Language Support / Campain Length

[Tridus]

If only blizzard would make AI war 2...

Sure, if you want a game that is AI War 2 in title only.

I wrote an Email to arcen about this. It's about polish.

Take hearthstone for example. I think the team wasn't that big, like 10 or 15 ppl? So basically it's compareable to an indie title. I am just saying that they spent so much time into polish and accesibility.

There are even tons of very very polished indie titles. Arcen isn't one who brings out polished games - thats ok, they give you he "rough cut". But you can't expect to hit a 300k kickstarter with rough games for a very very small market. You will have to go more mass market.

Arcen is around 4 people, total. If you're comparing that to a team of 15 dedicated to a project, with Blizzard's entire admin/support/IT staff behind them, then there really isn't anything left to say.

Some people just love to talk even when they have absolutely no idea what they're talking about, I guess.

[iob]

Arcen is around 4 people, total. If you're comparing that to a team of 15 dedicated to a project, with Blizzard's entire admin/support/IT staff behind them, then there really isn't anything left to say.

Some people just love to talk even when they have absolutely no idea what they're talking about, I guess.

*Sigh*

Guess who is takling.

What I wanted to say: Instead of assigning those limited 4 ressources into 30k words of text and creating tons of units that all need a unit description, they should probably use these ressources into a clean game that works.

I'd rather have 1 fun unit than 10 units taht are not fun.

But I am not sure how I can tell you that, you seem to not understand.

Imho, the vision for Ai: War 2 was too small to succeed. Just look over to kickstarter if you have any doubts. The interest in 2016 to a sequel to a game that has a lot in common with excel is very limited.

I opted for a slightly different game - but alas, the creators want to stay true to themselves and create another failure, ignoring all good advice. At least in my opinion. But I am just a gamer - i can just tell you that i stoped buying arcen after last federation because the outline is good, but the execution lacking.

This thread also sums up my opinion pretty well.
https://neogaf.site/forum/showthread.php?t=1270356

[iob]

Best of all, we will give you credit for improving the writing and if its such a massive improvement, there is always the chance that you could work with us.

I am in no way game related at all in the creation process. I am just a gamer. Maybe even a casual gamer.

But you might have heard of the problem, that programmers often write stuff that "they" understand and then they are baffled, when "users" don't get it. Basically every software has it, even accounting software where data suddenly shows up sorted in a way that only makes sense for the programmers.

It's really an interestig topic to pass the things on your feet on to someone else. If I would have any say in the creation of AI: War 2, I would have probably made a study of my target audience. Which game do they want? What niche is currently open?

The "Excel-Like-Overcomplex-RTS-Niche" obviously is smaller than expected.

I don't really know exactly why a major deal wasn't possible. But then, the views of the creators are a different one. They want to code and have a relaxed lifestyle instead of being the pushover of a major I guess.


Just one word of advice, asking your playerbase who already backed and are in the boat about what game they want is irrelevant if it's onlylike 5000 ppl and you want to sell to 50.000. You would have to ask the 45.000.

Also, probably most don't even know what they want until you show it to them^^.

[Dominus Arbitrationis]

Some people just love to talk even when they have absolutely no idea what they're talking about, I guess.

*Sigh*
Guess who is takling.

Okay, let's all put our metaphorical swords away and have a nice civil discussion. No need to be rude. Please remember that you are communicating through text as well, which means what you might not consider rude can come across as rude due to a lack of ability to discern facial expressions, body language, tone, and other factors.

Best of all, we will give you credit for improving the writing and if its such a massive improvement, there is always the chance that you could work with us.

I am in no way game related at all in the creation process. I am just a gamer. Maybe even a casual gamer.

But you might have heard of the problem, that programmers often write stuff that "they" understand and then they are baffled, when "users" don't get it. Basically every software has it, even accounting software where data suddenly shows up sorted in a way that only makes sense for the programmers.

It's really an interestig topic to pass the things on your feet on to someone else. If I would have any say in the creation of AI: War 2, I would have probably made a study of my target audience. Which game do they want? What niche is currently open?

The "Excel-Like-Overcomplex-RTS-Niche" obviously is smaller than expected.

I don't really know exactly why a major deal wasn't possible. But then, the views of the creators are a different one. They want to code and have a relaxed lifestyle instead of being the pushover of a major I guess.

Exactly. If our users don't understand the software, then they can change it to something that they do understand, and we can put that in the base game, making it a win-win for everyone involved. You understand what the mechanic does, and we get more sales because people understand the mechanic better, and you get credit for it (Which you can put on a resume, and that always looks nice).

The problem with that line of thinking is AI War 2 can't be a puzzle game or something different than an RTS. Then it isn't AI War 2. It becomes Tidalis 2, or AVWW 3, or New Game 1, which are all harder sells. It is much easier to push AI War 2 as AI War Classic, but improved in X,Y,Z ways, since AIWC is a known variable.

That being said, could we do a study of our target audience and figure out the genre they would prefer? Almost certainly. We just thought that AI War 2, in its full expanded form, was what everyone wanted. And what we found is this: A lot of people want that. But we can't reach many other people, so we don't know what they would want. If we could reach every existing owner of AI War Classic, I think the kickstarter would have been funded a long time ago.

How exactly was the vision for AI War 2 "too small"? We haven't even hit a third of the funding we need, so I think it was, if anything, too big. If we made the game bigger, the cost would go up. Companies like Blizzard have very large amounts of staff and more money than all of Arcen's games have ever made, combined, before anything is deducted from that total. And that is just the budget for a single game.

[Tridus]

Arcen is around 4 people, total. If you're comparing that to a team of 15 dedicated to a project, with Blizzard's entire admin/support/IT staff behind them, then there really isn't anything left to say.

Some people just love to talk even when they have absolutely no idea what they're talking about, I guess.

*Sigh*

Guess who is takling.

Well, you were talking about software development by comparing two radically different organizations as if they were the same. I'm a software developer, and I know how stupid that comparison is.

What I wanted to say: Instead of assigning those limited 4 ressources into 30k words of text and creating tons of units that all need a unit description, they should probably use these ressources into a clean game that works.

All four of them weren't working on it. Chris did the majority of it himself, with community involvement. The others were doing other things. And, the number of units in 2's design was cut down massively from what was in 1. So, not sure what you're complaining about.

[Misery]

I'll give you an example from Starward Rogue.
How would you say:
This attachment provides a 10% increase in the base damage dealt by the player, and is summed additively with other damage increasing effects.
This attachment provides a 10% increase on the total damage of missile attacks dealt by the player, and is multiplicative with other damage increasing effects.
This attachment provides a 50% increase in the rate of fire of all weapon systems, which is reduces the reload rate by 50%. It is matched with a damage multiplier that multiplicatively reduces damage by 50% to cause Damage per Second to stay constant. After which, there is an increase of 10% of base damage dealt by the player.

If you have a mechanics like this, I would delete it and replace it with something that makes sense. Even 90% of the english speakers can't understand this on the first readthrough. This reminds me of the effects on classic dota where nobody but the hardcore experts had a clue how wepons stack.

You could simply replace it with 10% more damage dealt, 10% more missile damage and 50% more damage dealt and 50% reload time reduce.

The way the texts are written is just clunky, overcomplex and irritating.

It's not quite that simple.

When we HAVE had overly simplistic text on descriptions for items, people complained.  They wanted to know "what EXACTLY does this do?  This description is too vague!".  Which frankly is the norm for the genre that Starward is in (the game those description examples are from), people want to know what each item does in detail.   So our descriptions need to work with that.   In addition, in that genre, items that just plain are overly simple are considered BORING.   We cant just simplify them to make them easier to read.  An item that merely gives you a 10% bonus to something and does nothing else is dull.   So a lot of items do way more than that; this is expected.   What's more, those descriptions can change at any moment.  If I were to decide to go in there, and go "Well you know this item that does funky stuff with missiles needs a change, because of reasons.  I'm going to set it up differently now", suddenly, the description needs altering.  This sort of thing can (and does) happen very frequently.

So not only do you have the issue of trying to figure out even the basic wording of stuff (a lot harder than most people think), but you have the constant need to re-do those, which requires a looking at by a translator EVERY SINGLE TIME, if there is a translator.  And the translator has to make sure to get it right.   And that'd just cost way too much.    If a game has full translation, they A: have a lot more resources than Arcen does, or B: they did it very, very slowly, with no intention to *ever* allow the game to change much after release (so that they don't have to change it or worry about that).    Or C: they have multi-lingual people on the dev team.   None of those three things are applicable here, that's all.   As irritating as it may be... and I can understand that it is... some things just aren't viable for some developers.  This is one of those things.

And that's for Starward.  It gets outright ridiculous for something like AI War... even a slimmed-down version of it.

[Cyborg]

Good lord is this thread persistent.

1) It has been said, multiple times, and in many ways,
You can have the language of your choice if there is a fan willing to translate it!

2) Writing crap translations is not appreciated. Paying for expensive translations does not appear to be profitable and requires ongoing cost.

This isn't an insult to your language, or your country, or that your group of people is somehow not valued. Everybody here on this forum welcomes everybody else from a lot of different countries and backgrounds. We want everyone to participate. Unfortunately, it costs money.

[iob]

   In addition, in that genre, items that just plain are overly simple are considered BORING.

Well, if easy to grasp concepts in a strategy game are boring, then go for the hard route. But as it seems on kickstarter, it can't even raise 100k bucks.

As I stated earlier, I love hearthstone. I also love starcraft. And the crisp, easy to understand mechanics are not boring .

But yeah, if you want a very very specialised product for like 1000 fans, then do it. Charge every fan 100 Bucks and there it goes, bam your 100k budget .


I think the whole point of my post (make the game interesting for more ppl by translating it and dumbing it down) is completely unwelcome. You all seem to want a game that noone else can understand, comprehend or even play (cause lack of funding).

My best advice would be to do a 100k kickstarter and have one pledge level at 100 bucks.


But as I said, I am not sure about sale progonsis with language X added or sale prognosis if target audience would be 1 million players instead of 1000. But seeing arcens recent track record, success by accident might do the trick ^^.

[ptarth]

I believe we have summed the various position sufficiently now.

Moving along.