Release Date too Zealous?

I'm inclined to agree with Postulio. I'm happy with the pace of things so far.

Once we get to about the alpha stage a lot of the things we discuss here will be hammered out, (at least partially) implemented and there will be plenty to show off to attract more funding and in turn more resources.

I remember reading some comments on a third-party site about the project while the kickstarter campaign was running and a few were saying the game's graphics were terrible and that is why the project would fail. They had no idea that the media at the time did not represent what the game would look like, even though that info was out there.

Then we have the RTX demo. 3 months later, and huge visual improvements. Between that, the art we see here that trickles out from the devs as well as the community contributions I'm impressed by how things are looking in that department. And I was already sold on the game by association and vision alone.

So I see a lot of potential to get a lot more people on board later in the project that coincides with a well presented marketing campaign. The power of screenshots, videos & game reviews can't be underestimated. There's still huge potential left for the rest of the gaming community.

 

As much as I would like the game to be released sooner ie Oct 2014, I doubt that is achieavble given the number of game systems that are still in early stages.
Some main ones:

PVP
Combat/ Skills
Magic System
Crafting (this seems to be going well at the moment)
SPO/FPO/MMO modes of play

I agree contents will be added as we go along but key systems like these need to be polished at release.

 

Most of the creators of SOTA are VERY experienced in the field. If they thought it was not doable they would not do it. I think that worst case scenario, they may delay it a little but like most said, and they can update it after release. I have full confidence in the team that they will not make anything live until it is ready. Not to mention it will be our job as the Beta testers to help them work out the kinks which could change the release date if there are too many unexpected problems at beta.

 

Knowing LB and the team working on this game.. They already got a significant amount done in the short time they have been working on it. I do believe they will get it done in time, possibly even shorter with the amount they've gotten done thus far. But indeed, beta testing ftw when it comes time for it. And yes updates can always fix things or release more content on the utmost worse comes to worse situation.

 

I don't want to wait either. All multi-player, on-line games are released in a less than perfect/ideal state and are tuned up as they go. There will be an Alpha and Beta that we will be able to help with, and that will be before the official release to the general public. So really you'll get to play before SoTA has reached a releasable state if you payed in at the Adventurer level or higher, that is if you want to help. I'm looking foreward to participating in the testing, and to seeing what we can do to shake this thing apart, so that they can patch and fix it so it's ready for a smooth launch.

*The Test Monkey's motto. "Lets turn up the juice and see what shakes loose."

 

One of the reasons I backed the Kickstarter was the timeline. If it were longer, I would not have backed SotA.
I have every confidence the required content can be created in the time allotted. I also believe, if they have the right people in place, the detailed in-game mechanics and systems can be tuned for launch.
At this point, my doubts center around a lack of distinctive features. I hope they reach far enough to distinguish SotA from every other persistent multi-player online game since 2004. I'm not concerned in the slightest regarding the single player/co-op experience. They've done that before, they can do that again.

The underlying systems/core mechanics that require more details, for me, are: death, travel, money, harvesting, processing, selling, mail, trading, banking, looting, combat ui, skills, guilds, alliances, weather, tracking, traps, poison, housing, stealth, invisibility, auction house, work orders, weight limits, inventory limits, advancement paths, and more.

It would also be nice to know if they're really going to take a serious run at procedurally generating both wilderness hexes and/or dungeons-on-demand. If they are, hold on to your hats.

 

The whole concept of "product release" is simply very different with online software. The can ship a map and an installer. They're no doubt emplying some kind of Agile methodology where they can ship whenever and keep adding stuff.

As I've said before, I don't care that PvP is even in the game for the first shipment. As long as they build the game around getting it right. The can ship the game with small towns, very little magic, etc. Give us the minimum number of features with nothing broken.

 

I agree with the overall idea of your post. I do not think they should ship with minimal features though. Balance in the game is important, so I think all those systems need to be worked out together so that they can be as right as possible from the beginning.

One thing that can be delivered later is content, as long as it doesn't take TOO long to get there. SWTOR wrongly estimated how long it would take for people to finish out their story and level out their characters. Those people got bored and left before more content showed up. SotA could deliver the main game systems pretty much complete, and add content on a weekly basis, as long as they think they can keep ahead of the players. The problem is that something that takes a week to design can usually be done in a couple hours. There needs to be something else that can keep player interest in the meantime. (*whisper*that might need to be PvP related, since crafters will probably take longer to max out their areas of play*whisper*)

 

I suspect RG had the core mechanics fairly well conceptualised and the skeleton of the game in place before the KS, which leads him to believe that Oct. 2014 is targetable. However, delays are by no means unknown in these kinds of projects, so one should be mentally prepared for such a thing.

That said,
I don't care that PvE is even in the game for the first shipment, as long as they build the game around getting it right.
Just as long as the mechanics for PvP work. Then I'm sure the other elements of the game will flesh-out just fine.

 

One of the advantages that the dev team stated was that in using a dual scale map, adding content is really easy and fast. So very likely the game mechanics and story will take up most of the time, which is completely realistic to being close to finishing in about 6 to 10 months.

One of the biggest time and money consumers in large scale multiplayer games are the assests devoted to world building, which does not seem to be the case with SotA.

 

Warhammer Online was as near a perfect launch as I've ever seen, it was feature rich, bug free, stable, and super fun till end game. At the end of the day, nothing has that special factor like an Ultima title, I"d wait as long as it took to get a good game, after all UO is still running after 15ish years.

 

The problem here is that you can never develop content fast enough for the people who are going to race through the game, yet those people also tend to be the most vocal. I think any model where the developer attempts to continually crank out new content for the powergamers is not likely to be a successful model. My issue with SWTOR had nothing to do with the amount of content, but instead the type of content. It was an almost-entirely linear progression through a game that provided little else to do outside of the main quest line.

There should be enough fun, repeatable, gameplay elements that keep players entertained without the need for constant updates. When I think back to UO, PvP met that criteria for me. My characters were fully developed and there was absolutely no grind required, yet I logged in and played for several hours every day for no other reason than because it was fun to battle and compete with other players and guilds. I understand that not everyone likes PvP, so that won't work for everyone, but there must be other things that people like and want to do on a regular basis without frequent development of new rewards and/or stories.