by harmonic » Sun Jan 31, 2016 10:12 am
Blitzen, I am almost entirely focused on Vald's comments. Nothing you've said has rubbed me the wrong way. Vald's comments would have people believe that I purposely designed this game for boys, which is factually false. Vald, I did NOT design this game only for boys. I would appreciate if that accusation could be put rest.
It's not "hostility" coming from me - I am seeing gross misrepresentation on this extremely hard-earned project. It's defensive at worst, and I prefer to call it clarification.
See, I know people don't like politics and military and stuff. I know that. I don't like it either. I think the perception by a few here is that this game is meant to be all about that stuff.
This is not the case! Skyborn live and died based on its light-hearted narrative. And while this one does get heavier, it is not the main focus of the game at large. Yes, it is the main focus when Lucian decides to form a rebellion. Then it becomes more about that than the character development. But quantitatively speaking, when people say there's less character development in this game than my past games, that is downright factually false false false!
The "politics" is meant to be a backdrop. Not the main focus. It just moves the story along. It's like Game of Thrones - it's a backdrop, but what people really care about is the character drama. Those "politics" you're perceiving are actually just a filled out, well-developed world. Yes there's titles of nobility, yes there's brief talks of "military stuff", but... what exactly do you want? Would you rather have an extremely 2-dimensional simplistic game world? Good kingdom versus Evil Empire, the good kingdom is lead by a virtuous king, the evil empire is lead by a big mean bad guy, and your journey is to kill him to save the world? Then you'd accuse me of being generic!
So, I decided to flesh it out. Make it believable, almost. In medieval history, there were loads of royal marriages designed for political benefit. That's what happens here. Does the game obsess about that? No - it's briefly mentioned but it's an important backdrop item. It is what drives characters and entities to do what they do. That's important in any story - why people do things, why the plot exists.
The narrative won't change. The only thing that we would improved, and have improved, are balance changes and aesthetic changes. I'm not going to go back and completely disassemble a huge game like this in order to simplify it. I appreciate honest and accurate feedback and I've received an immense amount of it. Which is why we've been turning around builds extremely quickly to suit customer feedback.
And yes, I have to wonder - if you don't like fleshed out worlds, if you don't like watching cutscenes, reading dialogue, if you don't like engaging in RPG Battles - what is it about RPGs you like, then? I've given you the option to skip everything, or do everything. Seems to me the experience is in the player's hands!
There's so much more to this game than politics and fighting. So much more. It's heartbreaking to hear someone poop all over my baby like that. Why did we even bother loading it up with tons of deeply-thought-out features? Why did we pour so much money and time into it if a few people focus like a laser beam on one thing they really don't like and then assign that dislike to the rest of the game? I have people saying it looks amateurish because of tilesets. Only tilesets. Let's just ignore that pretty much everything else is expensive and robust - literally everything else. But just because ONE thing isn't... that means the entire game is amateurish.
Again this isn't hostility. Please don't perceive it that way. It's passion.