Ideas for the Kickstarter

Battlescape
42

I like the KS page, might have some useful ideas.

43

As I have already said in the update, more videos are coming.

They’re narrated by me, because frankly, Keith has no time to do anything. He’s already busy enough to barely keep up with all the media/press/emails, we can’t ask him to narrate some videos on top of his plate.

All these vids were made pre-KS, we’re just waiting for the right timing to throw them. We felt that doing that in the first days, when all the streamers were showing the gameplay, would have been redundant and lost in the noise. We’ve currently scheduled to publish the first one early next week.

Concerning the KS page, a lot of your criticism is valid but… impractical to fix.

Let me get this straight: editing the pitch video is pretty much impossible for us at this point. We had to fly physically to Helsinki to record it. Editing took a lot of time, doing the green-background key editing took forever to our video editor, the sounds and sequences are already synced up, etc…

We didn’t show the seamless transitions simply because:

  1. It would have resulted into another of those seamless transitions videos that we had published in the past - nothing new here. In fact, the answer to the trailer we posted pre-KS ( showing the Helion flying on to the volcanic moon surface ) has been pretty poor.

  2. It would have been boring to watch unless we sped it up. The in-game KS video would have take 3 minutes, so we wouldn’t have had room to show anything else. We preferred to construct the mood, showing a bunch of various scenes ( what we call Battlescapes, like the take-off city, the mining asteroid, the space station ) and some action.

The video is extremely coherent with the gameplay we’re proposing. Maybe we’ve failed to put an emphasis on that, but really, you have all these battlescapes ( points of interests ) on various planets and hundreds of players fighting in massive battles to take control.

  1. We had very limited time to explain the gameplay. We explicitely mentionned in the pitch that we have a seamless planetary engine, true to scale. If we had spent more time on that, then we couldn’t explain even the basics of the game.

The KS page also has videos showing seamless transitions, and “Highlights” explicitely mentions hundreds of players in the same battle, procedural planets true to scale and seamless transitions.

Unfortunately I think too many people expect too much from the gameplay prototype at this stage. Yes, the only thing you can do is fly for hours ( and sometimes shoot at a few other people ). Yes, we’re not in a stage where we can demo hundreds of players in a battle. We don’t have many playable ships, we don’t have many weapons types. If we had, why would we be on KS in the first place ? And keep in mind that from all space-games that got Kickstarted, we’re probably in the few that have something playable to show at all.

Of course we’re going to keep trying to improve the KS page, so keep the criticisms / suggestions going, it cannot hurt, but I can’t promise we’ll be able to address everything…

17 Likes
44

Well, that answers all my questions. Thanks.

45

Very valid points. I didn’t expect elaborate gameplay, that’s of course why you need the KS.

Everybody has his or her (?) own idea about what the final game will be like. We used to speculate a lot about the MMO, and the same is happening for Battlescape. It might be that the Developer’s teams for the gameplay is in the end not what I was hoping for.

I really hope you will be able to integrate the environment into the gameplay and that it will not just be surroundings to look at, but that the environment has meaning for players.

46

The problem with waiting,I think, is that most people will take the time to look at updates or read the first portion of the page, but may not be willing to go watch HOURS of interviews or one on one combat.

If you have a short (3 to 5 minute) video that showcases combat, canyon running, and someone talking over the various highlights of what you have and want to have by the time you release, that is much more attractive to a new face than the minimum half hour, maximum four hour long youtube videos.

Also, are you unable to host hundreds right now because you don’t have a server with adequate resources, our because you think it would be boring to see hundreds with the same ship and weapons? Put them all on Cinder and duke it out for the base if it’s the latter, consider asking around your community if it’s the former. Hours of talking and flying around is great and all, but it’s only good once they’re hooked and looking for a reason to buy.

47

Alright, what’s still missing from the kickstarter, from the point of view of people who haven’t even heard of the project before now:

  1. Who are you?
    “I-Novae Studios is a small independent game studio building cutting edge technology [blah blah blah].” ‘but we’re not going to tell you our names or even how many of us there are working on this’
    Who doesn’t say who they are in a WHO ARE WE section of their kickstarter?

  2. Where’s this money going?
    What do you need the money for? Where’s that money going to be spent?

  3. What’s with these stretch goals?

$100,000 for one ship?
‘Better, more detailed damage model for internal ship systems’ vague much? You haven’t even said what you were going to do for this before.
Why is semi persistence a stretch goal when it’s been listed as a core feature in the kickstarter video?

Hope you think this stuff is relevant too.

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48

I think the kickstarter page is fine. It conveys everything necessary and provides links to more in-depth info.

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49

I think that by skipping the transitions, the result is kind of unremarkable and doesn’t do a good job of illustrating Infinity’s unique selling points. The first impression given to potential backers is a game that looks like literally any other shooty space game, except that only a small portion of the video has any shooting in it.

Having a cut between atmospheric and space flight implies that these elements aren’t continuous in-game. Enemy ships also pop out of warp in a flash when the attack begins which some might infer as another sign that these ships are transitioning between separate environments, like dropping out of supercruise in Elite Dangerous.

Its not until you get over 4 minutes in past the cinematic video to the talking section where the unique selling points of the game are actually explained. Here you do a good job of explaining things and you illustrate your ideas and the unique features with video footage. I think that this part is what people need to see first, then they can view the cinematic video afterwards, and it will be better because they will be able to fit it into the bigger picture that has already been described for them.

So put the talking section first and put the cinematic at the end. I think its a small edit that would improve the overall impact of the video.

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50

Sounds good to me.

I think the cinematic video was spot on. And following on with one or two transitions videos as it is on the page now is fine too.

But I’d shunt the live streams and interviews right down the page. People scanning through to find out what the game is all about aren’t going to bother with 2 hour videos. And they don’t really showcase the planned gameplay anyway, only that it all works.

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51

I think the cinematic video was not great, in fact i would go as far as to say that the videos posted by youtubers of the pre alpha give a far better idea of what the game will be like.

Its a great engine but with very little actual game on display currently.

52

I disagree. I love the kickstarter trailer, I probably have watched it 20 times by now and it still is pretty epic. The music is absolutely incredible too, reminds me of the interstellar docking scene at the end.
The problem is not the epic kickstarter video but the lack of publicity by major gaming sites or famous people with followings.
I think a lot will change when people like scott manley stream it, I am very much looking forward to that.

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53

I loved the trailer too. Really caught my attention, even though I already knew what I was throwing my money at :smiley:

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54

A few things after reading this thread:

  1. The trailer will not change.
  2. The live action/interview videos that were recorded before the KS will not change.
  3. We do not have the ability to make any new live action videos, any new interviews will be done via future live streams.
  4. We will be adding more video content throughout the 30 DAY LONG campaign.
  5. The prototype is what it is, we can’t add a slew of new content.
  6. We have a long way to go, we plan to stay calm.
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55

Please make your future interviews shorter, the 30+ minute videos make it really hard to convince anyone to watch.

Also, I tried to get my favorite streamer to look into it (LAGTVMaximusBlack) and he said he’d ask, but every single one of your videos bored the crowd to death. There was lots of flying, lots of talking, and zero action. Get a BUNCH of people on the server and get some REAL fights going on.

56

[quote=“INovaeFlavien, post:43, topic:1159”]
Let me get this straight: editing the pitch video is pretty much impossible for us at this point. We had to fly physically to Helsinki to record it. Editing took a lot of time, doing the green-background key editing took forever to our video editor, the sounds and sequences are already synced up, etc…[/quote]
Most of your objections seem to stem from the incorrect idea that you’re being asked to redo the short “Kickstarter pitch” video, but I think what would solve most complaints (and be easy-ish to do) is simply a 10 to 15 minute video of in-game footage, with someone talking over the top (audio-only! i.e. no green screen) to explain various elements of technology & gameplay.

Yeah, sure, it’s not going to win any awards if you are creating & editing it in a day or two, but at this point I don’t think that’s your biggest concern.

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57

We have such videos forthcoming.

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58

Hey navy, you started this thread with constructive criticism in mind. Imo it is currently drifting away from that.
It doesn’t help anybody to emphasize things which can’t be changed.

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59

Thank you. I just logged on, ~50 new posts on this thread since I went to bed. Reading now to catch up and will comment once done.

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60

But… why are you expecting a full content game from a KS ? Don’t you see the contradiction ? Are we showing less than Star Citizen or Elite Dangerous’s KSs ?

The problem we have atm IMO is that we’re showing more than what people expect from a KS, yet less than an alpha, so it falls in a hard-to-understand zone for most people.

Obviously watching streams of people flying for hours is boring. Whenever someone stream we sometimes try to attack, but the fact is a lot of streamers seem to be pretty happy flying around peacefully and getting immersed by the world. We can’t / won’t force them in engagements when they just want to fly around, talking to their viewers etc…

The game will support hundreds of players fighting all over these Battlescapes. That’s our pitch, and that’s even the first thing in the title. When you watch the prototype you need to imagine all these areas full of people fighting, capships attacking from orbit, artillery guns firing etc… This is what we tried to show with our “cinematic” pitch video. The station getting attacked, hundreds of ships in panic flying around, explosions / chaos everywhere… this is EXACTLY our vision of what a Battlescape should look like in the final game.

And that’s why we tried to show our gameplay vision in this pitch video. Not another tech demo of yet another seamless transition, which we have demonstrated plenty of times in the past.

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61

But is there any reason you can’t demonstrate that now? I understand it won’t be polished, but you said that you had a simulation of 100+ bots at once. Is there anything stopping you from having 100+ actual players? Even just a three minute video of a colossal battle over one of the moons or in space would alleviate some of the boredom people get from seeing the videos for the first time.

I just had a streamer look at the game for the first time this morning. He thought it looked cool. Everyone else didn’t even understand it was a combat game.

It’s a combat oriented game. Get some combat of note on film!