This is not intended to be an alarmist thread or anything.



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This is intended to be a thread where people can give a short statement about what they are seeing from Amplitude and whether they think the company is doing the right thing or whether they should be doing things a little differently.



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Read these food for thoughts:



1. This company seems to be brand spanking new and they seem, to me, to be 90% on the way there to having a fantastic product that will prove that Civ is not the only 4x game that has a clean release.



2. Being a newer company, however, means that they always have to worry about being able to put dinner on the table. They can't do things like hold off an expansion for half a year like Blizzard can. I think that these guys try to be the "good" kind of company that always puts it's customers first but at this stage their bank account and how low it's getting will force them to make and release expansions, whether the game is stable or not or whether multiplayer works or not. No dinner and you starve.



%OK NOW POST%



Here is my take on it:



They undertook a fantastically huge project and came very close to a complete success.



Yet they have to put dinner on the table. That means that new content to sell will take first priority in manpower. Whatever is left over can hunt down bugs.



But in every problem lies an opportunity. Instead of having whoever is left hunt down bugs and probably not be able to fix them in the time frame the player base is demanding and keep assuring them that the bugs will eventually be fixed; why not instead involve the community in the process?



What the customers are worried about is that their investment which was up to 30 bucks taken on faith, almost alone. Amplitude is an indie company on their first game, it seems, and there isn't the assurance that they will get a finished game that can come from a larger, more established company.



So instead of the usual approach that leaves the community feeling bitter and betrayed and the community managers with a colossal headache of a no-win situation with their names on the line and the developers unable to spare the manpower to make a real effort to fix it; involve the community in hunting down and fixing the bugs.



Will they actually be able to fix any more than if the developer instead just focused on bugfixing solo? Most likely not. But then that's not the real point of the exercise. The point is to make the customers feel assured that their investment is safe because they can see something, *visibly* (very, very key word) being done about it.



This is the 4x community we are talking here. They want to see a company succeed with a good game. And in niche markets like this, laying all your cards face up on the table for all to see won't have the same reaction from the customers that retail or EA would have. Admitting, with all evidence, that you really want to but cannot for one or more *specific reasons* put on your terminator suits and go bug zapping for a while will make the lives of your PR people easier, make it so less customers write the game off completely, make it so less customers leave feeling bitter, have more customers who do leave return the ES2, give your company the foundations of a reputation about being a "good and honest company" and also help silence trolls and alarmists. Honesty breeds loyalty. Your customers will be more inclined save your hired hands the trouble of defending your company's image by dog-piling the troll/alarmists themselves.



Another aspect of involving the community is that often times, especially in games with a good amount of mods, those you are involving will include people like professional programmers and even a few fellow game developers (I've seen them). And sometimes these people will be willing to work closely with your dev team, for free to help you squash some bugs (note: implement insectoid race).



Well thats what I think, what do you guys think?

/#/endless-space/forum/27-general/thread/9898-verbose-patch-notes



The lack of information in patch notes is crazy. This needs to change, particularly when many of the changes are completely undocumented within the game itself (a change having been made to the effect but not the text, which is a common Amplitude problem apparently), and many affect the balance of games/play styles.



Furthermore the lack of information is only hurting the reputation of the company and possibly driving people away.



/#/endless-space/forum/27-general/thread/9821-second-time-playing-and-devs-making-me-cry



What this is leading to is a problem, whereby because Amplitude is known to just make changes to the product without any notification and now when a problem is encountered, specifically a problem within the mechanics of the game that goes outside of the accepted/established norm, it is assumed that a change was made. Many, if not all, of these changes must be documented, thoroughly.

You know, I must be crazy.. or maybe my tinfoil hat isn't on tight enough.



I just see a company that produced a great game. A game that admittedly has a fairly average crop of bugs and issues, but nothing game breaking. A company that is taking an above-average approach to content updates post release, focusing on big and exciting features, but like any game company with limited resources, prioritizing fixes based on time availability and severity.



If you want a certain bug addressed, why don't you enumerate it instead of getting all vague about 'direction'? Seriously, Amplitude isn't the illuminati. Talk plainly. Perhaps you can move the bug that bugs you up on the priority list.

Lheimroo wrote:
You know, I must be crazy.. or maybe my tinfoil hat isn't on tight enough.



I just see a company that produced a great game. A game that admittedly has a fairly average crop of bugs and issues, but nothing game breaking. A company that is taking an above-average approach to content updates post release, focusing on big and exciting features, but like any game company with limited resources, prioritizing fixes based on time availability and severity.



If you want a certain bug addressed, why don't you enumerate it instead of getting all vague about 'direction'? Seriously, Amplitude isn't the illuminati. Talk plainly. Perhaps you can move the bug that bugs you up on the priority list.

I am not intending to point out any specific bug. Nor am I trying to say that they are doing a bad job.



They need feedback like this because they are at the stage where their reputation, as a company, is being built. This reputation is going to affect all of their future game sales. I did not find an official thread for feedback on what the customers are deciding their reputation is so I decided to make one myself.

They are basically saying the Developers need a forum where they update the community on bug fixes and to put it somewhere visible. It's not whatever you're thinking they're are saying.

While I understand this is an indie company that is making a great game with little resources it still seems like they are asking a lot of the community to basically be their bug team...its not enough to find a bug especially when its a rampant bug like desync they want us to then play for hours on end with the sole purpose of unlocking the bug in a saved game file....Its not even like they are asking us just to play the game and if we see something tell them or inform them they actively want us to do their work....I just feel like they are trying to take advantage of their player base that really enjoys their game. I don't mind trying to sort out how a bug happened and a little here and there but they need to take some responsibility and fix some shit that isn't working right

Yes the desync issue should have gotten more love earlier, it's being worked on and it's not a particularly easy thing to troubleshoot so I don't expect it to be solved overnight.

Those moaning about about Amp expecting a player to "do their work for them", give me a break. Not every conceivable situation\scenario can be tested perfectly prior to release by a team the size of Amp, let alone their outside testing partner.... or for that matter the size of the Windows testing team. If you run across a problem report it in as much detail as you can, yeah that might take some of your time but the more info you can provide the quicker it's going to get fixed. Bug reports like "I got and some error but I don't have screenshot or any other information" are usually totally useless and just waste developer time. Bugs or error conditions reported with detail and samples are almost always addressed quickly. If you want a problem fixed quickly yes investing some extra time on your part might be necessary - this is true with nearly all software.



For the 28 bucks or whatever I paid during the alpha phase I've gotten more then fair value out of the game and more then I expected out of the developers. Does that mean they're aren't issues with the game or otherwise, no, there are, some big, some small, most are likely to be addressed over time. I'm actually pretty impressed with Amplitude given where they started and where they are today, and their interactivity with the "community" imperfect as some may say is way above average.



/2cents

I hate to sound so harsh, I mean i really love this game I in fact bought 3 copies of it for my friends over the holiday for a christmas present because i enjoyed it soo much....now I've already got my money's worth out of the game but it could be so great to actually play w/ my friends online but the game is ruined to any point of playing online its just a big waste of time and single player i crush the AI on endless difficulty now every match which means single player is pretty damn boring to play and I still want to play online w/ friends because it would be interesting then but yet I can't....So my "anger" is more that this game should be legendary but instead its just awesome...

Way to make an "I'm awesome at this game" post. If it's that easy, make a custom race that is intentionally weaker than the standard fare.