Can we please get some other stretch goals like the elves discussed earlier, obviously mounts are not exciting to anyone half of the stretch goal was from the failed first time still. I have been looking forward to the other stretch goals and with only a year left until projected episode 2 time is running short fast.
Much of the problem with the mount stretch goal (other than it being far too much money) is that the pixel fluff on offer to pay for it is somewhat uninspiring, to put it mildly. If they do come up with other stretch goals for Ep2 let's hope both the amount required and what is on offer to raise that amount are both a significant improvement.
A stretch goal to hire another employee specifically for bugs might not be a terrible idea, i'm sure many in the community would get behind something like this!!! Also ships would be cool I know a lot of people wanted ships for episode two and were sad to see that it did not make it. Also ships with the new fishing update might be really fun and work into work they are currently doing. Sea monster encounters out at sea would be so much fun!
Adding more stretch goals will have the same effect as last time; it divides where the money goes and none of them end up being met. Mounts are not all that exciting, mostly because the choices we have are pretty boring. No carts, wagons, donkeys, bears, obsidian stags, warhorses, mounts with barding, war drakes. Heck, even the horse breeds we have are all just clones with different skins. There are lots of types of horses; add some. Add some emotes that we can perform when mounted. Add some skills/emotes that we can teach our mounts (kick, pose, whinny, rear, jump). Add some mounts that act like pets while in combat, rather than run away (war horses are a thing). Add fancy summoning whistles. I don't think it should be difficult to hit, if we have some motivation to do so. Currently... meh. Masks arn't going to do it.
I think it's a good idea to have goals set for acquiring some "specialised" staff, perhaps. Have employees been a stretch goal before? I can imagine how that might make both the management and the employees at the Company uneasy though. To imagine that your livelyhood might be subject to the capricious whims of an online community (a distant but realistix extrapolation)... At any rate, a new staff member would be a force multiplier. How high would a year of a worker cost? Salary, benefits, taxes and insurances, etc. Might be a fair bit more than a horse! And a hell of a lot more useful in my humblw opinion.
I can't imagine why it would be a good idea to promote Episode 2 Stretch Goals when Episode 1 systems are incomplete. Why would we pay for new systems when current systems need fleshed out or re-worked and have bugs? A good idea would be to get the current game in tip-top shape, fleshed out, systems and game loops smooth and FUN, bugs squashed and guts cleaned up - then promote Episode 2 with its new content.
I totally agree! However (very unfortunately), the purpose of a stretch goal is to raise money, and fixing bugs isn't very appealing for many people. Some people get salty and say, "Why should I pay more money for you to fix the game I've already paid for?" I wish they saw things the same way we do, but, as long as stretch goals are an important part of the funding, the development will always be feature driven rather than experience driven. So, the next question is, which features would most benefit us and energize the playerbase sufficiently to donate their hard earned cash?
The stretch goal is to hire somone to work on mounts so that the current devs dont have to pull resources from current tasks, as per my understanding from the explenation of episode 1 stretch goals. Its not a goal that would divert dev time from other stuff if reached
Not sure what the job market is like where Port is at, but 150k+ (total of salary + cost of benefits) a year for a senior software engineer type of position isn't outrageous where I live (large city in Midwest). 200k+ for a Lead Engineer isn't excessive either.
Just as with the Ep1 stretch goals, they were never appealing and barely made any money -- and never met their goals, barely reaching 10% funded over 2 years. Currently, the Ep2 stretch goals made a whopping $500 in the last 30 days, and $700 the previous 30 before that. The same arguments were made back then and are being made now, but the devs still want to try again...to the same results. I'm not sure what made them think the results would be any different this time. Would love to know what's changed? But sure, it's incremental income -- albeit at an insignificant rate the past few months -- but one has to take a step back and wonder how this (and other things...) is contributing to the overall negative perception of the game.
Episode 2 Stretch Goal : Hirelings / Employers ... to gather resources for you. Pay them to do some mining for you, or wood gathering, or hunting. Level them up. The growth potential is almost limitless!
The mount stretch goal is dead and not moving, may need a $5000 limited edition steam powered Lamborghini to revive it.
It surely does not take a year to implement a horse riding system, nor do you need a lead engineer for that either. I wonder if the money collected for stretch goal is used already or was it really marked and saved for this feature.
Interesting! I would be much more interested in funding it if I knew it was to support another mouth to feed. Perhaps they ought to revise the items, though. I don't know who the target player demographic is, but a horse mask is quite unappealing to some of the more conservative playees. Some brainstorming: items + patterns for: spurred boots of various kinds, riding helmet, barding (formal, armored, heraldic, viking, etc.), jousting armor (massive bonus points for armor display stand).... There's a lot of possibilitiss. I understand and appreciate that the item is not the point - it's a vote/support. But a horsehead mask...
If they have to rewrite major systems to support this (and/or if code quality is bad, and/or if the code base is gigantic), then I can see this taking legit 9-12 months for one person, especially if they have to work in parallel with the "main" system being updated all the time. I don't know if you develop software, but it's not just "hey Bob code this and then ship it". There's a mind-numbing amount of testing (and process, since they're doing Scrum) involved if you're doing it properly. At least with me, the time spent doing testing, analysis, and user support take far, far longer than the actual "code this hot new feature" time.
I am a software dev and agile methods are very familiar to me also. Ofc I can't see what kind of work it would be in their codebase, but a year to implement horse riding system? Nothing but riding it, Basic animations, for horse and character( hopefully done by person who excel in it ).. 250k for it? They added player dungeons, fishing, group search stuff anf lot others, in a lot smaller time. Dungeon stuff was definitely harder than riding a horse. But hey, its just speculation and mostly feeling based stuff. I think the amount collected for that goal, speaks a lot. Its overpriced feature. Edit: strech goal money is targeted for this feature and Im not talking about calender days, but man hours, days and years, time spent focusing on this feature