I think it’s important to listen to voices like Chris.
This game promised a lot, and asked for a lot $. So far it hasn’t delivered a lot. It is fair to say that the game isn’t finished yet. It is also fair to criticize a product that was published after 3 years and looking like it does in its current state.
If you are spending you energy responding to justifiably angry customers and not making major changes to an unfinished game then there is a reason to be concerned.
Good luck and hopefully you learn from these mistakes in the future.
In the Steam forum, the developers are focusing on the players that are serious and helpful in the player forum. The people complaining and losing it in the public forum are getting less attention.
Thank you! All I have seen from the developers is defensiveness and irritation at VERY VALID criticism of what at the moment is an intensely unplayable and boring game (albeit with a lot of promise). I backed in 2017 as well, and as far as I can see OP is absolutely right, they showcased gameplay 2 years ago that still isn’t in the game today. This feels very disappointing, and I have more than once wondered if it is indeed a scam. It probably isn’t, and the developers are probably doing their best, but a load of disappointed customers does not a successful game make, either way, and ignoring and talking down to those backers is definitely not good customer service. I played for four hours, did everything I could do in current version and was left feeling like I’ve been screwed over. And I’m well used to kick-starting games, and waiting through the inevitable delays! At the moment, yes the world is pretty, but the user interface and gameplay is downright bad. I hope it gets better, but for the moment I’ve written it off as a wasted kickstart. I’ll be pleasantly surprised if it every becomes what was promised.
I’d like to add my voice to the mild disappointment that is the game.
AC is actually a very minimal Alpha, and if I where to summarize the experience : we can just build houses and gather fruits. Not much to play with.
I could have been ok with this, even though I expected hunting at the minimum, but there’s too much core problems that need to be addressed :
The UI : Having to look though a tab on the “Tribe” menu to build buildings is not a good choice IMHO. Building just two houses, a fireplace, pots and some storage zones where a pain in the ass, to say the least. It’s nearly 2021 and I expected a more user-friendly approach. Try looking for Banished as an example of a hardcore game with simple characteristics. Because I don’t see myself managing a big Megalithic city of +100 peoples with this UI.
Working groups : I had a hard time understanding how it worked. Some people where just sitting idle, other went to work, while I still had places remaining the group. I don’t get why they are sitting idle, not looking for berries, while one of them goes to the other side of the map to get these berries. How ? Why ? I don’t have enough information on what my people are doing, and why.
FPS & Performance : You went for the … courageous approach of having your own game engine and that’s a part of the deal. But I had some issues with the overall performance of the game. The forest is nice to look at, there’s some pretty neat effects on mud and vegetation shadows, but I had to put it on Medium. At night I had some strange lightnings bugs but I guess that’s the kind of things you’re going to fix with time.
Overall content : Ok, it’s an alpha. But we had screenshots of animals, stone buildings and many more stuff. How close are you from releasing other core features of the game ? At the very minimum, hunting should have been present in the base game. I’m scared that you went too big.
These are my concerns as a 2017 backer.
I’m used to kickstarting games, but this one has big potential, but also scares me with the huge amount of features promised compares to the smallness of your team, and the actual content we have 2 years after the initial promised release
But again, this game has big potential so best luck to you guys
OK… I’ve not commented much. This is a game with good potential and absolutely shitful communication.
Every time someone criticizes you come in guns blazing. It’s obnoxious and quite frankly. Vile.
You should NOT be attacking your backers and acting like they are stupid.
You made promises. You have NOT kept them. You should not be attacking us.
That is awful.
You may think you are not attacking, but consider that every reply has been an excuse. Nothing more.
There are certain parts I love in this game. It’s going really well in some areas. But I had to work them out for myself. The tutorial was borderline useless. Seriously bad.
Priorities don’t feel like they work at all.
Animals should be there as a #1 priority. Not “on release”. But it should be in your next update. For crying out loud, we have got tents we can make that need pelts and… What pelts beyond what we start with…
There is only really 1 crafting building (drying fish). That’s it. There’s not progression.
The worst part is that you are talking up the custom engine you are writing. And… what? Everything that is available could have been done in unity so far. There is no benefit to this engine from a gameplayers POV. Nothing. NIL. Nada. Zip.
Put something in that your engine makes a big deal about.
Also really. Please fix up the UI. I appreciate you’re trying to fix screen clutter. But if it takes about 3 button presses to get to the build screen you need just to do anything, then your UI needs work.
I’ve “finished” this game. I’ve spent a couple of hours on it. I’ve got nothing left to build. And… That’s it.And a lot of that was just ‘waiting’. Building the religious monument… Gotta wait for the stone… YAWN! That’s not gameplay. That’s grind.
My #1 thing to request from the devs:
A roadmap.
That’s it. Show us what you are building towards and what order…
Please report any bug or performance issue. In general the game is performing well if you meet recommended settings. Please post your hardware configuration so we could check this issue.
This is not the base game, nor the full game. This is a work in progress version. Animals in the prototype versions are not currently present but will be easy to include them in the following updates. Hunting is a major feature and will take a while.
We are determined to continue development of the game. If we get enough funds we will grow the team and development will speed up. If not, development will be slower but at this moment core game and core engine are not an issue so we can focus on gameplay and new features.
We apologize again for not meeting our deadline. The game is being developed and will be completed because we are determined to finish it (that’s why we are here after several years of hard work, very low salaries and criticism). In our opinion we failed in growing the team at the very beginning and this is the cause of the delay. We will try to fix this problem if we get enough funds. Anyway we will limit the scope of the first full release to fit in a maximum of two years. Regarding communication, we are currently working on a public version so everything related with development will reach to everyone. You can follow game updates in the Steam store page and forums.
Let me get this straight, are we “whiney trolls” for asking legitimate questions about stuff that they said they had in the game 3.5 years ago, which still isn’t available? There has been next to no communication with the backers in those years, the excuse is that they spent all the time working on the engine, but so far, as @fennadmobile mentions, everything we’ve seen so far could have been done in Unity. The UI is really terrible, I can mention a dozen of games with a way lower budget which at least has a decent UI - i.e. not requiring you to click many times every time you build a building or designate a storage area (which is annoying that you have to do for each single resource).
Ancient Cites had three years and one before we came on board to back your project. We believed in you, so much so that we deride New Dawn that came out a year after we backed you. You say wait until the game is finished, I thinking here we go again another Cyberpunk 2077 (a seven year in the making fail on certain platforms). You have let us down. We expected more but Ancient Cites decide to reinvent the wheel. That cost time and how many dollars? I will wait another year and see if there is change but Ancient Cites has already failed the backers. If you where any other enterprise you would be here various regulatory bodies looking into you but sadly there is nothing we backers can do but hope it improves.
Do they not have that right? Second I do not remember Ancient Cites ever saying, when I signed on, that they were developing there on engine. The thing is Banished came out way faster than this game has, though I will admit I do not remember if you used a prebuilt engine and I am pretty sure he did not. Remembering the blog post he out, I do not remember him saying that. Another of those complaints about AC is that it does not like to keep its backers informed but Banished developer did and he explained the problems he had well developing the game. Can you say the same for AC?
Is it to me you’re writing to? If yes, could you please make a minimal effort to be understandable?
Am I the one having to play a puzzle with all those “he”, “they” and “you”? And am I supposed to be the one fighting to decode all your typos and cryptic sentences? And what’s your first question even supposed to mean? Who has the right to do what?
This being said, at least one sentence seems clear, so I’ll stop here for now. Short answer. The lazy way. But I don’t think you may complain about that.
Sorry that I have a problem with grammar, but I try. As for “Do they have the right”, I was talking about the Steam form.
For “he did not”, I should have said, “Ancient Cities did not”.
Next is a defiant oops, for “I do not remember if you used a prebuilt engine” I should have said, “I do not remember if the Banished developer used a prebuilt engine”.
Even with me reading it quite few times I did miss something’s and the only reference to you, Elfryc, was “Do they have the right”. The rest of my comments were relation to the AC team. Question Elfryc, are you part of the AC development team? You, Elfryc, seem to have many apologies for AC that has me confused; I defiantly like the discourse. Thank you for pointing out my errors.
