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Drifter posted:But yeah, laying out stretch goals like that before a significant portion of the main kickstart project is funded seems...unprofessional or 'heads in the clouds-ish' for some reason. Those aren't -quite- the words I want, but it comes close, for now.
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Dec 3, 2012 22:55
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For me, stretch goals that dramatically alter gameplay are a big turn-off. Oh, you're going to introduce a new character class or new items? That just shows that your game has no planning, no vision. Imagine Blizzard running a kickstarter (ridiculousness of that aside, just pretend) and having a 4th race as a stretch goal. The only way that could ever happen is if it was tacked on haphazardly, and in this example's case, it might even ruin the rest of the game.
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Dec 3, 2012 23:06
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Peaceful Anarchy posted:The words you're looking for are very confident, or perhaps pompous and self absorbed. Which one it is depends on how successful the kickstarter turns out to be. Pre-planning stretch goals is something everyone should do, it's important to have a sense of how your project will scale if it gets overfunded and have a plan for how you're going to make that enticing. On the other hand, it's not something that should be presented to the world until the project is funded, since it comes off as taking backers for granted and should leave room for adjustment based on backer feedback and reaction. I think it depends on the type of project you have. If you have a modest project goal that clearly has room to grow beyond the original pitch, it might be good to show what your plans are beyond merely making your initial goal. Stretch Goals don't have to come across as overconfident or unprofessional, but in a project that already seems too big for it's boots they probably look out of place.
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Dec 3, 2012 23:09
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Orzo posted:For me, stretch goals that dramatically alter gameplay are a big turn-off. Oh, you're going to introduce a new character class or new items? That just shows that your game has no planning, no vision. Imagine Blizzard running a kickstarter (ridiculousness of that aside, just pretend) and having a 4th race as a stretch goal. The only way that could ever happen is if it was tacked on haphazardly, and in this example's case, it might even ruin the rest of the game.
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Dec 3, 2012 23:11
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Orzo posted:For me, stretch goals that dramatically alter gameplay are a big turn-off. Oh, you're going to introduce a new character class or new items? That just shows that your game has no planning, no vision. Imagine Blizzard running a kickstarter (ridiculousness of that aside, just pretend) and having a 4th race as a stretch goal. The only way that could ever happen is if it was tacked on haphazardly, and in this example's case, it might even ruin the rest of the game. Well, using your example, I think it depends upon how it's done. It could be the stretch goal is also helping to pre-fund DLC. There's been some really good DLC for a lot of games. It could be that the same extra cash just means that they'd be able to hire an extra gameplay programmer or artist to work specifically on that one set of characters or items that while really cool would have prevented them from focusing on the other aspects of the game at the smaller budget. I really don't see it as bad. But I do know the other side of what you're talking about. I've seen people here talk about projects that have used kickstarter TIERS to delineate what parts of a game you're getting...I forget the game but holy poo poo I was disgusted. And I can easily see stretch goals doing similar if done poorly.
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Dec 3, 2012 23:13
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Orzo posted:For me, stretch goals that dramatically alter gameplay are a big turn-off. Oh, you're going to introduce a new character class or new items? That just shows that your game has no planning, no vision. Imagine Blizzard running a kickstarter (ridiculousness of that aside, just pretend) and having a 4th race as a stretch goal. The only way that could ever happen is if it was tacked on haphazardly, and in this example's case, it might even ruin the rest of the game. But the point of a stretch goal is that now they have more resources to devote to designing the stretch goal element, which includes balancing the rest of the systems to accommodate the new elements. In fact, when done right, posing such a thing as a stretch goal would actually indicate the opposite of "no planning, no vision," because it speaks to an awareness of what they can accomplish with a given set of resources and what they can change if they have more time, money, and manpower.
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Dec 3, 2012 23:14
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Maluco Marinero posted:I think it depends on the type of project you have. If you have a modest project goal that clearly has room to grow beyond the original pitch, it might be good to show what your plans are beyond merely making your initial goal. Stretch Goals don't have to come across as overconfident or unprofessional, but in a project that already seems too big for it's boots they probably look out of place. I'm new here and hopefully im not saying this out of place, but I agree with you. My kickstarter approach fits in to the "stretch goal" issue here, in a sense. My husband and I had the start to a really nice little game, but didn't know how far to take it, so we chose to use kickstarter as a voting system in a sense. we put the minimum needed to flesh out the game($5k), and then put all of our possible plans for the game up as stretch goals, adjusting them for some really good ideas from backers. we want people to be able to play the game in all forms, so all stretch goals will be like an expansion, you won't end up with some mutant game that other people want. To us Kickstarter is a way of gauging the market and seeing how well our game will do(worth the effort), and getting the money needed to continue working on it and making it the best we can.
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Dec 3, 2012 23:24
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The only good day 1 stretch goals are the comedic ones. See: Barkley 2 where you don't know what half of them even do, or Tim Schaefer's DF adventure where a couple of them were just played as jokes. Other than that, stretch goals make me laugh. Big props to Castle Story who simply stated that extra cash will go into the game, and that's it.
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Dec 3, 2012 23:30
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Toffile posted:SpikeTV's "Deadliest Warrior" had a card game? No, but it does have an unbalanced PSN fighting game that's a lot more fun than it has any right to be.
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Dec 3, 2012 23:35
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The Pathfinder MMO just got a nice bit of advertising from the CEO of Reaper. One assumes they sent this out to all of their Bones sponsors:quote:Hello, friends! First I want to take a moment to tell you how much I appreciate your support for our Bones Kickstarter campaign. We're still reeling from the incredible outpouring. We really appreciate you.
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Dec 3, 2012 23:59
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miguelito posted:Other than that, stretch goals make me laugh. Big props to Castle Story who simply stated that extra cash will go into the game, and that's it. Hey, big props to Castle Story for every reason. That is a good model of what a good Kickstarter is and how to run it. Start with a working prototype to demonstrate that you are not full of poo poo, offer that prototype to your backers, don't waste tons of resources on ridiculous rewards and stretch goals that drastically expand the scope of your game. These should be Golden loving Rules unless you are such a big name that the rules clearly don't apply.
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Dec 4, 2012 00:07
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That Pathfinder Kickstarter is kind of weird. Since they made the tech demo and secured funding already, the Kickstarter is just to give them more money so they can make the game quicker and with more content, but wouldn't it make more sense to run this sort of thing themselves, rather than via Kickstarter, because that way they wouldn't need to reach $1 million to get any of the money? Since the game is already funded by their investors, it's not like earning $760,000 would be less than they need to make the game - they could make the game with $0 from Kickstarter. So why bother setting a high limit on the amount of money people need to pledge before you can start selling stuff directly to them? Why not do a Star Citizen-esque thing where you just let people buy in directly? Why gate the funding such that you only get any of it if you get at least $1 million of it?
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Dec 4, 2012 00:11
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ChaoticKitten posted:I'm new here and hopefully im not saying this out of place, but I agree with you. Can I see your kickstarter? I think now that I've asked you can link it without it being shilling 
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Dec 4, 2012 00:13
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TychoCelchuuu posted:That Pathfinder Kickstarter is kind of weird. Their tier rewards are terrible too, who the hell needs six copies of the game with three month subs each. They'd probably sell out of a limited $200 "lifetime subscription" tier in a heartbeat. People love their founder editions.
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Dec 4, 2012 00:14
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Azhais posted:The Pathfinder MMO just got a nice bit of advertising from the CEO of Reaper. One assumes they sent this out to all of their Bones sponsors: I was surprised to see that, since I hadn't paid attention to that KS since the first day or two when the money was rolling in and it looked like they had the goal well in hand; I wouldn't think they'd need to be hitting up their KS famous friends for plugs quite so soon. It looks like things have slowed way down since then, though, moreso than is usual for Kickstarters between the first two days and last two days.
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Dec 4, 2012 00:21
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When you lay out your stretch goals right from the beginning you also take away the potential positive effect it might have on backers later on when it's needed the most. Project Eternity used them smartly and it raised the final sum by an incredible amount. It would be silly to say the well-thought-out stretch goals were the only factor but they contributed considerably.
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Dec 4, 2012 00:29
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Fergus Mac Roich posted:Can I see your kickstarter? I think now that I've asked you can link it without it being shilling *giggles* I can link it for you, but I haven't manually searched through the whole thread so it may be a re-post, if so, I apologize. Here you are : http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/robotloveskitty/legend-of-dungeon It's a roguelike Beat'em'up with 1-4 player co-op, and we used dynamic lighting on the art. The music is something I am really excited about too, it's going to assemble as you play, with different tracks depending on what monsters are in the room. Basically the game is about dying and treasure. I'd love feedback on it too, this game/kickstarter is looking like our best chance to live like normal humans while doing what we love, no more tree house game studio!
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Dec 4, 2012 00:34
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Thanks for the responses everyone, I'll try to get to everyone's feedback tonight.voltron lion force posted:Make a zombies vs. ninjas version and you can have all of my wallets goonsir. I can neither confirm nor deny the existence for a zombie faction in the future. Pretty sure the "Plaguebearer" ability is in the prototype deck right now though. Francois Kofko posted:Your game looks dumb and bad. I will pass this along to the rest of the dev team, thanks! Lordy posted:Not to be rude or anything but how do you expect to get 200,000 dollars for a free to play card game that seems to digital cards and the first reward to actually have one booster pack is 25$? I think you have a good point about the first reward tier, I am talking to the team about it and we may see an update on that soon. A Steampunk Gent posted:$200k for a PtW digital card game? Wrong kickstarter thread dude. We're trying really hard to avoid PtW. We really like LoL's monetization model. Obviously we're still in development but the current plan is that anything that affects gameplay, mainly cards, can be attained without spending real money. But, you're going to have to win a good chunk of games to earn the currency to buy them. Think IP. As far as vanity items go it'll probably be a mix of real money and in-game currency. Personally I've spent about $50 on LoL and that was on skins (Gentleman Cho ftw) and extra rune pages and I didn't do that until well after I was in love with the game, that's what we're aiming for with Krono. Mug posted:Korono looks so amazingly boring. "Smooth, asynchronous PvP battles" *shows player putting square pictures into square holes* I'm likeable! Thanks! As far as the video goes, I definitely see your point. We'll try and gussy things up for the next video but that video was primarily about showing how an actual turn would play, and it was using programming animations. Rest assured the game will look much, much better once our artists spruce it up. XboxPants posted:Hahaha what the hell. Yes, please, I'd love to buy a single booster pack of digital cards for $25. Thank you very much. Yeah, we're gonna work on the rewards, thanks for the feedback. As far as the art goes, some of the art is still being working on/having additional passes. Certain cards like Musashi and Geri are being given another pass as we speak and should feature a final version in a future update.
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Dec 4, 2012 00:39
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Orzo posted:For me, stretch goals that dramatically alter gameplay are a big turn-off. Oh, you're going to introduce a new character class or new items? That just shows that your game has no planning, no vision. Imagine Blizzard running a kickstarter (ridiculousness of that aside, just pretend) and having a 4th race as a stretch goal. The only way that could ever happen is if it was tacked on haphazardly, and in this example's case, it might even ruin the rest of the game. Please tell me more about how Blizzard wouldn't add races, classes, or completely new gameplay features. 
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Dec 4, 2012 00:41
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seorin posted:Please tell me more about how Blizzard wouldn't add races, classes, or completely new gameplay features. From "4th race," I assume he's talking about Starcraft rather than WoW. Though I don't pay a lot of attention to Starcraft so maybe they've added more than 3 races at some point and I just missed it.
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Dec 4, 2012 00:43
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ChaoticKitten posted:*giggles* I can link it for you, but I haven't manually searched through the whole thread so it may be a re-post, if so, I apologize. Yeah, it's been posted. Doesn't hurt to have a repost, good to see you've made your goal and then some.
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Dec 4, 2012 00:43
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ChaoticKitten posted:*giggles* I can link it for you, but I haven't manually searched through the whole thread so it may be a re-post, if so, I apologize. miguelito posted:In other news, there seem to be two interesting new projects vying for cash:
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Dec 4, 2012 00:44
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The Burning Legion was going to be a playable race in WC3 but Blizzard ended up cutting it.
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Dec 4, 2012 00:45
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You're going to be releasing your digital CCG at probably around the same time as Scrolls. How do you plan to compete?
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Dec 4, 2012 00:45
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Adding another race to Starcraft is a little bit bigger than adding another class to an RPG. Imagine Baldur's Gate without Paladins. Okay, now imagine Starcraft without the Zerg.
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Dec 4, 2012 00:46
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ChaoticKitten posted:Here you are : http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/robotloveskitty/legend-of-dungeon This looks really good but the 100k strech for online coop when the original goal was only 5k  I know about eight people who would pick this up if it was on Steam with online coop.
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Dec 4, 2012 00:48
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seorin posted:Please tell me more about how Blizzard wouldn't add races, classes, or completely new gameplay features.
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Dec 4, 2012 00:52
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Yeah that's a shame. Surely it can't be 20x the cost of the game itself to write some P2P code? I know nothing about game development, mind.
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Dec 4, 2012 00:53
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Maluco Marinero: *curtsies* Why thank you. We flipped out when we saw it hit our goal within a day, just knowing that people liked our game so much felt fantastic, and our years of hard work in near anonymity felt a little vindicated. carecat: we never really expected to get to 100k, we just though that it would be an awesome game to make. If people paid 200k for FTL, why not 100k for ours with an overworld? TychoCelchuuu: I actually prefer playing by myself, that way I don't have to give -MY- apples to my thoughtless and death prone comrades. Try the demo and see if you like it, we put it up with one so people wouldn't have to take our word for it being fun.
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Dec 4, 2012 00:58
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I tried the demo and only being able to attack left or right instead of also up and down felt horrifically limiting and in general I don't know why I'd want to play a simple little game like this without friends. The main draws seem to be "it looks pretty" and "coop hilarity." Mediocre combat and roguelike-like mechanics are hardly compelling unless they're bolted onto something that can hold my interest otherwise, and 2.5d sidescrolling beat-em-ups never really do that unless they feel really good. A game with bidirectional attacks, an anemic jump, no dodge or block, and so on doesn't feel really good.
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Dec 4, 2012 01:10
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ChaoticKitten posted:carecat: we never really expected to get to 100k, we just though that it would be an awesome game to make. If people paid 200k for FTL, why not 100k for ours with an overworld? I don't know but this sounds kinda wrong to me. It's not a we need this much money to produce it and more a someone else got a lot of money so why not us too. 100k for online coop in a game that basically sells on being coop is really weird to be honest.
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Dec 4, 2012 01:16
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ten dollar bitcoin posted:The Burning Legion was going to be a playable race in WC3 but Blizzard ended up cutting it.
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Dec 4, 2012 01:22
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Lordy posted:I don't know but this sounds kinda wrong to me. It's not a we need this much money to produce it and more a someone else got a lot of money so why not us too. 100k for online coop in a game that basically sells on being coop is really weird to be honest. Your interpretation wasn't what I meant. let me try again. the 100k goal would get everyone a overworld expansion that would basically be multiple dungeons with a RPG world above them, there would be a entirely different game outside the basic game the Legend of dungeon that everyone is backing would turn into an "arcade" mode or something similar. The addition of Networking would come into play letting people LAN, Run small servers of their own Overworld(way more than 4 players), or play online with others in instanced dungeons or something. I was referencing FTL not just because it made 200k, but because its starting goal wasn't much bigger than mine. also, having the people you are playing with withing punching distance makes playing legend of dungeon a lot of fun.
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Dec 4, 2012 01:24
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Cicero posted:They actually were going to have six races to begin with, but I guess that turned out to be too complicated. That sounds like something that would get struck down really, really early, like before you're even sure it's a Warcraft game. Or maybe they were taking a very different approach to the different sides originally, because even 4 seemed like a tall order in terms of balance and keeping all of the different sides extremely distinct as they started doing in Starcraft. If I were a designer making a Blizzard-style RTS and someone asked me if we could have six races I would have them committed.
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Dec 4, 2012 01:26
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Fergus Mac Roich posted:If I were a designer making a Blizzard-style RTS and someone asked me if we could have six races I would have them committed. Have you played Dawn of War?
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Dec 4, 2012 01:29
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NmareBfly posted:Have you played Dawn of War? Yeah. I haven't played them super extensively as I only own Dark Crusade as far as the first game goes but it doesn't strike me as being as thorough in terms of differentiating the different sides as Blizzard tends to be. Out of SC:BW, WC3, and SC2, I think SC2 is their friendliest game in terms of playing a race other than your main, but as a Diamond-level Protoss, when I played Zerg or Terran I might as well have never played SC2 in my life. That's not to say the races in Dawn of War are all the same or anything, I just think they're more homogeneous than WC3 or Starcraft. Sorry about the derail guys.
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Dec 4, 2012 01:33
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TychoCelchuuu posted:I tried the demo and only being able to attack left or right instead of also up and down felt horrifically limiting and in general I don't know why I'd want to play a simple little game like this without friends. The main draws seem to be "it looks pretty" and "coop hilarity." Mediocre combat and roguelike-like mechanics are hardly compelling unless they're bolted onto something that can hold my interest otherwise, and 2.5d sidescrolling beat-em-ups never really do that unless they feel really good. A game with bidirectional attacks, an anemic jump, no dodge or block, and so on doesn't feel really good. I hear what you are saying, and I know it is a weak response, but: The demo is barely an alpha, it is not complete, we are still adding in weapons and animations and such. There are a lot of things that are not finished yet. we just felt that having something that you can interact with would be better than not, especially since we aren't coming from famous game studios that make people back projects blindly. I do really appreciate your feedback though! it reflects a lot of my own feelings about the current state of the game, and that means +1 point for its validity. *curtsies* thanks!
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Dec 4, 2012 01:34
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ChaoticKitten posted:I hear what you are saying So hear this: Provide a way for online co-op or LAN (+Hamachi). Forget the large overworld that dwarfs the current game. I'm donating to your game because I like what you're doing (and you), but if you want my support (and by extension the rest of your fanbase's) in the future, you need to add to the longevity of the game significantly.
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Dec 4, 2012 01:43
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Well my point is that FTL didn't have any stretch goals at all. Strech goals must be good for marketing but 100k sounds like a lot for an indie game unless you hit it big. I'm backing you but I think it should have been at 50k, which is still ten times your minimum!
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Dec 4, 2012 01:48
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Carecat posted:Well my point is that FTL didn't have any stretch goals at all. Strech goals must be good for marketing but 100k sounds like a lot for an indie game unless you hit it big. I'm backing you but I think it should have been at 50k, which is still ten times your minimum! I'm not speaking for chaotic kitten in particular, but a lot of times you'll find that for many smaller devs, they may not have the ability to do a particular function justice. Maybe they would have to hire on a completely other dedicated net code guy in order to get it working, and hiring someone who knows their poo poo and can stay on to troubleshoot / write code well enough so that someone else can see what the hell they've done is pretty pricey. Or even teaching yourself / debugging network code can get pricey in terms of opportunity cost of production hours. Chances are that 100k stretch goal is one of those things where you almost hope it doesn't get reached, because it's close to or has completely surpassed the scope of your abilities, but if you do reach it you at least now have the capital to invest in making it happen.
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Dec 4, 2012 02:40
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