I completely wasted my money
DayZ: Showed a lot of promise, was deterred after item persistence was introduced, making loot impossible to find without 3 hours of holding down the run key. Tool up, only to run down a flight of stairs too fast, glitch, die, lose everything, ad-infinitum. Zombie mechanics are still a joke, basically just an FPS only you have to wait 5 hours between every fight.
ARK: To be honest I haven't played much of this, but from what I've read it's not really worth the bother. Lack of updates, they recently broke the game and they have terrible comms with their community.
Next Car Game: Wreckfest: I'm torn about this one. One the one hand the physics engine is amazing, but the ridiculous development time and the fact that I paid $40US for it (I nearly had a heart attack when I went back and checked how much I'd actually paid) put it in this category.
I hold minor hope
7 Days to Die: Only started playing this recently but was rather impressed, genuinely challenging and fun with a good group of people. I've heard murmurs from the long timers and from what I've read on this forum that there was a lot of nerfing going on, but there still seems to be a steady stream of updates so I haven't given up all hope.
Craft the World: Nothing terrible against the game itself, just that after 26 hours of game time I really have no drive to play it anymore. Might have a go at it to see if the release has brought any life back into it.
I don't completely regret it
Prison Architect: Early access done right. Well polished game with devs that really seem to actually care about their product and their community. Unfortunately after playing it for a while I realised that I wasn't into sim games like this as much I'd have hoped and haven't put too much time into it. But that's not the game's fault.
Besiege: Reasonable entry price and another good example of how to do early access. Well polished and good fun. It's worth well over the $7.99 they're currently charging even in its current state.
After fucking around with early access for a while I don't believe it's all doom and gloom, here's some things to keep in mind with early access.
- If a game is buggy from alpha, it will likely never get fixed. The games that seem to make it through to release are the ones that are polished from the start. E.g. Besiege was built around a solid engine, then the devs worked from there adding content and further mechanics. Watch a couple of Youtube videos first and if they start talking about game breaking bugs that they're hoping to fix in future releases...FUCKING RUN
- Open world/zombie/survival...just don't do it...ever
- You're not buying a finished game, so don't pay for one. They're still charging $40US for Wreckfest. Would never give them that money knowing what I know now.