Well, I was happy with where this conversation left off, but since there's been no activity, let me just bang on this drum a little more since obviously I'm not derailing anything:
Here's some quotes from KingDinosaurGames from 2014 over at that cesspool of awfulness that is RPG Codex.
You'll find it if you google it, the place is so bad I don't even want to paste a link to it here... Plus the name of the page is unfortunate. But Josh was quite active over there pitching the game, so it is what it is.
Demo - The better the KS goes the worse it is for us as far as dev goes - I've had no time to do any actual development the last week. With the KS cooling down in week two I want to get some heads down time to do it.
I think you'll find the game as it stands has a ton of replay value, but if you are the kind of person who wants every game to be on a geographical new map I can see how it might disappoint you. At the very least if we do fail to hit Procedural Generation I am SURE we'll see a ton of new scenarios from the community because of how easy the editor is to use.
So here this quote states the existing game in 2014 with the crappy looking art assets has a ton of replay value, and a scenario editor that is easy to use (This would imply that it exists, works, and generates scenarios that work in the game)
Update #21 Jan 31 2015
Development Updates, Rewards, Finalized Map, Old Ones, Hereos & the Steady March of Assets
Development Progress
As of last week the map is complete on the technical level with in-house alpha assets being shipped out to artists for improvement.
The Map Builder is complete and will be in the hands of Beta Backers this weekend
Did that map builder go out at all? I remember a non-functional asset viewer went out (that he called 'mod tools')
Remember he was still taking pre-orders here.
Here's a post about the "upcoming" beta release: (From november 4 2015, emphasis mine)
Our up to date list of Stretch Goals that you will be seeing in Beta and their relative state of completion:
Gods and Religions
- Gods and Planes are in and working, but lacking late-game powers and campaigns
- Religions are working but are generally passive at this time, we plan a whole range of upgrades to their content to make them more proactive
- Priest classes are in and work "fine" but a Priest Chosen One tends towards fanaticism (right now Divine Traits bolster religion as a priority and the Chosen One divine path grants excessive divine traits) and is generally terrible leading to the only "easy" game you may have.
- The Inquisition is happy to burn the world
Endless Mode
- The Resistance is in the game but is much less powerful than The Alliance, they currently are most useful at funneling artifacts and relics to sages
- Endless Mode itself won't be available in the beta release but most of the features we added to make it work are in the game
Lesser Evils have three archetypes that will be in the Beta, they currently appear alongside heroes but with a different frame for recognition. They can be recruited and are capable of betraying you, which at this point they are more prone to do than they probably should.
- Hastur is in and is the current most competent of the Rivals as his main goal is to simply prevent any Old One from rising - he will help adventurers against you and send his agents against your own
- Dagon is in and is semi-competent, especially mid-game spreading corruption through Deep One breeding programs, but he currently has terrible late-game AI
- the Elven Emperor and Enoch are both thoroughly incompetent right now and need a lot of work, but their more defining content is in the game so their theme and mechanics are well established
Note the constant talk about stuff "In the game" and "Working". They were still accepting pre-orders at this time. They are describing things in terms of "In the game and working now". That would imply the existence of said game. This sounds like a beta product that isn't perfect, but is capable of being called "A game" that a person could "play".
On february 24, 2016 they removed the pre-order option from their web page, saying that it was because the beta release was imminent.
Here's a collection of Josh quotes, from that same board. Unfortunately I don't know where the originals are, so if anyone knows where these came from it'd be great, because these are the most damning of all.
Josh said:
I don't think it's a viable strategy but back before KS their was a tester who played Azlan who could reliably "tease out" the Chosen One early almost every time so clearly there's some methods I'm just not savvy enough to uncover.
Josh said:
We have an integrated bug reporting solution as well as deterministic saves to make bugs easier to replicate. All bugs go to one of the "QA Leads" who review to make sure it is a real bug and then update a beta-visible spreadsheet with the relevant information and priority. We will have dedicated threads to discuss less obvious bugs and design decisions.
Josh said:
There are a lot of things we could do to release and finish the product if Josh got hit by a bus tomorrow - but we aren't there yet and I am not ready to go there.
Josh said:
Is it possible to capture/kill/corrupt the chosen one before he was actually revealed to be the chosen one early on in the game?
Yes and this has happened to me more than a few times - considering our spawn for a normal size map is 30 heroes you end up with a decent enough chance of grabbing an early unaware chosen one with multiple playthroughs.
Josh said:
Oh wow what a question. I have so many great Karth stories like right after we added the ability for certain creatures (and Karth) to knock down walls but I had one epic battle with Belial on the seal that lasted for 30+ turns before a highly imbued Rake wounded the Chosen One in open combat. I had to funnel orcs in from every direction, cut off the army from its base with Deep Ones, and bring the giants back from across the sea. Belial's aura continued to trigger horror in attackers denying breakthroughs and after the Chosen One got wounded I triggered an attack, got the breakthrough I needed, and Belial managed to rip the Chosen One to pieces.
Josh said:
Only in games that I'm not really trying to win - however I have lost within moments of winning to an adventurer Chosen One that has NOT rallied the world but instead simply prepared in silence to battle me. As long as you put some effort into identifying and hindering the Chosen One this won't happen but even knowing that (and having played the game hundreds of times) I still sometimes fall into the trap of focusing on my schemes to the detriment of my defenses. If the Chosen One has not publicly appeared it means that he or she is preparing to defeat you by more subtle means, you NEED to react to this.
Josh said:
haha, well they've gone mostly overboard because Desperation isn't well balanced yet. I've seen villages sacrificed to hasten rituals by what were once upstanding and honorable men, kings sacrifice their children to demons to gain some infernal support, elves marrying dwarves to forge alliances, and a Chosen One kill his friends to gain access to their artifacts. The problem right now is that they are a little TOO eager to do these things - I think Desperation is still the perfect AI mechanism but we do need to balance out a little bit how far desperation can "bend" a player's personality. I'd like to have it "pervert" a personality trait rather than simply globally expand thresholds but we'll probably work that out during the beta.
Josh said:
We've had over ten thousand notables pinging properly without any noticeable performance problem, but that's because notables are REACTIVE as opposed to proactive - they mostly sit there and wait for something to occur. Heroes you can have hundreds but you'll start having issues when you get up around 500 or so. Ruler AIs tend to be a problem not so much due to their processes but because the more you add the more each other ruler needs to take into consideration, I would recommend keeping it below 100. The only time I have seen slowdowns in the AI in one of our large games is when massive multiple front wars are taking place, and profiling says it's the commander AIs causing the problem.
Josh said:
The worst heroes are the ones you never see because you ignored them - it still happens to me occasionally when I'm testing a particular feature that I'll forget to look for the Chosen One and he will come a knockin when I'm not ready. However, when playing better I have suffered no end of frustrations from Elven Chosen Ones - they are tough, difficult to corrupt, and they bring the weight of the elven nations behind them. I almost always fall into rallying the humans against them and trying to frustrate their diplomatic advances. I also discovered (I suppose designed?) that the best way to bypass the defenses of a hero is to get them engaged as a commander and engineer a commando breakthrough, I've successfully killed elven and dwarven chosen ones this way though we have since introduced a bodyguard companion type that will negate this at least once.
I've done what everyone knows they're going to do (you know you will, don't deny it) and killed the Chosen One's family, burned their home town, turned their wife into a lich, and turned his friends against him. Definitely worth doing at least once.
Josh said:
What was your best Seraph game like?
I purposefully recruited all the invader types from the North Burns and had my coalition go against the honor bound men of the west allied with the wild tribes. It certainly wasn't the most viable strategy but I wanted to thematically recreate that tension. I didn't actually finish that game because of a bug, but it was a lot of fun to see all the cultural tension triggers going off.
Josh said:
What I want to know is: what's the funniest set of events that's happened to you? IE, even if it was something that completely wrecked your plans, was there anything that just made you laugh?
Nothing gets me as much as the lothario hero that impregnated and married everyone but I already told that story, so it has to be the Peddlar's glorious rise to dictator over New Peddlaria (I named it after a failed previous attempt at making the perfect Peddlar utopia). I wanted to ensure that even the worst Agent could, given proper grooming, become a fixture on the global stage - so I ended up getting the Peddlar a coterie of courtesans including a unique Courtesan which gave him an unearthly bonus to handling city challenges. After his meteoric social rise he befriended and corrupted a few key commanders and then used his persuasion to get them appointed heads of command before declaring a coup. I immediately passed the free trade law because obviously New Peddlaria is pro-peddling but my noble plans were foiled when a loyalist stormed the castle, attacked me, and on his first turn performed an attack that killed every courtesan minion. It was a national day of mourning in New Peddlaria, doubly so because it was quickly rejoined with its parent nation.
So he's talking about alpha testers, multiple full playthroughs, funny stuff that happened in playthroughs, etc. You don't make up all this by accident.
Here's an interesting article from one of the people on that site:
http://matthewhopkinsnews.com/?p=4505That article is well written and lays out the events pretty well. I... don't think you'll want to go elsewhere on that blog, it seems to share a lot of the same fringe politics as RPG codex itself.
Here's the stuff about the OTHER kickstarter Josh was involved in, Stay Out of My Dungeon.
http://matthewhopkinsnews.com/?p=4769This was created by 2HG games, for 2 handsome guys, one of those handsome guys being none other than our Josh! You'll notice similarities such as: Game is claimed to be almost complete, just needs money for art; Lots of weird excuses for delays, etc... Initially the guy behind the game denied knowing Josh at all, then changed his tune and said Josh was just the site owner who the kickstarter was in the name of...
So, once again, if you were defrauded and reside in the US, please contact the FTC, AG, and maybe FBI (quite honestly I don't think you'll get much response there...) Maybe Josh getting a visit from the Feds might be enough for him to realize he should stick to factual claims in the future. Many other countries have better consumer protections than the US, so if you reside in another country, check with your consumer protection agencies.
It's hard enough to get backing for something you're passionate about without people having to worry if you're just lying to them. So please help punish the liars. It's one thing to back a project when the risks are known upfront, but when the project creator outright lies about the risks, it makes it impossible for you to make an informed decision. I don't want to hurt Josh or Joe, frankly, I just want to prevent more of this behavior.
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Topic: That which sleeps- Kickstarted! (Read 372219 times)