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Another Kickstarter?
Ice-Queen
Member UncommonPosts: 2,483
https://www.therepopulation.com/index.php/news/126-happy-holidays-and-an-early-christmas-present
"We are in the process of launching a new Kickstarter campaign that we expect to start during the week of Christmas. We have many cool features we are going to be looking at adding as part of stretch goals and those who are looking to back us or bump up existing pledges will be able to very soon. You should see the new video and a lot of new information and videos coming out during the Campaign, so for those who like a bunch of constant updates and features, you will be getting a lot."
What happens when you log off your characters????.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFQhfhnjYMk
Dark Age of Camelot
Comments
Joined 2004 - I can't believe I've been a MMORPG.com member for 20 years! Get off my lawn!
Just a bit annoying to me. So they've went through their funds already and have new ideas, and wanna have a new Kickstarter?
Doesn't seem very focused and managing well to me, and that's concerning if I decided to play the game. Why are they not polishing the the game they have with the money they got from people already, get revenew coming in and then add more things? Just seems a shady way to start out and the game isn't even going to be released for years now if they keep begging for more money and trying to add more stuff.
What happens when you log off your characters????.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFQhfhnjYMk
Dark Age of Camelot
The type of game they want to make takes a while to produce and get right. I'd much rather the they take all the time they need and get it right. I also have no problem with them having a second Kickstarter to raise more money and hype. Good idea.
The only things that are stopping me from getting on board with this right now are F2P and the fact that I have a lot of other MMO plans for the next couple of years. I wish them luck though.
What happens when you log off your characters????.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFQhfhnjYMk
Dark Age of Camelot
The Early Adopters only allowed Pay Pal purchases. Kick Starter is easier for a lot of users.
Also from the same article:
I think the issue is that many seemed to be under the impression that the devs were planning a launch in 2013 with all the features listed, and that the Kickstarter was to ensure they have the most polished content they can provide at launch.
As a result, running another Kickstarter throws up a red flag, and reasonably so.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Delays happen sometime. Everyone who pledged in the first Kickstarter will get to play in March, technically they are 4 months late, no big deal imo.
What makes this different from what Star Citizen is doing, as SC is asking for more funds for more features?
I don't follow the game much, and have not donated, but AAA mmos are usually delayed a few times and still often pushed out too soon. I imagine a no existing IP cannot afford to push out a bugged product to be 'on time'. So if a huge budget mmo is often delayed, I would think the same or more delays would exist for a budget mmo. Not saying it has to, but would make sense.
Indeed. ON the other hand the first kickstarter was for a very modest 25k, of which they got 200%+ funding. Compared to other less promising projects, that is not a lot. So it is not suppricing they want to milk that income source some more.
As one of the 709 original backers I have to say though that I am appaled at how they have mostly been using the original Kickstarter as a launchpad to keep begging me for more cash. Needles to say that I want to see progress and actually get my hands on the game before even considering that. Alas, that seems to be finally happening soon'ish.
No they havent burnt through all their funds and if you have ever read through even ONE of their Monthly Updates, you would clearly see that they are VERY focused and managed quite well.
There have been alot of posts on their forums from people ASKING when they are going to open up another KS Round so they can donate.
KS Rounds have a limited time to donate before they close.
Bringer of Eternal Darkness and Despair, but also a Nutritious way to start your Morning.
Games Played: Too Many
They never once said they were launching in 2013.
Bringer of Eternal Darkness and Despair, but also a Nutritious way to start your Morning.
Games Played: Too Many
Funny you should say that, because my post was paraphrases of their statements from the Kickstarter page, including:
"Even without kickstarter we are planning a launch in 2013 with all the features listed."
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Yeah, this is correct. I kickstarted this, and delivery date for the things I pledged for was november 2013 if I remember correctly. Late 2013 at least for sure.
I believe they also made a clarification to that statement that the 2013 date was a Target Goal and not a Definitive Launch Date.
Bringer of Eternal Darkness and Despair, but also a Nutritious way to start your Morning.
Games Played: Too Many
I don't doubt that at all.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
I see no problem with a second Kickstarter. No different than EQN Landmark selling pioneer packs. More money leads to a better product which leads to more money.
Plus, the Repop folks have been pretty communicative about their progress.
Aye thank you. It's concerning and they are wanting more funding for more stretch goals, in the first kickstarter they met their stretch goals, now there's new ones? This will push the games release back further and who's to say they don't keep delaying it for the sake of one more thing. As to the person that says what about Star Citizen above, I don't know, I don't follow that game because I don't like space mmo's, I like having avatars not ships.
I just think it's bad form to go back and beg more money from your already current backers, and try to get new ones for the sake of new goals. You have a vision, you have a budget, you have deadlines and you stick with them, imo.
What happens when you log off your characters????.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFQhfhnjYMk
Dark Age of Camelot
The purpose of this Kickstarter is largely feature based as you'll see when the campaign begins. These are the fringe features that were never promised, and that we've generally treated with a "if we can squeeze it in" type approach. These are very common questions on the forums. Things like racing circuits, tamed mounts, XML interface, etc.
The game needs to ship though some time next year so these are features that were likely going to wait until post-launch. At this point our focus is primarily on squashing bugs, polishing gameplay, and inserting content into the world. Content is the largest bottleneck there, and the programming and art teams are expected to have their portions of the game complete before the content is filled out to a level that we're happy with.
The new Kickstarter campaign is primarily focused on stretch goals. There is a relatively low initial goal. But from there we have a lot of stretch goals. Some are likely attainable, and others are distant things that aren't likely to be reached. Within the next few months features will be locked down. This campaign will basically determine if any of those features will make it into launch, and which ones become post-launch features. It should be noted that nothing in here is a cut feature.
These are the "we'd love to get in, but if time doesn't permit we'll get them in post-launch instead" type features. They aren't the types of features that we'd delay launch for. When everyone is in testing and generally feels the game is ready to launch it will launch, and that will likely be when the game is finished from a content and polish standpoint. These are the types of features that we'd be bringing on additional hands to work on in.
What I do enjoy about this campaign is that because the Kickstarter is a short 30 day period, and will be closed by late January it will basically allow us to lock down our features now. We'll know what type of budget we have to work with in 2014, and we'll have our set in stone list of features for launch. 2014 is going to be an exciting year.
Joshua Halls
Co Owner-Lead Programmer The Repopulation
Unfortunately they didn't get millions from the state of "where ever" to create jobs like 38 Studios who missed their deadline and failed to complete their project. There is no evidence that these stretch goal will delay development, it will only bring on more hands as the dev above said. I guess EQ Landmark and Trove are "begging" as well since they are selling alpha packages? Makes no sense to pick on the small indie trying to fundraise, yet not point fingers at Sony and Trion for doing it? Very classy.
The problem is.. too many people haven't got a clue what they're talking about. It's like why you don't see a lot of early development videos of MMORPGs.. too many can't realize that a lot of art and animation are just placeholders and so when they see early videos they freak out and start proclaiming the game sucky because the graphics look horrible.
They've never given a release date.. I know what they said on their kickstarter, but that was a hope for them, not a set date, poorly worded, yes... they've always said it'll launch when it's ready. I'll admit, them hoping they'd be able to release in 2013 was quite unrealistic.
As for money.. people don't seem to realize how much it costs to make an MMO. All the money they've raised doesn't even begin to cover the costs. Most the team is still working for free right now. The money they've raised is basically going to outside people.. like artists and other programmers and I think some went to buy third party programs... but most the team is still working for free. All the money they raise from the new kickstarter would go to outside programmers and artists to add in the new stretch goals.
I just wanted to address the stretch goals issue.
The bottleneck for Repop right now is content. It's a huge world, and while a lot of generation is in place, a lot of things still need to be done by hand to get the most out of them. Tihs process has gone slower than expected because we've found that writers and content people have struggled to understand how to use the mission, engagement, world event and den systems correctly.
If you pay attention to the stretch goal amounts once this campaign goes live you'll find that the money for most of the attainable stretch goals is split in a way that it allows us to bring on additional hands. Much of that will be used for the stretch goal itself, and the rest will go into content. They won't slow down development at all. If anything they'll speed it up because while part of those funds are going to hire programmers or artists to work on the stretch goals themselves, the rest is going to the content of the existing game.
That having been said, I'd like to address the 2013 release talk. This all stems from the 2012 Kickstarter. Kickstarter requires you to give an estimated delivery date. This isn't a set in stone date, but it's your best guess. At the time of the Kickstarter we felt about this time of year the game would be complete, so that was the estimated period. But when asked about it we always mentioned that it would be ready when it's done. That was our estimate of when that would be. It was obviously off by quite a bit, and there's numerous reasons for that.
There are some situations where things that sound good on paper don't work out as well when it comes to testing. We had certain features that we polled players about and that we gave lots of discussion to and seemed like it was the right approach. For example, the mission system. Many MMO players have grown tired of the theme park oriented treadmill of leveling. They complain about quest markers, and missions being too easy in general. I know I'm one of them. Our original mission implementation was very much a throw back in that regard. Very few markers, often giving players very subtle clues and expecting them to solve it. Then you add things like day/night NPCs, etc. The problem is that most players are now conditioned by the easier missions. And slowly over the course of testing we began having more easier missions, more markers, etc because we found that even many of the players who said they didn't want those things, realized that once they had become conditioned to use them when they were taken away. So our concession was to mix it up, a mixture of easy and more complex missions, and a slew of usability features. To someone just reading the monthly reports, they might look and see these improvements one month and think that we're getting feature creep. But the reality is that the majority of the games additions in the past year have been a direct result of tester feedback. Sometimes that means that you may lose weeks or even months doing reactionary changes, and that also sets you back. The entire world was also rebuilt during the course of alpha testing, as we were running into performance bottlenecks caused by memory consumption and larger numbers of players causing older boxes to run into 2 gig memory limits. That probably set us back about 6 months, but it needed to be done. Those type of situations will sprout up from time to time, and they happen to everyone, from the largest teams to the smallest. The alternative would have been to stick to the previous specifications and launch the game before its ready, but the result would have been a bunch of disappointed players and a product that would spend the next year trying to undo some of the things post-launch and never reach its potential because it already had lost many of its followers due to the launch issues. That benefits nobody.
Most of our staff is unpaid, and the paid staff is all paid well below market value. They work on the title because they believe in it, and it's a labor of love. The problem with this type of set up of course is that sometimes people's situations change and they lose much of their free time. Sometimes they get a great job offer which has a no-compete clause and they have to move on. Over the years Repop has had roughly a $250k budget spread over a few years, and a sizable amount of that from our own pockets. Your average AAA MMO staff would go through that in a month. I'd say that we've been pretty efficient. But a lot of that efficiency comes from the fact that people are working for free or for cheap on often erratic schedules, and sometimes you need to deal with the fact that you may lose a key member for months at a time. We've had some a couple of setbacks as a result of that, but certainly nothing out of the ordinary for an MMO. EQ: Next for example was announced before Repop, and will ship after it. Wildstar was also announced before Repop. Those are larger studios with deep pockets, but you don't seem to hear the same complaints that they are taking too long to reach market that we've seen from a number of people on here. It's been 18 months since our Kickstarter campaign, that seems like a long-time, and we understand the feeling. But it should be noted that most MMOs don't hit their initial projection dates, it's tough to estimate with all of the moving parts and separate teams.
Obviously having a larger budget helps with this, due to being able to keep key staff under contract. This is where the Early Adopter programs and upcoming Kickstarter come in. This has been pretty par for the course for other crowd-funded titles in the past couple years. Many players were not exposed to the game during the initial Kickstarter. In the couple weeks since we closed our internal store in preparation for this campaign, we've had many posts, facebook messages, or emails asking when the store would be reopening. So there are people out there who would like to back the project. Running these campaigns allows them to do so, which benefits the game as a whole because that money all goes into development.
If you are not interested in backing, that's understandable. We can understand people being skeptical about spending money on an unfinished product. Especially an indie one. But it would be foolish of us to not allow those who want to back to be able to do so. As mentioned in the previous paragraph, their contributions allow us to deliver a better game which benefits everyone (backers and non-backers alike). Without any backers, this game would have still been completed, but it would not have been the game that it has evolved into. Most likely it would have shipped with a trimmed down world and features, and attempted to implement most of those things post-launch. There is certainly some merit to that approach, but in today's competitive MMO market many players will only give you one shot. So the better you can be at launch, the healthier your game will be long-term. That's our primary concern. We'd rather deal with complaints that the game is taking too long to market, than complaints that the game rushed to market, because in the longrun it will be better for the title. But that certainly doesn't mean that we don't want the game out as soon as possible. But we'd rather trade the short-term for the long-term. Three years down the road people won't care if the game shipped today, or a year from now. They'll either still be playing it or they won't. It's readiness at launch will be a large factor in all of that. We certainly don't want to pooch that.
https://www.therepopulation.com - Sci Fi Sandbox.
hope you finish the game ill play it.
no money from me ESO is coming.
maybe you will launch end of next year good luck.
what can I say I live in a third world country south-Africa and the government sucks us dry and steel and waist all our money so very little money for kick starter campains.
Sounds like you live in the UK
Sign of the times i guess, governments are pretty much all the same these days, and everyone is feeling the pinch.
But it does sound like these guys are really trying, and i do hope they manage to finish the game.