@luvayn apparently ubisoft used "market analysies" to determine that the settlers from 2019 was a bad choice and they wanted something to go against microsofts aoe4 not realizing that there is nothing like the settlers on the market and market analysies are therefore void because theres nothing to analyze. They just had to make it as complex as it was 2019 and probably got another Anno 1800 which is so successfull because of its complexity... And you cant compete against AOE in the first place so these decisions were the dumbest stuff they'd ever done...

@Ubisoft just look at what indie developers like Coffee stain studios and Youthcat Studio have done with their early access games. they are factory building games, which i consider to be really boring, but they listen to EVERYTHING their players want in those games, except maybe golf, that was a bit troll... however they are really successfull because of that and get amazing support. idk how you can sleep well if you look at this forum and tbh No mans sky developers have gotten death threats because their game was nothing like they promised. I'm amazed that hadnt happened here yet... However please just put the alpha state for 10 bucks or so in the shop and use your "market analysies" on what will be played more.... This beta game is not a settlers.

@editorial that sadly is still not much info. its just about postponing stuff. what i would love to know is WHAT exactly this vision is that the team is having and what is being worked on. just saying "we'll work a bit" will have fantasies fly on what will come and there will not be any feedback on what people actually want to see. So in the end everyone will be disappointed again.

If that is too difficult then i just give you an example on how that could be done, there are amazing means of communication done by studios with early access titles out there like spoiler If i should be honest, i think this would help this title a lot, there could also be a forum page with threads of requested features sorted by upvotes and not by most recent post



edit:
Let me be clear: the people who will advertise a game for you free of charge are those that write lengthy feedback. The people who ruin your chances of getting any foot on a competitive market if the game is not good are those that - you guessed it - write lengthy feedback.
If you want this game to have a chance of coming back from the dead you need to set up good communication with the people giving you the feedback you want. And to make it clear again: you dont want the "good feedback", you want the ones that are lengthy and spit critique. be it words of praise or dissatisfaction. However if those short encouragements are the grand majority then it is a good general direction.

For starters here are some ideas on how things could be tackled

1. you could give out some different versions of the game over the course of a week to press and influencers on the condition they show all of them and link a simple multiple choice survey with just one page. it could be something like "which version should be the groundwork of further development" and then versions like pre-alpha 2019, alpha 2020, alpha 2021, beta 2022
2. based off of the feedback of that one certain yt-video of one of the alpha testers gave, if this really represents what the testers said at that point. maybe scrap the 2019 version of the ship stuff and release the game (2020 version) as land only and patch ships in later. the video also mentioned really bad AI and i think that is the first thing you want to work on first to keep the people playing casually. maybe one difficulty first, a more easy one where it doesnt matter if it is not perfect but with enough game customisation features to allow 1 vs 3 to make up for the low difficulty and patch in better AI later.

A possible Roadmap could look like this (still an idea based off of 2020 version from the german alpha tester statement):
release: land only, easy difficulty, the campaign might not be finished but there could be a prologue to it already accessible
then get yourselves 2 months to finish the campaign to be really solid, maybe with help of some hand picked community members for ideas and feedback of course under nda, but take the feedback and dont ignore it
then 4 months for better ai features and to keep the designers busy maybe a second look for the map or crude models for a possible 4th folk
the rest of the 6 months can be spent on making the ships work so they are ready to hit the games on the first anniversary

if the funding is lacking there could be -Anno like- the 4th folk as a dlc in between year 1, and here again: get yourself feedback on if it works
but i would advise against anything that got promised to be in the full release to be made into a dlc if it will be patched in after release. <- that stuff makes ppl mad

year 2 may add a second campaign, for a different folk, or if the first one is not folk-specific make the second one to be first of 3 to be folk-specific
and other stuff that can be decided on with the communities ideas in a place like the anno-union, and maybe name it something like settlers-alliance or so... .....


well... i put way too much time into this for it to be probably never read by the people who should ^^

same here, post is just gone somewhere, and yes i do have beta access, just not for the beta forum

@editorial that sadly is still not much info. its just about postponing stuff. what i would love to know is WHAT exactly this vision is that the team is having and what is being worked on. just saying "we'll work a bit" will have fantasies fly on what will come and there will not be any feedback on what people actually want to see. So in the end everyone will be disappointed again.

If that is too difficult then i just give you an example on how that could be done, there are amazing means of communication done by studios with early access titles out there like spoiler If i should be honest, i think this would help this title a lot, there could also be a forum page with threads of requested features sorted by upvotes and not by most recent post



edit:
Let me be clear: the people who will advertise a game for you free of charge are those that write lengthy feedback. The people who ruin your chances of getting any foot on a competitive market if the game is not good are those that - you guessed it - write lengthy feedback.
If you want this game to have a chance of coming back from the dead you need to set up good communication with the people giving you the feedback you want. And to make it clear again: you dont want the "good feedback", you want the ones that are lengthy and spit critique. be it words of praise or dissatisfaction. However if those short encouragements are the grand majority then it is a good general direction.

For starters here are some ideas on how things could be tackled

1. you could give out some different versions of the game over the course of a week to press and influencers on the condition they show all of them and link a simple multiple choice survey with just one page. it could be something like "which version should be the groundwork of further development" and then versions like pre-alpha 2019, alpha 2020, alpha 2021, beta 2022
2. based off of the feedback of that one certain yt-video of one of the alpha testers gave, if this really represents what the testers said at that point. maybe scrap the 2019 version of the ship stuff and release the game (2020 version) as land only and patch ships in later. the video also mentioned really bad AI and i think that is the first thing you want to work on first to keep the people playing casually. maybe one difficulty first, a more easy one where it doesnt matter if it is not perfect but with enough game customisation features to allow 1 vs 3 to make up for the low difficulty and patch in better AI later.

A possible Roadmap could look like this (still an idea based off of 2020 version from the german alpha tester statement):
release: land only, easy difficulty, the campaign might not be finished but there could be a prologue to it already accessible
then get yourselves 2 months to finish the campaign to be really solid, maybe with help of some hand picked community members for ideas and feedback of course under nda, but take the feedback and dont ignore it
then 4 months for better ai features and to keep the designers busy maybe a second look for the map or crude models for a possible 4th folk
the rest of the 6 months can be spent on making the ships work so they are ready to hit the games on the first anniversary

if the funding is lacking there could be -Anno like- the 4th folk as a dlc in between year 1, and here again: get yourself feedback on if it works
but i would advise against anything that got promised to be in the full release to be made into a dlc if it will be patched in after release. <- that stuff makes ppl mad

year 2 may add a second campaign, for a different folk, or if the first one is not folk-specific make the second one to be first of 3 to be folk-specific
and other stuff that can be decided on with the communities ideas in a place like the anno-union, and maybe name it something like settlers-alliance or so... .....


well... i put way too much time into this for it to be probably never read by the people who should ^^

@salinajames they arent called 5 or 6, settlers 5 is called heritage of kings and settlers 6 is called rise of an empire

@iamdny i openly declared that this game is not something ill get and that i think that ubi took the wrong direction. but got the survey nontheless. i therefore doubt this is to get more positive feedback and more incompetence on the technical side, just like a lot of beta testers didnt have access to the closed beta forum

@wadmauz it is taken down. after just 6h of this post being online. i find no words...

@ubi-karl thank you, it works now

@luvayn apparently ubisoft used "market analysies" to determine that the settlers from 2019 was a bad choice and they wanted something to go against microsofts aoe4 not realizing that there is nothing like the settlers on the market and market analysies are therefore void because theres nothing to analyze. They just had to make it as complex as it was 2019 and probably got another Anno 1800 which is so successfull because of its complexity... And you cant compete against AOE in the first place so these decisions were the dumbest stuff they'd ever done...

@Ubisoft just look at what indie developers like Coffee stain studios and Youthcat Studio have done with their early access games. they are factory building games, which i consider to be really boring, but they listen to EVERYTHING their players want in those games, except maybe golf, that was a bit troll... however they are really successfull because of that and get amazing support. idk how you can sleep well if you look at this forum and tbh No mans sky developers have gotten death threats because their game was nothing like they promised. I'm amazed that hadnt happened here yet... However please just put the alpha state for 10 bucks or so in the shop and use your "market analysies" on what will be played more.... This beta game is not a settlers.

same here, post is just gone somewhere, and yes i do have beta access, just not for the beta forum