What do you think of Early access and your experiences both positive and negative ?

[eastyy]

Was thinking about this for a while been supporting Early access games for a while but something felt different in my psyche about it. Back in the early days game comes out and i enjoy it, but early access has altered my perception as I was surprised in how many games there was not a clear end goal in mind and they would be creating stuff on the fly and fixing what it affects later on and in my mind was expecting games to have a full complete plan .

I may back the odd game in early access but i do not tend to play them that much as seen a few games they keep adding and adding but fail to fix the core elements and other games where they make a change with I disagree with that can make the game worse

Anyway some of my experiences

Grim Dawn: Action Rpg pretty much a positive experience though was in Early access for a long long time, updates were regular and the only thing I disagreed with the game was the Difficulty (would often hit a wall later in the game)

Project nimbus: probably my best early access experience as game was updated regularly and actually spoke to the developers on numerous occasions to point out bugs which were fixed, only issue i had was feedback i had early on was the game really needed more replay value perhaps even rankings for missions but sadly was never done

Terrordrome: Reign of legends, Indie fighting game ....very low budget but falls into the point off adding stuff like characters but the core feels off with weird physics and blows having lack of impact and very janky graphics which i could forgive if the game felt better.

Valheim: A awesome experience but at a point I just stop played it though by that time i had sunk over 28hours, I just felt like i needed to wait for the game to be finished before experiencing, though have read on forums there were changes that people were not happy with

[Asura]

Like most, I've had very mixed experiences.

I jumped in right away with the very first, DayZ - which I don't believe was ever finished, or if it was, it certainly didn't advance at a reasonable cadence. Ultimately felt there was a good idea that never got fully explored, there. Also a few titles I actually refunded because the games weren't really EA, but rather just half-finished builds which should never have been pushed to the public.

But I've had two of my favourite games of recent years via Early Access, namely Kerbal Space Program and Deep Rock Galactic, as well as some other games that I put a lot of time into like Empyrion, all of which left me totally happy with my purchase, and I'm happy I was able to support that developer.

I mention these three games because I think all of them are great examples of EA titles, in that they were odd, experimental, and probably couldn't have existed via other means. Deep Rock in particular has a developer who really cares about player feedback and has rolled player suggestions into their plans many times.

The problem is when sometimes you get developers who released EA titles that weren't really Early Access at all; they were just unfinished, and the developer was using the EA sales/lack of sales to justify continuing/not continuing development.

[Brad]

Day Z.
An experience so amazing that the fact it was so obviously NOWHERE NEAR finished didn’t matter to me at the time, and for a long while. Until 1 unfair death too many

DCS.
Every single aircraft comes out in early access and can take up to 5 years to be fully finished. Experience has been mixed. Often the systems are incomplete and that’s fine but sometimes their subject matter experts are not as expert as they thought and they end up having to change the way entire systems work; systems that can take many hours to learn properly. Those experiences are not so good.

[eastyy]

I mention these three games because I think all of them are great examples of EA titles, in that they were odd, experimental, and probably couldn't have existed via other means. Deep Rock in particular has a developer who really cares about player feedback and has rolled player suggestions into their plans many times.

Strangely enough was watching the Skill up review about a hour ago as looked pretty good seems it has got a load of post release updates to, I really wish reviewers like Skill up would follow up with games later on just to see if the game has improved or if the issues they have had are fixed

[eastyy]

DCS.
Every single aircraft comes out in early access and can take up to 5 years to be fully finished. Experience has been mixed. Often the systems are incomplete and that’s fine but sometimes their subject matter experts are not as expert as they thought and they end up having to change the way entire systems work; systems that can take many hours to learn properly. Those experiences are not so good.

I keep seeing them, I was a big flight simulator fan in the day but these DCS I am just not sure what they were about....like if they are a proper game with a campaign etc like Falcon 4 or really just a plane simulator

[Brad]

I keep seeing them, I was a big flight simulator fan in the day but these DCS I am just not sure what they were about....like if they are a proper game with a campaign etc like Falcon 4 or really just a plane simulator

Both. All aircraft come with campaigns, individual missions and training. You can make your own missions and campaigns too and there are third party free and paid for missions and campaigns. The campaigns are not as immersive and story driven as something like Falcon BMS or IL-2 Sturmovic but there’s some great stuff out there. I don’t think you can find a more immersive VR experience either but you need and pretty mad pc for that.

[Cepp]

Yeah DayZ was amazing even if it never did get finished. That's my only experience with early access tbh. I've been temped by Baldurs Gate III but I'd rather just wait for the finished product. The buzz seems to be positive for people that are playing it and are seeing the updates and additions in real time though , Larion can be trusted to deliver I think

[Neon Ignition]

I paid into a few but ultimately it feels like another phase gaming has gone through like Kickstarter where it's abused far more than it pays off. At this point if it's not a finished and complete title I won't remotely consider it.

[Asura]

Strangely enough was watching the Skill up review about a hour ago as looked pretty good seems it has got a load of post release updates to, I really wish reviewers like Skill up would follow up with games later on just to see if the game has improved or if the issues they have had are fixed

Deep Rock Galactic is great for many reasons. First-up just because it's a fantastic game, but also, the game is, at its core, a procedurally generated Left4Dead. Essentially they took the L4D formula and worked out what you needed to add/change in order to make it work as a procedural game (generating the levels is the easy bit). As L4D2 is kinda like game design crack anyway (due to being just absolute genius in its simplicity, and rarely imitated well) this is not to be underestimated.