Have the developers given up on this game?

[real]

Game still feels very, very unpolished when comparing to outlast 1 and 2. And there is already the V1 release coming next week, even while the game does not feel like it is nearing the final state at all.

Not here to hate on anything. but it is just that the developers are working many years on this, and got me very hyped up towards this game. And now the developers are just throwing their project away by releasing the game just like it is nothing.

anyone else noticing this?


edit to make message more clear:
It is disappointing to see the game in its current state, especially after years of anticipation and not any notable improvement ever since the closed beta got released.
Despite the 6 years of development, it severely lacks the polish and depth of its predecessors. With the V1 release approaching, one can't help but question if the developers have lost their initial vision. This is not about criticism but rather a sense of letdown after such high expectations. Many, like myself, were eagerly awaiting this title, only to feel somewhat disillusioned now.
Makes this feel somewhat like the developers have indeed given up on further development and/or improvement of their game which they always wanted to perfect, no matter the costs.

[MrIncognito]

You might want to go into specifics about what seems unpolished to you.

[real]

Originally posted by MrIncognito:

You might want to go into specifics about what seems unpolished to you.

bruhh, come on man, if i need to make a list it would take me a few days. like even the little details such as opening a door feel like ♥♥♥♥ when comparing to even the original outlast. you just float towards the door, when in outlast 1 there are multiple animations to open it.

i am not saying this game is very unpolished, but rather i am saying that to red barrels standards this game is very poorly polished.

[real]

also it is like they used the roblox ai path following ♥♥♥♥ for this game

[real]

the graphics look clean tho, but thats it

[SUNNYWORLD.Shootah]

Originally posted by real:

Originally posted by MrIncognito:

You might want to go into specifics about what seems unpolished to you.

bruhh, come on man, if i need to make a list it would take me a few days. like even the little details such as opening a door feel like ♥♥♥♥ when comparing to even the original outlast. you just float towards the door, when in outlast 1 there are multiple animations to open it.

i am not saying this game is very unpolished, but rather i am saying that to red barrels standards this game is very poorly polished.

Sometimes this topics feels like bait or sumn
Bro you really tryin make a point over opening doors animations, are u serious rn?
Ofc make a few exactly examples (agruments) of what are you talking about
If doors opening is so important for you (not surviving agains ex-pops, stealth mechanic, rigs, amps, maps design, coop interactions, etc), then I guess you choose wrong game to play fam

[real]

Originally posted by SUNNYWORLD.Shootah:

Originally posted by real:

bruhh, come on man, if i need to make a list it would take me a few days. like even the little details such as opening a door feel like ♥♥♥♥ when comparing to even the original outlast. you just float towards the door, when in outlast 1 there are multiple animations to open it.

i am not saying this game is very unpolished, but rather i am saying that to red barrels standards this game is very poorly polished.

Sometimes this topics feels like bait or sumn
Bro you really tryin make a point over opening doors animations, are u serious rn?
Ofc make a few exactly examples (agruments) of what are you talking about
If doors opening is so important for you (not surviving agains ex-pops, stealth mechanic, rigs, amps, maps design, coop interactions, etc), then I guess you choose wrong game to play fam

literally everything you said except for the maps design are terribly optimised and polished.

here another example, the enemies when they briefly spot you, the enemies will investigate the EXACT position where they saw you, and will just stand there for a fixed amount of seconds and say a randomly picked voice line, and then they just continue their fixed path.

so in short, the 'advanced ai' as they called it is not even ai at all, it is just some very low effort static code.

not exactly as advertised when i saw the behind the scenes videos over 2 years ago

and also, how long they working on this game.. like almost 6 years, bruh


the stealth mechanic feels like they just ripped the code of some old ps2 game, like come one man, it is like they just put an invisible box, and whenever you is inside it, the so incredibly great 'stealth mechanic' activates


can you not see that this feels like a low effort, unpolished game. Especially when comparing it to outlast 2, and even outlast 1, which was simple but at least they put good effort in it.


i am not angry towards the developers or anyone here, but i am just incredibly dissapointed that the developers just gave up on their project after 6 years of hard work.

look at the closed beta, can you tell me one single thing they improved from the closed beta to current?

[real]

unless they have a separate version of the game where they continuously improve their game, but that is very unlikely.

i guess we will see what the game becomes next week.

[MrIncognito]

All right, if the only things you can say are "everything bruh wdym" and "this one is more of a video game than an interactive horror experience", all I can offer is counterpoints:

• Absolutely stellar effects on proximity voice chat
  
• Audio and video distortion during psychosis effects
  
• Effective use of distinctive audio cues to communicate important information (someone completed an objective, you've been spotted)
  
• Effective use of visual cues (door traps, container traps)
  
• Dynamic soundtrack
  
• Hold-to-confirm on most UIs
  
• Most loading screens hidden
  
• Distinguishable borders between "well-lit" and "dark" areas
  
• Fairly good transitions between NPC animation states (especially Prime Assets)

And more, but if I were to list them all it would take a few days

[MrIncognito]

Originally posted by real:

here another example, the enemies when they briefly spot you, the enemies will investigate the EXACT position where they saw you, and will just stand there for a fixed amount of seconds and say a randomly picked voice line, and then they just continue their fixed path.

You're describing intentional design. The enemy AI being predictable is how this is a video game and not a survival simulator. Also, the earlier Outlast games were also like this?? The people chasing you were dumb as rocks. They would see you run into a room with no other exits, check one single hiding spot, and decide you somehow poofed out of existence. If they ever exhibited different behavior, it's because it was scripted.

Originally posted by real:

so in short, the 'advanced ai' as they called it is not even ai at all, it is just some very low effort static code.

wait when did they call it this? I want a good laugh

Originally posted by real:

not exactly as advertised when i saw the behind the scenes videos over 2 years ago

Are you comparing it to prerendered promotional video? Because of course it's not going to be that.

Originally posted by real:

the stealth mechanic feels like they just ripped the code of some old ps2 game, like come one man, it is like they just put an invisible box, and whenever you is inside it, the so incredibly great 'stealth mechanic' activates

This is a gross oversimplification. Also, how stealth mechanics work in this game is more or less how they work in modern games as well. Can they clearly see you? They saw you. Can the only sort of see you? They see you after staring in your direction a little bit. Did they hear you? They may decide to check out the noise to see if they can see you.

Originally posted by real:

look at the closed beta, can you tell me one single thing they improved from the closed beta to current?

Yes? Almost every feature of the game has been drastically rebalanced. Using the blind rig no longer makes you an immortal god king capable of cheesing any challenge. The AI was tweaked so that people end up in unfair situations less. The performance review was changed to further punish players who don't participate. There's probably more I don't recall offhand.

[Karina<3Winter]

bro has 0 hours in the game and is complaining

[SUNNYWORLD.Shootah]

Originally posted by real:

Originally posted by SUNNYWORLD.Shootah:

Sometimes this topics feels like bait or sumn
Bro you really tryin make a point over opening doors animations, are u serious rn?
Ofc make a few exactly examples (agruments) of what are you talking about
If doors opening is so important for you (not surviving agains ex-pops, stealth mechanic, rigs, amps, maps design, coop interactions, etc), then I guess you choose wrong game to play fam

literally everything you said except for the maps design are terribly optimised and polished.

here another example, the enemies when they briefly spot you, the enemies will investigate the EXACT position where they saw you, and will just stand there for a fixed amount of seconds and say a randomly picked voice line, and then they just continue their fixed path.

so in short, the 'advanced ai' as they called it is not even ai at all, it is just some very low effort static code.

not exactly as advertised when i saw the behind the scenes videos over 2 years ago

and also, how long they working on this game.. like almost 6 years, bruh


the stealth mechanic feels like they just ripped the code of some old ps2 game, like come one man, it is like they just put an invisible box, and whenever you is inside it, the so incredibly great 'stealth mechanic' activates


can you not see that this feels like a low effort, unpolished game. Especially when comparing it to outlast 2, and even outlast 1, which was simple but at least they put good effort in it.


i am not angry towards the developers or anyone here, but i am just incredibly dissapointed that the developers just gave up on their project after 6 years of hard work.

look at the closed beta, can you tell me one single thing they improved from the closed beta to current?

Unfortunately, I aint played closed beta so I can't compare how it was
If you nitpick every aspect of the game down to the smallest detail, then almost any game will turn out to be bad, believe me
Almost all games with AI is far away to be called perfect (in literally way of this word and of course it's a matter of taste)
In Outlast 1, parts of the map with action were smaller in size, therefore there was less space for maneuvers and there was no need to hide from enemies for a long time in order to perform any long actions, such as pushing a cart in Grind the Bad Apples or interact with the levers in Kill the Snitch (correct me If Im wrong, cuz I played Outlast 1 a long time ago)
So basically when you had to run away from enemies, you simply ran away from them and moved on in forward
It cuts both ways: on the one hand, we can complain about enemies lose sight of us too quickly and because of this game seems easy, on the other hand, imagine if enemies did not let you go at all and ran after you all the time - youll be dead since the trial started
And after all its still just a game, its not supposed to be much close to RL, so its may be some sort of mistakes or irrational actions of AI don't take the flaws that close lol
All this sorts of controversy is quite relative and ambiguous, but in my opinion this game not bad at all, and in your case it seems like you dont like some of this games mechanics but this is life bro, hope youll enjoy Trials sooner or later
Otherwise the game is same, not bad and not perfect like other cooperative horror games with AI, but its an early access still
And yeah, 03/05/24 is coming so lets keep our fingers crossed

[real]

Originally posted by SUNNYWORLD.Shootah:

Unfortunately, I aint played closed beta so I can't compare how it was
If you nitpick every aspect of the game down to the smallest detail, then almost any game will turn out to be bad, believe me
Almost all games with AI is far away to be called perfect (in literally way of this word and of course it's a matter of taste)
In Outlast 1, parts of the map with action were smaller in size, therefore there was less space for maneuvers and there was no need to hide from enemies for a long time in order to perform any long actions, such as pushing a cart in Grind the Bad Apples or interact with the levers in Kill the Snitch (correct me If Im wrong, cuz I played Outlast 1 a long time ago)
So basically when you had to run away from enemies, you simply ran away from them and moved on in forward
It cuts both ways: on the one hand, we can complain about enemies lose sight of us too quickly and because of this game seems easy, on the other hand, imagine if enemies did not let you go at all and ran after you all the time - youll be dead since the trial started
And after all its still just a game, its not supposed to be much close to RL, so its may be some sort of mistakes or irrational actions of AI don't take the flaws that close lol
All this sorts of controversy is quite relative and ambiguous, but in my opinion this game not bad at all, and in your case it seems like you dont like some of this games mechanics but this is life bro, hope youll enjoy Trials sooner or later
Otherwise the game is same, not bad and not perfect like other cooperative horror games with AI, but its an early access still
And yeah, 03/05/24 is coming so lets keep our fingers crossed

You are totally right, but look.. 6 years, and we have this low effort feeling game, especially when comparing between Red barrels previous work.

but i guess we will see what becomes of it next week

[Prett]

Originally posted by real:

You are totally right, but look.. 6 years, and we have this low effort feeling game

No we don't.

[popkat]

Originally posted by real:

Originally posted by SUNNYWORLD.Shootah:

Unfortunately, I aint played closed beta so I can't compare how it was
If you nitpick every aspect of the game down to the smallest detail, then almost any game will turn out to be bad, believe me
Almost all games with AI is far away to be called perfect (in literally way of this word and of course it's a matter of taste)
In Outlast 1, parts of the map with action were smaller in size, therefore there was less space for maneuvers and there was no need to hide from enemies for a long time in order to perform any long actions, such as pushing a cart in Grind the Bad Apples or interact with the levers in Kill the Snitch (correct me If Im wrong, cuz I played Outlast 1 a long time ago)
So basically when you had to run away from enemies, you simply ran away from them and moved on in forward
It cuts both ways: on the one hand, we can complain about enemies lose sight of us too quickly and because of this game seems easy, on the other hand, imagine if enemies did not let you go at all and ran after you all the time - youll be dead since the trial started
And after all its still just a game, its not supposed to be much close to RL, so its may be some sort of mistakes or irrational actions of AI don't take the flaws that close lol
All this sorts of controversy is quite relative and ambiguous, but in my opinion this game not bad at all, and in your case it seems like you dont like some of this games mechanics but this is life bro, hope youll enjoy Trials sooner or later
Otherwise the game is same, not bad and not perfect like other cooperative horror games with AI, but its an early access still
And yeah, 03/05/24 is coming so lets keep our fingers crossed

You are totally right, but look.. 6 years, and we have this low effort feeling game, especially when comparing between Red barrels previous work.

but i guess we will see what becomes of it next week

not a low effort game at all

[Scabloonshki]

If you can look at everything in this game and seriously call it low effort, I don't think you have a very good understanding on the broader nature of game development. Not gonna say everything in this game is perfect, because it isn't. But there is a ton of detail in Trials to appreciate.

6 years is a long time for development, but we aren't talking about a AAA studio here. This is a team of roughly 60 people, and there was even less for a decent chunk of this games development. The studio is still growing if you look at their linkedin page, they're still hiring people.

Compare that to most AAA studios that have hundreds if not thousands of people working on a single game. The reality is that we live in an age of games with bloated development costs where most of that budget is going towards advertising, visuals, animations, etc. It's not conducive to games actually being well designed and it's resulted in people having, frankly, ridiculous expectations for how games should look.

Trials looks amazing in addition to being very tightly designed with a strong and narrative to back everything up. That, and this is RB first multiplayer game and it's also their biggest project yet. More content, more mechanics and more variables than any other previous project. It's not up for debate. Any person with at least some degree of understanding in game development will tell you this. They've built upon the gameplay of their previous games tremendously here in addition to incorporating multiplayer. That is a MASSIVE task to overcome for a team of their calibre.

The fact there is some jank in certain areas that really aren't THAT important is forgivable in the grand scheme of the things. I won't go to into specifics on what RB did well here because we would be here all day to be perfectly honest. Plus, some people above have already outlined some things. I would strongly recommend you to take a step back and actually compare trials to their previous projects in a way that goes beyond superficial details.