Every major game has had a preorder discount not just Elex.
I haven't even purchased Witcher 3 and am not too interested to do so
Well, if those "messy concessions" lead to games like The Witcher 2 + 3 or the Original Sins which were both made by big teams then it's fine with me if it gets a little "messy" .
No one suggested to grow "needlessly". If you look at Larian Studios and CD Projekt they have both grown fairly organically with the demands of their development projects.
The Witcher series is a near perfect crescendo of quality games from a good game to start with to an even better sequel and to a huge smash hit RPG that many folks consider to be the best RPG of all time.
The way I see it as a ex-PB fan, PB could definitely use more manpower in just about every area (especially writing, animations, game systems design (= combat et al)) and this need has existed at least since Risen 2.
Strictly IMHO it is either masochism or plain stupid stubbornness at this point to refuse to grow with the tasks at hand (with the tasks is the key phrase here… as I said, no one talked about growing senselessly and creating jobs where no work even needs to be done).
Every major game has had a preorder discount not just Elex.
ELEX's discount was 10% on release, So $40-ish. It's normal price is $49.99 which is still cheaper than a typical AAA game.
I have no problem paying that for a game like ELEX but YMMV.
Whether or not the price is right depends entirely on the person.
27, not 29 .
However, you can definitely add a few dozen more to that number because of outsourcing, freelancers etc.
It still remains true that they have not had hundreds of people working on the game but it's also not right to say that it was made by less than 30 people.
Also, it is their deliberate choice (per Pankratz), or their fault, depending on point of view, to be and to stay this small and they are playing ball with the big guys in the full price segment.
TW3 was selling for the same price at release as Elex so I think it is fair to compare the games regardless of team size. It is PB's own problem that they refuse to grow (up) .
TW3 was not selling at full price at launch, it is an outlier. Most AAA games sell for about 20% or more. Skyrim PC costs $60 USD at launch and Elex costs $50. Its a B-tier price.
Where did you get that from? It is most definitely incorrect .
Here is a list of the people who worked only on the German version of Elex and it does not yet include any outsourcing but what it does include apparently is the freelancers who were directly employed by PB since it is way more than 27 names under "Piranha Bytes".
At a quick count this is already a little over 40 with no outsourcing yet (and also excluding double mentions and the social media people ).
The final section of that list that is headed "Synchronsprecher" are the German voices. Everything else is development and publishing
As you can see, outsourcing was managed by the asset outsourcing manager Horst Dworczak (a PB veteran by the way who is/was an artist himself). They also specifically credited the PH Outsourcing GmbH further down the list which might actually be one of the many PB/Pluto13 subsidiaries since you can not find any public info on PH Outsourcing GmbH on Google.
My guess is that PB uses this PH Outsourcing GmbH to outsource their asset creation needs to Eastern European gigs.
Anyway, back on the actual outsourcing: I have personally watched/read interviews with Björn where he said that they outsourced some of the animations (except for the human/character animations… they did those themselves apparently).
He also said that they outsourced the creation of most of the -as he put it- "tedious" art assets which, to my understanding, means the many, many basic items that are simply required to be there but that are zero fun to design (e.g. chairs, tables, spoons, knives, forks, rocks, toilet paper and crap like that ).
It is anyone's guess how many people exactly laid hands on Elex beyond the at least 40+ on the list (sans outsourcing!) just for the German version. 60? 80? Who knows?
But the outsourced art assets and animations are a time consuming and tedious task that simply requires a lot of manpower and man hours to get shit done within a reasonable timeframe (or even within a deadline at which point stuff needs to be returned to PB for implementation).
So, please forget about 27 people. That is their very bare bone core team of employees with a fixed contract but all of their games have had many more people working on them due to freelancing/contractors and outsourcing.
I think you guys are splitting hairs with the price thing. A $10 difference is not very significant to most people.
Deary me, are you playing blindfolded?Regardless, I've personally played for 150 hours so far and haven't even seen 50% of the map yet...
Deary me, are you playing blindfolded?
Deary me, are you playing blindfolded?
Fluent goggles.
I generally agree that ELEX is Good to Very Good. But, anyone done "The Abessa Dispute" questline yet, This quest is pretty messed up in my view. Particularly
this is messed up IMO in combination with "The Claws". Specifically there seems to be no good outcome for "The Abessa Dispute" with the result that player gets locked out of the main entrance to the claws area. Have to use hard to find and use secret entrance. Plus all the dead ppl. Recommend don't trigger this quest (if ever) until after Claws is complete. Quest needs fixin' IMO
Regards.
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I generally agree that ELEX is Good to Very Good. But, anyone done "The Abessa Dispute" questline yet, This quest is pretty messed up in my view.
The only thing I'd change about that questline would be to make the player's choices a little more transparent in regards to the impact they're going to have.
Other than that, I really liked that whole sequence of events and that they provided the player with C&C of some actual significance.