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Post by Gmr Leon on Sept 1, 2014 4:56:26 GMT
In a bit of an early move to celebrate Godus being on Steam Early Access for about a year, I decided to necro a few old threads relating to still pertinent topics from PR, free to play, to gems. And for some mild kicks I brought back some original Voyage complaints to show not much has been improved with regards to them. =) Edit: On another note, interesting to look back on this article. |
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Post by 13thGeneral on Sept 1, 2014 7:38:47 GMT
Mmm, look at all that delicious zen-like development progress.
Good work raising those from the grave. It's just immensely tragic that there are multitudes of similar threads going all the way back to Steam Early Access, and even further back on the official backer forum, all depicting a very disappointing and grim reality. Little has changed in the way of the core game; it's still as soulless now as it was then. Worse in many ways. With all that evidence, I don't see how anyone can deny that there's something wrong in this whole development, or that there hasn't been enough feedback or suggestions from the community, or blame the critics because hatersgonnahate and they just "don't get early access".
I'm looking into the future and, when it's all said and done, I have this premonition that Godus will become a poster child for how NOT to do a crowdfunded/early access game, and how the mobile f2p model almost killed the creativity and passion in modern games on all platforms; the story will be passed around forums and subreddits, as a folklore "cautionary tale", for years to come about "how it could have been and what went wrong".
And I'm sure that's not the legacy Peter wants to leave behind, but it's the one he (consistently) creates.
It's a dammed shame.
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Post by Gmr Leon on Sept 1, 2014 9:18:54 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Sept 1, 2014 10:02:41 GMT
Looking back on all these vids and necro'd forums... It really does make you wonder just where all of these interesting ideas went. Did they get scrapped for the terrible cow-clicker we have now due to device resource management? Are they withholding them from the build, waiting to implement them in the PC sprint? Are they snake oil salesmen filling our heads with ideas that are impossible to implement? Are they simply unwilling to devote the resources it would take to complete and integrate these designs into the main build? The mystery continues... |
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Post by 13thGeneral on Sept 1, 2014 16:46:33 GMT
That's pretty cool. So many things that mysteriously never manifested in the game. Makes you wonder why they don't show us videos like that anymore, too. |
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Post by Gmr Leon on Sept 1, 2014 19:21:13 GMT
Are they withholding them from the build, waiting to implement them in the PC sprint? This is what I'm hoping for. There's a bunch of work that we never saw make it through and a bunch of lingering stuff in our files that makes me think there's some possibility of revisiting some of the ideas when they focus on the PC build, but I'm no stranger to the notion of loads of stuff just getting scrapped throughout the creative process. |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 2, 2014 22:28:50 GMT
On a completely separate and "vaguely relate-able" note: Kotaku, the opinion-blog gift that keeps on giving. |
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Post by Danjal on Sept 3, 2014 19:31:06 GMT
Extra Credits strikes again!
The problem with F2P/freemium game development!
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Lord Ba'al
Supreme Deity
Posts: 6,260
Pledge level: Half a Partner
I like: Cats; single malt Scotch; Stargate; Amiga; fried potatoes; retro gaming; cheese; snickers; sticky tape.
I don't like: Dimples in the bottom of scotch bottles; Facebook games masquerading as godgames.
Steam: stonelesscutter
GOG: stonelesscutter
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Post by Lord Ba'al on Sept 3, 2014 20:37:23 GMT
I wonder what happened to all the "acorn" people who were on the original 22cans forum back in the day. They had their own clan and everything. Are any of them here?
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Post by Gmr Leon on Sept 3, 2014 20:55:49 GMT
Fun fact: Gifts from god are the only representation of Peter's notion of Invest to Play. Problem? They're not easily/reasonably attainable without gems, and they have a gameplay effect that could lead to balance issues.
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Post by Danjal on Sept 3, 2014 23:12:10 GMT
Fun fact: Gifts from god are the only representation of Peter's notion of Invest to Play. Problem? They're not easily/reasonably attainable without gems, and they have a gameplay effect that could lead to balance issues. I think Peter's reasoning is that a couple of extra turns or short bit of extra time in Candy Crush is something passing. Its a consumable that is gone afterwards and all you have left is the score of the game which is inconsequential on the long run. In Godus on the other hand, gems were likely intended primarily for stickers, you buy stickers, you unlock cards with stickers and these unlocks stay with you forever. Alternately you can use gems to rush-build a building, and the way they intend you to play, those buildings are also going to "stay with you" forever. I don't think the core game design is build around the min-maxing ideal that some PC gamers utilize where they will flatten an entire area to 'redo' the housing there. The third (and currently most flawed) point is rushing breeding. If you rush buy on a settlement for breeders, it'll "top off" the entire pool of breeders (and increasing cost the more it needs to fill up). Farmers, miners and builders on the other hand are bought one at a time - yet if you subsequently add more huts to the settlement, your expensively bought miners or farmers get added to the breeder pool first. The thing with this last one also ties into the former argument of 'playstyle' - which is to say that Peter never intended "evil" to be a valid play method. As he said in various interviews, he sees no reason why you should need evil powers, because why would you be evil against your own followers? You only do that against someone elses followers (and thus it'd be exclusive to hubworlds...) Course now that the Pit of Doom is added, that argument changes, these expensively bought high cooldown farmers or builders from the larger structures aren't cost-effective to the pit of doom. Putting in just another argument of why you should never build anything but size-1 abodes. (They just are superior in every sense except for total storage per building, even the belief production doesn't scale well as a larger building generally produces equal or less per surface area used by the building (4 size 1 buildings equal 1 size 3 or 4 iirc) Regardless, all of this amounts to the idea that anything you unlock with gems, isn't a single-use consumable. But stays with you for the rest of your game, as the game is intended to be played without any resets. |
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Post by Crumpy Six on Sept 4, 2014 7:10:18 GMT
Extra Credits strikes again!The problem with F2P/freemium game development! To me, this video particularly highlights that the key element required to appeal to "whales" (a form of multiplayer in which you invest your time in helping/defeating other players) is missing from Godus. Consequently Godus isn't currently risking losing all its new players (who might otherwise find themselves at an enormous disadvantage to other players who are prepared to throw money at the game), so it may retain more low-spending users. But it also isn't going to capitalise on the really enthusiastic spenders. 22Cans will never release this kind of internal data, but I'd be fascinated to see how much mobile users are actually spending on microtransactions and how many whale-type users have emerged. Assuming mobile Godus gained most of its current userbase from the initial popularity spike on global release, anyone who enjoyed the game enough to keep playing (and even invest) will, microtransactions or not, be reaching the end of what the current content has to offer. |
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Post by Danjal on Sept 4, 2014 7:35:14 GMT
An interesting part in that puzzle to me is, of all the transactions they've been having. How many of those persist to this day?
Have the number of transactions gone down as the "novelty" wears off and people run into the lack of content?
Or are there enough people that don't mind just slowly expanding on their civilization and occasionally dropping some money on gems to bust down the bigger delays?
What about influx of new players, how many players get tempted into that initial small packet of gems "just to try it out".
Figuring that its only a few bucks anyway.
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Post by 13thGeneral on Sept 4, 2014 17:34:37 GMT
Extra Credits is a great resource for insight into games and game design/develolment.
Here's another one that really hits on a topic we're all too familiar with;
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Post by morsealworth on Sept 7, 2014 19:37:45 GMT
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Post by Danjal on Sept 8, 2014 0:52:32 GMT
The difference between forcing a playstyle on your players, or designing your game around the playstyles of your players.
Its like making a good tutorial, a good tutorial allows the player to figure things out themselves and only intervenes when the player struggles, it doesn't clasp your hand in a deathgrip and only allows you to move on after you have done EXACTLY as it demands of you.
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Post by engarde on Sept 8, 2014 8:08:14 GMT
Maybe all we've been playing to 51% has been a poor tutorial then?
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Post by Danjal on Sept 8, 2014 8:20:03 GMT
If going off of simple observation, I'd say we're looking at an elaborate proof of concept.
They're throwing out new mechanics trying to give us more toys. But they aren't actually putting the component pieces together and claim that we can't see the final result.
Imagine if someone was trying to sell you a car, by showing you the individual components just piled on a heap.
Perhaps you'd be able to fit a few of them together and make it do *something*, but you wouldn't be able to make a car out of it.
Especially if you weren't told what kind of car it'd be and if you only had about half the pieces.
That really makes the most sense in regards to Godus. Because if they truely believe that what they have right now is consistent to making a good and enjoyable game I worry for the end-result.
A very poor tutorial is the least of their problems.
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Post by banned on Sept 8, 2014 22:50:00 GMT
I just wish they understood the importance of a game to the game. |
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Post by Qetesh on Sept 12, 2014 21:54:24 GMT
The difference between forcing a playstyle on your players, or designing your game around the playstyles of your players. Its like making a good tutorial, a good tutorial allows the player to figure things out themselves and only intervenes when the player struggles, it doesn't clasp your hand in a deathgrip and only allows you to move on after you have done EXACTLY as it demands of you. I know some people love paint by numbers too. I just stopped doing them when I was ten. |
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