are not complete or detailed enough to keep track of changes. First weekly patches were promised, then bimonthly*, then monthly and now there is a roadmap which was a video of Dean making a presentation somewhere, however I don't see an official Roadmap thread anywhere on the forums (correct me if I am wrong). If anything I'd expect a thread with capital letters saying "DAYZ: SA ROADMAP" on the forums no matter how flimsy or little detail it entails, it would at least give confidence to the people who have "invested" in this game, that there is a proper plan for the future of the game.
 

All in all, saying "BIS stole our money", "they made billions and got away with it", "this is scam", "why aren't they hiring more developers" "stop the Alpha excuse" etc. isn't going to help either side. I am using the Alpha excuse yes, because I know what I bought into, an uncomplete game which we were also warned by the lead dev himself not to buy but I trust both Rocket and specifically BIS enough to pull through with their promise, eventually. Yes progress is slow and the development seems to be a mess and the game being in Alpha isn't an excuse for either, however that doesn't change the fact that THE GAME IS STILL IN ALPHA.

Edited April 30, 2014 by weedmasta

[liquidsnake 275]

I think that what OP needs to understand is that there are unjustified complaints and justified ones. Most are actually stupid complaints that negate the fact that it's in alpha, while others are proper complaints. Sometimes, people also yell alpha when it's a proper complaint, however.

[iongaming33@aim.com 137]

alpha and beta is a flawed concept in general. 

 

it allows a pretty stupid excuse to leave known issues open, and defer them to a later stage of the project. what this creates is a huge amount of backlog, and a broken state for a long time. i see many problems with this approach

 

- you are not really evolving your game in iterations. in an optimal scenario you make design decisions based on what is already there. but in an alpha you have to make design decisions based on a broken shape, while imaging how it would be. but you'll never know if it will ever become how it should be in the first place. how are you supposed to design without a real feedback? it is like balancing zombies while they are still running through walls - .

This. This is what I wanted from this post. I see the pressure that was put on the dev team to release but I don't think releasing the game in it's current state was the responsible thing to do.