I’m sold. I’ll buy this as soon as it shows up on GOG.
Really looking forward to this. I didn’t get in on the original kickstarter but I did go in on the Bards Tale at the level that gave me Tides too.
I know. It’s RPG Codex. Still…
I mean, no plan survives contact with the enemy. I imagine game development is much the same. 6 fully featured, fleshed out companions seems like a terrific number to me, and like they said, they can always add more in the DLC that will be free for backers.
As far as one area being smaller in scope and scale and another being larger in the same, I’m not sure why it matters.
RPG Codex is a miserable community.
I didn’t read all the followups, but the first post seemed perfectly reasonable. They promised those things would be in the game. They accepted money for these things. Then they cut them.
If they hadn’t accepted money for these specific features, it would be perfectly fine. They need to direct development resources as effectively as possible. But they did, they did take the money.
I’m not pissed off about it, personally. But there’s a lesson to be learned here.
I’m looking at their campaign which I also looked at when it ran, their stretch goals are pretty darn numerous but so is their ask. They likely reached their top tiers because of those promises. You’d hope they would do their best to reach those. it’s not just a wishlist but a promise to do more if you give more.
If the game is released and does well, maybe they still can and their supporters will forgive them.
The post from the RPG Codex guy is obviously a little nuts and based on an agenda. That said, I don’t think it’s controversial to say that something went hinky with the development of this project. Hopefully, the final product survived what ever happened.
I think complaining about a company not fulfilling a promise is reasonable.
I’ll hold out judgement for the release though. As long as the game has enough content without the promised town i will probably not care much, if at all. Similarly, if they are telling me they cut multiple companions (?) because they wanted to make them deep and have a lot of dialog/ties to the story, they better actually have those things.
I also must admit to wondering on whether inExile pulled a gearbox here (moving resources from game A to game B which is their main focus, hurting game A). We will see soon enough though.
It’s disappointing that met stretch goals have been cut or severely truncated. They should have been more transparent about what they were able to fulfil, especially as they took extra time on the project, with several delays over the years. Still, they do say any updates and expansions will be free for backers, so some of this stuff might make it back in officially or through mods.
I am shocked Italian language was canceled, that couldn’t have cost that much to do.
Lots of unhappy Italian backers on kickstarter, posting in the comments.
It sounds like it would have been extremely ineffective basesd on past IT sales. That’s why they are doing refunds - it’s way cheaper. Though with the number of outraged posts the PR hit isn’t maybe worth it, but who knows. They said they had millions of lines of dialog to translate - far more than the original scope of the game, so they may well be correct. Plus, “the number of outraged posts” is like… 6. Six super angry people on the internet.
I really think all this - the cut features - is very common. I’m not a game developer by any means, but I’ve been following game development long enough to know things get cut all the time. It’s only more transparent now with Kickstarter, but a stretch goal that seemed like a good idea at the time and then needs to get cut in favor to the actual gameplay is no different than a cool idea or game mechanic that “we just couldn’t make it enjoyable or workable so we had to cut it” like you read in a post mortem. The difference is they are more up front about it since they are talking to backers, instead of explaining it in a meeting room to a publisher.
And in inexile’s defense, they are still going to fulfill most of these (companions, codec thing, etc.) just not at launch. I understand people are disappointed, but none of these goals that were being cut seem like a big deal to me. I’d be more miffed if we were losing things like expanded dialog or something, which we are not. The entire game is much bigger and longer in scope and depth thanks to the more successful Kickstarter, you’d think people would be happy about that and trust in the developers to actually get it out the door and in their hands, but of course, Gamers: The Most Entitled Species on the Planet.
EDIT - I’m also being a bit of an apologist because I spun up the EA version last night to check something out and ended up playing it for 6 fucking hours. It’s absolutely amazing, and I really doubt there will be many disappointed fans (or new players).
This is a bit of the reason I’ve backed off on all the crowdfunding campaigns (aside from Deadfire right now). I really don’t like the uncertainty inherent in pre-ordering years in advance and developers don’t have much in the way of consequences if they don’t meet those goals that drove people to pre-order in the first place. I understand the angst, even if I don’t feel it much.
Honestly, I probably wouldn’t have noticed much of the missing content unless I specifically reviewed what was originally planned vs. what’s delivered. Regardless, I’m hoping I enjoy ToN to the extent it pays for the $125 level I pledged at (back when I was KS happy). I don’t care what’s missing from the final product if I love the time I spend with it, and it’s meaty enough on its own merit.
A more level-headed approach to what was cut and what the actual impact might be.
From what I read they made several consecutive stretch goals that got scrapped, not just one. If they had instead said “Gee, here are some features we would like to implement, but we may not have the time and resources to do so before development ends”, it would have been okay.
Anyway, I don’t really care. I’m not a backer, and I haven’t really been impressed with the stuff coming out of Kickstarter so far in general. (The only recent RPG I played that really impressed me was Underrail. The rest were just okay-ish.)
Of this extensive list, three were "tabled’ and one was scrapped. Backers will still get the additional companions, but only after they are more fleshed out and not just to fulfill a bullet point - and for no additional cost than what they already donated. The Codec is coming in a stand alone form. And they adjusted the size and scope of one area down while adjusting the other area up. Crafting is being cut, but it’s being replaced with more and more unique and powerful items in the mid- and late- game, and a very cool system I uncovered in the beta I won’t get into, but I feel it’s vastly more interesting and rewarding than crafting.
The remaining more than 25 extras, including new areas, expanded dialog, additional companions (it was only 4 originally), a longer game in general, expanded reactivity and depth, all that good stuff is still in the game.
There are a surprising number of people that have an opinion on this and then follow it up with “I don’t really care” which is fine, just interesting, I think.
Honestly, I find these changes to be encouraging, not a put off. One thing that concerned me when all these games were being kickstarted a few years ago is the way in which features were being put on as stretch goals. Anyone who has worked on a big project like a game knows that features are in flux and change over the course of a project based on the circumstances faced during development and feedback based on working prototypes. It seemed to me at the time that adhering to rigid bullet points promised in a kickstarter campaign would hamper that organic process. It’s actually nice to see that didn’t happen here. Not to a great extent. Though I’m sure it lead to a lot of heartburn and gnashing of teeth and resistance before calls were made.
Hopefully the end product will be excellent.
It may well lead to a better end product-- I don’t think anyone is seriously debating that.
The fact of the matter is that people are paying for stretch goals. They’re promises. Don’t make promises unless you’re positive you can keep them.
I only managed to get to page 4 of that Codex thread (yikes!), but there seem to be some more issues than you mentioned:
- Party size reduced from 6 to 4. I played Divinity: Original Sin and the Shadowrun Returns series, and in both cases the lower number of characters was frustrating. It was like having a hand tied behind your back, or missing an important tool you need. (Probably related to #3.)
- Some type of Goo character. Not really important, but sounded cool.
- Being designed for consoles simultaneously as for PCs. Not sure what effect this has in this case, but KOTORs had really lame combat. Other games have had weird cumbersome interfaces. I imagine it’s like playing chess with tongs and oven mitts.
- Some aspect of the Cypher System, whatever that is.
- Maybe others?
I agree the end result is what is important, but crowd-funding hasn’t produced a real “classic” yet, and I think the above is an example of that.
Party size should have never been more than 4 - that would have been way too much going on. This feels much better. As for a Goo character, I addressed that - it’s coming later and free for backers, when they can put more into it and other companions that need more depth to be up to snuff with what they put into the existing companions.
Console design is not affecting PC design, which was done first. Not related to KOTOR at all, either. If you don’t like the interface or UI on console, you wouldn’t have liked it on PC either - they look just about, if not, identical.
Nothing else? EDIT - Oh, Cypher System? I haven’t an idea what aspects they aren’t adapting from the pen and paper, but I’m not too worried. In the game, Cypher’s are powerful one-shot items you can have at the ready but only a few ready to go (equipped) at a time without penalty (more as you level up and upgrade a skill, I think?). They seem awesome, and varied, from what little I experienced.
And I disagree about crowd funding not producing a classic yet, but to each his own. I suppose it depends on what your expectations are.