Trials of Ascension, Shady Practices and the Big Crowdfunding Debate

[Kyanion]

All games lose lot of players in the first 3 months. Guild Wars 2 almost a year after release peaked 460k concurrent users. Don't know any better way to 'living up to the hype' than the fact that a lot of people seemed to enjoy the game and kept on playing. Personally I don't seem to have patience anymore to keep playing mmo's very long for whatever reason but I don't blame the games for it usually. Just don't get the same buzz out of them that I did ten years ago.

That I can agree with in part, I think GW sold something like 2 million copies at release and was over 3.5 mil as of last year. So 460 concurrent users is good but for a game with no fees you'd think it would be higher. I think a good testing stick for them will be the expansion and how much of that sells.

As for having much patience for mmos I usually don't make it out of the first month if the game can not impress me in some manner. Only a few MMOs got more than 1 month out of me since Everquest 1 and WoW came along.

[EponyxDamor]

Yup, I could see it being some space dogfighting MMO thing with a station and stuff, but when I heard something about them also making a ground based experience on planets and stuff it's a bit much. I don't see how they could make a game with a super in depth space fighting system and then basically another MMO on top of that with planets you can explore, quests, mini games, etc.

That's pretty much how I feel. They're trying to makes a dog fighting simulator, attached to a space simulator, attached to a ground-based planetary exploration simulator, and it just keep getting more and more complicated. It's almost like they're trying to create an entire virtual universe where absolutely everything is possible. Not to mention there's supposed to be 3 or 4 games total from the whole ordeal, I've lost track. Squadron 42, Arena Commander, FPS game, persistent universe, ???.

I'm really not saying it's a scam, but I don't think the whole project will ever be complete with the exhaustive list of features they've decided to add. At least, not to a quality level most people will be expecting. To me, it'd be better to do a few things incredibly well, rather than do everything poorly.

[Azrile]

I'm curious to know what your opinions are on Star Citizen. I've followed that game as well ... Really interested in the outcome, but I have a feeling it will forever be in a state of development and funding.

Feature Creep... pure and simple. It is a very dangerous phenomenon and is a double whammy for games like Star Citizen which basically now has unlimited funds but was originally designed for a much smaller budget.

The problem is really related to something I joke about with ToA, and that is toilet paper dev notes. The reality is that everyone has ideas for a game, and everyone has features they want to add to a game. It is easy to sit on the toilet and list stuff on toilet paper that would be features of your game. The exact same thing happens to real developers as they develop their game. You start out with a nice game design, but as you spend months building it, you start having ´cool ideas´.. for new features... and those cool ideas spawn more cool ideas.. and pretty soon the scope of your game is double what it originally was, and you have now doubled the development time of your game also... feature creep

It takes a lot of discipline and leadership to stick to the original design of your game, and say ´no´ to new cool stuff every time one of your developers suggest somthing ... unless it is really really cool. Usually you have someone in charge who has a grasp of the financials and your budget who needs to make those tough calls (Game Producer). In the case of Star Citizen, the budget went through the roof, which either forced ( or allowed) Roberts to say ýes´ to a lot of new features he originally had barely thought about. I don´t know much about him, but I know he has a ton of experience making great games.. but just in my opinion, I think this all caught him off-guard and his head is still spinning and he is not making the best decisions and has allowed the scope of his game to get too big pre-launch. But it is also just hard to put yourself in his shoes because what happened to him has never happened to anyone before. Tell me a game that was completely designed around X amount of dollars, and a few months later found themselves with 100X to develop the game. Hard not to allow feature creep to happen.

[EponyxDamor]

Feature Creep... pure and simple. It is a very dangerous phenomenon and is a double whammy for games like Star Citizen which basically now has unlimited funds but was originally designed for a much smaller budget.

Pretty much my idea about the whole project.

I think it'll be a good game when it launches, and I hope it does really well; however, with the ever growing list of features and additions, I don't think any size dev team could ever possibly catch up and keep up. So much rests on the shoulders of Star Citizen in relation to KickStarter funded games, and I hope they don't drop the ball during development.

I've just got an aching feeling that, within the next two years, Star Citizen will be under some pretty intense pressure from fans.

Thanks for entertaining my question.

EDIT: For shits and giggles, Proctor is now claiming to be continuing development of Greed Monger!

I've added you to MMOI's Discussion. I thought I had added everyone from our QA Discussion but I guess I hadn't. So anyways the Original GM IS dead. However since the Original GM was nothing more then a list of features (No Lore elements or Story really other then what Jason had up in his mind) the concept, ideas, and features that made up GM still very much live on and are being implemented at this time. I really am not at liberty to discuss any specifics here but just know MMOI is still very much ticking. We will fill you in about everything in our Skype Discussion. We are also looking to add more team members to our QA Team.

[Azrile]

He had 3 years... what he accomplished was installing Atavism and UMA. He makes it sound like he has, or will ever add features one at a time or anything like that.

Also, what the hell is MMOI? It is a company that he created now twice, but it exists only in his posts. There is no actual company with that name, either the first time he created it with Appleton on the board of directors, or now with Joel Lumpy as the CEO. He literally just made up this company in his head and assigned people to it. Depending on what state you live in, it costs from $50 to $500 to file the paperwork for a company, and there are requirements before you can create one.

Someone needs to ask him in what state he created his company, and then someone should inform Appleton that Proctor used a non-existent company in a legal contract. You can´t just wake up one day and say ´ok, today I have a company with a board of directors and a CEO and I will start using that company name in legal documents´. He would have to have collected money, or some assets, but that is fraud.

- - - Updated - - -

Pretty much my idea about the whole project.

I think it'll be a good game when it launches, and I hope it does really well; however, with the ever growing list of features and additions, I don't think any size dev team could ever possibly catch up and keep up. So much rests on the shoulders of Star Citizen in relation to KickStarter funded games, and I hope they don't drop the ball during development.

I've just got an aching feeling that, within the next two years, Star Citizen will be under some pretty intense pressure from fans.!

It is like an octopus at this point with mini-dev teams all over the country... and really should not even be considered one game. It is like 5 different games, but I think he was forced to call it one game simply because of the money coming in for ´star citizen´. He couldn´t take money for Star Citizen and then use it for game2.

I really don´t know. I stopped following it really closely awhile ago. I bought one of the early ships for $30($35?) just because it came with the full game. I don´t like playing alphas or early access for games because it taints the real game, so I have´t jumped into any of the partial stuff they have already launched.

[Taojnhy]

Q. How are James Proctor and Derek Smart alike?

A. Both are egocentric game developers.

Q. What's the difference between James Proctor and Derek Smart?

A. Smart has actually produced a playable game.

[Azrile]

Q. How are James Proctor and Derek Smart alike?

A. Both are egocentric game developers.

Q. What's the difference between James Proctor and Derek Smart?

A. Smart has actually produced a playable game.

Dude, stop being a hater. Proctor made that space invaders game... and honestly, I have been playing it non-stop since Wednesday.. I really wish he had included a paypal ´donate now´ button so we could send money to him...er... to his mother´s paypal account.

The gameplay is compelling. It´s only rival was that gameplay of when the 3 stoogies did the interview and the one stooge spent 20 minutes running up and down the same cave, because as Brax put it´ he hasn´t been able to tear himself away´...

[Kyanion]

Ah man that guy running around in the cave over and over was classic. I even wonder if it was a video loop to hide the bugs. The reason I say this is because when someone was streaming demo isle that cave was a disaster for the raknar. It would clip through the ground, causing the graphics to get all fucked up and they had to back out of the cave and stay away from it.

[Edge-]

Guys, I know this thread is pretty loose, but let's not turn it into "Let's bash developers: the thread!" please.

[Taojnhy]

Guys, I know this thread is pretty loose, but let's not turn it into "Let's bash developers: the thread!" please.

/salute

Roger that Edge-!

(apologies also, it's easy to get a bit carried away)

[Deleted]

/salute

Roger that Edge-!

(apologies also, it's easy to get a bit carried away)

More so because in all honesty, they deserve the hate :P

[Azrile]

This is just my opinion.. I am trying to look for binary things that determine if someone is trying to scam people about their game.

If you have experience with Unity, and you advertise your game using a person walking through an empty world.. you are scamming people. In my opinion, it is just a way of tricking people into thinking you have made real progress on your game. Back in the day before freebie engines, getting a character to walk on a terrain using physics, and having light correctly display that terrain and character was a huge milestone for the engine.

That RoH video is just that. It is a 25 minute video of a guy walking around an empty world. 25 mins is more time than it would take someone to create what is shown.

[dextersmith]

haha good lord that hype talk reminds me of GW2, jesus people wouldnt shut up about that damn game, and bam it is released and yeahhhhh the hype couldnt live up to that.

Or Rift? That was so terrible.

[Kyanion]

Yeah Rift was pretty awful, got worse after a huge patch early on that nerfed the bejesus out of a lot of stuff. It is funny that people think GW2 is doing 'well' considering how many copies they sold. I mean the game has no sub fees, that shit went dead after a month.

GW2 would have been okay if it wasn't hyped to hell and back. My problem with the game is that it just got boring after the levelling was done and the dungeons were boring without the holy trinity of tank/healer/dps.

I'd say SW was one of the games that was a bit hyped but at the same time wasn't the hype that doomed it really. It just had some soul crushing bugs in the raids, pvp was unbalanced with max level people in battlegrounds with people who were not capped out so they just farmed them all day. And once you ran out of the story quests which were all voiced there wasn't a ton of diversity in zones to level alts with outside of story quests.

Anyways, hype can help your game for sure, but god too many games get super mega hyped and flop. I see Star Citizen hyping itself to death.

[Azrile]

But I don´t think Star Citizen is hyping itself that much, I think it is more the fans willingness to fund it to crazy amounts that is causing the hype. The devs do monthly updates, but they really aren´t all over the forums or out doing interviews to drive up hype. And that was kinda the same with GW2... the devs didn´t really go crazy trying to hype the game, just a lot of GW1 players did the typical ´wow killer´type stuff. i do think you have to be fair and separate the actions of the devs from the actions of the fans and media.

To put it in contrast.. In Age of Conan, the devs of the game were constantly out doing interviews and trying to mudsling at Blizzard. A few months before launch, one of the devs did an interview and gave the famous ´AoC is steak and WOW is hamburger´ comment. At the same time, Mark Jacobs was doing the same type of interviews for Warhammer. And of course Rift with the whole ´you are not in Azeroth anymore´ comment. That type of marketing and hype is uncalled for. But blaming Star Citizen devs because their game is unbelievebly popular pre-launch.. i just don´t get.

[Kyanion]

Oh without a doubt it is super fan hype these days because there is the corpses of some dead games out there that tried to bash on WoW to show they were better. Devs for the most part have shied away from comparisons to WoW and with good reason. Fans however...usually never break from the mod. It is even worse than normal due to KS and people already having a large investment in something they've not even gotten close to playing yet.

[Post]

And of course Rift with the whole ´you are not in Azeroth anymore´ comment. That type of marketing and hype is uncalled for.

Yup, it instantly made me not like the Rift devs (I'm sure they weren't entirely responsible for the quote but you know what I mean). It's extra hilarious because Rift was the biggest WoW clone of all time.

[dextersmith]

That I can agree with in part, I think GW sold something like 2 million copies at release and was over 3.5 mil as of last year. So 460 concurrent users is good but for a game with no fees you'd think it would be higher. I think a good testing stick for them will be the expansion and how much of that sells.

As for having much patience for mmos I usually don't make it out of the first month if the game can not impress me in some manner. Only a few MMOs got more than 1 month out of me since Everquest 1 and WoW came along.

Me too, I was so hyped on Aion and Rift but didn't even stay past 2 weeks.

- - - Updated - - -

EDIT: For shits and giggles, Proctor is now claiming to be continuing development of Greed Monger!

Sounds like toa's talk of their next great yet secret plan.

[Azrile]

every game is perfect when it is a bunch of notes on a piece of paper.

speaking of dev notes... who wants to be a faqqer for me? send me a PM.

[dextersmith]

The gameplay is compelling. It´s only rival was that gameplay of when the 3 stoogies did the interview and the one stooge spent 20 minutes running up and down the same cave, because as Brax put it´ he hasn´t been able to tear himself away´...

No one got vertigo from walking upside down?

- - - Updated - - -

Yeah Rift was pretty awful, got worse after a huge patch early on that nerfed the bejesus out of a lot of stuff.

That patch was why I quit.