I agree it is my my opinion that I dislike them LoL is successful so I cant argue with that. But I must ask are you here to play an average game with nothing new other then its potential scale (which if they take all the icing away probably wont be very big at all after a few months) or are you here to play an awe inspiring game that everyone enjoys?
Like I said, PS2 don't have big socializing places, so are Heroes and Generals, but still they're good games and not average like you said. Planetside 2 offers somewhat unique experience which you can not find in any game on the market at the moment. A lot of people must think like I do because they still play them. To be honest, an unbalanced class screws a game much worse than not having a social place. BTW, Hearthstone, poor chat system, no social place whatsoever, hundreds of thousands people play that game every day.
2 new races, an open world with conquerable objectives and an overarching campaign, a broader variety of classes and races, additional content expansions planned...no, none of those are groundbreaking lay new concepts (I give as many fucks as Nathan on this point), and Founders Access is going to feel a bit like SM multiplayer because of the proposed setup, but the final product will only bear a passing resemblance. I should probably also be clear. Sleepylion and I both agree that personalised ship quarters are cool. I think we both also agree that personalised guild trophy halls are cool, which were also hoped for. And it definitely has the potential to offer non-character cosmetics to boost the flow of microtransactions, which is good for the devs and players (although see EVE's Icarna for why this isn't automatically a win-win situation). This isn't in dispute - what's in dispute is how critical this is to be in place for launch. Both my personal feeling and observed experience from other MMOs says this is "not very critical" in comparison to a number of gameplay features with it in the "maybe" box, although YMMV. On the budget/deadline/crowdfund angle, the budget is in effect a deadline, because Behaviour staff do need to get paid (trust me on this one) and staff costs are generally one of the biggest ongoing expenses of any business. It's not an ironclad deadline, because the studio can use its reserves to support the game, they could (potentially) seek additional investment, and there'll be an element of contingency budgeting that may or may not be used. But sooner or later the game has to launch to and be successful to keep Ivan and Nathan in sufficient supplies of squirrel food and spandex, respectively. The Founders Packs provided an additional cash injection (amongst other things) and has likely helped the decision to delay launch in pursuit of adding all of the desired features. Because delays aren't costless. Much though we might like the concept that a delay means more time to work on more stuff, and cut stuff makes space for other stuff, often a delay means less time to work on the same amount of stuff - and stuff is cut when it doesn't look likely to fit the new timeframe. A heck of a lot of games launch later than planned and without features originally planned with because of this. I'm not in a position to say where on this line EC is, and the difference between "Your cash helped us to include 95% of the planned and hoped for features, as opposed to only 70% of them, even though you probably hoped your cash would let us include 110% of the planned and hoped for features" and "Thanks for the bucks, now we've got your money we'll put our feet up and launch a bit later with less stuff, suckers!" is a bit too subtle a distinction for most people that don't study or follow game design. As for the Nids, they're one of the game's core population balancing mechanics, and the lynchpin for the PvE content. In many ways, you could argue that they're more core to gameplay than any individual playable faction. Speaking personally, I'd argue that the critical part of social interaction is linking it to the gameplay so the two fit together naturally and complement each other. The best example I've come across which illustrates this is two mobile multiplayer games; Boom Beach (BB) and Horus Heresy: Drop Pod Assault (DPA). They're fundamentally the same game, a mix of PvE and PvP, both having "guild" functions in game. DPA has much more intuitive social functions and handles rivalry and rewards for success more effectively. But the guild tab is absolutely dead. Weeks can go by with no-one in the guild talking to each other. BB, on the other hand, has incredibly lively guild chats and a growing out-of-game rivalry between some of the top guilds. Many players overlap between the two games, so it isn't an issue of different communities at play. The difference, then? In DPA, there is no co-operative activity. Your guild is a group of people that all do their own thing, as there is no need, and no way, to collaborate. BB has godawfully hard challenging group PvE encounters, with massive reward carrots, that benefit from close co-operation. So you end up talking to each other, and after a while it's not just about the gameplay activity, but about other game aspects, other games, outside life, etc. But it required the core gameplay content to make that happen. It's an extreme example, but neatly illustrates the point that I'm trying to make. If you get the skeleton and the flesh right, people will tolerate a delay for the pretty skin to go on top. But a pretty skin surrounding a fleshless corpse is going to hurl everything into a permanent state of stagnation and decline from the start. Just ask the Emperor...
You are indeed wise Kanthric. I do know that Budget is a dead line its apart of what we have learnt of the priority triangle <Time, Budget and Quality> you can have 1 on the mark or 2 half and half but never all three. Personally I prefer having a mix of Budget and Quality I would prefer to wait for something that is good then something shitty and rushed which is one reason that Xbox One suffered when they rushed out the door to complete with PS4 and it wasnt finished and people lost faith (as well as the earlier shitty concept ideas no one liked). But they could easily drop Nid's and I hope they do not. They do not need them fore PvP and can just put in down to they will come latter or they wont reasoning that SleepyLion wanted terminator armour and a dreadnought and they ran out of time and that it was designed as a PvP game not PvE. Like I said I pray to Russ and the Emperor they keep them but they are cutting out everything else. But again Kanthric you are right it cannot be just bones or just meat but by they looks its going to be all bones :'(
I had thought the personal quarters Strike Cruiser dealio was one of the shoe-in features, it's not a crucial gameplay element sure, but still it's an important flavor feature.
I don't think we can really tell what feature is just bare bone, and what is flavor. Because some features are just not only core to the gameplay but also help spice things up. For example, the Nids, they exist to balance the pop, they're the core to the gameplay, without them the balance may be messed up, so in your term they're now the bare bone. However, since this is a PvP centric game, most of the time people will play the PvP part, but sometimes, a group of friends may decide that "All this PvP make us tired, let's kill some Nids to relax", then they go doing PvE and have some fun with it, so now the Nids become a flavor. Therefore, I think you're wrong to assume that devs have removed all the flavors from the game and just leave a bare skeleton. Because what players enjoy is gonna be the flavor, it doesn't have to be a personal quarter on a Battlebarge. On the other hand, it doesn't matter if you try to add tons of flavors to the game, if players don't like them then they're not good flavors.
Honestly I won't care if you have to delay the game another 6 months to get it right. I'd rather you release an awesome product than forcing it out in patches (*cough* star citizen *cough*) which lead to people getting unenthused. Thanks for the update!
you realize that your argoumentation are damaging the game and the dev team? and for your info: terminator are no more confirmed in the game: they are in a limbo state.
