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Bard's Tale The Bard's Tale IV Pre-Release Thread [RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

Darkzone

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Sep 4, 2013
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Taste and opinions are always subjective, but there are distributions of attributes and qualifications that can make a good approximations towards current taste of a targeted group. Wasteland 2 makes many things right and good, but they fell short in comparison to the bad things.
If i look at Wasteland and DOS, i see some differences (This are also the reasons why in metacritcs the users give WL 2 a score of 73 and DOS 88):
1) WL 2 is not good in the beginning, but gets better later. DOS is good in the beginning, and descends later.
2) WL 2 has not a good combat, but is very combat oriented. DOS has a very funny and good approach to combat.
3) WL 2 has no centration towards characters. DOS is centered around the two characters.
WL 2 has wasted so much potential and that is truly so astonishing, that i lack the words to describe it. But then again other things are really awesome and unique to Wasteland 2. And what i do not get into my mind is how the fuck can one fuck up so much the combat, in a combat oriented rpg. Fallouts 1 greatest attribute was not the combat, but the possibility to avoid it, due to good dialog choices by high Intelligence and speech checks.
Why do i write this nonsense here and not in a WL 2 thread? Because i'm stupid or because i want to say why a Bard's Tale 4 (like in the trilogy) will fail to deliver. It will be a WL 2 in at least two of the three of these criterias, without the good things from WL 2.
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
For whatever reason, the laurels on bestselling indie RPG go to Divinity: Original Sin.
If Steamcharts' "all-time peak" stat is any indication, that title should go to SRR, actually.

Wot, rly? Then why does HBS keep acting desperate for money?

Because that stat is a wild outlier and not representative of the game's financial success. Shadowrun Returns is a small download (only 700 megabytes on release) so a very large percentage of the Kickstarter backers (of which there 36,000+) were playing it shortly after release. And they already owned the game.
 

Jaesun

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If it isn't going to be first person turn-based, don't even dare call it Bard's Tale, Fargo.
:rpgcodex:

Other than that particular pet peeve, I'm okay with anything they might want to make.

You have to think from a business perspective. Is Fargo going to make a FP turn-based blobber? That's not going to ever happen. That's not profitable.

With the success (and press) for Divinity: Original Sin that is more likely the way they will approach a new The Bards Tale (if that is what they are going to do). Of which they would be crazy not too.

BUT.......

What would be *really* nice, is if Fargo took a chance and made a small dev team that worked on making "classic" cRPG's that are for PC/Mobile devices (because seriously you can play all the old classic on mobile devices now. They were never that resource heavy). They then could do a turn based blobber The Bards Tale. Seriously, could you imagine some NEW "classic" cRPG's coming out? TAKE MY GAWDDAMNED MONEY!

But I don't really know the profitability of mobile devices/PC games that just do such a limited scope of games. Sounds good in theory.
 

Crooked Bee

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Codex 2013 Codex 2014 PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire MCA Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
You have to think from a business perspective. Is Fargo going to make a FP turn-based blobber? That's not going to ever happen. That's not profitable.

Oh, I understand that line of thinking. But they shouldn't call it Bard's Tale then.
:rpgcodex:
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Isometric or not, what I'd really be worried about with regard to Bard's Tale is that it's, you know, "generic fantasy". Is there a demand?

Maybe they could set it in Eora and call it The Chanter's Tale, haha.
 

tuluse

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Serpent in the Staglands Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Shadorwun: Hong Kong
I wonder everyday why there aren't some nice blobbers made for phones and tablets. The interface is basically perfect for them.
 

Lhynn

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I wonder everyday why there aren't some nice blobbers made for phones and tablets. The interface is basically perfect for them.
Would the term blobber also apply to a single character game?
 

SuicideBunny

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Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Torment: Tides of Numenera
I wonder everyday why there aren't some nice blobbers made for phones and tablets. The interface is basically perfect for them.
Would the term blobber also apply to a single character game?
no. but most blobber fans will still play single character dungeon crawlers like the quest.

wait.. if it's not a blobber when it's single character.. is it still a dungeon crawler when it's mostly outdoors?
:hmmm:
 

Roguey

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Isometric or not, what I'd really be worried about with regard to Bard's Tale is that it's, you know, "generic fantasy". Is there a demand?

Maybe they could set it in Eora and call it The Chanter's Tale, haha.

Generic fantasy is always in demand, despite the gripings of a vocal minority.

You have to think from a business perspective. Is Fargo going to make a FP turn-based blobber? That's not going to ever happen. That's not profitable.
I get the impression M&MX was a success (if a minor one), but you look at http://steamcharts.com/app/238750 and compare it to http://steamcharts.com/app/230230 or even http://steamcharts.com/app/240760 and it's clear that the sales potential for blobbers is much smaller compared to tpp. And Fargo does like to think big.
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Generic fantasy is always in demand, despite the gripings of a vocal minority.

It is and it isn't.

Let me give you a novel definition of "generic fantasy" - generic fantasy is any fantasy setting that isn't successful enough to become a popular brand. When it becomes a brand, it stops being "generic", no matter how bog-standard it actually is.
 

felipepepe

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Wasteland 2 rode heavily on Fallout's fame:

Wasteland 2 is a sequel to the amazingly popular 1988 RPG Wasteland and the post-apocalyptic predecessor to the Fallout Series.

Hard to do something similar with Bard's Tale...
 

Gozma

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Aug 1, 2012
Messages
2,951
Meantime would do better on Kickstarter, it has the kind of off-the-wall pitch with shit like historical characters as party members that lets people's imaginations pull them into enthusiasm-land. Obviously dangerous if they pitch it and get 60 bucks tho because it turns out KS really is dead this time

If they wanna do generic fantasy, get a publisher to pay for it
 

almondblight

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Aug 10, 2004
Messages
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Wasteland was blobby in combat, but used a top-down aesthetic outside of combat (similar to how classic JRPGs work, I guess) so converting it to full isometric wasn't as much of a stretch.

Wasteland had top down combat with a blobber interface, and it was as messed up as that sounds.
 

LESS T_T

Arcane
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Oct 5, 2012
Messages
13,582
Codex 2014
OK, let's make a selling pitch.

It's like Grimrock.
But it's turn-based.
And "squad"-based.
Like XCOM: Enemy Unknown.

Grimrock + XCOM = WOW~

:negative:
 

DeepOcean

Arcane
Joined
Nov 8, 2012
Messages
7,395
KS really is dead this time.
Don't think so, Thimbleweed Park, the remake to Pathologic and other projects made some pretty significant sums of money with no hype and the only high profile failure was from the Planetary Anihilation devs and that was mostly their fault for blowing up trust than anything. Hype is a powerful magic and Fargo is a specialist on Hypemancy my friend. Fargo goes on kickstarter after the reveal of some really kicking ass torment video, show some funny video of Tale: The Bardering and return home with lots of jew gold. Worked really well last time.
 

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