I would have thought that showing a game that looked like it would be great fun to play would be the primary focus. For some screwy reason, that has barely been mentioned in all of this. I’ve not once seen any imagery that tries to communicate to me what a battlescape experience is like. I find that rather surreal.
I fear that the team has been so heads-down in building the thing that they’ve lost sight of the reason that they’re building it.
[quote=“JB47394, post:366, topic:1159”]
I’ve not once seen any imagery that tries to communicate to me what a battlescape experience is like. I find that rather surreal.[/quote]
You’ve seen it. It took us many months to make. This is the pitch video. You know, the first half is in-engine and exactly shows what you’re asking ( or I haven’t understood what you’re asking ). A ship taking of from the planet, travelling through multiple battlescapes, arriving at that huge station which gets attacked by a team of players ( including capital ships ). Dogfighting in the station, explosions, missiles/chaffs, it’s all there.
At this point I just don’t know what you’re expecting to see. It’s only a Kickstarter, of course you’re not going to see the finalized game yet.
I suggest you go back and re-watch what E:D had shown at this stage in their Kickstarter:
JB on their KS page down in Video Content, look at the first video ‘Combat Montage’…That will definitely show you what they want the game to be about.
I know that’s how you perceive that video. I perceive it as an RPG cinematic. It’s a great little piece and I have no intention of diminishing the hard work that you guys put into it, but I think you made the wrong video.
Obviously. I don’t want to see a finished game. I want enough media presented such that I understand what game I’d be playing. Concept pieces. Stylized graphics. Animations. Game stills. Mockups. Something more than a text description amidst a bunch of flying and shooting videos.
David. Braben.
Flavien, I backed the project. But I didn’t do it because of the Kickstarter campaign. I backed it because you have given me so many years of entertainment through watching you work, supporting a discussion forum where we could debate ideas, enticing me to build 3D models of space ships and so forth.
You’re looking to create what I think could be a great game, but I’m not seeing that great game communicated through your campaign. That’s been my primary point through my posts about the campaign. I’ve already presented a couple script ideas as a means of communicating it.
There’s enough information in your campaign to get folks who like space games to contribute, but I think that you could have done far better with a campaign that focused on the gameplay. A simple HTML5 animation would have sufficed to explain how players go about capturing and exploiting various control points, presenting some of the complexities of operating large fleets of players and so forth. That’s the bit that has always been missing.
You organize your team into LiveStreams, yet you don’t set up a mock approach or attack on a surface or space facility. You don’t have half of the players defending it and the other attacking it - nor even a bunch of NPC ships just sitting stationary near such a facility. Nobody acts as a designated hauler to be defended from the surface to the space station. It’s as if you guys have no real interest in your own gameplay ideas.
A suggestion for the quotes right on top: I would link the images to the tweets / posts / videos where the people can find them. I think it would a layer of authenticity. Plus I prefer quotes to be linked to the sources since I just finished my MA thesis. 
Jan and Dan are working on that as we speak. We’ve announced already in a previous update that it was coming. I don’t think you realize that it takes dozens of hours to do such a “simple” thing, and that people can mostly only work on their week-ends.
I appreciate your feedback, really I do, but I think you greatly underestimate how much work goes into all these things. Just this week the revamp of the KS page took most of our efforts. You can’t have it all, unfortunately.
As for simulating scenarios in the prototype, I don’t think it’s something we can do. The pitch video is already there to demonstrate all of that. I’m sorry that you’re taking it as an" RPG cinematic". If you do we probably failed to communicate or be clear enough on it. But really, this is the pitch video. This is where all of our efforts these past months/years has gone. Yet everybody just wants to see it all in the prototype, instead of taking the prototype as an added bonus. That’s pretty frustrating for me. That cinematic video IS our gameplay vision.
I imagine running a Kickstarter is not an easy task…
I’m sure the I-Novae team put tons of time, thought, and effort into making the pitch the best they possibly could, and the fact that they’re adding more content, posting regular updates, doing live streams, etc. is impressive.
I would say that unless you’ve run a (successful) Kickstarter campaign yourself, it would be wise to keep suggested improvements to a minimum.
I know we all want to see this campaign succeed, and I feel the best thing we as the community can do at this point is to spread the word, telling everyone we know would be the slightest bit interested using the materials I-Novae has put so many hours into producing.
So there’s my two cents. 
As far as I’m concerned, their main issue was - at first - the kickstarter appeared to be catering to existing fans. It needed to show other non-fans what it was about. This main underlying issue appears to be fixed now, with a long thread and lots of words in between.
Having said that, I am really impressed with how the good suggestions were picked out and implemented. This will really help with the final days of the kickstarter. The only thing left is trying to get more media attention, which it seems like everyone is doing as much as they can already.
Cheers for the final 9 days of kickstarter
Did you miss our KS page refresh or something? We literally implemented alot of your posted suggestions.
Agreed, would be cool to put some of the Soundcloud snippets from the soundtrack on the KS page to give some examples of the music as the trailer music is fantastic.
This is correct, I directly implemented many of the suggestions offered by Navy and yourself, among others here and there. (of course we couldn’t use all of them)
I’m glad the majority of you are pleased with the revisions. Thank you again for all the feedback 
Well, yes I-Novae made some mistakes in how this campaign was put together (though some of them were corrected with this far superior new version).
But then again, it could have been worse, way worse even.
So imperfect as it inevitably is and despite those shortcomings we see in it, for people with who barely met each-other in person, doing it in your free time on your own resources, with no experience nor formal training in that kind of marketing, well…
You still did (and do) pretty great. Kudos for it.
The cinematic video does not portray the gameplay vision as I have come to understand it from what you and Keith have described on the forum and even in the text of the campaign page.
Does your vision for gameplay involve scanning wreckage for survivors?
Does you vision for gameplay involve being a delivery guy who panics and tries to escape from a mess of explosions when some unexpected mystery attackers show up?
To me that’s what the cinematic shows.
We’re of course not asking you to remake the video… (While some might, I’m pretty sure most of us don’t underestimate how much work goes into stuff. We’re just trying to provide helpful feedback.) … we’re just asking that you now focus heavily on portraying your actual vision for gameplay, ideally graphically, but at least as a voice over to a video prominently on the campaign page, not buried in an update.
Describe it passionately leaving room for imagination, not like you’re reading a list of washing machine components.
It is not my intention to bash you and the enormous effort that has gone into the campaign so far. I, we, love you guys and we love what we think Battlescape can be. We just want others to get that too!
I think it’s not about what was shown, it’s about the gameplay that was described and the enthusiasm with which David described it. Also of course he had the precedent of Elite so people understood the gameplay vision more easily.
I just wanted to add that the current Kickstarter main page is brilliant - it’s exactly what I’d want to see. (It’s just a shame it wasn’t anything like that on day one.) It fixes pretty much every gripe I had with the original page. To elaborate a bit more:
“The Highlights” section nicely covers all your main selling points.
“In The Media” points to the best 3rd-party (journalist) videos, along with nice brief summaries of exactly what they are, so you know what to expect.
“Video Content” puts the new “Combat Montage” video first, and I find that gives me a GREAT feel for what the gameplay is going to be like (unlike the original Battlescape Trailer). The other listed videos are also good. And good to have proper embedded YouTube videos, rather than MP4 download links!
“What Is Battlescape” is good at giving a bit more detail on the game & also works as a slightly longer sales pitch (without feeling artificial).
The remaining sections look & feel short enough that I’d be happy to browse them (the original Kickstarter didn’t feel like that, although I’m not quite sure what you’ve changed, maybe just better headings & order(?) - thumbs up anyway).
The skins section is much better (shorter, or at least more compact).
The stretch goals graphics look nice, FWIW, although I get the feeling very few of those will be met. Good that you stuck it so far down 
Finishing the page with a short description of who you are (and a load of small pictures of you) gave a nice feeling/vibe.
I can’t really think how you could improve it further… so now you just need some more publicity to get people to read it!
I think I see this similar to what you explain, but when seeing the cinematic trailer I think what is really missing, is the increadible beautiful procedural generation. Actually the cinematic trailer shows many assets that have been built but nearly no landscape and not even a second terrain.
The fact that the proc gen isn’t really shown off in the trailer is irrelevant IMO.
There are myriad videos showing it off. There are zero videos describing the gameplay vision in a convincing manner.
People all over the place are saying ‘nice looking engine, but gameplay seems meh’.
And there are people all over the place saying it’s the best thing they’ve ever seen; I still maintain the MAIN issue is visibility. Getting new people to see our page, view our video, and that is our current focus.
This is exactly the case and IMO bickering about what demo videos could be on the page and minor changes to it is just switching placebos around when the only problem that ever existed was visibility.
We have statistically average conversion rate and that means the page is fine, we need more people to see it, who cares if you make the biggest bestest kickstarter page and it’ll only get 60 clicks per day?
This is what I have been saying all along…
Visibility is the issue, not the content.
Well, you’d be mistaken. I know full well what it takes, and that’s why it’s so important to focus your limited resources on the stuff that provides the greatest bang for the buck.
Which is great. I’m glad that you agreed they were worth pursuing. That page is much improved, and I’ve said as much elsewhere. The videos without HUD clutter and icons are wonderful, and I’ve said as much elsewhere. The videos of cooperative flying are great, and I’ve said as much elsewhere. I commend you on your willingness to consider so much stuff from both your supporters and your critics.
I’m just so confused about why you approached this the way that you did that I just had to say something. I mean I’m really confused. Regardless, I do hope that you get well past the minimum funding mark in these last days.
Content goes viral, not visibility.