Kickstarter Suggestions

[ASYLUM101]

Originally Posted by Kardiophylax

Intro movies/videos are a waste of time and money. The amount of money required to produce them is absurd and they offer 0 to gameplay. In-game engine "cutscenes" make much more sense. Writing and soundtrack are far more important for setting the tone.

this!

or like insane (or someone else...i forgot)mentioned, you could do a more comic-book styled one with panes and scenes instead of animations. Could be just as cool maybe if done right and WAY cheaper.

[garkham]

I think comic-book is always a good choice when it comes with very beautiful images that carry the tone of the game - as the current wallpaper of the site does. But if you do so, you'll have to hire a very good voice, since text-based cutscenes are just totally useless...

[i.n.s.a.n.e]

Originally Posted by ASYLUM101

this!

or like insane (or someone else...i forgot)mentioned, you could do a more comic-book styled one with panes and scenes instead of animations. Could be just as cool maybe if done right and WAY cheaper.

Yup. HERE is the thread. =)

Nothing, and I mean NOTHING can ever be better for me than Fallout 2's intro. Such an atmosphere caught there, the teller's voice, the fitting pictures...man, I always watch it whenever I start over the game. All the CGIs and stuff can go to hell. =)

[Raven]

No intro, please The only thing I can think about any intro - where is this damn button to turn it off and get to the game menu?!
The same is for cutscenes. Probably they are fun and even necessary for other style game... but NOT for ARPG. Please, don't waste your time on them. Few intro PICTURES skippable by escape are more than enough.
Being pragmatic, there are ALWAYS more valuable things (in game terms) you can spend your money to rather than intro.

As a general suggestion I can say mostly that I have told before.
1. Make as many virtual (and preferably in-game) rewards as possible. It would kill two rabbits with one stone You can always expand rewards later if you can see you can afford it already. And you can add more levels of backing with non-virtual rewards later as well if you see the project is going well. Anyway, if you add more rewards it is good to be sure you can afford them from the backing amount itself for each backer not relaying on particular volume (i.e. number of people backing up this reward). It becomes especially important after hitting the pledge as you are already obligated to fulfill all promises. So I'd advise to start with virtual rewards only slowly adding more valuable and costly options once you see things are going good and you can (and want) hit the next level - of course you have to have in mind several funding levels as mentioned below.
2. Set a pledge at an absolute minimum that makes sense to YOU as developers. That requires tight calculations but it also would allow you to get a good observation and planning on any extra money as well. As I can see, you have already done these calculations so this advise is probably unnecessary Then imaginary add few more levels of funding with detailed planning what you are going to do if reach these levels and encourage people to add more backers by special promises if necessary if you see the next level of pre-planned funding is close. Just as Double Fine have done - there are many things to study carefully in their project as they have done almost brilliant marketing that is not a shame to learn from.
3. Create a good description. It may become a key difference between success and fail and between barely hit the pledge and collect times more money than requested. Make a clear and detailed text, mention TQ as an example, add some taste with images and gameplay videos. People should see you are serious about your product and understand you know where these money will go. And people should get a clear picture of the final product as well. I guess it would be good idea to discuss this description here on forums with the community as you could get valuable suggestions of some details and polish it well before posting on Kickstarter.

Well... I'm not pretending to say something very new and important Just repeating things I think would be good to keep in mind going into this challenge. Hope it will be at least a bit of help

[Fogia]

I admit that I'm not posting often but I wanted to thank you for your hard work and, although it can be time consuming, keeping your fan base in the loop. Looking forward to be able to give you hand with the testing since I bought the legendary some time ago.

On top of it, I actually had a suggestion in case your funding through Kickstarter ends pretty high. Unfortunately, I haven't got much time to check everything that has been discussed lately, so please excuse me if that has been already brought up.

My suggestion is about content once you hit the cap level.

As you pointed in another thread, Grim Dawn will likely be less linear than TQ, so it would be great if, once reaching max level, the player was allowed to enter a game mode with monsters at max level in every area.
This would actually allow free roaming instead of being forced to a part of the game, usually doing the end level over and over. This will likely increase the longevity of the game since the player would keep seeing all areas/monsters instead of a sub-set.

One could even imagine something similar to what was done under Sacred 2 (at least). The more enemies are killed while staying alive, the more powerful the monsters become, but the better the loot. However I didn't like the Sacred 2 system because upon death, this additional layer of difficulty was reset.
From my point of view, it would be great to have some kind of "dynamic" highest difficulty like this, but without the sudden full reset on death (so the more kills, the harder, and the more deaths, the easier, always above the standard difficulty, not below as I'm not trying to make the game easier), at least once you hit max level. The reward being that the more difficult the game is, the better loot would be.

Finally, I also had the idea of "dynamic" events, which would come on top of the suggestion about monsters being at max level everywhere when you reach the cap.
One could imagine that, in order to "promote" some areas of the game, the game would trigger some events in some areas of the game (periodically and randomly - or not - details would have to be brainstormed, but something along "Our scouts have reported that undead forces are regrouping in the farmlands. We need to take the fight to them before they overrun our base").
Those events would mainly be more monsters, more special monsters, but also more loot and more challenge. Maybe even more reward if you complete objectives linked to this event (killing X% of forces, or killing that special monster before some deadline, rescuing X soldiers, ...).
The goal would be to give the player the incentive to discover new places (or come back to old places more often - maybe the game could keep some stats about where the player goes the least), which again in the end, would increase the longevity of the game, esp. once the player has hit the level cap.
Actually that could even be used during the leveling process to randomize the path followed by players if several areas have the same level range.

I could speak a bit more about all this, but I guess you get the idea !

Edit: Also, after seeing the map shared in your other thread, I hope there will be enough dungeon/underground crawling. Maybe that's because I spent so much time playing Diablo 1 back in the days, but I often feel that ARPG are lacking dungeon/underground crawling nowadays. Most of the content is usually in the open and removes part of this feeling of danger due to limited exit route. Actually, I believe that besides Torchlight 1, no ARPG has ever been as much dungeon/underground crawling oriented as Diablo 1 (not even Diablo 2, TQ or Sacred 1/2).

[Chronikuz]

Medierra, what about spanish and other languajes (text) translation? for example "Wasteland 2" will be multilanguaje.

Zidders, before you post I talking about he guy of Shank, they are a great option, and how says, using the art style of the victorian era "etiquetes" can rise great animations.

[eisprinzessin]

Maybe a silly feature: left-handedness for the hero.

I have no idea if it is difficult to mirror animations, but left-handed players, might appreciate, if they can play left-handed heros, with shield/fulcrum in the right and the weapon in the left hand.

Similar for rifles, crossbows and any (in the future to come) two-handed melee weapons. Instead of displaying such a weapon in both boxes in the character screen, you put/display it in the box of the primary hand and grey out the other one.

[varsovie]

Originally Posted by eisprinzessin

Maybe a silly feature: left-handedness for the hero.

I have no idea if it is difficult to mirror animations, but left-handed players, might appreciate, if they can play left-handed heros, with shield/fulcrum in the right and the weapon in the left hand.
.

Just invert all X coordinates for vertices and texture map... If weapons and armor are all symmetric, shouldn't raise any problem.

May I add that you should nearly copy/past " State of the Game Address" on the kickstarter page. You will only have to add how the extra money will interfere.

[Bouss]

Originally Posted by eisprinzessin

Maybe a silly feature: left-handedness for the hero.

He he... I seem to remember, the first time I played TQ, trying to equip a sword in the left hand and being disappointed that I couldn't do it. (I did get over it).

I've been a Legendary Keyholder for about a year and have been following the goings-on in this forum for longer, although I've not really had anything to add to the comments of those more articulate or knowledgeable than myself before. I do hope the Kickstarter thing really, um, kicks off though, and I'm sure there are many others here besides myself who would love to contribute more to a project we all know is going to absolutely knock our socks off.

[Thorns]

Is Kickstarter going up this week?