We have moved our clocks forward, Winter is over, and Spring starts 3/20! I have quietly been following this game for a year now and the game is so close I can almost taste it! What does it taste like you ask? Some say Marzipan, others say Meat Pie, and some even dare say Pickled Fungus! Can we expect a release during early spring? mid Spring? or god forbid an Obelisk has taken control and we are looking at late Spring?
It will release when Nicholas' sanity enters a wane, David's manpout reaches its zenith and Daniel leaves Twitter.
My guess if we'll get a release date sometime during GDC. Maybe they'll tell the journalists the release date for their articles on clockwork empires.
If a developer says that it will be released *insert season name*, then it will be released on the last week/day of said season
Well, considering I won't be getting a new PC able to properly run this until summer anyways, I'm cool with waiting as long as that. Oh, who am I fooling? I just want to play CE asap, even if that meant doing so with the lowest possible graphic settings. Damn !
Maybe they are holding off because they need to add cats to the game? I also think it will be Summer before we see anything. I just wanted to start a thread to show that people are pining for the game.
I'm torn about the early access ... I figure for any given game you only play X hours initially plus + Y hours in followup..so do I want to "waste" some of those X hours on an incomplete product? For great strategy games (which are the most replayable..think Civ, GalCIV2, Tropico) you also have a high number of Y hours..whereby you come back a month later, a year later, 4 years later and put a bunch more hours into the game. I do see how this game could benefit from early access (especially if they do some sort of machine learning/ stats measuring to see how people are playing, problems, etc). I also do enjoy helping to create a game..but it can be distracting from the total game. Ofcourse the multiplayer aspect of the game might also add Z hours to the game (those hours that are devoted to social interaction...think playing halo for years and years with friends...call of duty, starcraft etc). but Z hours are really unsure at this point in development.. What are your thoughts?
@astaldaran I agree. The news about the early access left me with mixed feelings. Last year i bought a ONLY early access games, played them and lost my interest in nearly all products (btw. the only game, i had bought, which is "finished" now, is Don't Starve..) during the EA-process, because of character wipes, corrupt saves etc. with every new update. So, i must say, i'm cured from early access but yeah... it's Clockwork Empire and I really, really hope, that CE is some sort of retirement game for me
However long you play a game is unquantifiable, nor predictable. You don't *have* to play the Early Access, but doing so may give you the opportunity to help shape the game's final form. You will likely have access to a simplified game to start with (not necessarily a bad thing), and get to experience every feature as new. You may also get to play with features and content that is eventually scrapped (like one of the DoD talents). It comes down to whether you are okay playing an Early Access title or not. If not, that's fine. You won't lose anything in a real sense, except perhaps having to pay a slightly higher price for the game. If you're willing to play a feature-incomplete game (which form the majority of EA titles), then it'll be worth jumping on early. If you want to help GLG finish the game, it'll be worth jumping on early. I'm torn, too. My main concern is actually more to do with how the updates will happen. Coin Crypt got updates nearly every day for a short while, all of which were pretty small. SotS: Ground Pounders, however, I uninstalled after getting two 3GB patches in the space of just over a week (not to mention I have no idea how that game is 3GB). Battle Chess: Game of Kings I haven't loaded, nor do I think it's had an update yet (After a week or two). That's more where I'm coming from in this. I do have some concern I'd burn out before the game released for real, but that's not my main issue.
The main issue of early access for me is that the devs are basically saying "pay us money so you can beta test this for us". It's becoming a huge fad (there's probably going to be an "early access" generation) Not UNLESS the product is sold for a cheaper price during the early access period (AKA you get a discount for beta testing). So, basically what they're doing is stealing jobs from the actual beta testers.
Except Early Access is more sandwiched between Early Beta and Release. Most games don't go into EA until they're out of Alpha and into mid-late Beta. There are some exceptions, yes, but largely an EA release is to avoid crowd-funding, to get a wider range of opinions/tests done and so on. You're getting the game, but you're getting it earlier and in an incomplete state. It's a fair trade.
I read the game would be available for the public in spring time. Did I read wrong? (PC Gamer) and here http://www.gaslampgames.com/tag/clockwork-empires-2/ "we announced that we will be releasing Clockwork Empires in some sort of paid early access model this spring"
I don't have any problem with early access. What you're buying is exactly as advertised. If you want to buy only finished games that work and won't be reworked as time goes on (pouring out a forty for end of nations) then you can do that. Otherwise if for some reason you want to buy a broken game with uncertain update and fixing schedule that isn't guaranteed to ever be finished in your lifetime then Early Access is for you.
As far as I'm concerned, whether a game has early access or not is a decision for the devs and marketing people, and I try to steer clear of any such arguments. As far as playing early access, I like getting an early peek at how a game is developing, especially one that I'm excited about. Every once in a while, an early access game turns out to be disappointing from the start. Some get better. Some get much better. And some don't. But that, in my experience, has been rare.
I think Early access is a great concept; a useful business tool (helps with capital and with testing); I was just saying it is a hard decision for me to make. If it is at a discount, I'm sure I'll buy it..but ofcourse the temptation to play it will probably be to great to resist... If it is not at a discount; then I'll be waiting for the full release. I guess another good reason for an early buy would be to start learning how to mod it...not everything has to be in place to do that.
Think of it as a modern form of patching. In the past you would go to Best Buy and pick up your PC game in a Box and rush home and insert the CD-Rom (for those to young it's a round disk with data on it) into your CD-Drive and install the game. Then hop online and patch the game and as time progressed apply patches as they came out. Fast forward to today and you download the game and "updates" (the same thing as patches) are applied to add content and fix bugs.
