Lorini
1863
Supposing if Kotick of Activision made Blizzard release Diablo 3 6 months ago. Would that be Blizzard’s fault or Activisions? How can the developer possibly be at fault if the publisher (who owns the copyright to the code) publishes it anyway?
Now if what you guys are saying is that they mis-managed the project and gave Paradox wrong information about the state of the game, then sure, it’s Kerberos’s fault for lying. But I have not seen that substantiated by either Kerberos or Paradox. A lot of people believe it but that doesn’t make it true.
I’m not sure what you’re getting at: Activision and Blizzard are one company.
It seems to me that you hold the developer only responsible for finishing up at some time, whatever that may be. I think as professionals and a company, a developer needs to do more than that.
If you’re saying that ultimately, the consumer’s direct recourse is with the publisher, I agree with that. I’m not saying Paradox didn’t fuck up. What’s clear to me is that Kerebos are fuck ups, too. You seem to dispute the second, greatly.
Lorini
1865
What I’m saying is that Paradox has to be held responsible for the release. They had to have played the game and seen the state it was in but they chose to release it anyway and then had the nerve to talk about how ‘great’ it was on their website. They knew it was shit and they released it anyway. Yes, they are the publishers, they are responsible for the release of the game. The developers are responsible for the state of the game at any given point, sure, but they aren’t responsible for RELEASING the game in that state.
I don’t care about games that haven’t been released that are in an alpha state, nor do I think many other people care. Guild Wars 2 may be in an alpha or beta state right now, but I don’t care because the publisher hasn’t released the game. Now if their publisher turns around and forces a release that they know they aren’t ready for, why would it be the developers fault?
I’m still not seeing this. There must be some information I’m missing.
KevinC
1866
Kerberos contracted with Paradox to have the game complete at a certain point. The original release date was August, then September, at which point I recall a post by Mecron saying he begged Paradox for a beta extension which pushed the release in October and that was the absolute latest the release could go.
What I don’t know is what exactly the relationship between Paradox and Kerberos was. Was Paradox funding the title or were they only handling distribution and advertisement? Mecron has posted in vague terms that, due to the overall economic situation, funding had dried up. It was also mentioned that they had been working without two programmers for a good part of the year, which may have been what led them to be woefully far behind schedule (keeping in mind the small size of the studio).
In either case, the buck ultimately stops with Paradox for me. They put their name on it, they distributed it, and they took money for a product that wasn’t even to a Beta state yet. Maybe there were no good choices, but they have to share the blame.
They certainly have to share the blame. In fact, I see them as both being causally to blame, as I mentioned above.
The disagreement I have with Lorini is absolving Kerberos of blame.
You don’t know that’s what happened. It’s also possible that Kerberos claimed “yeah, we’re a week out. Everything’s great. We’ll do a launch day patch.” and Paradox didn’t do enough verification of the truth of the claim.
Looking at the complete failure of Kerberos to regression test, and their consistent post-release underestimation of how much work remains, it seems like good money’s on Kerberos not having their shit together. Paradox gave them delays and they didn’t manage to scale back and wrap up.
Paradox didn’t cancel the project and let Kerberos ship an unfinished game. That’s the only reason Kerberos is still in business. Was that a mistake? Probably. Should they have given Kerberos yet more money to be unable to finish the game? I don’t see why that would have been a good idea.
You’re crazy if you think the resulting public black eye didn’t burn bridges. Unless there’s a pre-existing contract, I can’t imagine Paradox would ever want to publish another Kerberos game.
KevinC
1870
Nice patch notes! With indies in now what are the remaining missing features?
Lorini
1871
So Paradox did no testing themselves (despite being a developer themselves) to see the state of the game?
Keep in mind that Paradox has already said this was their fault. But you guys magically know better. OK.
Espionage, morale, some scenarios, and … is that it? (of course, there’s a good deal of balancing and bug fixing left, I’m sure, and I know someone mentioned an overhaul of the economy system)
When a game’s this unfinished? The management on both sides are allways to blame. (And occasionally a lead developer who was supposed to and didn’t stop feature creep)
What he’s admitted wasn’t that it was their fault, but that it was a mistake. Not the same thing.
To be fair, that’s not to say his claim is accurate or not, but that was indeed his claim and saying otherwise is simply inaccurate.
And there’s a nearly identical quote from Kerberos. Go back an look at their early communication.
Paradox had three choices: release it and trust Kerberos could have it ready, cut off funding and bankrupt Kerberos, or continue to pour money into a pit. Reading between the lines of the late October Kerberos posts, it sounds like the yanked some stuff right before launch and ended up with a “blown apart” code base. I expect the version Kerberos showed Paradox wasn’t the same as the version the did some major refactor attempt on. Whatever change control they were using was so messed up that they apparently put the wrong version on steam.
Did Paradox screw up by not pulling the plug on Kerberos? Apparently.
You seem to think I’m excusing Kerberos. I’m not, nor have I ever.
Two different things there.
First, if you yank systems and it breaks the game, then QA are supposed to notice this. Publisher QA. This could be what screwed Paradox, but the problems were too systematic for me to believe this is a major factor.
Second, if you put the wrong version up, you then fix this with the right version. Max…a few days. It’s happened at least once to another game and it was fixed in hours. Can’t remember which game, offhand…
Well there’s a list of victory conditions in the game currently:
[ul]
[li]Last Side Standing
[/li][li]Last Capital Standing
[/li][li]Star Chambers
[/li][li]Gem Worlds
[/li][li]Provinces
[/li][li]Leviathans
[/li][li]Land Grab
[/li][/ul]
And scenarios will have unique win conditions.
Yes, but you can only have one active at a time. I’d like to be going for an elimination victory while my opponent is trying to build all the star chambers.
But first, I’d like to see the AI play a decent conquest game. Multiple victory conditions is not a pressing issue, I just wondered if they had plans for it.
Anyone have a recent video of space combat? I might pick it up cheap , just to see some space pew pew.
I don’t have a video, but the pew pew is pretty good. The last time I played was admittedly a few patches back and the AI was not quite up to par. However, the graphics have always been quite nice. Some of the ships are practically works of art (as opposed to “art assets”). From what I’ve gathered, it’s shaping up very well.
It should be noted that much of the game is not spent in combat. You’ve got expansion, economy, research, diplomacy, etc… Of course, you can declare war on someone whenever you want.
lordkosc: Decent video here. Some late game mega-ships here. (Neither by me).
I picked the game up during the sale, not knowing much other than it was broken but maybe promising, and I’ve played for an enjoyable two hours. There’s a bunch of confusing stuff, and I’m not positive some basic design decisions are sound, and no amount of fixing will make the game worthwhile without decent AI–but if you want to build fleets, push them around a starmap, colonize worlds, and fight disgusting space monsters, it’s a good time. I don’t regret my purchase.
EDIT: Protip: bring your own music. The default 30-second looping clip sounds like someone left the toilet running four floors up.
