This is good thinking. I agree with severely limiting the scope of the project and releasing something bare bones with very limited content. Just do what everybody else on Steam does and call it "Early Access" so you can get money rolling in to try and finish the game. But they are going to need at least something to show...not just Thronefast. At least 4-5 dungeons..and you need to figure out which classes you are cutting from the game, maybe they can be added later if things go well. Jobeson mentioned if he had $100 million, remember this project has less than $10 million from everything I have read. No, they don't have the resources to reinvent the wheel. I'm sure the idea with project Faerthale was to get some big money coming in but it's important to operate and reality and work with what you've got.
IMO:
It's not a question of can it be done. It can be.
It's a question of should it be. Probably not, and I'll explain why I say that.
It would be yet another fundamental shift in the entire premise, focus or public design goals for the game. Which they definitely do NOT need, 9.8 years into development. If you limit the scope of levels to a subset of the intended maximum, you have to provide all the consumables, gear, skills, abilities, and/or spells within whatever tiers you include.
In practice this means if your original design was requiring 5 tiers to introduce all of those things, completely, now you have squish that into less tiers OR for the duration of such an implementation, all of those things, including ROLES would be incomplete.
This would have consequences for content, as well, if it was intended that your flagship features were again, introduced, developed, and capstoned throughout 5 tiers.
So, again, can be done, probably shouldn't, imo.
Now, if you're really just dancing around the monetization option of charging a subscription prior to launch+persistence? That's already on the table, as per the November 17th announcement , which states (in part) " We are considering ... an early access subscription down the road. "
I have no interest in paying for anything Pantheon related prior to persistence, given how the past 9.8 years have gone with respect to donations given by their shifting target demographic. But, I guess it's possible a new target demographic will pay for an early access subscription, given other games have done this successfully.
On the other hand, I have no confidence in VRs ability to guarantee persistence prior to launch, because they haven't demonstrated the ability to do that, yet.
Well vjek I suppose the issue of squishing things into less tiers could be relevant if they actually have any of that mapped out and completed. I don't have pre alpha access to this game so I have no idea what the actual state of things truly is. All I know is they are telling us they don't have all the classes complete yet, and showed us very little in terms of completed zones and dungeons thus far. If there is content actually complete at level 30+ and various classes skills/spells have been mapped out I'd say you have a good point. But if none of this is actually developed? May as well reduce the scope of the game so you can get something out there before running out of money.
justdrop said:
VR has stated that more money would speed up development, that's why there's a focus on it.
Euther said:Reducing the scope of all the art needed for enemies, weapons, armor, quests, rewards and abilities at this point from level (50?) to about half that can still yield a very fun engaging experience...
IMO, the game doesn't need the full meal deal experience all levels (50+?) and zones. it needs the full meal deal experience of starting unique abilities for the classes and group co-player experience...
but VR paying money for resources for zones equipment and art for something that could take players months or a year to get to isn't the best use of time or money.
IMO this is the best suggestion so far and the most sensible approach for VR to take right now. Reading between the lines of what they have said in the past about Pantheon's goals, and what little they are saying publicly today, I think they agree with this also.
Of course, like so many things, success or failure will depend on the countless details of HOW they implement this concept.
Darch said:
I strongly believe that testers don't need to be going above level 20 (or whatever level the class gets all of their core skills). Generating level appropriate content is just a matter of scaling numbers with the exception of "meaningful" quests.
And to be brutally honest, no players should be testing at all until all of the intended classes (game mechanics) are included. The Pre-Alpha "players" are not "testers", they paid to access an unfinished game. They aren't actually doing game testing as much as they're providing very valuable feedback.
Trying to test something's mechanics, when all of the mechanics aren't even included is a poor choice IMO. The Bard and Necro will both change mechanics quite dramatically. With that said, basic (non-boss) NPC "mechanics" post lvl 20 shouldn't be different at all, only their difficulty and appearance/names should change, and that is trivial once a baseline is established. (A level 5 rogue NPC with a pyrophobia disposition should 'act' the same as a lvl 50 rogue NPC with the same disposition, just hit harder and stealth better with more defenses/HP). I think its more important to get all of the classes in before going forward... at all. This should've been done years ago... back before Project Faerthale honestly. Not knowing how the players are intended to interact with the game world being created before creating the world boggles the mind. I get the reluctance of the Bard, having so many design options... but the Necro should be a pretty straight forward mana using caster. That should be a slam-dunk class to conceptually create in a couple of weeks between 2 people. Maybe for difference in CC class flavor, have the ENC in cloth, Necro in Leather and Bard in Heavy Chain with range and ease of ability use taking class 'squishiness' into account. Allow Necro to restore resources and paralyze with fear (stun-lock) with cooldowns similar to WoW rogue, requiring timing and skill to permanently keep a single target stunned, or multiple targets temporarily. OR, they can use those fear cooldowns to instead control a recently killed NPC... maybe once the skills are evolved, allow for use of pet as well as CC. I can go on and on with ideas, but that's what someone in VR should be doing! >:(
There should be 0 player testing without knowing what you are actually testing for :(
Add: I greatly appreciate VR's transparency, but I can't help but wonder where we would be if there were a stringent scope of work for this project instead of jumping around from objective to objective and then back to the other objective, only to reverse ideas and scrap an entire game engine without ever finishing the first objective :/