What's this? Velociraptors! Cannibalism! Oh my.

[x4000]

Here diff 10 is not like not allowing you access to 1/5th of game features...
In DunDef nightmare is actually 1/5th of game in a away - it's ability to get one more run with campaign for you with better rewards and higher difficulty. Balancing it so that hours of grinding are required to have chance at it (and silly feature that you run on nightmare one of further maps to get items from there to have any chances on others) is simply ruining the game for 80-90% of players.. thats not something that sits well with players.

That's what I was worried about -- and so I definitely don't support that decision.  If I may, I think that the root of that problem is in the modern sentiment among many game developers that extrinsic rewards are required for every player action.  "What do I get for playing on the highest difficulty and winning?"  Satisfaction!  A feeling of accomplishment!  I guess maybe an achievement, if you really have to have something. 

But not 1/5th of the game content, or even 1/100th of the game content.  Because then you're forcing all the other players to either look on with envy, cheat, or slog through a difficulty that they find supremely un-fun.

[keith.lamothe]

DD is a lot of fun for my group of 4, we're still like level 15 though and only play about once every two weeks (alternating with League of Legends; Spikey00 and Lancefighter should laugh if they're reading this).

We just play along, blissfully unaware of how far above the mountain slope stretches, and however many sky-castle-mountains are floating above that

[tigersfan]

Wait a minute.... *checks previous post again* ... did Keith just say he plays League of Legends?

[keith.lamothe]

It was only against bots.  And I didn't inhale.

[Hearteater]

If you ever want to play non-bot games with less chance of headaches, Dominion is the way to go.  Short games, very fast paced, and if the game is bad for some reason it doesn't drag out nearly as long and as painfully as Summoner's Rift can.

[x4000]

Wow this thread has drifted off topic -- sorry about that, Draco.

[Draco18s]

In DunDef nightmare is actually 1/5th of game in a away - it's ability to get one more run with campaign for you with better rewards and higher difficulty. Balancing it so that hours of grinding are required to have chance at it (and silly feature that you run on nightmare one of further maps to get items from there to have any chances on others) is simply ruining the game for 80-90% of players.. thats not something that sits well with players.

Not to mention that the loot for playing through insane goes up to, oh, say +30 in all stats (if you're lucky).  The shitty loot you get from nightmare? +100 to all stats.  The good stuff?  +380.  The exceedingly rare items that have values higher than you can upgrade a piece of equipment?  +460.

Massive difference in loot quality, all brought about because they can't bugtest very well.  They released a patch where loot drops were generated with above-maximum values, and patched it 12 hours later.  Then people complained that they didn't get a shot at the items.  Then they add nightmare mode and another class of item with these mind-boggling stats (not that the drop system scales properly.  It's 1...X where X is based on difficulty and a few other factors, but the bottom end never moves, so you'll get absolute GARBAGE for drops while playing nightmare).

Best part?  They've hinted that future DLC will make all the current items look like junk.

Wow this thread has drifted off topic -- sorry about that, Draco.

It happens.  A good rant is good for the blood once in a while.

[chemical_art]

They supposedly got half way to their goal.

[x4000]

Nice!  Over halfway, actually, it looks like.

[x4000]

Supposing you hit your goal, what are your plans for distribution and so on?  Online-only sales, or is this something that you plan to try to get in game stores?  I have no idea how that works with boardgames.  Do you pitch this to publishers, or is this sort of a for-those-interested-from-kickstarter-only?

How much does one have to donate to get into a minor profit-sharing tier?  Things are tight right now, but if AVWW does well one of the things I want to do is be able to invest in other small indie projects, and this one looks promising.  Don't read too much into that, I don't know enough about the game at the moment and I frankly don't have the money at the moment.  But AVWW's 1.0 is prior to your kickstarter end date, and you never know, so I was just curious.

[Draco18s]

Looks like I forgot about this thread!

Supposing you hit your goal, what are your plans for distribution and so on?  Online-only sales, or is this something that you plan to try to get in game stores?  I have no idea how that works with boardgames.  Do you pitch this to publishers, or is this sort of a for-those-interested-from-kickstarter-only?

It's a question we've been unable to answer so far.  Given the response this afternoon...we might be looking at some kind of publishing beyond Game Crafter (a print-on-demand service like Cafe Press).  Looking at crossing the $9000 mark in the next half hour to 90 minutes.

(By the way, physical copies ARE available: $48 for US, $58 international)

How much does one have to donate to get into a minor profit-sharing tier?  Things are tight right now, but if AVWW does well one of the things I want to do is be able to invest in other small indie projects, and this one looks promising.  Don't read too much into that, I don't know enough about the game at the moment and I frankly don't have the money at the moment.  But AVWW's 1.0 is prior to your kickstarter end date, and you never know, so I was just curious.

Ha!  I don't think it ever entered our minds.  I'll certainly pitch the idea to the group.  I know at least two of us have enjoyed AI War.   I can't promise anything, of course.

[keith.lamothe]

Great to hear you met your goal; or rather smashed through it

Now what do we do about all the raptors running loose?

[x4000]

Given the response this afternoon...we might be looking at some kind of publishing beyond Game Crafter (a print-on-demand service like Cafe Press).  Looking at crossing the $9000 mark in the next half hour to 90 minutes.

Congrats!  And I see it's now $11.3k, already.  That's awesome!

How much does one have to donate to get into a minor profit-sharing tier?  Things are tight right now, but if AVWW does well one of the things I want to do is be able to invest in other small indie projects, and this one looks promising.  Don't read too much into that, I don't know enough about the game at the moment and I frankly don't have the money at the moment.  But AVWW's 1.0 is prior to your kickstarter end date, and you never know, so I was just curious.

Ha!  I don't think it ever entered our minds.  I'll certainly pitch the idea to the group.  I know at least two of us have enjoyed AI War.   I can't promise anything, of course.

I wouldn't worry about it, honestly.  If you can find your own way without giving out a revenue share to anyone external, I'd say do that every time.  It's only when they have something that you otherwise can't get (money, access to publishers, whatever) that you want to invite that sort of third party in, and even then you want to be super careful.  And in my case all I would theoretically have to offer is money, and you guys look past the point of really needing that as any sort of primary concern. 

My goal with future theoretical indie-funding projects would be to do sort of like what the Indie Fund was supposed to do, but actually only does a little of: bootstrap a number of likely projects, hope some pan out and make enough profit to cover the ones that don't, and in general stay out of the hair of the designers/developers since any sort of investment in an indie is an investment in the people rather than just the specific idea they have.  Knock on wood, you guys seem to be past the hurdle of where you'd really be needing/wanting to pursue that outside of a traditional boardgame publisher of some sort.

[Draco18s]

Great to hear you met your goal; or rather smashed through it

Now what do we do about all the raptors running loose?

Ship them around the world!  Bwhahaha!

Given the response this afternoon...we might be looking at some kind of publishing beyond Game Crafter (a print-on-demand service like Cafe Press).  Looking at crossing the $9000 mark in the next half hour to 90 minutes.

Congrats!  And I see it's now $11.3k, already.  That's awesome!

12.5k now.

How much does one have to donate to get into a minor profit-sharing tier?  Things are tight right now, but if AVWW does well one of the things I want to do is be able to invest in other small indie projects, and this one looks promising.  Don't read too much into that, I don't know enough about the game at the moment and I frankly don't have the money at the moment.  But AVWW's 1.0 is prior to your kickstarter end date, and you never know, so I was just curious.

Ha!  I don't think it ever entered our minds.  I'll certainly pitch the idea to the group.  I know at least two of us have enjoyed AI War.   I can't promise anything, of course.

I wouldn't worry about it, honestly.  If you can find your own way without giving out a revenue share to anyone external, I'd say do that every time.  It's only when they have something that you otherwise can't get (money, access to publishers, whatever) that you want to invite that sort of third party in, and even then you want to be super careful.  And in my case all I would theoretically have to offer is money, and you guys look past the point of really needing that as any sort of primary concern. 

My goal with future theoretical indie-funding projects would be to do sort of like what the Indie Fund was supposed to do, but actually only does a little of: bootstrap a number of likely projects, hope some pan out and make enough profit to cover the ones that don't, and in general stay out of the hair of the designers/developers since any sort of investment in an indie is an investment in the people rather than just the specific idea they have.  Knock on wood, you guys seem to be past the hurdle of where you'd really be needing/wanting to pursue that outside of a traditional boardgame publisher of some sort.

No worries.

[Draco18s]

We're rocketing along, and I wanted to give you guys a heads up that we're looking at putting up a stretch goal and update on Monday or Tuesday.

Details are still being worked out, but we're looking at a $50,000 goal and some new pledge levels (shirts?  We're not sure).

We've got a poll up on Facebook to decide the theme of the expansion (our 10K stretch goal that got obliterated).