release When should Xenonauts 2 be released?

[ooey]

On 11/12/2020 at 5:39 AM, StellarRat said:

You neglected the the choice:  When it's ready.

The original Xenonauts was not released when it was ready. Rather it was released nearly ready, but that was good enough. Refinements were made after the official release which brought it up to scratch. It was released in a near-ready state, and was polished after release. That's the method I favour.

I suppose it depends on the development path that's taken. For a game like this, you could release it in a 3/4 finished state if you go about it the right way (i.e. if the end-game isn't quite finished, it will take time for players to get there, so why not do so?).

It's all immaterial now anyway, considering Chris is deciding to release around feb. Factoring in the plandemic the team have actually done rather well. I envisage tweaking right up until christmas 2021 if the original is anything to go by, and that's fine with me too. It worked for Xenonauts, so it's a proven method of doing things.

Personally, I don't think Chris and the team will stop tweaking things until they are virtually perfect. Our Chris seems to be a bit of a perfectionist :-). 

 

You do make a good point about initial reviews though. Those of us that were here from the start of Xenonauts KNOW Chris and the team will make a good job of Xen2 by his track record. He delivered. For those that are thinking of buying for the first time, yep - game-breaking bugs look very bad. The only minor bug I have come across on playing was getting a jetpac man stuck behind a Carrier (he couldn't move out from the prongs) which was rectified using the game editor; that's pretty good seeing as I've played about 300 hours of Xenonauts! 

Edited November 29, 2020 by ooey

[Chris]

Yeah, the main difference between now and when Xeno 1 came out is the fact that sites didn't review Early Access games and there were no Steam reviews, so there wasn't much downside to releasing something that was a bit unpolished onto Early Access. These days you've got to be a lot more careful.

But if you take that logic too far, you'd only ever release a completely finished game - and I think X2 will benefit from a decent period in Early Access. V15 is starting to feel reasonably stable and most of the core systems are working well now, so it's a good foundation to work towards an Early Access launch from. Then once we're in Early Access we can hopefully just run the project as long as we need to polish it into a final finished game.

[Conductiv]

the way I see it, you only have 1 shot at the first impression. jumping the gun and having something unbalanced, buggy and/or unstable will pursue it after its polished, limiting the reach of the game.

so in effect, the game is "done" when the game is complete, the balancing is reasonable, it is stable and there are no major bugs. perfection is not required at that point but you should already be proud of the product you put out, and make sure that what you promised would be in it..is actually in it. if for whatever reason you would have to drop support, the game should still be able to effectively stand on its own.

I am not really worried that you will choose the right time to pull the trigger, and even though I am not a backer and don't play the beta builds I'm fairly certain the final product will be a joy to play. I'm looking forwards to see the evolution of the xenonauts franchise.

 

[maxm222]

I think that defining terms at the beginning of a discussion usually eliminates disagreements about anything but the definitions.  If you don't define terms, you have "X is 'better!"  "No, Y is better!" kinds of arguments, since no one realizes (or maybe, doesn't care) that there are different definitions of "better" being used.

So thank you to Conductiv for what I think is a reasonable definition of "done."  Using "perfect" as in "it will never be perfect" is reductio ad absurdum  and not helpful.

As for early access, I don't think there is any survey data available on what types of flaws will cause someone to never look at a game still in development again--unless someone knows otherwise (I'd love to see it)?  I've given games a second chance when there is a lot of better reviews that start mentioning major and then ongoing corrections by the devs, even if I originally thought I'd never buy it.  Think "No Man's Sky" which moved in Steam reviews from "mixed" (not to mention ridiculed in the media), to "very good."  I didn't buy it, mind you, since I like turn-based combat like Xeno, but a lot of people have.

[cheezygrasser]

On 6/29/2020 at 8:41 PM, garyg said:

I voted for just before Christmas but I'm not sure i'll still be around at that time. Too many people in the USA are doing their best to flush our country down the toilet for me to be optimistic. Many of us are wishing we had the money to move to the UK or some other place. Things do not look good here!

well looks like your worries were unfounded, as we wholeheartedly rejected the traitor Trump, (who to this day, refuses to concede, after being impeached already once, and having no evidence of voter fraud)who was masquerading as a real  POTUS, but luckily america smartened up, banned together, and dumped the turd, on november third.  and this time, we  got an actual  real christian patriot to get us thru this pandemic  crisis,(not that i want christians in charge of anything, but if they are gonna have no separation of church and state, then might as well be an actual christian, and not someone just grifting for votes) So #ThankChrist4Biden But all that nasty business aside,  im gonna have to push back on the OP stating  Firaxis re:  the new xcom series, as "examples of releasing projects the right way" ..

As i recall, Xcom2 was a total buggy mess for almost an entire year post release, and was supposed to be "mod friendly" and it turned out to be  anything but friendly to mods, as  just one or two of them would bork the entire game, and crash it to bluescreen. Just wanted to clarify any misconceptions about Firaxis, "being one of the good guys"  when it comes to consumer friendly releases. And to the guy from UK lamenting about your  boy Boris being in charge, could be worse, could be trump. 

[ooey]

Heh - if you're going to bring politics into this then just for balance I'll say I loved trump and all that he did. The real bad guy is in office now (you will see in 4 years time as the Communists take over the US) - in short don't be lazy listen to the MSM, go search for the truth. The choice for the moderator is to either keep or delete both comments (free speech, fairness and all that).  I'm happy either way. But there has to be a balance.

As for the extended release date - as long as it doesn't go to next christmas I'm happy!

Edited February 10, 2021 by ooey