Stretch Goals: Why are you hiding them? (and) Why I likely won't pledge toward them.

I see no deceit in Portalariums stretch goals. They state the goal, they state the pledge amounts, we choose to opt in or opt out. Why would you say that they don't intend them to be met, when they have stated that they will be met eventually as they are open ended and no closing date.

 

Absolutely not true. Take a look at the asset store.

 

I never once suggested any sort of deceit. Please don't put words in my mouth.

When I say I believe they never intended them to be met, I believe they realize the numbers are so high they will never be reached before launch.

 

Not trying to antagonise you or anything, i am just having difficulty trying to understand your views on the stretch goals.

 

I meant no disrespect , its just the way you worded your post that made me think it.
I misunderstood this line:
"The only real explanation for the huge dollar amounts is to ensure they don't get met."

 

I'm not antagonized

But here, take a look at this:
Horses!

Fifty bucks for a high-quality, animated pack of horses. They may not be perfect (but I think they look pretty good!), but even if they are not production ready they CAN be, and quickly. No huge justification of cost there.

 

Roger that. I really do believe that the devs never really expected any of the goals to be met with such high dollar amounts... it's the only thing that makes sense to me.

 

Yep, I think those estimates, as such, are inflated. And I imagine we'll see horses in the game even if we're unable to ride them, so the model and animations aren't the issue.

But like you said yourself, its not like they don't want these things in: its too much work on their end; they have to do coding and testing also, and probably would want a larger staff to keep things on schedule. The numbers do sound high; but what's your estimate of what it should all cost?

 

Isn't there a thread somewhere that was asking people to post links to assets like that? (i could be wrong)

 

I don't have one. I never claimed to be a bookkeeper; I know a lot more about time and artist management than I do about budgets. I would welcome a breakdown/explanation of the goal pricing.

 

dunno, but im pretty sure the Devs are aware. All I did was search the asset store for HORSE and that was one of the first results

 

You know how people have bitched about a lot of the animations, models, sounds in game and how the quality is poor?

Those are assets they bought from the Unity store that ended up being terrible, so they have to replace them over time.

A good fully rigged model that can be animated well is not something that costs a couple hundred dollars or a couple hours of time.

The SotA devs spent months on the male and female Avatar models.

 

Well, I never said a fully perfect model could be made in a couple hours time. You, however, estimated six months as justification for the exorbitant goal amounts.

However, you definitely can get a great model, fully rigged and animated, for a couple of hundred dollars on the asset store. See the link I just gave. Like I said, they aren't perfect, but they can be fully game ready with a (relatively) very small outlay of time.

And there's a big difference between a mount model and the main player character model. One would expect that to take more time.

And people are harder.

 

1) The artist would actually have to build a horse and then they would have to animate the avatars, and variations thereof, on top of the horse. Unless you want your avatar to 100% disappear when mounted which I think would be an immersion breaker but what do I know?
2) Not just the horse: also a horse with a fully animated person on top (unless you want the person to be completely static?). If you want the avatar to actually get on the horse rather than just poof his way on top of it then that's even more animation.
3) For the developer, I don't know. I know it sounds simple but it's possible mounting is actually pretty complicated. But I don't know. Since we're not developers, we have very limited real idea of how much work it would be to implement these. We can only guess the estimate they gave us is based on the experience they've had in actually making games.

I mean these rewards already including a horse and an animated horse. I imagine the real complication is putting the people on top of them.

 

Models are not the time consuming factor here (as said, they can be found on the Asset store fairly easily), although ideally you would get a wide range beyond just the ones in the stretch goal store so you can populate the world with them. The time consuming part is getting them to interact with what already exists in the game; the player models have to be animated to properly sit on them (assuming they even have an attachment point; one may need to be added), they have to properly work with all of the armor and such that already exist, and they have to be switched to the game's shaders. Then, a programmer has to add all of the functions necessary to use the horse; the calling whistle/animation, animation to vault into the saddle, animation to buck the character when combat erupts, code to change movement by mount type, etc.

So yes, I'd expect 3-6 months of development time for each stretch goal for 1-2 programmers, plus 1-3 months for an 3d artist and/or animator. Plus the cost of whatever assets they use from the Unity store, and likely spend time upgrading (as they have done on several purchased assets already).

 

I got a bone to pick with this

 

Glue factory the horses, lets ride the Llamas!

 

I think given what Bubonic does for a living, not to mention over a decade, he can speak to what it actually takes to get this done.

While, of course, it is not as simple as buying a pack and putting it in game, no one ever said that. What was pointed out is that the raw asset, which someone posted would take upwards of 150k+ to produce, is complete crap.

The actual CODING and INTEGRATION can cost more, but I can tell you, from experience, it would not even take a junior programmer 6 months to implement horse/mounts in game, unless they were totally inept.

At which point that is a whole nother matter. But that single cost, which I do know, is around 40k / 6 months of a junior coder to do.

Even if you DOUBLE that number, you still have 3x as much money being asked FOR than is required to DO IT.

The entire price point is put at such a high level as to simply say this:

"IF YOU REALLY REALLY REALLY WANT TO HAVE XYZ FEATURE IN THE GAME NOW!!!!!! PAY US ENOUGH MONEY TO OFFSET THE CURRENT SCHEDULE WE ARE ON TO GET IT DONE!"

It is not anything more than that.

 

1) Horse being built and animated is already covered. A "sitting on horse" animation is not exactly difficult. Getting on the horse will take more time, for sure, but not THAT much more, and most games have them "poof" on the horse anyway.

2) See 1. I'm not really sure if your #2 was a separate point?

3) I may not be a professional game developer, but I have a decent amount of production experience, as well as unity experience. While I may not be able to give an exact estimate of the time required, I'm pretty sure its a lot less than two hundred and fifty thousand dollars' worth.

 

That actually doesn't seem unreasonable though >.>