singlespace
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Posts posted by singlespace
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I personally wouldn't. As you mentioned, they have only one developer attached who also has to double as game designer and business guy. It seems like his experience has been limited to simple projects based on his portfolio, which makes sense since he's been out of school for 3 years.
I'm always very skeptical of projects that are light on experience and developers.
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The RPS review is incredibly damning, too, but John Walker's prone to getting turned off games over singular issues (high volume of repeated dialogue, in this case) so I don't know if that informs the rest of his critiques.
I think Walker brings up a lot valid points, but he is being a bit dense, so take that into consideration. For example, Walker states:
"It begins with a collection of people you know nothing about sitting around a campfire after an event you haven’t experienced, talking about people you haven’t heard of. It then flashes back to a year earlier, where you’re apparently a group of terrorists, with some hostages, attempting to hack a computer while holding off rescuing forces. Why? It doesn’t say."
However, in the scene referenced in the screenshot immediately above that paragraph explains who you are and why you're part of the terrorist group. In Vinny's Quicklook over at GiantBomb, he picked up on those things immediately. The GiantBomb East Coast guys also picked up on the mechanics of how the first scenario plays, while Walker didn't seem to have grasped the mechanics as he states:
"And you start over. And over. And over. You have to rapidly issue orders in turn, hoping you’re magically knowing which to do when, trying to plug leaks as fast as they spring up. Then you lower the difficulty, and get through it, not really knowing why."
The game itself is turn based, there is no need to rapidly issue orders. The mechanics are fairly determinate as well. When Vinny explained how the mechanics worked to Alex Navarro during the Quicklook, they were able to beat the first scenario on the harder difficulty without much trouble.
I personally didn't find the first scenario that hard to understand either, nor did I find it confusing in the least why a year earlier you were part of a terrorist group. So take that into consideration when reading his review: he probably played through the scenario quite a great deal more than others did because it doesn't appear that he understood the mechanics. You often have to play through scenarios multiple time to discover what the mechanics are, but they aren't as obtuse and incomprehensible as Walker implies.
If you want to see a good slice of what this is game is, then watch GiantBomb's Quicklook:
http://www.giantbomb.com/videos/quick-look-gods-will-be-watching/2300-9253/
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I agree with Jon, the PvP and PvE sections are segregated as far as I can tell. Is it even possible to shoot a player character and do damage while not in a dedicated PvP instance? Again, it's just like guild wars (2), which is still doing well. The only difference being instead of 3rd person MMO combat, it's FPS.
I'm not sure you can simply say people who like FPS games don't like socialising or playing cooperatively. It seems like a huge generalisation, especially when many people play both types of games.
That's the thing I don't understand about Merus argument: PvP is only possible in an entirely separate area of the game that can only be reached via menus. There is no friendly fire in any of the PvE areas at all while the social area doesn't allow any combat whatsoever. Furthermore in the beta the plot critical and set piece areas, which are dark zones, do not allow random people interfering either. In those areas, only your own fire team is present and you control who is part of that group.
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"Kickstarter doesn't disclose why it suspends campaigns, but said it will take such action if campaigns misrepresent or fail to disclose relevant facts about the project or its creator; provide inaccurate or incomplete user information; or misrepresent support by pledging to their own project."
"Our Kickstarter was suspended without any warning. As per Kickstarter's policy, we cannot contact them to find out why. "
Ah, that's super shitty. They should be upfront about why a Kickstarter is suspended for everyone's benefit.
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At the very least, they should've informed West Games about the suspension and given a reason for it. Instead, you go to the page and get "This project has been suspended" as a banner with no other information to suss out the details.
What makes you think they didn't inform West Games?
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I feel like Titan has the least useful special in PvP - I've seen tons of people use both that Warlock black hole thing and the Hunter 3-shot mega pistol to great effect.
I think the Iron Banner is definitely the most interesting mode, because it actually takes the level and stats of your items into account for the PvP so it could really make grinding for good loot worthwhile in all aspects of the game.
I think that Havoc is a pretty solid skill, but it's definitely meant for high aggression plays by the flags. I've seen Titans turn matches around quite a few times by flying into a flag room and wiping the floor with everyone in Havoc range. It has the advantage of proc'ing very fast, having invincible frames when it lands, and being an AoE so you don't need to be precise.
Ghost Gun has a long proc time where you can't move and are very vulnerable and the 3 shots disappear on a timer, so even though it seems like the strongest of the initial powers, it rarely is because of how difficult it is to use. The long the proc and short ability timer means you need to anticipate then deliver the actual shots accurately. The biggest advantage of Ghost is that it can be delivered at any range to three targets that aren't clustered.
Nova Bomb has range, unlike Havoc, but you're vulnerable for quite awhile as it procs. The larger AoE is compensated by travel time of the projectile and being vulnerable while proc'ing the super.
I kind of feel like all of the powers are overpowered in distinct ways, which is a good thing because it means that they're all "unfair" along different axes or rather they're very powerful in specific roles as opposed to generally strong. At a moderate range Nova Bomb wins over Havoc and Ghost Gun. At longer ranges Ghost Gun wins over Nova Bomb and Fist of Havoc. And at point blank Havoc wins over Ghost Gun and Nova Bomb.
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If you assume that each person is just paying the minimum for each tier you come out with about $38,740 for the supporters between $5 - $250, which is pretty much what they had for the majority of their entire campaign. Once you add the $250+ backers, it jumps to the $60,240. That's pretty suspicious.
I wish there was a dump of the number of backers per a tier on a daily basis available -- that would clear up just what happened.
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Me too. I noticed the second option on the Crucible menu is a 6v6 team deathmatch so hopefully'll have a good selection of alternate modes.
I never got round to trying the Strike mission, how does that differ from the Story?
The current Strike mission throws you through a gauntlet of enemies ending a set piece boss fight.
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Gah, I'm getting so many removed from game network errors that it's pretty much unplayable.
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The saga continues, they quickly threw together a prototype video in two weeks:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1577656602/areal/posts
RPS points out they're using an asset pack:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/07/18/stalker-kickstarter/#more-221271
I don't think that's a big deal per se given it's just two weeks of work, but good lord was this campaign a complete and utter mess.
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Jesus did they hire a 12 year old to run their corporate twitter?
Aren't all corporate twitter accounts run by 20 something year old "social media experts"?
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One legitimate guy comes in, offers them something that is really simple and surely makes the project more likely to succeed, such as "multiplayer combined with deep story". Doesn't make any of it more likely to succeed IMHO, maybe a bit less likely a complete scam.
All of them seem credible at this point, but it doesn't address many of the unanswered questions about the project.
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No major developments as far as I can see, but it seems pretty clear that they're much earlier in development than was stated. Looks like their plan is to produce as much pre-production material as possible before the end of the Kickstarter to try to prove that this is real and they're serious.
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New style for the Imperial faction with some Zentradi influences:
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Random Rampancy Fact of the Day:
Rampancy used to work at Bungie and was responsible for the Sabre starfighter sequence in Halo: Reach.
Oh yeah, and here's the latest trailer from back in March and it is glorious:
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Im really happy that Danielle has joined the show on a permanent basis. I can always count on her to have played something new that week.
Yeah, me too. Great addition to the idle hand.
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Until this gets sorted out I won't be backing it. Too much strangeness. Even if they just made a bunch of silly mistakes and oversights, that still speaks to their quality as a company, which is also worrisome.
I'm pretty much of the same mind right now. There's just too many unanswered questions and odd issues to have much confidence in the project.
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I really enjoyed Deconstructeam Ludum Dare 26 entry, Gods Will Be Watching, which is a minimalist point and click survival game played on a single almost unchanging screen where a ragtag team of Buck Rogers style space heros are stranded on a planet try to escape to save the universe. Except instead of acts of dashing heroism and saving the day, you quietly sit around a dwindling campfire slowly trying to repair a radio to escape as everyone slowly dies. Cheery!
I liked it a lot though. There was something oddly serene about making the same decisions day in and out knowing that eventually your team would slowly be paired away one at a time until you either failed or succeeded at a horrible cost. You'd think that it would be stressful, but the repetitive actions and simplicity of the situation gave it a sense of inevitability and that's pretty rad.
Anyways, they launched a successful crowdfunding campaign last year to make a longer form version of the game with more situations and such, which now has a trailer and I have no idea what I feel about this game anymore:
My first impression is that it's now too gratuitous and I don't really know whether it can be justified. Just a trailer though.
Here's the game's Steam page:
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I am still weirded out by the fact that multiple members of the dev team shown on the initial Kickstarter page, including lead Eugene Kim, were stock photos. Apparently, the taker of the stock photos lives in the Ukraine, which makes it possible that those members are still somehow who they say they are, but it's still bizarre that they'd do something that is so damn suspicious in an already suspicious Kickstarter...
That was resolved and video proof was provided:
They did some stock photos in the past and chose to use those shots -- probably because they were of a pretty good quality and they already had them. I'm not saying the project is legitimate, just that the issues of identity and what not are resolved at this point.
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Looks like it's infighting from former STALKER folks and people who are working on related properties:
http://www.theverge.com/2014/7/1/5861378/areal-kickstarter-stalker-spiritual-sequel-spawns-debate
The Misery / The Seed folks have pretty much backed entire out of criticising West after being threatened by legal action. The currently inactive GSC also came out in support of Areal in a way:
Vostok has also backed away from any accusations presumably for the same reasons:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1577656602/areal/posts/889637
So I guess they actually are the people they say they are, but the question remains as to what state Areal is in, whether they actually have much funding outside of Kickstarter like they've claimed, and I guess who's Leonid Kovtun:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-06-26-that-s-t-a-l-k-e-r-y-areal-kickstarter-whats-going-on
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Hmmm... Looks like there is now some dispute as to whether they're really who they say they are.
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Presumably they have some funding already, but GSC and 4A are kind of ridiculous in terms of what they consider reasonable game development and budgets so who knows?
Jason Rubin stated that 4A made Last Light with less than a tenth the budget of their competitors, which he noted was less than some of them spend on their cutscenes. He also had some horror stories about how they would work without power for days on end, have heating cut in the dead of winter, and working under other strange and insane working conditions. Granted 4A is based out of Ukraine, but that's still insane and scary.
However, $50K probably isn't enough to even keep them alive for the span of the game's development since they're out of the US now, so I'm erring on the side that they have some other money already.
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Looks like the core team behind S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and Metro (the leads for design, engine architecture, animation, concept art, etc.) left to form a new studio called West Games. They just launched Kickstarter for Areal, which is their spiritual successor to S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and Metro:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1577656602/areal
They also say Areal, Areal being the name of their game Areal, about a thousand times. Areal.
Destiny
in Video Gaming
Posted
You could try coordinating with the Idle Thumbs clan, but I'm hazarding that we're spread across quite a few time zones making the number of people available at any given time somewhat slim.