Time for some straight talk: Release Raptor is being pulled and refunded.

[tadrinth]

You can donate via credit card using the donate page, you don't need a paypal account. 

[crazyroosterman]

You can donate via credit card using the donate page, you don't need a paypal account.

well so you can herp derp.

[chemical_art]

Even if I agree with the "have to cut feature else there is too much to code" part... Cutting features... didn't work that well with civ5 after civ4. Or the sims 3 after the sims 2.
Well. We'll see I suppose.

I have considered that but when I pursue the issue mentally I find it becomes a case of apples and oranges.

Unfortunately to fully digest it needs to come at a time when the shock of this has passed and we are in a better state to more somberly examine what mistakes were made and how to correct them. Now is not that time for any of us. I would really think end of the week, maybe, but truly a week from now I think is ideal. Chris and the rest of the staff truly need to breathe, otherwise bad decisions can occur like announcing this news on...a...Friday.

That time of examination does need to happen though, because even brainstorming is hampered depending on how things go forward somewhat. Several potential ideas I have are only viable depending on how things going forward are planned.

[garion333]

Since we're in the "let's give Arcen some advice" phase of things I thought I'd chime in with something about your action titles. I've bounced off of every single action title because as much as I love the feature list and all the neat ideas, I don't much enjoy playing them. Action titles must have a good feel to them.

Raptor felt better to me than your previous titles, but stuff like the sluggish turn speed killed the positives. I chose turn speed because it's something you received user feedback about and fixed in the game, but your totally logical reasoning behind the slower turn speed didn't translate into a good feel. Things Misery said earlier in the thread sound great, but would those tactical/strategic elements have been apparent to the players? To me it seemed better to run and attack than to think and sneak.

Anyway, I'm not sure what else goes into feel in action titles, if I knew that I would be in game development, but Platinum nails it. Sometimes I think it has to do with acceleration, but, again, I don't really know.

Time and time again I feel like Arcen titles get the kitchen sink thrown at them but don't get the refinement needed to appeal to a more broad audience. Yes, of course we're excited by AI War 2. Even after a bunch of expansions you guys were coming up with great ideas and implementing them into a game you knew inside and out. How nice it'll be to play that game but with updated visuals and (more importantly)!  Obviously, the kitchen sink won't be a part of AI War 2 at launch, but I trust you to still have a meaty game.

I applaud you doing what's right by your customers and fans. From the couple of hours I played of Raptor there wasn't enough game there and the most fun I had was leaping all over the place. You did do a great job with the lighting, which I recall you talking about in a post. It's too bad we won't see if it would have come together more completely as a game, but at least you're in control of that and not, say, the company completely folding.

[Logorouge]

Things Misery said earlier in the thread sound great, but would those tactical/strategic elements have been apparent to the players? To me it seemed better to run and attack than to think and sneak.

I think that's just a consequence of the speedrun mode being the first one released and the abnormally low enemy concentration. Tactical elements and the importance of sneaking/thinking would quickly become evident after the player gets killed a few times from rushing at the enemy. But when you got infinite health and enemies are a rare sight, why bother with tactics?

A comment I heard often in the last few days is "What's the point if you can't even die?"

[Misery]

Things Misery said earlier in the thread sound great, but would those tactical/strategic elements have been apparent to the players? To me it seemed better to run and attack than to think and sneak.

I think that's just a consequence of the speedrun mode being the first one released and the abnormally low enemy concentration. Tactical elements and the importance of sneaking/thinking would quickly become evident after the player gets killed a few times from rushing at the enemy. But when you got infinite health and enemies are a rare sight, why bother with tactics?

A comment I heard often in the last few days is "What's the point if you can't even die?"

Yeah, pretty much.

One way or another, the enemy bots absolutely would have probably hit you a million times (or in other modes, outright killed you) until you learned to deal with them by actually thinking about each situation (hell, I was worried that some of it might get too difficult).  But with such an early version of the game, it was just impossible for it to really be shown off. 

And such is part of the downside of the EA process... I've seen this one happen with a variety of other games (and I'm sure many others have seen it too) where you get a game that's so early in development that you have no bloody clue what's going on, and it loses potential sales because of that.  And then later you find out what it's really about, and it's pretty darn good, but those lost sales are a lost cause at that point.

[Captain Jack]

So I've been trying to think of something I could say for days now that could capture how I feel about how things turned out and nothing's coming to mind that might actually help. So I'll just say: I wish you the very best of luck. You've always have the skills and mindset to succeed, it's the luck you need now.

[Soupinator]

I'm sorry to hear this.  Hopefully your next release will get you back on your feet.  Personally I'm greatly looking forward to Stars Beyond Reach (which I hope you get back to soon, especially after the massive disappointment of Civilization Beyond Earth) and despite it selling poorly, Starward Rogue is actually my favorite game of yours.

[Bluddy]

Just to give you an idea of why I wasn't interested in the game, first of all there's the Jack of All Trades issue. It just can't be done, certainly not with a tiny team. 3d games require lavish effects and models and compete against all other 3d games out there. This has been mentioned already on this thread.

But here's another aspect. I never wanted to play as a Raptor. But I could easily get into that fantasy, if it was fully fleshed out. Imagine a game where you can play as a Raptor. You have your pack, and maybe you start off as a baby Raptor, some members of your pack die, and eventually you can be the alpha male, or you can leave and be a lone wolf. You'd have random procedural adventures in the ancient savanna, or maybe have to survive as long as you can in the extinction phase (kinda like a zombie simulator for dinosaurs), and you could definitely try to take down a T-Rex. The animal survival genre is horribly underserved (anyone remember Lion or Wolf?). I could totally buy into this fantasy, and I believe many others could as well.

However, placing the Raptor in a building, and making the opponents robots... well, that's like taking a swashbuckling pirate and placing him on Mars. It breaks any notion of the fantasy we might have in our head and just seems random. The Raptor in this game could be any avatar fighting robots. In fact, if the plan was to not make this a mindless action game, a more vulnerable avatar would probably have been preferable (something akin to Abe from Abe's Oddyssey). To see the power of tapping into a coherent fantasy, just see the recent controversy with No Man's Sky.

Developers break players' narrative expectations at their own peril. Sure, you can come up with a complex narrative explaining the particulars of any situation, but you lose the passion and narrative flow that players already have. If your game follows expectations, players will supplement the narrative with their own personal stories.

[x4000]

Cheers folks, thanks for all your support and suggestions.