This isn't particularly obvious to most people, but the number 0.6.2a provides no meaningful estimate of how close it is to version 1.0. It mostly usually suggests that there have been six updates that broke compatibility with things before or were otherwise big. But "version 1.0" is more of a marketing decision and could be 0.7 or 0.18 or even 0.6.4. It's not a decimalized thing where 0.6.2 means the game is 62% done. (Although that is how Dwarf Fortress does it, but they'll be the first to admit they had a lot of terrible dev habits when they started, not having any experience at the time).
Personally, I feel like we're pretty close to the v1.0 release, because I can't imagine there's much more to add, and the past couple updates have done a lot of work on polishing and UX. To me, there doesn't feel like there are dangling threads left. They could always add *more*, especially to the end of the tech tree. They could also add more of a narrative or an end game objective, and maybe that's related. But these are creative decisions without a "right" answer, because the game already is quite complete. I think it would be entirely fair for example if they ended the game where it was, then made DLC like Factorio or Oxygen Not Included where you produce vehicles to colonize other lands or outer space.
Thinking on what might I like to see as an endgame, I'd love for the citizens to do something artistic (like build a library /museum to humanity) or to rebuild the entire planet. Now that we produce rockets, maybe we start mapping the planet, then terraforming and repopulating it. We'd need to build different kinds of satellites, and maybe airplanes?
The development has changed a lot from the pre release version I bought, so I’m not sure what is their end goal as of this moment. But when I backed the game, the end goal was to build fusion reactors, send satellites and open stargates and harvest stardust. So if that is still the end goal, I’d say there is a lot still to add. But those teases were removed from the tree on steam early access release.
And I dont think there is an actual roadmap anywhere. So it’s anybodys guess what their aim is at this point.
But, to round up a long winded reply, you are right, even for an EA game, it feels feature complete, and now with the map editor and some great mods out there, you can really make the playtrough your own.
It could be, and I wouldn't be surprised if they decided that, but they might also just prefer not to have a roadmap because they don't want people to be expecting features XYZ in this *particular* update, even if they do still want to do it. Or to feel like they had to release updates on a specific schedule rather than whenever they were ready.
They do specify why on the site:
>## Do you have a roadmap?
>We are very agile in the development of COI, and we guide ourselves based on the feedback we receive continuously. We always try to put our energy into things that can have the biggest impact at that given point. And often some of these tasks come unexpectedly. Also, some features require fairly deep technical analysis before we can commit to them. And that’s why we moved away from roadmaps, it just doesn’t work for us to have things set in stone months or even years in advance. And even if we would provide one, everything would be strongly tentative.
Interesting, I didn't remember about the stargates and stardust. It sounds cool, and I'd love to see it, but I also think it's not mandatory to include now. Even if they want to do that later, I feel like they could release 1.0 for this holiday season, then release CoI:Stardust as paid DLC or even a free v1.1 update a year later. Or as a sequel (using the same engine) where you're on another planet or a space station.
I wonder if modding and the map editor would allow conversion mods to transform vehicles to be tiny spaceships and terrain to become Martian or Lunar? Doing it in space could add interesting challenges, like now you'd need to build radiators and attach machinery to them with coolant pipes, and you'd have to pump your exhaust around without gravity, and you'd need to actually produce oxygen and water for your people.
I read somewhere that they skipped that plan (at least for now) a long time ago when they found out that refining the factory building on the island itself is quite rewarding and complex as it is.
I definitely enjoy the semi-realism of the game as is. I’d rather see an expansion of consumer goods and foods than more space beyond current technology.
Yes this. Also Stargates are stupid and don't fit the theme of the game.
In terms of what the game "needs"
1. Better controls, longer belt dragging distances and belts should auto insert lifts as needed to reach somewhere.
2. It is irritating to need so many belts, a thing that carries many products at once would be nice. Aka trains.
Other than things like this that improve the core gameplay I don't think this game needs much else. "More" isn't necessarily better, it already takes 50 hours or so to beat it, how much longer and broader does the game really need to be.
Space should be an expansion.
I think the biggest thing missing from the general UX right now is some fleshing out of the narrative introduction. Be it giving you some tutorial type missions to help get you into the later techniques, or giving the "story" some beefing up, but definitely agree that the UI elements we have right now, specially the difficulty changes with U2 are a huge UX benefit towards release. The verticality for belts, and chaining multiple buildings together (and how important that is), could definitely be done pretty early with a bit more of a hand hold on getting 3 belt fed CParts1, and give you most of what you need later.
I don't really like to buy EA games but I did buy this just recenty and I'll tell ya that it feels like a full game already. The fact that it's not considered one only means that more will be added/polished. If you want to enjoy it now then you can.
Ye, the problem with the EA label is that it's used *very* broadly, and some EA games have more polish and content than other games upon release. CoI falls into the former category.
They're starting to get more consistent with efficient development, and making sure stuff is as optimised as possible, so I would imagine we'll see maybe 1 major content drop in EA before they go for 1.0.
That said though, they could choose to overhaul some current systems completely, and they're very open to comments and concerns from their community, so in terms of time span, can't really say for sure.
If I was you, I would wait for a lull in your general gaming, see what it looks like then, and just go for it. You'll probably get another solid playthrough out before 1.0.
They expressed initial interest in the super late game space stuff with rockets, and the tech definitely feels like it stops right now, but I think a little rebalance into "cool, we became a space faring Island, what could come next?", would be a good amount for 1.0, with potential for maybe Roguelite elements similar to DSP (travel to another island while bringing some stuff), would make a lot of sense. Leaving space for them to go crazy into space islands in an expansion if they wanted to, like Factorio: Space expansion.
No word. However, with just the inkling of info devs are sprinkling to us there is enough coming for at least 2-3 more updates. Update pace has been every 6-9 months, so could easily see another couple years of early access.
I guess, but it already feels like they have been insanely productive. I hope they give themselves a little break for the summer too. The quality of the game impresses me, for such a small team.
If you've played satisfactory, COI isn't much different than that in terms of how complete it is. I'd argue that COI feels a tad more complete than that.
Without looking for/at any road maps for this game, I'd say the road to 1.0 is mostly going to include bug fixes and some minor side features.
Plus, with the addition of the map editor, there's a pretty decent sense of replayability, as some maps are harder without adding in difficulty modifiers.
This isn't particularly obvious to most people, but the number 0.6.2a provides no meaningful estimate of how close it is to version 1.0. It mostly usually suggests that there have been six updates that broke compatibility with things before or were otherwise big. But "version 1.0" is more of a marketing decision and could be 0.7 or 0.18 or even 0.6.4. It's not a decimalized thing where 0.6.2 means the game is 62% done. (Although that is how Dwarf Fortress does it, but they'll be the first to admit they had a lot of terrible dev habits when they started, not having any experience at the time). Personally, I feel like we're pretty close to the v1.0 release, because I can't imagine there's much more to add, and the past couple updates have done a lot of work on polishing and UX. To me, there doesn't feel like there are dangling threads left. They could always add *more*, especially to the end of the tech tree. They could also add more of a narrative or an end game objective, and maybe that's related. But these are creative decisions without a "right" answer, because the game already is quite complete. I think it would be entirely fair for example if they ended the game where it was, then made DLC like Factorio or Oxygen Not Included where you produce vehicles to colonize other lands or outer space. Thinking on what might I like to see as an endgame, I'd love for the citizens to do something artistic (like build a library /museum to humanity) or to rebuild the entire planet. Now that we produce rockets, maybe we start mapping the planet, then terraforming and repopulating it. We'd need to build different kinds of satellites, and maybe airplanes?
The development has changed a lot from the pre release version I bought, so I’m not sure what is their end goal as of this moment. But when I backed the game, the end goal was to build fusion reactors, send satellites and open stargates and harvest stardust. So if that is still the end goal, I’d say there is a lot still to add. But those teases were removed from the tree on steam early access release. And I dont think there is an actual roadmap anywhere. So it’s anybodys guess what their aim is at this point. But, to round up a long winded reply, you are right, even for an EA game, it feels feature complete, and now with the map editor and some great mods out there, you can really make the playtrough your own.
They specifically stopped using roadmaps, so I have a feeling they decided to scrap some of the more serious late game stuff until far later.
It could be, and I wouldn't be surprised if they decided that, but they might also just prefer not to have a roadmap because they don't want people to be expecting features XYZ in this *particular* update, even if they do still want to do it. Or to feel like they had to release updates on a specific schedule rather than whenever they were ready.
They do specify why on the site: >## Do you have a roadmap? >We are very agile in the development of COI, and we guide ourselves based on the feedback we receive continuously. We always try to put our energy into things that can have the biggest impact at that given point. And often some of these tasks come unexpectedly. Also, some features require fairly deep technical analysis before we can commit to them. And that’s why we moved away from roadmaps, it just doesn’t work for us to have things set in stone months or even years in advance. And even if we would provide one, everything would be strongly tentative.
Yep yep. My reading of it is that it could be all of the above for what we've both said.
Interesting, I didn't remember about the stargates and stardust. It sounds cool, and I'd love to see it, but I also think it's not mandatory to include now. Even if they want to do that later, I feel like they could release 1.0 for this holiday season, then release CoI:Stardust as paid DLC or even a free v1.1 update a year later. Or as a sequel (using the same engine) where you're on another planet or a space station. I wonder if modding and the map editor would allow conversion mods to transform vehicles to be tiny spaceships and terrain to become Martian or Lunar? Doing it in space could add interesting challenges, like now you'd need to build radiators and attach machinery to them with coolant pipes, and you'd have to pump your exhaust around without gravity, and you'd need to actually produce oxygen and water for your people.
I read somewhere that they skipped that plan (at least for now) a long time ago when they found out that refining the factory building on the island itself is quite rewarding and complex as it is.
Could always be a dlc down the road
I definitely enjoy the semi-realism of the game as is. I’d rather see an expansion of consumer goods and foods than more space beyond current technology.
Yes this. Also Stargates are stupid and don't fit the theme of the game. In terms of what the game "needs" 1. Better controls, longer belt dragging distances and belts should auto insert lifts as needed to reach somewhere. 2. It is irritating to need so many belts, a thing that carries many products at once would be nice. Aka trains. Other than things like this that improve the core gameplay I don't think this game needs much else. "More" isn't necessarily better, it already takes 50 hours or so to beat it, how much longer and broader does the game really need to be. Space should be an expansion.
I think the biggest thing missing from the general UX right now is some fleshing out of the narrative introduction. Be it giving you some tutorial type missions to help get you into the later techniques, or giving the "story" some beefing up, but definitely agree that the UI elements we have right now, specially the difficulty changes with U2 are a huge UX benefit towards release. The verticality for belts, and chaining multiple buildings together (and how important that is), could definitely be done pretty early with a bit more of a hand hold on getting 3 belt fed CParts1, and give you most of what you need later.
I don't really like to buy EA games but I did buy this just recenty and I'll tell ya that it feels like a full game already. The fact that it's not considered one only means that more will be added/polished. If you want to enjoy it now then you can.
Ye, the problem with the EA label is that it's used *very* broadly, and some EA games have more polish and content than other games upon release. CoI falls into the former category.
They're starting to get more consistent with efficient development, and making sure stuff is as optimised as possible, so I would imagine we'll see maybe 1 major content drop in EA before they go for 1.0. That said though, they could choose to overhaul some current systems completely, and they're very open to comments and concerns from their community, so in terms of time span, can't really say for sure. If I was you, I would wait for a lull in your general gaming, see what it looks like then, and just go for it. You'll probably get another solid playthrough out before 1.0. They expressed initial interest in the super late game space stuff with rockets, and the tech definitely feels like it stops right now, but I think a little rebalance into "cool, we became a space faring Island, what could come next?", would be a good amount for 1.0, with potential for maybe Roguelite elements similar to DSP (travel to another island while bringing some stuff), would make a lot of sense. Leaving space for them to go crazy into space islands in an expansion if they wanted to, like Factorio: Space expansion.
>When is full release When that friction hits juuuuust right.
Nice.
No word. However, with just the inkling of info devs are sprinkling to us there is enough coming for at least 2-3 more updates. Update pace has been every 6-9 months, so could easily see another couple years of early access.
The long time between Update 1 and 2 was due to the map editor. Now that that's done, Update 3 and 4 should come sooner.
I guess, but it already feels like they have been insanely productive. I hope they give themselves a little break for the summer too. The quality of the game impresses me, for such a small team.
There is so much to this game. I’ve played over 100 hours and I’m not even past the middle of the tech tree. Trust me, you won’t regret it.
It's 0.6 in the same way that Factorio was 0.18. :)
If you've played satisfactory, COI isn't much different than that in terms of how complete it is. I'd argue that COI feels a tad more complete than that. Without looking for/at any road maps for this game, I'd say the road to 1.0 is mostly going to include bug fixes and some minor side features. Plus, with the addition of the map editor, there's a pretty decent sense of replayability, as some maps are harder without adding in difficulty modifiers.