Make the Embers flare

[Fyredancer]

Gday Drifters,
Here's some positive feedback with comparison for you -

Large open worlds to explore and gather and adventure is my thing - played Embers till it hurt (literally). I've tried so many games - oft quickly forgotten. (Mask something?)

One new big game is Pax Dei, now under Early Access - a huge open world MMO, with some similarities to Embers. They claim a staff of 75, with funding of over $30 million. But frankly, it's a disappointment - and Embers Adrift stands out in comparison.

PaxDei is incomplete, frustratingly so (even allowing for Early Access) - whole game functions are not even present (e.g. trading, money, quests, friends, mail, wider chat). It's more of an Alpha, frankly.

* Things just don't fit together well - there are many duplicated items, some craft tiers are missing; tier progression is not smooth. Clunky. Incomplete. Inconsistent. Often: "why did they do that? silly"
* Craft grind means huge waste of useless items.
* Bizarrely inconsistent small stack sizes.
* Many different craft items look identical.
* Everyone is the same - no classes or specialities.
* Clunky UI - three actions to use a spell (skill).
* No easy weapon swap.
* Naked corpse runs again - let's party like it's 1999.
* Combat so clunky it's called a place-holder, sorry - 'iterative development'.
* Poor community communication - occasional answers on Steam discussion.
* Player community getting notably frustrated at poor communication.
* Slow development - 3-5 months for one (underwhelming) update.
* Lotsa bugs and crashes.
* PvP and PvE = 'worst of both worlds'
* I see maybe 2-3 players in a week in game, world is littered with abandoned homes - ghost game does not have a good feeling.
* Future is unclear - vague roadmap, subscription and plots uncertain. Early Access until at least June 2025.

In short -
It's YAMMO made from random MMO pieces thrown together with no passion, no vision. Their heart just isn't in it


Embers has the opposite in many ways -

* Things fit together well - progression, tiers, classes, items = often: "ah, that's smart". Tres bien ensemble.
* Classic Holy Trinity with inter-dependent roles; different items and skills and looks.
* Craft grind not always wasted.
* Unlimited stacks - how obvious, how smart.
* Inter-dependencies like augments and reagents and potions - good ideas.
* Partial bag run (keeps weapons/armour/hotbar) - smart design balances risk/fun.
* Smooth UI (e.g. weapon swap, food etc.)
* Combat that builds complexity as you level.
* Although a small population, still a sense of an active world with players in it having fun.
* Game changes in response to feedback where practical.
* Smart new ideas like defensive vs offensive targets (did you patent that yet ?).
* Good development progress - similar performance with 1/10 the devs - amazing !
* Few bugs, quickly fixed.
* Excellent community communication, Elloa is a Shining Star, and your devs are committed and present. We love you all
* Clear roadmap and subscription future.

Especially - a 'Vision' - some may laugh, but it's important. Your design shows careful thinking in how things fit together, and interact, and progress. You have an undiscovered winner - with so many boring yet-another-forgettable games, Embers Adrift shows a rare quality from a skilled team who care.

But with a niche game and so many other games out there - need to get it in front of enough eyeballs. Pax Dei Discord has 80,000+ players. There is a plenty of interest in games like this, and thousands of unsatisfied players looking for a home.

So - yes I know it's been mentioned, yes I've heard it's hard - but I would move heaven and and earth to get Embers Adrift on Steam for the Christmas period or maybe the April holidays. Could get 100,000 players checking out Embers, which should leave a critical mass of subscribers.

"Come, brazier, do your duty, make the embers flare".
Aristophanes, Lysistrata [251].

(BTW - I'm an oldie and heavily medicated - sometimes I've been a little crotchety - sorry Elloa and all. Overall the game and people are wonderful and I have a blast each time I return.)

 

[Keiban]

PaxDei is incomplete, frustratingly so (even allowing for Early Access) - whole game functions are not even present (e.g. trading, money, quests, friends, mail, wider chat). It's more of an Alpha, frankly.

Uhm, yes? That's what Steam Early Access is expected to be. Many games stay in Early Access for years. Did you really expect a finished game and like a few days headstart?

 

[Fyredancer]

Yes, I realise it's Early Access - I just think they did it too early, it's just too incomplete.

But that's not really my main point is it ?

It's about the quality of the game, the smart design, the thoughtful planning; and the team, especially communication with the community.

So the tone in Pax Dei Discord and Steam has become rather sour - and its just one example of many games like it, sadly.

By contrast, Stormhaven has managed to put together quite a skilled and committed team, small enough for efficient communication, but big enough to get things done.

Here, it feels like the devs totally know what they are doing, that the player community is in touch with the devs, that there's a continuous conversation.

Few games have that.

Competition is wide, but Embers' niche is narrow. It's all about the numbers - Steam means huge exposure, and having a full game ready to play stands out amongst so many incomplete, maybe-one-day games.

 

[North]

Played Pax Dei, awful. Uninstalled and forgotten.

 

[Keiban]

But with a niche game and so many other games out there - need to get it in front of enough eyeballs. Pax Dei Discord has 80,000+ players. There is a plenty of interest in games like this, and thousands of unsatisfied players looking for a home.

So - yes I know it's been mentioned, yes I've heard it's hard - but I would move heaven and and earth to get Embers Adrift on Steam for the Christmas period or maybe the April holidays. Could get 100,000 players checking out Embers, which should leave a critical mass of subscribers.

Ok, so your point is "so many bought this unfinished game on Steam, if EA went there it would sell even better".
I think it's pretty naive to think that. First of all it's of a very different genre, e.g. Sandbox MMO vs old school MMORPG. It received a lot of hype at release because (afaik) it's a Pioneer to the genre, going from just multiplayer like it's predecessors (Minecraft, Valheim etc.) to a full blown MMO. EA on the other hand is like the hundredth rehash of the same 25 year old MMORPG formula, and not a very original one IMO. Apart from innovation, the sandbox/base building genre in general is WAY bigger then that of old school MMOs.
EA also has a lot of competition, from actual old MMOs like Elder Scrolls Online and LOTRO that are very cheap or even f2p and new titles like Throne and Liberty.
And lastly: 100k (or 10k, probably even 1k) new players at once would be a complete disaster, as EA is IMO poorly set up to handle big player numbers (long respawns, only small number of quest mobs, drops that don't count for the whole group, dungeons that support only a handful of groups max, poor performance with 50+ people on screen). They'd end up with a lot of refunds, and a ton of bad reviews.

 

[Elloa]

We are considering STEAM. We are not certain we can pull it off, though. We need to finish to develop some important content before to get to it anyway. I can promise you that *Embers Adrift* will not be released on Steam by Christmas (unless miracles. We never know.. Christmas is the season, isn't it...)

Thank you for the very kind words @Fyredancer

 

[Fyredancer]

Sure, Pax Dei has some great points - perhaps I was a bit harsh :
* the most beautiful huge open world I've ever explored - grassy fields, rocky outcrops, nooks and crannies, misty forests, lakes and rivers, mysterious ruins - and totally real plants and shrooms, superb; (but not the metal nodes which stand out like triple canine testes.) I happen to like wandering large lovely worlds - having great fun in Pax Dei for that.
* rich complex crafting
* big fun building
* great potential for a large long lasting game with many facets.

But :
I fear they have done themselves a disservice by releasing too early. By the time real 1.0 comes along there will have been so many alphas/updates/patches that the interest will have rather faded, leaking away some each time. And frankly it's still quite buggy and clunky. The devs don't communicate well, and sadly the community has turned a little sour. So it's a fairly average STEAM EA experience.
Here's a comment from their Discord : "Well, given my 30 years of experience as a professional videogame QA tester, I am fully accustomed to zero communication from the dev team and months without fixes to easy issues, because that is the industry."

STEAM has a HUGE number of games - most of them are 100% craptastic, some are OK but in Early Release, but only a very few are really good and fully released.

Embers has quality and is fairly complete now - with a small skilled team who love their work and communicate well - not a common thing. Design ideas that are smart and different. Notably - you guys have great communication with us, answer requests, but stick to your Vision. You stand out as a beacon of quality amongst a vast sea of mediocrity. Go For It ! I love you all.

Of course a small niche game on STEAM will mean many don't like it, but it also means a vastly larger pool of players. April is US holidays ? June-ish in Europe ? Could work.

Hey - you know that was a genuine quote from Aristophanes, right ? I love this game so much I spent the last 2 years reading all the old Greek and Roman writers just for a good quote haha

Here's a followup to the original flare :

"When the flame had died down, he spread the Embers"
Homer, The Illiad, Book IX.​

Yes, I'm an old oddball.

 

[Keiban]

I fear they have done themselves a disservice by releasing too early. By the time real 1.0 comes along there will have been so many alphas/updates/patches that the interest will have rather faded,

Maybe, but that's not a given. I'd say it's less of a problem to go too early into Early Access then to actually release too early. One example would be Last Epoch, which was in Early Access for an eternity (2019-2024), but had a HUGE launch.