I’ve done it several times, I have no complaints about ammo or difficulty right now.
I did bug out the… Ehm… Bug lady one time which made it so easy… But have defeated her on several other occations where she wasn’t stuck.
1 Like
Played Fort twice with the first pre-alpha build, just played a random map now with the new build. Definite progress in evidence. I reported a few minor bugs, but the biggest bug is with the bug reporting system, which alternates between being very slow and timing out.
FWIW, I’ve had my clock cleaned all three times. The queen shows up and runs me over while 4+ alien gunners snipe at me. The queen got stuck for a few turns in one of the games, but eventually figured out how to walk across the bridge, and ate me.
In the most recent game I was in cover from the shooters, but didn’t have an angle on the queen because of intervening buildings. Until she destroyed the buildings, but by that point it was a bit late. There was some conflicting feedback on whether or not I could shoot her (reported as a bug) – the zoom-in showed my sniper could do damage, but none of the target icons were red. The shot I took did nothing, even though it was at close range. So something is a little off there.
I tend to take the XCOM approach of sitting in cover and shooting until bad guys are dead, which means I don’t get to many of the supply boxes before the queen shows up. This seems to be the wrong approach since cover elements get destroyed (too) easily, and you really need those supplies, especially when units are returning fire.
The game seems to want you to be on the move, rather than being patient and using overwatch, so I’ll need to adjust my style a bit.
I didn’t realize that ducking into the lower areas would keep you from getting stomped… I’ll need to try that next time. Otherwise I just can’t get out of the way fast enough.
1 Like
Thirdly, there are other abilities and different mutations for different situations. Fourthly, she will gain a more flexible attack for her pincers which would be more difficult to hide from.> Blockquote
Thanks Julian. Is this all reserved for the final game, or we can expect this queen “higher feats.” to be included in our next “learning sessions”?
Oh yeah, it needs a hell of a lot work, but you can see what they are doing. Yes the difficulty is unbalanced but also once you’ve got to know the map you can just hammer of the beast’s armour with the rover. My only real concern is that injuries can be too severe and obviously that ammo mechanic is too demanding/random. Anyway I have faith. Only a month from now I suspect we’ll see some rather significant improvements.
1 Like
I had the same feelings about the game at first.
Until now I think the first look was not what I was expecting. The game is not the way I would do it but there are some very good ideas in it.
I could go through all good ideas but I will keep this answer short:
The core of the game is a good one.
As I remember XCOM 2 I was at first “wow” and after a few hours it was a “meh”
This time it was a “meh” first and now is a “wow”
Don’t get me wrong there are a million little things they should polish but the core structure of the fights is done very well.
You can test the game… by letting your guys die a lot 
I think this is one of the “problems”: you already feel connected to the game and it is not okay to let your soldiers die for testing.
But if you think about it, it may be a good thing!
2 Likes
agreed. What is left is proven willingness to correct early development mistakes released as backers builds. BB3 might be insta-hype or insta-downer, depends on what we will experience in approx 23 days.
Backer Builds were only every meant to be the opportunity for backers to see development as it happens. The “mistakes” as you mistakenly call them are all part of the development process. The Backer Builds aren’t about adding or fixing particular things. Only the final release is where everything is expected to be 100% finished and working.
2 Likes
Lets call it “Snapshots”. More bugs (“mistakes”) could be ironed in between, if possible. Features included in BB should be expected to be 90% finished and working, or else excluded.
There should be a bit more devotion to what goes to backers, then mere buggy snapshot as-is.
Some development snaps should be kept in house.
Or more seriously - try to test and avoid such a big bugs as Queen unable to pathfind etc.
Its better to introduce something later then to have players pointing it out all over social media and forums, right?
We catch bugs where we can, but finding and fixing bugs takes a long time. Fixing anything but the most game-breaking bugs before the game is feature complete isn’t an efficient use of time, as each new feature or change potentially will introduce more bugs.
Again, this is wrong. The whole idea of the Backer Build is for people to get taste of the game in development. This isn’t one of those “beta” releases that is pretty much already finished and just waiting for release, designed as a public demo to build hype and increase sales. This is a raw and true in development build.
We expect there to be bugs. As said before, it takes a long time to find and fix them. With a 2 month release cycle for most Backer Builds, it only leaves about 2 weeks for testing and bug fixing between the content lock and the release. We don’t mind people pointing out bugs because we know (and the people playing know), that it is a development build and will have bugs.
If anyone wants to play a game that is feature complete and mostly bug free, they should avoid playing until there is a beta build. If people want to avoid bugs entirely, they should be waiting until release.
3 Likes
I would disagree. The devs were very clear about what the Backer Builds were. Or, at least for me, every BB is exactly what I thought it would be: something like a behind the scenes to what the game looks like as it’s being developed. No promises of balanced gameplay or final features were made, so it’s the closest I can get for a real game development cycle, since I don’t have any kind of programming background. It’s like seeing a behind the scenes for a movie, it’s very interesting, but it’s not the movie.
1 Like
Take BB as you like, fact is extreme bugs are included, that can ruin game play.
To I, such things should never be public even in BB / YT videos form.
Its better to have less feats included, but those quite tested by team.
That is your opinion of course, but that is not the purpose of the Backer Builds. People who are bothered by bugs won’t play them.
1 Like
Thats an easy excuse - Balkan politican style.
We should play more Turbo folk, because people love it.
Dont be bothered by so much “reality shows” 24 hrs daily (even its 18+) - you can always use remote.
Problem of such stance is that it does not improve your product.
Its not that I cannot handle bugs - I handle them since they started to crawl out of ZX Spectrum :–)
As a Fig backer, I’ve been playing the backer build since it was first out. It’s better than I expected it to be. One of the reasons I pledged for the $75 was that I wanted to get access to it. I knew it wouldn’t be a finished game, not even close.
I was expecting it to have way more bugs and be a lot more broken. I think Snapshot have done a good job with what they have released so far. I’m happy to deal with the few bugs to get to see the game taking shape. i’m sure they will have all of thse bugs fixed before release. I woudnt expect them to be spending time fixing bugs in prealpha.
4 Likes
For me the reason to back a game is because a) you want to see the final product, and b) it’s interesting to see how that game develops. Having a backer build to play in the meantime is a bonus, but I’m not expecting anything from it.
Dev time is a limited resource, spending it now on balancing/bug fixing means you’ve got less time available to either develop other areas of the game and/or to bug fix and balance the final product.
3 Likes
I used to feel more along the line that you do, but then I realized people/companies who offer early access to games could just as well not do so. I found myself happier to have potentially buggy access to a game (that’s still in development) vs no access at all. Plus, in my experience the games I’ve had early access to have been largely bug free and feature complete at full release. It’s really something special to be a part of that development process, even as just an observer. Though there’s always the issue of wanting more of the game than is present in whatever build is offered for early access 
3 Likes
Fully acknowledged, but not some major bugs or better to say, completely untested things, should be left alone until next BB. Have no doubts final release will have added value of our reported (and smashed bugs hopefully), but mostly full release games are today bug ridden and takes several fixes to come to reality.
Development times and especially testing is rushed.
Also …
Agreed as player, but …
They mostly have fat reason for this like being prebacked by people, or they charge extra newcomers, or you do both … So early access also becomes and asset and a paid product in a way.
I understand your point, but it should be considered that some (obviously not all) of the “buggy systems” may be required for the BB to even work, or be required for the more polished, non-buggy features to work. As an example (probably not reality), if the Armadillo required a buggy version of inventory to be in the game, but Armadillo works perfectly, do you leave out both and have a BB with JUST a new map, queen, and maybe class? What if there’s an element from the armadillo code that has to be there in order for technician to work? Now it’s a BB with just a new map and queen variation, which sounds like something people would complain about them not having enough in it.
Sadly, I’m not a programmer, so I don’t know how realistic any of this is. I do know dependencies exist though, and there may be very good reasons to include the buggy code along with the stable stuff.
2 Likes
I am quite sure not everything in the kicthen is in the BB, I am just asking for more tests before entering at all.
Let see
BB1- Armadilo was dead thing on the map, we had to face queen “alone” but she was not so mighty
BB2- Armadilo became driveable with unlimited ammo and squad transport with few enter/exit bugs. Queen became mightier.
BB2 more play- Armadilo was shown to be path blocker for queen and also to have ramming and similar bugs.
I expect Armadilo and Queen to be bug free in BB3
I would love the game more if how queen and armadilo interact was delayed until bb3 then how buggy it works now.
This wasn’t a bug. The Armadillo wasn’t implemented in BB1. The model was just being used as scenery.
Remember, with a 2 month cycle for backer builds, it doesn’t leave a lot of time for testing. If we spend a week or two fixing bugs in the previous build, it only gives us 4 or 5 weeks to add new content for the next build. After that, the content is locked and it leaves a week or two to find and fix bugs before we release the next build.
We test the Backer Builds before we release them and we catch and fix many bugs. There simply isn’t time to fix every minor bug, nor would we want to as these are development builds and not intended to be fully functional or bug free.
Unlikely. The Queen will have some new abilities which will most likely introduce some more bugs.
1 Like