28th February 2017, 6:50 PM
Oh right, it's actually done! By trying to make a sequel to Torment they've set a very, very high bar. It's been a long time coming, given that the kickstarter was a full four years ago already (it's been that long?), but I hope that the effort was worth it because the original Torment is amazing and I'd love to play another game like it. The game sounds like it's pretty good going by reviews, the writing particularly, so that's good. I haven't redeemed my key for the game yet, but probably will soon.
On the other hand though, there are a few significant issues I need to discuss. I was thinking of making a thread for this, but it's related to this game, so I'll just put it here. First, the first thing about this game that disappointed me was when they chose to go with turn-based combat. That's fine, but I'd have rather seen real-time-with-pause, which overall is the better system for this kind of game. I'm sure this works, but RTWP would have been great...
More importantly, have you been following any of the complaints some backers of the kickstarter have? There have been many. First, some people are upset that during development they cut or scaled back some of the content they promised in stretch goals... and then didn't talk about some of it. Those changes were only discovered when people started data-mining the data as they started to get it closer to release. InXile has apologized for that, but that's not great. I fully understand why the changes happened, and don't mind them; games change during development. The problem with very specific Kickstarter stretch goals is that you're committing to a specific featureset before you've gotten far enough in development to know how the game will actually end up once you've worked on it more. You see this in plenty of Kickstarter games both major and minor. It's always unfortunate, but this stuff always happens in games, it's just better known here because Kickstarter is publicly open in a way that game development almost never is. So yeah, while it's too bad, I don't mind these changes if the final game is great. I'm not sure how developers can avoid this problem; specific stretch goals help drive excitement and increase funding, which helps regardless of if that goal's text is reached, but there's no way to know which ones are actually deliverable that early... so yeah, not sure there, but again personally I don't mind this.
The other issue is that they made a deal with Techland for console and physical PC releases of the game, and also allowed Techland to make their own collectors' edition of the game... which is cheaper than the one backers were offered and, depending on who you asks, might come with better stuff. Since the backers collectors' edition is not out yet it's impossible to directly compare them, but this definitely does not exactly encourage me to back more Kickstarters/Fig campaigns/what have you, if what you're getting is kind of worse than something that costs less and doesn't require you paying for something long before you know how good it will actually be. In Torment's case, the biggest difference between the two versions is that the backer CE includes a thicker manual, cloth map, and printed collection of some/all of the novellas written in this games' world, while the Techland retail CE includes a thinner manual (difference is not clear yet), paper map, steelbook case, and a statuette. The statue is smaller than the statue that you could get in the Kickstarter, but you had to back the game at the $1200 level to get that backer statue, while the retail one is in a box that costs less than the statue-less backer CE. I do like the extras only included in the backer CE and don't collect game statues so this isn't a huge issue for me personally, and I understand how it happened, but still it discourages me from backing future InXile games when I know that I'm likely to get something about as good for less money when the game releases, and by that point you can know if it's a game you really want to play anyway, something much harder to do before it's been made.
On that note, did you back the kickstarter? If you've mentioned it before I forget. I did, at the collectors' edition tier, which after shipping costs cost me $135 (for the $110 collectors' edition tier, since the first collectors' edition tier at $95 sold out before I backed it, and I didn't want to wait... which is good, considering they kept raising collectors' edition prices as each tier sold out until it was $135 by the end of the kickstarter...). This is one of only two Kickstarters I backed at over $100, and ... well, the results are mixed, not just here but generally. While I still like Kickstarter, it has some issues.
1) You will usually pay more than you would for the same game if you get it on sale sometime after launch. This we've always known, but for games that have succeeded in meeting their funding goal and thus are sure to see development continue, it discourages me from backing them because what's the benefit to me for doing so now? Not much, really, unless you're backing a Fig game with enough money to actually get returns, but even there the economics are apparently not great unless the game in question sells very well.
2) If you back the game at a physical-product tier, there is no guarantee that there won't be a better physical product released around time of launch that costs less, but you won't get unless you buy the game again. See Torment above for an example of this.
3) Physical backer copies of Kickstarter games often take quite some time to arrive, so your "reward" for backing the game at that tier is either having to just play the game digitally, or wait weeks or more before you can play the game. I know there are good reasons for this, but it is annoying. I waited what, months for the physical box (regular, not collectors') backer-edition copy of Pillars of Eternity to finally ship? They had promised a fully DRM-free game you could just install from the disc and play, so they wanted to not ship it until after the first big patch was done so that could be included on the disc, but between producing copies and shipping them this led to delays. You could just install the Steam/GOG key and play that in the interim, but then what was the point of spending enough to get a box? The solution here is to not promise a DRM-free copy that isn't on Steam or GOG of course, like Torment: Tides of Numanera does -- physical copies of the game will be just a disc that requires you to input a Steam key and install it in Steam, apparently. That's worse than Pillars on a DRM standpoint, but better from an addons standpoint, because at least you won't have the problem here that that game does. And I see that PoEII does not promise "DRM-free" in its physical-box tier, so they're clearly giving up on it too. That's kind of too bad, since tying your game to a digital store that may or may not continue to exist is kind of annoying, but with all the integration those stores have, what choice do developers have? Buying addons, DLC, playing multiplayer, etc. in a truly separate DRM-free copy of the game would require the dev to set up a whole separate infrastructure for that after all, which both kind of defeats the purpose of having everything on the disc and may be impossible depending on the developers' financial condition. It's kind of sad that modern gaming is so deeply tied to these systems which can just go away, but you can't just ship everything on a disc at launch and be done with it anymore and retail expansion packs are a thing of the past, so what can you do...
4) Because you're backing a game before most of its development, there's no way to know if the game you are supporting will actually end up being any good or not, or if you will actually get everything you paid for or not. Sometimes you don't, and unless you sue over it there's nothing you can do about that. There are some Kickstarter games that totally collapse and fail to amount to anything, but I've avoided those. Apart from that, the best example of a failure of this point is of course Mighty No. 9. The game did come out... but backers who backed the project at physical-product tiers? They never actually shipped most of that stuff, the physical boxes and such for example that they claimed they'd make. Sorry, you wasted your money and got nothing for it if you backed those.
5) Physical backer editions of games often take longer than retail copies to get to backers, and they sometimes have issues. I mentioned this above in point three, but I think it's worth mentioning on its own too, because shouldn't the reward for getting in early in these projects be getting the game early, not late? And yet due to understandable issues, it's often the other way around if you wanted anything more than just a digital key. Sure, I understand why putting together that stuff takes time, but this does not exactly encourage me to back things early when it doesn't get you the game sooner, unless you back at a beta tier in games with such offers of course... but I'd generally rather play the finished game than that, so I don't usually do that.
So, in the past year-plus I've backed almost nothing on these services, versus a bunch of stuff in the years prior. I don't regret backing most of those things, and some did get me exclusive physical rewards you can't get elsewhere, but between the costs, risks, and issues with some of those physical rewards, it's usually not worth it, I think. I will back a kickstarter if it's something really interesting and the campaign is maybe not going to make its goal, because if it fails maybe that game never gets made at all, but something like a Wasteland 3 or Pillars of Eternity 2? I backed both of the previous games in those series, but not the new ones for those reasons.
On the other hand though, there are a few significant issues I need to discuss. I was thinking of making a thread for this, but it's related to this game, so I'll just put it here. First, the first thing about this game that disappointed me was when they chose to go with turn-based combat. That's fine, but I'd have rather seen real-time-with-pause, which overall is the better system for this kind of game. I'm sure this works, but RTWP would have been great...
More importantly, have you been following any of the complaints some backers of the kickstarter have? There have been many. First, some people are upset that during development they cut or scaled back some of the content they promised in stretch goals... and then didn't talk about some of it. Those changes were only discovered when people started data-mining the data as they started to get it closer to release. InXile has apologized for that, but that's not great. I fully understand why the changes happened, and don't mind them; games change during development. The problem with very specific Kickstarter stretch goals is that you're committing to a specific featureset before you've gotten far enough in development to know how the game will actually end up once you've worked on it more. You see this in plenty of Kickstarter games both major and minor. It's always unfortunate, but this stuff always happens in games, it's just better known here because Kickstarter is publicly open in a way that game development almost never is. So yeah, while it's too bad, I don't mind these changes if the final game is great. I'm not sure how developers can avoid this problem; specific stretch goals help drive excitement and increase funding, which helps regardless of if that goal's text is reached, but there's no way to know which ones are actually deliverable that early... so yeah, not sure there, but again personally I don't mind this.
The other issue is that they made a deal with Techland for console and physical PC releases of the game, and also allowed Techland to make their own collectors' edition of the game... which is cheaper than the one backers were offered and, depending on who you asks, might come with better stuff. Since the backers collectors' edition is not out yet it's impossible to directly compare them, but this definitely does not exactly encourage me to back more Kickstarters/Fig campaigns/what have you, if what you're getting is kind of worse than something that costs less and doesn't require you paying for something long before you know how good it will actually be. In Torment's case, the biggest difference between the two versions is that the backer CE includes a thicker manual, cloth map, and printed collection of some/all of the novellas written in this games' world, while the Techland retail CE includes a thinner manual (difference is not clear yet), paper map, steelbook case, and a statuette. The statue is smaller than the statue that you could get in the Kickstarter, but you had to back the game at the $1200 level to get that backer statue, while the retail one is in a box that costs less than the statue-less backer CE. I do like the extras only included in the backer CE and don't collect game statues so this isn't a huge issue for me personally, and I understand how it happened, but still it discourages me from backing future InXile games when I know that I'm likely to get something about as good for less money when the game releases, and by that point you can know if it's a game you really want to play anyway, something much harder to do before it's been made.
On that note, did you back the kickstarter? If you've mentioned it before I forget. I did, at the collectors' edition tier, which after shipping costs cost me $135 (for the $110 collectors' edition tier, since the first collectors' edition tier at $95 sold out before I backed it, and I didn't want to wait... which is good, considering they kept raising collectors' edition prices as each tier sold out until it was $135 by the end of the kickstarter...). This is one of only two Kickstarters I backed at over $100, and ... well, the results are mixed, not just here but generally. While I still like Kickstarter, it has some issues.
1) You will usually pay more than you would for the same game if you get it on sale sometime after launch. This we've always known, but for games that have succeeded in meeting their funding goal and thus are sure to see development continue, it discourages me from backing them because what's the benefit to me for doing so now? Not much, really, unless you're backing a Fig game with enough money to actually get returns, but even there the economics are apparently not great unless the game in question sells very well.
2) If you back the game at a physical-product tier, there is no guarantee that there won't be a better physical product released around time of launch that costs less, but you won't get unless you buy the game again. See Torment above for an example of this.
3) Physical backer copies of Kickstarter games often take quite some time to arrive, so your "reward" for backing the game at that tier is either having to just play the game digitally, or wait weeks or more before you can play the game. I know there are good reasons for this, but it is annoying. I waited what, months for the physical box (regular, not collectors') backer-edition copy of Pillars of Eternity to finally ship? They had promised a fully DRM-free game you could just install from the disc and play, so they wanted to not ship it until after the first big patch was done so that could be included on the disc, but between producing copies and shipping them this led to delays. You could just install the Steam/GOG key and play that in the interim, but then what was the point of spending enough to get a box? The solution here is to not promise a DRM-free copy that isn't on Steam or GOG of course, like Torment: Tides of Numanera does -- physical copies of the game will be just a disc that requires you to input a Steam key and install it in Steam, apparently. That's worse than Pillars on a DRM standpoint, but better from an addons standpoint, because at least you won't have the problem here that that game does. And I see that PoEII does not promise "DRM-free" in its physical-box tier, so they're clearly giving up on it too. That's kind of too bad, since tying your game to a digital store that may or may not continue to exist is kind of annoying, but with all the integration those stores have, what choice do developers have? Buying addons, DLC, playing multiplayer, etc. in a truly separate DRM-free copy of the game would require the dev to set up a whole separate infrastructure for that after all, which both kind of defeats the purpose of having everything on the disc and may be impossible depending on the developers' financial condition. It's kind of sad that modern gaming is so deeply tied to these systems which can just go away, but you can't just ship everything on a disc at launch and be done with it anymore and retail expansion packs are a thing of the past, so what can you do...
4) Because you're backing a game before most of its development, there's no way to know if the game you are supporting will actually end up being any good or not, or if you will actually get everything you paid for or not. Sometimes you don't, and unless you sue over it there's nothing you can do about that. There are some Kickstarter games that totally collapse and fail to amount to anything, but I've avoided those. Apart from that, the best example of a failure of this point is of course Mighty No. 9. The game did come out... but backers who backed the project at physical-product tiers? They never actually shipped most of that stuff, the physical boxes and such for example that they claimed they'd make. Sorry, you wasted your money and got nothing for it if you backed those.
5) Physical backer editions of games often take longer than retail copies to get to backers, and they sometimes have issues. I mentioned this above in point three, but I think it's worth mentioning on its own too, because shouldn't the reward for getting in early in these projects be getting the game early, not late? And yet due to understandable issues, it's often the other way around if you wanted anything more than just a digital key. Sure, I understand why putting together that stuff takes time, but this does not exactly encourage me to back things early when it doesn't get you the game sooner, unless you back at a beta tier in games with such offers of course... but I'd generally rather play the finished game than that, so I don't usually do that.
So, in the past year-plus I've backed almost nothing on these services, versus a bunch of stuff in the years prior. I don't regret backing most of those things, and some did get me exclusive physical rewards you can't get elsewhere, but between the costs, risks, and issues with some of those physical rewards, it's usually not worth it, I think. I will back a kickstarter if it's something really interesting and the campaign is maybe not going to make its goal, because if it fails maybe that game never gets made at all, but something like a Wasteland 3 or Pillars of Eternity 2? I backed both of the previous games in those series, but not the new ones for those reasons.