The latest on the Valley 2 schedule

[x4000]

I learn something new every day!

[KingIsaacLinksr]

I thought games had way more achievements than AI War did...that tells me how very little I pay attention to those lol!

Also, TF2 has a silly amount of achievements.

[LaughingThesaurus]

Have you guys got an approximate date on the beta's beginning? Someone said something to make me think it was tomorrow, but ultimately, I should be staying away till school stuff is done so... this is just a question of purely curiosity.
Also... AI War has like the fifth most achievements on Steam? I honestly didn't think it was that extreme. I thought there was some buffer between 266 and like the 800 or so that Champions has. IIRC, the achievements addition was just a token thing because lots of people wanted it, and Arcen Games took it to the logical extreme of "EVERYTHING IS AN ACHIEVEMENT" and it exploded from there. Well, look where that's gotten you guys!

...also, correct me if that story is totally wrong.

[x4000]

Have you guys got an approximate date on the beta's beginning? Someone said something to make me think it was tomorrow, but ultimately, I should be staying away till school stuff is done so... this is just a question of purely curiosity.

I'm hoping that it might be ready around November 30th or so, but it might slip a little further than that.  It's looking like beta will be longer than planned simply due to the need for sufficient time for artwork, too.  That shouldn't really impede anyone's enjoyment much, but it would mean we'd recycle graphics for the monsters temporarily and have fewer characters temporarily, too.  But that wouldn't have an effect on gameplay.

Also... AI War has like the fifth most achievements on Steam? I honestly didn't think it was that extreme. I thought there was some buffer between 266 and like the 800 or so that Champions has. IIRC, the achievements addition was just a token thing because lots of people wanted it, and Arcen Games took it to the logical extreme of "EVERYTHING IS AN ACHIEVEMENT" and it exploded from there. Well, look where that's gotten you guys!

...also, correct me if that story is totally wrong.

No, that's completely correct -- although I had no idea that 200-something achievements was extreme, either.  I don't pay much attention to achievements in the main, but I thought more were north of 100 than apparently is the case.

[LaughingThesaurus]

Well, beta is beta, and some missing placeholder bits of art can be expected in a beta. I don't guess other people will see it that way, necessarily, so I can see keeping things a bit more careful rather than throwing all caution to the wind and going with a purely gameplay-polished sort of beta. The weirdest part is, after marathon sessions of AVWW1, that art style started growing on me AFTER the change has practically already happened. It must be having a shiny 1080p monitor now or something.

November 30 or a bit after is a date I'm fine with. I've got to be finished with all the research jazz I have to do by around then, surely. Now all my school work has to compete with is Deus Ex, AI War, and the latest BL2 DLC.

[Aklyon]

Chris, I've been playing the City of Steam beta, which although still quite fun as a lightning arcanist (probably fun as other classes too, but I like being lightning mage, especially when I have everything active like that) and not bad in general (and remarkably impressive for a unity browserbased game), the fullscreen mode doesn't work for screenshots for me so I have to use the squashed on my screen window, theres been description bugs in basically all weaponry and assorted other text, the summons are bugged into invulnerability (which resulted in channellers being completely broken in pvp due to the healing summon), the equipment upgrade system is slightly off-kilter due to missing npcs, and other things.

A few pieces of placeholder art and me expecting multiplayer bugs is not a problem.
...the main problem would be which game do I play if both start a(nother) beta on the same day?

[LaughingThesaurus]

My concern, Aklyon, is more that people criticized the game for having the art style. Mixed opinions there. What happens if the sequel, promised to have an entirely new art style, opens up only to reveal some old art and some new art? That's not going to be so great, not as far as I can tell. And let me tell ya, people are really, really good at jumping to conclusions. I want the game to be successful so that there are lots of wonderful excuses to give Chris and company my money expansions.

[Aklyon]

I know that, and I can think of the commenters right now, I just wanted to add a supportive post in here.

[LaughingThesaurus]

Oh, for sure. Gotta have positivity. I do hope I don't come off as incredibly negative or realistic. I try for a good balance.

[x4000]

Oh, the new game will have all new art from day 1 -- but instead of 112 enemies with unique graphics, many of the enemies will repeat graphics from other enemies right at first.

[Aklyon]

So its less of a graphical problem and more of the previous 'espers are everywhere' thing with different monsters for now?

[x4000]

More or less, that's expected to be the case, yeah.

[LaughingThesaurus]

Oh, okay.
You led me to believe actually that it was going to be just a case of 'some art won't be done so it won't be replaced yet'. Glad I was wrong this time!

[x4000]

In terms of the enemies, all the enemies are new anyhow, so there's not much to go on in terms of "we just won't replace it," heh.

[LaughingThesaurus]

Ooh really?!

Yay, new enemies. I know most of the old ones by heart, so that's pretty fantastic news. I mean I wouldn't have been surprised to see old espers in there and stuff.