Is it just me or combat is really tedious?

[IndiraLightfoot]

Who'd keep the bad parts? They'll glean through all kinds of feedback. We are but one source. They have QA teams, and the devs obviously improve the game as they go along. Keep the suggestions coming, folks. It's what these forums are for.

[morhilane]

 

"Listen to your community, but be aggressive in your triage and remember that game development requires enlightened despotism, not democracy. Communities are diverse and as such you’ll get conflicting opinions. You need a strong core vision to guide you through their feedback, and you need to stick to that vision, no matter how vocal they become. But you do need to listen and recognize the underlying causes of problems being reported. Often communities will complain about the symptoms of something that’s wrong and it’s not always easy to discover what the root cause is. 

 

Also remember that the vocal minority does not represent the majority, no matter how hard their claims. The majority doesn’t have time to write thousands of posts. And if you encounter some uncivilized people on a forum,  ignore them. They’re not worth the emotional stress they may cause. You wouldn’t deal with them in real life either."

 

- Wise words from Swen Vincke @ Larian Studios, which I feel are quite appropriate for this and some other topics here.

 

This is hilarious as he just posted on his blog this:

 

The release of D: OS was one big crunch period with all the good and bad that come with it. If the game ultimately did well, it’s because of the outstanding performance of the team when “the going got tough and the tough got going”.

A lot of the crunch was caused by our decision to listen to the feedback we received through our Kickstarter and Steam Early Access communities. While it often was tough to read through all of the criticism, it was clear that integrating the best parts of the feedback would be well worth the effort and improve the game massively. We didn’t hesitate for a minute.

 

 

 

That doesn't contradict the first part you know.

[Arsene Lupin]

Swen flatly stated that he will no longer use this method of fundraising! I can't really blame him because I understand he must have felt constantly pulled in different directions by the community. However, he has carefully listened to the feedback to the point of almost completely overhauling the gameplay so close to the release. There are no reason to expect anything less from Obsidian.

 

You are completely misrepresenting him.

 

 

As I mentioned in this interview, the current thinking is that we shouldn’t go back to Kickstarter. That’s not because we’re ungrateful of the support we received through our Kickstarter community or because all those rewards caused a bit of extra work, but because I think the crowdfunding pool is limited and it should be fished in by those who really need it. Since we now can, I think we should first invest ourselves and then see if we need extra funds to fuel our ambitions. Only then it makes sense to look at crowd funding. I know several of our backers will be displeased by this, so it could be that we still change our minds, but if that is the case, I do think the the format we’ll use or the way we’ll do it will be different than how we did it for Divinity: Original Sin. (Update: I forgot to mention in the original version of this post that we will be looking at ways of engaging our community sooner in development, but haven’t made any decisions on this)

 

The plan was never for Larian to use KS for every single game. The plan was always to use the funds to develop a solid engine, which they could then use to quickly produce subsequent games using their own money + profits from D:OS and D:DC. Now that they have the engine built, the cost for subsequent titles should be much, much, much less. Crowdfunding is too unreliable to ever be useful as a primary financial model. In fact, many KS developers have stated that they view their initial successes as little more than "proof" that their ideas are viable, which can then be used to help arcue publisher support for future titles.

 

Larian's development of D:OS is, I think, a model for the crowdfunded games to follow. It was a very open development process, which worked to the enormous benefit of both gamers and developers. Who would have thought? Actually communicating with your target audience to learn what they like or don't like instead of dictating that to them is a more reliable approach.

[PrimeJunta]

I don't think the crowdfunding pool is any more limited than any other market. Nor do I think it's a zero-sum game. Successful kickstarters that deliver what's expected (or, ideally, more) smooth the way for everybody. It's the failures that shrink the pool.

 

I believe it would be a good thing for crowdfunding in general if "veteran" crowdfunders keep doing it. They build a track record of successful projects, create a model for others to follow, and continue to demonstrate that the model works. That leaves room for new entrants to try and fail without discrediting the entire thing.

[Elerond]

I don't think the crowdfunding pool is any more limited than any other market. Nor do I think it's a zero-sum game. Successful kickstarters that deliver what's expected (or, ideally, more) smooth the way for everybody. It's the failures that shrink the pool.

 

I believe it would be a good thing for crowdfunding in general if "veteran" crowdfunders keep doing it. They build a track record of successful projects, create a model for others to follow, and continue to demonstrate that the model works. That leaves room for new entrants to try and fail without discrediting the entire thing.

 

I would say that crowdfunding pool is more heavily focused on early adopter and limited supply markets, than your general markets, which usually means that number of possible customers(backers) is smaller, probably in significant degree (from which D:OS works as example, it had about 25k backers and about similar amount people that bought it from steam's early access, and after it come to general market number of copies that is sold has grown to ~500k copies), but other hand early adopters and people that markets offer only limited supply are usually willing to much more money in the product and they usually are willing to suffer more problems and delays with products that they have invested in.

Edited September 12, 2014 by Elerond