For The Love of Spiffo, TIS, Update the Steam Page!

[BayCon]

WARNING: I am BRUTALLY honest in this critique of Project Zomboid's Store Page on Steam. Please don't forget that I am not attacking anyone and I love this game. I just want to share something that's been bothering me for awhile..

 

The minute the new animations drop, the Steam Store Page for Project Zomboid will be in desperate need of an update. I've been looking at it for awhile ever since new features were released. I purchased this game when it was at around Build 28 or 29, and as I've said a few times here and there in other places around the forum, I would have NEVER bought the game if it weren't for the Features list. I decided to put the bare, boring look of the game depicted in the store page aside and give it a shot. If I hadn't, I would have never bought an extra copy for my ex, and convinced 3 or 4 other friends to purchase the game. Imagine all the sales you might be missing out on because your Steam page does not advertize the product in its current form; a product far more polished, attractive to the eye, and feature-filled than ever before! The game shown is almost two years old by now, maybe more!

 

There are no shots of new features like vine-covered, cracked up houses (erosion), no shots of the new and improved 2x resolution textures, and so on. Not even a single one of the screenshots is new enough to show the improved shaders and color filters! Now I'm not suggesting you show the W.I.P. features in the screenshots, I'm just saying they should be shown after their release. Spice it up a bit. Add text over the screenshots talking about features. For example, you can place text on the split-screen screenshot saying something along the lines of "Up to x numbers of players on the same screen with controller support!" 

 

When a consumer purchases any product, not just a video game, the marketing for that product should have made it quite clear what to expect, and when I opened the game for the first time, I little about the depth of it other than what was listed as its features. While I was given a general idea in text, the screenshots did not help to convince me of the reality of the features listed.

 

Another thing: Have a look at this piece of text from the features list, which I copied and pasted in its original, unedited form:

 

" Farming, trapping, fishing, carpentry, cooking, trapping, character customization, skills and perks that develop based on what you do in-game.  "

 

Did you see what I saw? They said trapping twice. In advertizing, there is a standard of perfection that, obviously, humans cannot replicate because we are not perfect, however, when you are marketing you want to make your pitch as seamless and as polished as possible. Might wanna fix that.

 

In nearing my conclusion, I want to add that, as most Steam users are aware, Early Access is in a shaky state at the moment and more and more people are losing faith in the system as time goes on because developers are keeping quiet about upcoming features, releasing updates with large gaps in between them, over-charging for incomplete games, advertizing amazing upcoming features, taking the money those people spent on an idea, and running off the face of the Earth. Having a store page that looks the same year after year might throw up red flags about the development of the game to people who have been on the fence for awhile.

 

And lastly, while I understand that Project Zomboid's trailer was made in good spirit by a couple of gentlemen running gaming channels, and I know how sentimental TIS is about people who help them, it might be time to consider updating that trailer as well. It depicts an older game, and this time around you'll want to get rid of the cursor in the film.

 

P.S.: I'm not sure why I can't write anything without it being too long and drawn out... -.- Anyway, let me know what you guys think!

 

TL;DR: PZ's Store Page on Steam is outdated and may drive away potential customers. If you want to know why I think so, see above ^^^

 

Edited March 15, 2016 by BayCon
Took "God" out of the title and replaced it with "Spiffo" because it sounded rude and might offend some people.

[MadDan]

I think everything's been said, it's a fairly outdated description of the game, even the demo (apparently) runs very badly because it's of the extremely old (build 20 something versions).

[Peetfighter]

I have something to add regarding the demo.

The System Requirements part states that the demo is meant to show customers if the game can properly run on their machine. Now that the resolutions have been doubled it needs to be updated urgently or it might lead customers to falsely believe that the game will run without notice of the higher resolution.

Furthermore, I completely agree with BayCon if the store page is really that outdated.

[Jela331]

I mostly care about the trailer, I didn't like the "new" one as much as the one before.

[EnigmaGrey]

It's unlikely the Steam page will receive much in the way of updates until the game is ready for release. Consider it a litmus test: those who do their research will find a feature rich game and those that don't, yet still buy the game, will get more than expected.

 

There's no marketting department here, or any real need to heavily market PZ at the moment. That said, it'd still be nice to at least have a few new screenshots, or something.

 

The suggested requirements should be fine, as is. Most people that have issues are well under them (e.g. a 1.83 dual core instead of a 2.77 Ghz dual core; no dedicated graphics card at all . . .) The demo is still an acurate predictor because it's meant to show the bare minimum: 2x textures can be disabled in options; 3D models won't be mandatory even in the animation update.

[BayCon]

2 hours ago, EnigmaGrey said:

It's unlikely the Steam page will receive much in the way of updates until the game is ready for release. Consider it a litmus test: those who do their research will find a feature rich game and those that don't, yet still buy the game, will get more than expected.

 

There's no marketting department here, or any real need to heavily market PZ at the moment. That said, it'd still be nice to at least have a few new screenshots, or something.

 

The suggested requirements should be fine, as is. Most people that have issues are well under them (e.g. a 1.83 dual core instead of a 2.77 Ghz dual core; no dedicated graphics card at all . . .) The demo is still an acurate predictor because it's meant to show the bare minimum: 2x textures can be disabled in options; 3D models won't be mandatory even in the animation update.

 

While we're on the topic of new textures, does anyone know the extent of the changes to performace as a result of them? I have a craptop and I wanna still be able to play the game and have 2x the textures. 

[EnigmaGrey]

Lemmy feels the performance will be little more intensive than the current 3D models. If you can already run them, with several zombies also set to 3D, you'll probably be alright.

 

They'll try to optimize it as they go, of course.

[bobchaos]

Just a little bit of attention might drive sales. New screenshots would certainly be a quick win.

 

I don't think the current page is actively driving away customers, and the user ratings and reviews are pretty unanimous for anyone that looks further than the screenshots, but some people put a lot of stock in graphics quality. A bit of eye candy might get those guys to jump in too.

[EnigmaGrey]

We don't really need to drive sales though, that's my point above.

[King jjwpenguin]

On 3/19/2016 at 8:24 PM, EnigmaGrey said:

We don't really need to drive sales though, that's my point above.

well said but  even if its not for sale it seems to drive a few people away. I remember i showed a person the home page and they said it looked crappy. They said the same when they played the demo, but when i showed them the full game they loved it. I just dont want people to be turned away from such a wonderful game. (forgive me if i seem agressive here. I am trying not to sound so in any way) 

[Asrayl]

I'm in agreement here, if you don't have the time to put together an update package, I'm sure there are plenty of people (myself included.) who would be happy to put together a draft for revision and potential publication. Alone, or in collaboration as a community. 

 

There's no benefit to not putting out at least the occasional image update. A stagnant advertisement says worse than nothing about the company, and equally so the product. 

 

I know it's not exactly high on the priorities list of the development team, but I hope you'll give my objections genuine consideration. The game has come much too far to be adequately represented by the current page.

[EnigmaGrey]

We're not worried and the sales of the game are otherwise doing fine. We're aware the Steam page is somewhat out of date or could look nicer and it'll probably be updated sometime after the animation and texture updates are released to the stable build, though probably nearer to the game's release from Steam.

 

TIS will update the Steam store page on their own time frame.

 

Thanks for your concern.

[Rathlord]

To put it in my own words, I'm sure TIS are aware the store page is updated and they/we will get to it when it's a priority. We appreciate the thought, but we know the issues so it's not really helpful to belabor the point on the forums. One of those things where you'll just have to trust they'll get to it when they do. If we need content for it I'm sure we'll ask. In the mean time, I don't really think going round in circles about it is going to help anyone- so, again, thanks for the feedback but I'm gonna go ahead and lock the thread. If you feel it shouldn't be for some reason, or want clarification please feel free to PM me. Cheers.