This is just copied and paste text from a conversation I had with my friend about the game over Discord. My goal is not to offend anyone, but my hope is that maybe the developers will see some of this and be able to take away something that may help them. Many people will likely see this as an attack, but it's being posted with the hope of being constructive & helpful, not deconstructive and rude. Again, this was a private conversation so there are references you may not understand, but for a borderline background understanding, I'm a game developer. That's about all you need to know: ------------------------------------ The problem is that people develop these small parts of the game, shooting here, food system here, and they get this idea that it's a lot easier than it is. Then they get to the hard production of actually making the features work with each other, making it work over the network, fixing bugs and that's where people generally find out how hard it actually is, and in a lot of cases regardless of difficulty, just how time-consuming it is. Basically, they got more money than they knew what to do with, and no amount of money in the world can make up for their lack of game dev experience. So they hired on a bunch of randoms and are now slowly beginning to learn what it means to do real game dev. Quite frankly the acknowledgment that they were over their heads came when I saw they bought a studio for their employees. Bad financial decision, they got it downtown in an expensive city so they're gonna lose that money fast on top of the employees they are now paying daily. On top of that this is their first game and they thought that the best decision was to blow their money on office space, very bad idea until you're established enough to have the income to keep the office space, they're basically going off savings of the kickstarter campaign. And living off savings can be very stressful (lowering productivity), as well as all the other problems that come with it (Primarily that's it finite, especially due to hype and for the most part, those interested in the game have gotten it, I don't see them as getting a ton more income than they already have). So overall the campaign is just plagued with decisions of people unfamiliar with running a business and unfamiliar with game dev. That's why it's taking them so long is because they're learning things the hardest way possible. I've seen it happen with a lot of other indie devs who have a cool idea, get a good Kickstarter campaign, and then realize just how over their head they are a month later but are then stuck in it. It happened with a game I waited 3 years for release (Survive The Nights), again, first-time game devs, successful campaign, said it'd release in 1 year but took 3. Bad quality on release/buggy. The reason these Kickstarter campaigns are generally successful is that they promise a million features that no other game is offering like STN which offered the largest survival map, or these guys who an MMO so large that every job is filled by a player. The problem is after they get the money and get to work, they realize the reason people haven't done this stuff before generally isn't because people haven't tried or people have been too lazy, but because there are technical limitations they didn't know, so they almost never are able to fulfill their full promise without it being full of bugs & lag that no amount of optimization could fix because they aimed higher than current technology is capable (with the exception of if you maybe had extremely experienced devs working on it) And that's also a problem with a lack of game development experience, if you build the foundation of your game on laggy code then your game becomes dependent and tangled into that code. It's very hard to change the fundamentals of a game without having to redo everything dependent on those fundamentals. So maybe they learned better ways to program as they went on but now they're stuck with the old code that's laggy and can't change unless they redo everything. That's something that happens in projects I work on too where I realize a better method of doing things but it becomes too late and I have to press forward (It was why Deep Space crashed so often on release, because I didn't realize everything that went into polished net code, learned it, but then it was too late and so I had to create bootleg fixes to stop the crashing) To summarize, Lack of game dev experience, Lack of business experience, Too much money That's why the game will take as long as it will. I give it 2 years at the minimum. ------------------------------------------ I won't be replying to any comments, feel free to discuss.

Hi, I bought up to the beta and I was curious, what makes having a rusted car cost so much extra? By that I mean, how long does it take in-game for someone to acquire a rusted car? Because if I'm paying extra for a car that would only take me around 2 hours in-game to get, I'd wanna know.

I think there needs to be a serious discussion on the actual politics of the game. Popular vote, in theory, is good but it's so abusable. For example - you could literally just ask a bunch of people who don't play on that server to hop on the server just to vote for you. I don't have any solutions, but I'm hoping that the community here can start a conversation on how we can make voting more fair to the server. My only idea is perhaps X amount of playtime required but then AFKing would get the vote. Perhaps X amount of time + you have to own or rent a residential structure? Doesn't really sound appealing, but it's all I can think of.

This still wouldn't work as it would just stop the spam from new accounts which will only be a majority for a short period of time, so most 'riggers' would still be able to do as they please. I think I might agree that the best way to go is X amount of time needed on server

I mostly refer to mayoral duties because it is that which I am more accustomed. I would like to suggest that the financial records of the city be up to the mayor as to their detail and what all they include. I would like to think that the cash system for mayor will be more than just sliding bars on how much is spent in one area and that the mayor can withdraw cash to use personally (As would be required for some of the welfare systems I've proposed). And as such then it would make sense that when financial records are published that it be up to the mayor to label withdrawals for specific purposes, such as when they go to the bank and withdraw they select an existing category (Welfare, Public service, etc.) and it would add to the amount of debits that category received. And if there was a category they did not see, they could create a new one and all this would be marked down in the financial records when they are published. I'd assume other categories of it would be automated like I would expect that Road services would be auto-filled out and such (and I hope to god the mayor can choose which roads get more care than others, I love detail), but I would really enjoy the creative freedom to expand my position as mayor by having more custom freedom over where the money is spent. It would also make more interesting detail if someone found out the mayor was illegally using funds, for example, if someone notices that there's a large debit in the police budget and find out that police are paid a lot less than they should be, or if road service is really high but the roads are actually all cracked, then people could figure out the mayor was corrupt. Just something to chew on. Sincerely, Blake Gillman - Running for Mayor

Maybe not direct documents, but y'know the whole 'spend cash as is needed' would be nice

yeah, i mean for real, right?

Sadly that wouldn't solve it, I agree that it should be short regardless but it'd still give people the chance to invite others on to vote

No, not another pictures posting forum thread! NOO!

I think you may have just made my day

Although there are some flaws in what you say, the base idea of the mayor appointing a police chief I think is spot-on. Someone to organize the police force is definitely needed. I'd be fine with it being basic as well (it doesn't need to come with new features and such) it could just be a title given to an officer and the other officers then have to respect the chain-of-command. This helps in more ways than one, it helps the mayor not have to micro-manage the police force (given their many other responsibilities this is much needed) as well as allow someone more qualified help organize the fight against crime, That being said, If you look at the Police FAQ in the Precinct section of the forums (Question #1), the developers note that there will probably not be a police chief at first. But custom servers will allow custom ranks, so we'll probably be looking at many servers creating a Chief role, but as to how it's assigned is up to the server. (Most likely it'll be an admin who assigns it sadly).

(Deleted bc i wrote this when i was really angry and probably should have)

My god, it's almost as if you truly believe you're the sole hero created by Asylum to fight the injustice of the forums. Get over yourself, you pronounce me as rude for such demands, and yet here you are blatantly saying "I'm right, you're wrong, and fuck you for saying anything that I disagree with". All your points have been focused on name-calling, and insults, without presenting any new information, and then when you're called out for your ignorance you once again take up your previous stance. This isn't a debate, it's a joke. To prove my point: (and showcase how condescending you are): And that's in just your latest reply. Who can count them all? Have you heard of a debate? Because it is done by presenting new information to counter information given by the other party, not throw off names and declare the other person this and that, so you've proven to me this isn't a debate, and so anything more you add is nothing more than a waste of my time to read.

You speak of pretentiousness and yet here you are acting like you've got a life of experience on your back, and a degree in your hand. I did not ever specifically mention community ITEMS. I said community-driven, as in that the majority of gameplay comes from the community (as in jobs, roleplay, politics, etc.). In your own stupidity, you just skimmed over my post and assumed yourself to be right, then went on a rampage writing as fast as you could about something that I never said. But my apologies as well, I wasn't aware that all Game Developers had to fit into a specific stereotype in order to be game developers. I'll work on that. You say that it's not only community-based stuff, and you're right about 5% of the game isn't community-driven. But as for the politics, jobs, roleplay, economy, criminal activity, corporations, and just about everything else in the game, it is community-driven. So I would heavily implore you to read up on the game before going off as if you knew what you were talking about. And sorry that a concerned member of the community expressed their concerns. From this day forward I should automatically assume that all my concerns are meaningless, simply because I am apparently too incompetent in your eyes to understand the grand projects that are being laid before me. And I will refrain from any further comment, for I was unaware that I had to be perfect in your eyes in order to express even the slightest amount of worry for a game that I care so deeply about, and which you seem to know very little about.

I'm an indie game developer since 2012, making survival games and first person shooters with my latest game releasing on Steam this coming fall. You seem to be confused about my message. I'm saying that this is a heavily community-driven game based on the massive amount of players required for the servers, and I was expressing concern that such release times would massively reduce the community due to the hype of the game seems to be dying down. And I did pay for the beta. The problem is that developers don't know how to meet a deadline. I would know. They feel they have to get things just right and just perfect before release which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but rather than focusing on a lot of the unnecessary features of the game, core ones should be developed first and then misc. features. The key is to get the game out there, and to grow and prove yourself to be competent through the patches and updates released after the game. Early releases are made for this reason. *And I agree about the shitty DayZ developers, fun mod, shitty standalone with half-witted developers. But at least they got the game out when it was popular as DayZ like identity is community-driven. They just failed to do good with the patches and updates after release.

We all know that it's going to be hard to get number one. For starters, if you're looking to run a business you want a lot of profits. If you're looking to drive a truck, you'll want good roads to drive on. And if you want to socialize, you'll want a safe environment to do it. Blake Gillman for Mayor. ECONOMY I offer realistic tax rates because lower taxes means more profit to business, and more profit to business means a happy and healthy economy! I also plan to focus most of the tax into government services like our roads, police departments, and firefighters. WELFARE This is not a guarantee but once I take office and see how things work, I will look into being able to get something together like renting out houses for a lower-than-market price to those who qualify. COMPETENT SERVICES I will not hire those who do not know what they're doing, and I will not fruitlessly spend the cash. I believe that the cash should go back to you the people, if you put me in the position of mayor, that also means that you're putting your tax dollars where they should be: Into the well-being of the economy, people, and the city. This is not an unrealistic dream my friends, make a good living, and have someone who knows how things work in office. Some things in the game are automated like police, so a few bad apples are going to get into government. Make sure that the most important of government positions doesn't fall into the wrong hands. I urge you all, if you're playing the game and you see my name in the elections, make the right choice. Vote Blake Gillman for Mayor.

My name is Blake Gillman, and I've just recently booked my flight here. As a past politician, I'm looking to work my way in as mayor of the township. With much experience, I understand proper tax rates, maintenance, realistic costs, and balancing government budget. My biggest priority is keeping the city well kept by focusing the budget on the most important services like police, firefighter, road maintenance and medical services. (I'll be running for mayor on Official Server #1 as soon as it goes up)

If they were to implement this, I can imagine it being just a piece of paper that you can write whatever on and place down places. It'd probably be more like leaving a mark after a murder for the detectives to find, rather than being a custom-made detective clue.

To the poor and hungry, would my welfare system not be sufficient? Do you mean to say that the only means of providing to the poor is by giving cash to the church? I have a well thought-out welfare system that will able to provide homes and transportation, but I do lack in terms of food. Perhaps the church could be a distribution center of such things funded by the government? If I were elected, I would make it so.

You guys (as far as I'm aware) haven't really specified how the 'starter car' system is going to work. You say rusted car, but I'd like to expand on that. For the sake of not wanting to see everyone driving the exact same car on the road everywhere, would it be possible for you guys to assign a random texture to cars? Not necessarily give everyone a different rusted car, but I would hope that you'd at least make so they didn't all look exactly the same, even a different color would do it for me.

That video doesn't really matter because all of those things used in the customization are purchased from stores, I think cars should naturally without purchase just start off with different variations (purely cosmetic ones of course)

I apologize in advance if this has already been asked (I did indeed look so excuse my ignorance if it's posted somewhere), but what engine is the game being developed on?

We all know that it's going to be hard to get number one. For starters, if you're looking to run a business you want a lot of profits. If you're looking to drive a truck, you'll want good roads to drive on. And if you want to socialize, you'll want a safe environment to do it. Blake Gillman for Mayor. ECONOMY I offer realistic tax rates because lower taxes means more profit to business, and more profit to business means a happy and healthy economy! I also plan to focus most of the tax into government services like our roads, police departments, and firefighters. WELFARE This is not a guarantee but once I take office and see how things work, I will look into being able to get something together like renting out houses for a lower-than-market price to those who qualify. COMPETENT SERVICES I will not hire those who do not know what they're doing, and I will not fruitlessly spend the cash. I believe that the cash should go back to you the people, if you put me in the position of mayor, that also means that you're putting your tax dollars where they should be: Into the well-being of the economy, people, and the city. This is not an unrealistic dream my friends, make a good living, and have someone who knows how things work in office. Some things in the game are automated like police, so a few bad apples are going to get into government. Make sure that the most important of government positions doesn't fall into the wrong hands. I urge you all, if you're playing the game and you see my name in the elections, make the right choice. Vote Blake Gillman for Mayor.

Thanks, and yeah I'm just surprised. Unreal is great for graphics, but it's much harder to program for compared to other engines.

I plan on running as mayor. I want to guarantee low tax so business can thrive, and spend the money on the important services like roads, police, and firefighters.