Consider Leaving a Steam User Review

Discussion in 'Clockwork Empires General' started by Alephred, Oct 26, 2016.

  1. Alephred

    Alephred Royal Archivist for Queen And Empire

    Just a reminder, in the Steam store, User Reviews from Early Access are partitioned off from the general User Reviews once a game launches. Therefore, if you are so inclined, consider leaving a new review once Clockwork Empires officially releases later day (10 am PST, 1 pm EST). Those early positive reviews are crucial in helping early adopters decide, one way or another.
     
    Exile likes this.
  2. Unforked

    Unforked Member

    I will certainly be doing that... again.
     
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  3. Daynab

    Daynab Community Moderator Staff Member

    It turns out that I guess Steam doesn't do that anymore, all that's changed is that the "recent" category got reset. But we would still appreciate your reviews if you haven't left one yet!
     
  4. Obeliske

    Obeliske Member

    I'm loving the game and threw one up there. Currently reviews are showing as mixed and personally when I buy a game (and with 500+ games on my list I buy a lot) that's a red flag for me. Lets get that changed guys and get some positive ones up there!
     
    Exile likes this.
  5. Nicholas

    Nicholas Technology Director Staff Member

    We'll swing some of those negative ones back as well. I'm not thrilled about the review count situation, but it is what it is!
     
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  6. Jagwithtude

    Jagwithtude Member

    Just left my positive review, I am having a blast playing this game.
     
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  7. razrien

    razrien Member

    Quite a healthy mix of reviews for the game so far.
    Not the landslide of positivity and love that Dredmor received, but I still don't see this as a completely botched release.

    The negative reviews are a bit tough to sort into a solid "this thing here is whats wrong with the game".
    Quite a few don't like the UI, a bit more don't like the pacing, some others expected more of this and that, or even an entirely different sort of game.
    I threw in my 2 cents, though it was tough for me to stay unbiased with as much as i've played and loved the game beforehand.

    It was quite an adventure to see it go from a bug-ridden shell of an .exe to a fully fleshed out game with all the bells and whistles, and even getting to see the bells and whistles themselves being made.
    I fell in love with seeing how it all came together, and it felt like each bug and crash report I turned in actually helped make the game just a little more stable, and it felt amazing seeing all the devs actually posting here in the forums, elbow to elbow with us as we argued and complained and broke everything they gave us.
    I've yet to come across any other game studio that connects to its fans on such a grounded, personal level.

    I don't know how well the game has sold so far, but I can only hope that they made at least enough of a profit from it so they can continue forward.
    I look forward to whatever else the future holds for Gaslamp Games. :)
     
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  8. Jonta

    Jonta Member

    I love this game to bits, being one of those who like the fact that there is a lot of complicated micro you need to attend to. I am going to put up a positive soon, just want to play a little longer so I can also comment on the late game.
     
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  9. Tikigod

    Tikigod Member

    I think at this point the poor reception by press which very much just repeat and rehash all the typical frustration, annoyances and feelings of meaingless repeated by many (if not most) people reacting to the 1.0 state, kind of makes it very somewhat clear "What is wrong with the game" for many.... especially when it led to PCGamer to give the game a "50" rating, and RPS to pretty much paint the same picture of the game in their coverage of release.

    I kind of get that for some the game is absolutely great as is, whilst for others there just isn't enough putting them off with the changes in the last 11-12 months for them to give anything other than a polite "Yeah it's fine, no problems here" rather than negative criticism because they feel that simply nodding and going "Sure it's not all bad" is being respectful to Gaslamp and to do otherwise would be an insult.

    But if you read:

    http://www.pcgamer.com/clockwork-empires-review/
    https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/10/28/clockwork-empires-review/

    And run it against what the more critical user reviewers and to put it bluntly what a few of us were saying outright straight for over half a year now as the changes piled in and causing many "Wait a minute... do you REALLY want to be doing this? As it's pissing away the game here and just ruining the whole user experience".

    You'll get a pretty clear and definite picture of the exact problem areas, as they're not new things.

    They're issues and criticisms raised increasingly across the last 7-8 months over the RECENT changes this year by a few, but for whatever reasons many actively giving Gaslamp feedback leading up to release felt issues or decreases in the player experience didn't warrant echoing those criticisms but rather to just shrug and indicate to Gaslamp that things were going good with the changes and 1.0 was eagerly looked forward to.

    Now 1.0 has released what a whole lot more people who were actively involved in Early Access should have had the decency to be frank to Gaslamp about over this entire year but failed to show them that courtesy has converted into the game bombing in the press, many release purchasers negatively reacting to the game and discouraging others from buying it, and many Early Access adopters left kind of echoing that feeling....

    Whilst we do have those who are legitimately happy and feel the game is exactly as it should be now, it has become much clearer looking at the wider pool of release feedback that the criticisms raised over the state of the game across this year which were oddly missing from the more actively involved individual feedback to builds is actually shared by a rather large majority of those leaving reviews and various press writers as they're all repeating the same criticisms...

    Yet still, the go-to action for many who were actively involved in the EA is still to avoid being up front about opinions on 1.0 and to just go "It's fine as it could have been worse. This games great. Everyone buy it as you will all love it and have fun.".... and that's just insulting to Gaslamp to put aside constructive criticism to lie to them to such a degree not to mention everyone else to get them to buy a game they'll potentially then just slag off to others damaging the game and Gaslamp further.

    And I really don't think Gaslamp can really be held at fault for a lot of it the 1.0 fallout.

    They can only act on criticisms and feedback given to them, and the fact that they actually had to release their game to have many of those previously minority criticisms made clearer to them makes me feel that those of us actively engaged in EA being unable to collectively be honest with Gaslamp about the realities of what we exactly thought about system A or mechanic B and how the game experience was shifting in a less positive direction, means we very much failed them.


    Though I'd absolutely love to one day hear just what exactly happened in these 11-12 months... as it seems something happened internally and almost feels like people working at cross purposes at some points.

    Like when control over work crews job categories quietly vanished in a September build, and when it was raised as a concern issue that damaged the game from a user standpoint Nicholas seemed equally confused why (even when) someone would have removed it from the game.
     
    Last edited: Nov 13, 2016
  10. Naffarin

    Naffarin Bureaucrat-Inspector Exemplar of The Empire

    I can't say that i share the opinion that there wasn't enough feedback to gaslamp games. First of all when a game is classified as early access you expect changes in the game engine, you also have to live with changes that change the way of playing the game considerably. But you don't necessarily consider them as a final decision which requires a loud and pronounced protest if it doesn't seem fit for the game. And the number of active contributors on the forum during my active phase in the beta was very low, i don't think i have seen more than 10 forum members actively providing feedback. If there are few active contributors you should pay even more attention to what they say even if it is only a single voice.
    As we have seen with the upkeep system feedback was heard and recognized...sadly only after about two months of investing time into the system which might have been used in a more constructive way otherwise.
    But because of such examples as the upkeep system (or maybe also the change in the farming system which i don't know personally since i bought the game only afterwards) i have to say that gaslamp was trying out a lot of game design decisions even in the beta without thinking it through thoroughly .
    I also had the feeling that feedback on those essential game changes was kind of ignored...maybe because of the low number of people actively participating on the forum but if you have 10 people participating and 1-2 complain about a feature then the conclusion should be in my opinion that these concerns should be heard. Sometimes things were changed (like upkeep) but only after a long time and continued protests.
    A lot of other threads haven't been answered by gaslamp games. So even if those threads were read they were missing feedback. Some other times there was some irritation about game changes like the job categories but there was no further information on it.

    And furthermore when a release date is announced the point of no return has been reached...there is no drawing back
    Even if all of the early access players would have voted against releasing a game in the state it was in 0.55 it wouldn't have changed anything. They weren't asked anyway.

    A lot more damage was done in my opinion when bugs and the suggestions forum was wiped on release date. Many of the threads were still valid for the 1.0 release thus needing unnecessary work to reissue.

    But as Nicholas said "It is what it is". Now it's too late to bother what could have been better.
     
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  11. Samut

    Samut Member

    Wait - is that what happened? That is awful. There was a lot of terrific ideas and discussions in there.
     
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  12. Nicholas

    Nicholas Technology Director Staff Member

    We archived it because, frankly, it wasn't particularly manageable and because we wanted a clean slate going forward. We have an internal backup copy.
     
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  13. Cheshire

    Cheshire Member

    I agree with what Naffarin said.

    One other thing that really bugs me is what the game is supposed to be about.

    Is it about designing a Steampunk colony?
    Is it about the emergent gameplay?
    Is it about streamlining the supply chain?
    Is it about constantly fighting against 'dangers of the frontier'?
    Is it about micromanaging the colonists?
    Is it about reaching the endgame ASAP?
    Am I supposed to care about Overseers and not Labourers?

    My experience so far is that there are quite little isolated events that have little depth/effect on the game and it feels like a rush to just get to the endgame since it is more fun there. However, even this is blocked (frustratingly so) by a supply of materials, time and labour. What's more, endgame is buggy as hell and I always have to restart a new colony once I reach 100+ population.

    It feels a bit confusing to play right now as some of these ideas don't necessarily mesh well with others.
    What is exactly the core gameplay loop of CE?
     
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  14. Jonta

    Jonta Member

    My my, if you can't get a bad dream in game, you can get one from the negative wibes in this forum.
     
  15. Samut

    Samut Member

    It would be extremely helpful if those old forums were put back up, even as locked archives. There is a lot of useful discussion and analysis of the game in there, especially in ways that cannot be recreated.
     
    Last edited: Nov 14, 2016
    Exile likes this.
  16. Long time lurker here... I read the bit about failing Gaslamp and I think that I agree to some extent with that. There were protests etc. regarding upkeep, but to be very honest, I don't think that the feedback was instrumental for that mechanic to be disposed of for good. It was quite obvious that was just unfun and flummoxingly convoluted.

    As tikigod, I think something turned bad with the development at some point.

    May it had to do with the concerns with pacing etc. ? At some point I think the message was that time compression wasn't feasible and lots of stuff would be added for us to be busy with. Honestly, I don't think much was added in the way of gameplay, but we got time compression. The vanishing mechanics etc. also concerned me a bit, but I also think games need to be their makers' first, and then find their players.

    Sadly, I don’t think I am a player for this one. I do appreciate the crew being very talented, full of brilliant ideas. This was a great concept, great technical solutions were put forward to very challenging problems, the art is lovely but the sum of all these wonderful components just doesn't click for me.

    I am sorry about not being able to enjoy this, yet I am happy to have supported this project with what probably covered your grocery expenses for a couple day.

    Best of luck Gaslamp!
     
  17. Regina Absher

    Regina Absher Member

    I absolutely love this game. I have never played a game where I posted on the forums, but I have found it enjoyable. Problems I have brought up, whether they were actual bugs or my not understanding how to make something work were all addressed. I have gotten many enjoyable hours out of this game and expect many more. I think it is a fantastic venture.