On the New Release Date: March 24th (EDIT: Now in April, FYI)

[chemical_art]

Do not underestimate the power of the d3 expansion. its the only expansion i know of that has computer hardware companies offering deals to get ready for it. it is going to take a very large akoi.t of gaming bandwidth

[x4000]

Thanks guys -- that is all excellent perspective.  I am going to be... seriously considering various alternatives to being stuck in the middle of all that.  None of that is going to risk any further staffing changes or anything, but it may push release into April.  Possibly we'd do a public on-our-site-only release of a public beta in March instead of a full launch, not sure.  Or we may chance it (from a wider market perspective) and go for mid-March after all.  Just really not sure yet, but I'm taking this really seriously.

[Penumbra]

Could you open pre-orders early? You would get the money from all the people who are going to buy TLF no matter what sooner.

[x4000]

Could you open pre-orders early? You would get the money from all the people who are going to buy TLF no matter what sooner.

We could, although in past experience that's something that is unlikely to bridge the gap unless there was visibility on the Steam storefront.  We could easily raise a few thousand dollars taking your suggestion there, but we need closer to $40k gross.  Because of... math complexities... if I pull the money out of my back pocket it's more like $20k that we need, if even that, to bridge a month.

But either way, that would be very unrealistic expectations on preorder performance based on past preorders; we'd have to see something like 5x higher sales than we've ever seen before during a preorder period.  Which is certainly something that could happen -- I mean, anything is possible, really, when you're talking about loads of people like this -- but the likelihood of that being a full solution is pretty low.

But it certainly might be part of a larger set of steps that get us to a full solution, and that's what I was referring to with an open beta -- the sort of open beta where anyone who preorders it gets into the beta, basically, like we did with almost all our games prior to I believe Skyward Collapse.

[Cyprene]

Is it gonna be playable and fun in beta?  It sounds immensely complex, and like it would need a ton of fine tuning to get right.  I'm sure if you can get it right, it'll be great, but I know I'd be worried about purchasing it before launch. 

[Misery]

Is it gonna be playable and fun in beta?  It sounds immensely complex, and like it would need a ton of fine tuning to get right.  I'm sure if you can get it right, it'll be great, but I know I'd be worried about purchasing it before launch.

Honestly, I'm sure it will be.  I've yet to be disappointed in anything they've made, and with this game I'm sure they'll be doing their best to make sure it's good and that it's balanced.  And us testers will be doing our best to remain useful by giving proper feedback and suggestions.   

One way or another there's bound to be LOTS of tweaking, as always, to make sure it comes out right.  They're good at that

[Vyndicu]

Amid all this talk of diablo 3/titanfall, I am surprise nobody has mention this tiny bit. But then again this is unconfirmed and may not come to pass.

There is a rumor that Diablo 3 may deploy the long awaited 2.0 patch (implement major changes to items and leveling) just two weeks from now, as in March 4th. If that happens it will likely hog up all of the media coverage until March 25th.

Edit: Apparently the patch is actually "Soon™" accord to tweets.

http://www.diablofans.com/forums/diablo-iii-general-forums/diablo-iii-general-discussion/80882-2-0-will-be-live-in-two-weeks-wings-of-valor-for

I am sad to hear that you are running into irl issues. I hope you find a way to sort a decent launch date.

[x4000]

Honestly I think the game is fun NOW, but there are some obvious snags and un-fun bits that need to be shaved off in the next couple of weeks in particular.  As Misery noted, that sort of thing is a big part of the focus of our company.


So... here's an idea.  What do people think of us doing a Kickstarter for something like $30k to push the release date back into April and basically add in an expansion's worth of new content while we're at it?  Basically adding things like ground combat or similar as the basic stuff, and then having stretch goals that add even more.  We could add some incentives around ship design and so forth, potentially.

This would let us do three things:
1. Get a beta started in March, as noted.  With a public demo of the beta at the time.
2. Get financing for the project delay.
3. Make it worth our while to actually do lots more fulltime development on the project during the delay period.
4. Give players basically a "free" expansion wrapped into the main game if the kickstarter is funded.  Obviously that is not free, since money is involved via the kickstarter itself.
5. Oh, and this would help to get yet more press for the game in a variety of ways, I'm sure.  Although that could backfire if the project is NOT funded.

[Mick]

It sounds like an interesting idea, but how realistic are those funding expectations?

[x4000]

Not sure.  And internally, the more that we've talked about it, the more we cumulatively dislike the idea.  We're looking at better alternatives than crowdfunding.

The irony is that, with a good release, the game should realistically earn 5x that in its first month.  And a middling-poor release would earn 2x that.  But when you put that number in front of people in a crowdfunding sense, suddenly it seems very large.  And it is, in that context in particular.

[Billick]

Have you guys considered doing Early Access?

[x4000]

Have you guys considered doing Early Access?

I... am not sure what is public knowledge and what is covered by NDA.  So what I will say is that that's not an option for us for both internal and external reasons, and even if it were, the wisdom of that would be questionable for... various external reasons.  I am sorry to be so vague on that. 

That said, doing a public for-pay beta is something that is possible without it being Early Access, so it is highly likely we will do that in mid or late March if we're pushing back the timetable here.

[nas1m]

It sounds like an interesting idea, but how realistic are those funding expectations?

This would be my main concern here as well .

Don't get me wrong, I guess it's pretty sure that you would get backed by the majority of us faithful Arcenites in no time, but I am unsure as to whether we would be able to give you a good enough start for your campaign that actually gets enough fresh people onto the train that think "Yeah, this one will surely make it so let's back it".

Just my two cents, though.

[Professor Paul1290]

I'm strongly against the Kickstarter idea, I think Kickstarter involves making promises to people who have a strong tendency to blow those promises out of proportion and fault you for not meeting those later.

Maybe I'm looking this a bit too negatively, but from what I've seen Kickstarter projects that aren't exceedingly awesome from the get-go get more negative word-of-mouth reputation for their faults than other games of similar quality.

[Castruccio]

30k for the Kickstarter could be risking it.  If you did 15k on KS and you put up 15 from your security fund, then you wouldn't be in nearly as much danger of tarnishing your reputation with KS and anything over 15 would be icing on the cake.  In other words, if you do KS I'd start with something more modest than 30, just in case  (then if you hit 30 you could tell everyone that you DOUBLED your KS goal!).  But I don't think you necessarily need to rule out completely the idea of KS.