KickStarter The Wayward Realms - upcoming Daggerfall-like RPG from original Elder Scrolls developers

[HoboForEternity]

This will be over a decade long game development, and rest assured - the final buggy, unfinished product will not be anything like what anyone is hoping.

You think it's going to get released. lol

It will be ""released " as much as underworld ascendant

 

[Cohesion]

Lol luj1 is butthurt that Morrowind is a shit game. Even Skyrim is better.
Daggerfall > Skyrim > Morrowind.

 

[Tyranicon]

Imagine at any point saying that all kickstarters are scams, and then giving funds to people who outright say they'll use your money to look for a publisher.

ROFL.

The games industry is a joke.

Every competent Kickstarter game had a publisher before it was even released - as potential audience was at least 50x bigger than people who paid 2 years in advance.

Only if a game is complete disaster - and no publisher wants to touch it - it gets self-published exclusively on Steam - to somehow 'fulfill' Kickstarter promises.

Finding a big publisher is just asking to be fucked. Asking for money so you can find someone to fuck you is an absurd position.

Games don't cost 50 million dollars to make. Especially not procgen unreal projects in 2024.

 

[Gargaune]

Finding a big publisher is just asking to be fucked. Asking for money so you can find someone to fuck you is an absurd position.

Games don't cost 50 million dollars to make. Especially not procgen unreal projects in 2024.

According to the link Harthwain posted here, the project was allegedly offered some $8 million back in 2019, but then they decided to ask for $12 mil "to compete with Cyberpunk and the next Elder Scrolls" and the publisher decided it'd be better if they just stayed friends.

 

[Azdul]

Imagine at any point saying that all kickstarters are scams, and then giving funds to people who outright say they'll use your money to look for a publisher.

ROFL.

The games industry is a joke.

Every competent Kickstarter game had a publisher before it was even released - as potential audience was at least 50x bigger than people who paid 2 years in advance.

Only if a game is complete disaster - and no publisher wants to touch it - it gets self-published exclusively on Steam - to somehow 'fulfill' Kickstarter promises.

Finding a big publisher is just asking to be fucked. Asking for money so you can find someone to fuck you is an absurd position.

Games don't cost 50 million dollars to make. Especially not procgen unreal projects in 2024.

When digital PC/Steam version in English is more or less completed and has potential - not going for international multi-platform release with proper marketing budget would be stupid.

Even small publisher has infinitely more experience with translations, physical versions, dealing with EGS / GOG / Sony / Nintendo/ Microsoft and handling marketing campaigns than developer.

Developers can spend resources to learn how to deal with all those things - or concentrate on making another game.

Usually taking X% of royalties from Switch or German version - and letting publisher handle these versions makes more sense than not having these versions at all.

 

[Gargaune]

When digital PC/Steam version in English is more or less completed and has potential - not going for international multi-platform release with proper marketing budget would be stupid.

Even small publisher has infinitely more experience with translations, physical versions, dealing with EGS / GOG / Sony / Nintendo/ Microsoft and handling marketing campaigns than developer.

Developers can spend resources to learn how to deal with all those things - or concentrate on making another game.

Usually taking X% of royalties from Switch or German version - and letting publisher handle these versions makes more sense than not having these versions at all.

That's not what they're pitching here though:

Our goal is to raise $500,000 to fund one year of development on an Early Access build that will feature preliminary versions of key systems. It is our aim to then take that Early Access build to publishers to seek out further funding and continue development on the rest of the game.

It's literally "give us 500k so we can make a publisher demo, then they'll fund the actual game you'll absolutely totally eventually get maybe."

 

[luj1]

Lol luj1 is butthurt that Morrowind is a shit game. Even Skyrim is better.
Daggerfall > Skyrim > Morrowind.

only a retard can say this, gj

 

[Vulpes]

All Bethesda games after Daggerfall are slop. By what metric is Morrowind a good RPG? By how alien the world is? Sure, if you've never heard of Indian culture before, it has that going for it, even if the world is still an unappealing mix of different shades of grey and brown. It's one of the most tedious and unchallenging RPGs I've ever played. The spell and class system are a step backwards from Daggerfall in terms of usefulness and customizability. The quests, despite being handmade and not randomly generated like Daggerfall, are still as simple as they were back then. It's a half-baked game overrated by pseudointellectual hipsters who have deluded themselves into thinking it's super deep with some kind of super complex mathematic shit going on in the background, when in reality it has the most basic and straightforward kind of systems you can come up with for a RPG. You don't even have to worry about your build because there is nothing stopping you from having 100 in every single skill and level scaling isn't as prominent as it in new titles. Fuck, you can be good at anything at any point of the game by just spamming the trainers like a retard because money is painfully easy to come by.

Even Arx Fatalis is a million times better and it was Arkane's very first title. Arx has an actual combat system that isn't just spamming the left mouse button and hoping you actually hit something. It has an engaging and immersive magic system that demands effort from the player (both in terms of collecting and casting spells), rather than just spamming a button and hoping your spell works like a bumbling idiot.

 

[Terenty]

in 2019, but then they decided to ask for $12 mil "to compete with Cyberpunk and the next Elder Scrolls"

$12mil to compete with Cyberpunk and Elden Scrolls? Completely out of touch with reality.

These "veterans" belong in a nursing home, not gamedev

 

[LJ40]

By what metric is Morrowind a good RPG? By how alien the world is? Sure, if you've never heard of Indian culture before

TIL: India is a mysterious far-off land of giant mushrooms and mechanical spiders.

 

[Vulpes]

By what metric is Morrowind a good RPG? By how alien the world is? Sure, if you've never heard of Indian culture before

TIL: India is a mysterious far-off land of giant mushrooms and mechanical spiders.

The shrooms and spiders are there to represent everything that ended up in Kirkbride's mouth as he was laying on his apartment floor stoned out of his mind trying to think of names for his version of Moksha (CHIM) and Samsara (Kalpa). And why do you think there are no toilets in Morrowind? Because everyone shits in the streets. Now that's what I call real representation!

Praise Vivek!!!

 

[Harthwain]

All Bethesda games after Daggerfall are slop. By what metric is Morrowind a good RPG? By how alien the world is? Sure, if you've never heard of Indian culture before, it has that going for it, even if the world is still an unappealing mix of different shades of grey and brown.

Good or bad is debatable (I can see why someone could dislike it), but Morrowind is without a shadow of doubt it is an interesting game.

It had amazing visuals at the time (the sky is still great to look at), it had a huge open 3D world that was almost seamless (indoors being the exception), the setting itself was interesting to explore thanks of its uniqueness (especially when compared to other games, not just cRPGs, then and now) and it managed to be a mix of an action game with RPG mechanics where skill of the character is way more important that skill of the player (something you can't say about most action cRPGs).

 

[Vulpes]

Almost all of the things you've mentioned were done far better by Gothic 1

 

[Lemming42]

MW's appeal is pretty much the same as other Todd games, it's an open world with no real rules where you can (theoretically) go anywhere and do anything, and approach things in any way you want. Obviously the problems arise when you try to do basically anything other than hit shit with an axe/fry shit with a fireball and discover that the game either has no systems to accomodate you, has very shallow and broken systems (stealth, speechcraft, etc), or just outright refuses to acknowledge what you're trying to do. And add to that the fact that even the systems which the game does expect you to use (ie combat) are broken and shitty, and the fact that the open world turns out to be almost entirely static and unreactive and that almost nothing you do is ever actually going to matter or affect anything or even be acknowledged.

All the Todd games (MW/Oblivion/Skyrim) are frustrating as fuck because they're perpetually on the brink of being really good, but basically every single thing you do just ends up revealing that more and more of the game's promises are false. I think there's still not much else like them and that Bethesda deserve credit for trying things that nobody else was during a time when innovation and experimentation in games was on a massive downturn, even if they consistently went about it in the most lazy and low-ambition way possible, to the point where even a bunch of jokers like Obsidian could absolutely smoke them with NV.

That's where the lively modding scenes for those three latter TES games come in, I think - people are motivated to put a ton of effort into these games because you can kind of see the outline of something brilliant which is waiting to come to fruition, even though it never does. Over a decade later and I'm still hoping someone somehow hits on a Skyrim modlist which will turn it into the game it should have been but never will be.

 

[Tyranicon]

Later TES games are GTA clones with interiors, slapped on RPG systems and slighter worse writing.

 

[Harthwain]

Almost all of the things you've mentioned were done far better by Gothic 1

That's a weird argument to make. I like Gothic 1, although for different reasons (by the way, both Gothic and Morrowind are my top 10 cRPGs). But even if I were to agree (for the sake of an argument) that Gothic 1 is "far better" than Morrowind, it doesn't invalidate anything I said about why Morrowind is an interesting game in its own right, which was the whole point.

 

[NecroLord]

MW's appeal is pretty much the same as other Todd games, it's an open world with no real rules where you can (theoretically) go anywhere and do anything, and approach things in any way you want. Obviously the problems arise when you try to do basically anything other than hit shit with an axe/fry shit with a fireball and discover that the game either has no systems to accomodate you, has very shallow and broken systems (stealth, speechcraft, etc), or just outright refuses to acknowledge what you're trying to do. And add to that the fact that even the systems which the game does expect you to use (ie combat) are broken and shitty, and the fact that the open world turns out to be almost entirely static and unreactive and that almost nothing you do is ever actually going to matter or affect anything or even be acknowledged.

All the Todd games (MW/Oblivion/Skyrim) are frustrating as fuck because they're perpetually on the brink of being really good, but basically every single thing you do just ends up revealing that more and more of the game's promises are false. I think there's still not much else like them and that Bethesda deserve credit for trying things that nobody else was during a time when innovation and experimentation in games was on a massive downturn, even if they consistently went about it in the most lazy and low-ambition way possible, to the point where even a bunch of jokers like Obsidian could absolutely smoke them with NV.

That's where the lively modding scenes for those three latter TES games come in, I think - people are motivated to put a ton of effort into these games because you can kind of see the outline of something brilliant which is waiting to come to fruition, even though it never does. Over a decade later and I'm still hoping someone somehow hits on a Skyrim modlist which will turn it into the game it should have been but never will be.

Much of Morrowind's appeal also comes from its rich Lore.
One of the most interesting in the whole series.
Daggerfall also had great Lore and story.

 

[Butter]

Later TES games are GTA clones with interiors, slapped on RPG systems and slighter worse writing.

They would support a criminal playthrough better if that were true.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Later TES games are GTA clones with interiors, slapped on RPG systems and slighter worse writing.

They would support a criminal playthrough better if that were true.

You can make a redguard.

 

[Vulpes]

Almost all of the things you've mentioned were done far better by Gothic 1

That's a weird argument to make. I like Gothic 1, although for different reasons (by the way, both Gothic and Morrowind are my top 10 cRPGs). But even if I were to agree (for the sake of an argument) that Gothic 1 is "far better" than Morrowind, it doesn't invalidate anything I said about why Morrowind is an interesting game in its own right, which was the whole point.

I mentioned Gothic because you made it sound like Morrowind was doing something ground-breaking. Nevertheless, these points don't make up for how basic, buggy and janky the core experience (gameplay, quests, NPCs, etc.) is. So much so that the advice most new players get is to heavily metagame (have the wiki open at all times) and/or abuse bugs that break the balance.

 

[Cohesion]

MW's appeal is pretty much the same as other Todd games, it's an open world with no real rules where you can (theoretically) go anywhere and do anything, and approach things in any way you want. Obviously the problems arise when you try to do basically anything other than hit shit with an axe/fry shit with a fireball and discover that the game either has no systems to accomodate you, has very shallow and broken systems (stealth, speechcraft, etc), or just outright refuses to acknowledge what you're trying to do. And add to that the fact that even the systems which the game does expect you to use (ie combat) are broken and shitty, and the fact that the open world turns out to be almost entirely static and unreactive and that almost nothing you do is ever actually going to matter or affect anything or even be acknowledged.

All the Todd games (MW/Oblivion/Skyrim) are frustrating as fuck because they're perpetually on the brink of being really good, but basically every single thing you do just ends up revealing that more and more of the game's promises are false. I think there's still not much else like them and that Bethesda deserve credit for trying things that nobody else was during a time when innovation and experimentation in games was on a massive downturn, even if they consistently went about it in the most lazy and low-ambition way possible, to the point where even a bunch of jokers like Obsidian could absolutely smoke them with NV.

That's where the lively modding scenes for those three latter TES games come in, I think - people are motivated to put a ton of effort into these games because you can kind of see the outline of something brilliant which is waiting to come to fruition, even though it never does. Over a decade later and I'm still hoping someone somehow hits on a Skyrim modlist which will turn it into the game it should have been but never will be.

Much of Morrowind's appeal also comes from its rich Lore.
One of the most interesting in the whole series.
Daggerfall also had great Lore and story.

Morrowind's appeal comes from atmosphere, you are right. Gameplay is total shit - just look At MW thread here - people discussing what is the best way to nerf economy/progression, trying to polish turd.

 

[Tyranicon]

Later TES games are GTA clones with interiors, slapped on RPG systems and slighter worse writing.

They would support a criminal playthrough better if that were true.

Seeing how Skyrim was basically a meme about buckets on shopkeeper heads and hording sweetrolls, I'd say TES actually beats GTA on crime simulation.

 

[NecroLord]

Later TES games are GTA clones with interiors, slapped on RPG systems and slighter worse writing.

They would support a criminal playthrough better if that were true.

Seeing how Skyrim was basically a meme about buckets on shopkeeper heads and hording sweetrolls, I'd say TES actually beats GTA on crime simulation.

It does have a pretty cool Thieves Guild questline.
Mercer Frey (leader of the Thieves Guild) was voiced by Stephen Russell aka Garrett.

 

[Harthwain]

I mentioned Gothic because you made it sound like Morrowind was doing something ground-breaking.

It WAS impressive, even if we look at it from the technical standpoint alone. Personally I think Gothic is different from Morrowind. Enough so that 1:1 comparison is not really going to work.

Nevertheless, these points don't make up for how basic, buggy and janky the core experience (gameplay, quests, NPCs, etc.) is.

That's one opinion. The core experience may have been basic or janky, but it had its charm, otherwise I wouldn't become the cult classic it is now.

So much so that the advice most new players get is to heavily metagame (have the wiki open at all times) and/or abuse bugs that break the balance.

Not sure what's the point of having a wiki open at all times. I never really had problems finding stuff, and that was before wikis even became a thing. Same goes for RECOMMENDING to "abuse bugs that break the balance". You are going to become too powerful simply by playing the game normally. There is really no need to metagame anything. One thing you could recommend is visual upgrade (and maybe some quality of life changes), but nothing major in terms of gameplay.

 

[Iskramor]

Here's the plan:

1. Kickstart a "demo".
2. Use the money to screw around for a year.
3. Take whatever random crap they have when the money runs out onto the publisher circuit.
4. Fail to get a deal because their "demo" is crap.
5. Blame the publishers for not recognizing their genius.

Julian will probably take about $100-120K for a year, Ted will cut in about $80-$100K. That would leave about $300K for 12 months of production for a team of about 15 people. Averaging about $20K/y for an individual paycheck.
This would all mean that most of the team will not work on the project full time [Julian and Ted excluded and maybe few others], probably just keep doing what they did up until now [volunteer hours], so putting in about 14h per week,...just this time they will get payed for that amount of [work].

Kickstarter money will last one year for sallaries.