Another release move needed?

[SharraShimada]

Judging from the actual gameplay, with all its issues, besides tons of new, and recuring old bugs, i would strongly suggest to move the release date even further into the future. 

Dont get me wrong. The release preview is a basic masterpiece when it comes to the new additions to the game. 

But i doubt, they can fix all issues in just a month. The majority of the bugs could be fixed, but due to the new added mechanis, there is so much work needed.

@Klei please take your time, if you need it. You´re doing an amazing job, and bugs are natural. I would hate to see the rating on Steam going south, because you release the game with too many problems. People are jugding a game on Steam based on reviews. And this game deserve it to be a "overwehlimg positive" release. Even if this means the final version 1.0 will be released in august or septemeber. 

Please release it only, if you are confident, this is what you want to present as final.

 

[EnderCN]

The release is just an arbitrary term at this point.  Everyone who is really excited about the game has it and is playing the launch beta.  The day they officially release the game is just a date that gets recorded with no real meaning. They can release tomorrow or they can hold the game back 2 more months and nothing really changes.

[SakuraKoi]

"One bug is already ten too many."

If you live by this credo and become a game developer you not only can but will go insane. Even if you stay as a consumer, being unable to discern how much impact a game's bugs really have (quantity+severity+occurrence) will be of no merit for you.

ONI has bugs, many of them but all minor and rare. If they are able to fix the new bugs to the degree they previously did, ONI is certainly ready for release.

If the reception is not "Overwhelmingly Positive" then there are other causes for indeed many don't just don't recommend a game due to rare minor bugs.

The reason by the by why it is ready for release is soon is due to them simply adding actual replay value plus a victory condition, that is what was keeping it from release. Up until the last update, it was just a very sophisticated survival sandbox, in the same sandbox. 4 primary subworlds (Sandstone+Marsh+Jungle+Frozen) become 8 with launch.

Biomes or rather subworld variations also increased by nearly 3 times, 37 biomes there are now in use, 14 (17) it were previously.

11 total subworlds were only 4 originally* (Sandstone+Marsh+Jungle+Magma, first came Frozen, then Oil, then SurfaceSpace, then the 4 new of which one is not even counted for being so barren).

*while I played very early and know a lot, I do not know (for I have yet to hear) if maybe and actually Jungle or Marsh were also not there since the beginning.

In any event, they are sly and have yet to announce a day in July so they have possibly the longest Beta Branch testing phase now. Well, Satisfactory also has an "End of June" update announced, to be on the 2nd July, today, calling it still end of June for a wrong reason (obviously, if it is the 2nd somewhere, no one is on the end of the month in whatever time zone)

[Cairath]

Of course such forum thread won't influence business decisions of a company. They're big boys and gals, they know what's best for them. They needed to move the release from May so they moved it. They'll do what they see fit, trust them

[Uani_Play]

6 hours ago, EnderCN said:

The release is just an arbitrary term at this point.  Everyone who is really excited about the game has it and is playing the launch beta.  The day they officially release the game is just a date that gets recorded with no real meaning. They can release tomorrow or they can hold the game back 2 more months and nothing really changes.

Some people can't even play the launch beta atm.. The game crashes out completely on 2/3 of my computers! They may need more time!

[Cairath]

25 minutes ago, Uani_Play said:

Some people can't even play the launch beta atm.. The game crashes out completely on 2/3 of my computers! They may need more time!

Did you post crash logs to the bug tracker? It may be the same silly error happening for all we know.

[ToiDiaeRaRIsuOy]

Usually Klei is very quick with getting rid of crashes, glitches, memory leaks. That's the first line of bugs and I'm not at all worried those will be fixed within a week.

Other bugs might take longer. We'll see.

[SamLogan]

Quote

Please release it only, if you are confident, this is what you want to present as final.

They always do that with all their games so no worries.

[ToiDiaeRaRIsuOy]

I am very thankful for Klei doing this preview branch. Just look at They Are Billions, a game released in an unpolished state with quite a lot of bugs. Reviews tumbled from very positive in Early Access to mixed at launch (meaning reviews were mostly negative at launch).

Like @SamLogan said, no worries. We just need some faith in Klei.

[SharraShimada]

7 hours ago, EnderCN said:

The release is just an arbitrary term at this point.  Everyone who is really excited about the game has it and is playing the launch beta.  The day they officially release the game is just a date that gets recorded with no real meaning. They can release tomorrow or they can hold the game back 2 more months and nothing really changes.

I dont agree. The launch date is the time when the game is marked as complete, good running and with everything in it. 

At this point, everyone interested in this game, but not interested in participating in early access, will jump on the game. And then they will post angry reviews because of bugs, glitches, weird mechanics and so on.

ATM there are 97% very postive reviews. This will change, it the game is declared final, and its obvously not. And thats nothing the game, and definitly not Klei deserve. 

Gamers are unfair judges. Thats the hard truth. 

[ToiDiaeRaRIsuOy]

Just now, SharraShimada said:

I dont agree. The launch date is the time when the game is marked as complete, good running and with everything in it. 

At this point, everyone interested in this game, but not interested in participating in early access, will jump on the game. And then they will post angry reviews because of bugs, glitches, weird mechanics and so on.

ATM there are 97% very postive reviews. This will change, it the game is declared final, and its obvously not. And thats nothing the game, and definitly not Klei deserve. 

Gamers are unfair judges. Thats the hard truth. 

But it is not declared final, that is the point. The timeline is now for a release at the end of this month, but Klei already showed they delay things should they not feel comfortable with what they have.

I do agree the moment of launch is vital. It will be there to attract new players.

[DarkMaster13]

The official release is also a good time for people to get into the game by word of mouth.  Personally I've really enjoyed the game, but couldn't recommend purchasing it to anyone who wasn't super into this sort of thing because it felt unfinished.  ONI wasn't quite there yet with the last update.  I think it will be with the launch update, assuming that all the assets are finished and the bugs and balance issues are addressed.  New maps and biomes were needed.  Unfortunately, adding new features right before release is almost always a recipe for disaster.  So further extensions to the date would not surprise me in the least.

[miauly]

1 hour ago, Cairath said:

Did you post crash logs to the bug tracker? It may be the same silly error happening for all we know.

If there would be a way to post crash logs. For me the in-game button did not work, and I couldn't find anything useful anywhere in all the folders. Output log file was covering the timeframe, but had no errors or traces in it for all 5 crashes that happened. 

[Cairath]

They still have a month til July ends, ya'll should stop panicking.

 

1 minute ago, miauly said:

If there would be a way to post crash logs. For me the in-game button did not work, and I couldn't find anything useful anywhere in all the folders. Output log file was covering the timeframe, but had no errors or traces in it for all 5 crashes that happened. 

Output log resets when you open the game again. Path: C:\Users\<username>\AppData\LocalLow\Klei\Oxygen Not Included\output_log.txt

So you have to grab it before you restart the game. I've yet to see a crash without leaving a trace there. If you're sure there's nothing in there, just upload it anyway alongside the crashing save and it's just as helpful because the devs will be able to debug it.

[EnderCN]

I will step back my statement a little bit.  The official release is the point at which they take all the tracking stuff down from the client.  It does make it harder to fix the game in release and people expect a little more.  But still for us playing now we are basically playing the release.  It is like an open beta before a game releases, the open beta is basically the release point.

[Greybear]

There are many things to consider before releasing a game - management, economics and administration besides the actual game itself - and I have no idea how any of these affect ONI. But as a game designer only looking at the gameplay, I would tend to agree with the OP. There are so many systems in this game that feels half-finished - the duplicate AI, controlled by the horrible task system, that sends them running miles to deliver small packages to the further storage bins and so forth. The temperature system is neither intuitive, easy to manage or realistic, making it an invasive and infuriating game element for many players. There are tons of subsystems that don't feel well integrated, and they just added a lot of new stuff, instead of focusing on stability and coherence. When comparing to something like Factorio, this game seems rushed. But it is also a different game, with a different focus.

Now, I don't think these basic systems will be changed - sunk cost fallacy and time issues will probably mean that the game won't change too much as this point. You can't make a game perfect for everyone, and at some point, you have to stop. We had a saying at my old game lab: "You don't finish games. At some point, you just stop working on them."

Will I give it a positive review? Probably. But with lots of caveats. I don't know how other EA players will react, but some might give it a negative review because of frustrating features never got fixed, or something they felt is lacking from the base game. How will new players react? No idea.

[Lurve]

There may be a little talking past each other.  For most Early Access shovelware these days, full release implies abandonment.  It says "we're writing off this game and are never going to update it again.  Any remaining bugs are now features." 

I don't expect that to be the case with ONI, but post-release support is (unfortunately) no longer an assumption in the game industry, and long-term plans may need to be communicated more explicitly to new users who aren't already lurking on these forums.

[Greybear]

7 minutes ago, Lurve said:

There may be a little talking past each other.  For most Early Access shovelware these days, full release implies abandonment.  It says "we're writing off this game and are never going to update it again.  Any remaining bugs are now features." 

I don't expect that to be the case with ONI, but post-release support is (unfortunately) no longer an assumption in the game industry, and long-term plans may need to be communicated more explicitly to new users who aren't already lurking on these forums.

I fully expect Klei, like most decent game companies, to support the game after launch - but I don't expect they'll make big changes. And the release day still means a lot marketing-wise - just look at They Are Billions for a recent example if what a release date can mean for a game, even if the developers are still supporting the title. I personally mostly review titles when they are released - and I gave They Are Billion a negative review.

[Sasza22]

Usually updates were adding more content. Now we got most of the content finalized (i`m not sure if the datamined stuff makes it). They can now focus on fixing the broken stuff without worrying there`s new things added on top of it. I think they got enough time. But lets wait. If 3 weeks from now stuff is still broken and balance all over the place then we can start panicing.

[Nightinggale]

Yes there are some "can't release without fixing this" (particularly crashes), but let them work for a week on the serious issues and the game will likely look better. I'm not worried about the severe issues right now.

What I'm actually the most worried about is actually the unknown rather than all the known stuff on the bug tracker. I'm sure Klei will evaluate every single bugreport posted since the test branch was released and they mark each "must fix" and will fix them prior to release. However if they fix them at the last moment, the fixes won't get a proper playtest prior to release. This means there is a risk of fixes introducing new bugs. This is a more likely source of nasty bugs in the release than not fixing nasty bugs already on the bug tracker.

Another concern is the lack of a modding tutorial. Since we (the modders) still don't know how to use the new modding tools, we can't test them. Granted it's not game breaking, but I would argue that it's a bit farfetched to ship with "official modding support" if the modding tools haven't been tested. Also it would be nice if we could start to look into getting the mods ready for release day.

[Oozinator]

Pitcher pump cooling is fixed now, or not?

[Rainbowdesign]

The release is NOT just an arbitrary term at this point. 

It is a point where reviews of all kind orient themselves on, most magazines will only write about a game once or twice one at ea one at release.

If there are many bugs and glitches they certainly will comment on it and lower the score.

Lower score means less people getting interested.

Less people getting interested means less money for the devs.

Less money for the devs could mean less money invested in development, less new features and maybe even early abandonment in harsh cases.

I think it is critical to have it really FINISHED at release not only halfbaked.

i got the feeling after looking at the oddities Klei avoids messing with the Ai maybe they are afraid of ai and pathfinding.

[mathmanican]

27 minutes ago, Oozinator said:

Pitcher pump cooling is fixed now, or not?

 

Contents are "insulated" so the heat leak is much less. It's still there, but not as exploitable, from what I've read.  I haven't played with it yet, but will at some point.  The others, namely liquid duplication and matter conversion, are not fixed. In fact, the oxyfern allows for quite a serious abuse of matter conversion that results in a huge amount of gaseous matter duplication, but the limited seed count prevents horrendous abuse (otherwise you would have seen me post about it). The liquid bead pump's ability to capture 5kg/s CO2 beats any abuse of oxyferns, so no worries there. 

[Nightinggale]

3 minutes ago, Rainbowdesign said:

If there are many bugs and glitches they certainly will comment on it and lower the score.

Lower score means less people getting interested.

Less people getting interested means less money for the devs.

Less money for the devs could mean less money invested in development, less new features and maybe even early abandonment in harsh cases.

I agree with this statement. However I assume ONI is in a bugfixing phase with multiple bugs fixed daily until the release. This means I'm not at the point where I'm concerned with the present set of bugs. I might become concerned as time passes, but at the moment I will wait and see how much is fixed prior to release.

I do agree that there shouldn't be obvoius bugs in a release since the release is what most reviews are based on.

5 minutes ago, Rainbowdesign said:

i got the feeling after looking at the oddities Klei avoids messing with the Ai maybe they are afraid of ai and pathfinding.

Pathfinding is often one of the really hard parts to get right in a game and many skilled programmers have issues with pathfinding. However sadly it's also one of those cases where shortcomings can becomes really visible.

[KittenIsAGeek]

10 hours ago, Uani_Play said:

Some people can't even play the launch beta atm.. The game crashes out completely on 2/3 of my computers! They may need more time!

That's strange. I've played on multiple machines running multiple different operating systems, all without any crashes.