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Post by Monkeythumbz on May 7, 2014 14:52:20 GMT
When there eventually is a release candidate, will everybody start with a unique procedurally generated landscape or will everybody start with the same landscape? I don't know, but I would've thought that unique, procedurally generated landscapes would be incompatible with a balanced and fun tutorial. |
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stuhacking
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Post by stuhacking on May 7, 2014 15:02:54 GMT
When there eventually is a release candidate, will everybody start with a unique procedurally generated landscape or will everybody start with the same landscape? I don't know, but I would've thought that unique, procedurally generated landscapes would be incompatible with a balanced and fun tutorial.
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| [ PLAY TUTORIAL ] |
| [ CREATE WORLD ] |
| [ LOAD WORLD ] |
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(Idea taken from our favourite source of indie inspiration  )
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Post by mrdrpink on May 7, 2014 15:08:42 GMT
When there eventually is a release candidate, will everybody start with a unique procedurally generated landscape or will everybody start with the same landscape?This This would be a choice for the designers/developers, unfortunately I can't read their minds right now but it's something I would like to see get added. |
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Lord Ba'al
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Post by Lord Ba'al on May 7, 2014 15:21:09 GMT
When there eventually is a release candidate, will everybody start with a unique procedurally generated landscape or will everybody start with the same landscape? I don't know, but I would've thought that unique, procedurally generated landscapes would be incompatible with a balanced and fun tutorial. The idea originally was that everybody would be playing together on one huge (Jupiter sized) world. But if everyone has a little piece of that world that looks exactly the same then it isn't really a world in my opinion. This question has been asked countless times over the course of the project but to my knowledge never received an answer. That doesn't really bode well. I don't get what you mean about the tutorial. Surely everyone who's played Godus before does not need a tutorial. Also there is no reason why new players could not have a tutorial while still providing a world where everyone has a unique piece of terrain. |
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stuhacking
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Post by stuhacking on May 7, 2014 15:34:00 GMT
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Post by Monkeythumbz on May 7, 2014 16:56:30 GMT
Also there is no reason why new players could not have a tutorial while still providing a world where everyone has a unique piece of terrain. It strikes me that it would be close to impossible to determine where to place predetermined tutorial objectives/action points in an achievable/completable way if the landscape was procedurally generated, as (for example) your followers might not be able to reach specific objectives due to unforeseen fluctuations in the landscape. I mean, that line of thinking being based on the assumption that the tutorial wasn't its own mode. |
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Post by Crumpy Six on May 7, 2014 18:09:24 GMT
It would make sense to me that the tutorial should be its own little 'practice world' before the user is unleashed on Jupiter. If 22Cans excuse for not doing the Jupiter world thing is "oh, we couldn't figure out how to make the tutorial work" that's lame.
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Lord Ba'al
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Post by Lord Ba'al on May 7, 2014 19:30:40 GMT
It strikes me that it would be close to impossible to determine where to place predetermined tutorial objectives/action points in an achievable/completable way if the landscape was procedurally generated, as (for example) your followers might not be able to reach specific objectives due to unforeseen fluctuations in the landscape. I mean, that line of thinking being based on the assumption that the tutorial wasn't its own mode. Tutorials have always been separate from the main game in every game I ever saw. Besides, who says you have to make the game moron proof? The most fun I've gotten from games in the past is figuring out for myself how they worked. There's joy in the discovery and there's a sense of achievement you get from finding out how to work a game by yourself. If you pre-chew the game it becomes bleeeeh. [tangent]I'm thinking back to the days when I played many pirated games. Yes I pirated games! I was 10 years old and there weren't any game shops that I knew of. Don't hate on pirates coz pirates are largely responsible for the size of the game industry we have today. Anyway. I loved a game by Sid Meier called Pirates! That game had a sort of copy protection that wasn't really copy protection. When you'd start a game you'd get a question at some point and if you answered it correctly you'd start off with a happy crew. If you'd answer it incorrectly however you would start with your crew on the brink of mutiny. But I loved that! It gave me a serious challenge. Eventually through gaining a lot of experience I learned the correct answers to a bunch of questions. Again I gained a lot of enjoyment from that. It made me feel good that I was so experienced. I felt it gave me an edge while playing the game. (while in reality there wasn't even really an edge because it was a single player game) My point is that even the most simple things (that in the case of my story weren't even part of the actual game) can bring a sensation of enjoyment. If you take away the discovery and the challenge then you're tearing down your game. O how I long for those days passed.[/tangent] |
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Post by morsealworth on May 7, 2014 20:55:27 GMT
"Good news - we're refunding everyone's money and going away!!" We're just discussing the v2.0.5 update in the office at the moment. Unfortunately we personally don't give out refunds I can point you to the direction of the Steam refund policy. And we, in turn, must point you to the direction of Kickstarter Terms of Use and FAQ. And we have at least Partner level backers (and above, no doubt) who lost their exclusive Alpha as it is no longer exclusive and even Peter himself admitted to game being in pre-alpha (somebody, provide the link please, I don't remember where it was). Also we have those printed "signed posters" and "signed T-shirts". Not to even mention Godus being neither a God game nor PC game and having nothing to do with the prototype demonstrated. |
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Lord Ba'al
Supreme Deity
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I like: Cats; single malt Scotch; Stargate; Amiga; fried potatoes; retro gaming; cheese; snickers; sticky tape.
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Steam: stonelesscutter
GOG: stonelesscutter
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Post by Lord Ba'al on May 7, 2014 21:16:03 GMT
^^^
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Post by Deleted on May 7, 2014 23:06:09 GMT
1. Are stickers here to stay? 2. Will Godus be playable offline? 3. What is 22Cans' response to the negative reviews appearing on credible sites such as Eurogamer? 4. What's going on with the promised distribution of the development roadmap? 5. Why does a team of 3+ designated community-hands need months of preparation in order to answer the most basic, straight-forward of questions? Can a dev not be allocated a few hours a week to do this? It would surely be a cheaper solution for the company. It would also get around the "devs won't tell us anything!" excuse that is peddled to every question raised. Hi, George here. I'm really not ready to make a formal intro, but sensible questions deserve sensible answers, so...
1. Don't know, haven't had that discussion yet. It's day three for me and I'm very much in the process of learning about hot topics and outstanding issues. There's a ton of feedback about the game I need to familiarise myself with, along with familiarising myself with the game itself. You guys have over six months more knowledge than me and it's on me to "bring myself up to speed" (marketing speak, sorry, can't think of a less awful phrase right now) ASAP so that I can serve you guys effectively. 2. Same as above. 3. I'm really not familiar enough with everything to be able to speak for the studio just yet, however IMHO the best kind of response would that which is apparent in software, rather than messaging. However, aside from bug fixes, feature changes can take weeks and/or months to implement, so addressing all the concerns raised in both the article and by the playerbase won't happen overnight for practical and logistical reasons. 4. I want to get this up and published ASAP (i.e. in the next couple of weeks), HOWEVER I haven't even arranged a time for me to collate this info yet. Rest assured, this is in my top three priorities (the other two being looking into establishing a game council and overhauling how we report community concerns/issues/hot topics/suggestions/requests etc internally). 5. I'm here to handle such activities, gathering questions from the community and returning to you with answers, thus freeing up dev time so that they can work on building the game. In order to have more frequent communications, I'm thinking that we should start favouring text & images over video - that way you guys can share stuff more easily and there's less of a time investment required from us to create it and from you to watch it.
ALL OF THE ABOVE ARE JUST MY INITIAL WORK-IN-PROGRESS THOUGHTS AND ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE.
Once I've "settled in" (FFS more corporate BS speak, sorry), I'm going to make myself as available as possible (i.e. time zones and working hours permitting) to get answers to as many of your questions as I can. First, however, I need understand your questions! Sorry to have to ask you for your patience, especially as I appreciate that this is a frustrated community, so I can only hope you understand just how much knowledge I need to internalise in order to do a decent job of serving the Godus's community.
I will 100% accountable for communicating with you about Godus - I think smaller, more frequent updates will give greater transparency and give you clarity on what exactly we do with all your feedback.
...and that's just about all I have to share right now. More to follow soon (where "soon" is defined in terms of days and weeks but not months). second question is easy to answer it was advertised as an offline game so it should be playable as an offline game but it doesnt work on steam everytime you cut your internet connection the game crashes on startup but i have an solution for it from 22 cans support: Hello Aron, At the moment you can't go 100% offline with GODUS, This is because of our analytics server. Currently you'll need to start the game in online and after the game has fully loaded you'll will then be able to go offline. Thank you again for getting in contact with us and thank you for supporting GODUS. Kind regards, David Jackson |
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Post by banned on May 8, 2014 0:32:12 GMT
We're just discussing the v2.0.5 update in the office at the moment. Unfortunately we personally don't give out refunds I can point you to the direction of the Steam refund policy. And we, in turn, must point you to the direction of Kickstarter Terms of Use and FAQ. And we have at least Partner level backers (and above, no doubt) who lost their exclusive Alpha as it is no longer exclusive and even Peter himself admitted to game being in pre-alpha (somebody, provide the link please, I don't remember where it was). Also we have those printed "signed posters" and "signed T-shirts". Not to even mention Godus being neither a God game nor PC game and having nothing to do with the prototype demonstrated. I would like to emphasize that the "neither a God game nor PC game" part by providing a small "history of Godus development from a kickstarter backer's view". (Personally, 22cans lost my good will after 9 in this chain.) 1: obvious signs of pay to win being designed into game.
2: denial of any such thing. 3: obvious signs of touch screen mobile design dumbing down the game4: denial of any such thing and assurances that it is being designed for PC and all the speculation is unwarranted. 5: obvious signs of entire design being mobile with announcement of DeNA partnership.
6: denial of any such thing, assurances that it is being designed for PC, that the partnership was just a distribution thing, no decisions have been made about monetization, and all the speculation is unwarranted. 7: initial beta of obvious mobile game with P2W elements.8: denial of any such thing, assurances that it is being designed for PC, assurances that the design elements are being misinterpreted, and all the speculation is unwarranted. 9: premature release of Alpha on Steam called Beta to get around Kickstarter reward issues contains a cash shop which sells speeding up intentionally irritating delays in game.I then offered some credit as 22cans hid the cash shop. then months of silence with occasional interviews where PM is very insulting and dismissive of not only the critiques but in fact all feedback despite the fact that it was a primary promise in the kickstarter which I and others had paid for the right to make. Then 2.0 and obvious more dumbed down for mobile with the special inclusion of preschool sticker mechanic to replace preteen card mechanic. Only actual nod to any of the very warranted criticism was the click and drag instead of click click click click ad nauseam. Which is admittedly very very slightly better but proves even more the game is designed from the ground for a fruitpad. Oh, and getting only one of the 2 Tshirts despite having specifically asked if it was going to be a problem having multiple pledges in one, after having provided a spreadsheet with full break down of the pledges, and assured it would not be an issue, was simply icing on the cake of 22cans incredibly vile business practices. But fear not, as I promised Peter, I'll only post about them where 22cans can reply. 
tldr; Best of luck with the PR clean up |
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Post by julians on May 8, 2014 6:38:41 GMT
Now that the Jupiter size world is actually a bunch of hub worlds, premade maps seem more than likely.
Is it just me that first hears about this 'live game'. KS specifically said a few months of development, and Peter was confident in their ability to make the game as it was a small and agile team and the scope was not that great. And now we're looking at years of development? Where did the change come from, and why nobody told us?
As for Mr. DRPink - I was under the impression that the job of community manager /spokespeople/ whatever you call it is to be communication bridge between community and developers. I think that if we knew that it involves mostly guess work, some slight mind reading and a lot of Ouija boards, we could have made Community department ourselves.
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Post by Crumpy Six on May 8, 2014 6:44:48 GMT
I think it's very telling that 22Cans actually needs spin doctors to attempt to deal with the community. Other Early Access games just have the devs joining in on the forums. Maybe those ones don't have as much to hide.
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Post by Monkeythumbz on May 8, 2014 11:00:23 GMT
And we, in turn, must point you to the direction of Kickstarter Terms of Use and FAQ. And we have at least Partner level backers (and above, no doubt) who lost their exclusive Alpha as it is no longer exclusive and even Peter himself admitted to game being in pre-alpha (somebody, provide the link please, I don't remember where it was). Also we have those printed "signed posters" and "signed T-shirts". Not to even mention Godus being neither a God game nor PC game and having nothing to do with the prototype demonstrated. Godus is not even 50% of the way through its development, as indicated by the game's title screen. We're fully aware of our obligations and have every intention of fulfilling them. However, doing so will not be an overnight process and delivering across all pledges will take time, most likely several more months. |
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Post by Monkeythumbz on May 8, 2014 11:05:38 GMT
Now that the Jupiter size world is actually a bunch of hub worlds, premade maps seem more than likely. Is it just me that first hears about this 'live game'. KS specifically said a few months of development, and Peter was confident in their ability to make the game as it was a small and agile team and the scope was not that great. And now we're looking at years of development? Where did the change come from, and why nobody told us? As for Mr. DRPink - I was under the impression that the job of community manager /spokespeople/ whatever you call it is to be communication bridge between community and developers. I think that if we knew that it involves mostly guess work, some slight mind reading and a lot of Ouija boards, we could have made Community department ourselves. I'm working towards getting a roadmap up on the 22cans website that will hopefully allay many of your concerns and also give you clearer insight as to where the game is headed. And yes, a CM *is* supposed to be the bridge between the players and the developers - I need to craft a plan on how best to do this, get it all approved and then implemented, so I'm afraid right now I'm actually an additional overhead (in terms of time), although once I've got a few processes set up to improve the way we incorporate user feedback, things should start moving at a faster pace. I think it's very telling that 22Cans actually needs spin doctors to attempt to deal with the community. Other Early Access games just have the devs joining in on the forums. Maybe those ones don't have as much to hide. I'm not a spin doctor, I'm a conduit. By employing me, the devs have their time freed up to focus on their primary task, which is making the game and bringing it to 100% completion. |
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on May 8, 2014 11:47:02 GMT
Now that the Jupiter size world is actually a bunch of hub worlds, premade maps seem more than likely. Is it just me that first hears about this 'live game'. KS specifically said a few months of development, and Peter was confident in their ability to make the game as it was a small and agile team and the scope was not that great. And now we're looking at years of development? Where did the change come from, and why nobody told us? As for Mr. DRPink - I was under the impression that the job of community manager /spokespeople/ whatever you call it is to be communication bridge between community and developers. I think that if we knew that it involves mostly guess work, some slight mind reading and a lot of Ouija boards, we could have made Community department ourselves. I'm working towards getting a roadmap up on the 22cans website that will hopefully allay many of your concerns and also give you clearer insight as to where the game is headed. And yes, a CM *is* supposed to be the bridge between the players and the developers - I need to craft a plan on how best to do this, get it all approved and then implemented, so I'm afraid right now I'm actually an additional overhead (in terms of time), although once I've got a few processes set up to improve the way we incorporate user feedback, things should start moving at a faster pace. I think it's very telling that 22Cans actually needs spin doctors to attempt to deal with the community. Other Early Access games just have the devs joining in on the forums. Maybe those ones don't have as much to hide. I'm not a spin doctor, I'm a conduit. By employing me, the devs have their time freed up to focus on their primary task, which is making the game and bringing it to 100% completion. first of all there should be communication without it it doesnt matter on what are the devs working |
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Post by Deth on May 8, 2014 11:49:57 GMT
And we have at least Partner level backers (and above, no doubt) who lost their exclusive Alpha as it is no longer exclusive and even Peter himself admitted to game being in pre-alpha (somebody, provide the link please, I don't remember where it was). Also we have those printed "signed posters" and "signed T-shirts". Not to even mention Godus being neither a God game nor PC game and having nothing to do with the prototype demonstrated. Yes I saw that interview as well. That was my main idea behind opening up the Internal Dev only test build to the Alpha Players. Let those that pledged for Alpha and wanted to help shape the game and find bugs do that. I understand Peter has his own vision but the KS said we would get to help shape that vision, not raise such a holy stink that he had to change his vision in hope of getting the game to go anywhere. |
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Post by Crumpy Six on May 8, 2014 12:19:25 GMT
I'm not a spin doctor, I'm a conduit. By employing me, the devs have their time freed up to focus on their primary task, which is making the game and bringing it to 100% completion. Haha, because the devs were previously spending so much time responding to the customer feedback... You are by now aware, I hope, that you are the fourth person who has been presented to the community as having this exact role. First we had Sam (way back in September), then Matthew, then DrPink. Where the proposed 'community conduit' role is concerned they've all been completely ineffective, and that's why you're being given such a hard time. Also, I don't think anyone entirely understands why such a role is required when other developers on Steam seem perfectly capable of talking to fans directly. The frustration in the community is because we KNOW 22Cans is deliberately not sharing stuff despite making claims of openness and community involvement, and no number of 'conduits' is going to solve the problem. |
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Matthew Allen
Former 22Cans staff
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Post by Matthew Allen on May 8, 2014 16:14:11 GMT
Haha, because the devs were previously spending so much time responding to the customer feedback... You are by now aware, I hope, that you are the fourth person who has been presented to the community as having this exact role. First we had Sam (way back in September), then Matthew, then DrPink. Where the proposed 'community conduit' role is concerned they've all been completely ineffective, and that's why you're being given such a hard time. Also, I don't think anyone entirely understands why such a role is required when other developers on Steam seem perfectly capable of talking to fans directly. The frustration in the community is because we KNOW 22Cans is deliberately not sharing stuff despite making claims of openness and community involvement, and no number of 'conduits' is going to solve the problem. To be fair, many of these are still different roles and positions. MrDrPink chiefly assists with the support side of things (player bug reports, tracking bugs in the system, customer service issues, etc.), but he still posts around the forums as he finds time. Sam was the Chief Discovery Officer and, while albeit a vague title, functioned as the primary community contact for everyone. When he left I stepped in to help fill in any gaps that he left but we always knew that we'd likely need to get a third person in at some point to properly replace Sam and to round out the community team and its myriad roles and responsibilities. While my role itself will be relatively unchanged (you guys are stuck with me), having George come in will no doubt help round things out even more. As I understand it, the opt-in builds haven't been updated much more recently than the standard build (like most of the things 22Cans has proposed, it was introduced with a lot of fanfare then completely neglected). Either that or the devs have just not done any work over the last month! This is something that I, and George as well I believe, will be working on getting some defined processes in place on. The opt-in builds will still play a part during the development of the game and this is something that will be getting tackled in the slew of meetings that some, or all, of the community team will be in on, particularly as George gets vetted in and all that jazz. He's already been in a number of meetings already and we're slowly but surely going to start marking some items off on the to-do list of community initiatives that we want to see put in place. Perhaps I have project management too ingrained in me. I don't understand how any reasonable development can occur if you don't know where you need to get to. That's just guessing and sloppy evolution - and goes a huge way of explaining why Godus is where it is. Perpetual life cycles? Really? I understand that things don't always run to plan, but surely there must be a plan - with KPIs to measure how you are doing. This is where releasing a roadmap to the community will be helpful I feel. A meeting was had with Peter and Jack on this just yesterday, actually. While we do indeed have a direction that we're going, I totally get that not communicating key elements of that direction with the community can sometimes leave you guys in the dark, which isn't a good thing. |
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