So I suppose most of you have heard of Chris Roberts and Star Citizen and how they raised over 37 million in their campaign that is running on their site. Although their ship packages are controversial since many say they are P2W I kinda wouldn't agree with that and will most likely pledge basic package. Also Miguel said that Behaviour is doing some work on Star Citizen, that kinda makes me happy since these are 2 games that I am looking forward to most. Well my question is can we expect some campaign similar like Star Citizen one ? Of course selling power items would be disaster for EC so smth like cool decals and trophies for early backers would be more then nice Just some cosmetic stuff that would show our support for the game nothing game breaking. And maybe add some small stretch goals for the game and let backers choose vote on them. Also one more example is DayZ standalone. Since it came to Steam it sold over million copies in less than a month !!! And funny fact is that DayZ is expected to enter beta later this year ! I think that is a great way for players to be included in creation of the game since they get to test stuff and help the creation of the game. This is especially important for massive pvp games like EC. If WAR, GW2 and PS2 used this they wouldn't have to deal with some problems that they had on launch since during closed testing they couldn't bring that massive amount of ppl and experience those problems. And also it would give devs more time and money to finish the game and lets us play it early and help with game creation . Warhammer 40k has huge following and I don't think devs should miss this opportunity. Would you support campaign like this ? Anyway I would like to hear your opinions on this topic and some dev responses would be nice too EDIT: Oh and one more thing i forgot did Behaviour think about modular approach that Star Citizen is doing, For example they have Hangar module already running where you can check your ships and walk around hanger and dogfighting module is on the way. Can we expect maybe smth like small scale ppv in lets say Fortress and later expand it witn ful open world pvp ?
I would like to point out that PS2 did have a huge amount on tester during beta. I participated in the beta myself. The game is losing playerbase because of it's incompetent devs, not because of any lack of testing. Im all for funders package and the like. But bear in mind that inviting players over for beta-testing is not as effective as actual beta tester trying to break the game.
Beta tests for mosts MMO's these days are just glorified server stress tests. The real testing is usually internal and is performed by professional QA (quality assurance) testers. I hope bE actually use the tremendous resource that is the fanbase for their real testing though, unlike so many other companies who ignore them.
I don't think a massive campaign like that would pay off here. SC was able to cash in on the complete lack of high quality space sims out there and many gamers (myself included) threw our money at it so we could live out our space fantasies. 40k has a big fanbase but its nowhere close to the conglomeration of fans that make up the SC community. The more I think about it, the more I'm against letting people buy their way into the actual beta. You'll end up with a ton of people who are just going to use it as a demo and potentially miss out on good testers who just didn't have the cash to buy a 100 dollar package. As far as helping with the game's creation is concerned, we're kind of doing that already. The devs read these forums fairly regularly and actually listen to our feedback so in a way we are helping to shape the game. Just a few founders packages would be fine by me. Let us put some money to help push the development along and give us some shiny bits in return.
GW2 could have benefitted from better understanding the type of stresses the servers would have been under, although to their credit the PvP was balanced better on day 1 than many MMOs I've had the (mis)fortune to play from the beginning. I wasn't in PS2 from the outset, so can't really comment. When it comes to WAR, their beta flagged potential server problems and balance problems, plus the gaping lack of meaningful positions to hold and defend in the open world (forts were included very late in the day). Their main issue was that by that point, they didn't have time to do much more about it. WAR's launch felt very rushed and, to be frank, the game wasn't quite ready to go live when it did. Opening it up to more players would have made the problems even more stark, but I think by that point Mythic had no option but to ignore them, cross their fingers, hit the "launch" button and hope for the best. On the note of encouraging payment for early access, I'm a bit torn. I have a lot of sympathy for independent developers who take that route as a way of getting feedback and generating money to allow them to extend the development cycle. However, its still a very new concept, and there have been some high profile foul-ups already (War Z is probably the most infamous). What would make most sense for EC is really going to depend what type of feedback the developers feel that they need once the game hits closed beta stage. A mass influx of fans into the beta phrase isn't necessarily the right answer.
@Grotar Miguel Caron already confirmed a "Founders Package" dunno if they will go as far as Star Citizen with the hangar... although i won't complain if they release our battleship and they let us customize our characters. Don't think so, the game feelt like rushed for a very long time... personally I think the devs were just doing his job and someone with no idea about videogames said that it had to be released with a fully functional store, similar to what happened with BF4.
Founders Package confirmed as said by Joram. As for a crowd funded game, no need for it. "Behaviour is a very wealthy studio with no debt." -Miguel Caron, AMA. As for "controversial packages", that stirring was caused by people unfamiliar to Star Citizen, saw big ships are for sale, and immediately called pay to win, even though the game isn't released yet and none of the stats are balanced. Star Citizen will be balanced using rock paper shotgun mechanics, one thing kills another, that kills another, that kills another, that kills the one thing, it's circular.
If BE is smart, and they seem to be smart, they will not be tricked into early beta/ early access or whatever. I remember only some months ago that Dean Hall (from DayZ) stated that the game will come out when its ready. And now you get Dayz SA in early access. It's tempting, but there's also a risk to it. More and more games start using the early access/open beta principle but the danger of it is twofold, aswel for the consumer as for the develloper: In a way a game is never really finished, and there's always this and that and such and so that could be added and....before you know it some game is in 'early access' for over a year. Consumers who then complain about certain buggy aspects of the game are told that...'it's beta'. People will eventually grow tired of this. It's tempting for a dev to bring the game out earlier than when its properly finished, you got tons of people begging you for it, you take the early acess route, ad a couple of disclaimers and you got money coming in. Make no mistake, a vast horde amongst the players who politely beg for the devs to open the game for them will be among the first to start complaining and whining 'OMG THIS IS UNPLAYBLE WTF DEVS' and spread negative word to mouth about the game. Then you get drama about wipes, rollbacks etc. If i was from BE I'd be really careful with my timing when it comes to this matter.
I don't like too much early acces in case like DayZ, because I feel like , before this, Dev pay pro Beta tester and now we pay the Dev for make the job of the Beta tester... wtf ... That say, to be honest, I'm a war40k fanboy, so I will try to have a alpha/beta/wahtever acces for EC too, event if I dislike this kind of way.
