Reaching Too Far?

 Well, that was a bit of a surprise. A pleasant one, too. I finally managed to get in and play some Stars Reach and guess what? I quite enjoyed it.

I played for about an hour and a half. Maybe a little more. I didn't time it and I can't remember exactly how long I already had on my Steam counter, which carried over from the pre-alpha.  

As well it might. They can call it Early Access if they like. (They are calling it Early Access.) They can sell expensive Founders Packs (They are selling expensive Founders Packs.) but anyone who was in the pre-alpha test can see it's basically the same build.

Although not exactly. Or at least, not for me. I didn't bother to log in for the last couple of hefty pre-alpha updates so some significant aspects were new to me. 

For a start, there's a proper introductory sequence now. There have been several but none of them really looked like the sort of thing you'd expect to see before a game begins. This one does.

 It has a simple narrative that, for the first time, explains clearly and simply where the game takes place, how your character got there and what's expected of them. It also has a hint of a suggestion, right at the end, that there could even be some kind of plot lurking somewhere in the background. I thought Playable Worlds were above little things like narratives and plotlines but maybe not.

It helps that they've gone with a visual style for the intro that really works for me, a kind of comic book crossed with children's educational publishing aesthetic and it works very well. My compliments to the graphic designer.  

The introduction is over quite quickly and then it's on to Character Creation. Yes, it exists! It's pretty basic by modern standards but it would have looked decent enough fifteen or twenty years ago, which does seem to be the era of gaming Stars Reach is looking to emulate. 

I wanted to be a cat-person, of course, but I couldn't remember the name of the race and when I scanned down the list I missed it so I ended up making one of the demon-types, the ones with the horns. I got mine to a state where I was quite pleased with her before I realised she wasn't, in fact, a cat. They do look pretty similar. Ears, horns, what's the diff?

Since it had only taken a few minutes, I tried again. The cats are at the bottom of the list, it turns out, and they don't have exactly the same options as the demons so there is a bit of variety there. 

Weirdly, I couldn't find any option to change either hair or eye color, which you'd think would be a given in any character creation process. You could pick your hair color in EverQuest almost thirty years ago. Conversely, you can change jaw lines and cheek bones, although not by much. Still, it seems odd you can morph your bone structure that but you can't change your hair color. 

Maybe the option is there, somewhere. I might just have missed it. That'd be a lot easier to believe than that it isn't there at all. In 2026.

After that it's into the Controls Tutorial in the metal tunnels. It's completely arbitrary and pointless in any narrative sense. I think the ship we were in got attacked or something? The whole thing is only there to explain WASD, Crouch and Jump and it's been pared down to an absolute minimum now so if there ever was any story to it, it's long gone. That takes about fifteen seconds and then you're on Haven for the real Tutorial.

I've always had a problem with Haven and it's only gotten worse as they've improved things. The trouble with Haven is that it's precisely what the name suggests: a lovely, comfortable, safe place. They keep tweaking it and it gets nicer and nicer. Why would anyone want to leave?

At some point since I last played, it must have received a substantial makeover. In the current build, it's very impressive visually and also much larger than it used to be. The grass is deep and lush, there are flowers everywhere, snow-capped mountains loom in the distance and to cap it all there are now giant arches of rock soaring over the town. It's spectacular.

What's more, it's entirely explorable. Those impossible ellipses, tens of thousands of tons of rock hanging in the air, suspended by nothing, so terrifying above your head? You can climb them and look down on the city from the clouds. I did and it was the single most interesting thing I've done in Stars Reach since it began.

Haven is the sort of place I'd love to explore in depth and detail. It would make a seriously satisfying zone for any MMORPG. And they've just thrown it away as a one-time only tutorial area. The Mayor makes a point of telling you, as he gives you the Key to Space, that once you leave you can never come back. 

If I was a refugee from a doomed solar system, transported halfway across the galaxy by some Elder Gods and dropped into somewhere like Haven to make the best of things, I wouldn't leave. I'd stay there. They'd fricken' have to drag me out.

There's food on the trees, no aggressive wildlife, buildings to sleep in, even a dance club. Why would you take the risk of flying into space, especially after you've had a glimpse of the alternative on the aptly named "Crucible"?

Crucible, the volcanic planet nearest to Haven, never made any sense and it makes even less now, if that's possible. There used to be a series of missions there but now there's just one and it takes about thirty seconds. They moved the ore you need to mine to within sight of the guy who wants it. All you have to do is walk about fifty paces, blast it with the Terraformer and take the bits back for the hand-in.

 Then it's back to Haven and you never see Crucible again. Obviously the entire planet only exists because you can't mine on Haven and they want to show you how before they let you loose on a real planet. And equally obviously mining is only banned on Haven because Playable Worlds doesn't want you digging up the starting area, griefing newbies with your Terraformer and making the first place they see look like a disaster area.

It's a kludge on a kludge and it's indicative of the underlying problems Stars Reach suffers in so many areas. Too many of the mechanics feel more like temporary fixes than permanent solutions. It's the hallmark of a game still in relatively early development. What they need is to be torn down and rebuilt from the ground up, not shifted around and shored up so they kinda-sorta work, for now.

This has always been present in the development process but it's getting harder and harder to pass it off as work in progress. Haven looks so much better than either Crucible, which is just horrible, or the next planet I went to, the name of which escapes me, which is ugly as fuck.

I just don't understand why, if you have an art department and a graphic engine that make somewhere as attractive to look at and spend time in as Haven, you'd want to encourage your players to leave it as quickly as possible to go somewhere very much less pleasant. It just seems calculated to drive people away. Why is so much of the game so damned ugly when clearly they could make it look so much better if they wanted? 

 But then, very little about Stars Reach makes sense, least of all the decision to go to market with what was openly described only a few weeks ago as a "pre-alpha build". I'm all too aware that Early Access is a widely-abused term but this really is pushing the margins of what's generally deemed appropriate.

My feeling on Early Access is that it ought to be somewhere around the equivalent of what we used to call Open Beta. An Early Access build should include the full gameplay loop, sufficiently polished to be fully playable and fun to play.

The "Early Access" descriptor tells you you're getting to see it before it's in a final release state but it does not mean it's still in testing. It doesn't need to be "Feature Complete" but it has to be fully functional. 

There could certainly be more content to come. Additional systems and mechanics. More landmass. An extended narrative. It's fine for there to be more of just about anything on the way but what's there already has to be complete, in and of itself.

This isn't a pipe-dream. It isn't an unreasonable expectation. It's exactly how the games that have been moderately to extremely successful have handled it: Valheim, Palworld, Enshrouded... Do Early Access right and you don't just sell a lot of games, you build trust and loyalty. Do it wrong and everyone except your hardcore loyalists will take a quick look and leave, never to return.

The irony is that this Early Access build does feel like a step forward for Stars Reach. I haven't had this much fun playing since the very early days, when it was all new. It looks a lot prettier and gameplay feels smoother. If this was the latest update to the pre-alpha playtest, I'd say things were moving in the right direction. We might be almost ready for alpha!

But this isn't a playtest. It's Early Access, for which they're asking a minimum of $30 and as much as $80. There's no way to play now other than to buy your way in and once you tell your customers they have to pay to play, you're not in testing any more. You have launched.

I keep drifting on Stars Reach. Do I like it or do I not? I have had some good sessions. I have had some fun. I had a good session today. It was fun. The game looks much better than it used to. My character was much more customiseable and crucially didn't change appearance every time I zoned. Combat was noticeably better. 

Good things are happening but they're small good things and they're happening slowly.

As many, many people have been saying, including most of those whose reviews lean towards the positive, Stars Reach is not ready to be in Early Access. It's a pity because there are signs that it could, eventually, become an interesting and enjoyable game. Unfortunately, as things stand, it seems extremely unlikely it will get the chance. 

Early Access may be the end of the journey for Stars Reach, not the beginning. And that would be a real shame.