Well, no different conceptually the co-op PvE card games like the Lord of the Rings living card game.
Or the campaigns of e.g. the old Microprose Magic the Gathering game, Spectromancer, the Duels of the Planeswalkers games, etc etc. I would hope Hex’s PvE content will be more elaborate and involving than the latter’s pretty straightforward series of deck challenges, but it sounds like it.
Also, I was resisting backing because I hate the TCG model, and I really really didn’t want to be getting involved in one that was also trying to be an MMO and…all sorts of “do not want” flags were firing. And then I actually investigated and I was lost. I was even a little tempted by the $250 packages, although I didn’t fall quite that hard. That’s just not an amount of money I’m prepared to spend on anything that’s not furniture or hardware.
Oooh, I’d forgotten about the Microsprose Magic game. Sid Meier helped with the strategic game overlay. I lost a lot of hours to that one.
The Microprose Magic is still the best computer verison of the game.
Take a look at this:
Trying to start a new scifi tv series by David Gerrold ( he wrote the tribbles episode on Star Trek).
Looks like an animated CGI series.
So he’s selling the series on his proven writing talent and the trailer starts with the line “Listen up, bad guys!” Um, yeah.
(Also, “Star Wolves?” Ugh. Horrid title.)
I’ve read a decent amount of Gerrold. He’s no Asimov. He’s not even a pre-nutjob Card. It’s entertaining stuff, but it won’t be the Ultimate SF TV Show.
Not that they’re going to come anywhere near getting it funded at this rate, anyway.
(God, I hate it when I sound like a forum cynic. But this project just doesn’t look viable or particularly good.)
Gerrold has a lot more to his credit than “the Trouble with Tribbles.” Though that is relevant to The Star Wolf, since if I remember correctly, that started as a Star Trek script that he changed to his own setting because what he had was inappropriate for the show. I may be confusing that with another story, though.
Those concept sketches for costumes sure are awful, though. One of those guys looks like he’s wearing a 40’s undershirt.
He never did finish the Cthorr books, did he? Makes me wonder if he can sustain a TV series. Leaving a major work unfinished seems so… unprofessional. If he’s going to dredge up his old work, I’d rather see The Man Who Folded Himself.
Sometimes being a forum cynic is only rational. But hell, I’m always a forum cynic, so don’t listen to me.
I doubt this will fund but if it does maybe they can draw some fruit of the looms for that one character. ;)
I did not like their ship designs either.
I found this by accident and remember reading at least one of the star wolves books though I cannot remember the story. I did not realize he has written the “tribbles” episode.
i was excited to see Road Redemption get funded the other day. Its been too long since we had a new Road Rash.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/darkseasgames/road-redemption
Hex has blown past its target and has put up the first batch of stretch goals. They’re already about to hit #3.
That video was awesome. Ok, I have one major concern and that is the standard IAP as developers are using them nowadays. It’s no longer about the game, but about how to take advantage of the players mind to get him to hit the purchase button. I’m seeing slot machines where there’s are buttons to spend up to $1,000 for virtual coins to kep playing. It’s sickening as the entire balance is set, based not on the game but on when the dev’s feel they can effectively trigger that sale. So simple games end up costing hundreds of dollars instead of a normal price.
This leads me to the gems… those look like items that may be sold, and the auction house, which billiard has shown in Diablo 3 leads to all kinds of issues and problems. If this game is going to focus on the auction house instead of the actual game… Then we run into areas where scarcity and balance are tuned for that instead of the core gameplay.
The ideas for the game sound fantastic, but so far I’ve found every game that had IAP for anything outside of more campaigns or content to be bad because it’s no longer about the gameplay experience, but getting the extra sale.
But… Game sounds and looks amazing! Can you comment on where y guys stand on the above?
Well I decided to back hex. The last two update videos (one with Chris too) really put it over the top for me. Can’t wait to start playing now.
They’ve stated that the gems are always freely available. Once you find a card that has a socket, you can pick which one of 10 or 20 effects to apply without having to track down the gem somewhere.
As for the rest… well it’s a TCG, so if you want to do PvP you’ll probably have to buy some packs, though even then there are typically some deck archetypes that can be competitive using mostly commons and uncommons without spending much money.
For the PvE content, they’ve said that you can get through everything without spending money. Obviously spending might make it easier or quicker, but I feel like being a TCG inherently limits how much they could use in the way of artificial difficulty spikes. In a typical F2P game, it’s easy to tune things so that regardless of skill, you need to buy in to pass something, but in a TCG, a really well-tuned deck full of commons should be more effective than a poorly-tuned on with expensive cards.
And at this point, there have been enough examples of games that use the F2P model without being abusive about it that I’m not too worried.
Yeah, gems are free. The only thing we’re actually selling you is booster packs, and that’s a pretty tried-and-true model. We don’t have stamina, grinds, or pay-to-win style of mechanics. It’s totally comparable to a standard TCG model.
So does this mean there’s also no pay-to-unlock skins/cosmetics, alternate art cards, sleeves, XP boosts,additional character slots, etc.? If it really is just packs, tournament entry fees, and nothing else ever, that’s even better than the “good-F2P” I was expecting.
Which is plenty bad in itself. Painful confession time: I went out of control with playing draft in MTGO, and I ended up spending, no joke, $900 on the game. You know those stories about “whales” pulled in by the predatory Free To Play games? That was me for Magic. And it’s hardly uncommon, I suspect the median is well over $200. You don’t buy a couple of starter decks and stop.
The basic gameplay in that video is straight Magic with only a few name changes. It’s such a direct copy that I wouldn’t be surprised if WotC tried to sue them. Magic has its warts for me, mainly centered around the nature of the meta-game, and how to be competitive, you really had to have 4 copies of certain rares, depending on the current generation of cards. That, and it seemed like you had a very few top-notch players creating killer deck concepts, and everyone else copying those few decks because their own deck ideas would lose to someone who copied a top-notch deck, provided they paid for the required cards.
That’s why I liked drafting so much better than the other formats. You couldn’t copy someone else’s deck concept, you had to work with the cards available, and my own brainstorms might actually work in that limited arena. Draft was better than other sealed deck formats, because you all drew from a single, large pool of cards. Everyone had more or less the same chance at the cards, instead of it being a crapshoot where you hoped the rares / uncommons in your booster packs were the good ones, and that you’d find cards that would work together. Building theme / combination decks was much more workable in draft because you could pick and choose from a much, much larger pool, provided you didn’t overlap too much with the desires of other players. Of course, the downside to Draft was you were opening a new set of boosters every friggin’ game, which got expensive fast.
What might make Hex work for me is that you’re competing against autonomous AI decks, not other players. You don’t have to copy the top-tier decks to do that, you just have to make a deck that works. Which reminds me of the old Microprose version of Magic, which was about wandering around in a strategic layer, fighting opponents that had specific decks.
The stuff with permanently boosting your cards with equipment and gems would be awful if I were focused on playing other humans, since it takes a common complaint about Magic, rares are usually flat-out better cards than commons, and squares it. Your copy of card X is stronger than my copy because you pumped it up. That mechanic works if I’m competing against the AI, though, since “fairness” doesn’t enter into it.
The equipment is only in the “PvE” (i.e. vs AI) part of the game.
I don’t think we know for sure yet, but it does look that way. They mentioned that “foil” versions and alternate card art are things you get by getting achievements and cards gaining XP.
Ah, OK. That wasn’t clear.