warlocc wrote:

The problem is, that date just wasn't realistic. Even if this was a traditional studio, that date would have been optimistic.
I'll come out and say it; That was a bad prediction. The people in charge at the time had no idea what they were getting into.

I can appreciate that. Honest to God, I can. It was incredibly ambitious. You got in a bit over your heads. I get that.

I don't think I've seen a single person on this community that was legit mad that we didn't get a game in 2015.

What bothers me is more the change in both attitude and outlook.

We didn't go from "we're going to take a crack at this and hopefully we'll get it done in a few years or so" to "well, it's proving more difficult than expected, so we need to postpone things a bit, but we're still working and don't expect things to take long."

It went from "we can do this. We just need $320,000 from you and we estimate we can get in done in a couple years" to "eh, we're volunteers, we'll get to it when we get to it."

I understand you're all volunteers. I understand you're not pulling a salary. But it's frustrating that at a period of not a few months, not several months, not a year or two, but seven years after the ETA we were given, after we initially gave the company twice the amount it asked for and more afterward, it's sounding less and less like the project is less a serious product being developed, and more like a hobby that a community is working on in private whenever. Which just doesn't sound like something that's ever going to bare fruit.

warlocc wrote:

WraithTDK wrote:

"eh, we're volunteers, we'll get to it when we get to it."

I'm not sure where you got that impression. What's been said is that we are volunteers and that we can't predict what's going to happen as a result. I've seen these devs skip holidays with their families to get things done, and I've seen them uploading work as late as 4 AM on a weekday, knowing they have to be at their day job in just a few hours. If that sort of thing isn't enough to show they're seriously dedicated, I'd hate to see what else they'd have to do.

Just a reminder, [b]we[/b] don't see any of that. [b]We[/b] we see only what we are shown, and what we are told. And [b]we[/b] have to divine what's going on based entirely on "tone of voice" as it were, and imagery.

So when the dwindling number of people who still come here eight years after the project was funded say "hey, it's been another year, any clue when we'll see a beta build?" And what we get is "we don't have nay paid staff, it'll happen when it happens," that kind of sucks for us. That's not a response that engenders hope or speaks to a team's dedication. It sounds more like people who don't want to be bothered by customers legitimately wondering whether or not the project they funded with an ETA of [b]two[/b] years for delivery will have a closed beta build in [b]ten[/b].

Unfortunately there's no answer that can appease both sides, and both sides are valid.

Dark Cleric wrote:

Unfortunately there's no answer that can appease both sides, and both sides are valid.

This is it exactly.

I know this isn't the answer that folks want to hear but the only answer we can honestly give is that we will be releasing when we have something ready to release. It would be easy to do what other game companies have done and shout from the rooftops "We'll release on THIS date" and then slap something together and throw it on the market just to meet that deadline, but we will not do that. We could have done that years ago, and you would have been justified in calling us out for how awful it would have been. We are dedicated to making a game worthy of the time and dedication you all have shown us.

It is not one single thing that we can point to and say "this is what's holding us up"; it is a lot of small things combined together. Some of these are known issues. We DO have a small, volunteer team working on the project in whatever spare time their lives allow and we ONLY have a tiny fraction of the budget that a major studio would have which makes it difficult for us to hire more people and buy more equipment, and do the thousands of other things that need to be done. We've talked about all these things many times before but these are not the only issues that we have to contend with.

In some cases, we have been learning to use the tools to make the game AS we are making the game. This leads to false starts and dead ends and all of the difficulties any new skill brings. We've made some mistakes. That's part of the whole process. We are learning as we go. But, unlike others, we're confident that, because we've made those mistakes, we can eliminate major game flaws before we release it to the public instead of giving you endless patches and revisions afterward.

We are watching how other games are released and trying to learn from their mistakes as well. We're not stopping every few days and redoing everything because we want to add "SOMETHING COOL", like other games seem to have done. We have a clear path in mind for how we want the game to develop, but this does mean that we sometimes have to pause and figure out HOW we're going to get there. As we've learned, this is not always easy, and it is not always quick. But because we've had to do this, we know we'll be able to give you the best game we can. And we've even had more than a few "AHA!" moments which give us more possibilities to give you a better game.

We will continue to move forward at the best speed we are able with the goal of giving you the best possible game we can. We will continue to give you updates on game progress when we have something worth talking about, and we are happy to discuss the game as much as we are able both here and on our Discord, but the short answer to the question is: We'll release the game when it's ready to be released.

I know that isn't really the answer anyone wants to hear. Not you, not us, not anyone. But it is the Truth.