Too many betas; AI War for the masses.

[LordSloth]

I hang around a lot at the something awful forums, and I often hear a variation of the following refrain, which is common but not predominant.

Thanks for the summary! This is a "career game" for me that I come back to every 3 or 4 months, only to find something new and unexpected. I visit Arcen's forums pretty often but don't always follow the high-level discussion, and as a 7/7 player, this looks to be a pretty big set of changes! I wonder how they intend to communicate this to returning players who have a certain set of expectations (and who don't read the blog posts or visit the forums).

This has lead me to question the release cycle of nothing but betas between official releases, making things a little inaccessible to the general crowd, especially since I consider some of the current updates so fantastic I'm not interested in keeping a copy of 6.000 around for general commentary and introducing new/lapsed players. In addition, we've been discussing some truly sweeping new changes, from hacking to resource consolidation, etc.

I speculate we're reaching the point (within 1-4 updates, maybe even zero once i finish my 6.018 game and try out 6.019), where the beta should be split off from the official/stable release, to promote accessibility. I'd happily keep a copy of 6.019 on hand for non-veteran co-op games, and yet playtest all the future 6.020 and onward versions. Among other things, this would encourage me to finish writing my "Goon Guide to AI War co-op", and provide a convenient access point for all those people busy with college and the like. A stress-tested update that isn't beta would be a huge aid to managing the expectations of less frequent players, and make it easier to get non-arcen community games going without instituting a mandatory lecture for each new player. The steam goon group has a few stalwarts, but a lot more lapsed players. If we get an 8 player game going, I can only expect 4-5 people to know what they're doing. Being able to bring those 3-4 occasional players up to standard would make planning and also substitutions go much easier.

Thank you. Thoughts?

[keith.lamothe]

Practice for the last few years has been to do an official when we do the official release of a new expansion.

The stuff in the current betas needs a lot more balance work, at the least, before it could be made into an official.  I also need to go back over the tutorial. That will become more pronounced if/when we do the new hacking changes, etc.

Shorter official cycles generally means we have to hold back on the bigger changes as there isn't enough time to get proper balance feedback and iteration, etc.

Generally speaking for "returning players" we try to provide sufficient info through the official release notes if they really want to know what changed and why; other than that there's the updated tutorial and updated in-game text (despite appearances, I do try to keep unit text up to date).

[TechSY730]

A more frequent official release cycle may be more accessible for newer players and not "hardcore", forum "lurking" players.
However, the manpower needed to push an official release is very high. So much so, even the benefit of more frequent releases may not be enough to justify the costs for the devs, especially now that they have several other projects going.

[chemical_art]

Game is a mess right now, I agree.

So the last you want to do is make it official.

[TechSY730]

I do kind of see where the OP is coming from. It would be nice if the next official release could be a "polish" release instead of a new feature release where those new features could introduce as many balance problems as the polishing work for the existing stuff fixed. (See, well, that last expansion and to a lesser extend the one before that).

Aka, maybe there should be a feature "freeze" soon-ish and then focus on getting everything already there in a good state. Preferably before work on the next expansion.

But I understand you guys have only so much man power and a schedule you need to keep, so this might not be viable.

[LordSloth]

Game is a mess right now, I agree.

So the last you want to do is make it official.

I completely disagree on the first point. From an entry level point of view, what is wrong with the current implementation of AI War? On the second point, I agree about the issues brought up about making an update official - ESPECIALLY in today's world of steam auto-updates and having to push patches through to various other digital distributors without auto-updates. The problem is, there is no middle ground between the 'official', the tested new changes, and the bleeding edge. The benefits of the in-game updater are fantastic- but the downside is that there is no easy way to recommend to a new player - "Grab patch X, patch X+1 adds nuclear trains and you're not ready for that yet." If you look at Dredmor and Drox, they release both beta and 'official' patches that still have bugs and issues to them. Take a step away from the official community here, and most people are used to a division of three stages; release, tested patch, and bleeding edge. Arcen's bleeding edge is a lot more stable and reliable than any studio I can think of, but there's no way for a player to get an updated version without the blood still dripping fresh from the wounds of the AI and 10/10 players. Putting aside Arcen's (generally superior) method of doing things, people are used to more rough edges on their patches than your definition of official would allow.

There are plenty of concerns in balance for pro players, and there are serious concerns about updating the tutorial in the days of Steam automatically and silently pushing them through, as well as the distribution. Rolling this out silently or bringing everything to that standard would a burden, but that's not really what I'm asking for. I'm aiming for something in-between.

But I'm arguing that for the 'career' players, the current version is much better than 6.000, and that the accessibility of the 'bleeding edge' will take a sudden drop when an entire resource is ripped out, and infrequent players without much time will get horribly lost, and the strategic questions will change, not just the details of the answers.

The balance is almost perfect right now for a semi-casual 7/7 co-op game. There should be less stalling due to reinforcements, special forces are no longer out of control, Dark Spire could take over the universe... from the point of difficulty curve and accessibility, the current version is much less of a 'mess' than 6.000, although I'm loathe to call 6.000 a mess, the patrols were insane.

Putting aside entirely real developer concerns, the major reservations I have about this as a consumer are 1). I don't know Arcen's roadmap. 2). We have rather major discussions going on, from questions of balance to removal of mechanics (armor as a value) to the merger of crystal and metal with the promotion of hacking. 3) When things hit a weekly cycle it is impossible to keep casual co-op groups up to date without burning out on a). explaining things b). organizing people's schedules c). keeping an eye out for the couple of players who inevitably forget to raid a warp gate next to their HW.

The current system has worked fine for things as they are now... however, new expansions, new balance, and new features are one thing. Removing crystal, promoting hacking, changing armor to a binary mechanic, and to a much lesser extent, reducing knowledge and aip scale are the sort of thing that put the bleeding into bleeding edge.

They may even continue to be fine. But with everything on the horizon, I figured I should raise my concern even if I'm not certain about it or figured out all the details of it, especially since I don't now about the timeframe we are looking at for the next AI War expansion will leave us with weekly updates or whether the two entirely new games will divert resources and leave us with the equivalent of patrol overspending by a factor of ten for a few months, except revolving around core economy.

I'm confident Arcen can manage the release schedule and updates, but I wouldn't feel very responsible if I didn't voice my concern.

[TechSY730]

Ah I get it. I guess getting a new "official" version out before major refactoring starts may be a good idea. If for no other reason than giving players a good "rollback" point to avoid the rather long-lasting balance "turbulence"/"upheaval" that these major refactoring are almost assured to generate.

[chemical_art]

I'm going to have to disagree. We have had plenty, plenty of new things who have not been bugged out yet. The lazy AI, the new starships changes both need some time to settle in. These things are messy enough to mess with balance, but in the big picture to take the time to write up

In addition, we have plenty of things in the pipeline. Hacking, Armor, and nebula changes are all coming down the pipeline in one way or another. These all will need to be tested out before released.

I don't see how, fundamentally, a new official release is going to make things easier. I'd rather they have time to settle out, with fundamentally new things added like hacking, before we go ahead and make another release. But that is just me.

Just look at the hotfixing bugs that are still turning up. It would be silly to release an official patch now. Official changes as you pointed out need to be rock solid, and I don't feel AI War is right now.

[TechSY730]

I'm going to have to disagree. We have had plenty, plenty of new things who have not been bugged out yet. The lazy AI, the new starships changes both need some time to settle in. These things are messy enough to mess with balance, but in the big picture to take the time to write up

In addition, we have plenty of things in the pipeline. Hacking, Armor, and nebula changes are all coming down the pipeline in one way or another. These all will need to be tested out before released.

I don't see how, fundamentally, a new official release is going to make things easier. I'd rather they have time to settle out, with fundamentally new things added like hacking, before we go ahead and make another release. But that is just me.

Just look at the hotfixing bugs that are still turning up. It would be silly to release an official patch now. Official changes as you pointed out need to be rock solid, and I don't feel AI War is right now.

Not now of course. This version is not ready. What I mean is "gearing up" for an official (which implies balance, polish, etc) for the current set of features/mechanics, before "ripping out" core aspects of the game.

Yes, this would delay the start of the work on crystal, armor, etc stuff for several more weeks while the current set of stuff gets "polished". But it might be worth it for the reasons I mentioned above (a "rollback" point)

[chemical_art]

I'm going to have to disagree. We have had plenty, plenty of new things who have not been bugged out yet. The lazy AI, the new starships changes both need some time to settle in. These things are messy enough to mess with balance, but in the big picture to take the time to write up

In addition, we have plenty of things in the pipeline. Hacking, Armor, and nebula changes are all coming down the pipeline in one way or another. These all will need to be tested out before released.

I don't see how, fundamentally, a new official release is going to make things easier. I'd rather they have time to settle out, with fundamentally new things added like hacking, before we go ahead and make another release. But that is just me.

Just look at the hotfixing bugs that are still turning up. It would be silly to release an official patch now. Official changes as you pointed out need to be rock solid, and I don't feel AI War is right now.

Not now of course. This version is not ready. What I mean is "gearing up" for an official (which implies balance, polish, etc) for the current set of features/mechanics, before "ripping out" core aspects of the game.

Yes, this would delay the start of the work on crystal, armor, etc stuff for several more weeks while the current set of stuff gets "polished". But it might be worth it for the reasons I mentioned above (a "rollback" point)

For me though, it seems inefficient. A TON of polish is going to into these things after ripping them out. Why get the game cleaned up when it is going to a mess very soon again? There is no precedent for it. We went through 4.0 days with a lot more pain just fine.

[keith.lamothe]

I'm not sure if the 4.0 days qualify as just fine, and 4.0 was the most messed-up 'official' we ever had (during my time here), but 5.0 hit fairly soon after that.  It was a mess too, but not as bad.  6.0 felt a lot better than 5.0 in terms of cleanliness, though even it had some regrettable ones slip through.

[TechSY730]

I think the reason we got through the "4.0 hiatus" just fine with little "complaint" is that the last SlimDX 3.x version (even though it was beta) was very, very solid. Not perfect, but good enough that it probably could of been an official.

I guess we are asking for a similarly solid version before similarly huge changes are made. (Granted, while huge, the changes still won't be as huge or "painful" as the 3.0 -> 4.0 was, but it will be "painful" nonetheless).

[LordSloth]

In addition, we have plenty of things in the pipeline. Hacking, Armor, and nebula changes are all coming down the pipeline in one way or another. These all will need to be tested out before released.

I don't see how, fundamentally, a new official release is going to make things easier. I'd rather they have time to settle out, with fundamentally new things added like hacking, before we go ahead and make another release. But that is just me.
Oh certainly. I'm not certain that 6.019 is the perfect version, and why I was thinking in possibly a month's timeframe, with lots of room for Arcen to arrange things to their suiting and their schedule.

Just look at the hotfixing bugs that are still turning up. It would be silly to release an official patch now. Official changes as you pointed out need to be rock solid, and I don't feel AI War is right now.

And this is where we disagree. There is room in an official release cycle for something less than rock solid, and unstable for Arcen is something that many development studios only dream of..

 Making this a full official release does introduce complications, but the goal of not fragmenting 'players giving beta feedback' from 'players who want to play co-op' is what I'm worried about. I'm not certain what the answer is, but I am worried that the existing cycles of updates will kill some non-official AI co-op communities. For a time in my community, I could easily get twelve different people to show up on a weekly basis, but only I was capable of hosting. I've managed to to find another person capable of hosting, but community has been dead for a couple weeks. Getting everyone on the same page is a serious concern, even when we're not dealing with people who haven't even checked the tutorial (more common than you'd think, unfortunately).

Anyways, I'm glad for your feedback, since my perspective is limited to only two communities, and one of them might be withering for entirely unrelated reasons. That said, I'm more interested in getting feedback related to the 'community' and co-op perspective. I can easily get plenty of sp feedback and balance, getting that same feedback on multiplayer gameplay isn't something I can do as often anymore for various reasons (including sleep and exhaustion).

Ultimately, a lot of my bewilderment is simply due to the fact that as a consumer, I have no idea how development will be affected with so many projects on Arcen's hands right now. Keith's and Chris' confidence goes a long way towards my own confidence, but only if I've shared my opinion and worries in the first place. I'm not aware of any indie studio handling nearly as many projects simultaneously, so I don't have any baseline for comparison.

[Hearteater]

I'm nearly certain Chris and Keith have access to a machine that doubles the number of hours in a day.  If you compare the amount of work output on any given day you'll see it is simply impossible with normal humans.  Unless they are the AI, and they are using us to find all the strategies we'd use against them!

[Kahuna]

Game is a mess right now, I agree.

How exactly is AI War a mess? It seems to me that Ancient Shadows is a mess but other than that.. how?