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Originally Posted by Peter Ebbesen
This is the area in which Larian has been lax by not sending out a kickstarter update or making a sticky forum post focused on the original promises and how and why they decided to make changes or omit some of them, but instead leaving it for people to discover post release, with the understandable result that even weeks after release we still have people starting new threads about where the missing features are.
This.

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Originally Posted by Darth_Trethon
Originally Posted by Morrandir
Originally Posted by Darth_Trethon
Well the companions seem to be on track to be placed in the game soon. The character traits are in the AI personalities have been patched in a couple days ago and I'm keeping faith the lair will be added as well sooner rather than later...
I'm aware of this, but again it should have been communicated earlier. As for the lair (if you speak of the mega-dungeon?) afaik it won't be added at all as it had been split up and is already placed in the game world.


Unless Larian have specifically said it's been scrapped I wouldn't assume it. They HAVE said they intend this to be a living project that they constantly add to and expand. You could shoot them an PM on the KS website or an email and see if they reply.
I'm not interested in a mega-dungeon. wink

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they did explain about the day-night cycle

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Originally Posted by Darth_Trethon

Well the companions seem to be on track to be placed in the game soon. The character traits are in the AI personalities have been patched in a couple days ago and I'm keeping faith the lair will be added as well sooner rather than later....unless I'm missing something about them saying it's been scrapped. At the moment I don't mind these delays, they have been busy furiously patching things really fast, which is great.

You'll be waiting for a long time for that ~10 levels Phantom Lair, based on the latest information from Larian in response to an inquiry last week. See this thread, Lar_q's answer about halfway down .

Basically, large parts of the end content already in the game is content that was originally designed for the Phantom Lair, which was instead split up into separate areas, with remaining parts of the Phantom Lair in whichever state of completion discarded, in favour of spending development resources on areas of the game they considered of higher priority.

Somehow Larian thought this was a good idea to do based on their development situation (and I'm certainly not going to argue against that decision) and at the same time didn't consider it important enough to communicate to their backers at release that a megadungeon that featured prominently in the kickstarter and had a kickstarter update dedicated to it was cut with resources spent otherwise (which failure of communication I really don't understand).


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Originally Posted by DragonCommander
they did explain about the day-night cycle

Originally Posted by Morrandir
What I'm not happy about is that Larian failed in properly communicating the "missing" features before the release. They did so for the missing day/night cycles but not for the other stuff (AI personalities, more companions, mega dungeon).

Last edited by Morrandir; 18/07/14 12:59 PM.
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Originally Posted by Peter Ebbesen


I'd prefer if they were less common, but if you are making them in the first place, for the love of God make them something that you can reasonably expect to make for considerably less money than the money you are asking for, such that it is almost certain that you won't end up being overwhelmed when your budget turns out to have been optimistic, as is often the case. It is even worse from my perspective when people make a promise of the "if we get X likes on Facebook, do Y" or other promises to add stuff that isn't funded, but these are popular as a way of attracting more backers - backers whose pledges will likely go towards meeting the funding of some of your stretch goals.

Money was not the problem here. It was the question if you stick to these goals or if you substitute them for something else which probably benefits the game in general.

If anything time was the pressing issue but not money, at least for the companions.

The day/night cycle is the only goal I would agree on that they might overestimated their capabilites - and underestimated the work it would require. But they explained that in a kickstarter update for what it's worth.

Last edited by LordCrash; 18/07/14 01:00 PM.

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Originally Posted by Peter Ebbesen
You'll be waiting for a long time for that ~10 levels Phantom Lair, based on the latest information from Larian in response to an inquiry last week. See this thread, Lar_q's answer about halfway down.
In case you din't know, you can link to a posting directly by using the URL that the little icon left of the posting's topic is referring to.

Last edited by Morrandir; 18/07/14 01:03 PM.
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Originally Posted by Morrandir
Originally Posted by Peter Ebbesen
You'll be waiting for a long time for that ~10 levels Phantom Lair, based on the latest information from Larian in response to an inquiry last week. See this thread, Lar_q's answer about halfway down.
In case you din't know, you can link to a posting directly by using the URL that the little icon left of the posting's topic is referring to.

I didn't know the correct syntax for it, but now I do. Thank you. smile


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Originally Posted by Morrandir
What I'm not happy about is that Larian failed in properly communicating the "missing" features before the release. They did so for the missing day/night cycles but not for the other stuff (AI personalities, more companions, mega dungeon).


I will concur with this statement. While I'm not exactly miffed about it like some others, I do recognize this nevertheless. My best estimation is that they simply overworked themselves to finish the game, and some details (like the dungeon and the companions) simply fell by the wayside when it came time to update the KS backers.

It's not an ideal situation, by any means, but it is understandable. Their primary focus was finishing the game, and so they didn't give as much thought to informing us about the changes they were making. Hopefully, future endeavors that involve KS will be handled more smoothly. Perhaps Swen can hire/assign a KS project manager to maintain the communication properly.

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Originally Posted by Jito463
Originally Posted by Morrandir
What I'm not happy about is that Larian failed in properly communicating the "missing" features before the release. They did so for the missing day/night cycles but not for the other stuff (AI personalities, more companions, mega dungeon).


I will concur with this statement. While I'm not exactly miffed about it like some others, I do recognize this nevertheless. My best estimation is that they simply overworked themselves to finish the game, and some details (like the dungeon and the companions) simply fell by the wayside when it came time to update the KS backers.

It's not an ideal situation, by any means, but it is understandable. Their primary focus was finishing the game, and so they didn't give as much thought to informing us about the changes they were making. Hopefully, future endeavors that involve KS will be handled more smoothly. Perhaps Swen can hire/assign a KS project manager to maintain the communication properly.


Well, I can understand Larian. They even probably were silent on purpose. It's marketing. But also we gamers and the internet are to blame. Why is that so?

Just think about Larian announced shortly before release that features X and Y didn't make it to the final release. What would have been the effects and results of such a statement? There would have been the high risk of some serious complaining, whining and flamebaiting on the internet. No developer who is dependent on word-of-mouth can actually want to have a shitstorm at release, from both people on forums and press who write about that "missing stuff" right before release. It's the behaviour of us gamers nowadays, our unability to cope with such situations with reason. Also nobody who wants to sell a product tries to get some negative press right at release. From a purely theoretical perspective it would have been "nice" to have a clear and honest public statement of Larian about the missing stuff. But from a practical perspective it was probably better to not doing so. Even as a gamer I can enjoy a game more without thinking about negative elements while playing. It's a different if I play a game with positive or negative thoughts in mind. There is a big difference in an experience in which I think "Wow, that's a cool feature." and an experience in which I think "Hm, this feature is missing." We humans are easily conquered by our feelings and we gamers tend to negativity literally without limits. That's the reason for shitstorms on the internet or such ridiculous exaggerations like the "graphics discussion" in Watch_Dogs which let to hundreds of zero points reviews on metacritic. Honestly, i can't blame any developer for trying to prevent such damaging situations. Sometimes it's better to be a bit less transparent, not because you want to hide something but because the effects are probably far worse than the actual issue deserves.

It honors Larian that they at least try to deliver on their promises (or rather "goals" as the wording stretch goal implies) after release and that they talked about the issues on forums. They even openly admitted that they couldn't deliver on the day/night goal. It's very easy to criticise if you don't have to lose anything, if your life and job and future isn't at stake. But Larian depend on the success of D:OS so of course they try to offer both a great product and they try to prevent negative press. Most big publishers would never even talk about cut features though. Let's just be happy for a second that Larian is not like that. Sure, they want to earn their daily bread with D:OS but they also want to do the right thing - at least that's my opinion. wink


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Originally Posted by LordCrash

It honors Larian that they at least try to deliver on their promises (or rather "goals" as the wording stretch goal implies)

You don't get off that easily: The original kickstarter is also a goal.

A stretch goal is neither more nor less of a promise of what the kickstarter starter will do than the original goals, it is merely an additional goal for a certain funding target.

https://www.kickstarter.com/help/faq/creator+questions#faq_50035

If you consider any of the goals announced in a kickstarter as promises to the backers (including the original kickstarter goal(s)), you should consider all of them to be so rather than picking and choosing to fit your narrative.

Now, legally, the only things in a kickstarter that (currently) counts as promises are the rewards promised to backers, so it is certainly possible to take the standpoint that nothing that is stated about the project to be made in the kickstarter should be taken as a promise so long as you keep it away from the reward tiers, and that regardless of what is actually made - so long as what is explicitly stated in the reward tiers is carried out, all promises have been fulfilled. This would be an extreme position, however, and not one shared by most backers, as the majority expect that the goals stated in the kickstarter are actually what will be done should funding occur.

So if you think it honours them to try to deliver on their stretch goals, presumably you also think it honours them that they delivered on any part of D:OS that was mentioned in the original goal.

I think this is a good game. I think that, overall, Larian has done pretty well with their kickstarter. And though I feel they have failed in communicating properly with respect to their failure to achieve goals, I am hopeful that they've learned valuable lessons from that in case they ever want to start another kickstarter project.

But I must admit that your idea that we should honour and praise Larian for trying post-release to deliver on announced funded goals that they failed to deliver upon release truly baffles me.


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Originally Posted by Peter Ebbesen

But I must admit that your idea that we should honour and praise Larian for trying post-release to deliver on announced funded goals that they failed to deliver upon release truly baffles me.


Perhaps I just don't share your feel of entitlement. Maybe we've just backed the project on kickstarter for different reasons. Maybe you just have little empathy and understanding for other people in general. I don't know.

I say it honestly: I don't give a shit about those stretch goals. Not because I dislike their premise but because that's not the reason why I backed the kickstarter in general. I've backed the project because I thought that free and transparent game development should have a chance in our AAA-company gaming industry. I've backed the project becasue I thought that Larian were able to create a good game once freed from corporate chains. And they did exactly that. I don't see kickstarter as a mere deal, I see it as a way of supporting people and stuff I see worthy off my money. Kickstarter is as much about donations as about funding. It's not an investment and if you see kickstarter like that I feel a bit sorry for you. Maybe you value your own money and contribution a bit too high in general, that's at least my impression...

And I honor them because compared to the "industry standard" they do a lot more. They want to create more stuff even though the game is already "finished", without additional charging, not only for the 20,000 kickstarter backers but also for the 200,000 or more regular customer to whom they never gave any promise or whatsover. Most of the other companies in the industry would have just cut the product short or release paid DLC afterwards (e.g. additional companions). In an industry in which paid DLC and microtransactions are all around I honor devs who want to improve on their product and who want to make their customers happy without asking for your money again. And I acknowledge both their quality product and their working ethics. It's not like they didn't want to deliver on those stretch goals, not at all. They just couldn't deliver on every goal in time which is a common issue in game development. You - as a game developer - should know that best.

And thanks for ignoring the whole rest of my post about communication and effects..."You don't get off that easily" you would probably say. I say cherry-picking... wink

Last edited by LordCrash; 18/07/14 04:37 PM.

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Originally Posted by LordCrash

Perhaps I just don't share your feel of entitlement. Maybe we've just backed the project on kickstarter for different reasons. Maybe you just have little empathy and understanding for other people in general. I don't know.

Perhaps I just don't share your feeling of gratitude over people doing what they've promised to do in order to obtain funding, and consider this normal behaviour and nothing especially praiseworthy. Maybe we've got considerably different ideas of what kickstarter promises entail. Maybe you are a ten kilometer tall purple invisible accordion-playing smurf, that likes to belittle people that disagree with you. I don't know.

[skipped a paragraph praising Larian, noting that LordCrash didn't care about stretch goals, and presenting LordCrash as a true philanthropist supporting a worthy cause.]

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And I honor them because compared to the "industry standard" they do a lot more. They want to create more stuff even though the game is already "finished", without additional charging, not only for the 20,000 kickstarter backers but also for the 200,000 or more regular customer to whom they never gave any promise or whatsover.

See the above. I can admire people who do more, but I expect people to live up to their words.

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Most of the other companies in the industry would have just cut the product short or release paid DLC afterwards (e.g. additional companions).

Objection!

Given the currently low number of completed crowd-funded games in the industry, it seems very unlikely that you have a single example of a crowd-funded game where something promised as a stretch goal that was fully funded was instead released as paid DLC, and extremely unlikely that you have an example of that with companions.

Which means that you are more likely here thinking of comparing a crowd-funded game, where such companions have been promised to backers as part of the game for reaching a certain funding target, with non-crowdfunded games, where players might very well have such wishes, but would have no reasonable expectation of it. In the latter case it would be entirely reasonable to expect such companions as paid DLC, in the former not.

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In an industry in which paid DLC and microtransactions are all around I honor devs who want to improve on their product and who want to make their customers happy without asking for your money again.

So do I. I just disagree with you that that is what is going on here.

I see it as sound business logic given the circumstances, namely that nobody but the most blinkered would consider the current two companions and umpteen henchmen in the game to fulfill the explicit "Henchmen becomes companions" stretch goal as presented in the kickstarter updates during the kickstarter funding period.


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And I acknowledge both their quality product and their working ethics. It's not like they didn't want to deliver on those stretch goals, not at all. They just couldn't deliver on every goal in time which is a common issue in game development. You - as a game developer - should know that best.

If there is one thing I do not doubt, it is that they have done their best and would have loved to do even better. That is the one thing that is common in all teams I've worked with and otherwise known of. You do the best you can under the circumstances you labour under....

...and you accept that what you get measured by is not how hard you worked or how well you coped with adversity (because there's bloody well always something that goes wrong), but on the quality of the product and on how you honoured your promises, if you made any.

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And thanks for ignoring the whole rest of my post about communication and effects..."You don't get off that easily" you would probably say. I say cherry-picking... wink

The rest of your post wasn't directly relevant to the points I discussed and hence I saw little point in quoting your wall of text as a prelude to my own wall of text, as I didn't see how that would help anybody, but would only obfuscate the issue.


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Good point, Jito463. Perhaps it is time to stop our posturing and devote some time to cooling down. smile


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