elder dock
I saw the recent post on Steam, so I'm going to drop my own two cents here.
Bellwright is already successful. Sure, there are issues and things people want (and don't want), but plenty of people are playing and enjoying the game right now.
These days, everything is built around hype, and it's impossible to deliver on all the promises, especially when players imagine more than you say, leaving disappointment inevitable. Bellwright isn't a competitive game where people need a ton of heads-up to prepare and figure out the meta.
The worst example of overhyping is probably Star Citizen, which has been pushing dates and changing promises for ten years. A lot of Early Access and Kickstarter projects have the same problem. Players spend all their energy hyped for something they can't even play yet, focusing more on what's not in the game than what's available now.
On the flip side, total silence is also a mistake. Even Helldivers 2, which did a good job overall, messed up big time by sneaking in a major change that required PSN account linking, causing a huge rift with players.
We just need some general dates to look forward to and at most the theme of an upcoming update if it's a major one.
I'd also suggest avoiding open betas since Bellwright is already Early Access. People will probably just try to play the even more unstable version and complain when things go wrong. (Lethal company had this issue for a bit, but then pivoted to modding)
I could rant all day about the state of early access games, but I think this gets most of what I want to say across, great job so far and I hope the dev team can keep working with a smile as everyone moves forward 🙂
terse breach
solemn robin