What would change

I don't understand why people care. Does it really bother you that much, that they don't use that magical number 1.0? Just be happy that they are stubborn enough to keep pumping new stuff in to the game for so long. At no additional cost.

I got my money's worth a long time ago, and I am getting even more. I don't want them to stop, it's the best zombie simulator out there!

The only relevant thing that would change would be for new customers to *not know* at first view on the store page, that they will buy into a dev-in-progress game.

There is a fine line between well maintained games, and those that get thrown on the market in an unfinished state.
And it is often not easy to tell, which part of the spectrum a given game falls.

But I absolutely prefer if a developer flags a game for me as a customer as "we are still tinkering around in save-breaking ways" with the EA-tag.

I am a bit fed up with the other kind of "Yeah - here is update 2.3.6d which will invalidate your games from 2 weeks ago, where we invalidated your games from 5 months ago, where we invalidated your games from before. Oh and also we have turned half the mechanics upside down, so this game basically is nothing like the product you payed for. " kind of games.

What does that change aside from the versioning tag?

id rather this game stay in EA then release like 7 Days to Die.

Absolutely not.

I'm starting to fully understand why the devs are tired of answering the exact same questions and criticisms for years, every couple of days. Here's the quote that answers your 1.0 talk, and you would've found it if you could take half a minute of your time to read a pinned discussion instead of posting yet another "why still in EA" discussion.

"It's still called "Early Access" because our game remains in active development and so to come out of Early Access would give just as much the wrong impression ("we're done working on this game") as remaining in Early Access ("this game will release shortly"). So whichever option we pick, it's not really the correct message unless Valve create some sort of "Active Development" banner you can attach to "released" games."

Originally posted by killjoy:

Regardless of how condescending you are you still took the time to write this...

I've got loads of free time these days. :)

Writing one paragraph and copypasting another took me about 1 minute though. I wouldn't consider that a time investment.

Originally posted by Marco:

Imagine this in another business, where you pay and the guy maybe will deliver

The problem with this "logic" is that whenever you do pay for an EA game, you pay for exactly what's there and nothing else. Any possible future updates are a free bonus. That's what buying "as is" means.

Had I bought PZ during B40, I would've been absolutely blown away that in B41 the characters and zombies were suddenly 3D and all items had 3D models as well. Sneaking had it's own animation now, how cool, etc.

There's also this saying in my language about business that would roughly translate to: "It's not dumb for a seller to sell, but it may be dumb for the buyer to buy."

So, sucks for you if PZ wasn't what you wanted it to be. But you bought it "as is", and you're "entitled" to quite literally nothing else. It's still pretty rad that B42 is a thing that will happen during this century. I'll be enjoying it from my retirement home, lol.

What's so silly about this whole topic is that the Indie Stone could do exactly what's asked. Just think about it.

Allright everyone, B41.78 is officially PZ 1.0! Enjoy.
B42 is now known as PZ 1.1

Nothing changes no matter what the devs do. You people would still be here, complaining about the same things, just using different terms.

Originally posted by Marco:

Originally posted by ★Rainmaker★:

I'm starting to fully understand why [...]

And you are the reason these people can be millionaires without selling a complete product, I buy one copy expecting to see a final product one day, you buy a copy and expect nothing, I am sure devs love you more.
EA is an excuse to deflect criticism and fool people into buying a game on a promise.
Imagine this in another business, where you pay and the guy maybe will deliver, no ETA, he may or may not feel like it. You may be called fool for falling for that, but how would they call the guy ripping you off? Not game developer, there are other names for that kind of practice.

Why do you buy it then? You're explicitly told not to buy the game for anything mentioned in the future, by Valve on their Steam Early Access policy documentation. Why do you go against something explicitly consumer friendly when it's not what you evidently stand for? I'm here on all these topics trying to tell people *not* to do this, because if you don't understand Early Access you're buying into something that will end up being consumer unfriendly for you. Clearly we've provided value to you in the range of 10K+ hours, I don't know why that loses meaning because we're still developing the game. Did we not "deliver a playable game that's worth the value of the current build" when you've played that many hours?

You want to buy a game that's completed, buy a game that's completed. There's plenty of Early Access games I would like to buy, yet, I'm not confident they'd end up being what I want them to be, either not completed, or change direction of what they currently are (Examina, for example). I just don't understand any of the logic here.

This is incredibly useful to read through:
https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/6554-ED29-FBDB-1612

Originally posted by Marco:

Man, you locked that thread again while I was replying...
Anyway, about that thread, just let me say if I played 7k hours jun 2022-2024 I am pretty sure I played at least the same amount nov 2013 - jun 2022 , so 15k or more is very very likely. I'd say more, but I played it offline so I can't really say.
Nothing to brag about or say out loud, I am aware.
Having said that, I have 0 hours on 1.0 zomboid, but hope to play it one day.
I am playing this incomplete game to waste time until PZ 1.0 comes out, hopefully the "promised" one and not a 'that's a wrap' one when the money stream dries up.

For the rest, be sure I have something to say. I'll write the reply to this one as soon as possible.

Let me be clear: I bought 2013 zomboid to play 1.0 one day, for me it's not just another game in the list, it's the game I've been playing every day since nov 2013 (with small 1-2 months breaks every now and then) and known since the Desura days. Sometimes I think about this one: https://projectzomboid.com/blog/news/2014/06/march-to-1-0/ Damn...things were different back then.

Yeah sorry, i was hoping that you weren't in the middle of replying when I locked it again because I didn't want to be hopping between three different thread conversations lol.

Understandable, I mean, so did I, bought it on Desura for €5. I wasn't always on this side of the fence either, and was critical even in the earlier days when updates were even more common (because of the poor performance in stuff like Build 21 or something.)

I get the frustration of being told that you're not "entitled" to updates you hoped to get due to Early Access working this way, but it's not in a way of us saying we're not intending to deliver on them, it's just a good thing to know for any Early Access game because anything can change. I'm disappointed that Phasmophobia is going to consoles, for example, when it isn't completed.

To explain the March to 1.0 thing (which during that time I was literally just a normal consumer like you reading it) that was a publisher deal that fell through. And, I don't know further details than that but I wouldn't really delve into them if I did anyway. I think we'd absolutely have a shell of the game we have right now, just with a "completed" tag, and possibly much more greedy business practices.

Evidently you're in love with the game, and 15K hours is wild, so me saying it was ever my dream game with only 1500+ hours feels a little less meaningful in comparison. :D

Originally posted by Marco:

Originally posted by Higgs:

...

As I said, you use terms and conditions to deflect criticism.
Valve allows that practice, fine. Is that a good practice or something to be proud of? Not in the slightest if you ask me. Some may disagree with me, I am aware.
If I say you're slow, do you really think your "I don't owe you anything" is the right answer?
Because that's pretty much what you're doing.
"devs could stop tomorrow and would be in the right" and the all amount of, sorry, crap EnigmaGrey kept telling for years and years, does that sound like a respectful reply to a legit concern regarding the delivery of the final product?
You call it Early Access, but you use it like crowdfunding and again I couldn't care less if it's allowed, it's wrong and should be frown upon, especially if you abuse of that state for 11 years and counting. Not that I care, but if people can't try the current B42 the "testers" are using, knowing full well it's not a finished bug-free release, the game is not really in early access. I can come up with possible reasons for that, easiest one is bad publicity, because it would confirm devs are pretty much sitting on their hands, hope to be wrong and this is what it is, a wild guess, how am I supposed to know after all.

Let me explain a pure form, in the sense of innocent, of EARLY ACCESS.
You're competent enough to be aware of the level of difficulty of the endeavour. You have a roadmap for your game and you know pretty much what it takes for you to get to the final product. Instead of working for, say, 2-3 years and then publishing the final product you ask people to buy early copies of the game in current state to help you with 1. bug detection 2. development speed (more money in the bank for more help, better hardware , etc...). So those two years, can become 1 year and a half, because people helped.
The project is pretty much the same you had in mind and promised to the people.
The whole idea is: you were going to deliver a final product regardless

If developers fail to deliver according to their own roadmap, don't share their progress, can't tell release dates not even in the range of what year, deflect criticism and can't even guarantee the final product...That means the persons involved are either incompetent or in bad faith or both and are clearly using Early Access as some sort of crowdfunding (but mainly for their pockets, not the project)

Edit: some corrections

" Not that I care, but if people can't try the current B42 the "testers" are using, knowing full well it's not a finished bug-free release, the game is not really in early access."

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by this. This is just what game developers (even not in Early Access) do. We want to test a game before just releasing an update we know has big issues, like a combat glitch so people can at least play it, while it still is WIP like Build 41. It will still be Early Access, there will still be bugs and people will absolutely be helping us test them and giving necessary feedback to the changes we've made, so we hit a good balance for the entire community.

For 10 years we're fully aware we're slow, but we've delivered on every update that people said the same thing for. "Vehicles aren't coming, they're a lie," "animations aren't coming either lie," "build 42 will never come," we're in the same cycle here. Not everyone is going to agree here. I will never agree there is any instance of Early Access being used wrong, except in the case where people release unfinished games, without an Early Access tag.

In the end, I can't really sway your opinions you're entitled to, and I'm not expecting to end up doing so, but I'm not trying to "deflect" criticism. I'm engaging with it and hopefully you'll use the knowledge of Early Access to not purchase another EA game.

I'm done with the back-and-forth though and not going to go deeper into this, it'll save us both the headache of just going in circles.

Marco, i'm not gonna lie and despite you being my good little brother's namesake, but your arguments have 0 legs to stand on, and seem to be born out of crass ignorance.

I can't help but thinking you're just unhappy it's not done yet, while unwilling to hear the actual facts pointing to it not being done, such as all the reworks, the mechanics implementations, the engine overhauls, etc to only name a few.

Also, you saying you played 7000 hours in the span of 2 years means that you spent 40% of those 2 years playing this game. So either you stop fibbing youg man, or you go do some productive stuff outside ^^

None of this matters and you're all wasting your life arguing about it.