KickStarter Knights of the Chalice 2 Thread - Augury of Chaos

[Clockwork Knight]

On October he was in touch with GOG, but was very butthurt that they wanted to sell Knights Of The Chalice but not Battle of the Sands:

[...]In addition, anyone interested in seeing another game like KotC should care about BotS too, because the viability of any business depends on its sales. I've said it before, but I don't get paid anything for the humongous amount of work that KotC 2 requires. Financially, it does not make sense to do it. That's one of the reasons why I had to split the work between two games.

[...]

I would also very much dispute the idea that getting a distribution deal for any game is always a great boon. In any case, you're not in the position that I'm in, so you cannot make the assessment that only I can make as to whether a distribution deal would be good or not. Finally, I don't consider that it is particularly urgent for me to get any of my games on a distribution site. I hope that clarifies things. I am now locking this thread.

"I need money now if I am to develop KotC2 in the future, the viability of my business depends on this!"

"Huh? I said what? No, I don't really need to make money right now, especially not free money from my old game."

Stay aspie, Pierre. Maybe one day you'll get a Vogelpiphany.

 

[Niektory]

lol you think that price is bad, it used to go for twice as much not too long ago

£14.95 is twice as much as £12.50? Then I guess £10.00 would make it freeware.

It was £24.99 or something around that

https://web.archive.org/web/20100314044758/http://www.heroicfantasygames.com/Download.htm
All snapshots between 14 March 2010 and 9 July 2013 say £14.95. That's what I paid as well. So stop talking out of your ass.

 

[Excidium]

Yeah, that was in dollars whatever

 

[TigerKnee]

After all the pages of this thread I think I'm going to change my feelings from "Man, I didn't like KoTC that much, I regret buying it at its overly inflated price" to "I regret buying it because it means supporting a creator who's kind of a egoistic doofus who really should starve for his stupidity"

 

[Grimlorn]

Missed this. This is pretty crazy. Last year I told him about Kickstarter allowing you to kickstart projects in Britain and he seemed to have no interest in kickstarting KotC 2 either. It's just insane. I wonder if he doesn't want to hire anyone because he hates working with people or something. Maybe it's all about saying he did all this work with no pay since he likes to mention that. Why is he asking people to buy his book and RTS game instead of simply kickstarting KotC 2. Insanity.

Did someone post this thread over at his forums? Somebody should. He should see how everyone is calling him crazy for passing up a deal to make money. It's not like GOG would own the game he created.

Artwork for KotC 2 looks terrible but who cares. I just want to create my party and then look at the top of their heads for the rest of the game like in KotC.

 

[Zetor]

Soooo.... this guy is basically bizarro Cleve, only he managed to finish and release a game that actually turned out to be pretty good?

 

[Elwro]

Yeah. If you haven't tried it, definitely download the demo -- it gives you a good impression of the game, and iirc contains different areas than the game itself.

 

[Dickie]

The saddest thing about the dismal sales that KotC2 is bound to have without a distribution deal is that it's more of a campaign making tool than a game. At least that's how he's presenting it. If that were to get out to more people, we'd have a better chance of getting some great stuff, I think. I wonder how many D&D fans haven't even heard of this game.

 

[Explorerbc]

Did someone post this thread over at his forums? Somebody should. He should see how everyone is calling him crazy for passing up a deal to make money. It's not like GOG would own the game he created.

There's no reasoning with people like him. He'll probably think "all these guys are idiots, I'm better than them. They can't compete with my financial skills and superb intelligence" or something like that.

 

[felipepepe]

Posting this thread here would only make him butthurt at how many people pirated his game, as well make him him attack me for sharing the private forum stuff...

 

[Mortmal]

The saddest thing about the dismal sales that KotC2 is bound to have without a distribution deal is that it's more of a campaign making tool than a game. At least that's how he's presenting it. If that were to get out to more people, we'd have a better chance of getting some great stuff, I think. I wonder how many D&D fans haven't even heard of this game.

Even in my online D&D group(by fantasy grounds 2) , a group of nerds playing every kind of rpgs both pen and paper and computer no one heard of it . Even my friend who knows more than me about broken 3.5 thri kreen quad wielding scimitars disciple of mephistoles builds never heard of it , when i show her the game shes says the graphics stinks too much to play it.....
The number of potential customers is already very small and he do his best to hide his product.

 

[Grunker]

I really dislike the way he goes about house-ruling 3.5 without really seeming to know what he's doing. I had a discussion about the classes with at length once, in which I tried to convince him to use Pathfinder for everyone's sake, but he's insisting on keeping a self-modded abomination of 3.5, so I suppose crossing your fingers and hoping for the best is all that's left.

His houseruled 3.fail is still better than Pathfinder as is.

Why? I mean I know you hate Pathfinder, no reason to explain that as I'm not going to argue that with you anyways, but I'd think you'd like his house ruled version even less. It's basically Pathfinder with less streamlining and more problems.

 

[getter77]

There's really not some grand secret truth here---only Pierre and perhaps the people he's contracting various parts of the work with know what is up with the project beyond him just doing as much as he can, as he can, on it with these little devlog snippets. I can't imagine he'd not make any especially noteworthy news rather public---been that way since the start.

 

[Dickie]

Even if GOG took 99%, I think he'd make more net money selling KotC on there.

 

[Roguey]

Why? I mean I know you hate Pathfinder, no reason to explain that as I'm not going to argue that with you anyways, but I'd think you'd like his house ruled version even less. It's basically Pathfinder with less streamlining and more problems.

I like wizard-sorcerers and cleric-favored souls, no pre-buffing or potions, maximum hit points per level, and maximum hit points on rest.

 

[Grunker]

Why? I mean I know you hate Pathfinder, no reason to explain that as I'm not going to argue that with you anyways, but I'd think you'd like his house ruled version even less. It's basically Pathfinder with less streamlining and more problems.

I like wizard-sorcerers and cleric-favored souls, no pre-buffing or potions, maximum hit points per level, and maximum hit points on rest.

All those exist within Pathfinder as variants. Pre-buffing is mostly impossible in a P&P setting, and I agree with you that any cRPG worth its salt today will remove pre-buffing.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

I don't mind "no pre-buffing", but seriously what's the difference? In KotC when having a serious encounter and not one of those you just roflstomp over, you need to buff as well. That's what you do when combat starts, you buff the party. The difference is, in IWD for example you'd prebuff once and do several encounters in a row as long as your long-term buffs hold whereas in KotC you have to go mass pro evil, haste, prayer etc at the beginning of every encounter. I fail to see how that is so different.

 

[JudasIscariot]

Hey guys,

if you want to know how we operate as far the money is concerned, you can read all about it here http://af.gog.com/indie?as=1649904300

Just putting this here to clear up any confusion

 

[DraQ]

bizarro Cleve

@implying that default Cleve isn't bizarro enough.

Cleve is idempotently bizarro - he's a bizarro version of himself.

I don't mind "no pre-buffing", but seriously what's the difference? In KotC when having a serious encounter and not one of those you just roflstomp over, you need to buff as well. That's what you do when combat starts, you buff the party. The difference is, in IWD for example you'd prebuff once and do several encounters in a row as long as your long-term buffs hold whereas in KotC you have to go mass pro evil, haste, prayer etc at the beginning of every encounter. I fail to see how that is so different.

I imagine that the difference is that combat buffing doesn't reward metagame or risk relying on metagame as far as encounter balance is concerned.

Of course, one could implement pre-buffing, balance for pre-buffing and then provide encounter design intermeshing with environment and ability to get all the information necessary through cautious and observant play but that's a whole another tier of game design, and given that even expansive projects made by more than one guy can't aspire to that...

Not that I've ever cared for any KoTC, mind you.

Hey guys,

if you want to know how we operate as far the money is concerned, you can read all about it here http://af.gog.com/indie?as=1649904300

Just putting this here to clear up any confusion

Potato plant.

Spoiler

 

[JudasIscariot]

bizarro Cleve

@implying that default Cleve isn't bizarro enough.

Cleve is idempotently bizarro - he's a bizarro version of himself.

I don't mind "no pre-buffing", but seriously what's the difference? In KotC when having a serious encounter and not one of those you just roflstomp over, you need to buff as well. That's what you do when combat starts, you buff the party. The difference is, in IWD for example you'd prebuff once and do several encounters in a row as long as your long-term buffs hold whereas in KotC you have to go mass pro evil, haste, prayer etc at the beginning of every encounter. I fail to see how that is so different.

I imagine that the difference is that combat buffing doesn't reward metagame or risk relying on metagame as far as encounter balance is concerned.

Of course, one could implement pre-buffing, balance for pre-buffing and then provide encounter design intermeshing with environment and ability to get all the information necessary through cautious and observant play but that's a whole another tier of game design, and given that even expansive projects made by more than one guy can't aspire to that...

Not that I've ever cared for any KoTC, mind you.

Hey guys,

if you want to know how we operate as far the money is concerned, you can read all about it here http://af.gog.com/indie?as=1649904300

Just putting this here to clear up any confusion

Potato plant.

Spoiler

Takes one to know one, eh fellow Potato? :D

 

[Declinator]

I don't mind "no pre-buffing", but seriously what's the difference? In KotC when having a serious encounter and not one of those you just roflstomp over, you need to buff as well. That's what you do when combat starts, you buff the party. The difference is, in IWD for example you'd prebuff once and do several encounters in a row as long as your long-term buffs hold whereas in KotC you have to go mass pro evil, haste, prayer etc at the beginning of every encounter. I fail to see how that is so different.

The difference is that buffing during the battle is at least a choice with both pros and cons and not something that is basically without any drawbacks as in games like BG2. In KotC you have to consider whether losing that turn is worth it or not though I'd personally like to see some buffs perhaps taking two turns to cast or spells like Protect from Evil introducing vulnerabilities to creatures that are not evil so that they'd be more of a choice.

Pre-battle buffing is obnoxious in games like BG2 with about a dozen different spells being applied before serious fights with none of them introducing any handicaps aside from using up a spell and the fact that you have chosen that spell and not some other spell on level-up.

 

[Grunker]

I don't mind "no pre-buffing", but seriously what's the difference? In KotC when having a serious encounter and not one of those you just roflstomp over, you need to buff as well. That's what you do when combat starts, you buff the party. The difference is, in IWD for example you'd prebuff once and do several encounters in a row as long as your long-term buffs hold whereas in KotC you have to go mass pro evil, haste, prayer etc at the beginning of every encounter. I fail to see how that is so different.

In BG2, you cast Protection from Fire before any fight with unknown enemies. You might as well. It lasts forever. Even when you know the enemy, if it's a spellcaster, you cast PoF because he might cast a fire spell, and you might as well cast the buff.

In KotC, you cast a buff when it is usable in the current encounter, and it is always a trade-off since it costs an action like anything else.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

DraQ and Declinator

All fair points. Of course a lot of challenging fights in KotC would be totally trivial if you could buff to hell and back prior the fight, from mass pro evil to death ward, haste, protection from all elements etc. Or in BG2 where you can spend 20min to buff your party to the stratosphere and then just wish for rest and start combat. However, it also depends on the game and its spell list. Many cRPGs have way too many stacking buffing spells.

 

[DraQ]

Them...

...tradeoffs.

This too.

 

[oscar]

Pre-battle buffing sucks as there's no opportunity cost to it in-game, beyond the tedium. Much better for the player to have to think in the first turn "Do I get my mage to buff us up, go for a damage nuke or drop a utility spell?".