I realise it’s a bit late in the day to question this, but I’ve not checked up here for a while.
As I understand it, the base game to be put up on kickstarter will have a number of separate arenas to duke it out in. A stretch goal would be to have free roaming combat throughout a star system. Is that right?
I feel that the difference between these goals is fundamental to the gameplay. I always thought that the sense of scale in a space game is key. Probably the most important thing.
If the engine can support an entire system, then I think I Novae should make it a priority to let people experience it.
I don’t know how much extra work is needed to make the jump between these game models, but I’d suggest it take preference over any amount of of graphical polish, choice of ship, weapons or other things that might also be a stretch goal.
If at all possible, I’d like to see the whole system model as part of the base goal. If that’s not feasible, it should definitely be the next thing to aim for.
Not sure what you mean by this. Whether we reach minimum funding only, or the crowd funding explodes, the gameplay will always consist of teams of players at points of interest (Battlescapes) spread throughout a single solar system. There has never been any plan to have free roaming combat throughout the entire solar system.
That’s incorrect. Only the minimum Kickstarter contains fixed “battlescape’s”. The higher funding tiers do allow free roaming combat throughout the entire solar system. The primary reason that the minimum KS does not have free roaming is because it won’t have a resource system. The resource system is central to driving the conflict with free roaming gameplay. Otherwise nobody will ever find each other because solar systems are pretty big. Moving to a fully functional resource system that allows players to build factories and space stations is a pretty big jump in terms of dev resources and that’s why the gameplay changes a fair amount from the minimum KS relative to our larger funding targets.
The minimum KS will primarily consist of our core gameplay of exciting, cinematic quality space combat that captures the feel of movies like Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica. We would like to build a much deeper game which takes more advantage of the unique nature of our technology so we’re hoping we’re able to raise much more than the minimum =).
Not sure if you were saying Keith’s point was invalid? If then I misunderstood.
We would explain to those new people the game mechanics that would bring people together and prevent that from being an issue.
What Keith just said is
[Battlescape needs the mechanic that prevents that from being an issue], Otherwise nobody will ever find each other because solar systems are pretty big.
If Battlescape didn’t have the resource etc mechanics then it would be an issue.
Does it seem out of place that a developer in Inovae doesn’t know about one of the central goals about the launch of the game? I might suggest deleting Gene’s posts, editing your quoted response and deleting this/my post.
I don’t know what it’s like in Elite, but in the Star Citizen community, one of the employees might say something about a feature that isn’t totally accurate. That happens all the time. Usually they say that the feature or mechanic is being worked on and is in flux. But either way, it’s never about a core gameplay feature like that which is sort of akin to whether SC is using CryEngine or not or whether SC is planning on 10 systems or 100 systems for release. Of course if Gene made that mistake on the old forums, it would be no problem at all. But now I assume you guys want to keep a professional public image since you gave contributors titles and requested everyone use actual headshots in their avatars.
I don’t really consider it all that big a deal nor do I consider it unprofessional. It was a simple mistake, game design is organic and ever changing, it can be difficult to keep it all in your head. That’s why larger dev teams have a design lead, art lead, and 1 or more producers - their job is to keep everything coherent. Most companies don’t give their employees a lot of leeway to post on their forums, and frankly many employees would be afraid to anyway, but we give our dev team members a lot of flexibility to speak their mind if they so desire. This is so that they can better engage the community which I think is a good thing.
I think when we are funded, we certainly will have to make an effort to be more careful as there would be more followers of the project, and many of them financially invested. A project lead keeping us all up to date will help as well. In terms of going back and deleting posts to hide a misspeak/mistake, nah. It’s better to own mistakes than cover them up IMO. (However, I likely will not be the community manager )
I can only speak for myself here, but members of the art team not necessarily knowing the finer details of gameplay options based on funding levels bothers me about as much as car engine engineers not knowing what colour paints are being considered for a car’s exterior.
One person being a little confused or out-of-date on the plans regarding an aspect of the game he or she isn’t actually working on doesn’t strike me as a problem. It doesn’t suggest there’s a general atmosphere of confusion amongst the dev team, nor that there is a problem with individual team members. It’s just a person not having all of the details about something they’re not personally working on at the top of their head.
Now, if WD didn’t seem to know what the planned polycount limitations were, or what the different faction stylings were planned to be, that might be something else.
Except that this is something concerning a core feature that the non-dev members of this community already knew about. But fair enough it’s your choice. Don’t get me wrong, it doesn’t bother me at all because I’m used to an informal atmosphere from the old forums and I know that many of the developers are in different locations around the world making coordinating anything but their specific work a challenge. I’m just wondering what new people coming in would think. Not everyone is as knowledgeable in how game design works as we are (not that I would ever consider myself knowledgeable about it).
My misunderstanding was not as black & white as it initially came off in the post, but I’m not going to get into details about it as we’re not at the point where we are presenting the gameplay to the community. None of us are working with gameplay intimately on a daily basis yet, however those days will be coming soon we hope.
I’m with Kichae on this. One artist/developer getting a bit of information mixed up about the product in an area he has no immediate involvement in isn’t that big a deal, and doesn’t really need history rewritten.
Plus, covering up the tracks of a minor mistake takes a lot of effort, as leaving any trace of the conversation behind without the context is liable to cause more confusion than the original mix-up was responsible for. Which would mean that basically all the posts in this thread up to the erroneous one would have to be disappeared. Which is basically all of them.
Keith has been “leaking” bits and pieces here and there. When we get the I:B website up and running, there will be a more formal presentation of intended gameplay and the funding goals. I am not sure in which thread/post he initially talked about the “free roaming” combat.
“free roaming”, “fully explorable star system”
You see, these are the types of terms that kinda get me balled up, and what I initially reacted to in the OP. To me, those might imply sandbox/indefinite persistence, qualities of an MMO, not of a game with a start and an end, with a winner and a loser.
Adding a resource system in my view, just allows the players to create more areas of interest (battlescapes) during a match, as opposed to fixed battlescapes placed by a level designer. And IMO, I’m not sure it’s feasible to allow teams to add as many of these as they want, anywhere they want, or if there will be resource “hot spots” placed by a level designer that the teams can choose to exploit during a game. I think there may be a requirement for restrictions that make the “free roaming” concept, a bit of a misnomer.
[quote=“INovaeGene, post:16, topic:399”]free roaming", “fully explorable star system”
You see, these are the types of terms that kinda get me balled up, and what I initially reacted to in the OP.[/quote]
This is why I prefer to bring up the “World of Tanks vs DayZ” analogy whenever I explain what Battlescape is going to be. It brings context to the discussion by giving potential players context against which they can compare and contrast, yet still gets the point across.
I don’t equate free roaming and exploring with persistence or sandbox.
Players are free to roam around a whole map in a Battlefield game etc - they are not limited to just the objective areas.
I have the impression that the idea is for players to be able to fly freely around a solar system (the Battlescape).
At planets and moons in the system, teams can ‘mine’ resources enabling them to do stuff like spawn in bigger ships, set up static defences, perhaps to build a spawn beacon type thing enabling team mates to spawn there rather than back at their carrier on the edge of the system. That sort of thing.
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