"Financing Space Engineers."

Dear Marek, you are probably not going to read this but I still want to express myself to see if my way of acting coincides with someone else's.

I do not like the fact that you are publishing content of the game, which should be in vanilla, to be up to the standards of current video games in the form of DLC's, (blocks and other things), but ok, okay, I am buying them all, but I am going to tell you the reason why I buy them, it is not having those blocks or having that new content, since as I said, it seems wrong to me that it is not part of the base game, I buy it to support you, so that with that money you can hire more professional people, acquire better offices, you can develop a SE2 or improve it until it seems like a new game, which is what it lacks, either get a SE2 or melt the code and do it all from 0.

As I said, I hope that all these grains of sand can make a mountain and make a better SE among all, he trusted you.

<3

 

None of the blocks in the DLC packs are mandatory and most are purely cosmetic alterations of existing blocks, some with even less features than the standard vanilla versions of the block, case and point the ATM. The game has to make money somehow to keep going or they won't be able to hire new people, do a SE2, or any of that stuff. So if not from cosmetic DLC how do you propose they make money?

 

GoFundMe?

 

Even with all the DLC purchased plus the deluxe edition... I'm still not up to the price of the usual AAA game title. I've consistently played the title since 2014 so I'm getting my money's worth. Maybe that's not the same for everyone else. But I want to see the game continue development. I think there may be something to 3rd party scenarios being released as DLC with some custom blocks attached.

I'd pony up $10-$20 for a cockpit pack with 10-20 variants including side-by-side and tandem. Are you listening Keen?

 

I fully agree with you @Ronin1973 , and I'd gladly toss my cash in the stash if I could get a small grid door (seriously, why not!?!) and/or a full set of 1x1 and 1x2 armor blocks instead of the half-baked set we have (a full 1x3 set would be simply marvelous, but unrealistic). And don't get me started with projectors and sub-grids...

 

As I track back and look what all discussion about the past DLCs, since I'm new here, it's funny too see people complain about its give away price, then before I came here, to see people wants to playing Star Citizen for example, those are people are ready to drop a hundred box just to have that thing that feeds their vanity...
And here we are, SE, For the price way cheaper than a slap drop junk food served from fast food chains, still they cry like they their guts are slash like an old woman's purse

3 years playing with just one side sandwich vanilla to munch with, and to have a kick @ss lockers, toilets and transparent lcds... I'll buy even at 20!!!

 

Complaining about the price costs $0.00. So people are very quick to do so over $3. Everything should be at no charge to them.

 

Some people feel cheated by the game in its present state. They are upset about DLC being added before adding more critical fixes. I for one abandoned this game quite a while ago, purely for instability in MP. There's almost no way to keep a server persistent, sooner or later they all need to wipe to deal with accruing issues that cannot be resolved (or due to a patch that breaks just everything).

I spent almost 2000 hours in game (granted a lot of that time was waiting for refining and moving between point A and point B, but I definitely got my money's worth out of the game I have no complaints. It's probably the most fiscally sound gaming investment that I've ever made. However....

With that said, I'll never buy another Keen product again, nor will I support any of their future endeavors. I had a friend recently ask me about this game and I told him I spent a lot of time on it, but I couldn't recommend it given the sour taste left. Frankly if they had spent less time pumping out DLC... (what's this, the fourth one???) and more time aggressively working on certain bugs and certain content that's lacking I would have probably bought DLC. But I've been watching carefully (why I'm still here in fact) and it seems they are more interested in cash grabs than anything else. I mean hell, I saw the "turrets shooting at owned grids" problem crop back up just a few months ago.... seriously how many times has that specific bug been squashed, re-added, re-squashed, zombified, resurrected, re-killed... It's laughable. And it's given me all the evidence I need to guess how KSH is going to spend their resources.

Edit - For the record I bought 4 copies of this game, one for each of my friends that like this sort of thing. They couldn't even play it consistently though due to the bugs and I was left as the last man standing.

 

Same with me, but I'm not ready to toss out the baby with the bath water. It still has many great features, but I'm probably less upset simply because I hardly ever play MP.

 

This game has cost me so little and has provided me with 9600 hours of... well... Space Engineers.

I'm going to ride this one out and see what the next thing is. They said earlier that the next "project" will not be Early Access, so we don't get to tear it apart before it even gets started. It also means we'll get to find out what "ready for release" means to KSH.

 

@Stardriver907 Apparently "ready for release" to KSH means something like ME.

 

So you spent around 1 cent an hour and it wasn't entertaining? It's been a bit of a ride. The scope of the game has changed over the last.. ummm.. SIX years as it has been an evolving game. The goal post keeps move... but with that the number of features has also increased. With an increase in features comes exponential amounts of bug squashing. It's not uncommon for the same bug to pop up over and over due to a variety of factors.

I figure if I'm spending around 50 cents per hour of gameplay, it's a decent value. The new scenario "Frost Bite" is showing some promise. It's not the same but it reminds me a bit of the very first Half-Life as you're searching for clues and features.

 

For me, "Ready to release" means being forced to manually move save files just so the game sees them when wanting to play with steam in offline mode, a new feature I might add... this is not how the game acted in the past.

There is a combination of little small things Keen have done adding up over the past 2 years that is really starting to piss me off, and that's without including bugs that are still present since initial release as an "Early Access" game

The one thing that ticked me off majorly that was thankfully fixed was the game presenting a message that could not be turned off telling you that steam is offline.

*eye twitches*

 

"Reload, Dr. Freeman..." - Anonymous

 

The game has alot potential to be expanded more, more features to be added, I'm still hoping for the volumetric water to come, a new block engine to propel as to the oceans, new block hover engine, enriched pve, more faunas, and a revamp of combat systems in game, and lastly, new weapon blocks.

The economy update was a great leap to the game, for the past year alot of things are added to the game.

Sad to see the people around here don't bother that it was these very small team who created these game a half decade ago, that every actions they made have operational expenses they have to sail with, for which most of people don't give a damn, and these goes for other alpha, betas and early access games...

The game mean alot to me, even playing in vanilla offline mode for more than 4years... The dlcs are a breakthrough, even for its short comings... I just wish they open the doors a bit wider, like:

1) More freedom to have all we paid for in offline mode.

2) The ability for players to atleast, interact with DLC blocks for those who don't have it.

3) It's better to have 2 sets of DLC blocks, one is for free basic vanilla, and a paid for, which are 5x better looking but fair functionality with the vanilla.

The future of SE is bright and worth waiting, I still want to buy all dlcs, regardless of raisins on top of them,

As for the Medival Engineers, its an asset they can't trash without rethinking a million times.

I understand they have to re-organize/re-structure their very small team, and focus on SE, much better than maintaining TWO open fronts at a time while stretching the resources they have with small progress in the process. I have play ME for a short time, and its a marvel to play with.

For those people already ate the dog s**t from the false prophets. I felt sorry for them...

SE is on move, regardless of the bugs, I'll support the game for next half decade or more.

 

That's already a thing and has been since they made that change for the first DLC.

Also a thing (see economy, store blocks). The DLC blocks are just visual variants - with less function, even. The rest of the DLC blocks have no new functions either, they're just decorative or variants of existing blocks. You don't get any new function with any DLC block. Now, making the blocks is far from free. It costs a lot of money. They have to sell a lot of the DLCs just to make up for the artists' time. I understand why they do it this way.

To play Devil's Advocate a little: As I understand it; ME quite simply didn't get the required player numbers to keep it afloat. It didn't sell. It was never able to match SE's playerbase, even considering the dev time. SE had far more players at the same age than ME does. If it doesn't bring the revenue, it gets canceled. That's business for you. Especially in Early Access where that income is so important.

Unfortunately, that means that they've already considered the consequences of disappointing that player base: From a pure numbers view, canceling the game and disappointing them costs less than continuing the development. Again - that's business.

I agree with those who thinks they should just have been straight-forward with this. But Keen was never good with PR.
I also agree with those who thinks Keen should never have started on ME in the first place. Sure, they hired new people for that project, but... they weren't... heck; still isn't imo; large enough to be able to do that successfully.

 

Yeah. Trying to make two games at once was rather ambitious. I understand them trying because, frankly, I thought it was going to work. Seems like it did for a little bit.

What disturbs me is the dishonesty. Saying the game is "out of beta" and "feature complete" is carnival barking. What's wrong with "The response to this game does not warrant further development" or something to that effect, then tell all the Modders they have your full support. They may have considered the consequences, but apparently never considered turning them into opportunities. They figured the pool of hardcore ME fans was small enough to disrespect. Well, all SE fans are at least closet ME fans sooo....

 

I was wondering what was up with that. My most recent attempt to play the game a few months ago was offline, I quit almost instantly when I realized it wasn't loading my save games from normal online play. I didn't even bother moving them, I just "noped" right the f out... haven't played it since. A shame too, I finally got rid of my old potato and got a fairly robust gaming rig.

 

At this location.

C:\Users\YOUR USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\SpaceEngineers\Saves

Long number folder is your individual SteamID, if you actually google this number you will most probably find your Steam account profile, I did mine.

Short number folder is what KeenSWH is forcing the game to look at now when Steam is set to offline mode..... All that needs to be done is KeenSWH making the game look at the Steam ID folder when Steam is offline, that's it.. that's all they needs to do.

This change to save location to steam offline mode makes no sense, like literally none.. I am still logged into my Steam account, I can't play the game without my Steam account.

 

I know where they're at... I just didn't wanna deal with it, lol.

 

Well as a pure n00b (this being my first post) to this topic, I'd have to say I'm forever thankful SE does NOT follow the business model of a "game" aka tech demo the likes of Star Citizen.

For those who are unaware of this ultra HD space simulator, SC is an ultra realistic, deeply immersive sandbox tech demo. It consists of a single player mode (i.e SQ42) and multi player (the PU). Both of which have been in development since 2012-2013. Yet some 7+ years and $350M USD later, is STILL being classified as a "pre alpha" state by (Cloud Imperial Games aka CIG).

So whenever I see threads like this I can't help but about the complaints of how costly the DLC is for the game. Because

1. after surviving the fallout of major missteps from NMS---which btw has made an unprecedented comeback in earning fan base loyalty and industry respect since it's disastrous launch. AND has continued to release regular DLC and game performance updates to date.
2. after investing near 1K hours playing fully mature space games the likes of Elite Dangerous. Which recently exited its beta testing on its free Fleet Carrier DLC update after a long DLC hiatus of some 3 years. But then I realized that as amazing as ED is giving you the freedom to be your own 1st POV/VR Freelancer pilot, it's still lacking many major game immersion features by default of its seater design (aka space legs, NPC-Player interaction, being a genuine sandbox space sim with interactive flora/fauna on barren planets, atmospheric planets etc).
3. after trying alternate space sim clones the likes of Empyrion Galactic. Became very disillusioned when I realized its snail pace development will likely have it remaining in Early Release status for an indefinite time in the future. And so will continue to release ZERO DLC content upgrades to date.
4. after wasting money buying knock off space sim clones the likes of Nomads. Which turned out to be a major disappointment because they failed to make the grade as genuine sandbox/RPG in any terms of replay-ability

I could go on. But IMHO, based on what I've seen of Keen as a dev (second to Hello Games) they've been completely transparent with the SE community to date. Compared to other industry devs in the space genre, they've been very responsive to fan base requests for game play improvements/enhancements. And done so on a regular basis. From major updates like player economy with the Economy update. To functional details like small grid windshields for vehicles, to ladders, and fluff the likes of custom skins and small grid door for the space toilet. That gives me a LOT of hope for the future of this game.

TL DR
Space Engineer's updates/DLC pricing and business model is NOTHING. Like. The. INSANITY. Of. Star. Citizen. Because unlike CIG, Keen actually RELEASED A WORKING GAME. With a REALISTIC flight model that ACTUALLY OBEYS Newtonian Mechanics. And also permits the player to utilize said flight model in both a space AND atmospheric environments. WITHOUT consistent server crashes, disconnects, poor game performance/optimization bugs, and general network instability impacting the client side. And that's before you factor in the fact Keen has released SEVERAL major DLC/game updates that aggressively targeted bugs/game performance. All of these were either FREE or UNDER THE PRICE OF $20 USD. When other established and released space games like ED, X4 and NMS all have DLC pricing that is considerably higher around $30+ USD?

So I won't go down the insanity gilded rabbit hole that is the $27,000+ USD Legatus ship DLC pack (which is approx the majority of all promised ships CIG plans to deliver at game release somewhere around 2090 AD). Which btw, is what the fanatically devout SC fan base considers the mandatory hyper norm CIG needs to continue SC's pre-alpha development. Google is your friend......

 

To be fair, even a casino will seem like a charitable business model when compared to Star Citizen.

I'm on the fence with the DLC. The "cosmetics only" is fine for DLC but where are the actual upgrades to the game? I feel like the overall amount of content and mechanics added is just way too low. The next performance improvement will be great, but after that please start adding some quests or anything to do with our ships in the game.

 

Squadron 42 is 50 dollars "not released yet", The MMO Star Citizen is also 50 dollars, Star Citizen you can play right now, anything extra is for funding the games development, hence the term "Crowd Funded", which Star Citizen and SQ42 is.

Space Engineers was not a Crowd Funded game.

I am really looking forward to Squadron 42, the MMO game I don't care about.

--

A car with 3 wheels is still a working car....... technically speaking, I mean it won't get far, but it runs.....

 

Well Space Engineers development was funded largely by the early access buyers, so in essence crowd funded. Star Citizen is largely funded by people buying jpegs of ships, which may be actual in game ships to use by the time Elon Musk has set up a colony on Mars

 

Yes. Yes. And since June 1 2020 AD, the gaming industry is well acquainted with those subtle distinctions between those two.

$50 for a single player title. That was scheduled to be released this summer. It's almost as though a certain other game called CP 2077 isn't being released this year. How fortunate for CRobbers & CI +/-G that Covid19 put a monkey wrench into those works /sarcasm>

Regardless, I don't want to get into splitting hairs on semantics. Fact is SE has always been on cost and schedule. Had a good degree of beta testing back in its Early Release status on Steam. Was developed to be a modder friendly title (similar to extremely successful games like TES, Fallout, and Minecraft). Which means the dedicated modding community can help the dev resolve bugs and troubleshoot game mechanics issues. And SE continued to remain on cost and schedule -- while releasing several AFFORDABLE DLC---well after its milestone exit from Early Release to date.

Yet despite receiving monetary resources of $300 Million+ USD in funding, zero publisher interference, some 300+ employees spread across several time zones, and being in pre-alpha status since 2011, SC has yet to accomplish any of these SE road map milestones to date.

I also seriously doubt if the SE CEO or game's Sr. Project director has ever directed a software dev to change the color of a single pixel to date.....

I too am looking forward to SQ42's release. For my grandson in 2090 AD.....

Imagine what Keen could've done with $300M in developing SE.

Just IMAGINE .

 

Maybe npc ai at the very least..

 

NPC AI, now there's an idea

In all seriousness however, Keen have done very well with SE for a group as small and 'indy'.
Have they always been completely open, no.
Have they made mistakes, yes.
Does this make them the devil, absolutely not.

Keen are not perfect, but they are significantly better than a lot of the competition.
Personally I'm happy to pay the very small price of the DLC if for no other reason than to try to help Keen to continue to improve this wonderful buggy mess that we all know and love.

 

Yes. But even if Keen put in the minimum dev effort towards this? Now why do I get the feeling delivery of this feature would be far superior in quality and performance v. any "high fidelity" AI that CI has produced in Star Citizen to date?

Seriously.

Anyhow I digress. This new feature became part of the road map scope creep to produce the industry's first every dynamic AI NPC vendors. It was announced a year or so ago. However, the sheer amount of mixology experience and complex animations poor Atlas requires to perform his job competently, has exponentially grown since. Quite predictably ever since, this progressive feature creep (just like tons of other scope creep) has been repetitively cut from every fantasy road map CI has released to date. Poor Atlas's latest dev ghosting was the road map CI released a day or so ago. In which he quite predictably was pink slipped yet again

So in the Tale of our Two Cities:

Universe of SE: Keen actually RELEASED a working game with publisher influence. And which flight model actually obeys Newtonian physics. And also which has reasonably stable server performance and doesn't frequently disconnect every time you logon. And also happens to be a WIP which they DO update on a regular basis with AFFORDABLE content (regardless of DLC scope).

Universe--erm--incomplete, single star system of SC: a Sisyphus project that has had ZERO publisher interference, had all the schedule, budget, and labor resources aka is every dev's wet dream in the industry. Yet still remains stuck in the purgatory of pre-alpha status to date.

TL DR
In answering your sarcasm with equal (pessimistic) cynicism: I've finally come to understand CI +/- G's great conundrum. It's all about creating road maps to create pipelines to create road maps to create pipelines to...
Best damn space infinite recursion ever.


ps: ED is another Kickstarter rival with a space based genre. It basically piggy backed off SC within months of SC's Kickstarter debut. But never defaulted from its production schedule and released on time back in 2014. FDev has added several expansions to ED over the past years since release. The same dev team resources under FDev has also released several other non space themed games (i.e. Planet Coaster, Jurassic World, Planet Zoo, plus numerous expansion packs for each of these). And now, ED appears poised to transcend SC with the announcement of space legs and other associated/emergent EVA game play. A practical/immersive feature which SC has held bragging rights over ED to date. To the new FDev game changing announcement, CI +/- G released an unforgettably exotic world salad on Spectrum forum to soothe rattled SC backers. An excerpt of their spin doctoring techno babble speak is captured here. Still waiting the day Keen devolves into this vintage insanity to date:

...And as eternally parodied by Die Fuher himself here:

You simply. CANNOT. Make. That. Up.....