What features to cut for round 2

[kasnavada]

Of its over 23,000,000 units for 450,000,000 USD only 14% of its sales were PC, which could be modded in a reasonable method.

You can have the opinion the game is unplayable but the sales, which drives production, tells a different story.

To state it another way: The PC sales alone did not pay for the budget, let alone drive a profit.

And just 'cause... AI War II is going to be a PC Game. Whatever sold on consoles, it's not the same market.

Pears & Peaches.


/sarcarms aside...
AI War II is stated to take on the features of AI War base, which was fun. This whole point is moot. Unless you think that the base AI War was a bad game ?

Other than that, as you stated, the market changed. A significant part of the buyers will expect moddability if the game is suited to it. Given the numerous ships, turrets, buildings that AI War has, and how it's handled in game, that it's suited to be modded is a no-brainer. Choosing the ships for a game is nice, but being able to make one's own ?

[Tridus]

Going to cut in he real quick:
Bethesda games ARE NOT FUN WITHOUT MODS.
End of story.

I agree with you that for some people, such as myself, a game isn't worth the effort to mod unless it is already fun.

But for Bethesda games, that is not true for 90% of the player base. Nearly every person I have ever met who likes Bethesda titles says, "oh god no, don't play unmodded, you NEED mods. The whole reason to play Bethesda games is to mod them."

If we're using "nearly every person I've met" as a valid statistical sample for games that sell on such a global scale that they cause noticeable changes in Internet traffic, then sure. By that logic, AI War ain't fun either, because most of my friends don't like it. Time to shut the lights off and go home.

But if you want to meet some people who won't say that, here you go: https://steamcommunity.com/app/377160/discussions/0/365172408531432488/?ctp=2

[Tridus]

OTOH, the Skyrim-Steam 'paid mods fiasco', which actually moved Valve to completely backtrack on something, even dragging Gaben out for a spontaneous AMA on Reddit(in which, IIRC, he mentioned their mail system was literally choking on all the protest/concern E-mails).

If there's anything I took away from all the related discussion, it's that Bethesda pretty much leaves their userbase to do their bugfixing/post-release support for them(and kinda drove me off of wanting to buy anything from them).

QA had absolutely nothing to do with what was policy decisions between sales & management at Valve and Bethesda. The paid mod system *worked* fine. People didn't like it for unrelated reasons, mostly falling into the "the mod creator should get a far bigger cut" group, and the "pay money, what madness is that?" group. It's too bad, really. I've long believed that we'd actually see Long War 2 in XCOM 2 instead of the Long War team trying to make their own game if there was a feasible way for them to get paid for making Long War 2. AS it stands, they can only do it as a career if they make their own game, and nobody's really coming out ahead on that.

From first hand experience with AAA games, they employ lots of QA. Just look at the credits, you'd be surprised how many are in there. The problem is that Bethesda games have so many permutations of what can happen that it's impossible to hit them all, and that (more generally across the industry) the marketing department doesn't want release to slip just because QA found something. Look at the Arkham Knight's PC release and it's crippling issues. Do you *really* think that QA didn't notice? Look at Assassins Creed Unity. The problems there were not a surprise to QA at Ubisoft.

Since most people have no idea how these studios work internally, it's easier to blame QA (who are relatively low on the corporate totem pole) than admit "we knew, but marketing & management didn't want to miss the launch date we started hyping two years ago".

[Tridus]

Of its over 23,000,000 units for 450,000,000 USD only 14% of its sales were PC, which could be modded in a reasonable method.

You can have the opinion the game is unplayable but the sales, which drives production, tells a different story.

To state it another way: The PC sales alone did not pay for the budget, let alone drive a profit.

And just 'cause... AI War II is going to be a PC Game. Whatever sold on consoles, it's not the same market.

Pears & Peaches.

And you're basing the assumption that everyone on PC mods on... what, exactly? The whole problem with these discussions is that people take what the vocal minority online say and assume that's what everyone does, while entire segments of the gaming population are not represented at all.

/sarcarms aside...
AI War II is stated to take on the features of AI War base, which was fun. This whole point is moot. Unless you think that the base AI War was a bad game ?

Other than that, as you stated, the market changed. A significant part of the buyers will expect moddability if the game is suited to it. Given the numerous ships, turrets, buildings that AI War has, and how it's handled in game, that it's suited to be modded is a no-brainer. Choosing the ships for a game is nice, but being able to make one's own ?

It was a good game, in 2009. This isn't 2009. The market isn't the same. Plus, it wasn't competing with a prior version of itself featuring years of expansions. AI War 2 is doing that. Pitching "far less features than before, but you can change ship stats via modding!" isn't going to draw in the big crowds.  Hell, the first KS had modding in it, and that failed. How is stripping other features out (leaving fewer tools for modders to use) but still having modding now going to be the savior?

If it was full scale modding, maybe. But it's not. It's data modding only. I can't use it to create new mechanics, which when the game is mechanics light early on is what's actually needed.

[kasnavada]

And you're basing the assumption that everyone on PC mods on... what, exactly? The whole problem with these discussions is that people take what the vocal minority online say and assume that's what everyone does, while entire segments of the gaming population are not represented at all.

Yeah, you might want to quote someone that actually told that instead of me. I certainly didn't state "everyone". I'm not stating that. What I'm saying is:
- "A significant part of the buyers will expect moddability if the game is suited to it." (auto-quote).
- priorize new features that are moddable.
- Yes, a game needs to be good, and as AI War I was, I've got no reason to expect that AI WAR II will be a piece of shit.
- moddability is a good idea to create long term interest in the game, and it has to start somewhere.
- I've no proof for AI War itself, but my professional opinion is that patterns that allow for "modding", if done from the ground up, is not a significant overcost in short term, and a cost gain in long term.
- AI War, the game itself, by its very nature, is "moddable" in the sense of there is stuff that people would want to mess around, like (example) new ships.

Now, Arcen can't really afford to ignore potential customers, or can it ? And, it can't afford to be back here in 6 months, no ?

It was a good game, in 2009. This isn't 2009. The market isn't the same. Plus, it wasn't competing with a prior version of itself featuring years of expansions. AI War 2 is doing that. Pitching "far less features than before, but you can change ship stats via modding!" isn't going to draw in the big crowds.  Hell, the first KS had modding in it, and that failed. How is stripping other features out (leaving fewer tools for modders to use) but still having modding now going to be the savior?
If it was full scale modding, maybe. But it's not. It's data modding only. I can't use it to create new mechanics, which when the game is mechanics light early on is what's actually needed.

Sure beats "AI WAR II, Pitching far less features than before"... and that's it. Which. I'm not proposing. So... yeah. Sigh.

In any case, I'm not advocating only xml based modding, I am actually advocating full scale modding. Maybe you're talking to someone else ? If so please stop quoting me. For reminder, I'm advocating to keep ships, units, player race (so possibility of having 2 different races) and tutorial / campaign moddable. Maybe I've forgotten to state it, as it's obvious to me, but that comes with examples. In fact, I believe I specifically spoke about making the community do part of this work to reduce costs...

I'd like to know where you're getting that xml-only information from though. You've been adamant that it would not be possible to create new mechanisms. Or else, I'm again wondering why you're quoting me, as it's not my opinion. Sigh.

Last... that "the market ain't the same" argument's getting ridiculous. I specifically stated games from 2000 to this year with modding as a selling point. Any "proof" that modding ain't a selling point this year compared to last decades ? Then again... as if it was even possible to have such a proof =).

On the "modding's a selling point front ? Rimworld's currently in beta. Don't starve - a bit older, still going strong. Oh, you'd want strategy games ? X-Com 2. Granted, it's more an action game. Civ 6. Cossacks 3. Stellaris. All of those have reviews, and entire lively sections of their community, buzzing around modding, generating content, for some of them, RPS articles, and free publicity. If that ain't a good point, I don't know what is. Modding's a taboo on KS for some reason ? First time I ever heard of something like this. Examples / proofs ? Otherwise I'm still going by "what is a selling point in the general case is a selling point here". Granted, not "THE" selling point, again, I don't state that. But a selling point nonetheless.

Because, even assuming that the "silent majority" isn't interested, they've got nothing to lose if a game's moddable. In any case, it's the vocal minority that generates noise. And modders are noisy. Apart from cost issues I'm not privy to, it's enough for me.

[Timerlane]

OTOH, the Skyrim-Steam 'paid mods fiasco', which actually moved Valve to completely backtrack on something, even dragging Gaben out for a spontaneous AMA on Reddit(in which, IIRC, he mentioned their mail system was literally choking on all the protest/concern E-mails).

If there's anything I took away from all the related discussion, it's that Bethesda pretty much leaves their userbase to do their bugfixing/post-release support for them(and kinda drove me off of wanting to buy anything from them).

QA had absolutely nothing to do with what was policy decisions between sales & management at Valve and Bethesda. The paid mod system *worked* fine.

What I came away with was the issue of introducing it suddenly into a long-standing mod community.

Mods had significant interdependencies since everything had been left sitting out free and open for so long. And the promise of some level of 'protection' for paid mods drove users to put theirs under the paywall to keep others from claiming and profiting off of their work. It wasn't that the system was inherently 'bad', it just wasn't the right time and place for it.

At least that's what I got from the seemingly cooler heads in the debates.

[Tridus]

In any case, I'm not advocating only xml based modding, I am actually advocating full scale modding. Maybe you're talking to someone else ? If so please stop quoting me. For reminder, I'm advocating to keep ships, units, player race (so possibility of having 2 different races) and tutorial / campaign moddable. Maybe I've forgotten to state it, as it's obvious to me, but that comes with examples. In fact, I believe I specifically spoke about making the community do part of this work to reduce costs.

I'd like to know where you're getting that xml-only information from though. You've been adamant that it would not be possible to create new mechanisms. Or else, I'm again wondering why you're quoting me, as it's not my opinion. Sigh.

That would be the design document, specifically the part where it says it's not possible to create new mechanics:

There are intrinsic limits to this.  XML is not a coding language, but rather a format for storing data that the code of the game then acts on.  This means that entirely new game mechanics out of whole cloth are not something that can be added via xml alone.  Those will still have to be added by Arcen coding -- which ultimately is useful since then it gets all of the performance vetting and the proper professional rigor.

Further down it also explicitly says "no scripting". Modding graphics/sound and a mod management system were both listed as "theoretical", which with things scaling back, more likely means cut than not. What will be possible is creating and editing ships, but only using mechanics that are already there. So if the game has shields, you could make a bomber with shields. If the game doesn't have shields, you can't.

On the "modding's a selling point front ? Rimworld's currently in beta. Don't starve - a bit older, still going strong. Oh, you'd want strategy games ? X-Com 2. Granted, it's more an action game. Civ 6. Cossacks 3. Stellaris. All of those have reviews, and entire lively sections of their community, buzzing around modding, generating content, for some of them, RPS articles, and free publicity. If that ain't a good point, I don't know what is. Modding's a taboo on KS for some reason ? First time I ever heard of something like this. Examples / proofs ? Otherwise I'm still going by "what is a selling point in the general case is a selling point here".

Civ 6 is a pretty great example actually, since they made almost no mention of modding while hyping up the game, exept to say "mod tools will be released sometime after launch". XCOM 2 had 3 mods at launch (and now has tons, of course). Mods didn't sell either of these games. Mods greatly extend the longevity of them, of course, but they had to sell on the basis of the game itself.

DotA might be a better example, because that was a Warcraft 3 mod that became more popular than Warcraft 3 itself. People literally did buy Warcraft 3 later in its lifetime soely for the purpose of DotA... but Warcraft 3 was already popular before that happened.

Nobody ever said modding was taboo on the KS, but you keep talking like modding is the great savior. It's not. If the game itself isn't compelling enough to sell, modding won't change that in the slightest. Given the results of the first KS, we clearly have a problem on that front.

[Tridus]

OTOH, the Skyrim-Steam 'paid mods fiasco', which actually moved Valve to completely backtrack on something, even dragging Gaben out for a spontaneous AMA on Reddit(in which, IIRC, he mentioned their mail system was literally choking on all the protest/concern E-mails).

If there's anything I took away from all the related discussion, it's that Bethesda pretty much leaves their userbase to do their bugfixing/post-release support for them(and kinda drove me off of wanting to buy anything from them).

QA had absolutely nothing to do with what was policy decisions between sales & management at Valve and Bethesda. The paid mod system *worked* fine.

What I came away with was the issue of introducing it suddenly into a long-standing mod community.

Mods had significant interdependencies since everything had been left sitting out free and open for so long. And the promise of some level of 'protection' for paid mods drove users to put theirs under the paywall to keep others from claiming and profiting off of their work. It wasn't that the system was inherently 'bad', it just wasn't the right time and place for it.

At least that's what I got from the seemingly cooler heads in the debates.

Yep, that'd be fair. It had nothing to do with Bethesda leaving their userbase to do their bugfixing, though. That was what I was replying to. The system worked as designed. If the design itself is a bad idea, ultimately QA at a large studio can't do anything about that. Management makes that call.

[kasnavada]

Nobody ever said modding was taboo on the KS

Yeah, actually, chemical_art did:

I say it is apples and oranges because on a fundamental level the pitch for a game to be published is very different then the pitch to make via kickstarter. I think on the publishing side it is easier to sell a game because it can be modded, because that implies you already have a good game. A kickstarter that claims that causes as many worries as benefits.

but you keep talking like modding is the great savior. It's not. If the game itself isn't compelling enough to sell, modding won't change that in the slightest.

I think I adressed that part already.

>>(...)I am actually advocating full scale modding. (...) to keep ships, units, player race (so possibility of having 2 different races) and tutorial / campaign moddable. (...) with examples. In fact, I believe I specifically spoke about making the community do part of this work to reduce costs...

Then again, I don't see anyone advocating something else that'd work. But in any case, all of the new interesting new feature I saw & wanted to keep could be moddable.

Given the results of the first KS, we clearly have a problem on that front.

The only thing that the first KS showed is that Arcen can't reach 3% of their customers. 

That would be the design document, specifically the part where it says it's not possible to create new mechanics:

Ah damn, I missed that. Then the design doc is stupid. In any case, in Rimworld, new features are done via decompiling and recompiling the code, so... minor point ? Hopefully ? It's already been done by Red queen for AI War I too. Similar thing could be done for AI War II.

http://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Modding_Tutorials


Edit for clarifications.

[Aklyon]

If your modding relies on decompiling the game, thats not exactly an amazing point to tack on the KS. Does Red Queen's mod even work with the newer version of Classic, or did the minor update break it?

[kasnavada]

If your modding relies on decompiling the game, thats not exactly an amazing point to tack on the KS. Does Red Queen's mod even work with the newer version of Classic, or did the minor update break it?

Only the "new feature" part, and no clue. All that's xml based should still work. At least that's how it does on Rimworld. The rest is random, because you can't know if the minor udpate broke your stuff without trying. A lot of modifications requiring code don't work after updates even with a more integrated system like X-Com II proposes.

In any case, the main features I want to keep is all that was proposed as moddable, so new races, new ships... and so on. Sorry if I was unclear, I believe this part of digressing this thread's over, no ?

[Tridus]

Yep, I think so.

[NichG]

Maybe a good angle for this thread's question would be to talk about stretch goals, see what people would want as early or later stretch goals?

[x4000]

Hello, I am here.  I am sorry for being absent.  Are there any questions I can help with?

[kasnavada]

Hello, I am here.  I am sorry for being absent.  Are there any questions I can help with?

Not sure, as you put the new list of features on the KS. That answered my questions at least =). Can't speak for all though.