Hi guys I want to express my concern and see how you guys feel about this. As my topic says: I believe beamng is dying. Earlier we got dev updates every month or two. Right now latest major update was 20th of december. only bugfixes. Year ago, in may I saw a post where devs experimented with ai traffic (using junctions). I was very excited. Year later some guy on the mod section says he spent 40 hours to create traffic tool and it works beautifully. its not ai of course but its what we need devs to to I think. And i can go on. there is a lot of things need to be improved. IMO beamng right now is not a game, its an engine with some resemblance of game features. I can see excuses that devs can use, like we are a small team. tho earlier they managed to do much more progress. do you guys feel the same way? or you think game is nearly finished? or they ran out of money? or I am wrong?
personally, I never bought into the idea that it would ever be a "real game". I think i've gotten my moneys worth out of lolcrash and some random driving. they are doing other stuff they don't really talk about here, https://beamng.gmbh/research/
I'll admit it's seen better days but it isn't dying, look at the number of views these shitty crash compilation videos get,
We are working hard in the backstage. In general we are trying to organize better our updates cycles, having a more precise and less chaotic scheduling than in the past. An update goes pretty much like this: 1 or 2 weeks alone are spent in testing the changes, fixing new-found bugs and so on. With a short update cycle that leaves little time for changes. That's why we have been aiming for a 3-month cycle for major updates (and smaller ones in between), as this leaves enough time for us to keep working on the game, break things for good and put them back together. (It was not as punctual as we wanted the past year due unexpected bumps in the roads, but this year we organized things better). We are near at the 3-month mark since the last major update, means the next update is almost there | (• ◡•)| Also check for staff posts around the forum and in the dev-section, they usually hint what we are working on.
Impressions and facts rarely meets. A fact, you can kinda see effect of traffic tool here, which is becoming official part of the game in a future (hint, that red spike of twitch.tv views) also you can see how after major update there is spike of players and it has been steadily climbing up, game does not have online mode, but still manages to get over 2000 simultaneous players even at slowest day of the week and over 3000 simultaneous players during busy days: So then there is Wreckfest game compared to BeamNG.Drive, hardly a contest there, somehow I fail to see rumored dying trend of BeamNG.Drive, Wreckfest on other hand, well, we are not discussing about that: https://steamdb.info/graph/?compare=228380,284160 Click link and compare any game you like to see how things really are, among realistic simulations that have crashing physics, I don't know anything that comes even close, considering this game is still in early access and does not have any kind of multiplayer over network, this game is enjoyed a lot, increasingly a lot. More and more people will be able to enjoy game in a future as better hardware happens, traffic is certainly addictive, according to their posts devs are working on stuff that brings much more game to this game so can't see this game dying.
I dont feel this game is dying, yes updates take between 3 to 6 months, but each line of code is a labor of love from the devs and on every update we tend to get something new and exciting and the game improves as a result of it, I have been on the forums since Alpha 0.3.0.5 so coming up on 6 years on 15th October 2019 and I know 30,680 users before me have been on the forums longer and they have waited longer for updates between versions, all you need is to wait for updates and learn to savour the game as it is, how do you tackle a big game development problem, you break it down into smaller pieces and build each one and then add it to the core game a piece at a time
I have a question. Why some people tend to make a new thread just to complain some issue that is virtually non-existent yet?
My guesses: -Lack of knowledge, either in ways how to dig up truth or just generally in status of things -Will to stir up some noise -Attempts to harm -General emotion driven nonsense driving a person instead of fair good share of Vulcan logic It can also be person is lonely and bored, as such is certain way to get responses... Probably million of other reasons too.
Well I mean it is a genuine concern of the OP, unfortunately it wasn't backed up with much evidence nor research. But that is why he asked us, and we replied with answers based on what we know with some great facts and statistics (especially by @fufsgfen) So I don't see it as a complaint or attention seeking thread, but that's just my own personal opinion, and you are obviously entitled to your own
The whole state of BeamNG as a "game" is kind of like trying to make sense of how the Higgs Field can stop a massless particle from travelling at the speed of light. BeamNG isn't dying, it is the essence of quantum entanglement.
Ok so let me try to answer your question the best way i can (with my basic psychology skills). No the game is not dying but there is a noticeable lack of content/features (that will probably be added in the future) in the game, but i think that's do to the fact that they're a small team of people working on a game that has BIG potential. As for the updates, i admit they're taking way too long. Three months is too much, maybe an update every month would solve the issue, but since they're a small team there is not much we can do to make the updates come out faster. Another thing could be a lack of finances. Now i'm not saying that the devs are out of money (because they probably aren't) but that they may need a little bit more in order to not only pay themselves, but maybe to buy better stuff to run/make their game, and as much as y'all don't like it, i think DLC is the only reasonable option they can choose to make more money. So no i don't think BeamNG is dying, but i do think that its struggling a little bit and needs our help to get through tough times.
about the updates taking awhile, Minecraft's take upwards of 6 months and its built on Java (kinda unrelated, but is not a very hard language to learn as far as im aware), and has a huge dev team I think beam is doing fine and wont ever loose an audience for a very long time.
Personally, I think three months is the perfect time. One human error or one line of code could technically break the whole game, I'd rather them check the code 20 times than 19. Honestly, three months is surprisingly fast for a game like this. Especially for being "one of" the first of it's kind. Either way, three months, as Nadeox1 noted, are usually major updates and not bugfixes.
There were no 'basic psychology skills' involved in your answer, it was just a misinformed explanation on why you think the updates are slow, (which in fact, they aren't... 3 months per major update is great for an indie developer) Also DLC is certainly not the only way to get an income, out of anything it would just reduce profits. People such as myself purchased the game with one of the factors being no paid DLC, so less people will purchase the game if it has DLC included. The correct way to make more profit is to keep the constant update cycle, finish the game and add more features (which they are currently doing) in order to attract new players. Merchandise would also help with profits, however I don't think it's the path the devs want to take right now.