SPO and SP Offline

That is absolutely ~not~ something that a contributor should expect. Look at it this way. SotA currently has just over 32,000 backers. Some of them are not going to have any important suggestions to voice, but many of them feel that they do. Most could probably go on for quite awhile about what they believe is good or bad for the game. For the sake of argument, let's say that each backer has suggestions that take an average of 5 minutes to go over. This seems like a very conservative estimate.

32k is a relatively small number for a project like this. But even so, that means 160,ooo minutes or 2,666 1/3 hours to review at 5 minutes a piece. That makes for 66 2/3 work weeks devoted to nothing but reading and evaluating suggestions. Over a year of development. So I say again, being a backer does not entitle you to this, or anything else besides what was explicitly promised.

That said, this development team has gone above and beyond in proving that they are very willing to listen to any well thought out and well presented suggestions or grievances. But it is very hard to give a meaningful response to vaguely stated problems. Especially ones based on features that are not yet released for feedback.

I understand that it makes people anxious when a feature that they were really looking forward to is not being presented for testing. But that is the entire reason why most game development studios keep early iterations largely under wraps. In any sort of software development what the public, even the testers, are able to see is a small piece of what is going on. Just because you do not see it being showcased does not mean that it is not currently in production or in the production pipeline for later. Player's expectations when they start to get involved in the early testing phases is the entire reason why that is not how game development has traditionally been done. They lack the scope to know what is really happening, yet they want to jump to conclusions about it regardless.

And there is a big problem with fans believing early, unstructured statements to be testament. It has been brought up that there is a 'refusal' to discuss Companions. This does not mean that they have been ignored. But until implementation starts, you never know what sort of issues you are going to run into. 'Lord British' could wax poetically about all of the things that he would ~like~ Companions in SotA to be. Elements that he ~intends~ for them to be. But until the implementation is well under way and it is pretty certain how things are going to turn out, it would be very foolish to do so. Not because these ideas haven't already been considered. But because anything that is said now will be held up by the community later. And it is an absolute fact of any sort of development that things ~rarely~ end up the same as the early concept for it.

 

Man. And I thought _I_ was pathologically literal...

 

True its not strictly a single player game but they have announced the game as being able to be played Single player online and offline. Not you can decorate your house by yourself but that you can play the game single player and there is going to be a lot of very annoyed people if they back down on this. No matter what they chose to call it these issues need to be addressed

 

My advice would be to frame your message in a way that focuses on each single item and try to integrate that message into the other parts of the game that you may not care about. For example, "I want X because it will help players do A B and C." Instead of saying I want "the single player game you guys promised us!" I don't think that's a winning strategy.

Even if you look at the PVP vs. PVE arguments you can see it there. One of the reasons that PVP got moved up to R8 instead of sitting back at R11 was because someone on the dev team realized that if you worked on PVP you could balance PVP and PVE together, thus saving time and making a better game. You need to find ways like that to ask for what you want.

Unlike other games, the devs here have proven they will listen and if it makes so much sense that it becomes obvious to them that's the right thing to do...they will.

 

It could very well be possible that PVP got moved up because of all the PVP posts. There has to be hundreds, many asking for the same thing. That had to get their attention.

That's not saying I agree that saying you promised us this we want it now is a good arguement. What i am saying is that by now they should have at least a plan in place for all major components, and companions are a major component, at least they were when the kickstarter campaign was on.

Loot and equipment are all over the map if you read the forums....crafter driven economy which will change how single player is played. Equipment from a lot of the PVP people perspective(I know not all, but quite a few vocal ones) should be from the crafters and not too hard to replace. Already PVP full loot is being bandied about, and I wish they would decide on that because it will require a lot of the other facets of the game to work with that to make it balanced at all.

I want to be clear, I like a lot of what I have seen so far, I will be playing online...and I will most like casually PVP...I'm not bashing the game, I'm saying that I do have an interest in something that doesn't have a lot of info out. I think threads like these are perfectly viable in the fact it gets discussions moving forward, if this one is not viable, how would you explain the hundreds of PVP threads?

I'm not complaining for the sake of complaining, I'm trying to get a grasp on the design decisions so far.

 

I've been consistent. I haven't suggested that you don't have a right to complain or discuss (whichever you prefer to use). But what I have said is that your approach is not good. Read your PM's.

 

That's a reasonable point, but it requires a distinction.

Remember the difference between what is discussed by the devs and what is delivered in a release. Although it may have still seemed too slow, combat and PvP was given attention and discussed by the devs prior to R8. The point of the thread is not that we need to see it in a release first and foremost, but that the lack of attention and discussion causes concern. All my ideas were not about incorporating something into a release, but things that could be done in forum, videos, etc.

 

Since you appear to be new to the forum, it's ok that these comments are dismissive and don't take into account that I've considered this all along. I have asked almost nothing of anyone from the beginning, unlike many in the forum. Nor do I expect that they have to respond to my concerns and have said so many times. I pledged wanting them to make the game and am not going to give up or quit no matter how it turns out. However, this forum is precisely for expressing our opinions. Please don't try to shut that down.

 

I don't agree. Some story elements have been released... post-cataclysm... other races are deformed humans from Obsidian order. Quests/NPC's in Owl's Head are not just placeholders? I don't want to focus too much on the story, in favor of the point Rune is trying to make. But really as I said in my original post holding on to the story because it needs to be new and not leaked is not necessarily true. Story is leaked in advance all the time - alpha/beta - maybe not all but significant parts.The idea that it has to be held onto is a fallacy. They've already posted things in the forum asking dev+ for non-disclosure.

Those who want a pure experience know not to check the wiki and just play the game. People do this with movies they don't want to know the endings to! It's in the control of the player, and is not something to take time worrying about.

 

Whether the story is leaked or not, that is not subject to our preferences. That is up to RG and Tracy Hickman.

 

The devs just recently made it clear in both video hangouts and forum posts that there's a ton of story that has not been and will not be revealed until almost immediately before launch. What you're doing is confusing story with world setting, those are two different things.

I can tell you that in Lord of the Rings, goblins and orcs are bad. I can tell you how they look and act. But this doesn't tell you who's controlling them, or why they are doing X and Y. You have to read the story to find that out.

 

No I didn't confuse them, and they do bleed into each other. My original post argued for releasing more info on the world setting in a separate comment from talking about releasing the story.

But anyway, it's a point I don't agree with any devs who believe they need to hold onto story elements. For many reasons. It's ok if you disagree, but it's just an opinion, not wrong.

 

Totally, I wasn't trying to say you were "wrong" to have that opinion. I was just trying to offer some logical reasons why I disagree with you.

From a crowd sourcing perspective, I do agree that having more knowledge of the game world and perhaps even more of the story is important to help foster valuable fan contributions (music, lore, etc)...but the idea that somehow we would all be better off knowing that Darth Vader is Luke's father prior to seeing the movie is where I draw the line. I'm not sure if you were suggesting that or not, but to me that's the kind of thing that shouldn't be thrown around this early in development.

 

It's not wrong to want or expect an early release of story elements, but I do think it's an unrealistic expectation, given the strong opinions expressed by the entire dev team.

 

Everything ultimately is up to RG lol. What would the point of the forum be then?

 

Not better off per se. But if I had crowdfunded Star Wars, I would be ok knowing that and discussing it with the "devs" of the movie. To me whether I find out then or at release is immaterial as there's only one first time. But maybe others want to wait for release to know such things? Also, to continue the example, there's a whole lot that goes on in star wars before that point. If they wanted to save the climax plot twist til release that would be one way to do it. Although for me personally, I am involved in this to know things prior to release. I also think crowdsourcing can improve story by testing just like is going on with PvP right now.

 

Well, the forums are meant for us to offer suggestions, but I think you'll get more mileage out of a suggestion that doesn't involve something that RG is on record as saying will not happen.

 

It's dangerous to build that anticipation, too. If people are kept in suspense waiting and the product, when it finally reaches them, fails to live up to the astronomical expectations that have developed from the hype, the project could suffer extreme losses. See almost every big title MMO that has been made in the past ten years.

 

George Lucas famously kept Darth Vader's line "I am your father" even from the actors who read them. So even as Luke is saying "noooooooo!" he's actually saying it to a different set of lines. The real lines said by Darth Vader were digitally replaced and only a very small handful of people (perhaps 3) actually knew that happened prior to the movies release. The impact was that it turned out to be the biggest surprise in the history of movie making.

Do not underestimate the power of the darkside force.