Does this game have a future?

[Albi]

Or is it another one of those ea games that is spiraling downwards.

[Mesarthim]

When a game has success, for me, it's a behemoth occulting other games by their success.
Be it advertisement or not.
Citadel still had 7k players on release and while you can't keep those numbers up, they reached 1k on their huge update and everybody left.

But what you say is just plain silly and insulting when you do not know who you're talking to, also I'm starting to think you're the one who hasn't got a clue about game development.

In many games, not to say all, developping a game is just like creating a program, which I did during my studies mainly in Java, C and assembly if you want to know !
So I perfectly knows what it is like to touch code and spend month in hundreds of pages of code.

It goes through a couple phase while skipping details about agile project management, art direction, modelling, animating, testing and such:

Creating the game and adding content... to this point the game is unplayable, frame rate is close to 0 and there is no optimization whatsoever ! That's what we call the developper build.

Then you start optimizing and fixing bugs, this is the beta phase.

Finally, you take care of the ballance.

Why do you do this? Because adding content is always prone to add more bugs and break what is already existing. It's the same while programming companies programs.

If you keep adding / fixing fixing fixing fixing ballancing fixing ballancing then adding... you're only going to make your life a real hell and spend it debugging.
And debugging is the less fun part, believe me !

Now, why does the devs of Citadel do it this way? Because of Early Access... They try to please the community and fix it, then they add, fix it more, ballance see how things are going, fix ... add content after many month of fixing...

That is exactly why they ran into the problem of changing the entire magic system from skills to crafting. (Hell, that must have been a pain)
They created something which started to work, fixed it a billion times through weekly patch and
then threw it completely in the garbage to develop something else entirely and having to start the debugging all over again.

How is that efficient? Nowaday, I'm not into programming anymore, I'm a project manager... So I can tell what they're doing is not efficient at all.
Agile project management is already something I'm glad I'm out from and I can tell Citadel devs are right into agile project management as a trello is the best proof.

But then again, it's early access, they're not developping a game from A to Z then shipping it.
Now, is that wrong to develop your game this way? No and I never said the devs were stupid or slow or whatever, don't make me say what I didn't but the community sure made it hard on them for such a small team.

The problem is the community who keeps complaining about ballancing and the devs being a small team which started to work on a game requiring a lot more people.
The scope of the project is really hard on a small team.

[Splashbang]

Doesn't matter what anyone tell you i guess, so i'll just stop responding after this post.

Debugging is a constant process during any stage of development. Fixing as many bugs as possible before shipping a game is a minimum requirement, and if you had worked in project management in the gaming industry you'd know this already. The same goes for when you add content. You fix as many bugs as possible to make sure they don't carry over to the updated version, to avoid a pileup of both bugs and bug reports, and having a bug and bug report pileup is not exactly what i call being efficient. As a small team it is more important to make sure everything works before proceeding to add more content. Ask any QA and they'll tell you the same thing i'm telling you.

I do agree that the community is an issue, but it is Steam after all. The most toxic platform on the internet where people (mostly kids) bash games just because they don't understand it or the concept behind it.

It is also why i've repeatedly told Valve to get rid of Early Access reviews because it hurts developers namely because Steam is so toxic and people (kids mostly) just bash a game because of it's either a game competing with their favorite game or other childish reasons.

But the main issue is the non-existent advertisement. They need to get this game out to streamers/youtubers to give it as much exposure as possible. If they're lucky they might even get some to do it for free, or very cheap.

When wanting to sell any product, exposure is key.

On the subject of changing things (replacing or removing game mechanics/features) within the game such as the spell system, that is something every game developer does during development of a game from time to time. Road maps and plans change. Again, something you should already know if you're as you said, a project manager and especially if you've been working as a programmer.

[Mesarthim]

You don't debug constantly until all features are added.
You debug to check that everything is working but you're not making a full test until the end.
Of course you debug to check if everything work when you launch after a feature is added but that's just regular coder work (which I was doing) but you'not going to debug the entire thing as if you already were in the test environment. (for a program wich is not an early access that is)

And that's precisely why I think here, for Citadel, the devs are spending too much time debugging. I never said they should stop fixing bugs at all but they spent too much time on it because they will inevitably add more which will cause more bugs anyway.

And there are the main bugs like a hole in the ground where you fall infinitely, which you should fix immediately and bugs players do encounter because they abuse the game...
"Hey, we've notice by casting 5000 fireballs on a wall constantly repairing, the game crash ! Fix ASAP !" ... No ! Seriously no ! (but in the situation they are, they cannot ignore that comment)

+following community suggestion to keep popularity up, which I understand they're doing as a way to market the game.

I don't know how it goes with their team but agile project management doesn't go so well in my experience as you can feel there is a lack of direction.
That's probably why the quidditch thing nobody asked for and nobody cares about was added.
It's not a bad idea but it completely flopped among the community and was probably added too early when the community was expecting something else.

Complete change / adding or removing things happens all the time in project management, well, not that often luckily, depends of the client actually... You can tell when something is probably going to change completely mid-course because of the client's attitude... But most the time it's a last minute thing when you're on a deadline because time frame doesn't change but change / request still need to be made. it gets really stressing.

Here, I think the skill system was fine, we needed more spells but it was mighty fine (except the awfully slow levelling)... Anyway, when crafting was announced, it was crazy once again with the community and I believe they decided to completely revamp it because of community suggestions.

Early Access is nice for the devs to get money early when they lack funding and when you're indie but in the end it would be better if it didn't exist.

For advertisement, I'm not sure... popular youtubers are very expensive and they're forced to review a game they're not really passionate about or want to know more about so we get a 30min to 1h video where we learn nothing and the youtube just complains.
While ppl playing it for fun because the game is good do attract more IMHO.
I say this because that's exactly what happened to everspace.
For a pure solo game from 2016 which stopped adding content a while ago, they still have a peak players of 1400. They spent a bunch paying youtubers which made them the worse kind of advertisement but other ppl doing it for fun attracted players.

[Awakened Gamer]

引用自 Dat Geek：

引用自 Mesarthim：

Simply put... no ! And it makes me sad because I really wanted to believe in this game.
The devs is a small team and the project was too big for them IMHO.
It's not really their fault, they did their best I think but this game needed a lot more work and is leaving early access too early.
This type of game is demanding, the community wants a lot and this type of game always need more content.
I think release is more of a desperate attempt to make more sales... I can't blame them and it will work for sure!

So even if they say they might continue support after launch on 10/11, I wouldn't count on this game to be such a success. They do not have infinite funds either.

They did update the game a lot but those updates were mainly fix, if not only fix.
Content wise, not much was really implemented.

It might change at launch but I wouldn't count too much on it...
-We still lack a whole bunch of decoration !
(they never added a proper bed room or a proper magical kitchen)
-They removed the most impressive spells.
-A lot more spells should have been added.
-They talked about new weapons never were implemented
-Even though the world is more vibrant, it's still pretty much the same all over the world map (divided between forest and snow... sure there are a couple more small biomes but it's mainly forest and snow)
-Through numerous and constant reballance, they ended to make the game less fun than it origianally was (to please the community and focus on pvp too, they focused on the wrong aspect of the game like changing the spell system and a majority of gameplay elements by restarting from scratch... I think this wasn't really needed to work so much to change it instead of just adding more spells.

-But they added a fun and fantastic farming system which is really pleasant.
-They added the sport quiditch-like thingy which nobody asked for (it's fun but doesn't add much to the game)
-The new spell system has it's perk but it has many flaws too.
-we can customize our avatar a bit more.
-For PVP they added more defensive structures, changed some structures and added a possibility to create outpost.
-They added / changed a lot of things in the world

And that's pretty much it ! Now, they worked a lot on all those features, it's quite polished but this game needed a lot more content.

If you're looking for a small harry potter-like survival which you will be able to sink a couple hours into and can afford it, then I'd say go and purchase it if you haven't yet.
If you're looking for a deep and lasting game which you want to sink countless hours into and expect tons of content... then look somewhere else.

But the team proved they are able to make impressive and polished game...
I think it's a studio worth looking for if they grow in size or develop less demanding games.

You don't seem to understand a thing about game development.

Content is something added in between bug fixes etc, and this game has far more content than most early access games ever released COMBINED during development.

The more content they add in one go, the more bugs appear that will only make it harder to get a polished game on release. There's a reason games such as ARK: Survival Evolved is still filled with bugs long after release..

People like you will never be satisfied. This game could have more content than World of Warcraft and you'd still be unhappy about it.

They have more content coming as far as i'm aware of, including post launch content.

Oh and you should probably not write such a huge wall of text where you contradict yourself every 3 lines.

Could not agree more!

[Awakened Gamer]

引用自 Mesarthim：

First, I never said the game is junk, I said the game lacks of content.

I perfectly understand game development, there is a bunch you haven't read I see.
You just rushed to attack me with weak argument !

If I seem to contradict myself, it's because the game does disapoint me but I bought it and I still enjoyed the bit there is.
You should actually be glad I try to defend the game even though I put it down...
I could have written "this game is crap" without much argument and leave.

You can't say this game has a lot of content and that people should be satisfied with it... If the game was as great as you seem to say, there would be more than 100 to 200 players playing it.
Ark: 40k to 80k people playing it.
Conan: 5k to 20k people playing it.

Sure, you can't really compare those behemoth to Citadel but Citadel had a peak of 7k... why did people leave? At the update in August 2018, they were 1k.
So we should at least keep 1k... Nope, we're at 200 and less.

You say people like me are never satisfied but if you're honest, this game really lacks even the simplest things. For survival games, there's a minimum... and that minimum isn't there yet.

Meanwhile, I still wish the best to the devs who are doing their best and hope the game will get better.

Are you responding to both of us here or just dat geek?

[Mesarthim]

To whoever wants to read I guess? XD

But mostly to Dat Geek I think...

[PetrolWitch]

I hope it takes off more I really love the art style of this game its just pretty. Besides my character shes ugly as sin in game. I would like to be able to rotate building parts too but omg the building parts are gorgeous.

[Jalee224]

Well, I'm not a programmer since the lose of msdos, lol. I really don't like Ark that much and never played Conan. I see both Mes and Geeks points. 2 very powerful arguements. however, I think one or both is misunderstanding each other. First, Geek didn't say Citadel has more content than those other 2 over all, he said it has more content than either those 2 had during early access, basically when they were at the same stage as Citadel. I agree it does over Ark since I haven't played Conan I have no idea about that one.
I have enjoyed Citadel (which I found totally on accident) and only paid steam 5 dollars for it. To me it was worth it where as Ark wasn't work what I paid for it. Mes you say fixing bugs isn't important, I see your point but disagree when I spend 20 minutes trying to figure out how to finish the roof of my building that I could finish easily if the pieces would adjust correctly. Not sure if this is a bug or design flaw. Also more types of roofing might have reduced my time as well so easily more content or sorry Geek, Mechanics would have been nice, lol. As I read different articles on this game, it was my understanding that CFWF was not a survival game which is why it doesn't have that really annoying food drain I hate so much. Personally I don't PVP-thank Star Wars(2004) for that when PvP became a must every single day whether you were online or not. I play games to get away from work not because I want to work more.
Anyway, what I read was CFWF was a sandbox rpg not a survival game, which is exactly why I like it, take the food drain and stuff it up your ass. Real life you don't die if you don't eat 20 times a day, and spend your entire life everyday doing nothing but looking for food then cooking it and eating it. A game shoudn't be that bad at food drain either.
I would recommend CFWF to others as long as the developers don't give up on it, continue to fix major bugs especially and add more content, mechanics & features. Overall, don't make WoW's mistake and sissyfy the game.
I would love to see another game like Asheron's Call. That was a fun game and IMHO no game matches it, especially WoW. Citadel has issues, what game doesn't? all do and if you judge this one cause of it's issues then I guess you'll never be happy with any game EVER! I would like to see some storyline added so it's not just a tedious hunt and build game. 10 quests from the starting point isn't much help either.

[Mesarthim]

I didn't say fixing bugs isn't important Jaleespc, I said you shouldn't spend too much time fixing them. Basically they're going through a Beta phase when it's actually still an alpha.
It slows the development process a lot more.
But I guess the devs have to do it this way with Early Access? Though I've never seen EA where so much time is spent on fixing bugs rather than trying to add more content little by little.

The thing is, there will always have bugs, no matter what, you can't have a perfect game.
That just doesn't exist and players will always find a way to break the game.

Food drain can be annoying... But you still need it for the animals you tame! Kind of a discrepency there... I think the time limit on the mounts is quite annoying.
But I guess you can spend your time doing something in the game?
I never really cared for a food system TBH, the food system in Conan is just fine and doesn't annoy me, so many way to eat and food quality does slow down the drain.

I'm not a fan of PvP either but this game is basically made for PvP... and the PvP doesn't work because you can abuse the magical structures and make an unraidable base.
And anyway, it's what I call offline PvP, as I said above, to go attack players while they're not logged in (same issue in Conan and Ark TBH) but it makes players complain so they abuse and then ask for fix... So the devs are filled with request like base are unraidable... they do something about it and then players come back, we can't make an unraidable base anymore... etc. etc. etc.

引用自 PixxelPerfect：

I hope it takes off more I really love the art style of this game its just pretty. Besides my character shes ugly as sin in game. I would like to be able to rotate building parts too but omg the building parts are gorgeous.

I totally agree and it's the first game where you can have round parts (conan and ark only have angles) which is why I find it sad you have so little decoration.
Building and decorating is the most important part of those games, it's like playing lego all over again... so of course you want to decorate and have a nice place but exterior is all you have at the moment (oh and buildings gets so huge so fast, I wish that protection dome was so much bigger)

I love the role playing pen and paper game called "ars magica" where you are a wizard, create your spells, study magic and live in a tower... So in this game the first thing I did was a tower fit for a powerful wizard but I quickly realized how the rooms do look alike because of the lack of different decoration piece. This issue has been going on since the release of the game.

What I really like with Conan is how they added a lot of decoration, even if we had to pay for them, I was a sucker for them and loved every single part as you could make very different buildings thanks to that.

Again, a proper "magical kitchen" would so be desperately needed as you probably also made a castle and placed the campfire in the middle of a room as a "kitchen" ... it looks like you're rich but poor at the same time... Same with that bed which looks fit for a prison.

We lack tables, candles, silverware, plates, vases, desks... More paintings, more doors, ...
And magical decoration like glowing pentagrams and such.

First thing we really need IMO then if we could get more weapons and spells? The come back of those amazing spells? And after? Well, I'd actually be already pretty happy with the game if it could add this already. I'd say the game is worth it.

[Jalee224]

Mes, I said I agree on both points and that major bugs was needed.

I would recommend CFWF to others as long as the developers don't give up on it, continue to fix major bugs especially and add more content, mechanics & features. Overall, don't make WoW's mistake and sissyfy the game.

Your trying to argue with me and I'm agreeing with you. Please read all I said before replying. Both you and Geek are right. just combine your ideas and we would have the perfect answer to solve all Citadel's problems lol. Unfortunatly we all know that won't happen :(

I seem to have about 6 or so type of tables, not sure why you need more. At least one will connect parts to make a really long table as I have in my dining hall now. I agree the campfire sucks, need a stove/oven and I also agree the bed looks horrible. I would like a few more window styles and door styles as Mes has pointed out. One thing I really love about Dark & Light is the magical building pieces. Love the glow. Stuff like that in Citadel would be nice.

Also I play offline alone so no problems with PvP. Thus I can not speak to PvP issues, won't try.
Also, if anyone knows how to take out those birds that soar around so fast you can't target them, please let me know.

[Mesarthim]

Ah no, I'm not trying to argue, I'm just explaining the little stuff above, that's all, because I don't want any confusion... it's different !

But in this current state, I don't recommend the game unless we get enough content.
I can't recommend a game where the devs give only promise.

I'm torn between Dark and Light and Citadel actually...

Citadel is a-okay, world is rather blend but it has really cool features like round building pieces, magical shields, spells using mana, quick tame even if you have to maintain them and the crafting stations are actually pretty nice.

Dark and Light has that terrible ark feelings with taming taking hours upon hours, taming being too mendatory, having to eat / drink, loads of grinding, having to feed your tames, having to fuel the light source, an horrible UI for mounts, spells needing to be crafted instead of using mana, having a need to sleep, ... But the world is pretty and diversified, creatures look good even if there are some weird stuff, the spells look awesome (couldn't get over the map spell), utility spells to warm yourself or just light your way, ...

The perfect game is a mix of both...

Actually, the best game I played was a mod and it was thaumcraft for Minecraft... I've never been so impressed ! I wish it was made into it's own "non-blocky" game.
You can be a mage and stay hours in your mage tower just to research spells, create traps, magical equipment, golems and whatnot ! (so much possibility, only one guy doing it and it's a genius... But the mod do require you to watch a tutorial before getting into it 'cause it's not that simple)

[namco]

Personally, its spiraling downwards in my opinion. I played it a year ago, long before this stupid "magical essence" ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ we have now. Instead of making the game run better and smoother, they focused on changing the core game play as if that would fix anything.

I had high hopes for this game, the castle building system was ON POINT for a building type survival game. But, the game still runs like ass. I have a 2700x and a Radeon VII, which is essentially 2700x and 1080ti performance.... and yet, I get 30 fps.... that is RIDICULOUS.... this game should have improved so much since last year that i should get MORE fps than back then, not less.... I used to get 60-90 as of last year.... now 30 or less.... just NO. Typical developers, releasing an unfinished game that runs like ass instead of actually improving. Feels like pubg, even to this day pubg runs like ass and feels clunky. Another indie company with few employees if not a handful..... whom had a good idea, then over time ruined it, and since they don't know coding (probably using copy/paste code) game runs like ass.

[SOuNDSNC]

Xbox One (original) runs the game at 30fps so something is up with your machine. The game is far more optimized than you are experiencing. I get around 70fps with a gtx 970. Maybe check your resolution and make sure you arent running at 4K.

For total clarity, an immense amount of work has gone into this game's optimization. We would not be shipping on consoles otherwise.

[Awakened Gamer]

引用自 namco：

Personally, its spiraling downwards in my opinion. I played it a year ago, long before this stupid "magical essence" ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ we have now. Instead of making the game run better and smoother, they focused on changing the core game play as if that would fix anything.

I had high hopes for this game, the castle building system was ON POINT for a building type survival game. But, the game still runs like ass. I have a 2700x and a Radeon VII, which is essentially 2700x and 1080ti performance.... and yet, I get 30 fps.... that is RIDICULOUS.... this game should have improved so much since last year that i should get MORE fps than back then, not less.... I used to get 60-90 as of last year.... now 30 or less.... just NO. Typical developers, releasing an unfinished game that runs like ass instead of actually improving. Feels like pubg, even to this day pubg runs like ass and feels clunky. Another indie company with few employees if not a handful..... whom had a good idea, then over time ruined it, and since they don't know coding (probably using copy/paste code) game runs like ass.

The game totally optimized for me drastically a few months ago.