My main question is why should the dev of manor lords care about player retention? I mean he already has your money, and I really doubt there will be much paid DLC any time soon. He needs to worry about attracting new players so he needs to fix bugs and produce enough content that the people still playing don't review bomb him. But if someone forgets about the game and doesn't come back for a new update, it really doesn't matter because again he already has their money.
I put about 70 hours into Manor Lords. Then I stopped because I basically got what I wanted out of it in its current state. But I have every intention of coming back with each future patch that meaningfully changes the game. When those happen, and they surely will, player counts will spike again. It's a lot of fun, and I don't mind waiting, nor will I forget about it. There's plenty of other games to play in the meantime. The developer seems like a great guy and he's doing the right things. I trust he'll stick with it as this is clearly a passion project for him.
I'll buy the if they get with the times and put LGBTQIA2S+ themes in the game. But according to my research they use outdated 14th century cultural themes.
@@VP_Patrick_Bateman Not every game needs to have those themes tho? it is based on the Middle Ages, it should use the cultural themes of those ages. We can acknowledge that homophobia is bad while also keeping games grounded in their own time periods.
I love The Long Dark and have over 700 hours on steam. But their developer, Hinterland, is really poorly placed to lecture other developers on early access. In terms of it's story mode, TLD isn't a finished game 7 years later and they haven't always responded well to community criticism.
That was my thoughts exactly. I also love TLD, but in 7 years they haven't really added a massive amount of content. Especially the newer dlc stuff which kinda sucks
I got The Long Dark early in its long early access period and the initial game was functional but pretty bare bones, and updates were small, and few and far between. I remember one particularly long period of hype not too long before the full launch when we were all breathless and excited about the addition of meese to the game, one single rare animal added to hunt. That game succeeded in early access for two reasons imo, the quiet and contemplative nature of the world and gameplay, and the existence of the brutally difficult Interlope survival mode. Unfortunately, with hundreds of hours in Interloper, when the game launched with Story mode I was one of the many early access fans who lost interest almost immediately because the main game was trivially easy in comparison.
Absolutely agree, TLD storymode has been a disaster, entirely because of development choices. It overpromised, it tried too many tech switches, and even if I imagine they had executed perfectly on what they intended, while I am playing the game I'm struck by how dumb and often cringe their intentions were. I do love survival mode tho. If you think TLD is "done" ,let me ask you this, how is that full season (spring, summer, fall, winter) experience treating you?
I tried Manor Lords with the understanding that the early access version was a bare-bones assembly. I tried it out to get a good idea of how the game should play, and now I've set it aside until the game gets actually released. I have not abandoned Manor Lords.
@@noxy4966 dude also talked about preparing for the massive hype. Slavic Magic did something for the hype namely controlling expectations or putting it in a crass manner : bringing the hype down. All in all i think Lierop's point makes some sort of sense but he lacked the 2 critical information needed namely the team size (or in this case a solo poject) and how Slavic Magic handles the hype
@@hoshi314 Yeah when Slavic Magic did that I was like wow: Sure enough you are killing the hype but that is the rational thing to do. The speculators are crying and they better be. Speculators are parasites.
@@noxy4966 Most people don't. If the thing that was made by 1 person is good & previous updates are good people will tell them to take their time. Look at ConcernedApe & Stardew Valley. Yes the guy has a team now that helps with small things but the majority is still done by him & him alone. People are hyped but they're not rushing him.
@@noxy4966 It's actually going to be a lot faster because it's one dude, especially with people telling him directly what the issues are. Have you ever wondered why it takes such a long time for a studio like bethesda to release major content updates for their games? It's because they have to deal with stupid social drama that actively slows down the development time. In a one man studio, he doesn't have anybody fighting against him, he can literally add code whenever he wants to, test it, make sure it works, and move on to the next bit of content. A single dev studio with contractors can actually be way faster than AAA.
Helldivers 2 took away things like running two different mechs strats. I'm having fun playing other games though since they took away the fun in helldivers.
@@ioanwib HD2 is such nerfed meta heavy trash. I still can't understand how badly they f*cked themselves out of success. Those devs still sucking themselves off for ruining their fifteen minutes as if all the attention they got was somehow bad (240k daily for two months straight). Zombie studio that'll be chopped up like a turkey for parts by next year.
Also I would like to point out that the long dark that was advertised in early access (survival mode and challenges) IS FINISHED. Both story mode campaigns are post release content
@@heliumfreak5364 Except The Long Dark dev has yet to deliver what he promised 6+ years ago. The fact they relabelled the game as "released" in the meanwhile doesn't really change anything, especially since they opted to make a DLC to the game instead. Neither Stardew Valley or Terraria have any DLCs (you can buy the separately OST to listen to it in your free time, I guess), all updates are free, so on that front alone you're cultivating false equivalency.
"Oh no! We found a way to print money, but the printer sometimes runs out of ink! Let's throw it out, it's useless." "Man, that guy who invented the electric stove was a failure! Sure, people still buy electric stoves now, but not as much as they were when they first were out on the market." "Oh no! The second season of this show wasn't as popular! Better cancel it." That's the state of so many things in entertainment. It's like his foreign concept that after you put something in the market, sales are going to decrease after some time.
It's because of cost and benefit. Take _Call of Duty_ or _FIFA_ for example. Those games are annual, and usually 95% reused assets from the previous entry, yet they're sold for "full price" every year. If the game's audience naturally dies out with time, why put more effort and resources into one dying game, instead releasing a new one, with mostly reused assets, so that players' progress is reset and they have to do it all again? Scummy, greedy, sure, but it works, and I can't really blame them for doing what the system is all about.
@@fakecubed Even that's not completely true. The Simpsons, one of the longest running TV shows ever, has had a steady decline in viewership almost every single season. It was still a mega-hit pulling in over 15 million average viewers per episode per season after ten years. Yes, it probably should be cancelled by now with how far it's fallen. At this point, I think most people agree it was at least good for the first 8 seasons. If they had followed the "Oh no! Line go down a little!", so-called logic, we'd probably have lost it after season 2...When every episode was still managing "only" 24 million viewers per episode instead of 28 million in season 1.
@@custos3249 Apparently. And let's be clear, Manor Lords made LITERAL BUCKETS OF CASH, but even then it's just not good enough because he isn't charging extra for every little thing via Live Service to milk gamers out of ALL THE MONEH!
@@nickh4354 Indeed, but there's a difference between the type of "suits" that demand Profits above all else (EA, Sony, Zenimax, etc) vs those that also likely jump the asses of Devs to increase profits but don't outright require them to add shitty micro transactions and "surprise mechanics" to the game.
Yeah, ENVY clothed as ADVICE is pretty obvious to spot. And a desperate need to tell others they have to do it your way, is the weapon of the weak; those suffering from an inferiority complex.
The problem is "Early accesses" is inherently a promise that a game will be finished. And that barring disaster. You should expect that it is finished in a reasonable time frame. But as it stands "Early accesses" can mean anything from paying full price for a game that was abandoned years before it was sold. To paying to play a already finished game 3 days early. And there is absolutely no accountability on the developers part.
I disagree, you should not buy an early access game if you do not expect to be satisfied by the current offering of the game. I have bought a decent number of early access games, but every single one was one where I bought it because I liked what was on offer at the moment and was willing to pay the listed price to play it at that moment.
You're treating early access as if it's a kickstarter. If you have a kickstarter, and it met its backing targets, then they may have some responsibility to their backers to fulfil their promises. But early access is just that: early access. Development is an on-going process, and you're getting access to the game early on. But development stops for all sorts of reasons. Maybe it didn't reach its sales goals so they'd hemorrhage money if they continue development - money that they might not even have in the first place. Maybe stuff happened in the lives of the devs. Maybe they made exactly the game they planned to make, that matches their public early access goals, and it's just that YOU don't consider that a "full" game. And public early access goals isn't the same as kickstarter promises. Early access goals is just making your development plan public, but development can still stop for all sorts of reasons. If you buy a game early access, you can either do so because you like the game in its current state enough, or you can do so to support the development process. If you do the latter, you're taking the risk that the development process might just stop before the game reaches a state you're happy with. It's up to you to decide whether you're happy to take that risk. Maybe there are some devs exploiting early access to make money from a half-finished game. But that would be something for you to evaluate on a case-by-case basis to decide whether you want to support any given game or not. Whether you support or don't support a game is entirely your own choice.
@@colinhobbs7265 If I sold you a game and called it "full accesses" then gave you half the game. Would that bother you? Why? is it because "Full" has a meaning? I don't see why you should care about that meaning when you clearly don't care about the meaning of "early". Being early to something that you don't know is going to happen is not being early. Being early to something that may not even happen at all requires faith or foolishness. We could be using more accurate words to describe what is currently called "early accesses" But instead we are using a word that conveys intention that may or may not exist.
Isn’t it kinda wacky how there’s always these 2 large group of players where 1 side goes “Long/big/hard game bad. We don’t have time to play videogames. People have jobs/children” and the other side goes “Where’s content? It’s been 24 since the game launched. Where’s content? dead game. DEAD GAME!”.
@@sowianskizonierz2693 They have this idea that everything should conform to them even if they will not play it in the end. Pandering, its called and it doesn't only happen in gaming industry sadly.
@@sowianskizonierz2693 The two arguments given had literally nothing to do with harassing game devs. You’ve just added on a completely separate element as though it’s responding to anything being said.
Players certainly have no reason to care, and the developer and publisher only need to care about the total sales. If I sold a million of something, and it turned out nobody even used the thing, I'd still be pretty happy to have millions of dollars.
The players don't care about anything but getting a FUN experience for their money. When a PUBLISHER addresses a SUCCESSFUL DEV, expect to hear utter bullshit. Because right now publishers, especially AAA publishers, are EXCEPTIONALLY BITTER about the amount of risks they assume when chasing trends, and EXCEPTIONALLY ENVIOUS of devs who innovate, give the customer what they want, and PROVE that those AAA publishers ARE the CANCER that the average gamer now SEES they are. These indies are not just making more successful product at much lower assumed risk, they are winning hearts and minds; they are teaching a new generation of gamers that listening to AAA Publishers trying to TELL US WHAT TO LIKE is fairly STUPID, compared to actually using our power as the Customer - i.e. THE BOSS - and using our VOICE to tell the industry what we want - and watching indie devs quickly provide us that. AAA Publishers don't want that - they don't want an abundant and generous market that WORKS, where people get what they want. They want a scarcity market where the customer has no choice, and reaches deeper and deeper into their wallet trying to get something they can't find anywhere. TLDR: Indie is taking over, and AAA SUITS are getting more and more bitter and vocal about how much they hate it, every day.
Simple answer: it's a performance indicator that let's a suit know if their investment performs well. Rant answer: most of the people who fund games have likely not played anything more complex than candy crush. Players can argue about engines and genre and art direction for hours, but at the end of the day, a very important group of people only cares about "bigger number = better game". With that being such a big part of the industry and media, the thinking has filtered down to players.
@@freighttrain7143 I play indie games as well, but the indie side of the game industry is in arguably worse shape than AAA. A lot of indie developers have been folding lately, and they are getting hit harder by investment funding drying up.
@@freighttrain7143 Except in this case, the shade was thrown by another indie studio head and the counterargument was made by the head of Hooded Horse, who are a very successful publisher.
As a veteran of games like Kenshi, Stellaris, Starsector, Project Zomboid or Rimworld and also of games like Apex Legends, League of Legends, Warframe or Black Desert Online, all I can say is: I'd rather get one big quality update every few months, than to download 10 GBs of jackshit every week. It's basically impossible to roll out enough content to keep 95% of the players occupied until the next update. And it's OK. There's no need. If they players like your game, they'll come back when they hear a major update dropped. As for Manor Lords I bookmarked for when the devs would get a decent chunk of the game in, because, yes, atm it looks a bit barren, like the dev of The Long Dark said, but that doesn't mean I'll forget about it in half a year. Quite the contrary, I often check what state games like that are in "now", because 99.9% of all the AAA garbage is unplayable, so I don't have anything to play... or such is the case with games like Stellaris or Rimworld, I've had my week-long "binge" spree with yet another playthrough to experience all the new and old things, so it's off to another thing. On the flip side, you got games like League of Legends or Warframe where they do weekly/semiweekly update, that 99% add nothing of value or worse, ruin already existing things (because they have to change SOMETHING) and that's more infuriating than not getting any updates.
Starsector is probably the most value I've had out of any game I've ever bought. It was $15 in 2015 and I've had way more value out of it than that. It's still $15 now.
@@MareSerenitis It's not even that you have to buy it, because any CD-key works for the game and not only Sseth made his own public, the developer doesn't really mind, because all the publicity Sseth brought likely doubled or tripled the playerbase, including the paying one.
@@godleftelmo7710Helldivers problems isnt small updates with bugs, it was Sony pulling their usual shit and the devs getting bullied into identity politics. Which is something that irked a large part of the player base.
Man, If I make other people do my homework and when I hand it over to the teacher and say that I alone worked on the homework, does that really make me the only one that worked on it?
I don't expect quick updates. I just expect him to not lie about actually news articles that have been out since the first trailer. But if you bring it up that one dev will ban you on any platform he can.
Younger gamers are insane for expecting every game to have some constant stream of "new content" or be declared "dead". What does that even mean? If a game's good, it's good, just play it and enjoy it, and then move on to another one.
I wouldn't say insane, it's more not understanding just how much work goes into everything, especially 'under the hood', and being trained to expect consistant novelty with new things to gain attention, perhaps you can thank (or not) the bigger companies to setting this trend.
No, they're insane. How can something being a solid, finished product be alien to them? All these games that end up being ruined because the devs can't stop tacking shit on, why are new gamers demanding live service bullshit when it ALWAYS ends bad?
Well... in this situation, Manor Lords by no exaggeration has no content/replayability and one dev means it ain't getting finished. People are coping so hard for spending $60 on the game. Has nothing to do with live service. The base game has no content..
These call outs are just an extension of how out of touch publishers are anymore; they don't understand games, they don't understand fun, and they damn sure don't understand the customer. They only understand money and spreadsheets anymore. Don't expect them to say anything that relates to a gamer, and don't expect them to speak the truth. They prefer to lie in the direction of where they HOPE the market will devolve into, not be honest about where it is. Where it IS, is trending HEAVILY INDIE, and BOY do publishers want to DENY THAT and gaslight the shit out you if you can see that objective reality.
Stating "facts" doesn't mean you aren't lashing out, what is lashing out depends on the person hearing or reading and the person supposedly doing it Whether or not you're stating factual information has no correlation to how you're speaking, and honestly I think a LOT of people lashing out are in scenarios where they're being brutally honest, saying something they think or feel even if it's hurtful - but regardless, you can lash out and be truthful, or state facts, just as you can do so without "lashing out" and could also lash out with complete and totally made up things I'd also say lashing out is generally personal, so if someone says something while lashing out, even if you don't think it's right or true, they could think it is, which would be their truth, or a "fact" to them
I bought a game yesterday for 9EUR. I played it 3,5 hours and completed it. I did not feel cheated. It delivered on what I expected from it. I might revisit it in 2 or 3 years. It was not early-access so I'm not be expecting new content or big improvements. And I'm perfectly OK with this.
I 100% agree with the manor lord dev and seeing this response only made me further respect his work. No one should be buying a game like manor lords, specially at such obvious early stage in development, and expect it to be racing to 1.0 in a few months. I got the game, played for about 15 hours and stopped BECAUSE it was so early and it would be so heavily updated, I know I'll come back to it every year or so and the game will be a lil better every time. And the idea of the game just being forgotten because the updates were slow is just ridiculous for a game like this, what competition it has? Banished? Freaking city skylines 2? And even if they had competition, the game is like 3 months old, what good would releasing weekly major content updates really do? it's not gonna get monetized, and they won't, nor should, release a paid DLC this early in development
I wishlisted Manor Lords, bought it on release, played it just enough to confirm that the basic concept was good. Now I’m letting it bake. I like to play the finished game. The only game I’ve ever played extensively while in early access is Valheim. I’m not disappointed that Manor Lords doesn’t have more. Early. Access. I’m excited about what I have to look forward to when it’s done.
Thing is with Manor lords is the guy has made millions now, he can hire a few people now to grow his studio, so it will be slow the start with, but hopefully over time, the speed will increase bit by bit, I hope most gamers understand the need for this small incremental growth.
I stopped playing because i was just starting to immerse myself into the systems and was watching videos from people who had done the spreadsheet work. Then expectedly the systems would get tweaked and changed. So I thought to myself that i would wait and come back when I'm really hungering for that experience again. That way the systems would have more establishment time (the longer systems are in the game the more likely they don't need change).
The funny thing with Elden Ring is, the whole philosophy behind From Soft's games is that if you keep something alive forever it becomes corrupt and rotten. Everything must die and be reborn. Which is a perfect metaphor for how they do games. They don't linger trying to support a game forever. They finish a game, take what they have learned, and make something new.
I built a few villages in manor lords, and I got the victory screen after a few attempts and put it down I will probably revisit it in a year or two. But I already feel like I got my moneys worth.
I played a lot of Manor Lords when it came out, and now I'm not playing it. However, I'm not frustrated. I enjoyed playing it and I think its a nice relaxing game with a good foundation. Because of the fact that I know its in early access and has a lot more development ahead of itself I'm patiently putting it aside so that I don't burnout on it before it gets the chance to be a more complete game. And if there's any amount of mod support in the future, a lot of problems can be solved. For example if there's a lack of a proc gen map but modders/map editors can create maps, that can still lead to endless content. I don't expect any one studio to make a game with endless content, especially a tiny indie developer. Some games with small communities are still having new maps and experiences made thanks to editors over a decade later.
No, it’s abused. Some of these games spend decades in early access and it’s bullshit. This is a case by case basis. But they’ll take your money and then act picked on? I’ll support a game dev, not coddle one.
I quit mannor lords kinda quickly.~6hrs It wasnt fleshed out enough and had too many sharp edges for me to enjoy at launch but i personally gave until the end of the year to be at a more enjoyable state to be upset. I think the foundation is really good and im excited to see where it goes.
Personally, I don't even care if it takes 1 or 4 years. I just wanted to play a version of the game, now I've scratched my itch, when the game is finally done I can come back and enjoy it again.
Yeah i found it had to many fundamental issues to build a large village like houses complaining about no food when a stocked food market would have been visible from their door or how annoying the hauling stand/stable is why can't i move the animal from one stand to another. It really feels like it went to EA a bit too early
I still havent beat the game at the hardest mode (3 years to build up your army to prevent an invasion), so I continue to come back trying to beat it in that mode. It's a really good game. Basically, Banished without the amazing mods, but with invaders and raiders involved.
The thing with Manor Lords is that despite being in early access, everything just... works. So many games throw a huge amount of content in and half of it doesn't work properly. A rock solid base game that can be safely built on top of is such a good thing.
I’ve completely checked out of live service games. I realized a few years ago that i hate their format, i hate loot shooters and i hate most humans and especially hate the cash shops.
@@davidmorris6254 did i infer it was anything different? Did you read my words and for once you understood what was said? Congratulations on reading comprehension. Keep it up and you’ll be reading books instead of eating them in no time.
Yeah, live service is a drag. I realized this when I was first exposed to it playing Battlefield 5. I felt EA was telling me what game modes I should play to get the rewards that were being offered. It was that or shell out money for slop. Didn't take me long to drop that game and haven't played Battlefield since.
Yup. I like buying games, finishing those games and then moving on. I hate it when it feels like the game is trying to get me addicted to a progression cycle instead of just… delivering a quality experience for a reasonable amount of time.
The only problem with early access is that you never know if a game will ever be finished or when you can expect the next updates. I'm not buying ML until the full release.
> make an overpriced game > put it in early access or add seasonal content > effectively advertise you're going to add way more content then you possibly feasibly could in an absurdly short time frame > get shocked when people demand 'unreasonable' amounts of content - that's actually less than what you advertised > "gamers are entitled" MFW. Nice to know there's at least some dev studios out there that see how exceedingly moronic this is.
I hate that sentiment about gamers being entitled. Yes, yes we are entitled. We're entitled to get a quality, finished product that we gave you money for. This isn't us putting out our hands and demanding free things. This is us paying for a product and expecting it to perform as advertised. And in comparison to other products on the market! It isn't entitlement, it's commerce. Devs or journalists that call that "entitlement" can fuck off and get no more of my money.
helldivers 2 was imediately refunded when I was refused acess to play a game that I was playing alone, but servers couldn't take me in LOL games as a service is GARBAGE and it is nothing but corporate greed
To be fair, the game tells you up front that it's still WIP and it takes very little time to see all the WIP stickers, it doesn't obfuscate the progress, it sets in place-holders. You have plenty of time to decide if you want to own the game or get a refund. Even so, it's playable, it's casual, it's a good game if you don't want to worry about anything and just game.
This is why I don't play live service games. I refuse to treat a game like a job. I did that back in the UO/EQ days, never again. The closest I get is Satisfactory, but that's only because there's always more to do in that game and not because of some battlepass crud.
@@targard.quantumfrack6854 it’s not. I specifically said I don’t play games like a job. Which is what live service asks of a player. Satisfactory is not a live service but it has me using calculators and tools to optimize - that’s as close to a job like experience as I care to have for a game
What about the people who buy a game and it changes so much that it becomes a game they would not have bought? That is the reason I rarely play many of the early access games I've bought. The games I bought no longer exist.
That is why Early Access is a form of stupidity tax. Buyers of Early Access games deserve to get taxed for the stupid action of buying Early Access games. No need to feel concerned for them.
@aquapendulum Would you say the same thing about people who subscribe to live service games? That's a mistake I'll never make but I will continue to support interesting early access games that appeal to me, because I would prefer they exist even if the final product doesn't always appeal to me.
@@lorrygoth Not to the same extent, no. In order for a decision to be a stupid one, there has to be a clearly better decision you could make. In the case of an Early Access game, that clearly better decision is to defer purchase decision until 1.0. Buying Early Access is a pre-order of 1.0. There is no such clearly better decision to make for a live service game. Buying a live service game isn't a pre-order of its future maintenance-mode state
@aquapendulum Ok then, that is a valid argument. I still don't like being called stupid but I'm clearly doing something with a known risk of a bad result regardless of my motivations why. You have every right to think I'm stupid for it.
I miss the days when you buy a game, and it is the complete game. I played cyberpunk for the first time in 2024 after the devs had announced it is complete, and I'm sure I had a much better experience for it. I've bought the game. I've paid my money. It is in my library. I'll play it on off for years and years.
The monkey brain pursuit of the green arrow can create such a hassle. Sometimes, sustainability is just as good for a business instead of infinite growth.
This is why I'm not against EA on principle but I think that the messaging around it are problematic. You should not purchase ANYTHING in EA if you are not already comfortable that you're getting enough value for what you purchased. Consumers need to stop paying for promises made by companies who, more often than not, don't have any incentive to follow through on those promises after a successful EA launch. Also, companies need to stop trying to convince as many people as they can to buy in during EA under those auspices. It could be argued that the way that many EA campaigns are handled is predatory and there isn't really much in the way of avenues for accountability in the process. Don't buy games that aren't currently worth what you're currently paying for them.
I avoid Early Access games these day as much I can. Oft I play a game in Early Access and feel satisfied, game get a full release long after and I don't feel like playing it again as I feel I already beaten the game.
Man, I love Hooded Horse. Such a great publisher. Cannot recommend all their curated offerings enough. I own the whole library and don't regret a single purchase.
The fact that the "clarification" was "I was just looking at profitability" shows that there's a fundamental lack of understanding of a model and lifestyle that is not infinite growth, and he's not the only one. The forma mentis to merely conceive that idea is not there. And not just in this guy or the industry at large. If you enter the solo indie dev side of RU-vid, EVERYBODY talks about how to market your game, how to make your buisness plan, what numbers you "should" strive for. I was discussing/arguing with a member of another community because their stance was "I'll find a way to make the next big thing". The WHY didn't even cross their mind, they were speechless for a minute when I asked. The idea that you can make your product, sell it, move on to the next and live happily and comfortably like that didn't even cross their mind. Too many people in the western world and the US in particular are too indoctrinated and culturally fucked by corporative capitalism to even understand that not only there's a different way of doing things in this and every other industry, but that said way was more of the norm a mere 15-20 years ago.
I was in early for manor lords. I loved it, but i am not playing currently. I am not frustrated with the updates cadence. It hasn't updated fast enough for me to continue to play but i will be back for the next big update. I have done this for oni, rimworld and many others. If i don't have a paywall to come back then i will happily for every patch. If i do see a paywall then it needs a big enough update to compensate.
Drinking the capitalistic kool-aid by the gallons I see. "Audience has a right to get what they were promised and payed for" does not mean they get to micro-manage and demand how it will be done.
I do feel that the updates have not been substantial but I also realize that this is like a very small team doing this themselves essentially. I'm ok coming back to it once its updated a bit more
I think its agaisnt the agenda or narrative to push out bad games as live service. that their gimmick is the added content and skins. because the base game is really bad and not authentic/ doesnt have a sou l.
1) I put about 15 hours into Manor Lords, and stopped there. The game feels nice, but it doesn't have enough content to keep me engaged. 2) No, this is the expected norm. I'm primarily a Paradox Interactive player, so I'm fine with letting a game sit for a couple of years, while the devs make it better. For example, Victoria 3 was pretty lackluster at launch, but this year the game has hit its stride, so I'm buying DLC and playing the game with excitement. Having said that it's not a given I'll go back to a game I bought into at launch. What the developer does and says makes a big difference.
Business focused people are the bane of anything technical or artistic. Fantastic to see people who care about more than just the $ taking a stand and pushing back against the filthy corpos.
Anything taken to an extreme is bad. By the same logic its exactly the business people reigning in the creatives' bullshit that results in almost all things in life you probably enjoy.
If you ever worked on software, you'll see it's 50/50. Management does kind of hamper creativity sometimes, but if you leave artists and devs working unsupervised, with no deadline, they'll never get anything done in a realistic timetable.
A drain for your money? Certainly. Require little effort? The polar opposite. Live service games have the expectation to constantly be pumping out content, meaning devs don't get a break. You *always* need to be working on something new for that same game, whether it be 5 weeks, 5 months, or 5 years past release. It's a real brain drain and source for dev burnout.
@@GhostyOcean well, for the most part just copy pasted asset flips of new skins etc. Not really anything requiring much work. No story line, no writing. The typical season pass repetitive crap. It's probably even nothing but a tedious chore to those tasked to continue to work on the game.
I have about 500 hours in Satisfactory single player, and that game isn't fully out for the next 60 days. It has been in early access/development for like 5 or 8 years now, and during that time it had like 8 big content updates. It doesn't need to be a live service game, it almost can't be one, but sometimes I'd like to give the devs even more money because of the amazing work they've done.
You cant really compare Valhiem in all this. Players didnt want Valhiem to be a live service game, they wanted the devs to finish making the game. To this day the game is incomplete in terms of content and its original roadmap (that they deleted) is years overdue. People were angry because they loved the game and were dissapionted by the slow dev speed considering the massive monetary succes it had. That game couldve been the next minecraft or terraria.
An excellent game that stalls out; it was not ready for early access, as there is little to no new content to keep interest. This is a must for EA, or you sell your product short. It feels like, at most, a 20-buck game, but given its features, it sure is pretty.
There is a big difference between live service games and early access. Early access games owe the community a released product with all the features promised - that is what they paid for. The success might be great, but they still need to develop the game. Now, the live service scourge really needs to die. Put out a polished product then move on to the next.
I’ve got over 200hrs with Manor Lords and enjoy it on an almost daily basis. There are times where I feel burnout, but then something else inspires me to play. It’s a wonderful slow burning game that you can start/stop without too much confusion. Super excited about the new patch soon to be released… love the game and everyone involved in it deserves nothing but the highest accolades. ❤
I'd say stronghold was more "an RTS with city-building/economic elements" while Manor Lords is more "a city-builder with RTS elements," but I do love both games. Also it's kind of funny that you say stronghold 2, since the actual stronghold 2 tried to expand on the economics of stronghold and that's what most people don't like about it (personally I mostly liked 2, it was 3 that really dropped the ball).
@@alekssavic1154 True I mean look at stronghold crusader The best experence i feel like the mix of the 2 elements makes it the best one you cant just build overly simple economy like age of empires but it doesnt take up the entire game
@Ladyjuliet-uv5qt personally I love a good economic management game, so for me Manor Lords is perfect (although I do hope we get the tools to build proper castles sooner rather than later) and I always liked Stronghold 1 more than Crusader (although both are great games, and Crusader is closer to a more conventional RTS so I completely understand why a lot of people prefer it).
This is a problem 100% of the publishers' making. Release FULLY COMPLETE games that have been fully tested. Make it clear the game is complete and will receive no updates or dlc. There you go. But we all know that will never happen
Manor Lords is goated. Single developer, basically fully playable on Early access release, 250k sales in last month, 8 hours average playtime per player, sick graphics and systems with so much potential...
I own a couple of city survival sim games that are in early access. Every 6 months or so I will dust one off and run through and see what has changed. I beat manor lords in the first few days and haven't played it since however I am engaged in the community and I read all of the updates. Once the game goes full release or another 6 months or so(which ever comes first) I will dust it off and run through it once or twice. Then I will put it away and wait another 6 months.
Yeah, even though I'm not currently playing it, I am a happy customer (haven't reviewed it yet, but if I do it'll be a positive review) and I check on the Steam forum every few days or so just to see what people are saying about it. My attention isn't going anywhere, and I will be back for the next big patch to put dozens of more hours into it. Then again, and again, and again, all the way until release when I'll play it for however long it takes to get my satisfaction out of it.
Counter point, you don't get to release in early access and then just STOP. You didn't publish a finished game, you published a paid demo. the expectations are different.
You can't compare Manor Lords to HD2. HD2 released at full price as a "feature complete" game (lol) that also had a DEVELOPER PLANNED live-service side to it. The current disastrous state of that game is nothing like Manor Lords, which is simply an EA game going through its "EA-to-1.0" pipeline.
What bothers me about the HD2 situation is they tweaked the game mechanics and enemy spawn rates too much. Turned it into a game I wasn't very interested in anymore sadly.
This reminds me of a game I played called "of orc and men" I played it over a weekend and finished it, got both endings, and had a great time. Didn't have any pain points, just a nice self-contained little story. And then moved on
I'm just going to buy Manor Lords in whatever state it's in when it's finished. I hate the effect that early access publishing has on the ability for developers to make the game they want to make, the way it creates absurd, contradictory, unsatisfiable expectations and then claims a game to be a failure if it never does what it was never initially supposed to do.
He cooked and he delivered. TIm Bender said absolutely nothing wrong lol. The industry is rotten. Palworld Dev had the same mindset. Good games are born like this.
Sadly palworld is probably going to go the way of slopdivers pretty soon. they just recently got into a partnership with sony and their subsidiary company aniplex. shaking hands with the devil wont end well.
It would make absolutely no sense for a single player early access game to judge its success based on the number of concurrent players. But even if we did judge it on that the fact that the game is so early in developmemt but still has around 6,000 players is a testament to how great it is.
well then don't sell things if the game isn't complete and you don't want to deal with player demands for regular updates. Its not the job of customers to sympathize and care about the difficulties that developers have. This is another reason why I never understood people who celebrate a game when it has been made by just one person or a few people. That isn't a good thing. Sure its very admirable that a single person managed to create something by themselves. But that isn't an excuse for it being buggy or lacking features, not unless you are selling it for a few dollars.
You're not going to find a game made by a single or few people selling for AAA game prices. And you'll probably find less bugs in the smaller game, because AAA doesn't understand how to combat scope creep.
I considered buying all 3 of the games you mentioned and decided to buy none of them due to concerns of various kinds(mostly EA purchasing being a risk). I feel vindicated having seen the HD2 drama and how barebones manor lords are that skipping them was a good choice.
I think they'll get HD2 back on track. The Jungle planet is neat, and it seems they're refocusing away from monthly warbonds. Seems that monthly cadence wasn't sustainable or realistic.
The 5 secondattention span idiots were never actually there or of any value anyways. Stop trying to keep them, they would just get distracted by the next loud noise
So, what rubs me the wrong way in gamedevelopment is, that a lot of devs compare todays expectations and industry practices to the standard of 10-20 years ago. So when you release an early access game then yes, I do think I expect regular updates as the game has released in a clearly marked, unfinished state. If your game is finished, it's finished and i go in with a completely different expectation. But nowadays the standard is that every game is effectively an early access game as it's not just used, but abused to justify publishing a title way before it should be and charging, in most cases, full price for it with AAA just leaving the early access away and release a game that is mostly broken when it comes to behemoths like EA, Ubisoft etc. And, without any regulation to what is and isn't allowed or exploitation, the Industry is encouraged to resort to this predatory practices that burns out players and devs alike since the input can be minimized while earning revenue as early as possible and, if they feel the product does not yield the return they feel like, as in the case of KSP2, they can just stop investing in the game without repercussions. And with devs just being discarded after they've been chewed through.
Early access, means just that. I don't expect to see a bunch fo new content unit maybe a year after early access starts. For many companies the early access launch is where a lot of devs get the main chunck of their funding to expand the team, and start making that new content. If you want a regular cadence of content, buy a finished game. Early access games are meant to be played until yourun out of content, and then you take a break and play other things, then you come back in a year or whatever and play it again with that new content. This doesn't even take into account that not every game is trying to be a Live Service Forever Game trying to suck every moment of a players time and gaming dollars. If you buy an early access game expecting a regular flow of content, you kinda missed the point of an early access launch in the first place, and if it makes you angry, then you should WAIT until full release because it sounds like early access is not for you. (This does not apply when it's a huge publisher doing early access though, like Ubisoft, or 2K, etc.)
I fail to see the difference between early access and live service Actually i see them being more of an scam for especially devs just doesn't giving a damn to finish it taking decades to finish anything if just dropping it and running away
Early Access was originally supposed to be for beta testing purposes, not funding. So Early Access is now putting the onus on customers to fund games...
@@lycanwarrior2137 , Yeah, and then it became the new type of crowdfunding when things like Go Fund Me turned into a shitshow. What it started as, and what is is NOW are different.
The problem is that consumers don't have access to the information they need in order to make an informed purchasing decision. Therefore, developers are able to take advantage of the expectations that games in early access will be updated regularly (not an unreasonable expectation given that these games sell for full price).
Dev here, the smaller the team, the faster your turnaround. Larger teams have a lot more sluggish processes and limitations, but can do more grander scope things of course.
People shouldn’t expect quick updates with this game. It’s literally one dude. I got 20 hours out of the game in its current state and for what it’s worth I had a great time with it and am incredibly excited to see this game develop a little bit more. Whether that’s 6 months from now or 4 years from now I’ll still revisit it because it’s a cool concept and it’s one guys project and it has a lot of great ideas and hopefully will continue to grow into an even better game.
You're telling me that the _publisher_ in this situation is the one saying "not everything needs to grow infinitely and make all the money ever printed"? That's wild.
If you have too many devs in any studio or company, you should fire them. An overly high head count is bad for every aspect of your product, from quality to accountability to vision. The whole thing suffers when you have more people than you need to get the job done. Expand and shrink as needed.
This reminds me of when RDR2 came out, and a bunch of people started saying that it would be the new standard for open world games, and ompanies who failed to meet that standard were just proving their laziness, when it took over a decade of work and almost destroyed one of the largest gaming companies in the world. People expect too much out of developers.
See, this is where a game like NMS is really impressive. They've really only done 1 or 2 "major" updates, and I think even those were only "major" on the surface. The vast majority of updates for NMS have actually been pretty small. They generally focus on adding one new feature or updating one old one. Or, it's an addition/change to the algorithm that is small in nature, but has a big impact. The thing is, over time, they've added up creating what feels like a huge impact despite really just being a bunch of little ones.
I did drop out of Lethal Company. It’s hard to getting a crew together every time. However, we’ll probably be coming back for next update. It’s fine to wait, I’ve been playing other stuff anyway.
Both are right and the difference is okay. I as a player rather come back later with a substantial update of features instead of slowly exploring one thing at a time. It depends on players and both ways will work. Its fine
Early Access is really a double edged sword. It gives small studios a boost in income to hopefully finish the product, but usually the product provided at early access has a very limited amount of content which means users get burned out on the existing content waiting on more. By the time the game releases, they will have started playing something else. Especially online multiplayer games.
i honestly just think the trend culture of a game being popular for a week and then falling off is the problem. it leads to the live service pressure and honeslty everyone throwing out games as soon as they stop being popular feels really toxic to me. idk. feels like most big games only really have temporary fans at this point.
My reality as someone with 500+ games is that i can sit here and play whatever i like and something else will get an update in the meantime no matter how much i play. Im fine waiting half a year to a year between every time i play Stoneshard, but at least the new content looks absolutely fantastic.
A game that tries to be super successful no matter what often ends up being a game for everyone, and a game for noone in particular. I'm a huge fan of Dishonored and I remember both Dishonored games being criticized for underwhelming sales, but people whose tastes the games applied to were absolutely in love with them. I'd never have an experience like this if the devs were trying to please everyone.
I've bought 3 games early access each one for under $30. Medieval Dynasty, Satisfactory, and Manor Lords. I knew exactly what I was getting and still play all 3. Can't say the same for the $70 games I've bought
I have multiple pending early access games in my library that i played, was happy with how they performed, then uninstalled and decided to come back a year later to see what changed. I have too many non-game things to keep track of to worry about a single games updates. But I do have few enough games to remember and come back. I check for updates on all the early access stuff once a month, I mostly very quickly read the change log. No worries from me.
The drive to immediately update the game is the reason why Starsector is not on steam. Starsector only updates like once a year, but its players are ever loyal. I go back to it once a year when an update drops. If the game is good enough players comeback even if the update takes awhile to drop.
