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Game didnt get funded but still moves forward - They now have my attention
sludgebeard
Member RarePosts: 788
Seriously I thought the game looked great but I saw how little money they were getting and couldnt put down any money of my own on the project.
However after reading that the dev team plans to continue on despite the failed KS, I have a ton of respect for them and will certainly be looking into the game when it gets into the more prominent stages of development.
I really liked a line they gave in the comments:
"We arent Chris Roberts or Richard Garriot"..."We came into this campaign overconfident and having no idea what truly laid in store for us. We learned that game developers are not good at marketing."
These guys know that it takes a huge amount of marketing to make it work in KS, they arent trying to compete from this point on, they are simply trying to create. This gives me a huge bout of respect for the fella's developing shards, and I will defiently follow the game more closely from here on out.
Anyone else really vibing these guys for being so humble and open about the kickstarter and still pushing forward?
Comments
I'm not surprised UO2 didn't get funded. It seems like the game should have come out YEARS ago. A little too late?
Proud MMORPG.com member since March 2004! Make PvE GREAT Again!
I had my eye on this and Albion Online but honestly the shard thing is something I don't really find appealing. Now if each shard was actually a moddable territory that made up an entire world together, now that would be something! Could you imagine a world where each zone had different rulesets, creatures and resources thought up by the gods (players) ruling them? And you and your friends had to venture across all these lands with each one offering a totally different experience?
Maybe we need to get to a zone that has a certain type of valuable resources but between our original zone and the one we're trying to get to is a territory that allows FFA pvp? Man that would be something else. Anyway, I hope it still gets made as I'll probably still check it out if it does.
"Small minds talk about people, average minds talk about events, great minds talk about ideas."
I know my opinion won't be popular here but...
They should stop development now.
Salvage what they can in terms of development tools and sell what has value.
Kickstarter is like an "expression of interest". This Kickstarter proved there is no real interest.
Maybe one or two die hard fans - but certainly not enough to sustain the project going forward.
Developers are beginning to learn that crowd funding is not always a win / win of positive advertising & marketing and bags of cash.
The lesson is that if you intend to develop a project with, or without, community support then don't gamble your reputation and put yourself up for failure by asking for crowd funding.
If you do, and you lose, then you should be prepared to swallow your pride and pack it in. There is no sense chasing your losses.
Nothing says irony like spelling ideot wrong.
Never give up , never surrender !! One failed KS campaign doesn't mean much. There are plenty of stories about failed KS campaigns that regroup and then succeed on the 2nd attempt.
I believe Shards could succeed with a 2nd KS if they learn from what didn't go right the 1st time around and market it better.
The concept is solid and the people behind it are passionate about their work.
I will remember your comment about giving up and return to it when Shards succeeds.
you can always succeed at kickstarter if you go low budget!!!
but then again, which company did really deliver somthing worth lately?!
much respect going for 320.000$ as a no-name company. im amazed they could do 73.000 in just 4 weeks.
i will keep looking what they can deliver next year. in the end they sell you something like minecraft with content and much more appealing medieval setting.. and there is a lot more planned
i think they can go far.. very far.. might even compete with the big 10 once the editor is out
if only every third player from daoc,ultima online and neverwinter nights buys 1 copy of the game.. this will SKYROCKET
Game development teams and what I (and maybe others think) goes on:
1: High tech well groomed and physically fit professional people all doing some sort of magic at a keyboard that only they and very few others can do. They have knowledge that the common lay person will never have.
2: Joe hates Preston cause he was first to nail the lady at the desk out front. Jim is pissed off because he has to go outside to smoke. Annie hates Jim because he's always outside smoking and she lets David know about this when ever she can. David is the middle man. David and Joe used to be drinking buddies (after work at the bar sort of thing). Since Carl arrived, he thinks he has all the answers and no one likes him or even listens to him or anything at all really and it's not that Carl is wrong, it's merely because he's the new guy.
3. Somewhere in here, an alpha gets released and put on Steam as "Early Access". Work stops cause they all made enough money and maybe moved on to a better company. Anyone new brought in has no clue to what the game vision was. Forgot to mention Jeffrey in paragraph 2. Jeffrey has been there all along and he knows stuff. Too bad everyone hates Jeffrey so they all just (well, you know.)
/end of story
I'm not entirely sure I understand why you don't like the shard system because what you describe sounds like exactly what they are trying to do.
Each shard is a moddable territory/world and you can link them together to form an even larger world. The only difference is that each shard that's linked together has to share the same ruleset, but the shards themselves could be COMPLETELY different. They already gave a bunch of examples in the kickstarter and various videos but you can have fantasy, steampunk, sci fi, futuristic, etc... types of shards and they can all be linked together to form one "world" for lack of a better term.
Everything you describe that you want is exactly what they're going for, minus the rulesets. Maybe I'm just misunderstanding what you want, if that's the case let me know and I'll try to explain better. The cluster/shard stuff can be a bit confusing to wrap your head around at first, it took me a while personally (though it's entirely possible I'm just really slow ;p).
==========
On another topic, the developers are fantastic and they are definitely motivated to keep going despite the kickstarter not being funded. We had the first community round table recently which was pretty cool. Basically just a way for the developers and the fans to interact and discuss things about what they're doing, what their plans are, all that good stuff. Right now they're refocusing their efforts on alternative ways to get the game made and changing around their original plans to something more realistic since they wont have the KS funds. An example is that they will be working on creating one large world for the alpha release rather than the 4 worlds they originally wanted to do with the kickstarter funds. They're still going to be creating ALL of the worlds they just wont be in the alpha.
Take a minute to walk through that in your mind a bit. How different could the rulesets, creatures and resources be before each zone manager is wasting time either rebalancing their content to compensate for the rulesets of other zones or trying to "one up" their content to attract people to their zone?
Wouldn't you give it a week (and that's being generous) before someone's got a Monty Haul zone?
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
This crowd flipped out when they saw the buggies in Archeage, could you imagine the first time someone is firing a shotgun in their perfectly-crafted fantasy zone or wearing a spacesuit in their authentic renaissance town?
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
Doesn't bother me personally, I mean if they don't like the cluster or shard they're on they can move to the official ones or search for a cluster run by someone that has the same type of mindset they have. It seems more of a player problem than a game problem in Shards' case. With something like Archeage you can't just move to another server with less ridiculous stuff or run by someone that's more "serious" I guess.
That's the beauty of what Shards is going to be imo. If you don't like it you can find something you do, if there's nothing you like you can make it and run it yourself.
Personally I'd think that's badass. If I see someone in a fantasy world with a shotgun the first thing I'd probably do is ask them where they got it from and form an expedition to go visit that place. But yeah it's totally up to the cluster admins on which shards they want to add to their "network." I'm sure you'll find plenty of people who will want ONLY fantasy shards in their cluster or ONLY steampunk and so on ;p So for Shards, I really don't think it will be an issue, for more traditional games like Archeage where you don't have a choice you're basically screwed if it bothers you that much.
We're looking at it from two different angles. You, the general player. Me, the shard manager and those invested in a shard (guilds, community, etc). I have no doubt that you're sane enough to handle anacronisms without blowing a gasket. We have seen here, however, that others don't have the same level of tolerance or the common sense to just move to a different zone/game.
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
You're right, somehow I missed that completely from your post. Just assumed you were taking a players' perspective.
But either way what I was saying still sort of stands. You are not "forced" to link with other shards, you can run a single shard by yourself and that's it, just like a minecraft server. Or if you really want and have the time or resources you can create multiple shards yourself and then purchase Cluster hosting and link together all of those shards you created. No one would have any control over it aside from you and the people you allow to run it.
Alternatively you can choose to join a Cluster which is simply a group of shards all linked together. Obviously you would have to talk with the Cluster admin and see what the ruleset is and if they are of the same mind you are when it comes to the worlds' theme. But yeah, ultimately the shard owners have complete control over their world. If they don't like something they can just leave the Cluster and keep their world separated from everyone else's until they find a Cluster that's more fitting.
If people lose their minds even with them having full control over the fate of their "world" then I'm really not sure what to say. It's kind of like purposefully poking yourself in the eye and complaining about it but continuing to do so. If you already understood what I was saying then just ignore me ;p I'm just elaborating for the sake of random people reading.