Interesting post. Let's go point by point:
This isn't the case. Colony Ship's 'Hero Mode' is specifically tailored to be as easy as it gets for RPGs. While games like Pathfinder, Baldur's Gate, and Fallout focus on debuffing enemies and or buffing the player in some numerical way; Colony Ship's 'Hero Mode' takes it a step further by giving the player better starting gear on top of the numerical modifiers. The starting gear you get access to in 'Hero Mode' is ridiculously good: better weapons that aren't rusted, an energy gadget, a few credits; you're basically given an easy start with this difficulty setting. You have to try real hard to ruin that advantage. Speaking of which, unlike other titles, Colony Ship's easy mode goes to the *extreme* when it comes to numerical buffs. Let's look at those modifiers (and remember you can customize these percentages if don't like the values):
This is beyond silly, a +100% effectively trivializes the progression systems in place. Essentially, you can be 2-4 levels higher than normal with little to no investment in build making or party making. This also stacks with implants, Int stat, feats, etc - so you can be everything, do everything, complete everything, with absolutely no investment.
This accuracy bonus is basically the equivalent to a high quality premium piece of gear that can enhance accuracy - and you start off with this, for free. The type of enemies you face at the start can not compete with this level of accuracy. It basically means you don't need to worry about missing hits, at all.
These three settings turn the enemies into little babies. On top of *you* getting high accuracy bonuses, starting with better gear, the enemies are also at an inherent disadvantage.
You have to try real hard to make Colony Ship's easy mode, "harder than 95% of rpgs". While we're on this topic there have been testimonials of players from steam who've tried the easy mode and complained that it was *too* easy. Again, just to re-emphasis, you can customize the values by the way. Suffice to say 'Hero Mode' is intentionally designed to be *the* easy mode; it's neither balanced nor play tested in any sufficient capacity - it's intentionally created specifically for the purpose of making the game easy to play. If you struggled on this, I don't know what to say.
Contrast this to Knights of the Chalice 2 where you only have one way to play: combat; if you're not good at tactics, party making, or build optimization; you're pretty much screwed, as the game is a pure hardcore dungeon crawl with no means to bypass some of the harder encounters. Sure you can make them 'easier' with dialogue options but if you're not proficient at combat then such advantages are wasted. If you don't manage your resources, like resting, you're screwed. There's no alternative mechanisms in place for someone who sucks at combat. Even the difficulty settings won't make much difference if you can't understand what spells or effects to use, what targets to prioritize, etc. Again, just to contrast, in Colony Ship if you suck at one thing you can either ignore it, come back to it later, stealth your way around it, talk it away, or have a strong late game companion like Cobra to aid you.
1) there are certain encounters where you can choose a dialogue option to start with a huge bonus to initiative if you have high initiative, it also leads to a whole feat line called 'Ask Questions Later':
Now this doesn't work on *every* encounter, it's also been a while since I last played, and last I remembered the developers were still tweaking the encounters so you have this option available, but nonetheless, that exists.
2) it has nothing to do with "balance", this is just the appeal of Iron Tower's ethos: you're outnumbered, outgunned, and outflanked; the appeal is that it forces the player to seriously consider their options before engaging in combat - are you sure you want to go in guns blazing, maybe explore other options, maybe that optional encounter isn't worth getting stressed out, etc.
You say other things about this but personally I like this type of approach because it makes the combat fun to me. I enjoy difficult games that bust my balls - it's enjoyable to be challenged.
Juggernaut turns you into a indestructible killing machine. Healing Factor gives you big bang from healing on top of facilitating more implants to install. Dodge This turns you into a critical strike machine. All these potent effects is what a player *should* be trying to shoot for in their build making; it's neither complicated nor arithmetic to bump one stat up to max to get these 'Heroic Feats'. A normal player shouldn't feel that they've failed at the initial process of this stage of game unless they intentionally refuse a 'Heroic Feat'. Over the years the only people who had problems were specifically the RPG veterans that thought this was like those "other" RPGs they've played where stats were superfluous and you can get away with a clunky 'Jack of All' build. The actual new players who've I've assisted over the years didn't have much trouble in regards to this aspect of game, save for encounter advice, because they usually didn't have preconceptions that were detrimental to the experience; they almost always had a solid build, usually one with a heroic feat; again it was the actual combat engagements that they struggled with, but I digress.
Here's a few examples:
I have a combat build that exists purely to buff my favorite companion:
My main character isn't *that* good in combat. All he does is spread negative malus through 'nades, aimed attacks onto enemies while my main girl does all the heavy lifting, and here's her build:
That's one example of a companion supplementing a bad build out of the equation.
Here's an example of a DR heavy build that supplements poor evasion with sheer damage reduction:
I have hundreds of builds where I intentionally make gimped characters with poor stats, feats, etc. Colony Ship's build making is *very* flexible. You need to engage the game on its merits in this front to truly appreciate the depth and just how much you can do with the system.
"We're a small stall in a giant gaming bazaar. Without exposure (media coverage, big YT names, Steam's front page, etc), this market of hundreds of millions shrinks to a quarter million players who know about the game (and might or might not be interested in it)."
Now grab that potential market and shrink it even further with the amount of people who even cared about games like Chalice.
Anyways, while I still believe that Colony Ship was a success (80% approval rating on steam, 2K+ reviews) it didn't meet the financial expectations that Vince had. Which is both sad and a shame.
No.
This isn't the case. Colony Ship's 'Hero Mode' is specifically tailored to be as easy as it gets for RPGs. While games like Pathfinder, Baldur's Gate, and Fallout focus on debuffing enemies and or buffing the player in some numerical way; Colony Ship's 'Hero Mode' takes it a step further by giving the player better starting gear on top of the numerical modifiers. The starting gear you get access to in 'Hero Mode' is ridiculously good: better weapons that aren't rusted, an energy gadget, a few credits; you're basically given an easy start with this difficulty setting. You have to try real hard to ruin that advantage. Speaking of which, unlike other titles, Colony Ship's easy mode goes to the *extreme* when it comes to numerical buffs. Let's look at those modifiers (and remember you can customize these percentages if don't like the values):
This is beyond silly, a +100% effectively trivializes the progression systems in place. Essentially, you can be 2-4 levels higher than normal with little to no investment in build making or party making. This also stacks with implants, Int stat, feats, etc - so you can be everything, do everything, complete everything, with absolutely no investment.
This accuracy bonus is basically the equivalent to a high quality premium piece of gear that can enhance accuracy - and you start off with this, for free. The type of enemies you face at the start can not compete with this level of accuracy. It basically means you don't need to worry about missing hits, at all.
These three settings turn the enemies into little babies. On top of *you* getting high accuracy bonuses, starting with better gear, the enemies are also at an inherent disadvantage.
You have to try real hard to make Colony Ship's easy mode, "harder than 95% of rpgs". While we're on this topic there have been testimonials of players from steam who've tried the easy mode and complained that it was *too* easy. Again, just to re-emphasis, you can customize the values by the way. Suffice to say 'Hero Mode' is intentionally designed to be *the* easy mode; it's neither balanced nor play tested in any sufficient capacity - it's intentionally created specifically for the purpose of making the game easy to play. If you struggled on this, I don't know what to say.
I don't agree that Colony Ship is harder than Knights of the Chalice 2 by virtue of the fact that the game gives you three ways to play: Speech, Stealth, Combat - you can also play around the three fundamentals by using whichever you prefer in solving an encounter. There are also no combat encounters that are *needed* to win the game, meaning you can pick and choose your fights. If an encounter is too hard, you can save it for later, come back to it when you're strong then beat it. If you're having issues with a story related encounter you can ask the NPCs for help and or request for an easier scenario. On top of this, companions give even more flexibility with the amount of options you can have available.
Contrast this to Knights of the Chalice 2 where you only have one way to play: combat; if you're not good at tactics, party making, or build optimization; you're pretty much screwed, as the game is a pure hardcore dungeon crawl with no means to bypass some of the harder encounters. Sure you can make them 'easier' with dialogue options but if you're not proficient at combat then such advantages are wasted. If you don't manage your resources, like resting, you're screwed. There's no alternative mechanisms in place for someone who sucks at combat. Even the difficulty settings won't make much difference if you can't understand what spells or effects to use, what targets to prioritize, etc. Again, just to contrast, in Colony Ship if you suck at one thing you can either ignore it, come back to it later, stealth your way around it, talk it away, or have a strong late game companion like Cobra to aid you.
So two main things:
1) there are certain encounters where you can choose a dialogue option to start with a huge bonus to initiative if you have high initiative, it also leads to a whole feat line called 'Ask Questions Later':
Now this doesn't work on *every* encounter, it's also been a while since I last played, and last I remembered the developers were still tweaking the encounters so you have this option available, but nonetheless, that exists.
2) it has nothing to do with "balance", this is just the appeal of Iron Tower's ethos: you're outnumbered, outgunned, and outflanked; the appeal is that it forces the player to seriously consider their options before engaging in combat - are you sure you want to go in guns blazing, maybe explore other options, maybe that optional encounter isn't worth getting stressed out, etc.
You say other things about this but personally I like this type of approach because it makes the combat fun to me. I enjoy difficult games that bust my balls - it's enjoyable to be challenged.
Not necessarily. When you start the game the first thing you see is 'Heroic Feats', and the first thing a player is going to want to do is get those feats because of how unique, game changing, they are:
Juggernaut turns you into a indestructible killing machine. Healing Factor gives you big bang from healing on top of facilitating more implants to install. Dodge This turns you into a critical strike machine. All these potent effects is what a player *should* be trying to shoot for in their build making; it's neither complicated nor arithmetic to bump one stat up to max to get these 'Heroic Feats'. A normal player shouldn't feel that they've failed at the initial process of this stage of game unless they intentionally refuse a 'Heroic Feat'. Over the years the only people who had problems were specifically the RPG veterans that thought this was like those "other" RPGs they've played where stats were superfluous and you can get away with a clunky 'Jack of All' build. The actual new players who've I've assisted over the years didn't have much trouble in regards to this aspect of game, save for encounter advice, because they usually didn't have preconceptions that were detrimental to the experience; they almost always had a solid build, usually one with a heroic feat; again it was the actual combat engagements that they struggled with, but I digress.
That's subjective. While Colony Ship doesn't have that level of politicking in Age of Decadence where you can set up betrayals, alliances, and so on; the game still has engaging writing that is very fun to experience as a pure talker build - I personally liked how a talker can solve combat encounters in entertaining ways, one of my favorites is how you can deal with Menzel's questline - you can impersonate as an Officer and extort for more monies. Another favorite of mine is in the first chapter of the game in the Braxton v Jonas questline, where you can talk down a gang of reinforcements in a humorous way while the main force deals with the siege.
This isn't true. Especially in regards to combat. There is no rigidity in combat build making. To keep it simple, there are four pillars for combat build making: Feats, Stats, Gear, Companions. If you're lacking in one aspect you can make up in another. For example: Feats give a huge bonus to power, which can supplement poor stat making; Gear can supplement poor stats; Stats can supplement poor gear; Companions can completely bypass your main build and supplement *you* out of the equation; and this can be applied in reverse and so on.
Here's a few examples:
I have a combat build that exists purely to buff my favorite companion:
My main character isn't *that* good in combat. All he does is spread negative malus through 'nades, aimed attacks onto enemies while my main girl does all the heavy lifting, and here's her build:
That's one example of a companion supplementing a bad build out of the equation.
Here's an example of a DR heavy build that supplements poor evasion with sheer damage reduction:
I have hundreds of builds where I intentionally make gimped characters with poor stats, feats, etc. Colony Ship's build making is *very* flexible. You need to engage the game on its merits in this front to truly appreciate the depth and just how much you can do with the system.
I have hundreds of hours in Chalice 2 both from the DRM free version and on Steam. I'm not all surprised that the game didn't make much wave on steam since most players don't like difficult games - I've accepted now that this genre is for romance faggotry, posers, and hyper casuals who treat RPGs as a visual novel medium where combat is more like a dressing than a main dish.
Marketing. That's really it. Chalice 2 didn't have any marketing at all. It released with little to no fanfare on steam - the high price also didn't help matters. Pierre is just a single dude who spent more time making the game, playing it, then actually marketing it. As Vince once put it in regards to Colony Ship:
"We're a small stall in a giant gaming bazaar. Without exposure (media coverage, big YT names, Steam's front page, etc), this market of hundreds of millions shrinks to a quarter million players who know about the game (and might or might not be interested in it)."
Now grab that potential market and shrink it even further with the amount of people who even cared about games like Chalice.
Anyways, while I still believe that Colony Ship was a success (80% approval rating on steam, 2K+ reviews) it didn't meet the financial expectations that Vince had. Which is both sad and a shame.
