Prosper Realms of Arkania: Shovelware Edition

[vorvek]

What's a flee battle?

 

[Stabwound]

Today's patch:

Patch 1.05 - August 1st, 2013 (8pm GMT+2)

Dungeons: Spellcasting activated

Nothing else much to say there.

 

[Bobbles]

To be fair, battles are on their own separate maps, so enabling dungeon/town spellcasting only affects out of combat spells like Light.

 

[MetalCraze]

Evil Publishers got skooled

 

[Stabwound]

This must be a nightmare scenario for the developers. It must have taken some luck and negotiations to get the license to not only the Das Schwarze Auge but also the Realms of Arkania PC game, and they completely dropped the ball on it. They're clearly running around like madmen trying to salvage the game into something playable now, but what a fucking disaster. They probably planned on doing the rest of the games in the same engine, but there's no way that's going to happen now unless they patch the game daily for the next 2 months (which they actually said they're going to do).

Makes me worry about the upcoming Kickstarter games. Sure, they lack publishers and can delay games as they please, but budgeting is still an issue: see Double Fine, for one.

 

[Gord]

I don't know.
It's clearly been released at least a month or two too early, but on the other hand many fans (not all though) of the old games still see the possibility to salvage it, if the bugs get fixed. Might turn out to be wishful thinking, of course.
I guess the team bit of more than they could chew, no wonder considering that they are only two guys from what I read.

I'll wait a few weeks until I form a final opinion.

 

[octavius]

It's ironic, but I though "impressive, they must be very professional" when I learnt that the game was ready to be published so soon after being announced...
But I really hope they manage to salvage it into a playable game.

 

[Bobbles]

Most German magazines are considering the game untestable, so the devs can still profit off uninformed buyers right now.

 

[Caim]

I am seriously surprised that there isn't some form of QA on the stuff that is dumped onto Steam. You'd expect at least a check on the achievements, which was not done because if you go to the Steam page right now you will see that THERE IS STILL A TESTING ACHIEVEMENT IN PLACE.

Fucking hell, not even Ultima IX had it this bad.

 

[Stabwound]

Yeah, Steam has been catching some flack lately. I do actually believe they've stopped doing proper QA on the games they release: recently, there has been Citadels, Realms of Arkania and WarZ/whatever the fuck it was just re-released as dropped on Steam for sale in hopelessly broken states. Seems like they're getting a little too greedy, or at least a little too big for their own good.

At least in the case of WarZ, they removed and offered refunds to anyone that bought it. I'm not sure there's enough outcry over RoA or Citadels for them to do such a thing with these games, though.

 

[mondblut]

Realms of Arkania HD remake being released as is vs Chaos Chronicles getting cancelled after not being released as is. The tale of two games.

 

[GlutenBurger]

I have to admit being surprised that this came out so bad. My scepticism must have grown a little rusty under the mist of all these promised releases.

Yeah, Steam has been catching some flack lately. I do actually believe they've stopped doing proper QA on the games they release: recently, there has been Citadels, Realms of Arkania and WarZ/whatever the fuck it was just re-released as dropped on Steam for sale in hopelessly broken states. Seems like they're getting a little too greedy, or at least a little too big for their own good.

Perhaps, ten years hence, there'll be a DRM Codex out there, wherein denizens reminisce over the glory days of Steam and gripe about the decline of DRM since its collapse.

 

[Crispy]

Today's patch:

Patch 1.05 - August 1st, 2013 (8pm GMT+2)

Dungeons: Spellcasting activated

Nothing else much to say there.

Yup. Game's fixed now as far as I'm concerned.

Edit: Really, it's hard to imagine the process that a company has to go through in order to ship a computer role-playing game, one that's based on another from many years ago, that it itself is based on a very popular PnP ruleset, all focused around casting magic spells and exploring dungeons, and have that game NOT SUPPORT CASTING SPELLS IN DUNGEONS. OOPS, SORRY GUYS WE FIXeDS IT HRURREHHUUURRRRRRRRRRR

 

[Jaesun]

Yeah, Steam has been catching some flack lately. I do actually believe they've stopped doing proper QA on the games they release:

Steam now does QA on videogames?

 

[Stabwound]

No, but I'm sure they check to make sure the games are actually games and not virus.exe for $50. If they started to just sell any random bullshit offered to them they would lose all credibility. You know what I meant.

 

[DemonKing]

Not sure how the Steam agreements with 3rd party publishers work but it would probably be wise for them to have a holding clause in place where funds aren't released until a month after release in the case they have to make mass refunds due to botched shoverlware being onsold through them.

 

[Easily Amused]

I've actually preordered it. I'm kicking myself now. Can gift my copy on Steam to KKKodex if someone is up to reviewing it.

 

[Gord]

I'd wait a few weeks to see if they manage to get rid of the worst bugs/problems.
Atm. at least they seem to be pumping out patches quite fast.

Otherwise, I'd take it (though I won't have time for a review or even playing much in the coming weeks, so better to give it to someone else).

 

[Bobbles]

The first real review with score and text and everything is out from Gamestar.de:

Pro:
- strong atmosphere
- good character creation system
- great voice-overs
- complex combat and skill system

Con:
- ugly
- buggy
- terrible music
- lack of relateable/sympathetic NPCs
- dumb AI
- lack of powerful loot

49%

 

[thesheeep]

Lack of powerful loot?
Wow, those guys have no clue whatsoever about the setting :D

 

[Gord]

Really, "lack of powerful loot".
Fuck those "my first RPG was Diablo" people.
There's no Apocalyptic Sword of Deathfire + 25 in RoA.

The loot (in the original at least) was already pretty OP compared to what you usually found in PnP.

Also:

Schicksalsklinge kann einem modernen Rollenspiel wie Skyrim oder The Witcher 2 in keiner Beziehung das Wasser reichen

Blade of Destiny isn't able in any way to hold a candle to modern role playing games like Skyrim or The Witcher 2.

And he's not necessarily referring to the remake here, but rather the gameplay of the classic rpg series in general.

 

[Bobbles]

Lack of powerful loot?
Wow, those guys have no clue whatsoever about the setting :D

He dismissed the setting as "seinerzeit populär" ("used to be popular"), which implies that he doesn't know about Drakensang or Chains of Satinav (which was supposedly the fastest selling German adventure game ever).

 

[thesheeep]

He also has no idea that DSA is still a very popular PnP RPG (at least in Germany), but I guess PnP players are not the target group of game journalists since many years

 

[Bobbles]

New post from the other half of the two person team:

Hey Leute

Hab das Thema hier mal überflogen... Ich will mal kurz was erzählen - hoffe, es kommt so an, wie ich's meine

Wir arbeiten hier grad wie die Verrückten, die Dinge zu fixen, die gefixt werden müssen und die Dinge zu liefern, die fehlen. Oder aber daran, Dinge so zu richten, wie sie gemeint waren - und weil sie nicht so waren, wurden diese als Bug wahr genommen.

Es gibt viel Kritik, die sehr sehr sehr begründet ist - das wissen wir, dafür entschuldigen wir uns (egal, wessen Schuld das ist). Und wir tun unser Bestes. Die Angebote/Ideen/Vorschläge zum entwickeln: Lasst uns mal die Base so richten, dass ihr seht wo das Spiel eigentlich steht.

Wir arbeiten grad wieder am Patch für heute abend - ob das Flüchten heute fertig wird, kann ich nicht versprechen. So weit ich informiert bin (ich bin kein Coder, ich bin eher für LevelDesign und Grafiken verantwortlich), kommen einige Zauber hinzu und - worauf ich mich sehr freue (ich weiß, was das Arbeit für Chris war), kommt ganz sicher die Kampf-Info. Dann fühlt sich dieser ganz anders an!

Ich sitze gerade an den neuen Charakter-Modellen für die Siedlungen. Hoffe, dass ich die heute alle ausgetauscht bekomme. Ich werd mich dann zeitnah ans Finishing der Kampf-Charas machen (ich sag nur: Vierbeiner). Die sind schon da. Wir haben sie. Nur nicht fertig im Game...
Es gibt viele Dinge, die an sich fertig sind, denen nur das Finishing fehlt... und die wollen wir nun nachziehen (nebst den Bugs). Wir sehen aber fehlende Dinge auch - oder gerade deswegen - als Bugs an, weil sie anderes fehlerhaft wirken lassen.

Ich kann wirklich nur bitten, uns die Stange zu halten - wir sind dran! Wir mögen unser Game - wir mögen DSA!

Der Shitstorm der letzten Tage hat uns aber auch viel Substanz gekostet (auch wenn wir ihn in den Augen vieler verdient haben, womit sie nicht gänzlich unrecht haben - ich finde aber immer noch, dass sauer sein eine Sache ist - aber Shitstorm: Alle gegen zwei... naja - da müssen wir durch). Der Shitstorm macht uns aber auch anders noch Sorgen. Jeder auf Amazon regt sich nur auf, auf Steam ... und überall anders. Kaum mal wer, der auch sagt: Hey - die tun! Da sieht man was! ... Das würde uns helfen - ganz ehrlich.

Aber nun zurück an die Bewohner Thorwals (in meinem Fall), an die Kampf-Stati-Meldungen (Chris' Fall) und an alles andere, wo uns die fleissigen Helferlein zur Seite stehen. (zb. werden grade die Reise-Events gefixt, die wurden bei der Erstellung scheinbar völlig verdreht... wieder was, das einen das Spiel nicht so erlebbar macht, wie wir's wollten... keine "große" Sache zu richten, dauert nur und kotzt euch, wie uns hier gewaltig an... aber Chris und ich können uns halt nicht zerteilen)

Ach ja - Leute... DANKE!

Too much to translate, run it through googlefiish or something.

Highlights:

- new NPC models for settlements are coming, possibly with today's patch
- combat models are next in the priority list
- combat statistics and info screens will be added with today's patch
- random event triggers are restored with today's patch
- more spells are being restored

 

[Stabwound]

I don't understand, how and why are they implementing so many things that should have been in the base game in the past week? Were they so down to the wire that they couldn't have squeezed this in, you know, during the past year or two it's been in development?

It's just weird. I was really looking forward to this, but it's just embarrassing. I feel more like playing the original now than this thing.