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[nenjin]

The more I look this over, the more questionable it becomes. When you have an entire team of 45+ industry veterans, they're not looking for a minor success. They're looking for retirement money I think. The kind of expectations that drive up overhead because they want salaries comparable to their old job, offices comparable to their old job....

Compare and contrast a smaller group of younger developers who aren't used to 6 figure salaries.

[nullBolt]

Peer to peer doesn't sound good with pvp.

Remember Dark Souls?  I was once invaded by an invincible guy whose crossbow permanently drained my stats without reducing my soul level, basically ruining my character without cheating to fix it.

Brilliant.

[Folly]

Speaking of this, how's EQNext coming along? I know they're not really related, other than Smedley once being in charge of EQ.

I guess I could go find and bump its thread, or Delve the Internet.

Basically, after the launch of Landmark beta, updates and news became very slow for about a year, then completely stopped, without any explanation or expectations for renewed development. At this point it's been about 8 months since anyone heard so much as a single word from development or community relations, and more than a few people are crying vaporware.

I for one am saddened to see the once respectable Everquest name has fallen to this.

[Folly]

Dunno whats wrong with people not liking permadeath lol.

The general thinking of people disliking permadeath is that they don't want their time and effort to disappear, and they don't want to repeat the same early-game content over and over.

Now ideally, a good RPG should have a combat system with dynamic systems that keep things interesting on repeated playthroughs. Sadly, this is often not the case. In many RPG's, the only possibility of seeing something unexpected is when you've progressed to a new area and found new enemies, which is tedious to do without checkpoints or save-states.

The trailer for Hero's Song is not entirely clear, but the impression I got was that it is intended to be played in weeks and months, not minutes and hours. Most people don't enjoy the idea of spending weeks adventuring, dying to ignorance as they encounter some new unexpected mechanic, and then being faced with several more weeks of repeating the exact same content before getting another chance to progress. Of course, Hero's Song does boast a Dwarf-Fortress-like world generator which might allow for unique experiences on each play-through, but there's just not enough information to determine how entertaining repeat plays will be at this point.

[Xgamer4]

The more I look at this the more concerned I get...

Going off the timeline, they've been at it 4 months. Just 4 months. So it's effectively "fund our concept".

They apparently already received $1 million, and are looking for another $800k (based off stretch goals, another $1.3mil). So they turn to Kickstarter.

They failed to do basic research into how Kickstarter campaigns work. Entire campaign page as images with text? How, exactly, do you expect people to find out about it? Marketing seems scant. Reward tiers were all kinds of screwed up (they've made headway towards fixing that, to their credit, but messing up something as integral to a campaign as your incentives isn't a good start, period).

Plus the main name apparently has a very mixed reputation, which doesn't bode well at all.

It just makes me very, very wary. And judging by their current funding amount, I'm not alone. Though Kicktraq does project a possible success, just barely.

[Folly]

Some news.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Herossong/comments/41wf1g/john_smedley_ceo_of_pixelmage_games_amaa/

Smedley has opened a reddit thread where he is answering questions. A lot of questions answered already.

Also, a new kickstarter tier at $15 for just the game, and every tier $25 and over now gives two copies of the game.

Roughly 10% of the way through their campaign and they've raised 10% of their requested amount.

[MasterFancyPants]

Others have hit the nail right on the head:
-Remember how Everquest should have trashed WoW.
-Remember how Star Wars: Galaxies when from awesome to shit
-Remember BFRs is Planetside
-Remember how Planetside 2 STILL doesn't have features promised 3 years ago
-Remember the HNZ1 scandals.
All Smed.

[Folly]

Others have hit the nail right on the head:
-Remember how Everquest should have trashed WoW.
-Remember how Star Wars: Galaxies when from awesome to shit
-Remember BFRs is Planetside
-Remember how Planetside 2 STILL doesn't have features promised 3 years ago
-Remember the HNZ1 scandals.
All Smed.

WoW beating EQ2...there's nothing anyone could have done to change that. Even if EQ2 had done everything right, it still would have been crushed by WoW. EQ2 had better graphics, more involved combat, more varied and interesting setting and lore compared to WoW, and if handled properly all of those areas could have been even more impressive, but it still wouldn't have mattered. WoW is just a force of nature.

I still believe that BFR's were the best thing that could have happened to Planetside. Despite all the haters, I had a ton of fun fighting in them and against them.

Planetside2 has been a hot mess though, as has HNZ1, and EQNext. My biggest problem with those games however was the lack of developer communication. In all of them, shit went horribly wrong, and the devs basically just sent mods out to ban anyone who said anything about it.

However, Smed is doing the exact opposite of that right now, by openly responding to people's concerns on Reddit, and I think that's a huge step in the right direction. Not saying I'm ready to invest...but I'm much more interested in watching now.

[Zangi]

Dunno whats wrong with people not liking permadeath lol.

The general thinking of people disliking permadeath is that they don't want their time and effort to disappear, and they don't want to repeat the same early-game content over and over.

Permadeath doesn't go well with grinding, especially in a PvP/Griefer environment.  In my opinion anyways.
EDIT: Also doesn't go with bullshit surprise M* you are dead mechanics/gameplay.

[Folly]

And the Kickstarter has been canceled, with an announcement that they will still make the game without needing to take any money from any other sources.

So apparently they started the Kickstarter to try to get some money they didn't actually need, purely for the sake of greed. Bravo Smedley.

[motorbitch]

hum. proably not greed but because they could have made a bigger game with more money.

[Neonivek]

hum. proably not greed but because they could have made a bigger game with more money.

Or they didn't want to be beholden to producers and keep their artistic integrity.

a LOT of kickstarters are basically 'we could make this game now, and be told exactly how to make it by studio heads who would water this product down to the point where it would be unrecognizable from a bowl of tepid spring water, but we want to kickstart it to have some freedom in how we make it"

[nenjin]

Possible they just wanted to avoid the negative publicity of a "failed Kickstarter", especially if whoever is bank rolling them is sensitive about stuff like that. Although a "Hehe, didn't need the money after all, thanks anyways!" is arguably just as bad.

[Vilanat]

Still can't get my head over the text as images thing. that kickstarter page was one of the worst "serious projects" kickstarter pages i've ever seen.

But honestly, even with a superbly designed kickstarter page i wouldn't have bought in.