KickStarter Shroud of the Avatar - Lord British's Not-Ultima Online 2

[Jaesun]

Bro, play Lineage 2 for that shit.

What specifically does that game do better than Shroud of the Avatar?

 

[thesheeep]

Bro, play Lineage 2 for that shit.

What specifically does that game do better than Shroud of the Avatar?

Does not being a Second Life in disguise count?

 

[Cadmus]

Bro, play Lineage 2 for that shit.

What specifically does that game do better than Shroud of the Avatar?

I haven't played Shroud of course so I will only try to make an advert for Lineage 2. Sperg alert!

My experience with L2 is only a few private servers with Chronicle 5. I'm assuming you can still find some with some OK rate like 5x or 7x not shit like 500x. Might be a waste of time if you can't. Theres good player experience on all levels if the server isnt too old. Population should be at least 1-2k people to make the game work.
Firstly the game doesn't look like shit even today, I believe it runs on some Unreal engine which looks amazing. You need to see the game in motion, the screens don't do it justice.
The game has many intertwined systems which create the right conditions for what you might want in a sort of live-your-life-MMORPG.
The economy is entirely player-driven with supply and demand. You craft most of your stuff or buy it if you're really rich. To craft, you need to farm. To farm you need a team for most items so you need a clan, clans can form alliances. Used to be clan is 30 people, alliance is 4 clans I believe and it does work like this. So in practice when you farm you farm with your clan. The PvP system is totally free, you can kill people if you like anywhere not in town and if they dont fight back your name becomes red until you die. If you PK someone you get 1 PK point, if you have more than 4 PK points, you have a high chance to drop your equipped gear on death (the gear you spent 4 months farming for) which makes the PvP fun. Clans can declare wars on each other so that you don't become PK for killing "an enemy".
So you farm with your clan and in the place where you need the mats, theres another party. So you tell them to fuck off but they don't so you fucking murder them. If you're a PK from that you also get attacked by townguards so you better get killed by your clanmates fast in case you drop gear. You lose significant progress when dying I think 4% of your current lvl (but in war death you lose only 1 or 2% I think, another reason for war to contest resource heavy areas).

When you've pissed off enough clans they might declare war on you and murder you when they meet you anywhere on map. This is fun, you make a strong clan and make gank parties . The whole game must be played with people in clans, you can't do shit alone. So by now you see how farming works with combat and how supply and demand are made. This drives the economy mostly.
Next, what do you do with that shit you farmed?
Well,everything is about wars and resources. Your clan can conquer a castle to gain an access to taxes, buffs in homebase and high % back from dying when you respawn at the base. To do that you need a strong alliance. So you sign up for a monthly castle siege where the castle is usually held by a strong alliance and you go to the siege and glorious amazing battles like 120 vs 120 vs 120 happen.
Now who wins?
Who ever has the best gear and tactics. Wheres the best gear from? From epic raids. WoW raids dont have shit on L2's raids. Again, there are no zones or PvP areas in L2 so a raid goes like this. You know a dragon will spawn at 12:00 every month. So you get your 120 people alliance to get the fuck there on time at 10:30 and for an hour and half you kill anybody who even comes close to the boss. So you can imagine how that works with wars and alliances and the freeform PvP.
Next you spend an hour killing the boss unless you're really good and trying not to get ganked or die to the boss. Now you have 1 amazing ring for your 120 people.
So what the fuck you do with that ring?
You put all your best shit on your best guy (and pray to god he doesn't fucking leave your clan and join the enemy once you've given him your 1 year's worth of work items) and send him to the Olympiad.
In the olympiad he fights matches with peers in his character class and if he wins the olympiad (held once per month and heavily contested on all the classes) he gets alliance wide buffs and skills which make your sieges and boss fights far more successful. Who has the most heroes in a fight usually wins. All this drives the economy who gets to farm what and where and sell it and make themselves gear.

Now for housing, there isn't player housing but clan housing which is limited and heavily contested in a bidding system or behind the scenes deals with clans and then theres a few castles which can be besieged.
Crafting is a wholesome system with many materials which must be farmed and even the recipes and all that is heavily contested.
The pvp is totally free and you need a well put together party with many supporting buffs and tanks and damage dealers (not fucking DPS whats with that retarded acronym) and different party to support mages than archers etc. All this to reach the one goal in game: personal prestige and clan prestige. Basically you live a life in this game and you feel really good when your clan has many epic items, good organization and best castle and many heroes or you yourself are a hero. It's all very simulationist and the game world behaves like a real world because everything is driven by players. It shits all over WoW for example in all these aspects.

I suppose in Shroud you can buy your house but what will you do with it? Here you work real hard for a clan hall with your mates and it gives you buffs (buffs are 20 mins long and necessary for farming and combat in general) gives your xp back when you die and gives you a place to meet and speak. Market places dont work like some list of stuff people are selling you pull up with an F1 button, marketplace is usually a square where people open a shop with their shit and sit there overnight selling it. If you're a castle lord you can buy a flying wyvern to oversee battles and shit. You can do stupid shit like fish or craft pretty acessories and there's some MMO quests etc. Basically, L2 got the PvP and the economic model right and I haven't seen it anywhere else because it all works together to make sense and to give the systems importance. It's also a properly cutthroat world with any gay honor or such shit because you can really hurt somebody by killing them and you can do it anywhere. It's important to play on a server with bots and shit banned or everything sucks. I dont know if its still possible to find a good server though.

 

[grimace]

I dont know if its still possible to find a good server though.

All online--games as a service--games are ephemeral.

Many Ultima fans long for a new (offline, never online!) single player narrative RPG like "classic" Ultima.

Shroud of the Avatar approaches the throne to Spiritual Successor but has not claimed it nor do Ultima fans (most of the "Dragons") accept SotA as Spiritual Successor.

Maybe after Episode 5? Will the true believers remain alive in this mortal coil to see it?



See Example:



https://twitter.com/razimus/status/1035099954270822400

https://youtu.be/hsTfqChFKuI (skip to 51 minutes)

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Ultima fans are so fucking weird

 

[Jaesun]

Today's Release was rather fascinating:

They abandoned the notion of Regional Economies (They never had that set up in a way they would ever work, so no need to continue it) and now all the Passes can be freely ran through. You aren't forced to go through them. You can now run everywhere on the world map. You still have to watch out for the overland encounters. That was actually a good change, exploration wise. It's possible they might go back to the Regional economy idea, when the new land mass is introduced (Chapter 2).

All the Banks are now linked. Items placed in any Bank can be accessed from any other Bank.

And for the most part, they finally fixed the Taming Skill. I don't use that though.

Also XP gains are now at a double rate. For both crafting and adventuring.

And the new player made dungeons thing could possibly be interesting.

 

[Infinitron]

taxalot From Ultima Codex: http://ultimacodex.com/2018/09/the-seeming-state-of-sota-and-portalarium/

The Seeming State of SotA and Portalarium
BY GOLEMDRAGON · SEPTEMBER 22, 2018

Greetings Friends! I was hoping to post this Friday, but I decided to wait till late evening a day later to post this to give ample time for return emails to give me statements on some final requests for info. Since I received none, I am proceeding as planned and may not address some of the points due to lack of inside information. As many of you know, I stepped away from Shroud of the Avatar as a player and backer a long time ago already. I still gladly post news about the game regularly using information I garner from the Shroud of the Avatar Website, the SotA Forums, Social Media, and other Gaming News Websites and Writers. Since we haven’t had a good “State of the Game” style post in awhile, I thought it would be apt to bring one to all of you from my perspective.

As an active gamer who loves to keep up on the news and many wonderful developers, studios, and even publishers I have gotten to meet and/or contact over the past decade. I also love talking about gaming news with peers and friends. Going into this, I want to remind all of you who read this of something important… as with any developer, there will be good things and bad things that occur with any game’s development as well as with any studio’s lifetime of work(s). Blind hatred of any Studio, Developer, or Publisher is immature, in my eyes.

I want to look at not just the state of the game from an outside viewpoint, but I want to also bring up the state of Portalarium from this outside viewpoint. I will be looking at a few specific areas in particular: the Marketing of SotA, the Game after Launch, Portalarium’s management of various issues, and lastly, the lifeline of SotA. I believe these first 3 issues play greatly into the final one.

Marketing

Shroud of the Avatar released the end of March 2018, almost 6 months ago already. While Shroud of the Avatar raised quite an impressive amount of money via Kickstarter back in 2013, a variety of issues have marred what most supporters hoped would be the revival of single player Ultima games, and a final hurrah for Richard Garriott. So when Shroud of the Avatar first launched its kickstarter, gamers all over the world heard that another legendary creative force behind a classic video game series was returning to the industry, and coming back to create a new work that would be for all gamers, not just fans of his past works.

The marketing machine was in full swing as gaming news websites, social media, Youtube, and even some on Twitch were all aflutter in excitement. The optics for Portalarium was on the receiving end of tons of free marketing, and they deserved every bit of it. Many of the interviews, whether audio, video, or print, included Richard talking about a number of various items of importance he wanted to focus on with this new game. The term “spiritual successor” was used by him as well as by fans, the media, and even the devs. Because of his history in the industry, questions from interviewers often led to Richard talking about the ebb and flow of trends in the gaming industry and game development, to World of Warcraft in regards to quests, to mobile gaming.

While Portalarium did fun little specials with such companies as Alienware, one advantage of it, is it continued to help reduce the severity of the inevitable reduction in optics when it comes to the news. Even the engine they chose to use, Unity, helped market them. They even did cooperative efforts with Underworld Ascendant and Star Citizen, because of the tie mutual ties to fellow employees at Origin, from back in the day. Portalarium also decided to partner with Travian Games and Black Sun Publishing to help spread overseas optics.

However, marketing dropped alot for a while and marketing seen publicly became continued attendance at conventions. While small time youtubers and streamers still periodically do Shroud of the Avatar videos, not much was really seen on the marketing front. While SotA is a niche game and overall numbers would never reach the levels of, say even, EvE Online. This often means that more niche as well as lesser well known gaming sites tend to be the only ones still doing articles on a regular or periodic basis. This keeps the optics at a level that may please some, but will always hold the game back from a larger audience.

The marketing at release, either from Portalarium or Travian but also from mainstream game sites, was more along the lines of a more press release style with pre-candid responses of “expect more content and features over time” and focus on features like housing that would garner big interest from others. Release related in-game events were really only stated on the website or on more niche websites. Portalarium did release an initial launch trailer on youtube. It currently reminds me of the marketing style Blizzard used with the Warbringer videos they did this year. And while this initial launch video had no gameplay footage in it, whether that was to the game’s benefit or not, thankfully they did do a few with later marketing videos. I have put one of them below. However these other videos never got nearly the amount of views as the initial launch one. Continued marketing, from what I can tell, has only been the announcements of the focusing on Episode 2.

Spoiler

Status of the Game

The simplest way of summarizing the game at the moment is that, Shroud of the Avatar is a game that doesn’t excel at anything. It has some wonderful points to it, as well as flaws that need a lot of work. The art and graphics has improved a lot since release. The overland map and use of instances is still something that I see as a wise move on their part to help set a very “Ultima” tone to the game and set them apart from some other games. The main story lines have some interesting development and provide some interesting content for those who want to do a playthrough.

The variety of scenes in the world provide much needed variety for what Richard envisioned was a world filled with a plethora of cultures. The combat system, while not loved by some, is enjoyable to those who do continue to play the game regularly. I still enjoy popping into Teamspeak to hear the guild, I joined back in the day, discuss how they optimize skills, rotation, surviving in battles, etc. They also added the ability to bypass what were basically choke points to make it easier to travel and explore the various regions of the continent.

The AI and UI both leave something to be desired. Pathing issues are something I still continue to hear & read about, from existing players. Tips and tricks to use the AI against itself to gain an advantage is something that all gamers tend to do. So I am certain some of this is simply due to the inability to predict what some players will do when coding systems in a game and so continued work to improve on it is simply needed. In fact, this is normal for any game’s lifecycle. The AI in regards to scheduling, like the day/night cycles, is quite nice too. The dialogue/speech UI especially is something even Lum wanted to upgrade to something improved and far better. Sadly with him no longer being at Portalarium, I have my doubts this will ever happen. Though, it has been mentioned by the dev team as being on the list of future goals.

The lack of content in some areas is another issue that has persisted since Release and hopefully in time will finally be resolved. Some zones were still clones of other areas even after release. When you play the game, there are some zones that are fantastic. It is quite obvious a lot of time and effort went into polishing not just the look, but the richness of it to have it feel fairly robust. NPCs that have personality in their dialogue are a big help with this. However some zones and NPCs still feel lacking in that area. This though tends to tie into the issue of scale, which was more of a management issue. More on that later…

If you look exactly at the primary goals of the game, laid out during the kickstarter: “our primary objectives are to tell a story even more compelling than Ultimas IV-VII, create a virtual world more interactive than Ultima VII, develop deep rich multi-player capabilities beyond combat akin to Ultima Online, and offer a bold new approach to integrate them with ‘Selective-Multiplayer’.” Do you think they have succeeded? Honestly, I don’t, but not from a lack of trying…

Management Decisions/Issues

It has been around five and a half years, and early Shroud of the Avatar backers are only now just finally getting their physical rewards. Now while thousands of boxes of physical rewards have gone out, there are still a significant enough number of people I know, who have yet to receive their version of the collector’s box still today. Now while I am certain some of this falls on some accounts simply failing to have correct shipping info in their account info. So first let’s look at some management decisions that people in the community are concerned with, in regards to physical goods.

The choice of not going with tracking info and especially no email notification when they shipped is still a sore topic for even many of those who received their collectors box. All backers eligible to get the print version of “Blade of the Avatar.” are still waiting for it. The collector’s box, most assumed, would contain ALL physical goods due to them. However Starr Long stated that this was not logistically possible with the box they chose to go with. Did they simply chose to go with one size box for both Collectors and Retail editions and choose to not worry about the logistics of if all items for collectors would fit? The only difference between the Collectors Box and the Retail box is a sticker. Is this Collector’s box really “a special box to hold your physical goods” if a sticker is all that differentiates the two?

We also learned on Sept 11th that there was an issue in dealing with the publisher to get copies of the book, for both fiscal reasons but also because they didn’t like how the illustrations were laid out. Now “Blade of the Avatar” was renamed for the version they had published as ebooks, an audiobook, and in hardcover. They called it “Sword of Midras”. However, “Sword of Midras” has additional story content that does not exist in the PDF version, that some backers currently have access to, of “Blade of the Avatar”. Which version of the book is Starr talking about in his post about these additional issues in getting the book to backers? I also find the two books being treated as the same in that recent post from Starr Long to be a bit dishonest. Saying “Blade of the Avatar” is “aka ‘Sword of Midras’” is not completely true. In fact, back in June of 2016, backers and fans were told that anyone with a SotA pledge of Citizen level on up would be getting the “Blade of the Avatar” version in the signed physical/print version, and NOT the “Sword of Midras” version. However, I now question if this is now the case with Starr’s recent post about this reward item. Is this just a communication mistake on Starr’s part? Which version will backers now get?

Starr Long even admitted in a post back in July, that their communication has been subpar. He even covers a few management mistakes that many of us have talked about for years: The fact that they were so ambitious, the fact that the scale of the game they wanted to make basically was attempted with a fraction of the budget they really would need to do it as well as many polished role playing games out there on the market, that the quality is lacking at times. It was nice to see this come from him, however at the same time, mixed in with apologizes, are statements that to some, could appear to shift blame and avoid Portalarium from taking accountability. However, as with any game, plans change, this is why pre-ordering and backing something via crowdfunding is not always something some people should do. There is a big difference between things changing because they need to for something to succeed versus false advertising. It is up to you to decide whether you see the apology as sincere and accept it.

Scale however has been however the biggest issue I see as a mismanagement issue with Portalarium from the start. Starrobviously acknowledges this was an issue and obviously a valid criticism. Without dedicated writing staff, without a bigger focus on UI, aspects of the game were doomed to fail from the start. And since they never became a priority like they should have, they are still an issue to this day. The increasing of the size of the world as a stretch goal during kickstarter was a bad idea.

A trend in gaming at the moment is to go larger in scale when it comes to open world games. While it is amazing how much we can do now with modern technology, this larger scale, isn’t always a good thing. The larger the world, the harder it is and longer it takes to fill the world with satisfying and robust content. Often side areas become a lower priority than main quest areas, and the content quality suffers for it. Add in production goals to meet a release deadline and the odds quality suffers increases again on top of it.

With the large number of NPC towns in the game, trying to have enough interesting NPCs with robust dialogue, along with interesting quests starts to be an issue. I am sure part of this was a financial issue due to the team being small throughout the whole process, even before the staff reduction this year. But when even major plot point towns suffer from this, it made it clear to many in the community, that a larger staff with dedicated writers for dialogue for instance would have been a big help. However, with big maps being all the rage, going smaller in scale may have caused some to be upset. Did the embracing of the trend of “bigger and better” prevent Portalarium from realizing the issue of scale until it was too late?

The management of the community is another issue that Portalarium has had over the years. Conflicts of stance between large groups of the community, toxic ppl in the forums (both backers and others), the handling of criticism of the game by some people on all sides, and so many other ones that continue to be brought up by people. With the staff at Portalarium often wearing “many hats” consistency and efficiency in dealing with the community has always been an issue. It is still a sore topic that I foresee will forever haunt the game. While there will always be at least one toxic person or element in any community, having the right person to deal with it is not always an easy task. I think some would say Portalarium hasn’t had that since Rustic Dragon worked for them.

I am not going to discuss RMT or Real Money Trading and whether Portalarium is right or not police it. However I do continue to see the constant need for new vanity items for the add-on store as something from Portalarium, to continue to drive income into Portalarium to simply keep afloat as a company. Microtransactions for many companies in the video game industry are the primary source of income for a company. Electronic Arts, for example, has a revenue stream in which the primary source of their income comes from microtransactions and services. So obviously selling vanity items and those few addon store gameplay or system affecting items (like the commission free vendor that have an effect on the game economy), is something that works, to have a revenue stream into the studio.

However, there will always be mixed feelings from gamers on microtransactions as well. Many feel like they are being nickeled and dimed for content. Others don’t mind it, especially if there are ways to get the items via a free way without spending real money. This is why having a good system to gain similar items either via loot or crafting is important to find that balance for players of both mindsets. Better reminders about what items were pledge/backer only and not available in a non pledge/backer version would have been nice as well, so players know if it is maybe worth investing more money into a game for an item or feature.

The Lifeline of SotA

In 2017, Richard tried to help calm the storm of fear about Portalarium’s financial state when they decided to do the SeedInvest campaign. It became such an issue mainstream gaming news sites, like Kotaku, were compelled to do an article. With the annual report for Portalarium, from April 30, 2018 (on the SEC’s website), the continued fear of the finances of the stupid continued. The fact the statement of “As of December 31, 2017, the Company has not yet commenced planned principal operations nor generated significant revenue.” caused a lot of fear for players.

With the staff reduction, that was stated as being in preparation for and to focus on Episode 2, these fears increased again. When Dallas Snell, the COO and a co-Founder of the company, left, there was no post or even press release that went out. For any larger company, a press release would have been the bare minimum done for someone of his position. With the recent move, yet again, to a new office space, even I have to admit that Portalarium is showing significant enough signs to question how long they will survive.

Richard stated in 2017, in that same Kotaku article, that “We earn about the same amount as we spend every month,” Garriott said, “and that has been true for the majority of the existence of this company.” The primary source of income from my point of view would have to be microtransactions and the subscription feature more so than game sales. The stretch goals they do for each release livestream would tend to support that. However, how long will this revenue stream of existing players be able to hold out? With Episode One not being complete still in the eyes of many, there will be a reduction in revenue for support for future episodes. Plus, as with any online game, a reduction over time is inevitable as players leave and spent more and more time on other games. Even two of the oldest MMOs, The Realm Online and Ultima Online, no longer have the player base they once did… These two games were niche games too, much like SotA is.

From the outside, I have serious doubts that Portalarium will ever complete all 5 Episodes. I have doubts about Episode 2 ever being completed, even just based on the financial info that is publically available. I would be so bold as to say, I don’t expect Shroud of the Avatar to last more than a few years, at best. I hope I am wrong though.

 

[thesheeep]

From the outside, I have serious doubts that Portalarium will ever complete all 5 Episodes. I have doubts about Episode 2 ever being completed, even just based on the financial info that is publically available. I would be so bold as to say, I don’t expect Shroud of the Avatar to last more than a few years, at best. I hope I am wrong though.

As was clear to everyone from as much as a few months after "launch".

But hey, nice to see even the fans slowly catch up

 

[taxalot]

I am not sure _anyone_ is expecting anything by that point. They are running with a skeleton crew barely able to make a patch or two. Every time I read the patch notes I am thinking that yes, this is going in the right direction, but by this point it's trying to fix the Titanic by throwing water overboard with a bucket. The matter is not about if it will fail or go under, the question is : when ?

I am betting 2019, but look at what happened to Telltale. You might very well wake up tomorrow and find a bankruptcy announcement.

I seem to remember the Episode 1 funding to be a fast success ? Well, Episode 2 stretch goals apparently interest no one. How can you blame them ?

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?page_id=40715

 

[thesheeep]

I seem to remember the Episode 1 funding to be a fast success ? Well, Episode 2 stretch goals apparently interest no one. How can you blame them ?

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?page_id=40715

Wow... that "selection" almost physically hurts.

 

[Max Heap]

Horse Statue: 20$

Scaled Up Horse Statue: 50$

Wow! What a value!

 

[Makabb]

Why games like Ultima Online were possible in mid 90's with a fraction of the budget and hardware from 20 years ago, but today they cannot make something similar ?
Most games today turn out to be vaporware/scam/meme material.

Are the developers of today so shit ?

 

[Zep Zepo]

Why games like Ultima Online were possible in mid 90's with a fraction of the budget and hardware from 20 years ago, but today they cannot make something similar ?

Boy! Have I got the game for you, it's called "No Man's Sky"!

Give it a try, report back with your impressions.

Spoiler

of course

Zep--

 

[Grauken]

Why games like Ultima Online were possible in mid 90's with a fraction of the budget and hardware from 20 years ago, but today they cannot make something similar ?
Most games today turn out to be vaporware/scam/meme material.

Are the developers of today so shit ?

People like you look at old games, see "dated" graphics and think these have been cheap to make and only cost a fraction of the money used today to make games. UO was a major game from what would be an AAA- or at least AA-developer today, not an indie title. They had the whole gamedev infrastructure in place that allowed them to make these games, and even they produced lots of turds. If the kickstarter "revolution" showed one thing, is that a lot of old developers bought into their own overstated ability of game creation, while forgetting that all the overhead that is never menioned, the people that do the marketing, that make sure your company has enough cash flow to pay your employees tomorrow and so on just worked. Not to speak of all the content pipelines that were in place and most of the lead designers didn't think about on a daily basis.

A quick google search tells you that UO's costs were around 5-8 million dollars. Account for inflation, acount for that these were teams of seasoned professional with young developers and you cut down a lot of dev. time not relearning dev. development from the ground up, as a lot of the kickstarter teams see to do. Also I doubt that these numbers really reflect the correct assigned overhead costs of the company, but even then, they could start running and didn't need to set up a new company to make a game, including HR and all the other departments. Comparing a modern indie game to a game produced by a major studio 20 years ago is just stupid

 

[Zep Zepo]

What does UO (Ultima Online) have to do with Ultima Underworld?

One was an interactive 3D world (UU), the other (UO) a 2D side scroller?

I liked UO for what it was, but comparing it to UU is like comparing apples and oranges.

Zep--

 

[Grauken]

What the fuck are you talking about?

 

[Zep Zepo]

What the fuck are you talking about?

Get bent you stupid retard. Do you seriously lack the comprehension to read ONE POST above mine (yours, btw)? You're the one comparing UU development to UO, not me.

Zep--

 

[Grauken]

Did somebody shit in your brain, I was talking about Makabb comparing UO to Shroud of the Avatar, never mentioned UU

 

[Zep Zepo]

Did somebody shit in your mouth? Because your (and his) "comparison" bullshit is still comparing apples and oranges (UU and UO).

Zep--

 

[Zep Zepo]

Of course I'm serious, you stupid gimp. Do you even (re)read your previously posted diarrhea before posting more?

Obviously not.

Zep--

 

[Makabb]

A quick google search tells you that UO's costs were around 5-8 million dollars.

Compare that to Star Citizen fund of over 100 million dollars or WoW cost.

5-8 million dollars IS a fraction of the cost.



And SOTA has raised 12 million, that is all money directly to Garriott

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?page_id=35155

 

[thesheeep]

Of course I'm serious, you stupid gimp. Do you even (re)read your previously posted diarrhea before posting more?

Obviously not.

Zep--

Man, you're on a roll.
A roll into insanity.

Maybe should step back from this place, breathe a little.

 

[Zep Zepo]

Some real retards in this thread rating posts.

It's funny, actually.

Zep--

 

[Jaesun]

I am not sure _anyone_ is expecting anything by that point. They are running with a skeleton crew barely able to make a patch or two.

They do just fine, every release. I play the actual game, you don't. The last months patch had a few hitches with them moving and other shit happening...

Every time I read the patch notes I am thinking that yes, this is going in the right direction, but by this point it's trying to fix the Titanic by throwing water overboard with a bucket. The matter is not about if it will fail or go under, the question is : when ?

Well, every single month, they do a fundraiser to support the game, and every month it still seems to do just fine.

I seem to remember the Episode 1 funding to be a fast success ? Well, Episode 2 stretch goals apparently interest no one. How can you blame them ?

It seems to be doing quite well, Do you have specific numbers about this? I see tons of people with the Visionary tag in game, but then again, you don't actually play this game, and make shit up.

 

[taxalot]

"They are doing fine" he said after they fired half of their staff. "Patches add welcome additions", he added staring at the first new monster in the last 6 months. If only people could be more oblivious to the fact the game is still a broken less and that no one is bothering to fund Episode 2.

"This game is a great success", he repeated to himself one last time before rushing to farm some items : he had in-game taxes to pay.

"Man, I can't wait for more news on Episode 2. Now that they have finished relocating to a cheaper office, they can probably show the entire world how healthy their situation are."