2 years and waiting

Such as?

Can you please make at least some examples, among these tons? What you think is missing from the original ks and it's not being worked on lately by devs?

 

@GimmeUOPlz,

The only real big new idea I can think of that fell out of the scope of Kickstarter was POTs.

But its really not been the major thing pushing back the deadline. There was a transition to Unity 5 (to meet player concerns about graphics and performance), a reworking of the combat system (to meet player feedback and complaints), a change in the map style (due to player feedback). Now that those things are done with, the hump is over with, and development is going much faster, as I think you can see in every new release.

Frankly, POTs are blamed a lot for the development slowdown, but the blame isn't warranted at all and one feature isn't much feature creep.

There are some single-player fans in this thread. A lot of them have complained before about the hits to immersion the game has taken because of appealing to MMO fans that don't care about immersion. I agree with those people, but that has nothing to do with game delays. The holdback on the story elements are a natural part of the development process. I always expected that to come in last.

 

From what I've gathered by hangouts and articles, my impression is that @DarkStarr has a firm grasp of what needs to be done; at least for Ep1. You see him talking a lot like he's reeling in the reins to keep the team moving to their destination.

I think a lot of the uproar stems from the idea that the developers are discussing on future possible features while we sit here with an incomplete game. The thing is, they need to have these discussions (at least internally) so that they can correctly implement the current systems to support these ideas.

I'm in the development process of a video game of my own. The project has a very straight-forward and defined step-by-step objective. What needs to be done, when to complete it, etc. So projections on how long it'd take can easily be made. When you see it in action through testing, there's often two things that comes to mind:

• "Wait, this system is working... but it's not accomplishing the things exactly the way we wanted it."
• "This is cool! Wouldn't it be cool if this could lead some something even more amazing?"

Either of these cases involves changes and time to make the necessary modifications. I mean, why wouldn't you make the changes? The biggest mistake is to ignore the team's feelings on particular details when building the project. Even during the "this is cool!" scenario, you want to make changes to accommodate for possible additions down the line. What about DLCs, Expansions, modding tools, etc?

Failing to do that and you risk not being able to make modifications because the game was already hard-coded to act a certain way... like increasing the resolution of Diablo 2 to something higher than 800x600. Experienced developers are more aware of these issues and now work accordingly. Less like young naive adults in a garage bashing code to build a game and more like software engineers.

In my particular case, the project got a 6 months delay because of it for ONE (major) change. With over a year of delays in total (if you add up all the different cases).

Project looks amazing and it still follows the original plan. The difference is that the projections were off for whatever reason.

You can't put a timer on art but we do it anyways to get an idea of how much it'll cost (that's usually the ONLY reason dev teams do this); unless you rush it or are pre-printing for mass production... Call of Duty comes to mind but that's hardly the only example.

 

@Katrina Bekers​

I would point to the rest of this thread and others that cover each topic quite well, and ask you what your goal is in insisting that I rehash old details for you? Ain't nobody got time for that, please go read the ks goals and other threads that criticize them for yourselves and see what people are upset about.

Angry that I called out a pal for being inappropriate? It was justified as they were lashing out with name calling. Sorry for that, but it's not my responsibility to summarize this thread or any other for you in an attempt to validate or reiterate people's opinions. Simply not going to take the bait and simply side step the attempts to cause this thread to spiral out of control. Read it if you want to know what it contains, simple as that.

 

I have to respectfully disagree that *tons* of examples exist. I *have* looked over the KS goals repeatedly and the only thing that appears to be missing at this point is some kind of theatre that you can rent. Other than that, everything else is in. So if you have any examples of the tons of things missing from the KS promises have at it and list them.

 

I'm going to save some pain and reinforce the fact that the needs of a single-player focus and the story elements of a game are not the same thing. There are structural mechanical differences between single-player games and multi-player games, as has been discussed in many forums. Most concerns that I've heard from the SP crowd have little to do with story. Equating single-player and story needs to stop, I would hope any good multi-player game has a great story and all should realize a single-player game is not just a multi-player game without other live players.

 

@UnseenDragon,

Yea, I mentioned things having to do with immersion; never reduced it to the story.

But it was announced as a hybrid SPO game from Kickstarter, and the fact that they have to balance multiplayer and singleplayer elements is as was always expected. Personally, I'm a lot more hopeful that they can do it well.

 

You may very well have something specific in mind.. I'm not trying to say otherwise.. but when refusing to answer a question and pointing in some vague direction saying "look over there" and insisting they'll find all the answers isn't very compelling. It assumes people will accept the answers are "out there somewhere" regardless of whether they are or not. Which only begs the question.. do you have something specific in mind or not?

As Katrina just pointed out.. nobody is asking what OTHER people think.. but what YOU think..

 

Lol, to be honest, I wish there was feature creep. I wish we had horse mounts, pack animals, setting up camp, and a number of other features. I'm disappointed to the extent that there hasn't been any major feature creep.

I'm not going to tell the devs how to do this from a business perspective; the schedule is theirs to set. Although I will say I hope they can get in as much as possible with E1. Also, the more great things they manage to get in without major game delays, the more impressive it will be for people on the fence about playing.

 

Read the original KS many times over, and as far as it and the promises, so far, there are very few things that aren't currently being delivered:

• Pet system: in... being iterated.
• Weather: in... being worked on.
• Instruments: In BEYOND expectation!
• Taming: in place and being iterated.
• Content is king: I think we've gone way beyond the 20 additional scenes and the game is HUGE!
• Mysterious Island: Not sure about this one...
• Ports and Boats: Sort of in... but only as far as there are ships you can click on to get to other places. With "random encounters", it wouldn't be hard to institute the "Defend your Vessel" promise
• Dynamic contested resource nodes: ehhhh....
• Minimap: in, but could also use some work.
• Lost Vale: Not really in place, unless I have missed something...
• Serialized Novel: in.
• Interconnected Underworld: In, with some story apparent, but needs more fleshing out.
• Apprenticeship system: In place and working, sort of...
• Animated cloaks: In, but need work to meet promise and look decent.
• Theater Center: not in place.
• Masks and costumes: Partially in place.
• Castles and Keeps as new town type: POT's could be construed as the beginnings or meeting this goal, but nothing in this stretch goal from the original KS is truly in place, as far as I have seen.
• Coat of Arms: Support for it exists on community side, but nothing is in place yet to display them.

Given the massive setbacks of the reworking of combat, adding in the POT system (and devoting time to the development of the INCREDIBLE amount of POT's in place), and switching over to Unity 5, (and considering all of that has taken place over the past year (for the most part) and that they have been adding the functionality to support the vast majority of pledge rewards along the way, the only complaint I could lodge at this time would be that they needed to be more honest with themselves about the scope of the project when setting the original estimated release date.

Aside from that... not sure where "tons of examples" are...

 

I was under the impression that the Lost Vale was the Hidden Vale.. The only item on that list that I really have questions about are Castles & Keeps.

 

@Lord Tachys al`Fahn

The "Mysterious Island" and/or "Lost Vale" could be references to the Hidden Vale.

Dynamic resource nodes are possible; we haven't seen them yet because the bulk of the higher-tier crafting elements are not in yet.

As for the rest of the red, your guess is as good as mine.

 

I'm sure they're possible, I was just uncertain as to whether or not they were counting the shardfalls as part of that system. If so, that item is partially in place, but needs work.

I agree that the Isle and Vale could be one and the same in the form of the Hidden Vale, but it would be doing the game an injustice to not have them be separate entities.

The point of the whole, is that despite claims to the contrary, MOST OF THE CONTENT promised in the kickstarter is in place and working, despite some nearly insurmountable obstacles!

 

*throws in a personal favorite*
Coat of Arms still MIA.

 

Ah... I did miss that... Sorry!

 

also Castle Siege Mechanics

 

That one's kind up included under the Castles and Keeps item. I just didn't see the point in iterating the whole section since none of it was in place just yet (or, not enough to bother counting).

 

Do you mean town sieges? Or are you thinking about guild warfare? I don't recall actual castle sieges from KS. Or was that part of the stretch goal? Maybe I'll have to go back and review that one.

 

$2m Stretch Goal: "Castle Defense Scenarios which can be played offline as well as online"

I asked for clarification on this a while back but have had no response.