Playing other Kickstarter funded games makes me nervous

[Death Machine Miyagi]

I've only played two of the really big, successful ones now: Shadowrun Returns and Broken Age. But despite the two of them making many times what they sought, the feel is much the same. They were made on a strict budget.

 

They're both quite short. They're both fairly linear, though Broken Age much, much less so than the relentless feel of being on railroad tracks in Shadowrun Returns. Options and choices are largely simplified compared to the games they're paying homage to. I enjoyed both for what they were, but I left both feeling that the developers were trying to do the best they could with what was, in game industry terms, not a lot of money. The fact Broken Age was split into two parts precisely because they shot over budget only reinforces that.

 

So now we come to Pillars of Eternity, which also made what seems at first to be a pretty large sum of money. The intention is to create two huge cities, an enormous multi-level dungeon, lots and lots of class and races choices, and a variety of other such claims that indicate a game aiming to be set on an epic scale ala Baldur's Gate.  

 

Yet their budget isn't all that much bigger than the Broken Age budget, the first released installment of which I completed in about three and a half hours. That makes me uneasy. Am I alone on that? 

[ZornWO]

I am very worried, especially after I heard Josh Sawyer's talk here that mentioned that making the areas took much more work than they expected.  Plus, I haven't heard anything at all that would address my biggest fear, which is that the spell system won't be sufficiently elaborate to be worth studying for as long as BG2's spell system was.  Plus plus, I'm naturally a pessimistic sad panda.

[rjshae]

What good will worrying do about it? They already have the development money so they either achieve the goal or they don't.

[Sir Chaox]

I think Obsidian will get things done and do it right, but there will be a definite delay (unfair to hold them accountable for a date they were forced to place before pre-production really began).

 

Also, Wasteland 2 looks to be shaping up quite nicely. I heard some iffy things about it (combat too simple, for one), but inXile came back around and laid my fears to rest in their last update. I guess not all the features are in yet, so it cannot be judged fully, but it looks great so far, and sounds like great additions will be coming to beta players soon.

 

I got Broken Age, but haven't played it yet. All I'm hoping for is a game as good as Grim Fandango or Full Throttle or Monkey Island... Great story, memorable characters, great puzzles.

Edited January 16, 2014 by Sir Chaox

[Death Machine Miyagi]

What good will worrying do about it? They already have the development money so they either achieve the goal or they don't.

 

At least in my case, the benefit is managed expectations. I've now had a couple of demonstrations of what game projects that made millions can do with that kind of money after all the Kickstarter rewards and such have been shipped and the actual money they can use for the game is left. That means, while I might hope for something epic in scale, I'm not going to be shocked if the developers are forced to settle on something a little less than that.

 

And I can handle it if that ends up the case, as long as the game is good. I kinda liked Shadowrun Returns and thought Broken Age was great fun. They were just, as I say, a bit short and linear.

 

I don't know. Perhaps Obsidian can do more with what they have.

[Death Machine Miyagi]

I think Obsidian will get things done and do it right, but there will be a definite delay (unfair to hold them accountable for a date they were forced to place before pre-production really began).

 

Also, Wasteland 2 looks to be shaping up quite nicely. I heard some iffy things about it (combat too simple, for one), but inXile came back around and laid me fears to rest in their last update. I guess not all the features are in yet, so it cannot be judged fully, but it looks great so far, and sounds like great additions will be coming to beta players soon.

 

I got Broken Age, but haven't played it yet. All I'm hoping for is a game as good as Grim Fandango or Full Throttle or Monkey Island... Great story, memorable characters, great puzzles.

 

Broken Age has the great story and memorable characters, for certain, but the puzzles are (mostly) pretty straightforward, particularly for the veteran adventure gamer. Definitely not bad mouthing it and I'm planning on playing it again soon.

[Sir Chaox]

 

I think Obsidian will get things done and do it right, but there will be a definite delay (unfair to hold them accountable for a date they were forced to place before pre-production really began).

 

Also, Wasteland 2 looks to be shaping up quite nicely. I heard some iffy things about it (combat too simple, for one), but inXile came back around and laid me fears to rest in their last update. I guess not all the features are in yet, so it cannot be judged fully, but it looks great so far, and sounds like great additions will be coming to beta players soon.

 

I got Broken Age, but haven't played it yet. All I'm hoping for is a game as good as Grim Fandango or Full Throttle or Monkey Island... Great story, memorable characters, great puzzles.

 

Broken Age has the great story and memorable characters, for certain, but the puzzles are (mostly) pretty straightforward, particularly for the veteran adventure gamer. Definitely not bad mouthing it and I'm planning on playing it again soon.

 

 

Urg, well I'll have to give it a shot soon. Bad puzzles can turn an adventure game into an interactive movie. I'm looking at you, Dreamfall.

[LadyCrimson]

I wasn't ever expecting mega-epic in breadth or length to begin with, although I was/am hoping for a game that would take me (a slow-poke) 20-25 hours first-playthru at least. So I suppose for many others that might mean only 12-18.

 

My hopes rest more upon that quality/the world and various options are such that I want to replay the game more than once, as opposed to many games these days where I play it and go "that was some fun" and then never fire it up again.

 

It's pretty rare I rack up countless hours on a video game because the official campaign is really that long...it's more that I rack up hours via replays and endless tinkering of...whatever it is that interests me.

 

Btw, I didn't find BG1 to be all that long, either ... main campaign wise. I think I spent most of the time on non-quest things + trying to get every map to have as little "black" left on it as possible.

[Metabot]

FTL

 

BAZINGA! More seriously, I think that Shadowrun Returns was decent, but yes short and linear. Hopefully Dragonfall is better. Banner Saga seems to have turned out ok. As for Broken Age, that looks terrible to me. I think PoE is turning out incredibly well and will be the highest quality release from kickstarter so far. People complaining about them seeking additional funding really make me angry in this light.

[malolis]

In my opinion, Shadowrun Returns was a very poor game. There was so little depth and scope that I felt bored after about 2 hours in. While the plot and setting were interesting, they didn't make up for the lack of solid content.

 

I think that if that game did not have the Shadowrun name attached to it, it would have been criticised much more harshly. I really hope PoE does not turn out that way.

[Death Machine Miyagi]

 

Urg, well I'll have to give it a shot soon. Bad puzzles can turn an adventure game into an interactive movie. I'm looking at you, Dreamfall.

 

 

Not to worry, I don't think it reaches that extreme. But there was a never any time where I was so baffled that I felt the need to wander every screen rubbing every object I had against every clickable object in the game world, as I remember doing in the Monkey Island days. 

[Marceror]

I wasn't ever expecting mega-epic in breadth or length to begin with, although I was/am hoping for a game that would take me (a slow-poke) 20-25 hours first-playthru at least. So I suppose for many others that might mean only 12-18.My hopes rest more upon that quality/the world and various options are such that I want to replay the game more than once, as opposed to many games these days where I play it and go "that was some fun" and then never fire it up again.It's pretty rare I rack up countless hours on a video game because the official campaign is really that long...it's more that I rack up hours via replays and endless tinkering of...whatever it is that interests me.Btw, I didn't find BG1 to be all that long, either ... main campaign wise. I think I spent most of the time on non-quest things + trying to get every map to have as little "black" left on it as possible.

I'm hoping the game will end up with a good 40 - 50 hours of gameplay what with all those "the game gets bigger" stretch goals we hit. If the mega cities are done right there should be a ton of content that can reuse a lot of the same areas. Not everything needs to have new areas to support it, and not everything requires voice acting. If BG2 is 80 hours, I would love to see at least around half that. I may be dreaming.

 

Glad to know I'm not the only person who tries to remove as much black as humanly possible from the IE maps!

[LadyCrimson]

I'm hoping the game will end up with a good 40 - 50 hours of gameplay what with all those "the game gets bigger" stretch goals we hit. If the mega cities are done right there should be a ton of content that can reuse a lot of the same areas. Not everything needs to have new areas to support it, and not everything requires voice acting. If BG2 is 80 hours, I would love to see at least around half that. I may be dreaming.

 

Glad to know I'm not the only person who tries to remove as much black as humanly possible from the IE maps!

Yeah...when I say 20-25 hours I do mean the main campaign + side quests, perhaps. But not including the mega-dungeon. Unless each level of the dungeon only has a couple of encounters, I expect that to add some hours to my total.

 

If it's higher than I'm expecting, say 30-40 hrs, awesome. I'm so far content with two major city hubs.

 

The only thing that would seriously disappoint me is if the entire game felt linear travel-quest-wise - and by that I mean more like some arpg's, ala Dungeon Siege 1's single-player campaign. Follow the yellow brick road forward and nothing but. That's fine in a loot/action game but would be not desirable in this style of game. But I don't expect Obsidian to disappoint me in that regard.

[Velerion]

I'm hoping the game will end up with a good 40 - 50 hours of gameplay what with all those "the game gets bigger" stretch goals we hit. If the mega cities are done right there should be a ton of content that can reuse a lot of the same areas. Not everything needs to have new areas to support it, and not everything requires voice acting. If BG2 is 80 hours, I would love to see at least around half that. I may be dreaming.

Glad to know I'm not the only person who tries to remove as much black as humanly possible from the IE maps!

 

 

This is what i hope too: Think about Baldur's Gate 2: The city was really big, on relatively small room. It had hidden rooms, some stairs, a sever and so on on relatively small room. This could be done in Pillars too: On one day there is a market in the city where a lot of things get selled: from food to weapons to various other interresting things (think that you buy a pendant and then a questline starts); on the other day (at night) you get attacked by thieves. Same room, completely different story.

 

Also shouldn't Pillars of Eternity be moddable like they said it on the News (because this is one of my personal points that i pledged to it)? If yes, it should be possible to add unlimited of content; simply think of Skyrim: there are so  Mods that are even better than the game itself: This does not mean that Obsidian will not do a good job (for example: the story of Fallout: NV was better than FO3), but there are always excellent modders. So i really hope that it will be so.

[Karine]

Removing the fog of war from IE maps is part of the fun!

 

I admit I worry about how the game will turn out too, but I like to remain optimistic. I honestly think everything we've seen of PoE from the updates looks great so far. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a game with a decent length that is fun to play at least, and I do think Obsidian has enough experience under their belt to deliver that. And yeah, non-linearity is a must, but I think with all the planned wilderness areas it's going to be fine.

 

I haven't played Shadowrun Returns and Broken Age so I can't comment on those, but I did play one kickstarted game named Expeditions: Conquistador, that had a small budget in comparison ($77,247) and I thought it was pretty good.

[Pshaw]

Like Metabot has already said FTL, there a kickstarter success story if ever there was one.

Also while I find myself enjoying hearthstone a bit more than SolForge considering my time played in Solfore is at over 100 hours while it's still in Beta that's a success in my book any day.

Banner saga seems amazing, though I admit that I haven't played it just yet. I was too broke to back it when it was being kickstarted.

Shadowrun returns wasn't amazing. That said while I never backed it personally I never got the impression that the packaged campaign was never really intended to be the main product. Rather that it was always intended to be driven by community content and the campaign was merely giving you examples of what you could do. Even then they got some things right that I would love to see in future crpgs. Such as the temporary NPCs that only join you for missions that they personally care about. Far more realistic than the typical rpg of, 'oh you helped me with this one thing? The world will end if you fail? Well I suppose I best tag along with you even if you do things that constantly conflict with my personal morals and beliefs!'

So I guess what I'm trying to say is that there is hope for PoE and even if it doesn't live up to every expectation I'll be glad for what we do get which would have been better than the nothing we would have gotten otherwise. Beyond my own enjoyment what I really want from PoE and Wasteland2 is success, hopefully success big enough that we will continue to get plenty of good crpgs in the future both from kickstarter, indie developers, and yes even publisher backed big time AAA studios.

Edited January 16, 2014 by Pshaw

[Hurlshort]

I have the opposite experience, all the Kickstarter projects I've played have done nothing but reinforce my hopes and expectations.  But I don't expect AAA titles from Kickstarter, I expect games that embrace different styles of gameplay and tell less traditional stories.  I expect games that let me reminisce about the classics while enjoying newer graphics and and modern UI's.  

 

I've gotten that out of Shadowrun Returns, FTL, Banner Sage, Expeditions: Conquistador...I think I might have forgotten a few, but you get the point.

[Lephys]

I'm not sure, but I think between the larger pool of funds PoE has and Josh's ultra-emphasis on pre-production, I have a feeling PoE is more efficiently transitioning into Unity, and getting all their stuff built/made like they want it to, than some previous games.

 

Like, in Shadowrun: Returns, it's my understanding that they wanted to do a lot of the stuff they're adding in with Dragonfall (the functional stuff, not just expanded content) in the initial release, but things were a lot trickier than they thought. Now, I realize that there's only so much you can get ironed out before you actually start production, but, as I said, I think PoE has an edge from both more funding AND Josh Sawyer. 8P

 

Seems like a lot more of the technical aspects of PoE were figured out before they started making them, as I've not heard a lot about "Oh, we were halfway through the dialogue system, but we couldn't figure out how to put in this thing that's one of the core features of the dialogue system in our initial design document, so we might just hafta do without it"-type situations. I dunno, maybe they're just keeping them all secret?

[Ink Blot]

I wasn't ever expecting mega-epic in breadth or length to begin with, although I was/am hoping for a game that would take me (a slow-poke) 20-25 hours first-playthru at least. So I suppose for many others that might mean only 12-18.

 

My hopes rest more upon that quality/the world and various options are such that I want to replay the game more than once, as opposed to many games these days where I play it and go "that was some fun" and then never fire it up again.

 

It's pretty rare I rack up countless hours on a video game because the official campaign is really that long...it's more that I rack up hours via replays and endless tinkering of...whatever it is that interests me.

 

Btw, I didn't find BG1 to be all that long, either ... main campaign wise. I think I spent most of the time on non-quest things + trying to get every map to have as little "black" left on it as possible.

Pretty much my thoughts exactly, although I'm apparently incredibly slow at playing (took me 87 hours to go through DA:O the first time, while many players were saying they finished in 25 or so. Still don't know how they did that).

 

Oddly, my confidence in a good, long, meaty game will be boosted if Obsidian delays the game by several months. Anyone else feel that way as well?

[Nonek]

I would pick up Expeditions: Conquistador if I were you Mr Miyagi, I believe the funding lay around the eighty thousand mark and the game they've made is absolutely stunning, somewhat like King of Dragon Pass in implementation. I was very satisfied with it, though obviously opinions vary.

[Reever]

The scope isn't that important for me, to be honest, as long as the story, reactivity and characters are done great! Of course, I'd love to be able to play 40+, but as I said, those other things come first for me.

 

And to be honest, Obsidian should know how to make RPGs and how many resources they need. I agree that Kickstarter rewards are something new and they're also a drain on resources, but I'd be a bit disappointed if a team developers add stretch goal after stretch goal without being sure if the money is sufficient only for the rudimentary parts (I'm exaggerating a bit now..).

 

And what Nonek said is right, heard only good things about Expeditions: Conquistador. Will get that one at some point, too.

[lolaldanee]

I have the opposite experience, all the Kickstarter projects I've played have done nothing but reinforce my hopes and expectations.  But I don't expect AAA titles from Kickstarter, I expect games that embrace different styles of gameplay and tell less traditional stories.  I expect games that let me reminisce about the classics while enjoying newer graphics and and modern UI's.  

 

I've gotten that out of Shadowrun Returns, FTL, Banner Sage, Expeditions: Conquistador...I think I might have forgotten a few, but you get the point.

same here, with exactly the same games too

to me, kickstarter already has proven to be a very valuable source of interesting games

 

just keep your expectations to a realistic level, people

even if PE should turn out to be only one third as long as BG2, that's still an enormous game, and maybe better for it, more focus on core elements can be a good thing

and from the updates so far i'm having the impression that they are doing very well, much more so than many other kickstarters did at this point of time in development

 

also remember: this game is being made by the guys that created torment, the icewind dales, the fallouts, alpha protocol, mask of the betrayer, bloodlines

they are the best of the best at what they do, if they can't do it, noone can

i'm absolutely certain this game is NOT going to be lacking choice and suffer from too much linearity

it just isn't

Edited January 17, 2014 by lolaldanee

[Darth Trethon]

They were both shams......Shadowrun Returns had the DRM scandal when they intended to pull some shady shenanigans on their backers and turn all the DLC the backers funded ass stretch goals for a DRM-free game into content only to be sold via Steam, essentially cheating everyone and forcing everyone to start worshiping DRM.

 

And all there has to be said about Broken Age is "Tim Schafer".....that should require no explanation and should instantly kill all expectations for that game. The dude grossly miss-managed 800%+ funding and decided to only make half a game in hopes it would make enough overblown profits for him to miss-manage in order to create the second half....and then he was trolling and insulting backers who were upset at the fact that now the second half of the game may never see the light of day and all the backer funds will end up as wasted on a crappy half game.

 

I had a bad feeling about both of those shams from the start, I just didn't feel like they deserved to be trusted with money, I was right and I am proud to say neither will ever see a cent from me.

Edited January 17, 2014 by Darth Trethon

[Greensleeve]

They were both shams......Shadowrun Returns had the DRM scandal when they intended to pull some shady shenanigans on their backers and turn all the DLC the backers funded ass stretch goals for a DRM-free game into content only to be sold via Steam, essentially cheating everyone and forcing everyone to start worshiping DRM.

 

And all there has to be said about Broken Age is "Tim Schafer".....that should require no explanation and should instantly kill all expectations for that game. The dude grossly miss-managed 800%+ funding and decided to only make half a game in hopes it would make enough overblown profits for him to miss-manage in order to create the second half....and then he was trolling and insulting backers who were upset at the fact that now the second half of the game may never see the light of day and all the backer funds will end up as wasted on a crappy half game.

 

I had a bad feeling about both of those shams from the start, I just didn't feel like they deserved to be trusted with money, I was right and I am proud to say neither will ever see a cent from me.

 

...  wow...

[Lephys]

Erm... All a kickstarter does is declare what someone is raising money to try to do.

 

It is a guarantee of nothing beyond an attempt. It's not as if Hare-Brained Schemes just woke up one morning and said, "Hmm... you know what? WE SHOULD PUT IN DRM, EVEN THOUGH WE SAID WE DIDN'T WANT TO! LOLZ!". And it's not as if Tim Schafer said "Hehehe, I really need like 1,000% of my funding goal, to do what I need to do, but I'm INTENTIONALLY going to pretend like 800% is plenty, and that the game will just be a lot better than it would at 100%."

 

If you wanna judge their shortcomings, then that's fair. But, calling them "shams" isn't really accomplishing anything at all.