In my opinion, the best example of how to run a high profile successful KS campaign is Planetary Annihilation. They clearly had everything prepared from the word go, they disclosed the stretch goals in a very intelligent manner and they released enough information for the donors to fully understand what they were funding.
I don't know about that, I feel like Planetary Annihilation relied much more on smoke and mirrors. I still have no idea how the game will play out, especially the galactic annihilation mode, which which I can't think of any way of being particularly interesting. I'm not sure if they know, either. I'm not saying they don't, but they're Kickstarter didn't give any indication they did, at least not more than Obsidian's until now. The last stretch goal being the hiring of a full Orchestra to do the music also seems to imply to me that they were running out of ideas as to how to actually spend the money.
Have you played Total Annihilation and/or Supreme Commander? If you have, that's their starting point. If you haven't, then go play some because they're awesome. What PA adds to TA/SupCom is, first, the spherical planets (I won't go here into the details of rotational ellipsoids and geoids and just call them "spherical") which add a new element of strategy because of the fact that the enemy can come at you from all sides. An extra layer of strategy is added by orbital installations/weapons and by planetary bodies with natural satellites, which can be used for weapons deployment. I won't even go into how awesome is that they aim to allow you to crash asteroids into planets. This is the first RTS to do this using the in-game engine, not some shitty cutscene, for what I know. Basically, you move on from a roughly 2D map (we'll abstract away the multi-level maps used in the more recent RTSes) to a 3D map that represents a whole solar system governed by a realistic enough approximation of gravity (as shown in the KS video by launching rockets towards natural satellites from the surface of the planets or crashing asteroids into planets).
The Galactic Annihilation mode is just expanding all of this to a galactic scale. It won't be a 4X space strategy game. It will be closer to Sins of a Solar Empire, which is something of a cross between a 4X game and a RTS. What PA has over SoaSE is that SoaSE had just ships fighting in solar systems in a traditional RTS manner, with a layer of 4X planet economy management on top, while PA is focused on a more realistic approach by allowing seamless transitions and interactions between planets and space, all of it being based on all out warfare.
The stretch goals were very well though out because each of them ads a new level of intricacy of the gameplay:
1) naval units & water planets: the initial goal used no naval units, but if you are familiar with TA/SupCom, you'll know how much of a difference naval units make. Also, from the TA:Core Contingency add-on, the water planets make a comeback. These are planets with an exclusively liquid surface, which means that there is a need for units and buildings that could be built on/under water.
2) gas giants & orbital units: these make use of the new interplanetary travel/warfare mechanic much more than just sending your units up to the moon. Now you can have orbital bases and weapons systems. On top of that, you can use gas giants to harvest resources and, most likely, to use their gravity for interplanetary vehicle maneuvers.
3) metal & lava planets: the lava planets are pretty boring IMHO, I admit. They will be, most likely, useful for resource extraction, but I don't think they add much. The metal planets, which are supposed to be ancient Death Star-like installations, on the other hand, sound quite awesome. The idea is that you could either tear them down for a lot of resources or repair them and use them to blow shit up on a planetary level.
4) the galactic war, as I was saying before, add a nice layer of 4X
5) finally, the last stretch goal is irrelevant from the point of view of the gameplay, but both TA and SupCom had orchestral music and this was done in order to keep up with what is already a tradition for these games.
The existence and number of stretch goals was revealed since the the first stretch goal reveal. The nature of the stretch goals was kept secret and unveiled as the donations were coming in, in order to make people donate to see what's in store. It is highly unlikely that the stretch goals weren't already established since before the project was launched.
I can't say that there is anything about this project that doesn't sound good. Now, we'll have to see how the implementation comes along, but both TA and SupCom weren't known for bugginess, so I'm not too worried about that.
Another thing - though these Kickstarters talked about how open they could be with the fans about the development, there's only been a trickle of information from most of them so far. It's only been a few months, but The Banner Saga is supposed to be released next month and Shadow Run Returns and Wasteland 2 are supposed to be released next year. I know some basics about both games, but I still have no idea about how either of those will actually play. Contrast this with the AoD development - frequently showing us how quests play out, telling us what they're working on each month, getting feedback and modifying it.
Are you an active member of these games' communities? If you're not, how can you say how much they communicate with their communities? All of them have their own websites and forums and I doubt that these forums are inactive. I think you may have gotten used to the hype machines around mainstream AAA games and you're subconsciously expecting the same thing from what are, essentially, indie teams.
I'm just sick of paying for games I won't see for another 1.5 years and don't know much about, and also thinking that my money is going to be much better spent supporting indies that actually have open development processes and are already making good games.
Nobody is forcing you to donate to KS projects. Also, most KS projects are indie projects. You could say that it's hard to call DFA or PE indie because they're being developed by established studios, but even in these cases, the studios operate independently, without publisher interference, so they are indie (as in "independent") games. I assume you dislike waiting 1.5 years for the games... well, that's the price we all have to pay for the incline of the gaming industry. The alternative is EA, Activision, THQ, 2K Games, Ubisoft, Square Enix, Capcom, Namco Bandai, SEGA, Nintendo, Microsoft, Sony... should I keep going?
