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[muwahahaha]

While the game does certainly look interesting, it appears to be more like 'MMO Space Engineers' and much less 'Shores of Hazeron V2'. From what I can see they're going for a 'players do everything' route where they expect cities to be populated and ships crewed entirely by real people as opposed to NPCs as you get in Hazeron.

I have to say I've got lingering doubts as to whether they'll ever get a population significant enough to have things like 'intergalactic political empires' and 'thousands of others in player-made cities'. Mostly because it appears that the bulk of the game is just generic voxel build things and blow them up. It reads like they're hoping to get EVE levels of playerbase, with all sorts of player generated intrigue and politics and drama, and I just can't see that happening in a voxel build-em-up game.

I'll keep an eye on it, but at this stage I don't think I'll end up buying it, especially if they're aiming for a monthly subscription.

[Neonivek]

I admit I am kind of sad their combat stretch goal wasn't found... It feels somewhat needed.

[Chiefwaffles]

It is really strange that they would make that out of all things a stretch goal. It feels like construct v construct should be a cornerstone of a game like this.

They did include this in a post-funding update, though:

We didn’t reach the “Construct vs Construct” stretch goal. However, we observed the brilliant effort you made to reach it in the last few days. To thank you for that, we just decided to include the second stretch goal in the official release! This won’t modify the schedule for the “Construct vs Construct” goal. We said it would happen in the first expansion or important patch of the game after the release, and this is still the case!

Even though CvC is the first goal, they're including the second goal in the release. Said second goal is being able to customize your character and remove your helmet. So it seems like assuming the game gets released, CvC will follow soon. It just won't be present in the alpha or beta and immediately following release, which would be a fairly significant portion of time.

[Neonivek]

My "conspiracy" senses are tingling and it sounds like either
A) They were originally intending on those stretch goals being met (this actually happens... far too often... where they just put planned features into stretch goals so people think they are achieving something).
B) They find the surge of popularity to suggest that maybe they can earn some money upon its initial release enough to justify doing the stretch goals anyway.

[ollobrains]

it needs a bit more PR from the youtubers some early alpha plays like astroneer start low then go high over time

[Chiefwaffles]

While this post is already up here, I may as well mention that the developers are continuing funding on their own site. It's nowhere near Star Citizen levels, and is really just for people who missed the Kickstarter and still want the pledge awards.

Also I'm editing the title to be a bit less direct with the Hazeron comparison. While it definitely is similar to Hazeron, I wouldn't say "done right" anymore because that implies a much greater level of similarity than there actually is.

[Neonivek]

Also I'm editing the title to be a bit less direct with the Hazeron comparison. While it definitely is similar to Hazeron, I wouldn't say "done right" anymore because that implies a much greater level of similarity than there actually is.

But that is ruining the Bay12 title scheme.

It is always "Dis game: It is like Diablo and Dwarf Fortress had a baby except amazing"

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Also I'm editing the title to be a bit less direct with the Hazeron comparison. While it definitely is similar to Hazeron, I wouldn't say "done right" anymore because that implies a much greater level of similarity than there actually is.

But that is ruining the Bay12 title scheme.

It is always "Dis game: It is like Diablo and Dwarf Fortress had a baby except amazing"

Bay12ers just know their market audience, lol.

[Gabeux]

Reviving this to ask mostly if anyone thinks this is worth buying, as it's only 3 days left for the crowdfunding to end.

I'm 100% interested in the genre, but I don't get the hype around this game (which seems to have settled down a bit nowadays) or the reason people would throw millions on the face of random developers.
To me, this will be a Miner Wars + Space Engineers + Hazeron when it comes to development, at least that is my intuition.

But given my love for the genre, I'd be willing to hear any positive opinions on it. I mean, I've paid for and played Hazeron, Space Engineers and No Man's Sky..could this ever be more heartbreaking? 

PS: Just realized I've ranted on this thread almost exactly 1 year ago. As nothing really positive came out about it in all this time, I'n guessing I should let it pass.

[Chiefwaffles]

I haven't pledged and am probably not for reasons largely unrelated to my opinion the game, but I have been following development via their monthly devblogs.

Like the updated OP title (which I also removed the Hazeron reference from) says, the Pre-Alpha is coming September 30th. It seems to be focused largely on the creative aspect - building a ship, scripting it, and being able to fly it to the moon and back with a functional and realistic physics model. Apparently the developers originally intended for the Alpha to come out at around this time, but in their eyes "Alpha" includes a core gameplay loop - scanning for resources, mining them, and crafting things from them. And their prototype for that isn't anywhere near ready for the public.


But what I've seen so far does look nice. Their building tools look interesting and more able of precision than Space Engineers. Though generally the building does look similar to Space Engineers, except seemingly more focused on giving player tools to make something easily instead of SE's "block by block" approach.
Scripting is done by Lua (I'm pretty sure), and so far it seems like they intend for it to play a huge role. In addition to linking pretty much any external block to scripts, there's also a mechanic that allows scripting UI elements for the pilot. So you can program a speed indicator or something a lot better than that lame example.

But it's really just hard to tell given how it's mostly just the building stuff so far. But I would guess that getting burned is pretty unlikely. They've been pretty upfront so far and their progress is notable. I'd recommend looking at their monthly devblogs if you haven't already.


EDIT: I think you're mistaken regarding the crowdfunding. The 3-day timer has this right below the time left:
"LAST CHANCE TO SECURE A LIFETIME SUBSCRIPTION!"
Which is $570. I wouldn't be too panicked.

[Gabeux]

Nice, thanks for the input!
The video you linked indeed shows a much better state. The first videos really concerned me as they were just tech demos and there were people throwing hundreds of dollars at that.

Given what I've seen and heard, I think my only two worries is how PvE/NPCs be handled, and the subscription.
I think a game like this could benefit a lot from having NPCs and PvE, but I'm not sure they are gonna take that route (their FAQ says there will "probably" be NPC ships).

At least, I'm happy it's not a scam. If it was, they wouldn't have put in the effort. I'll follow it. 

[ollobrains]

i got in as a gold backer , the pre alpha will be landing for donwload i think around september 30

[dragdeler]

Diggedy dig... ah there it is.

*harrumph*

I was excited about this like 2 years ago, recently there has been a wave of presentations and I still am! I will just start writing up facts and assumptions I gathered in my research. Apparantly the game is currently in Alpha, approaching 5k backers/players but the reason it is so difficult to gather information, seems to be that backers have signed an NDA. From that we can assume that so far, nobody deemed necessary to alert the public and thus risk his priviledges. (I will be italicizing assumptions, rumours, unsecured knowledge and speculations).

-The game has passed it's kickstarter phase, intermittently servers are running tests, the next being scheduled november 22nd. One of the top 50 richest frenchmen seems to be backing the project.

-A few years back they were talking about thousands of players in a single shard universe. In that time I saw a techdemo/servertest with 8000 bots, if I recall correctly, all walking on the same planet. Framerate wasn't that promising but the thing did what it was supposed to. In all recent videos, Jean-Christophe Baillie, founder of novaquark (JC), has been talking about millions of players! The way he picked his words hints that the only limitation is the amount of people actually willing to pay and play.

-The game relies allmost entirely on player-world/player-player interaction emergence: there are no NPC that give you quests, but there is a system where organizations (player groups) can tender their workload to the public (any player).

-Mining will be an essential part of the game and never automatized, though you might be able to upgrade the speed at which you can mine.

-At the moment the top 10 organizations allready include like half the playerbase. Joining a nation, guild, clan, confederation, alliance whatever seems not only the way this is intended to be played, but also very necessary to any meaningful achievement. The developpers allready do monthly updates on ingame politics in a short video. From that I gather that there is allready such a thing as "military expenses", or at least the players are allready negotiating such things between themselves.

-Combat will be lock and shoot, like WOW, not a dynamic FPS, like Half-Life 2. Bearing that in mind it's a little less exciting, but seems all the more achievable.

-At gamescon 2018 we saw JC scrolling trough a list of interactive objects in godmode, to pick a door and a button. The menu featured like 40 icons and he did quite a scroll, though he quickly left the menu  .

-They seem to be aiming for a 2020 release. So I guess the questions is will I be playing this, or myth & magic update first  .



I'll spare you my hyped rambling. Ollobrains, or anybody for that matter, in there? Are you allowed to tell, deny or confirm something?

[dragdeler]

The server has been wiped and is online since 40minutes if anybody has been wondering about the game. NDA is still up though.

[forsaken1111]

Looks really neat, I look forward to trying it once it's released. I'll be following along