Game News Bard's Tale IV Kickstarter Update #16: Final Week, Monte Cook Stretch Goal Unlocked

[Vault Dweller]

Because BT4 hit a mil in the first 2-3 days and then slowed down to a crawl, suggesting that the momentum was lost. I can't speak for everyone but I paid less and less attention with each new update. I may be wrong but I think that "let's raise more funds for famous guy X to join the team and do something ... awesome?" card has been overplayed and people simply don't respond to it anymore.

As for Grimrock or Expeditions, their budgets are irrelevant. Expeditions is a very different kind of game, so you can't compare. Grimrock 1 has been in development since 2001. It's a good game, but the character system, combat and magic are utter crap. The puzzles and atmosphere were top notch though. Grimrock 2 improved everything and was my game of the year but it was a sequel building on top of the first game.

 

[roshan]

In general, the campaign has been very boring. I loved the video but I don't really care about "Monte Cook designs this, Avellone designs that, social media achievements!!!" crap. I understand they can't show new videos every week, but give us more screens, concept art, design talk.

Yeah, they completely bungled this campaign, even the campaign page is an absolute mess. Which is strange because the Torment campaign was done so well. This is what happens when you prioritize Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr over lore, mechanics and concept art.

 

[Morality Games]

With FaceBook, Twitter, and Tumblr, the campaign will never have to end, though. It can keep raising revenue as they develop more material to show people.

 

[Vault Dweller]

With FaceBook, Twitter, and Tumblr, the campaign will never have to end, though. It can keep raising revenue as they develop more material to show people.

That's the only logical explanation.

 

[Zorba the Hutt]

I don't think there was ever as big a market for a BT blobber as the new Torment, but offering free games at the start got everyone to pledge in the first couple of days. Gave the impression of a successful KS, as planned, but meant the plateau was even more pronounced than with other KS campaigns.

 

[roshan]

With FaceBook, Twitter, and Tumblr, the campaign will never have to end, though. It can keep raising revenue as they develop more material to show people.

That doesn't provide much real benefit over convincing fans to shell out their money right away. I think it's because it's a more solid, concrete long term asset. They can bank on those Twitter followers and Facebook likers as a market for future products, as indicators of brand strength, as vectors for disseminating information. Thus I don't think it was necessarily a wrong move on their part, but I do think it probably cost them a large chunk of funding.

 

[Morality Games]

With FaceBook, Twitter, and Tumblr, the campaign will never have to end, though. It can keep raising revenue as they develop more material to show people.

That doesn't provide much real benefit over convincing fans to shell out their money right away. I think it's because it's a more solid, concrete long term asset. They can bank on those Twitter followers and Facebook likers as a market for future products, as indicators of brand strength, as vectors for disseminating information. Thus I don't think it was necessarily a wrong move on their part, but I do think it probably cost them a large chunk of funding.

One benefit is that they can establish a revenue stream for the post-Torment game right now instead of wading through 2016's Year of the AAA trying to get a foothold.

A company of 30 or so people can't produce a huge amount of art and design specs to show off while I'll working to get a big C&C-driven party-based tactical RPG out before the fiscal year ends. At the same time, Witcher III and Fallout 4 DLC are going to keep people replaying those games for all of 2016 and then you have Mass Effect: Andromeda and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. It's not exactly as a doomsday scenario for AA games, especially since ME: A and DXankind Divided are unknown vectors, but its stiffer competition than they've faced in the past two or three years, where the KickStarter Four have been relatively unopposed.

 

[Infinitron]

I think this discussion is premature. Let's wait and see what they do in the last three days.

What I can tell you is that Team Fargo and Team Saunders work differently. The latter being almost like an Obsidian spinoff company with lots of top-down planning, the former having a more Underworld Ascendant-like iteration-based "we won't know until it's done" approach. That said, I've been told that in addition to the video, BT4's had a decent amount of work put into its lore by Nathan Long. So maybe they could have shown more lore. Would that have helped, though? Codexers probably would have just complained about too much meaningless storyfag nonsense that nobody cares about. And it's probably a good idea not to spoil too much, too.

Again, I think the best thing they could have done is try make the video more gamey. They put a lot of work into that thing - work that could have spared them the need explain about the game mechanics verbally. A gameplay video is worth a thousand words, right?

As for the social achievements stuff - eh, get used to it, this is the Internet in 2015. It's not like they're selling in-game exclusive items like Underworld did. It's just an expansion of what previous campaigns did with Facebook likes and such, only you noticed it less there because they had more to say.

 

[Jaesun]

Because BT4 hit a mil in the first 2-3 days and then slowed down to a crawl, suggesting that the momentum was lost. I can't speak for everyone but I paid less and less attention with each new update. I may be wrong but I think that "let's raise more funds for famous guy X to join the team and do something ... awesome?" card has been overplayed and people simply don't respond to it anymore.

This has already gotten to a point where it is not that much interesting to me. The last Kickstarter I backed, where I was actually excited about the project making certain stretch goals was Shadowrun: Hong Kong. I am VERY excited to see some of the new systems they can now put into the Shadowrun engine.

 

[Crooked Bee]

The campaign definitely has been lackluster, but I've honestly no idea what exactly they should've done differently - done more research on their target audience maybe? Personally, I'd like more specifics on dungeon design and combat, but going into specifics can have an adverse effect on your KS as well.

Something to get me excited about the combat would've been a plus, though. "It's not just attack, attack, attack" is fine and dandy, but what is it, then? What are the new exciting things you're bringing to the table?

Same with dungeon design. Okay, so you want to compromise and do both grid-based and free roam. I don't like that, but okay, fair enough, at least name me some cool things you think you can do with that sort of approach. Etc.

 

[Ulrox]

As for the social achievements stuff - eh, get used to it, this is the Internet in 2015. It's not like they're selling in-game exclusive items like Underworld did. It's just an expansion of what previous campaigns did with Facebook likes and such, only you noticed it less there because they had more to say.

I think people are using this to go around the argument that - no, people do not want another blobber, blobbers suck, that is what I'm reading into this kickstarter. Grimrock 2 did not sell very well after all.

 

[Athelas]

In general, the campaign has been very boring. I loved the video but I don't really care about "Monte Cook designs this, Avellone designs that, social media achievements!!!" crap. I understand they can't show new videos every week, but give us more screens, concept art, design talk.

Yeah, they completely bungled this campaign, even the campaign page is an absolute mess. Which is strange because the Torment campaign was done so well. This is what happens when you prioritize Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr over lore, mechanics and concept art.

The Endless Paths megadungeon was added as a bonus when the Project Eternity kickstarter campaign reached 50,000 backers and started with 3 levels, with a new level being added with every 2,500 new backers and with every 20,000 likes on Obsidian's Facebook page. The dungeon ended up being 15 levels deep, as the campaign ended with a combined total of 77,667 backers from Kickstarter and PayPal, and over 20,000 likes on Facebook.

 

[Infinitron]

Would be better to use Torment's version of that: http://tormentrpg.tumblr.com/castofflabyrinth

For every 3000 Backers beyond 45,000 (roughly when the $2.5m Stretch Goal was reached), we will extend the Castoff’s Labyrinth by one Fathom. So at 48,000 Backers, we’ll be at Fathom 2, at 51,000 Fathom 3, etc. Backer count includes PayPal. We have also added a bonus fathom as we reached 10,000 likes on our Facebook page.

 

[Athelas]

Oh yeah, forget about the Torment one.

 

[Vault Dweller]

I'm not asking why there is social media crap in mah kickstarter. I'm saying that it seems that the focus of the campaign was on the social media and other retardedness.

 

[Infinitron]

I'm not asking why there is social media crap in mah kickstarter. I'm saying that it seems that the focus of the campaign was on the social media and other retardedness.

Not really. They had basically one update announcing the gamification campaign and that's it. There weren't really like, updates dedicated entirely to talking about that stuff after that.

I don't think you can say that the campaign had much of a "focus" at all. Fargo's recap in the last update is pretty honest. They showed a video, shared what little information about the game they were prepared to talk about, and announced stretch goals, and here we are.

EDIT: Oh, there were also the promotional giveaways of other games. Is that "retardness"? Maybe so but free games is a pretty tangible thing!

 

[theSavant]

no, people do not want another blobber, blobbers suck, that is what I'm reading into this kickstarter

While the interest is certainly not as big as for isometric games, consider that: every blobber-kickstarter I followed (Thorvalla, OldschoolRPG, BT4) was a joke of an half-arsed, lukewarm attempt of a kickstarter. And by that I especially mean compared to any of the isometric RPG campaigns. I even recall Project Eternity being crappy as well - but at least they were fully present and active in the comments section...

 

[DeepOcean]

Get a designer and make him write a few updates, make a theoretical dungeon that only exists for kickstarter purposes. On each update, he does a theoretical tour of how a dungeon on Bard's Tale IV will look like. Make some mock ups of the interface, monsters and concept art to make things pretty. Jeez, nobody at InXile played a DnD game to come up with a nice dungeon example on a few days?

 

[Turok]

blobbers suck

 

[Night Goat]

I can't wait to see what the creator of shit-flavored shit like Monte Cook's World of Darkness and Ghostwalk brings to this game.

 

[almondblight]

While the interest is certainly not as big as for isometric games, consider that: every blobber-kickstarter I followed (Thorvalla, OldschoolRPG, BT4) was a joke of an half-arsed, lukewarm attempt of a kickstarter.

I remember Starcrawlers having a pretty decent campaign (and I think Arakion did as well?).

 

[Infinitron]

Get a designer and make him write a few updates, make a theoretical dungeon that only exists for kickstarter purposes. On each update, he does a theoretical tour of how a dungeon on Bard's Tale IV will look like. Make some mock ups of the interface, monsters and concept art to make things pretty. Jeez, nobody at InXile played a DnD game to come up with a nice dungeon example on a few days?

You mean like this one?

(Not entirely joking, if you pay attention that story has a lot of gameplay element-type stuff in it! In general, it seems like they have a good feel for the game's sensibilities but they're seemingly reluctant to demonstrate them in a more concrete way.)

 

[stony3k]

Latest update is out, with another video. So we'll see how that impacts this KS, although this is just a "Making of" video

 

[Kz3r0]

For now they are wasting one of the three remaining days, seems that they are betting all on the final day rush.

 

[theSavant]

I don't want to crush your dreams but it seems like they already do the best they can.
They can't pull a joker out of their ass because there is no joker.