78stonewobble

I see you kind of skipped everything else I said. OK, so an early access consisting 1 planet, 1 engine and bugs enough for requiring 4 more years of early access and 11 years total for bugfixes, is a fair and reasonable early access for 6 months of development time. An early access consisting of quite a few planets, quite a few engines and parts and bugs requiring an unknown amount of time in early access and post release fixes is an unfair and unreasonable early access for an unknown amount of development time? Can you go through the calculations and graphs, so I can judge how few bugs of what severity, features, frames per second etc. Is fair and reasonable to expect for an early access dependent on development time?

Nothing. True, but it's one of the advantages of being a small team deciding for yourself, that you can decide to do it that way. You don't have to ask others. To me a reasonable realistic expectation of early access is this: Bugs, poor performance, lack of features and no guarantees. A state in the development in a project. You guys seem to suggest that a reasonable realistic expectation for early access should be: Bugs, performance, features and guarantees dependent on various factors such as eg. cost and development time ( and presumably also budget, company size, problem free development vs. troubled development). Which means that early access will be wildly different from project to project ie. project A's early access will be entirely different from project B's early access. That's a quite complicated calculation to do, not even considering that there might be information we know little to nothing about. I think my approach is much less confusing for both consumers and developers and will overall lead to less unrealistic expectations, unfulfilled expectation, regret, buyers remorse etc. In any case, the wonderful thing about choice, is that you get to decide, how you want to see these things. You don't have to agree with me and indeed it would be a boring world (for me) if everybody did agree with me. You guys keep me on my toes and I get to keep you on your toes.

*lol* That thing is delightfully kerbal.

[snip] Well, discovering whether a coffee is hot or not, before drinking it, is prudent and an example of doing one's due diligence. Not knowing that coffee can be hot or ignoring that a particular coffee may be hot, leading a person to burning themselves on hot coffee, would be an example of a person not living up to, what can be expected for a reasonable average person. The responsibility for the decision to drink coffee, whether a person did due diligence or not, is the responsibility of the person making that decision. And I don't think such a person get to blame any others for any potential resulting burnt mouth/throat and feelings of discomfort. *sips coffee that has cooled sufficiently to not burn, while still being delicious* Or in other words, it's not "Hah burn!" ... it's more of a "Hah self burn!"

Personally I firmly lean towards not paying to test other people's products for them. Even if it was free, it would be rare that I want to do that work (as it would be for me) That's me though. I have no problem with the option being there for the people that get a kick and fun out of that. Especially because that probably does end up giving me a better product in the end.

And do we base that discussion on the average of a reasonable consumer or the outlier of the consumers that need to be told hot coffee is hot?

It's early access, meaning bugs, low performance and a lack of features, all of which means people might get the game and play around with it a bit and then wait and come back to it after some updating has been done. Or at least that makes sense to me. I suspect people did the same thing with KSP1 during it's 4 years of early access: "What's in the newest update? Cool, but it's not quite there yet, I'll be back when X is fixed and/or Y is added."

We don't know that it's been in 5 years of uninterrupted of problem free development. I don't think it's reasonable to expect "early access" to mean everything from: A: Buggy (many bugs and possibly severe bugs), low performance (from some situations to all the time), lack of features and no guarantees. To: B: Limited amount of bugs of limited severity, good performance (in all situations), plenty of features, guarantees of such things and nearly ready for full release. And of course to have such a wide definition and thus expectations being dependent on time in development, number of employees, budget, what company owns what company and what not. Such a wide and ambiguous definition will only lead to consumer confusion and buyers regret. Whereas defining "early access" as A, will lead to realistic expectations that adequately describe eg. KSP1's own early access, KSP2's early access and anything better is simply a bonus.

KSP1 had been in early access for almost 3 years, when you got into that and you can't give KSP2 3 days of early access? Well, the early access is comparable to early access. For reference, here is KSP1 earliest access release. "v0.7.3 Released June 24th, 2011 Initial Release[2] Notable Features Downloaded over 5000 times[3] No SAS, although SAS module is implemented and generates torque The only engine, the LV-T30 can only be fed by one FL-T500 attached on its top The AV-R8 Winglet is just a fin and can't be used to control the vehicle It is nearly impossible to achieve orbit Kerbin is the only celestial object, does not rotate, and is a mirror reflection of the example planet from libnoise The sun is a directional light source at infinite distance The render distance is only 1500 km, and Kerbin will "sink" into the sky background, vanishing entirely as that altitude is achieved The original Intercontinental Kraken had not been fixed (Moving far from the KSC will result in shaking and even Rapid Unplanned Disassembly due to floating-point precision loss.)" I get why people, who expected early access to not mean early access and nearly full release, for some reason, would be disappointed, but that's really on them and their own unrealistic expectations. PS: And the big company vs. small company thing, where 1 company's early access can absolutely mean lack of features, poor performance and bugs and the other company's early access can't lack features, can't have poor performance and can't have as many bugs and they must be smaller bugs, is a silly and ambiguous definition of early access, that will make the already confused even more confused. Early access only refers to development stage.

You are absolutely right. Early access means bugs, low performance, a lack of features and not least, no guarantees. If a person wants a maximum limit to bugs and their severity, buying early access is the wrong decision. If a person wants a minimum of performance in all situations, buying early access is the wrong decision. If a person wants a minimum of features, buying early access is the wrong decision. Early access also has absolutely nothing to do with whether a game/software is from a single enthusiast, amateurs, indie company, a small company, medium company, large company, huge conglomerate of large companies with subsidiaries around the world... It only refers to the development stage of bugs, low performance, lack of features and no guarantees. Complaints and reviews based on the buyer not understanding what early access is and therefore having unrealistic expectations of it are simply not valid. That is why I didn't buy KSP2 early access and waited 2-2½ years into KSP's early access, before the development stage reached a level, where I wanted to buy in. If I had bought it earlier and was unhappy, that would first and foremost have been me making a bad purchasing decision and that would have been my responsibility, not the devs of KSP1. For comparison. Here is the earliest (early access) release of KSP1: "v0.7.3 Released June 24th, 2011 Initial Release[2] Notable Features Downloaded over 5000 times[3] No SAS, although SAS module is implemented and generates torque The only engine, the LV-T30 can only be fed by one FL-T500 attached on its top The AV-R8 Winglet is just a fin and can't be used to control the vehicle It is nearly impossible to achieve orbit Kerbin is the only celestial object, does not rotate, and is a mirror reflection of the example planet from libnoise The sun is a directional light source at infinite distance The render distance is only 1500 km, and Kerbin will "sink" into the sky background, vanishing entirely as that altitude is achieved The original Intercontinental Kraken had not been fixed (Moving far from the KSC will result in shaking and even Rapid Unplanned Disassembly due to floating-point precision loss.)" That level of development is not for me, but that doesn't mean others shouldn't be allowed to choose to be in such early access, even at that early moment. We should not let the people complaining due to their own unrealistic expectations and idiosyncratic definition of early access prevent others that make the correct decisions, whether to buy or not buy into early access from doing so.

Uhm, any consumer should look into what they're buying, before they buy. This should be a reflex. Buyer beware or caveat emptor is hundreds of years old at this point and there's no excuse to become the reason that coffee cups need to warn people that hot coffee is hot.

It's applicable, because whether we call it early access, alpha testing, beta testing etc. Is irrelevant compared to the development stage, which is about the same. And because it was quite clearly possible for other people to have accurate and realistic expectations. And 5000 choose to deal with the problems of early access. The rest of the, ultimately, 3.995.000 players of the game would choose not to I've seen players/gamers/fans beg to be part of early access, beta testers etc. So clearly there's a market. Now you can buy your way into early access. Be careful what you wish for...

Well, I can only refer to another example of early access, that I loosely base my definition and expectations for an early access release on. Allow me to present to you, the earliest access release of KSP1. "v0.7.3 Released June 24th, 2011 Initial Release[2] Notable Features Downloaded over 5000 times[3] No SAS, although SAS module is implemented and generates torque The only engine, the LV-T30 can only be fed by one FL-T500 attached on its top The AV-R8 Winglet is just a fin and can't be used to control the vehicle It is nearly impossible to achieve orbit Kerbin is the only celestial object, does not rotate, and is a mirror reflection of the example planet from libnoise The sun is a directional light source at infinite distance The render distance is only 1500 km, and Kerbin will "sink" into the sky background, vanishing entirely as that altitude is achieved The original Intercontinental Kraken had not been fixed (Moving far from the KSC will result in shaking and even Rapid Unplanned Disassembly due to floating-point pre cision loss.)" 12 updates or so and about 5-6 months til there was a moon to go to. That's about the level of my expectations for early access. And it seems that was a bit more accurate than quite a few others.

[snip] So pandemics is like weather? Unforeseeable events? How about your company being replaced with another company? Unforeseeable event? How about your company suddenly being put on a new project by the company your company is owned by? Unforeseeable event? In any case KSP1 needed 2-2½ years in "early access" (all previous public available releases) before I found it worthy of purchase. That's my point of comparison.

[snip] To me that's like a poor hotel review, because the weather was bad at the location, which doesn't happen often, but absolutely can happen (and everyone knows it can happen).