Bard's Tale IV - Final Kickstarter Week

The final week of The Bard's Tale IV Kickstarter has begun. Brian Fargo wants to turn up the heat - Kickstarter Update #17:

Final Week! Campaign Recap

Hello Exiles!

It’s time for our final week! As you may know we’ve run a few Kickstarters before and we’ve always found the final week to be one of the craziest, most exciting ones. The hours tick down and everyone is excited to see what our final amount will be, and we’ve always seen our fans come through to kick us into over-drive for this final week and we hope that’ll be the case again!

We have quite a few things to share this week, but today we wanted to recap our Kickstarter so far and talk about what you’re all getting for supporting us. Before we jump into that, I have a new concept piece to share with you.

This is a 3D model of one of the enemies you will run into in the game, the huge and dangerous Ogre Brute. We did not use this particular model in our video, but crafted it very early in our prototyping stages, as a test of what we want to do stylistically and graphically. When you see this hulking monstrosity come down the corridor towards you, will you stand and fight, or flee?

Tier Changes

We looked at some of our tiers and decided to tweak our some tiers a bit, all to your benefit of course.

$400 will now also come with the Collector’s Album Box, making it a great collectables tier if the Reliquary is outside of your price range!

We’ve decided to cut the price of The Puzzle Master tier by 50%! It is now $750. We really want to see some of the nifty and creative ideas our backers could come up with, and would love to have you jump on board for this tier!

Kickstarter Creator Hangout

Recently, Kickstarter contacted us and asked if I would like to attend a hangout session that they're running. Called "Creator Hangouts", they're an opportunity for the Kickstarter community and our own fans to ask questions about crowdfunding, our games, our campaign, and more. As someone who loves the concept of crowdfunding, how could I say no?

To check out the full details on the Hangout session, you can find the event on Facebook here. The event is on July 8th, 2015, at 1 PM Eastern time. Check it out, and I hope to see you there!

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More information.

With 4 days to go the Bard's Tale IV Kickstarter is trending against $1,543,869

There are few people who remember this franchise ever existed, and it's not a game with a cool setting where you get to kick some ass, but rather a slow blobber based around exploration and puzzles, so it's normal it doesn't have much mainstream appeal. Brian Fargo said pretty much the same thing in his Matt Chat interview and still looked happy it was funded.

I'm happy if it means we won't get to see 3D representations of characters, they aren't needed. I don't want them. Paper dolls are more than enough.

I am very happy this game is being made, and from what I know it looks great. I really, really liked MMX, and I am really looking forward to Star Crawlers and hope they are making a MMXI.

When I was younger, other than Dark Sun and the QfG, Traveler, almost every game I played was a game you created a party, had a first person view, etc, like Wizardry, Buck Rogers, the gold box games, EOB, Ravenloft, RoA, etc. I forgot how much I missed that until MMX. Paper Sorcerer was pretty good as well. The funny thing is I never could get into an MM game. I started with Xeen and liked them less and less as the numbers got higher, ending with the atrocity of 9 (which may actually be a game I like now since I've been indoctrinated with so many crap games that when I see more than three stats I get excited). Devil Whisky was good but the lack of a modern interface really hurt the game for me.

I never played the Bard's Tale games. When I'd go to the game store there was always something more appealing to me, but that was back when things made sense and real crpgs where the standard and new ones came out often.

I'm really getting sick of people blabbing about Grimlock and ignoring the far superior in every possible and conceivable way MMX. Grimlock had no meat. No NPCs, no shops, no quests. MMX was Grimlock to the power of awesome.

Sorry to rant, but what is really, really getting to me are these fucking millennials who post on anything that has a party game with first person view either Grimlock ripoff or Grimlock clone. No. Especially when these games have shops, NPCs, and quests. These games where the standard in my day, and unlike Grimlock I never played a game without a shop or NPCs, quests, etc.

Look at the forums for Luzar on steam, look at all the people who bring up Grimlock as a percentage of total threads.

People like Grimrock precisely because it was simpler. It was fast real time action rpg with rogue like elements and that seems to attract people. See how people prefer Witcher 3 action instead of Pillars of Eternity tactical approach.

And this is the exact same reason why most popular games are shooters and moba games. Simple and more action = appeals to wider group of people

Originally Posted by Archangel
See how people prefer Witcher 3 action instead of Pillars of Eternity tactical approach.

I'm pretty sure that's not the only reason many people preferred TW3 over PoE.

PoE is essentially Red Dead Redemption with tactical combat, so it makes sense

Grimrock had no roguelike elements---just some of the classic dungeon crawler ones.

Originally Posted by Unrestigered
I am very happy this game is being made, and from what I know it looks great. I really, really liked MMX, and I am really looking forward to Star Crawlers and hope they are making a MMXI.

Unfortunately it doesn't seem likely because the experiment didn't give very good results in the economic department apparently. Really sad.

I also think that M&MX is far superior in every department to Grimrock (except for technical probably) and I feel strange that a game with such a basic and abusable combat could get so much praise (to begin with).

Originally Posted by JDR13
I'm pretty sure that's not the only reason many people preferred TW3 over PoE.

I think my post was precise enough that this reply of yours is pointless.

Originally Posted by Archangel
People like Grimrock precisely because it was simpler. It was fast real time action rpg with rogue like elements and that seems to attract people. See how people prefer Witcher 3 action instead of Pillars of Eternity tactical approach.

And this is the exact same reason why most popular games are shooters and moba games. Simple and more action = appeals to wider group of people

The Witcher and Pillars of Eternities are totally different games. One is made for CoDfags, the other is made for BGfags.

In one thing you're right: you really do need to pair PoE against TW to call it (PoE) tactical. Because Pillars of Eternity, like pretty much every single real time with pause RPG, has terrible tactical combat.

Turn based for the win! Burn the infidels!

Unfortunately I burned out on Grimlock-style blob combat long ago, so I took a pass. A pity really, because I like some of the other parts I heard. If they come up with something more tactically interesting later on, I might give it a try.

Originally Posted by rjshae
Unfortunately I burned out on Grimlock-style blob combat long ago, so I took a pass. A pity really, because I like some of the other parts I heard. If they come up with something more tactically interesting later on, I might give it a try.

They are not same games. It is like saying I burned out on Doom 2 so I skipped Deus Ex.

Originally Posted by Archangel
They are not same games. It is like saying I burned out on Doom 2 so I skipped Deus Ex.

Well, true. But utterly missing the point. Thanks for playing.

Originally Posted by rjshae
Well, true. But utterly missing the point. Thanks for playing.

Or you don't know how to get your point from your head into normal sentences.

Originally Posted by Morbus
The Witcher and Pillars of Eternities are totally different games. One is made for CoDfags…

I hope you aren't trying to make a living as a comedian…

Still no possibility to support via PayPal ?

Yes. Read the front page news: http://www.rpgwatch.com/show/newsbit?newsbit=32342

Well, thank you. I contributed.