I miss the good days of NWN1 which seemed to have a modding community united towards making a better game overall. Nowadays it feels like every mod team is trying to turn into Splash Damage and screw anyone that gets in their way.

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Sounds like you were playing a game in ALPHA, where such changes are prone to happen.

Don’t fault Eskil for allowing testers into the ALPHA. Love has a long way to go and personally, I knew that going in, and am more than willing to let Eskil make the changes he wants. Look at what he accomplished WITHOUT following anyone’s suggestions, its pretty fucking amazing. Give him the time he needs to improve the game, not bitch because he made a couple changes to an Alpha.

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Both games seem to have potential and it will be interesting to see how they pan out.

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Sigh.

But yes, it amazes me that such a space game hasn’t been released. If Galaxy Rage was made co-op and added the photography aspect, then it would probably be the game I seek. Then I could drag people off to show them this unique planet or that unique creature/plant I’d found. And for a person whose strongest interest is exploration…

Well, if nothing else, I hope that Galaxy Rage will sate those desires a little.

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As the old saying goes, just because you’re an expert at something, it doesn’t mean you’d be a great teacher at it. In his regard, just because he’s a great coder, doesn’t mean he totally understands the mechanics of game design and the sociological aspects of human interaction to drive a good multiplayer experience.

I think the track record of the LOVE alpha is a perfect example of this. The first two weeks of October showed a steady climb of people trying out the game and the majority raved about it. At it’s peak in mid October, we had settlements setup with tons of playtesters within it. Even Eskil was surprised when he showed up ingame one day and was blown away by how many people were in the settlement we were building.

As soon as he dramatically changed the direction of the gameplay in mid October (i.e. different approach to token acquisition), people started dropping like flies and within a few days, active server populations plummeted. I’ve heard from people repeatedly saying that the latter part of October was a waste of their time and money because everything in the game was in flux and bugs didn’t appear to be getting fixed (even when he said he had fixed them). Because of this, people just disappeared, many not even bothering to comment about it on the forums.

Don’t get me wrong. I still think LOVE has a lot of potential. It’s just that I think Eskil needs to seriously learn how to effectively communicate with people better or possibly hire someone else to do that for him (i.e. Community/Beta manager). I mean communications is a critical component of an alpha and beta test experience. If it’s not there, the people involved will feel like the relationship is just a waste of their time and leave. That’s what seems to have happened to me. You had people reporting bugs and suggesting improvements to the original version, yet those bugs weren’t addressed and the suggestions were largely ignored in favor of a completely different and seemingly radical approach that changed the entire flow of the game.

Right now you have a small group of testers left who like the game (mostly because they came in after mid-Octobers change and weren’t aware of the radical changes) and they are wondering why everyone is leaving or has left. I think it’s great they are enjoying the game but they just don’t know what others have already gone through. For myself, I probably won’t purchase another voucher until it’s evident he has finished all of his radical gameplay changes and has dramatically improved the AI experience which was my only primary issue with the original version of the game.

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Ironically the utter opposite of N8, Looks ugly as sin in screenshots – Like an ancient N64 game, but thanks to the wonderful animation looks really cool when you see it in video, like you imagined living lego as a kid.

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Fantastic.

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