Sword of the Stars II released, is gigantic pile of fail

[Vympel]

Yup, finalised my refund request today. Since its through Steam I imagine it might be through store credit or something.

Its pretty dumb, because you know if they had just been honest and said "the game's borked and not ready for primetime, please donate at least [x] amount to help us complete development and you'll get the game for free on release" (i.e. original Mount and Blade approach) people would be considerably less pissed. Fully inform the consumer? Unthinkable!

[Kinyo]

Just got the newsletter through from Paradox and it seems like they are handing out free copies of Sword of the Stars 1 to every body.

Seeing as the Sword of the Stars II devs are currently working so hard on improving and polishing their game, we thought we'd do something nice, too. We'd like to thank any of you who bought Sword of the Stars II, as well as give anyone not familiar with the franchise a chance to get involved by giving away a copy of the critically acclaimed prequel, Sword of the Stars. Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy your free game!

[Stark]

I love how they always try to spin the positives. 'We are polishing the game'. This, from the guys who couldn't even make it playable at launch!

[PeZook]

Yup, finalised my refund request today. Since its through Steam I imagine it might be through store credit or something.

Its pretty dumb, because you know if they had just been honest and said "the game's borked and not ready for primetime, please donate at least [x] amount to help us complete development and you'll get the game for free on release" (i.e. original Mount and Blade approach) people would be considerably less pissed. Fully inform the consumer? Unthinkable!

The best thing about the above "pre-pay to play the beta" model is that the consumers buying into it accept problems and incomplete features etc etc and get invested in the brand.

I have no idea why more of these niche companies don't do this: you can always do the big rollout thing later, like Minecraft is doing, and you come to version 1.0 with a massive, invested and loyal player base you can then monetize like there's no tomorrow.

And...you get BETA TESTERS WHO FUCKING PAY YOU TO PLAY,which is an epic marketing coup

[Artemas]

yeah, i think theres still a bias against that sort of approach, whereing "only indies do that". similar to the long era of "proper games are full price (50-60) at launch"

[PeZook]

yeah, i think theres still a bias against that sort of approach, whereing "only indies do that". similar to the long era of "proper games are full price (50-60) at launch"

Paradox only sells games that might as well be indie, anyways. They have all the characteristics that make the indie business model succesful.

Of course these games are also crap, but maybe if they got feedback from paying betatesters early...

Ah, who am I kidding

[Stark]

The downside of the approach is you get a bunch of really entitled beta testers who will flood your forums demanding features and attempting to steer development, just like indy games.

In this case, of course, random people trying to steer development might have been a step up.

[dragon]

I'm glad I didn't preorder like I had planned, maybe after a while they'll fix it.

now excuse my while I go preorder a copy of Skyrim

[Vendetta]

Paradox only sells games that might as well be indie, anyways. They have all the characteristics that make the indie business model succesful.

Except the prices, of course...

[CaptHawkeye]

God I really hope they don't fuck up Naval War Arctic Circle.

[Rightous Fist Of Heaven]

Just as a heads up to anyone who's still willing to give this admittedly disappointing (understatement of the month?) game release a try.

I've got about 35 hours of playtime spent on 5 different games. In one, I got up to 200 turns before starting a new game due to last weeks patching. Current game is running on turn 100. Havent gotten much further than that, ran into an odd crash on my current game which sends me merrily back to desktop right when I try to end turn 100.

Anyways, I managed to overcome most of the performance issues up to the point where the game is quite playable and running without significant hiccups (apart from bugs). To achieve this, I stopped launching it from Steam and instead started running it directly from the 64-bit executable. I shut off Steam entirely when playing. I noticed that ending turns, screen switching etc. all take significantly longer if you start the game from Steam. After taking Steam off the loop, the performance issues are mostly gone. Ending turns takes about 20 seconds at the moment, screen switching about 5 secs. Battles and the rest of the heavy stuff all run without any noticeable slowdowns and my computer isnt exactly on the cutting edge of computing technology. Specs below:

CPU:Intel Core 2 Duo E8600
RAM: 4 GB DDR2
GPU: 560GTX Overclocked
Mobo: Fucked if I remember

So it runs, but with only half of the features of the full game and the half actually implemented in the game are only half working. In conclusion, one quarter of the game runs pretty well! When it doesnt decide to crash due to one of the 10,000 bugs that can cause it to crash at any time.

[The Yosemite Bear]

I'm still waiting for my steam versiuon to work, It still won't

[Vympel]

Got my refund today (Steam store credit) so I'm glad they did the right thing. I'll probably pick up the game a year from now, or whever its in a decent playable state.

[Rightous Fist Of Heaven]

Current experiences after the latest patch. Playing as SolForce with 4 AI players, random encounters engaged and the previously crash-happy Von Neumann RE's engaged as well, 60 turns with no crashes, no appreciable slowdowns or significant enjoyment killing bugs. Trade seems to work as it should and some significant issues related to the economy model (no income during feasibility studies to name one) seem to be gone. I admit, I haven't had the time to dwell fully into finding broken features, but at the moment for the first time since I bought the game, it seems to be actually playable and enjoyable at least for me. Same could not be said a week ago when I made my last post on the subject. Oh and the latest patch includes laserhead missiles, which in all likelyhood are broken at the moment but isn't it the thought that counts?

For anyone having trouble running it either from Steam or with Steam running in the background at all, I'd suggest killing Steam entirely before playing. You can launch it directly from either the 32-bit or the 64-bit executable. Steam is unnecessary for everything else except patching and buying the motherfucker. Starting it directly from Steam has also been shown to cause significant performance issues (40 additional seconds to end a turn just for example).

Leviathans are whoop-ass in a can. That is all.