Boat stretch goal pricing?

To be honest I don't think any stretch goal in the store will be met unless the goals are cut 90%.

 

Oh hell yes.... if these counted to the pledge, then I would drop for probably every "all of it" package but the elves, and maybe even those!

 

Thank you for clearing this mess of misunderstandings for me Lord Andernut. I believe I am just a Benefactor at the Duke's level tier, for there are no circled white or gold F's on my account page. It only says 'Duke' $5300. So that makes me a Benefactor? Correct? It does not say I am a Benefactor on my account page, so I am just assuming that I am? This is sort of confusing for me. Am I still missing something? I'm thinking about going for that castle in a few more months. I know it sounds crazy but we only live once, so enjoy what you like in life. Either case I am happy to support this project being a long time Ultima fan.

 

Extrapolating 8400 boats would mean: 8400 people aspiring to get a water parcel... This is still extremely unrealistic as a stretchgoal...

Without wanting to sound too critical.. whoever plans those goals might want to realism-check their numbers.

 

I'm surprised there is no/barely an official word regarding stretch goals.

 

In my opinion, every stretch goal I've seen so far are very basic game features and should never have required asking for more money.

To the average gamer, imagine what this game looks like on the surface when the devs are asking for half a million dollars to add... boats. $250,000.00 to add... mounts. Does anyone realize that amount of money could pay for one game developer's salary for 5-10 years? Would it really take 1-2 devs five to ten years to develop this technology?

IMO, these stretch goals will never be met. There is a reason they are only at a fraction of the amount needed, and it is because a lot of people fundamentally disagree with the concept of these stretch goals.

 

Quite possibly.

Which is why there will most likely be more than 1-2 devs actually hired to implement the system (I personally have no interest in waiting five to ten years for it to be done).

I would say that at least two coders, two artists, and two animators. Add to that each new employee incurs additional non-salary related overhead: Office space, equipment, power, management requirements, etc.

With that let's say that each employee takes $90,000 a year (average 2012 game developer salary according to google is 84,000, with additional yearly overhead):

$750,000 / $90,000 = 8.3 man years. Set six employees at that and both projects will be completed in 1.4 years.

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Of course, if the stretch goal is *not* met, then the team can simply fit it in whenever they feel like, using the existing man-power to do it, rather than pay additional costs to hire more people.

 

REALLY??? Does that include matching his payroll taxes? Health care if any? Does this count resources like pencils, pens, software licenses, and all other expenses for the employee? Wouldn't be much good to pay the employee if he didn't even have a desk and a chair to sit on, oh and electricity so they can have lights, and Internet Service Provider.... oh and that whole thing about even renting an office in the first place. Cant have employees without renting a reasonable office space. I'm not even done with expenses yet.... but you should see where I'm going with this... running a small business successfully is not as easy as you think.

Me thinks you're not counting all the variables of running a business. ALSO keep in mind it is reasonable that the business owners eventually earn a dividend. Why start a business and not make any money at all?

If I had to guess I would say Portalarium runs on a very tight budget! Tight budget indeed. I believe they are making sure to spend as much on the development of the game as possible, because the real money to be made is releasing a successful product. Then they can be rich! They aren't going to get rich raising as much as they have so far. Seriously!

 

90k per year is extremely generous for this type of position, but regardless I'm having a hard time believing that it would take 6 people a year and a half to make a sailing boat. Hell, even a high school kid in 3D design class could come up with a decent looking boat in less time.

All in all, on the surface it feels like we are getting shafted having, what most would consider basic game features, held ransom behind a massive paywall.

 

Personally, I'm not big on paying for a high-school student quality level product.

But that's probably just me.

(And $750,000 is the combination of both mounts *and* boats, not just one or the other. By the calculation above, it would take 5.6 man years to do just the boats).

 

If it takes a group of two or three even six months (while doing nothing else, mind you) to add horses to the game I'd be very disappointed indeed.

 

What makes you think two people can do this on their own?

 

actually if it's that easy maybe you should do it in unity and send them the horses. You don't need artists, or any planning do you? No need to test stuff right?

 

Don't misconstrue me, I just Havering more faith in Port than that!

 

True true... How DarkStarr decided on those numbers is purely speculative on our part.

Perhaps there is more overhead costs involved. Perhaps there is a different mix of professional qualifications involved.

Even with a separate team running in parallel with the core development, there will be times when the main-team will need to be involved: Either to offer expertise in how to integrate the systems, provide initial training, ensure that quality and aesthetics are maintained. Such would need to be accounted for as well.

Who knows.

 

Just a quick one, to all the people who seam to think that adding boats in, should be a fairly easy task, and not worth $500k A few things to bear in mind.

1) Boats open up a huge portion of the world planned for ep1, and offer up a huge number of hexes that were previously unaccessable - in short, additional development time on the entire map, including moving the hidden vale world map to be part of the main world, so you can sail there.

2) Adapting the over land (3d map) movement system to accommodate for boat travel, ie make it so boats can only go on water, and avatars cant walk on water. Sounds simple, but its not. - in short, more development time, to expand on the current overland movement system.

3) Adapting the scene movement system (when your in a hex) to accommodate for boat movement. Not as complicated as the overland map, but still requires work - in short, more development time, to expand the current scene level movement system.

4) Addition of 'ocean' hex scenes. This, in all honesty is probably the easiest of the things that would be part of the implementation of water craft. However, to do it to the extent that they have said they want to, there would still need to be work done here to account for random encounters and such.

5) Boats would enable players to bypass certain things, like the requirement to enter certain hexes, to be able to move to the other side, such as bridges, or Hilt. This could require a large re-write of certain aspects of the game, and potentially require certain areas to be changed, to prevent access to them in this manor.


I've only listed a few here, as its late, and i cant think of any more off the top of my head. Don't get me wrong, I think $500k might be asking a bit much, but expecting all of that work, for only $50k, is a asking way more then is possible. I would say $250-300k would be a more reasonable figure. But again, I dont know ALL of the aspects that would require addition work. I just know its not as simple as, Make some boats, make them float, make them move.

 

Excellent points. To add even more , mainly to address the added potential (& complexity ) boats can add :

*Boats make new professions possible. You can be a merchanter, transporting goods & people on sea routes - bypassing dangerous or risky overland roads. Or one can be a pirate, preying on those same merchanters with all the added thrill of boarding , fighting , or being chased by bounty hunters who specialized in taking down pirates.

* Boats can be mobile crafting platforms. Has the current town you"re based in become too competitive and cut-throat? No problem, hoist your anchors and move to the harbor of that new thriving player town across the continent.

* Boats will be invaluable in PVP guild wars for transporting troops quickly and sneakily past blockaded points on land. Or for taking surrounded guild members safely out of enemy territory. Fill a boat with archers and you have a mobile artillery platform to rake the beaches or port with an arrow storm. Or maybe for the hell of it, full of mages casting fireballs.

There can be so many, many ships to choose from - each specialized for a different purpose.



Now having said all that, I agree with @Korvash that $500k is probably an overkill. Better to have some achievable goal at $250-300k then something really wonderful once $500k is reached. Having that HUGE 6 figure goal post at the start tends to kill the impetus of the funding drive.

 

Now while $90k seems like a lot for a game developer, the caveat that you get what you pay for is eminently applicable when talking about coding. I don't want to play the game designed and coded by the guy making $30k a year.

The software I worked on was online real estate productivity and was mostly database manipulation and didn't require a lot of real time activity. Even so it took almost as much budget to test the software as it took to develop to beta test stage. At which point the cost of further development became far less predictable as the bugs found could be minor or wind up causing a major redesign of whole sections of the project.

All of the stretch goals seem pretty reasonable cost estimates to develop the features being offered. As these are stretch goals outside the scope of development for episode 1 any underfunding of these goals would impact the development of core features of episode 1. I wasn't aware of the stretch-goals page until about 10 days ago so I can't speak to how things have been posted or what the original page states, at this point it does state:

(NOTE: Stretch goal items cannot be turned into Add-On Store Credit unless the stretch goal is not met by launch date.)​

That statement defines both the soft finish date for the current stretch goals and at that point converts the vanity items offered as reward for your pledge into regular add-on store items.

One of the things a lot of people seem to be missing is that a pledge is not a purchase. Thanks to the unfortunate choice of terminology KickStarter uses, the confusion over pledge/invest/purchase has only deepened. If you stop thinking of these as 'KS pledges' and equate them more with a PBS pledge or some charity telethon pledge you may not be quite so nonplussed by them. All of the stretch goals are optional and as best as we can tell, most if not all, are intended for later release as the development schedule allows.

The stretch goals give those who wish to see those features sooner rather than later an opportunity to support that feature. By breaking the stretch goals into separate pots you have the ability to support only the features you choose to support and not have to hope that your favourite at the end of the chain is actually achieved. The size of the goals represents what seems to me to be a reasonable estimate of the cost of such features. If someone with industry experience can post reasons why these goals are inaccurate, I'm glad to see their thoughts on the matter.

So in point form the positives of these stretch goals are:

1. A way to get features people want into the game faster than the current development schedule allows.
2. Priced at a point that will keep implementing these features from affecting other aspects of development.
3. The free choice to support only the features you wish to support.
4. Minor vanity rewards that become functional when the goal is implemented in the game.
5. The ability to convert your pledge to store credits should the goal not be reached by the release of episode 1 and you decide you no longer wish to support the goal.
6. These goals & the pledges are completely optional.

The negatives are:

1. I don't want these goals.
2. I want them, but I don't want to pledge for them.
3. I think these goals are too high but don't have any reasonable explanation of how I come to that opinion.
4. I'm tired of having to buy things to support this game.
5. Portalarium is just being greedy.

As the fact that these are optional pledges as opposed to required purchases, I'm at a loss to understand opposition to these goals. No one is being forced to make a pledge and should any or all of these goals be reached, everyone is going to benefit from those who do.

These stretch goals are about a month old and I don't think full release of episode 1 is any closer than late-spring next year, meaning we have 8-9 months to see how these goals are working.

Just some of my thoughts on this, YMMV

 

why would boats need individual plots? why wouldnt there be some sort of harbor structure implemented with more tightly-placed slips? Or a floatilla of some sorts?

 

With the anchor ornament becoming functional once the goal is met , you should be able to park yourself in the middle of the bay or off the shore.