Larian Studios - The Halo Effect

rune_74 said:

Yes and when that happens there us a report to the publishers of what has changed right?

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Yes, the big changes (on the user level) will be communicated.
Changes on the programmer's side rarely.

Turjan said:

I guess we use a different definition of "technically". PayPal isn't Kickstarter.

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Yes, I guess we must, and I must say yours makes no sense to me. Larian themselves clearly announced (as seen in the link I gave) that PayPal money counts towards their stretch goals, and even raised some money based on that, undoubtedly. What else could you possibly think is the technical definition of having reached a stretch goal, besides what Larian themselves announced as the definition? After all, these goals are defined by the companies themselves, stretch goals are not a feature of Kickstarter.

HiddenX said:

Yes, the big changes (on the user level) will be communicated.
Changes on the programmer's side rarely.

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That's my point, they didn't do that with the dungeon…they did reply to a thread after the game was released saying it didn't make it in. That isn't being up front about it….that's hiding it.(not sure that's what they meant to do…) They have released no kickstarter update on it at all.

EDIT: Be clear I think the game is excellent and they did a good job, except for the areas that they didn't address or make...

Yeah, well maybe at some time they were still hoping they'd get it in, and the communication slipped through the cracks. Not good but we still got a great game nonetheless.

Stingray said:

After all, these goals are defined by the companies themselves, stretch goals are not a feature of Kickstarter.

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But the statement came after the Kickstarter campaign was officially over. That's why I said that, technically, the stretch goal failed.

But doesn't really matter if you see that differently. I would have liked day/night cycles, but I don't want to wait half a year for those. They can be neat, but often enough, they are just a gimmick that forces you to press a "wait" button.

HiddenX said:

Swen said this in March.

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It didn't mention the dungeon....I was fine with the other announcements because they made it clear.

Turjan said:

But the statement came after the Kickstarter campaign was officially over. That's why I said that, technically, the stretch goal failed.

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No. Check out update #34, which came BEFORE the campaign ended, where they said definitively that PayPal contributions would count towards the stretch goal.

While the language used leaves a loophole, it doesn't really matter. Larian made several promises that may or may not have legal implications and definitely rubbed quite a number of backers the wrong way. It would be interesting to see how the forums would look like if the game had been bad. But often, even this doesn't help.

I have met quite a few people who expressed their eternal hate for the developer of Terraria because he didn't fulfill some of the promises he made when the game was still in early development. For someone like me who came late to the party and thinks that Terraria is one of the best indie games of this kind that was ever made, this sounds extremely silly, but I guess it's a trust issue. It's a bit sad.

But yeah, I'm a Kickstarter backer in this case, and I'm happy with the game as is. I'm not sure how I would have reacted if I were a mega-dungeon fan. Failed promises leave a bad taste, but there are so many games with cut content that I can see the reason behind it, especially with projects of this size. Some of my favorite games have cuts that I could be sad about, but then again, they are still my favorite games. Look at the droid factory in KotoR II, now restored: was that necessary? Or, a slightly different example: I now volunteered to review Drakensang: TRoT, where the mega-dungeons suck and are one of the few blemishes in that game. Which means, the loss may even be just imaginary. But imagination is a powerful thing.

In this case, I decided to be happy with what I have. And I guess I will leave it at that in this thread.

Turjan said:

Or, a slightly different example: I now volunteered to review Drakensang: TRoT, where the mega-dungeons suck and are one of the few blemishes in that game.

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Ugh, the Temple of Efferd. Worst part of that game.

The dragon path was pretty awful too. That reminds me I still need to finish TRoT.

HiddenX said:

Swen said this in March.

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Reading that, I really don't see the problem. Sounds exactly like what I'm suggesting - and they did it for the right reasons.

I mean, what more of a statement do you really need?

Anyway, I guess we're going in circles.

I'm completely with Larian on this issue and explained my view in July already.
Being a developer myself I can understand necessary changes in the software development life cycle and have no problems with that.

That some users here are not satisfied with some not fulfilled stretch goals (or the lack of communication about it) is understandable, though.
The final product is very very good so the design decisions by Swen (and the sacrifice of extra features) were right.

Keep in mind that deleting features that are nearly ready and/or you really wanted is often a very painful frustrating process for a software developer himself.
I don't like to cut features that I originally planned at all.

HiddenX said:

I'm completely with Larian on this issue and explained my view in July already.
Being a developer myself I can understand necessary changes in the software development life cycle and have no problems with that.

That some users here are not satisfied with some not fulfilled stretch goals (or the lack of communication about it) is understandable, though.
The final product is very very good so the design decisions by Swen (and the sacrifice of extra features) were right.

Keep in mind that deleting features that are nearly ready and/or you really wanted is often a very painful frustrating process for a software developer himself.
I don't like to cut features that I originally planned at all.

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Like I said I understand when things get removed, however...the dungeon was never even mentioned to be removed, that link you gave didn't even mention it.