POLL: As funding continues... What's next?!

[The_A_Drain]

I think it's important, despite the fact that Kickstarter made this possible, that you still make decisions that build the game you think is best.

I would be careful to make sure you simply don't have too many chefs mucking up the soup.

Just want to quote this for truth. I'm sure you are aware of this already and I have every confidence, but make the game you want to make and bolster it with the feedback, don't let the feedback control the direction.

[Janos Kruger]

Don't know if this would be possible for legal reasons, but if the kickstarter gets $2 Million + could the team rebuild the old Wasteland with the new engine? It could be sold as a separate product / dlc but given to the kickstarter users above $30? One of the reasons I loved the Old World Blues DLC in Fo:NV was all the WL references it had (Scorpitron anyone???)

[Burt Gummer]

Haha, voted without looking at the results and picked the three most popular options.

- Larger world and more content
- Enhanced NPC portraits and equipment artwork
- Mod kit

I want to stress the NPC portraits and equipment artwort part. It adds so much to my enjoyment of the game, if I can open the inventory and see all the cool little icons for my stuff!

Only one the reasons why I hate the oblivion-style inventory. Just a fucking list of things? Really? Fucking consoles!

[SXX]

That's not true at all. It might take a team of programmers and writers several weeks to perfect a quest

Several weeks for one quest? Which kind of quest do you mean?

whereas all the voice acting for it can easily be completed with a few voice actors in 2-3 hours.

But for 100 quests it will be 200-300 hours.
And I believe Wasteland 2 will have more than 100 quests... And some non-quest dialogues as well..
Its extremely expensive.

Also, better graphics can be reused elsewhere in the game. Quest writing cannot. Not saying that a huge network of sidequests is a bad thing, it's just that good graphics and voice acting are much more cost effective. I hope we have a measure of both.

Reusing of graphics its one of thing that we all hate in brand-new games.
2D old-school RPG have some kind of reusing, but not so much.
Graphics and voice doesn't required to good RPG game. But lot of text thing and good music is very important.

Sure, did you play Fallout 2 for example? Do you remember how many dialogues each NPC?
Just check it and think how expensive voice can be.
Or you want to cut large dialogues?

By the way, Crysis is one of the greatest games ever made, so I don't see why you would want to "fight" anyone who enjoyed it.

May be its was a good game for somebody who love FPS, but not for me.
That game doesn't add anything new, but graphics.
IMHO.

[SXX]

Don't know if this would be possible for legal reasons

No, its not possible by legal reasons.

inXile own rights to trademark, but not for game itself. Game still in property of EA.

[Sobboth]

Anything around (or maybe a little above) Dawn of War 2's visual quality would please me greatly,

Dawn of War 2 is only a 3 year old games (02/09) and had excellent graphic for his time.It was a big AAA games too.
Now i know nothing about the cost of graphics except they cost lot of money, but you expect the same level of graphic, and maybe a little above for a 2/3 millions game max ?(keep in mind Amzon takes 3%, Kickstarter 5%, remove the shipping cost, the goodies cost and the tax from the final pledged amount. Moreover it's still a small budget, not even a medium one)
I don't say we should play with primitiveASCII graphics, but your expectation seems phenomenal. i really doubt that only three years later technological progress have been so great you could do the same thing now with maybe 1/10 of the budget, not talking even a bit better.
I would be very happy with graphic of the same quality than in F 1/2 (check the high resolution patch).
But like i said i know nothing about graphic cost so i hope i'm completly wrong.
SXX : 4 millions budgets is far for being a huge budget, AAA titles are dozens of millions. And while i agree with you to not spend everything in the graphics because we have a small budget, a mod kit, according to InXile themselves would have a huge cost.

[The_A_Drain]

Anything around (or maybe a little above) Dawn of War 2's visual quality would please me greatly,

Dawn of War 2 is only a 3 year old games (02/09) and had excellent graphic for his time.It was a big AAA games too.
Now i know nothing about the cost of graphics except they cost lot of money, but you expect the same level of graphic, and maybe a little above for a 2/3 millions game max ?(keep in mind Amzon takes 3%, Kickstarter 5%, remove the shipping cost, the goodies cost and the tax from the final pledged amount. Moreover it's still a small budget, not even a medium one)
I don't say we should play with primitiveASCII graphics, but your expectation seems phenomenal. i really doubt that only three years later technological progress have been so great you could do the same thing now with maybe 1/10 of the budget, not talking even a bit better.
I would be very happy with graphic of the same quality than in F 1/2 (check the high resolution patch).
But like i said i know nothing about graphic cost so i hope i'm completly wrong.
SXX : 4 millions budgets is far for being a huge budget, AAA titles are dozens of millions. And while i agree with you to not spend everything in the graphics because we have a small budget, i notice you seem to ignore that a mod kit, according to InXile themselves would have a huge cost.

That was supposed to say Dawn of War, not sure where the errant 2 popped up from. My brain is in sequel mode it seems.

That said, once you remove entirely cut-scenes from the equation, and quite such extravagant sound production, you save a LOT of money. Not to mention ditching things like real-time shadows, etc which may simply not be needed at all depending on how they decide to implement the camera. For example, if it's mostly fixed in terms of angle and relative position then you can use baked lighting maps instead of real time lighting.

I would be more than happy with Fallout 1 graphics (in fact, I would prefer them), however 2D art has become very expensive over the years, especially if you want more than a handful of frames of animation, whereas if you have a nice range of generic animations to apply to a set of 3D models, especially with the advances in mocap technology which allow the same animations to be adjusted to characters of different proportions easily and tweaked quickly and cheaply, then you can churn out a lot of those models with a generic base rig and populate the world very quickly. Nowadays, simple 3D art is much cheaper than 2D art depending on the size of the project, and if the game wants to have as many characters (if not more) as Fallout or Baldur's Gate, then 3D will be not only cheaper, but more flexible.

[Kiya]

The thing about a mod kit is that it would enable the community to do alot of the other things that are being asked for themselves. More content - more stories, enhanced graphics, new models, enhanced effects, all of this can be handled by a robust modding community.

Both Morrowind and Oblivion have some superb graphic mods, masses of fan made content and quests - yes it will take a while, some of the larger fan mods may even take a year or so but that gives you an excuse to play the game again - and again. And isn't that one of the best things about this type of RPG - the replay value? It always has been for me

Well made Modding tools just extend the life of a game in ways that the developers don't even think of. Several modders have gone on to be hired by the companies whose games they developed mods for because they were just that damn good.

I really don't understand why more people are not going for that option in the poll, seriously.

[Hiver]

I really don't understand why more people are not going for that option in the poll, seriously.

I guess its mainly because they assume it will take a lot of time and effort from the team that could be spent on other primary things.
Also elder scroll games moding tends to produce a lot of shallow stuff so it may make people think its not worth it in the end.
of course there are a lot of good mods there, may without whom you cant even play the vanilla versions of the games but thats a whole basket of issues in that case.

As for Wasteland2 i mostly think about mods as opportunity to add more content, more quests, more characters or add whole new areas to the game. And it does depend a lot on the chosen engine in the end. Hopefully it will be doable, even if done sometime after the release of the game.

[Drool]

I only used four of my votes, because there were only four things that I thought were really important.

Larger world and more content: It's pretty easy to see why this is winning. People want more game. Obviously, people want a good game, but presumably the devs won't be just adding random things pointlessly. If it's a choice between adding another amazing town or porting the game to the iPhone, I'll take the town every time.

Enhanced graphics and 3D models/textures: I'm more interested in the first half of this than the second. I don't really care if it's 2D or 3D, I just want it to look good. This is also why I didn't pick the option for an 8 bit version. Trust me, I love Wasteland to pieces. It's, hands down, my most favorite game of all time. But I love it despite the graphical limitations, not because of them. I don't want a retro game. I want a modern sequel to an old game. I'll wear my nostalgia goggles as much as the next man, but I know when to take them off.

Enhanced NPC portraits and equipment artwork: This was actually the second one I picked. Even back in '88, I wished that the game gave equipment pictures. I've spent countless hours imagining and reimagining what, exactly, the Ion Beamer looked like, all because it was described as a "strange looking weapon". I would love to have visuals for the items in game, and it'd be even better if they included some flavor text. It's the little things like that that help flesh out the world and make it feel real.

Mod kit: I may not be a modder, and I rarely use mods, but it's impossible to deny that this sort of thing greatly increases the longevity of games. People are still modding Morrowind. Also, if it was done like the Creation Kit is (the development team's tools with a bit of polish) it probably wouldn't be terribly difficult or expensive to manage. Famous last words, I know.

[Kiya]

I guess its mainly because they assume it will take a lot of time and effort from the team that could be spent on other primary things.
Also elder scroll games moding tends to produce a lot of shallow stuff so it may make people think its not worth it in the end.
of course there are a lot of good mods there, may without whom you cant even play the vanilla versions of the games but thats a whole basket of issues in that case.

As for Wasteland2 i mostly think about mods as opportunity to add more content, more quests, more characters or add whole new areas to the game. And it does depend a lot on the chosen engine in the end. Hopefully it will be doable, even if done sometime after the release of the game.

The release of mod tools should definately come a few months after the game's release - otherwise people dig into the games files and spoil story/plot and gameplay for other gamers. It's best to wait until the majority of gamers have had time to play through at least once to minimise that impact. So with that in mind it should hopefully be possible to leave the majority of the work for modding tools until after the game is pretty much ready for release - obviously I'm not a game developer though so I could be wrong there.

It's also worth mentioning a point related to that which is that the release of the mod tools can then be used for marketing purposes to rekindle interest in the game and increase the games sales at a time when they have probably started to flag.

Of course there are a whole lot of silly and trivial shallow mods around I don't deny that at all (alot of fun silly ones as well though). But there are as you say also pure gold nuggets to be found if you know where to look - and then there is the content in some games like Skyrim that probably would not exist if it were not for the efforts of modders on previous titles.

For a couple of examples - horses might well never have been added to Oblivion or Skyrim if it had not been for the efforts of MadMax who created the Pegas Horse ranch for Morrowind. Having companions (including pets!) who fought with you and accompanied you on quests also originated from mods created for Morrowind

Mostly when I think of mods I tend to think of the truly great ones that have awed me over the years - mods like The Dark Mod - a Thief inspired mod made by fans of that game that was a total conversion of Doom 3. Nehrim which is a full conversion of Oblivion. The game Dear Esther which started out as a Mod for half life 2 before TheChineseRoom gained an Indy fund loan and recreated it using the Source engine.

Now I'm not suggesting that anything so lofty and awesome would come from Wasteland 2, however the potential is there, and to me it is exciting to think of the possibilities that might develop from the community being given access to a set of tools specifically made for the creation of a CRPG.

I'm just going to make one last point here and then i will stop banging on about it.

No matter how hard InXile try to please all of the fans who have pledged - with this many people involved there are inevitably going to be some people who are unhappy about some aspect of the game. It is pretty much impossible to please everybody all of the time. Making mod tools available to the community would mean that instead of being upset over such things, they could just wait until the tools were released to change, or ask somebody else to change whatever they had disagreed with or were unhappy about to be more to their liking. It helps to diffuse potential rifts that can spill over into angry rants on blogs and forums.

Ok, apologies for the extremely long post - as you can see it is a subject I am quite passionate about so thanks for reading

[Polterageist]

I think, graphics in the game would be 3d and in isometry with free rotation camera, as it was in the "Fall: Last dayts of Gaya". And although it will be tactical rpg, I think, many gamers don't want to tinker with companioons and to wipe snot for them, so, companions would be or optional, or clever, or and then, and then. Sorry my bad language:)

[i_ramiz]

I think devs doesn't have to make world bigger. Make a dialogs with npc-s more deeper, make an extra quests on existing locations and/or make story of locations even more interesting (by adding side-stories or something) - yes. So I chose 3 things:
- Expanded character dialog and voice acting (well, without voice-acting - so costy, no point in it)
- Enhanced NPC portraits and equipment artwork (to adding more individuality to characters and so on)
- Mod kit (well, it has to be on default)

So, do not make world bigger, make it deeper and more polished.

[Tetri]

do not make world bigger, make it deeper and more polished.

Agree. Deep various content is more important than vast map.

[WarpCrow]

If this will actually be read then I'll chime in with what I'm sure everyone else has already said: deeper world, story, quests always the main priority. Mod kit would be awesome, as it extends the life of the game and gives creative people a sandbox to develop their skills and bring new ideas to the field. A lot of people will poo-poo the importance of better graphics but I think one of the opportunities of Wasteland 2 is to bring this style of RPG to a new generation. Modern descendants like Skyrim and Mass Effect just don't offer the same stuff, and today's gamer is too spoiled by eye candy to appreciate games like Geneforge or Avadon. If there is to be a chance of this catching on (slim nonetheless I'm afraid) then it should not turn people who are not accustomed to the oldies off at the very sight of it.

[Sobboth]

Quality over quantity.
i don't like having 500 shorts quests like in FNV (even if those ones were rather well integrated to the game), each one completed in 10 min max.
I like huge elaborated side quests who surprise me by their development, taking several hours each to complete and a long gripping main quest/mystery (in W1 it was the mystery, no clear quest).
The thing about mod kit is it really help Bethesda games because "nobody care" much about the main plot.
People want to play forever doing what i consider meaningless things.
Mod kits are perfect for that but i'm not very fond of this kind of gameplay. It's a matter of taste.
For me the replay value is discovering other possibilties in the main quest and the very complex side quests who perfectly fit the game and complete the story.
And when i finish the game I want to have this amazing feeling of achievement, satisfaction.
I'm for the option to be able to continue playing the game after the end. But if i have this feelling of fullness it's not very tempting because the main plot/elaborate stories is really what got me.
I got this feeling with Ultima/Wizardry/fallout 1/2/Wasteland games and in a lesser extent in Baldurs gates ones.
I simply don't have it in the Bethesda game where it's more yeah let's shoot/slash some more dudes or exploring the last (mostly lowly intereseting) locations indicated on your quest compas.
Even in Obsidian FNV where the story/world was however good, it didn't really work.
I will remember with emotion of the fallout 1/2 trip and even wasteland one (and i only have watched a let's play of wasteland!), but the ending of Bethesda games

[Svetlovska]

I see it's not doing well in the polls, and like everyone else, a better, richer world is a no brainer as first priority *but* - maybe post PC launch - it sure would be nice to see Wasteland 2 running on an Android tablet. I'd pay again for that.

[flikera]

Thumbs up for nice icons, weapon models, etc. ! Leave the fancy 3D to Bethesda and their shooters, we need real GAME!

[talkingcrows]

When its all said and done,I would probably buy an action figure.Maybe McFarlane is a fan.

[dmaar]

Another here for world depth. Make quests more interesting, better character development, back story, things like that. Vastness of the world doesn't matter as much, as long as the world you have is awesome.