I've supported this game through every single BETA weekend up till early January. And I've since stopped playing it. This game is in a steady decline to a state of non-existence. And it has EVERYTHING to do with the development team.

I had enough faith in you all to pre-order the "premium edition" many months ago. I defended the chosen Beta model and had a lot of hope and excitement for launch. I've enjoyed a number of hours in game and really feel like the game has potential to become something that stands out from other survival games.

That being said, my confidence in the development team all but died. As unique as Icarus can be, it also borrows a number of core systems from other games. A great example of this is the talent system. You all have made changes to talents on numerous occasions since the launch of the game acknowledging that some talents were not performing as intended. You've also nerfed some talents. Yet not once have you refunded the talent points of characters so that players could make desired changes after said changes were implemented. I'm leading with this example because it shows how little the development team is focused on enhancing the experience of the players (aka paying customers). The short-term answer to resolving issues with your talents: Make and level a new character...

Instead, we've had this crap https://steamcommunity.com/app/1149460/discussions/0/3195863700543340077/

dangled in front of us now for over a month. A promise to rectify a very glaring issue and very obvious lack of foresight from the development team. In the meantime, your paying customers are waiting each week anticipating a respec, performance fixes, crash fixes, bug fixes, game-breaking issue fixes, and any sign that the development team actually cares about the experience that their customers are having. What do we get instead? Weekly content updates with a footnote on some minor bug fixes. No status updates regarding performance issues, no status on respec, nothing of the sort.

Oh, but wait. We got our nice "Christmas miracle" where you all decided to restore dead characters (a great number of which died due to your servers being down and players being unable to log into the game to actually finish the prospect that they were on). How generous of you.

I've posted this several times and I'm posting it again here.

https://steamdb.info/app/1149460/graphs/

If you want to turn a blind eye to the facts then so be it. Your playerbase is in a very steady decline. More and more people are losing faith in you. You have a product that could turn into something great. It needs some work (a good bit of work) but it won't last long enough for you to complete the work needed to elevate it to its fullest potential if you continue to lose your players. The time has come for you all to show your players that you truly care. Open up to players. You haven't said anything about the respec idea in over a month now. You've not given any kind of update regarding performance issues / game-breaking bugs that desperately need to be fixed. Be transparent. Any update is better than the complete silence that we've seen thus far.

It's up to you all to correct the current course and steer the ship. Your crew is slowly abandoning you and you're going to be left with an empty ship if this continues.

Sincerely,
Your players

Not that i don’t agree with most points about the state of game, but:
Checked the calendar recently ?
It‘s been peak holiday season for the last 2 weeks.
Some hotfixes and prefab content updates (unfortunately also buged/unbalanced af) was all we could hope for.

So i would wait what happens in next two weeks before i get the pitchforks out.

Originally posted by stb155:

Not that i don’t agree with most points about the state of game, but:
Checked the calendar recently ?
It‘s been peak holiday season for the last 2 weeks.
Some hotfixes and prefab content updates (unfortunately also buged/unbalanced af) was all we could hope for.

So i would wait what happens in next two weeks before i get the pitchforks out.

They chose to delay the game and release it in the middle of the holiday season. They also chose to release it as a 1.0 game vs an Early Access title. Those decisions do come with certain consequences and expectations.

I don't have a pitchfork in hand; merely a megaphone asking the development team to do right by the players. Sure, it was a holiday season. That also means their player counts were inflated during said holiday season. These poor practices have nothing to do with the holiday season though. This has been going on since launch. The development team needs to step up and do right by the players.

Originally posted by Lt. Aldo Raine:

Originally posted by delp435:

Sorry, didn't see the part where I elected you to speak for me?

You didn't miss anything. I don't represent trolls.

Then why are you here? You don't represent anybody..

To most of the "intellectuals" that commented useless ♥♥♥♥♥: can you properly write a complaint post in which you eloquently explain what too many of us think about? You can't, huh? Cool, then shut the F up instead of commenting for the sake of commenting.


As for the OP :
I agree with most of what you said, but from my perspective, the respec of talents is not the only problem. The low number of talents is beyond stupid ,no matter what lame excuse they try to use, and the amount of bugs the game has is more than most Early Access games I've tried.
A small list that came to mind :
- whenever the character dies, goes back, picks up his stuff from the ground, his helmet and armor tend to clip through the field of view, making it extremely difficult if you loose your gear in a dangerous area with bears or whatnot.
- to make things better about death. Don't dare have a backpack and extra inventory slot modules. When you die, you got a giant chance of loosing all the items you were wearing. You know... those expensive ones, that costed you money worth multiple prospects.
- fire kills even the most powerful of systems. It isnt even that impressive new gen of a fire, yet whenever a thunderstorm sets a few trees on fire, the fps plummet. same when you build too many torches in your house/cave. Signed: a 3090 user that's mind boggled by this.
- I can kite a bear with a bone skinning knife, but the machete is practically worthless, barely kills boars. that's just one in a long list of items which should be useful, yet after wasting an F ton of resources to make it, turn out to be useless garbage.
- how come my computer has less overall electronics in it, and far less gold, than a freakin' dehumidifier? Or a machining bench that requires the mining of a quarter of the map just to be made. Some items have over inflated requirements which seem put that way just to waste our time struggling to gather. Especially unpleasant for solo players. Yes, we exist. But not for long.


Maybe it doesnt sound like much, but while working 6 days a week, I've managed to pass the 300hour mark in this game. And I am giving it until next friday. If it's still just as buggy, and just as unbalanced (yes. i do demand more freakin' talent points. Got my ass to level 99 in order to barely have talents for under 20% of the possible talents? F that. ), then I'll just do what many others in here are doing: giving up, moving on to another game.

Of course, trolls will comment, as they did above. And there will also be some (same) fans that keep defending it blindly against all criticism. Even ignoring the statistics that show how the game's dropping like gravity in terms of player count, just look here at the comments. The absolute vast majority, almost unanimous amount of posts are problems, bugs, errors and complaints. Let that sink in. Maybe it aint the players, maybe the game just is that bad. Maybe something should be done about it instead of defending it because possibly , potentially maybe at some point it'll be good.
Maybe it will be. But right now, it's a dumpster fire.

I would wait a month. The Dev said their full team is back in action next week after the holidays. And they have been more active on the forums. Which is a big beacon of light that shines through all the trolls.

It's funny how it's the same people calling others trolls only because they don't agree with their opinion, makes you think who is toxic.

Originally posted by Ambient Gamer:

I would wait a month. The Dev said their full team is back in action next week after the holidays. And they have been more active on the forums. Which is a big beacon of light that shines through all the trolls.

yeah, this. People are complaining but had every chance to buy the game at a discount, play it, and even refund the game no questions asked before release yet are complaining about things like performance or balance which they had the ability to test beforehand. You knew it was releasing on christmas, you knew you could test the game and refund it if it didnt run well or whatnot, you knew beforehand the types of games rocketwerkz had made, you knew every possible thing about the game and had every chance to just back out and wait. I will not defend bad business practices but they let you play the game at no financial risk, released it right when a lot of people would be on break from school or off work so they could play it, have been very clear about everything, etc. If you still feel ripped off it's on you as the consumer for not bothering to do research. I'll agree its not in a "1.0" state, is pretty buggy, and needs a good bit more work but at the end of the day it hasn't been made any worse since it's release and you could play it before then so it is factually better than what you must have played and said "yeah, you know what, I like this, I won't refund it". It needs work, but you knew that getting on the boat and still decided to hop on. Rocketwerks gave you every chance to know what you were buying and aside from some poor phrasing I can see no-one point to anything that would indicate anything they did is actually wrong.

As I see it the minimum of a 1.0 release is the point at which you get your money's worth from the game and it more than meets that bar so at worst you can argue they implied a greater degree of polish and refinement than they gave but arguably incorrect implications is not grounds for the dozens of people I have seen talking like they were somehow lied to about the quality of the game. Is it in a good state? No, not really, it needs more balance, polish, and some gameplay tweaks, but thats relative to what it COULD be, not other games in the genre. Compared to basically any other survival game I can think of it is more innovative, looks better, has a more solid gameplay loop, etc with the only thing it genuinely falls behind on being polish. There are some genuine gameplay issues like tier 4 being more or less useless because it takes so long to get to you won't be able to get to it for any missions that are dangerous enough to warrant it but at the end of the day the game as it stands is still entirely solid. I feel like a lot of people just didn't bother to play any of the betas and are whinging they didn't get a flawless AAA experience from an indie dev team at an india price.

Originally posted by Church.exe:

I feel like a lot of people just didn't bother to play any of the betas and are whinging they didn't get a flawless AAA experience from an indie dev team at an india price. :conwayfacepalm:

flawless AAA experience.

Sorry, not trying to disrespect you but, I had to quote you on this. I had a bit of a chuckle. Have you seen the state of AAA gaming lately? If anything, Icarus had a better launch then recent AAA games.

Originally posted by Church.exe:

Originally posted by Ambient Gamer:

I would wait a month. The Dev said their full team is back in action next week after the holidays. And they have been more active on the forums. Which is a big beacon of light that shines through all the trolls.

yeah, this. People are complaining but had every chance to buy the game at a discount, play it, and even refund the game no questions asked before release yet are complaining about things like performance or balance which they had the ability to test beforehand. You knew it was releasing on christmas, you knew you could test the game and refund it if it didnt run well or whatnot, you knew beforehand the types of games rocketwerkz had made, you knew every possible thing about the game and had every chance to just back out and wait. I will not defend bad business practices but they let you play the game at no financial risk, released it right when a lot of people would be on break from school or off work so they could play it, have been very clear about everything, etc. If you still feel ripped off it's on you as the consumer for not bothering to do research. I'll agree its not in a "1.0" state, is pretty buggy, and needs a good bit more work but at the end of the day it hasn't been made any worse since it's release and you could play it before then so it is factually better than what you must have played and said "yeah, you know what, I like this, I won't refund it". It needs work, but you knew that getting on the boat and still decided to hop on. Rocketwerks gave you every chance to know what you were buying and aside from some poor phrasing I can see no-one point to anything that would indicate anything they did is actually wrong.

As I see it the minimum of a 1.0 release is the point at which you get your money's worth from the game and it more than meets that bar so at worst you can argue they implied a greater degree of polish and refinement than they gave but arguably incorrect implications is not grounds for the dozens of people I have seen talking like they were somehow lied to about the quality of the game. Is it in a good state? No, not really, it needs more balance, polish, and some gameplay tweaks, but thats relative to what it COULD be, not other games in the genre. Compared to basically any other survival game I can think of it is more innovative, looks better, has a more solid gameplay loop, etc with the only thing it genuinely falls behind on being polish. There are some genuine gameplay issues like tier 4 being more or less useless because it takes so long to get to you won't be able to get to it for any missions that are dangerous enough to warrant it but at the end of the day the game as it stands is still entirely solid. I feel like a lot of people just didn't bother to play any of the betas and are whinging they didn't get a flawless AAA experience from an indie dev team at an india price. :conwayfacepalm:

Judging from multiple posts about how the costs for certain things are, and how atrocious the performance is, it's just downplaying the problems when you say it just needs POLISH.

In no way is unbalanced leveling, reworked talents, underperforming higher tier weapons (compared to a skinning knife), very, VERY bad performance issues "just a lack of polish". These are very real problems that interfere with experience, and that's what you pay for. I don't get why a game does not deserve any criticism or NEEDS to be recommended when a player plays it for more than 50h. Maybe those people pushed so they CAN try to get their money's worth, but it doesn't make it valid.

Also, your kind of thinking makes it so that devs will release games with huge problems OK for as long as you blindly play a game long enough. You did acknowledge issues, but downplaying them as just mere lack of polish is why these devs opted to release the game in this sorry state.

why are a few people so hung up on talents and respec? making a second character gives you the opportunity to do it differently and doesn't take long because now you know what gives good exp. also.. you can beat the missions without talents, you either figure out the mission or you don't. what i truly don't understand is the few people crying for MORE talent points.. as if that is whats keeping them from enjoying the game.. everyone having every ability sounds lame to me.

Originally posted by hURT:

Originally posted by Church.exe:

I feel like a lot of people just didn't bother to play any of the betas and are whinging they didn't get a flawless AAA experience from an indie dev team at an india price. :conwayfacepalm:

flawless AAA experience.

Sorry, not trying to disrespect you but, I had to quote you on this. :lol_emily: I had a bit of a chuckle. Have you seen the state of AAA gaming lately? If anything, Icarus had a better launch then recent AAA games. :steamlaughcry:

Because these AAA devs think that their playerbase will have the same expectations towards them and will be more forgiving as well.

They don't realise the prize + the size of your company contributes to how much players are willing to forgive you. For this game's case though, while I do agree that some other AAA games have had worse launch (*cough BF 2042 *cough*), I don't think it's right to use that as a benchmark to say this kind of practice on release games too early is OK. This is why most AAA games nowadays are getting released too early, because players have been downplaying very real issues alot.

I have the feeling that this very written and detailed post will be ignored.

Only the short posts that can be downplayed or given a simple answer/analogy are "refuted".

When it's time for a thought out response to be upfront with the playerbase... nope, ignored.

this feels like one of those you owe me this post. i bought your game and i supported you but you let me down.

lets get something strait just because you bought a game from a company doesn't mean they owe you anything. they will do exactly what they want to do. they owe you nothing this is their game you just bought a copy of it.

As a relatively new Icarus player i fully agree with Lt. Aldo Raine and Wolf guys. I allready experienced bugs, glitches and sheer lack of foresight of devteam. And you know what? I want to add another 2 cents. Game seriously lack in common sense too. I know there are some game-related allowances, needed for balancing purpose. But there is a certain limit to stupidity and logic-wracking,

-Silica ore? srsly? silicates is ubiquitous. And not only on earth.
-Platinum tools? 3,5 Mohs scale. That`s a bit tougher than hot butter. I know, some games do that (terraria for example) but no, that`s not a valid excuse for pure idiocy.
-Carbon paste with NO carbon in recipe? but with aluminium and epoxy? What insane mind come with this?
-Flint arrow uses iron ore in recipe? not silica? Too lazy to make some sense or what? Zero points for geology
-Copper bolt is better than iron bolt? Zero point for metallurgy and materials science.
-You can be poisoned in space suit AND catch a pneumonia? Ur mad? Zero points for biology.

And so on and so on.

Add to this invisible walls and misalign between textures and real objects in rock formations.
This is just bad. But if you add mentioned above problems with bugs, glitches and how devteam communicate with playerbase....
Guys. srsly. Grow up and stop diggin huge grave to potentially very good game.

Originally posted by Konstantin:

As a relatively new Icarus player i fully agree with Lt. Aldo Raine and Wolf guys. I allready experienced bugs, glitches and sheer lack of foresight of devteam. And you know what? I want to add another 2 cents. Game seriously lack in common sense too. I know there are some game-related allowances, needed for balancing purpose. But there is a certain limit to stupidity and logic-wracking,

-Silica ore? srsly? silicates is ubiquitous. And not only on earth.
-Platinum tools? 3,5 Mohs scale. That`s a bit tougher than hot butter. I know, some games do that (terraria for example) but no, that`s not a valid excuse for pure idiocy.
-Carbon paste with NO carbon in recipe? but with aluminium and epoxy? What insane mind come with this?
-Flint arrow uses iron ore in recipe? not silica? Too lazy to make some sense or what? Zero points for geology
-Copper bolt is better than iron bolt? Zero point for metallurgy and materials science.
-You can be poisoned in space suit AND catch a pneumonia? Ur mad? Zero points for biology.

And so on and so on.

Add to this invisible walls and misalign between textures and real objects in rock formations.
This is just bad. But if you add mentioned above problems with bugs, glitches and how devteam communicate with playerbase....
Guys. srsly. Grow up and stop diggin huge grave to potentially very good game.

Yeah, but a plumber can eat a mushroom and grow bigger, an elf can play a flute to create rain, or a soldier can take infinite bullets to the chest and heal over just a couple seconds. It's a game...

I'm not following your last part though.