Anything not delivered from the original
Kickstarter has been replaced or modified as best the team could.
Richard specifically cited the custom heads promised to some backers,
which the team never found a viable solution for, from technical and
cost perspectives.
Funny thing is the tech worked out good for the devs that got custom heads.
That makes no sense. So you're saying that they could do it and just aren't because...? Just for the hell of it? How does that make any business sense what-so-ever?
If nothing else, let's hope SotA will become a big warning sign - a lesson for all the developers how not to do it.
Didn't we say this after Vanguard? Or am I mixing up my evil developers?
Whatever you're thinking of, I don't think it's Vangard. That one was pretty much developed by a ton of college students in under a year after the previous team went off the rails.
Folks might not like SotA, and that's a perfectly fair, but it's a complete game and there were never really any staffing issues. In fact, I'd say Shroud is probably a case study in successful crowdfunding. If the design failed, then that's more of an issue with the developers. From the perspective of getting a game funded and building it in a fairly transparent way, then Shroud's been pretty successful at that.
...now, whether it's shown that crowdfunding is a good idea or not... That's a little harder to answer from both sides. Backing based on your perception of someone else's idea and developing a game openly while trying to meet the demands of those perceptions. Both are aspects of crowdfunded-development that have proven to be sticking points.
If nothing else, let's hope SotA will become a big warning sign - a lesson for all the developers how not to do it.
Didn't we say this after Vanguard? Or am I mixing up my evil developers?
Whatever you're thinking of, I don't think it's Vangard. That one was pretty much developed by a ton of college students in under a year after the previous team went off the rails.
Folks might not like SotA, and that's a perfectly fair, but it's a complete game and there were never really any staffing issues. In fact, I'd say Shroud is probably a case study in successful crowdfunding. If the design failed, then that's more of an issue with the developers. From the perspective of getting a game funded and building it in a fairly transparent way, then Shroud's been pretty successful at that.
...now, whether it's shown that crowdfunding is a good idea or not... That's a little harder to answer from both sides. Backing based on your perception of someone else's idea and developing a game openly while trying to meet the demands of those perceptions. Both are aspects of crowdfunded-development that have proven to be sticking points.
From what I've read through on the SotA forums, there are entire zones that use cloned assets that were supposed to have unique assets created for the zone. I may have misread that, but if I didn't, I would hardly call the product complete. That doesn't even take into account other items they have yet to implement (boats with shipping lanes were another mentioned, I believe as a successfully funded stretch goal from what I read).
Again, if I'm not misreading those forum posts and those backers aren't lying, I don't see how what's there could be considered the complete product. I guess in a "there's a game there" sense, but that's not saying very much about the responsibility of devs to deliver on their funded promises.
In all honesty the ‘game’ turned out about how I thought it would. Lord British has completely lost touch with the genre and this project demonstrates that
Indeed and still, he wants to do a second Kickstarter for Chapter 2 . I don't know if he lied or if he's really not good with numbers.
Kickstarter has been replaced or modified as best the team could.
Richard specifically cited the custom heads promised to some backers,
which the team never found a viable solution for, from technical and
cost perspectives.
Funny thing is the tech worked out good for the devs that got custom heads.
That makes no sense. So you're saying that they could do it and just aren't because...? Just for the hell of it? How does that make any business sense what-so-ever?
Mate this is a perfect example of why so much of the coverage of shroud has been so laughable. What you think is a retorical question was simultaneously being proven to be ignorant elsewhere. Reddit found portalarium were at one point actually making the custom heads but have it hidden behind developer status. The posters there followed the project honestly enough to have at least remembered at one point the heads had been started and went looking to check their beliefs. So yeah portalarium could do it. Actually were doing it.
And arent now because well nothing portalarium has done made business sense or appealed to the community. The reality is they misspent all the cash money and are burning staff just to stay alive now. Theyre not doin the heads because they cant afford too and for the last 5 years have staggered from crisis to crisis.
Man I get wanting to not let go of your faith but people aint good unless they actually do good things. That was what the ultima games supposedly taught us remember? Hangin on to hope that all this may turn around whilst ignoring all the ways they shaft people aint right. And tryin to spin hope which will only lead to more people gettin burned is actively bad. Maybe the portalarium dudes were always awful or maybe theyre just out of date and out of touch today. But shroud aint no ultima and never will be and tryin to cover for that is just making the coverage look even worse too. Better to just be Honest as the games taught.
That link does include further links to the original thread soliciting the photos (even with the devs posting an example of how they took a photo and converted it to a texture for the head model), as well as photos of a few completed head models. If the backers entitled haven't gotten theirs, then that's another pledge reward that appears likely never to be delivered in any form.
Said it before: best thing to come out of this project is a postmortem on how NOT to do crowdfunding. Considering things like the above, even taking the position they were successful at the garnering funds part is taking a hugely anti-consumer position.
I too feel bad for the people who lost their jobs... that said, the game is horrible. Animations, movement, gameplay, just about everything I played was absolutely atrocious, so it makes sense that it has hardly anyone playing it which would result in this happening.
My guess is there is quite a bit of hyperbole in your statements, or you have very exacting standards.
Or an under powdered rig as this game seems to favor those with a 1080 and 32 GB of RAM with appropriate processor.
No not at all. I think its always shitty when someone loses their job. It does nothing but put them in financial harm. They're 2 separated comments though.... 1 about them losing their job and another about the game being dog shit. Just about everything it offered was dog shit. If you played through the initial tutorial you could see the poor quality it offered. It was piss poor to put it lightly and I'm usually a player to give a game the benefit of the doubt and give it some time. The tutorial basically shot the game in its foot right out of the gate. The tutorial felt like something that was made 20 yrs ago. I mean I could go on and on. I didn't mention ran in my first comment so not sure why you brought that up.
It was doomed from the start. If the game was going to be actually good, Richard would have used his own millions but he knew it was going to be shit so he used your money instead. He’s still rich so he doesn’t care, onto the next kickstarter.
I've been playing it all day, going from event to event.
The day started with an RP Solstice event. It went long so I had to cut out early in order to go fight (and lose) in the PvP tournament.
Then there was the Goblin Faire, run by the goblin guild (started in UO). It was fantastic, along with the Avatars Radio DJ and usual dancing, there was a petting zoo, goblin ice cream booth (I guess a UO tradition), kissing booth to raise gold for the Aerie Fund, a palisades jump course "Forest of Pain", and a "carnival ride". (Quotes because that one was just an awesome deco, and a goblin in the middle saying "It goes up, it goes around". It was awesome, lots of screenshots).
Finally, the weekend guild hunt, which this time consisted of some officer designed flavor in the form of a jailbreak, investigation, then
Shroud is something special. Those of us that love it have found a long term home.
I've been playing it all day, going from event to event.
The day started with an RP Solstice event. It went long so I had to cut out early in order to go fight (and lose) in the PvP tournament.
Then there was the Goblin Faire, run by the goblin guild (started in UO). It was fantastic, along with the Avatars Radio DJ and usual dancing, there was a petting zoo, goblin ice cream booth (I guess a UO tradition), kissing booth to raise gold for the Aerie Fund, a palisades jump course "Forest of Pain", and a "carnival ride". (Quotes because that one was just an awesome deco, and a goblin in the middle saying "It goes up, it goes around". It was awesome, lots of screenshots).
Finally, the weekend guild hunt, which this time consisted of some officer designed flavor in the form of a jailbreak, investigation, then
Shroud is something special. Those of us that love it have found a long term home.
I wish I believed it might be around long-term. If I did, I might put some time into it. My gut, though, tells me that the only way it could last that long is on life support.
This was the only game I ever backed and it has failed. Lesson learned.
You would have to qualify your remark with how it has failed , what measures did it fall short on?
Doors are still open, people are still playing.
So 50 people playing it in peak doesn't mean they failed? The game they've delivered is a poorly optimized empty world cash grab based on an engine created for mobile games. This couldn't work. Worth to mention that the proud Richard Garriot, who has been selling his blood for money(!!!???), was their final nail to the coffin.
Anything not delivered from the original
Kickstarter has been replaced or modified as best the team could.
Richard specifically cited the custom heads promised to some backers,
which the team never found a viable solution for, from technical and
cost perspectives.
Funny thing is the tech worked out good for the devs that got custom heads.
That makes no sense. So you're saying that they could do it and just aren't because...? Just for the hell of it? How does that make any business sense what-so-ever?
That's what appears to be happening.
In 2014 Portalarium even did a sitewide call for people to submit their pictures to get the reward. However, that post is no longer found in the forums, though it was captured by wayback.
Here in this 2014 Venturbeat article where they interview Lord British they use an ingame pic of Lord British and Darkstarr sporting their custom avatars.
Here's a recent shot of Darkstarr's custom avatar:
As good business decisions go, I think them honoring their backers pledges would be the best choice as clearly the tech and resources have been in game for years.
In all honesty the ‘game’ turned out about how I thought it would. Lord British has completely lost touch with the genre and this project demonstrates that
Indeed and still, he wants to do a second Kickstarter for Chapter 2 . I don't know if he lied or if he's really not good with numbers.
If he is so confident in these projects why not use his own money? He has alot more than most of the players do.
Shroud is something special. Those of us that love it have found a long term home.
You meant the few of us and about the long term home, did you know Port fired half of the team ?
How long do you think they're going to last , I'll tell you , few months max.
As Darkstarr said, they wont add any content but work on what left . Maybe because they don't have enough people to work on content.. and what happen when a game is stop adding content ?
Players stop playing.
No players , no money.
No money, no server.
Have fun in your single player game.
Your so long term home might not be what you think it would be.
This was the only game I ever backed and it has failed. Lesson learned.
You would have to qualify your remark with how it has failed , what measures did it fall short on?
Doors are still open, people are still playing.
So 50 people playing it in peak doesn't mean they failed? The game they've delivered is a poorly optimized empty world cash grab based on an engine created for mobile games. This couldn't work. Worth to mention that the proud Richard Garriot, who has been selling his blood for money(!!!???), was their final nail to the coffin.
So failure to draw a large number of players logging in is your benchmark for failure. Are you sure 50 is an accurate figure, where are you pulling the figure from?
I ask because I recall reading those playing in a private or group instance can't be counted.
Also, if from Steam I thought I read gamers have to opt in to be reported online, but perhaps that is only at a personal level, and they are still reported in the total.
Also, players can log in outside of Steam I believe, so it might be challenging to get an accurate count unless the devs report it themselves somewhere.
I realize they are well below the reported 50K figure quoted many years ago, and coupled with the recent 50% layoffs clearly it's fair to say they are severely underperforming.
But despite all that, not really "failing" until the servers shut down, no more new content is being added (might be very near that atm) and players can no longer log in.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Also, players can log in outside of Steam I believe so it might be challenging to get an accurate count unless the devs report it themselves somewhere.
The game was available outside of Steam quite some time before it launched there and continues to be at Portalarium's own site (where one can download the perpetual free trial of the game as well.)
It is reasonable to assume the most ardent supporters of the game had long since already installed it before the Steam version came out, and that many that try the trial would opt to purchase and continue to play that client rather than the Steam one.
As such, Steam numbers don't likely reflect the overall population well, and should probably be viewed as an indicator of success on that platform only.
This was the only game I ever backed and it has failed. Lesson learned.
You would have to qualify your remark with how it has failed , what measures did it fall short on?
Doors are still open, people are still playing.
So 50 people playing it in peak doesn't mean they failed? The game they've delivered is a poorly optimized empty world cash grab based on an engine created for mobile games. This couldn't work. Worth to mention that the proud Richard Garriot, who has been selling his blood for money(!!!???), was their final nail to the coffin.
So failure to draw a large number of players logging in is your benchmark for failure. Are you sure 50 is an accurate figure, where are you pulling the figure from?
I ask because I recall reading those playing in a private or group instance can't be counted.
Also, if from Steam I thought I read gamers have to opt in to be reported online, but perhaps that is only at a personal level, and they are still reported in the total.
Also, players can log in outside of Steam I believe, so it might be challenging to get an accurate count unless the devs report it themselves somewhere.
I realize they are well below the reported 50K figure quoted many years ago, and coupled with the recent 50% layoffs clearly it's fair to say they are severely underperforming.
But despite all that, not really "failing" until the servers shut down, no more new content is being added (might be very near that atm) and players can no longer log in.
Just how I define actual failure.
Certainly not an accurate number, there are 250 people on right now in Steam by itself, not counting all the players in on the launcher.
I think SotA proved Kickstarter works perfectly fine, they funded a game and delivired one. Now the actual quality of the game is well below what was expected by most, but that has got nothing to do with the crowdfunding mechanism and eveything with the talent and the vision of the developers.
It was a high quality, succesful Kickstarter, it was a low quality, failure of a game. Two different things.
/Cheers, Lahnmir
'the only way he could nail it any better is if he used a cross.'
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
I think SotA proved Kickstarter works perfectly fine, they funded a game and delivired one. Now the actual quality of the game is well below what was expected by most, but that has got nothing to do with the crowdfunding mechanism and eveything with the talent and the vision of the developers.
It was a high quality, succesful Kickstarter, it was a low quality, failure of a game. Two different things.
/Cheers, Lahnmir
I'm still not convinced.
I disagree with Red that they don't have staffing problems; they're laying off roughly half the staff before delivering on the funded promises. You can see the aforementioned unique head skins for one example, I've already cited another.
Just because the devs call it a release doesn't mean they've actually met the obligations they entered into through crowdfunding. To say they have is, again, to pretty much absolve crowdfunding devs of any responsibility to be good stewards of the money they receive in good faith from backers. It sets a precedence that anyone should be able and allowed to run a Kickstarter campaign for an MMORPG as long as they give it the ole college try, end results be damned.
Saying they've ran a successful Kickstarter and/or crowdfunding project is basically accepting said project was on the same level of legit as a snake oil salesmen.
Doesn't look good. Layoffs are always a bad sign, especially large ones. Reading the positive and negative reviews and forum comments on Steam I don't really see anything that would cause new players to stay at this point. Even a lot of the positive comments say it still needs a lot of work. People who defend the game say it probably has about 1000 players, with about 200 at any given time.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
This was the only game I ever backed and it has failed. Lesson learned.
You would have to qualify your remark with how it has failed , what measures did it fall short on?
Doors are still open, people are still playing.
So 50 people playing it in peak doesn't mean they failed? The game they've delivered is a poorly optimized empty world cash grab based on an engine created for mobile games. This couldn't work. Worth to mention that the proud Richard Garriot, who has been selling his blood for money(!!!???), was their final nail to the coffin.
So failure to draw a large number of players logging in is your benchmark for failure. Are you sure 50 is an accurate figure, where are you pulling the figure from?
I ask because I recall reading those playing in a private or group instance can't be counted.
Also, if from Steam I thought I read gamers have to opt in to be reported online, but perhaps that is only at a personal level, and they are still reported in the total.
Also, players can log in outside of Steam I believe, so it might be challenging to get an accurate count unless the devs report it themselves somewhere.
I realize they are well below the reported 50K figure quoted many years ago, and coupled with the recent 50% layoffs clearly it's fair to say they are severely underperforming.
But despite all that, not really "failing" until the servers shut down, no more new content is being added (might be very near that atm) and players can no longer log in.
Just how I define actual failure.
The game isn't supporting itself financially, that is the very definition of a failure.
Comments
That makes no sense. So you're saying that they could do it and just aren't because...? Just for the hell of it? How does that make any business sense what-so-ever?
Whatever you're thinking of, I don't think it's Vangard. That one was pretty much developed by a ton of college students in under a year after the previous team went off the rails.
Folks might not like SotA, and that's a perfectly fair, but it's a complete game and there were never really any staffing issues. In fact, I'd say Shroud is probably a case study in successful crowdfunding. If the design failed, then that's more of an issue with the developers. From the perspective of getting a game funded and building it in a fairly transparent way, then Shroud's been pretty successful at that.
...now, whether it's shown that crowdfunding is a good idea or not... That's a little harder to answer from both sides. Backing based on your perception of someone else's idea and developing a game openly while trying to meet the demands of those perceptions. Both are aspects of crowdfunded-development that have proven to be sticking points.
거북이는 목을 내밀 때 안 움직입니다
Again, if I'm not misreading those forum posts and those backers aren't lying, I don't see how what's there could be considered the complete product. I guess in a "there's a game there" sense, but that's not saying very much about the responsibility of devs to deliver on their funded promises.
거북이는 목을 내밀 때 안 움직입니다
Indeed and still, he wants to do a second Kickstarter for Chapter 2 . I don't know if he lied or if he's really not good with numbers.
x1muft.png
Mate this is a perfect example of why so much of the coverage of shroud has been so laughable. What you think is a retorical question was simultaneously being proven to be ignorant elsewhere. Reddit found portalarium were at one point actually making the custom heads but have it hidden behind developer status. The posters there followed the project honestly enough to have at least remembered at one point the heads had been started and went looking to check their beliefs. So yeah portalarium could do it. Actually were doing it.
And arent now because well nothing portalarium has done made business sense or appealed to the community. The reality is they misspent all the cash money and are burning staff just to stay alive now. Theyre not doin the heads because they cant afford too and for the last 5 years have staggered from crisis to crisis.
Man I get wanting to not let go of your faith but people aint good unless they actually do good things. That was what the ultima games supposedly taught us remember? Hangin on to hope that all this may turn around whilst ignoring all the ways they shaft people aint right. And tryin to spin hope which will only lead to more people gettin burned is actively bad. Maybe the portalarium dudes were always awful or maybe theyre just out of date and out of touch today. But shroud aint no ultima and never will be and tryin to cover for that is just making the coverage look even worse too. Better to just be Honest as the games taught.
Said it before: best thing to come out of this project is a postmortem on how NOT to do crowdfunding. Considering things like the above, even taking the position they were successful at the garnering funds part is taking a hugely anti-consumer position.
Er, how so? Steam concurrency hasn't shifted since what they called launch.
I've been playing it all day, going from event to event.
The day started with an RP Solstice event. It went long so I had to cut out early in order to go fight (and lose) in the PvP tournament.
Then there was the Goblin Faire, run by the goblin guild (started in UO). It was fantastic, along with the Avatars Radio DJ and usual dancing, there was a petting zoo, goblin ice cream booth (I guess a UO tradition), kissing booth to raise gold for the Aerie Fund, a palisades jump course "Forest of Pain", and a "carnival ride". (Quotes because that one was just an awesome deco, and a goblin in the middle saying "It goes up, it goes around". It was awesome, lots of screenshots).
Finally, the weekend guild hunt, which this time consisted of some officer designed flavor in the form of a jailbreak, investigation, then
Shroud is something special. Those of us that love it have found a long term home.
I wish I believed it might be around long-term. If I did, I might put some time into it. My gut, though, tells me that the only way it could last that long is on life support.
So 50 people playing it in peak doesn't mean they failed? The game they've delivered is a poorly optimized empty world cash grab based on an engine created for mobile games. This couldn't work. Worth to mention that the proud Richard Garriot, who has been selling his blood for money(!!!???), was their final nail to the coffin.
You meant the few of us and about the long term home, did you know Port fired half of the team ?
How long do you think they're going to last , I'll tell you , few months max.
As Darkstarr said, they wont add any content but work on what left . Maybe because they don't have enough people to work on content.. and what happen when a game is stop adding content ?
Players stop playing.
No players , no money.
No money, no server.
Have fun in your single player game.
Your so long term home might not be what you think it would be.
I ask because I recall reading those playing in a private or group instance can't be counted.
Also, if from Steam I thought I read gamers have to opt in to be reported online, but perhaps that is only at a personal level, and they are still reported in the total.
Also, players can log in outside of Steam I believe, so it might be challenging to get an accurate count unless the devs report it themselves somewhere.
I realize they are well below the reported 50K figure quoted many years ago, and coupled with the recent 50% layoffs clearly it's fair to say they are severely underperforming.
But despite all that, not really "failing" until the servers shut down, no more new content is being added (might be very near that atm) and players can no longer log in.
Just how I define actual failure.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
The game was available outside of Steam quite some time before it launched there and continues to be at Portalarium's own site (where one can download the perpetual free trial of the game as well.)
It is reasonable to assume the most ardent supporters of the game had long since already installed it before the Steam version came out, and that many that try the trial would opt to purchase and continue to play that client rather than the Steam one.
As such, Steam numbers don't likely reflect the overall population well, and should probably be viewed as an indicator of success on that platform only.
Certainly not an accurate number, there are 250 people on right now in Steam by itself, not counting all the players in on the launcher.
It was a high quality, succesful Kickstarter, it was a low quality, failure of a game. Two different things.
/Cheers,
Lahnmir
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
I disagree with Red that they don't have staffing problems; they're laying off roughly half the staff before delivering on the funded promises. You can see the aforementioned unique head skins for one example, I've already cited another.
Just because the devs call it a release doesn't mean they've actually met the obligations they entered into through crowdfunding. To say they have is, again, to pretty much absolve crowdfunding devs of any responsibility to be good stewards of the money they receive in good faith from backers. It sets a precedence that anyone should be able and allowed to run a Kickstarter campaign for an MMORPG as long as they give it the ole college try, end results be damned.
Saying they've ran a successful Kickstarter and/or crowdfunding project is basically accepting said project was on the same level of legit as a snake oil salesmen.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey