Vault Dweller
Commissar, Red Star Studio
- Joined
- Jan 7, 2003
- Messages
- 28,024
It is and it works well. However, there's no arguing that it would have looked better with proper art.
lolwut?What's next? No demo because demos cost you sales?
Quite the opposite.
Dead State didn't have a demo, so everyone who wanted to try the game had to buy it. Had quite an effect on sales. What's that? People will pirate demo-less games? Sure, but they will do it regardless. We're talking about the only market that really counts - Steam's market, which accounts for 80-90% of sales and isn't really affected by piracy.
Why do you think demos went out of style? Because publishers are stupid?
Biggest on Kickstarter don't mean shit in the wonderful world of games selling millions of copies. Bethesda's "wine and dine the media" budget was probably bigger than what WL2 took on KS.
Because that's the truth. There is a number of very successful strategy games. The only way to make an RPG very successful is to streamline it to the point of it being an action game with stats.It took the fourth iteration of EU for Paradox's grand strategy game to find footing. Why chalk that up to "strategy games often become popular" instead of really figuring out what's going on?
I'm not saying that AoD is an artistic masterpiece. It's not. There are plenty of things I didn't like, including that dance floor, but we were light on artists and our to-do list was endless. The dance floor was done first, 10 years ago, and we never had time to revisit it. Now we're working on 3 games at once, which is a bitch, so again we don't have the luxury of fucking with things that work.You can hug your police-lights dance floor interface close and tell the non-true RPG players to go fuck themselves. I don't really care. Bottom line is... that shit needs to go. That's what this is really about. You can't color code your goddam grid like it's a fucking JRPG on a bricked 3DS. I'm trying to do you a favor here.
Somebody give Lurker King the title "Indie Jihadist".
Relax, sser isn't a developer.
You can hug your police-lights dance floor interface close and tell the non-true RPG players to go fuck themselves.
Do you know what you can do in a dance floor? Dance with your motherfucking legs!
You can hug your police-lights dance floor interface close and tell the non-true RPG players to go fuck themselves.
Do you know what you can do in a dance floor? Dance with your motherfucking legs!
Battle Bro Legs will be sold in a seperate DLC, expertly marketed as "extra arms" tofool the audiencereach broader audience.
The floor visuals makes you hum"Stayin' Alive"on occasion which is a good mindset for AoD
You’re trying to sell a product that does X, for a target audience that wants a product that does X. If you have a good quality product, you don’t need to pretend that it is something that it isn’t to attract to your costumers. Many successful companies outside gaming are based on this premise. In fact, given that we are living in a kickstarter period of studios that promised the world but delivered shit, the importance of blunt honesty cannot be exaggerated.
Repeatedly I see people criticizing Vault Dweller for not doing something that most developers do, as if conventional wisdom were a solid truth, instead of just repeated practices that are basically folk psychology. You are ignoring that ITS has another type of mindset, sser. AoD don’t have the art of PoE, but has great combat system, writing, C&C and itemization. You know, they have all the ingredients for people who want to play proper cRPGs. They can focus on that, because that is what they want to do, and that is what their target audience care about.
They are trying to create a type of experience that is different from the traditional model. They're hardcore developers that want to make games for hardcore players. Instead of hiding behind a community manager, they post regularly on forums such as the Codex and answer the players directly, implementing feedback and working hard to create a worthy game. Christ, sometimes I think they spoiled me, because other developers, including indie developers, are not that considerate. AoD has a small fan base that was hard-won over a decade, but it is a loyal fan base, that knows what is they are getting into, understand the value of ITS, and will keep growing (slowly but surely) over the years. If ITS keep making quality games, players will keep buying them, because hardcore players can appreciate their games and them, as developers.
1. Choices and consequences do not make your game niche. There are many mainstream games with choices and consequences, and which advertise their games through it. Latest example: Until Dawn, the sales of which "vastly exceeded expectations." The idea of promoting player agency, and giving players choices through the course of the game, is very much mainstream today.
2. Hard/unforgiving combat does not make your game niche. Not in the era of Demon Souls, Dark Souls, and Bloodborne. Many people want "hard," and even those who don't, can be satisfied with a difficulty setting.
3. Stat sheets & character creation do not make your game niche. Virtually all JRPGs have them, the aforementioned successful Western CRPGs have them, and even Bethesda's games have them. People aren't afraid of stat sheets. They might be afraid of stat sheets that are overly complicated, but then why shouldn't they be?
4. Turn-based tactical combat is more niche than real-time, but still not that niche. XCOM, Transistor, all the aforementioned successful Western CRPGs, JRPGs, most tactical strategy games such as Endless Space, Age of Wonders, etc. all have turn-based combat. It's not a dead sell just because your game has turn-based combat; it is a dead sell, however, when your game only advertises turn-based combat.
5. Attribute checks deciding dialogue choices, etc. do not make your game niche. In actuality, outside of the Codex and a few other communities, few people care about whether the game has attribute checks.
With the above in mind, I'll list the main issues with Age of Decadence, Legends of Eisenwald, Lords of Xulima, etc. that DID, in my opinion, negatively affect their sales:
1. Choice of ruleset. There are a handful of popular RPG rulesets out there that practically every RPG gamer uses. A few of them are even free for commercial use. There is, as such, no compelling cause to brew your own unless you have absolute confidence in your systemfag credentials, and in the vast majority of cases, you are wrong. The RPG community patronizes developers who use existing popular rulesets, even developers who use popular rulesets found only in computer games. By making your own ruleset, you lose sales, especially when your own home made ruleset is worse, as is the case 90% of the times. At the minimum, in case you're going to make your own ruleset, *name drop* how it's similar to X,Y,Z in your marketing campaign, so people get a sense of what they're in for.
2. Choice of setting. There are, again, plenty of popular settings around, though these are usually licensed and do require a licensing fee. The choice of setting is obviously very important when trying to target old school gamers. But even in case you're not going to use an existing setting, you should, at the minimum, make the effort to create a setting that isn't just a pale imitation of an existing setting. Nobody cares about generic-medieval-European-fantasy-setting-195251 and generic-post-apocalyptic-grimdark-setting-99582, because face it, the shots of you being able to create a compelling setting different from the countless people who've worked on Forgotten Realms, Fallout, etc. is pretty damn low. In case you actually did it, then you need to market it, and *make* people believe that your setting is worthwhile, because most gamers who're older than 20 have seen enough poorly done fantasy/sci-fi settings to last a hundred years.
3. Involve industry celebrities. Humans have idols; RPG gamers are no exception. Put Chris Avellone's name on a product and you'll instantly gain the attention of the press & the community. That's just how it works. Whether they actually do anything is not that important, although of course it is best that they contribute a few pieces of writing & design. But it's money well-spent regardless, because people worship celebrities, which is why Sawyer, Avellone, Fargo, Cain, Gaider, etc. get so much press on all the forums.
4. Story & characters. This is a more personal opinion, but as games such as To the Moon and Undertale have shown, you could go a long way with a compelling story & characters. The trick here is what constitutes a compelling story & characters, and that's not the same for everyone. But certainly, few of the above games advertised anything of the sort and none of them, to my knowledge, have received awards for their storytelling. That could just be a SJW/Tumblr effect, I don't know, but I do know that nobody wants to experience generic-fantasy-story-3351 alongside generic-medieval-European-fantasy-setting-195251. It's just a stale set up, as Jasede said, and you'd need to work extra hard to stand out just by virtue of having a typical fantasy/post-apocalyptic story set in a typical fantasy/post-apocalyptic world.
5. Innovation is underrated. One of the key differences between people who buy indie games and people who buy Call of Duty, FIFA, etc. is that the former group actually cares about innovation and new experiences. Here, I agree fully with Jasede that too many developers who consider themselves "hardcore" are actually just remaking the same old games - with a few twists here and there. The problem with that strategy is two-fold. First, nostalgia works best when it's actually nostalgic - ie when it's actually based on an old franchise, such as Shadowrun, Wastelands, Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition, etc. It doesn't work so well when you're only "inspired" by the old games to create an imitation.
Second, as much as we talk about how these games are no longer being made, *they are being made*. Take Jeff Vogel, for example - he's been making these "old school" games for the past 20 years! Just the fact that I'm able to call up 5-6 games in *two years* ought to tell you that this market is saturated. It's similar to 4X games, in this respect - nostalgia for the old games is just not going to cut it when there are over a dozen 4X games on the market from the last five years. It's not the dead RTS genre where people just want to see a new quality RTS game because so few have been made in the last decade. We live in an age where there are a lot of turn-based games, and a lot of turn-based RPGs specifically, from both big-time developers such as Obsidian, and small-time developers such as Jeff Vogel. In this sort of industry, you need to *innovate* to set yourself from the crowd. Just making another Wizardry, Fallout, etc. isn't going to cut it, because as much as we want to make it look otherwise, the industry has had plenty of turn-based RPGs in recent years.
Nothing Azarkon said is bad
I don't understand what Eyestabber and co are so mad at. Nothing Azarkon said is bad. He's not arguing for things that would ruin these games if they were implemented.
It's p. funny considering a propa CRPG that flees from the typical mold would probably sell like shit anyway. I'd risk waging that all CRPGs released since 2012 only sold enough to break even because of the (marketed or perceived) similarity with popular classicsNo? You people are throwing a childish temper tantrum. "H-he's saying the developers of these perfect games could do better marketing, which means he's saying they're not perfect people, which means he's a hater!"
No? You people are throwing a childish temper tantrum. "H-he's saying the developers of these perfect games could do better marketing, which means he's saying they're not perfect people, which means he's a hater!"
No? You're throwing a childish temper tantrum here. "H-he's saying the developers of these perfect games could do better marketing, which means he's saying they're not perfect people, which means he's a hater!"
AoD marketing really misrepresents the setting a lot though, implying it's completely mundane. "In a land where ancient evil has never awakened, the job of destroying the world was left to mankind". Except half the storyline is discovering shit about ancient evil... Overall it's very vague what the storyline's actually about, no mention about any of the factions, places or characters you see in the game. Everything's very vague - visit new places, master the system, acquire loot, raise your skills. Is that really supposed to excite anyone? It's basically saying, this is a run-of-the-mill RPG with some nice kill animations.Well, post-apocalyptic late Roman Empire decadency mixed with extra-dimensional future tech is a p. common setting. Gotta give it to him.