Last Epoch: the campaign is simply unfinished. Once you think everything is gonna come together and the plot is about to get interesting the campaign just ends and you're left asking "wait, that's it?". The community also seem 100% fine with it, because apparently "nobody plays ARPGs for their stories". So we just let lazy devs get away with murder, ok.
Tempest Rising: an entire faction is missing from the game and online mode lacks features Warcraft 3 had. The game was released once both campaigns were playable from start to finish, which gives them plausible deniability, but make no mistake: this game is a working beta and the community is wondering "will the player base die before the devs finish the game?".
Fall of Avalon: multiple quests in act 1 were either cut or streamlined to meet a deadline. The further you progress the more empty areas become. This game is being praised (and it's actually quite good) but there's very little discussion on its unfinished state. Do not buy it until dev ******* actually finish what they started. From what I gather the game was supposed to be 5 acts long, but devs thought it was OK to release with 2.5 at most.
On the other end of the spectrum I came across cases of EA OVERcooking. Games that were fully playable and finished at least a year before their actual release date, leading to bloat and a modder mentality of "more stuff = better". Off the top of my head I can name:
Against the Storm: a city builder that just kept adding more redundant buildings for an entire year after everyone thought it was well and truly finished. I guess the devs suffered from "release anxiety" and just kept "polishing" the game until it was no longer the simple, but fun indie game I bought in EA but an overly convoluted and bloated mess.
Battle Brothers: yes, I was there in EA and yes, the game took several months more than needed because devs thought adding more annoying enemies and abilities was a must.
While the later is clearly the lesser evil and blaming devs for wanting "perfection" can be considered unfair on my part, one thing is certain: a game being in or out of early access no longer means ****. So here's what I propose, a "survival guide" if you will:
- Assume you're being sold a beta. Take "out of EA" with several grains of salt and try to dig deep into the community consensus regarding the late game and feature completion. In fact, I would suggest @rusty_shackleford change the policies regarding RPGHQ reviews to include specific demands for information regarding how feature complete a game is and barring reviews from people who didn't finish the game. I was there when a bunch of "dad gaymers" played Divinity Original Sin 2 for half an hour and voted that garbage Codex GOTY. Back in those days the game was simply a case of "gets much worse", but in 2025 games don't get "worse", you just run into a big "insert missing content here" sign. If you're naïve enough not to pirate games before buying that means you played for more than two hours and got scammed and I think it's our duty to warn gamers of ****** devs scamming people with new "releases" that are actually just betas.
- Don't accept "but it's early access!" excuse from ****** devs. Poor functionality should be called out early and often. Many EA scam releases are plagued with bugs and missing features that were reported YEARS before the release date and nothing was done about it. NEVER COPE with "ofc X is missing, it's EA what do you expect?". Remember: early access costs players money, so developers should be held accountable in ALL stages of development. Don't expect that 1.0 will magically fix things, because reality proves that it wont.
- If you care about the development of a given game, SAVE its roadmap somewhere and hold ****** devs accountable to it. Don't believe they magically changed their minds regarding the initial vision. Either the initial plan was delusional/a lie or devs ran out of money/interest and rushed a release date. There's no in-between.
- Trust the PUBLIC version of the game. A lot of EA devs will claim the playable version of the game lags behind their in-house version, a version that CONVENIENTLY already addressed all player issues. That's just a scam tactic. EA should be transparent, with constant updates to the public build and we cannot allow said transparency to be replaced with "oh, they already fixed X for the next version, trust."
- Listen to players who were in EA. If the last version before release was still missing a lot of stuff, there's no chance the release version will magically fix everything
