The "Alpha" label is scaring off new users from trying the game

[Thunderforge]

I came across 0 A.D. several years ago and, as an Age of Empires fan, figured it would be neat to try. I saw that it was an "Alpha" though and so I didn't download it, figuring it would be buggy and incomplete. I decided that I would wait until it was at least a Beta version when I tried it.

A few years later I came back to it, only to discover it was still Alpha. I was confused about there being so much progress though. I decided to download it and it looked playable. There were still rough edges, but about what I would expect for a Beta version.

I talked to another person who said they too had heard about the game, but never tried it because they too were "waiting for the game to not be buggy". When I asked when they would know that would be, they said "1.0, or at least a beta".

So the "Alpha" label scared me off from trying 0 A.D. for years and scared off another person I know from trying it at all.

Now that there have been Alphas for all 26 letters of the English alphabet, maybe it's time to start releasing Betas? That would prevent new users like me from thinking that the game is still a buggy mess not ready for prime time.

Edited May 21, 2023 by Thunderforge

[Gurken Khan]

Yeah, that's a known issue.

I, too, would go for a "beta", just for "marketing". But alas, the powers that be here obviously like the "alpha" ...

[Lion.Kanzen]

12 minutes ago, Thunderforge said:

I came across 0 A.D. several years ago and, as an Age of Empires fan, figured it would be neat to try. I saw that it was an "Alpha" though and so I didn't download it, figuring it would be buggy and incomplete. I decided that I would wait until it was at least a Beta version when I tried it.

A few years later I came back to it, only to discover it was still Alpha. I was confused about there being so much progress though. I decided to download it and it looked playable. There were still rough edges, but about what I would expect for a Beta version.

I talked to another person who said they too had heard about the game, but never tried it because they too were "waiting for the game to not be buggy". When I asked when they would know that would be, they said "1.0, or at least a beta".

So the "Alpha" label scared me off from trying 0 A.D. for years and scared off another person I know from trying it at all.

Now that there have been Alphas for all 26 letters of the English alphabet, maybe it's time to start releasing Betas to signal to new users that this isn't a buggy mess and you can play a largely bug-free game?

The WFG team has a very high standard.

 

It is secret its starting point from the beginning of the beta stage.

[Stan`]

Well IMHO the whole (Spamming, Cheating, DDOSing) lobby debacle, and the lagging kinda proves the point. If 5 people can tank the multiplayer game are we really allowed to be called a beta?

Or should we just target single player folks, in which case not having a campaign is kind of a no no ?

[LetswaveaBook]

On 22/05/2023 at 1:02 PM, Stan` said:

Well IMHO the whole (Spamming, Cheating, DDOSing) lobby debacle, and the lagging kinda proves the point. If 5 people can tank the multiplayer game are we really allowed to be called a beta?

Or should we just target single player folks, in which case not having a campaign is kind of a no no ?

Most youtube videos about age of empires 2 games are 1v1s and most streams are dedicated to 1v1s. So there is a third option to play the game apart from single player and team games. Unfortunately, the game is not the best it could be for competitive 1v1s.

Team games have lag and matchmaking issues. 1v1s lack a campaign or interesting AI for skirmishing mode. In this light, these two game modes shouldn't be a serious contender for 1v1 online matches. The developers need to ask what is it about the game that makes 1v1 online matches not much more popular/common than the currently are?

Anyway, this is an unpopular opinion.

[Lion.Kanzen]

15 minutes ago, LetswaveaBook said:

Most youtube videos about age of empires 2 games are 1v1s and most streams are dedicated to 1v1s. So there is a third option to play the game apart from single player and team games. Unfortunately, the game is not the best it could be for competitive 1v1s.

Team games have lag and matchmaking issues. 1v1s lack a campaign or interesting AI for skirmishing mode. In this light, these two game modes shouldn't be a serious contender for 1v1 online matches. The developers need to ask what is it about the game that makes 1v1 online matches not much more popular/common than the currently are?

Anyway, this is an unpopular opinion.

Is fine. In your opinion, why is it not more popular?

[Genava55]

Furthermore, the "alpha" label is very repulsive for modders. There is nothing worse than spending time tracking patches for a mod. This issue is currently known from M&B Bannerlord and several big mods are complaining about the current development of the game that multiplied mod-breaking patches the last 6 months.

[Lion.Kanzen]

4 minutes ago, Genava55 said:

Furthermore, the "alpha" label is very repulsive for modders. There is nothing worse than spending time tracking patches for a mod. This issue is currently known from M&B Bannerlord and several big mods are complaining about the current development of the game that multiplied mod-breaking patches the last 6 months.

But what can be done?

 

Make a video explaining that we are not like others?

[hyperion]

2 minutes ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

Make a video explaining that we are not like others?

0ad doesn't offer a stable API for modding at all.

[Lion.Kanzen]

1 minute ago, hyperion said:

0ad doesn't offer a stable API for modding at all.

What should we do?

 

Where should we plan for the future?

[Genava55]

4 minutes ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

Where should we plan for the future?

I don't know. The development of new civs has nothing to do with the core development of the game. Stan said that multiple times. It is not the same people working on those.

From what I understand, the biggest issues pending are related to the core of the code. Is there a list of the remaining jalons before Beta?

[Lion.Kanzen]

If I agree there should be a little more transparency with what is planned for the long term.

[alre]

1 hour ago, LetswaveaBook said:

Most youtube videos about age of empires 2 games are 1v1s and most streams are dedicated to 1v1s. So there is a third option to play the game apart from single player and team games. Unfortunately, the game is not the best it could be for competitive 1v1s.

Team games have lag and matchmaking issues. 1v1s lack a campaign or interesting AI for skirmishing mode. In this light, these two game modes shouldn't be a serious contender for 1v1 online matches. The developers need to ask what is it about the game that makes 1v1 online matches not much more popular/common than the currently are?

Anyway, this is an unpopular opinion.

automatic 1v1 matchmaking would very interesting I think. If implemented, it has the potential to significantly increase the player base.

if that would also increase the development contributions, I'm not sure.

of course one has to remember that this general vision of 0ad as a game to be brought trough the phases of development until it's a beta and then something resembling a full game, is not actually shared by all the people that form the development team of the game, and it's usually given for granted somehow naively here in the forums.

[Lion.Kanzen]

1 minute ago, alre said:

automatic 1v1 matchmaking would very interesting I think. If implemented, it has the potential to significantly increase the player base.

For those of us who do not have acquaintances and want to play with someone who is at our level, this is a good alternative.

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

I think 1v1s are less fun and less popular because the interaction of team bonuses is a good source of strategies and variability. Of course changes don't have to improve gameplay experience in only 1v1s or only tgs. I think civ and unit differentiation would help the 1v1 scene as well as tgs, for an example look no further than @real_tabasco_sauce's unit specific upgrades community mod patch that could be seen in the community mod for a27.

Edited May 23, 2023 by BreakfastBurrito_007

[real_tabasco_sauce]

Yeah I have been a proponent of some kind of basic matchmaking for 1v1s.

The ratings could then be directly tied to this. Ideally it won’t supplant organized rated games.

[Lion.Kanzen]

22 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

The ratings could then be directly tied to this. Ideally it won’t supplant organized rated games.

would be an alternative to traditional lobby.

should be an alternative to LAN match

[Stan`]

12 hours ago, LetswaveaBook said:

1v1s lack a campaign or interesting AI for skirmishing mode. In this light, these two game modes shouldn't be a serious contender for 1v1 online matches. The developers need to ask what is it about the game that makes 1v1 online matches not much more popular/common than the currently are?

I suppose the first one is a typo and mean solo playing? 

We know that there are at least 10 times more player that play solo matches than multiplayer ones (1500 per day). And those are the ones that enabled feedback.

So we're obviously doing something right, even though we're not sure what it is.

I suppose competitive 1v1 is just missing the "balanced" maps?

10 hours ago, alre said:

automatic 1v1 matchmaking would very interesting I think. If implemented, it has the potential to significantly increase the player base.

How so? It will not create new players. 

10 hours ago, alre said:

of course one has to remember that this general vision of 0ad as a game to be brought trough the phases of development until it's a beta and then something resembling a full game, is not actually shared by all the people that form the development team of the game, and it's usually given for granted somehow naively here in the forums.

I think the issue here is that it's not that we don't want that, it's more than we don't have the resources for it.

12 hours ago, hyperion said:

0ad doesn't offer a stable API for modding at all.

 

12 hours ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

What should we do?

Well what we do currently is offer as many scripts as possible to update mods.

But at the same time mods benefit from the extended API as well.

11 hours ago, Genava55 said:

From what I understand, the biggest issues pending are related to the core of the code. Is there a list of the remaining jalons before Beta?

Is there a list? Yes tickets have been flagged beta. Does that mean it's exhaustive? Not really because there are things we hadn't forseen that came in the way.

https://trac.wildfiregames.com/query?status=assigned&status=new&status=reopened&keywords=~beta&col=id&col=summary&col=status&col=type&col=priority&col=milestone&col=component&order=priority&report=22

Looking at it some stuff is missing and some stuff shouldn't probably be there.

[Stan`]

Another thing I don't know how to advertise is the opportunity the engine has. You can stick to a version if you wanna play with A23b forever and don't need anything else you can and just make mods for that.

Hyrule (even though it was not a voluntary choice) have managed to do that people download old versions to play their mods.

You can even package the mod with the game!

@Freagarach is a good example of a modder that wanted more and eventually added a ton of gameplay features (he's also responsible for some of the api breakage but shhhh). I wouldn't mind having more features borderline with the game but used by mods. 

 

[alre]

3 hours ago, Stan` said:

How so? It will not create new players. 

Do you know "player retention"?

3 hours ago, Stan` said:

We know that there are at least 10 times more player that play solo matches than multiplayer ones (1500 per day). And those are the ones that enabled feedback.

So we're obviously doing something right, even though we're not sure what it is.

Considering how huge is the number of daily downloads, one could say you are doing right by keeping the game installer online and giving it visibility.

[Feldfeld]

Imo what 0 A.D. is lacking most is a campaign, and second would be better performance.

[Stan`]

1 hour ago, alre said:

Considering how huge is the number of daily downloads, one could say you are doing right by keeping the game installer online and giving it visibility.

I did not mean it as a dismissal. I meant that somehow players are playing single player and seem to be gaining something out of it.

31 minutes ago, Feldfeld said:

Imo what 0 A.D. is lacking most is a campaign, and second would be better performance.

@Langbart and @SciGuy42 did a great job porting a campaign to A27, hopefully will be available through mod.io

1 hour ago, alre said:

Do you know "player retention"?

Yes. But from what I read you seemed to mean that the player base would increase, rather than not decrease. Sorry if it wasn't what you meant.

[hyperion]

4 hours ago, Stan` said:

@Freagarach is a good example of a modder that wanted more and eventually added a ton of gameplay features (he's also responsible for some of the api breakage but shhhh). I wouldn't mind having more features borderline with the game but used by mods.

Worst are the ones like stone -> rock, don't think @Freagarach is guilty of similar ones.

[Stan`]

3 minutes ago, hyperion said:

Worst are the ones like stone -> rock, don't think @Freagarach is guilty of similar ones.

Except that's not really part of the API. Also those are the easiest to update ^^ I'd take automating template changes every day over updating hyrule code after we changed some of the underlying javascript

Changing techs from json to XML is a much bigger breaking change.

[hyperion]

25 minutes ago, Stan` said:

Except that's not really part of the API

Not pyrogenesis but 0ad. Not that either officially claims something like an API

That change was done manually and after tripping enough people someone wrote a script, it would have helped it it had been the other way around. Write a script, if the output is what is desired commit the result of the script.