What happened to the reviews?

[Dragonrubi]

They gone for blue “extremely positive” (all time) to “extremely negative” (recent), so what happened for so dramatic change? The game is under some review “bomb attack” or something?

A fast check seems that some people are unsatisfied because they feel a rushed “launch” and that the game feels still unfinished, yet the in my years of experience in Steam that would not totally explain so dramatic change, I only had seen it when something VERY dramatic happens like a n evil patch that leaves the game unplayable and then is abandoned or something like that… but a lot of early access games are launch before time and don’t receive this treatment

[WillieSea]

First world kids who were used to lots of updates, and suddenly the game is finished and the updates stop. The game fulfilled most all its promises when released so it's not like anything big was left on the table. Yeah, lots of people wanted this game to be something else, like island base building, enemy ships, visible fish, but none of that was on the actual roadmap. The game is an exploration / quest game and little more although many wanted more.

[Dragonrubi]

Well yes in old times you bought a CD in $60 store, if you were lucky espected a couple of patches to manually download just addressing the most serious bugs.

Nowdays kids pay like $10-20 for a game and expect the devs. to be their slaves for life.

[404_Not_Found]

There were a few other promises made on the wiki pages and talked about, the most notable thing being changes to the ocean as well as how ship permissions worked in multiplayer. The latter of which is largely a QoL update and should've been implimented sometime after release for how much it meant to people playing multiplayer. (Which is most people.)

Generally, I like the game, but there isn't really much to do in it and the things that were hinted at never made it in. It felt more like the game was abandoned instead of 'released' properly. Most of the things I and many others were expecting weren't antithetical to the exploration aspect, it was mostly just making sea travel more interesting, allowing you to go underwater in search of treasure, allowing more than one person to access ship inventory (bit silly for 4 people to ride about on a ship and only one person is allowed to steer it yes?) and generally just smaller QoL improvements or some added functionality to existing systems.

I mean, it might still be better than sea of thieves but at least that lets you actually have a crew on your ship that can do things...

as it stands I've kinda moved onto raft and worlds adrift. I don't like them as much as salt since WA is an MMO with PVP (and that is immediately stressful) and raft isn't an adventure game as much as a survival game but salt is in a weird limbo place where it's frustrating that the game has flaws that will never get fixed and my ability to enjoy the game was largely hinging on "well, they'll get to it eventually, best not bother them about it too much, they likely know about it already" etc.

[WillieSea]

Going under water was never on the developers list, just the communities. The same with making sea travel interesting, with fish and what-not.

And I would agrue strongly that most people play multiplayer. The game was single player for the majority of the games early release life, and that player base is much bigger. Personally, I never understood why it was even made multiplayer.

I do agree fully that the owner of the boat should be able to allow inventory access. But I guess that keeps the thieves out of your inventory, so you have to trade it instead.

[Dragonrubi]

Yes I hate how EVERYTHING nowdays should be multiplayer, the few good single player games out there you find a mob of kids ranting in the forums: “we want MP, we want MP!” even when the game is not good for it, and like in this case when the devs yield (consuming time and resources that could be used better on the game) often it happens and that it doesn’t turn good and the mob is not happy anyway.

[Spad]

Just a bunch of people expecting things that were never promised.

[404_Not_Found]

Originally posted by WillieSea:

Going under water was never on the developers list, just the communities. The same with making sea travel interesting, with fish and what-not.

And I would agrue strongly that most people play multiplayer. The game was single player for the majority of the games early release life, and that player base is much bigger. Personally, I never understood why it was even made multiplayer.

I do agree fully that the owner of the boat should be able to allow inventory access. But I guess that keeps the thieves out of your inventory, so you have to trade it instead.

To be honest I'd be satisfied with just being able to give my friends ship permissions. Like, if you could whitelist people to do things on your ship such as steer it or check the chests, same as a party system. I'd love to have some underwater stuff to do but that was by far the most important thing to me.

well that, and fixing a few bugs...and giving me a proper gamma slider.

Speaking as someone who didn't even get the game until multiplayer was added, I can tell you that it matters to some people. The reason is because we have finite hours in our day and most of my friends would rather spend it on voice chat playing games together than playing games alone.

I am actually the exception to the rule in most cases, I'd rather play a lot of single-player games. Ideally ones that are short and can be beaten in a day. Only problem is, a game like salt is incredibly mindless so playing it solo doesn't do much for me. If I want a good single player game, I can play treasure adventure world, or a text adventure, or some other game that doesn't involve grinding or sailing for 10 hours. That kind of tedium is only fun when you have people to talk to, but doing it solo means being alone with your thoughts and not having your entertainment do enough to distract you with story or something.

Elder Scrolls games and other WRPGs get around this by having huge swaths of story that are all sprinkled about, and the games usually only shut up when you need to concentrate. the good (or at least, the playable games today) also give you fast travel so you can only deal with roaming about when you're actively exploring and not just hoofing it from A to B. A game like salt, and by extention most games in the genre, don't usually have the luxury because the nature of their world doesn't allow for it. It's up to the player to add substance to the world, and one player can only add so much. It's a universal truth that things become wholly more complex when you add more people, and a player-driven system of fun is ideal for multiplayer because of this.

Originally posted by Spad:

Just a bunch of people expecting things that were never promised.

Usually when a bunch of people are expecting them, it's because there was a reason to believe they'd be a thing. Most commonly happens because of marketing failures and not nipping rumors in the bud for indie devs and it's definitely something to look out for if you ever plan on making games.

[G0dsGulag69]

Would have liked enemy pirates at sea but otherwise the game is perfectly fine where it is (imo)

[Andbrew]

Originally posted by Spad:

Just a bunch of people expecting things that were never promised.

Like optimisation ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

[WillieSea]

It was optimized, several times. The problem is the poor choise of game engine used. Well, perhaps not poor, but the game engine is a big bottle neck to many games. I have a few games where the developers actually created their own game engine, and some of them are pretty cool.

[Sanuku]

High Expectations where not meet. People moved along as the Developers did too since Feb. Why would you leave an positiv review for a Game that has been since then abandoned and the Team behind it moved to their next project?.

[Andbrew]

Originally posted by Sanuku:

High Expectations where not meet. People moved along as the Developers did too since Feb. Why would you leave an positiv review for a Game that has been since then abandoned and the Team behind it moved to their next project?.

That's a really bad thing to say.

[Spad]

Originally posted by Sanuku:

High Expectations where not meet. People moved along as the Developers did too since Feb. Why would you leave an positiv review for a Game that has been since then abandoned and the Team behind it moved to their next project?.

It's called the game being fun? There are lot's of games that aren't being developed anymore that are still fun. Just because there aren't more updates, doesn't mean that the game isn't fun.

And it's not abandoning the game if they see it as finished. The high expectations were set by the community, not the developers. If you expected more out of this game, that's your fault, not the developers. Stop blaming the developers for what you thought the game should of been.

[Dragonrubi]

Originally posted by Sanuku:

High Expectations where not meet. People moved along as the Developers did too since Feb. Why would you leave an positiv review for a Game that has been since then abandoned and the Team behind it moved to their next project?.

That’s not a satisfying answer, for 2 reasons:

1) That happens with a lot of games in Steam and I don’t see a dramatic fall in the reviews as happened here

2) Like I said before kids nowdays want devs. to be their slaves for life just because they paid them the amount of a hamburger, if the game is good and finished no matter if it is “abandoned” (oh! the horror!), it is expected an uproar with a heavy bugged and unfinished game, but for the comments it’s not the case.

[R2-D2]

Mixed is mixed. Some newer purchasers don't like it for whatever reasons. Personally I'm glad they've finally stopped shovelling content into this game.