[My opinion] Team17 screwed up.

[Fiat Punto]

Don't get me wrong here. I love The Escapists series. The concept of trying to escape a prison is awesome and it was well done in those games. But besides that, once you complete the game, there really isn't much that you can do.

Starting with Multiplayer escapes. These are cool, but you need a friend (Forever alone ) to complete them, or at least more players in the community so others can help you complete them. I personally like figuring everything out myself, without the help of others.
In TE you could have your prison mates fight for you. It was a bit too OP when there were too many of them but this feature is missing in TE2. The only thing a good friendship level does in TE2 is lower the prices / allow you to trade with a prison mate. Maybe a possibility to request others to do small favors for you for coins / items? Like have someone sign as you so you can skip an activity?

But these two are nothing compared to the extremely limited TE2 prison editor, which I have the biggest problem with. Of course the editor in original TE wasn't perfect too, but it had more capabilities compared to what the main game's had to offer. (Please note that I've only used the prison editor in TE1, not in TE2 so it's all about my experience with workshop maps and others' opinions)
TE2 features lots of new things. The community would be more alive and there'd be many fun prisons, if they allowed us to utilize at least everything the base game has to offer. Why can't you change the soundtrack / theme of the prison at all? Why can't you modify the underground layer? Why can't you use as many floors as you want? (Ok, maybe a limit of 10 would be better) Custom quests? Custom player stats? Completely customizable zones like in TE2? Multiple (for example canteen) zones for big prisons? All the potential wasted here makes me upset. A good game imo should have everything moddable / customizable as much as possible. Imagine being able to even make your own items & graphics for them and every tile (custom themes?) and add custom interactions to them.

With way more customization, it'd make sense for T17 to make monthly prison contests and maybe even feature / add the best / most upvoted prison(s) of the year into the game? It'd encourage players to make crazy stuff.

TL:DR - Team17 screwed up by wasting so much potential that the prison editor could bring.

[MekaDovah]

I agree the lack of effort put into the prison editor is perhaps the biggest detriment to the game and limiting its long term playability.

Escapists is fundamentally a puzzle game and like all puzzle games, once you figure out the solution you're essentially done for all time. And even then it's always basically a variation of digging/cutting out or finding the items you need to make the unique escape work.

If we had at least the same features as the vanilla prisons then creativity could potentially fill the gap as players found more interesting ways to set up a challenge - as creative players tend to do whenever given the opportunity. But we didn't even get the ability to make our own rooms and instead got an array of pre-fab rooms that often didn't fit together well and had to nag them for it.

Most cripplingly, we never got the ability to edit the underground layer, which means unless your prison is an island, digging out is always a relatively easy option to take that's only a matter of time to pull off. Let alone anything more advanced like a mobile prison in order to make different scenarios and objectives which would have been a godsend, or the ability to fine tune the loot distribution to adjust the difficulty more precisely (like being able to make absolutely sure every key is available on a map where the intended solution was to use all the keys to escape).

I was kinda hopeful at first, but once I heard they had no further interest in updating anything, I was very disappointed. Gotta wonder what kind of behind the scenes business politics caused that. I say that because it's almost always something like that leading to poor decisions these days.

[Fiat Punto]

Originally posted by MekaDovah:

I was kinda hopeful at first, but once I heard they had no further interest in updating anything

Huh? No any future updates to TE2 at all? Where did they say this?

[MekaDovah]

To be honest, I forgot. Maybe it was just rumor, but I thought I recall reading elsewhere on this forum a moderator post claiming there would be no further updates to the editor, and that was months ago.

I did not hear anything in regards to updating the game itself, one way or another. Sorry for any confusion.

[Fiat Punto]

Originally posted by MekaDovah:

To be honest, I forgot. Maybe it was just rumor, but I thought I recall reading elsewhere on this forum a moderator post claiming there would be no further updates to the editor, and that was months ago.

I did not hear anything in regards to updating the game itself, one way or another. Sorry for any confusion.

Thanks for info. I lost hope that they'll update the editor. Do you know any games similar to TE? Preferably with singleplayer mode.

[MekaDovah]

Originally posted by Izofeu:

Thanks for info. I lost hope that they'll update the editor. Do you know any games similar to TE? Preferably with singleplayer mode.

Outside the Escapists series as a whole? Not really. I guess you could play Prison Architect's escape mode. I do and enjoy creating interesting prisons to both run and escape from, but it's not really the same and the mode overall is threadbare. I heard the console version is a bit more involved, but I don't know the specifics.

I do know on the PC version you don't need to follow the regime much and can't get a prison job. Contraband is just something you go pick up rather than acquiring in any sneaky way (and the guards will see you do it and not care), but you can create a riot, form a controllable gang (in single player), and storm restricted areas that will have the guards responding with extreme prejudice if they see you all as part of the experience.

Even then, if you just played escape mode exclusively you may find many workshop prisons are pretty samey in their escapability or are genuinely impossible to escape from. Also combat is extremely simplistic in PA and you can't disguise yourself.

I know there are other prison games, but I don't know if they're sandboxes that follow a prison routine that you plan around or if they're more like adventure/third person action games with linear plotlines wrapped in a prison theme.

[Fiat Punto]

Originally posted by MekaDovah:

Originally posted by Izofeu:

Thanks for info. I lost hope that they'll update the editor. Do you know any games similar to TE? Preferably with singleplayer mode.

Outside the Escapists series as a whole? Not really. I guess you could play Prison Architect's escape mode. I do and enjoy creating interesting prisons to both run and escape from, but it's not really the same and the mode overall is threadbare. I heard the console version is a bit more involved, but I don't know the specifics.

I do know on the PC version you don't need to follow the regime much and can't get a prison job. Contraband is just something you go pick up rather than acquiring in any sneaky way (and the guards will see you do it and not care), but you can create a riot, form a controllable gang (in single player), and storm restricted areas that will have the guards responding with extreme prejudice if they see you all as part of the experience.

Even then, if you just played escape mode exclusively you may find many workshop prisons are pretty samey in their escapability or are genuinely impossible to escape from. Also combat is extremely simplistic in PA and you can't disguise yourself.

I know there are other prison games, but I don't know if they're sandboxes that follow a prison routine that you plan around or if they're more like adventure/third person action games with linear plotlines wrapped in a prison theme.

Maybe one day we'll get a better sandbox prison escaping game made by some other studio that actually cares about the community.

[Veikko(FIN)]

how do you know the devs have abandoned this game its sad if they have :(

[MekaDovah]

Originally posted by Veikko(FIN):

how do you know the devs have abandoned this game its sad if they have :(

I asked around some time ago and was told no further updates to the editor were in the works at the time by a moderator (who may or may not have also been a developer, I'm not sure). I wouldn't take what I heard as absolute truth, but given that it's also been awhile with nothing added...it probably was true.

[Fiat Punto]

Originally posted by Veikko(FIN):

how do you know the devs have abandoned this game its sad if they have :(

Have there been any updates recently? I don't recall any updates to TE2 for months if not for over a year. Team17 does not care at all. I know it's sad, it's my favorite game up to this day, I wish there was an alternative.
It makes me angry when I think of all the potential wasted, how they gave us something they call a "Prison editor". It's so limited I wouldn't even call it an editor.

[Veikko(FIN)]

no further updates to "editor" what about the real game i think they are working on something big update

[Veikko(FIN)]

was the latest prison the christmas one

[Fiat Punto]

Originally posted by Veikko(FIN):

was the latest prison the christmas one

Latest prison? How long ago has it been released..
I've dived deep into the updates section, and from what I see they're updating the mobile version of TE2 (last update October 15, 2019), adding all the prisons from PC version. Is this a joke? Who even plays this game on mobile?! They also said:

Originally posted by Team17:

As for the future of The Escapists in general… If you all exhibit some good behaviour then maybe we’ll tell you![www.team17.com]

[Rookie]

Originally posted by Veikko(FIN):

no further updates to "editor" what about the real game i think they are working on something big update

A "big update" wouldn't take an entire year to be developed. Heck, they could even create a whole new game in this timespan, or at least, the concept and it'd take still some time

I've kept an eye on the thread of this game since last year, but seeing there is no hope we're getting ANY update and getting replied by the moderator himself saying they weren't planning any updates made me give up.
I loved making maps in this game, a lot. But limited features exhaustes your ideas after a while, so for me this game's good as dead.

[Fiat Punto]

Originally posted by Rookie:

Originally posted by Veikko(FIN):

no further updates to "editor" what about the real game i think they are working on something big update

A "big update" wouldn't take an entire year to be developed. Heck, they could even create a whole new game in this timespan, or at least, the concept and it'd take still some time

I've kept an eye on the thread of this game since last year, but seeing there is no hope we're getting ANY update and getting replied by the moderator himself saying they weren't planning any updates made me give up.
I loved making maps in this game, a lot. But limited features exhaustes your ideas after a while, so for me this game's good as dead.

I agree. I'm sure that TE2 would be way more popular if it was easily moddable / had a very advanced prison editor, like:

Originally posted by Izofeu:

Why can't you change the soundtrack / theme of the prison at all? Why can't you modify the underground layer? Why can't you use as many floors as you want? (Ok, maybe a limit of 10 would be better) Custom quests? Custom player stats? Completely customizable zones like in TE2? Multiple (for example canteen) zones for big prisons? All the potential wasted here makes me upset. A good game imo should have everything moddable / customizable as much as possible. Imagine being able to even make your own items & graphics for them and every tile (custom themes?) and add custom interactions to them.

I'm still angry and sad that I can only dream of it. Best fix is to make a fan-made Escapists-like game that has it all.

[Veikko(FIN)]

we have lost the hope on escapists 2 idk about you but i have