No. No it’s not.
Woohoo!!! Great work cliffski. And in all my excitement for this game, I ended up buying two copies. I am not yet sure how I will do it, but I will definitely gift my second copy to a deserving forum member.
After you guys get a chance to play it can you let me know if it is any easier to figure out why the battles go the way they do? That was my gripe with the first one. Even if I won a battle I had no idea why what worked worked and what didn’t didn’t. For some reason the reports just didn’t give me what I needed to interpret the results (or maybe it did and I just lacked the skills to interpret it).
Hopefully its better this time, with better in-battle feedback as well as simpler after-battle stats. I can’t believe the quality of the first borg cube workshop mod. Within 20 hours, its so cool :D
I WILL be getting this game, cliffski, but it’s going to have to wait a little bit. My gaming budget (both time and wallet) have been blown to bits over March/April!
Looking forward to checking it out.
I’ll admit I might be in the minority here, but I thought the first game was pretty intuitive. You could just watch the action unfolding on screen, notice which ships blew up fast, which ones survived, which ones got the most kills, and put the pieces together that way. I would build mono-purpose ships and see which ones survived better/got kills faster, then I’d make different deployments with different combinations of ships. The trial and error aspect of my approach really appealed to me, because even horribly built fleets still went boom in satisfying ways.
Also, fighters always seemed a little OP. Not that I was complaining about that. OP fighters have had a special place in my heart ever since Star Wars.
Kind of a bummer it isn’t coming to iPad. Perhaps I should pick the first on iOS. I have it on PC, but never got around to playing much (as with many things on PC)
It very well may be ME in the minority :-)
Thanks for your perspective though.
I don’t know how many of you caught the blog post on launch, but it was pretty illuminating.
http://positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/2015/04/19/well-my-game-is-on-sale-time-to-relax-ahahahaha/
- There are so many games the media (including youtubers/twitch streamers) won’t care that you released a new game without real hand-waving and pleading. Just being a good, quality game isn’t going to cut it any more. Unless your game has a famous actor in it, or is hilariously weird in its premise, or has some other non-game related ‘hook’ for the press to get excited about it, you can forget it. I hate worrying about all that. I’m a coder at heart, and this is meaning its getting tougher for me.
- Ad costs are creeping up. The site takeover costs are stupidly high anyway, but even facebook, google adwords, its all got very very pricey.
- There is a definite tendency for everyone to just add a game to a wishlist and wait for the sale. The inevitable sale. Kinda weird because…
- There is still the inevitable abusive anger about a game daring to cost $24.95. People moan that the price is too high, then say they only ever buy games at 50% off. There may be some logic there but I can’t quite see it myself. Every game I’ve ever released on steam has had a thread saying its cost too much. I suspect every game on steam has that thread. I suspect its the same posters too…
- Nobody leaves steam reviews. Seriously, its like pulling teeth persuading people to do so. Which means only people with a bug, or a problem bother, and that drags down the scores. I can see from my stats I have a lot of happy people playing the game, I wish I could interrupt them to ask them nicely to leave a review :D
The first and second points align with the panel conclusions of the Quo Vadis conference discussing those very issues.
That was a great read, thanks for pointing us to it, Telefrog.
A few points of my own - the first being I really did like the first game, though I forgot about it and kept meaning to but never quite got around to getting back to it. I DID add this to my wishlist, though not to wait for a sale, but because between Dark Souls 2 SotFS, GTA V, and the AoW3 expansion my gaming plate is pretty damn full, also Elite and Spelunky, which are ever-looming shadows.
Also, I never really do Steam reviews - maybe I should?
I honestly wish more people would to Steam reviews, I find them pretty valuable since you can see how long a person has played a game and so on.
People actually care about Steam reviews?
Well then, I should start bothering to write them for the games I enjoy. I just assumed they were virtually worthless.
Edit: Also, GSB2 is a game I intend to buy at full price, but will have to wait a couple months to do so because of strict budgeting right now (fiancee and I are buying a home and there’s a lot of incidental expenses that are cropping up around that).
I actually like to buy games I know are worth it at (or very near to) full price, because I believe in voting with my wallet. Sure, I buy cheap-ass games during Steam sales, but that’s for stuff that is of medium-to-low interest.
I don’t take them as gospel or anything, but I do find them useful. Even if the review is poor as a whole, there’s oftentimes interesting information about the game, especially stuff that’s left out of official PR releases and reviews from large sites. Hell, I’ve seen negative reviews of games that have prompted me to make the purchase simply because the things they were knocking the game for are things that I enjoy in games.
I definitely factor Steam reviews into certain purchases, especially full price purchases like newer releases. Beats going in blind. I haven’t been burned by doing this type of homework yet. At worst I might miss out on something I could end up enjoying if I had only given a seemingly negatively-reviewed game a chance sooner, but that isn’t much of a drawback compared to wasting money. At best, good reviews steer me towards a fun time.
Like with any aggregate customer reviews, the ability to distinguish the good reviews from bad helps a lot. But this applies to formal reviews as well, and always has. To lump them all together as garbage, or to try and claim they don’t tell the whole story, or to try to wave it all away and claim that only angry people ever say anything and that happy people don’t say enough, well, I don’t think that’s being completely honest. And I don’t think this type of hand-waving amounts to much, nor is it helpful.
I’m not sure why some indie developers seem to have so many problems getting their games player-reviewed, while at the same time claiming there are plenty of people happily playing them; especially while other indie developers are rolling in thousands of overwhelmingly positive reviews for their products. What ratio of players-to-reviews would suffice? Because from a consumer standpoint, I don’t need thousands upon thousands of reviews to tell me if something is worth it. The first GSB has nearly 500 reviews that averge out to “Mostly Positive,” and that tells me all I need to know. And while that might not look as bright as shiny as the 6700+ (Overwhelmingly Positive) reviews that another indie title (also developed by one dude, as far as I know) called Antichamber, 500 reviews seems more than sufficient to me.
I look at another indie game that also released this week, Jumpjet Rex, and it has twice as many reviews as GSB2. So far the review count is up to 91, and averages out to Very Positive. I don’t see a single review knocking the game for the price (in fact there are a couple lauding it for its value), but then again, it’s pretty rare I ever do see a review that starts off with “Had a wonderful time, GOTY. But don’t buy it until it’s at least 80% off, because otherwise it’s a rip off!!”
If it’s a good game, many people will pay a premium and consider it the cost of getting a good game. And they’ll do so on day one, just to get in early and experience it as soon as possible. So what if there are those people who will simply wishlist it and wait for a sale? Does anyone honestly think bargain hunters are some new invention that Steam created and unleashed upon the world? However, if some of these people are unhappy with a seemingly expensive game, they’re gonna feel ripped off if that game doesn’t deliver, and they’re gonna say so. And after reading the Steam reviews for GSB2, there’s certainly a trend of people saying so. So who do we blame, the players? Why, because they can’t keep their mouth shut when they’re unhappy? Or the other players, the happy ones, because they aren’t doing enough to help combat all the negativity surrounding a problematic release? Do we blame the indie developer trying to keep up with the plethora of operating systems, hardware, drivers, and configurations each and every individual Steam user has under their control? or do we blame Valve/Steam for fostering an environment that allows buggy games to be released to frothing masses in the first place, and then giving those masses a voice and a vote?
As a consumer, I honestly don’t care to spend too much time trying to place blame. I’m still going to read reviews, I’m still going to use them to help determine what’s a value, what’s not, and what’s a gamble. If I buy a turd, I may just say so, either on Steam or on a forum somewhere. If I buy something awesome, I’ll probably do the same.
I’ve never written one on Steam (though I’ve written 160 at Amazon), but I read them all the damn time, and comment on a lot of them. I try to stick with the more well-written reviews, but some of the lesser-well-written ones can also be useful, as well as entertaining. Most Steam reviews are a lot more thorough than the reviews on Amazon for the exact same game.
Yes, Steam reviews are invaluable, but you need to be able to identify the quality ones and ignore the ones from people with an axe to grind or overzealous fanboys.
I also thumb down every single 3-line review that follows this structure:
[I]Great game
11/10 Would trip over a rake again :) [/I]
Because they are only funny the first 35 times.
-Todd
It depends on your audience. If your audience is young teens with a lot of time on their hands, then they tend to be more social media obsessed, more into online commenting and write more reviews / upload more screenshots etc. If you target people in their 30s, 40s, then those people are lucky to find a few hours a week for precious gaming, let alone the rest of it. (This is annoying, as they are the least price-sensitive too, so I get a disproportionate number of negative criticisms about prices, always have done. Democracy 3 is constantly plagued by accusations of being too pricey, yet I’ve carried out A/B experiments and proved mathematically that it is at the correct price. )
All my games tend to be more popular with the older slice of the gaming demographic (no surprise, I’m 45 myself), so that definitely factors in. Also games that are involved or deep mean longer play times, and less reviewing after ‘a quick game’.
I definitely get less than 2% of steam players leaving a review.
I will echo Cliffski’s comment - if you are not going for the younger demo, things can get pretty cold for you fast going the current traditional routes. Older customers are less impulsive, and less interested about bragging about what they are doing (as they have probably realized no one cares). Customer service is more important to them, so one-on-one communication and extra help/support are important. I get a lot of email from people who tell me they are retirees. It is actually quite rewarding.
It’s interesting, older gamers are selfish for the gaming experience in of itself. Younger gamers are selfish for the attention it brings and want to externalize: brag, show, comment as part of the experience, like a sporting event.
Olders also play less games, because generally as one travels through life, you pick up responsibilities. However, They can afford a game that costs more, but will evaluate the purchase much more before making it. They like investing a game that provides more than the current 20 hour experience.
And for younger, if it ain’t cool and hip, it ain’t any good. Hence the value of an endorsement from a Pew Die Pie or other such popular blogger.
I’m setting aside a couple hours to mess around with this today so that I can write a credible review for it on Steam.
That being said, I’ll admit I’m pretty lazy and don’t care to see if this is already written somewhere: What is the function of the frigate? Other than to get blown up, of course.
Also: any recommendations on how to build effective gunships? Right now I don’t see why I’d use them instead of fighters.
Also, also: I like the added touch of making fighters now have to carry fuel.
Hello :D
Frigates are basically your hit and run ships, especially in massed groups. They are good against fighters/gunships/destroyers/frigates maybe even cruisers. Faster than cruisers & dreadnoughts. I tend to pile engines onto them and set them to ‘keep moving’
Gunships are essentially bombers, or chunky fighters that can make it back to a carrier for repairs after surviving the odd blast.