Leaving Alpha & Early Access: some clarifications.

[Pantera]

Dear Galactic Survivalists.

We would like to address some of the concerns we have seen in the comments on our initial ‘leaving Early Access/Alpha’ announcement.

The reasons?

Plain and simply: We want to leave Early Access on our 5th anniversary release, because we are confident that the game is now in a shape, where it no longer needs that supporting wheels tag. We are not running out of money (most read concern) and there are no dark entities that are forcing us to do that (lots of funny theories :D) .

On the contrary, we are sure the game is playable in quality, although not free of issues, that is simply not reflected anymore by how the meaning of an Early Access tag is understood or talked about even nowadays.

As a consequence, leaving Early Access also means to remove the “Alpha” tags, as they are somehow tied to this stage. But there needs to be some sort of new versioning. While we did not want to proceed with simply counting further up or adding fancy letters, the version counter had no other choice as to being reset to 1.

Why no Beta?

For us, the “Alpha” tag is THE visual statement of the Early Access stage of the game. So it has to go, because we are leaving Early Access. Simple as that.

Of course, in the classic software development, there is a definitive meaning for Alpha, Beta, Full Release, where you put in features in Alpha, fix bugs in Beta and do not change anything relevant (because it might again break your stuff) and then go to a full release. But this is not “classic software development” for cars, medical equipment, elevators or else. And even in the so called A+ Game development, there are literally only very, very few games that let all interested players play a “Game in development”. At least if it’s not 80-90% done already, although those stages are called Alpha or Beta often as well.

We also do not have an investor we need to “develop for” or which pushes us to a certain stage. Eleon Games has successfully bootstrapped the game 100% on its own up to this point, while working with and for the community that helped to actually shape the game a lot. And we possibly could go on like this for years.

That being said, and because we realized that putting in Beta or Dev or Post-Alpha or any other term would in no way have avoided any discussion on that, but also leading to the same expectation discussions, strange reasoning (no, we do not simply want to avoid the 13!) or even conspiracy theories. So we simply have chosen to go with a plain number and deal with the resulting feedback by simply addressing your concerns.

As we always do.

Missing features.. ?

Leaving Early Access DOES NOT mean this is the “final release” or finished by any means, because, as detailed above and in the initial announcement, everything else will literally not change a lot.

In our definition of the Alpha stage, it has had the purpose of bringing in all the features that define the basics and primarily the larger technical basis of the game. Starting from the Database, large planets up to the galaxy addition in Alpha 12.

This type or ‘grade’ of complex, code-breaking features is now completed, which contributed to the decision of leaving Early Access as well.

We are aware that there are dozens of features that are not yet added. All those left out features will be the main context of the upcoming “Post Alpha” content releases.

In the rare case we discuss a feature of the grade and technical complexity of the galaxy for being included in the game, we hope you bear with us adding additional fun to the game on a larger scale even AFTER the version change. ;)

..via paid-DLC?

Because we are reading this quite frequently: There are no current plans to release additional DLC packs anytime soon or in the near future.

We also do not have plans to dive into the Cosmetic-Micotransactions topic of crazy dragon helmets and unicorn suits. If we get to know that there would be a common agreement on the possibility of having that, with the context of supporting the development, we might consider that. If you want to support the game development right at the moment, simply gift some game copies to your friends and help them to make their first steps in Empyrion. ;)

Also: if you bought the game at any stage, you will not have to re-purchase it for any of the upcoming releases. This has always been the case, and this will not change as well.

Roadmap?

This is possibly one of the toughest topics to deal with.

We have always tried to approach an open development policy, which means developing for the community. Being the small team that we are, it is also extremely risky to lay down a roadmap, which promises features in a timed manner we then might not be able to deliver at that point in time. And this is more likely than the other way round. But we are not alone in that struggle. Even game companies in our genre with several times the amount of programmers in one team alone, have had to scrap their public schedules or do not give any new ones anymore.

But we of course know that giving no info is as bad as giving false leading info. So we are currently trying hard to carve out a development plan and a rough “feature list” for the next content update after the version change - as the anniversary release, being so close to Alpha 12, will be merely gadgets and fixing stuff.

There are a few topics floating around already, and we hope to be able to release some of the info just after the version change in early August.

Make good use of the forum topics and suggestion areas, as these often help us to find interesting ideas and of course your opinion on possible features!

Until then, we hope we could ease some of your sorrows and explain the reasoning of the move we made.

Best,
Empyrion Dev Team
Eleon Games