Sword Coast Legends To Introduce RAGE OF DEMONS and Tile Based Editor

JonArkanix · Oct 31, 2015

I think most people forget that Neverwinter Nights out of the box required quite a few updates to kill crashing bugs, errors with the ruleset, updates to the eventual publicly available editor, etc. I'm talking 20+ updates over years, not two or three like the typical game release.

Dire Bare · Oct 31, 2015

Reinhart said:
It certainly doesn't have most of the features that I desire. For a lot of people, it clearly doesn't play just fine. The designers promised to have the tools for designing and running entire campaigns. What they delivered just doesn't fit the bill. Perhaps all you want or need from a campaign editor is a random map generator that you plop monsters down into, but a lot of us expect a lot more than that before it becomes useful. I need more direct control than they currently offer. So I'm going to wait and see what it's like with an actual level editor, dialogue options, and greater DM influence over monsters and NPC's. I find it strange that DM software that doesn't allow you to use orcs or dragons is somehow seen "complete."

So calm down and take a deep breath because your defense of the game comes across as a little hysterical. It's not that you like SCL that seems odd, it's the fact that you completely misunderstand the rest of us who don't.

Reinhart said:
Probably the #1 skill in game development is expectations management. And expectation management is partly a matter of marketing. It doesn't matter if you technically never lied or not. It doesn't even matter if you do lie. What matters is if the expectations of your customers are met by the reality of your product. And when you market your product your job is to create those expectations and draw mostly people excited about it.

Tetris is a respectable game. But if you thought you were buying Super Mario and I sold you Tetris? I'm pretty sure I'd have an irate customer and deserve it. I'm not sure who was in charge of marketing SCL, considering Digital Extremes and Hasbro both had their hands in promoting it as well. What I do know is they did a terrible job of it, because they made a lot of people very unhappy. As a result they have been hemorrhaging players. SCL has roughly 11% fewer customers now than there were at the beginning of the week. That means that since it came out, demands for refunds have outpaced sales!

Now, you might say "There's no way it's so bad it deserves that!" I agree, but that's why the people in-charge of the marketing for this game should be sacked. Because I think people wouldn't be upset if they had known what they were getting into. And there was almost a year of promoting this game where it was plainly apparent what the players wanted and expected. Basically, this was a disaster that was easily avoidable.

Now that we know what it is? I'm willing to buy it. Just not for $40, and not until it has the features that I actually want. I didn't pre-order this game because I was skeptical about n-Space's claims which seemed out of synch with the game they were actually showing off. I still understand and sympathize with the people who bought this game feel mislead though.

I can accept if someone who's played the game doesn't care for it. If they find the story campaign lackluster, or the gameplay less than exciting, or if the gameplay simply doesn't press their buttons. I'd even accept someone stating that the game *feels* incomplete at launch based on their expectations (fair or otherwise). If you feel the game is "feature-poor", I can accept that. If you feel like you didn't get enough fun for your $40 or more dollars, that's fair. Give the game however many stars you want!

But the game isn't incomplete or unfinished, N-Space didn't ship a broken game. We might be arguing semantics, but I get so tired of folks lobbing BS attacks at game companies (pen-and-paper or computer). It's the hyperbole, and then the doubling-down on the hyperbole, that irritates me. Not that anybody here needs to worry about poor ol' me getting irritated, but that's why I shot back.

I've paid perhaps a medium-level attention to the marketing for the game. I've watched all the trailers, read most of the major previews, and canvassed the SCL website fairly well. I haven't watched any of the developer videos or Twitch feeds, but I liked that they were available. I personally don't find that the marketing overreached very much, at least not any more or less than marketing tends to do for any product.

I also haven't devoted a significant part of my life to the game once I got it, I'm into the story campaign a few chapters, I've played around with the creation tools, but haven't tried my hand at designing any of my own adventures. Once I get that far, perhaps I'll be underwhelmed also. But so far, I'm having a blast and I am totally feeling Baldur's Gate nostalgia, as I feel that the new game looks and plays very much like the classic I remember. Does it play exactly like BG? Of course not, I can tell the differences even though it's probably been decades since I've touched an Infinity Engine game.

The idea that the marketing got folks all excited for a different game experience than was shipped . . . . if that's your opinion that's fine, of course, but I'm not seeing it myself. I don't really care much if folks love or hate the game, rate it highly or poorly, I just get irritated at attacks that (to me, at least) seem to have no basis in reality, perceptions be damned. I'm like that with the pen-and-paper games also, my "game company apologetics" is fairly equal opportunity. I got no skin in the game with SCL . . . other than I hope the game survives with a decent player base for a long time, as that will increase and extend my own enjoyment of the game.

Dire Bare · Oct 31, 2015

darjr said:
Yup.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...s-face/page2&p=6740362&viewfull=1#post6740362

"One of the things I put to the designers when we framed this all up for them was, I want you to take this campaign, and I actually gave them the 5th edition starter set and I said I want you to take this campaign and I want you to reproduce it, I want you to reproduce it, and I want anybody to be able to reproduce it. And if they can't, the tools aren't done. And so uh, I think we got to a place where you can create that content real quickly and real easy and uh and just recreate your favorite homebrew or your favorite module or whatever your heart desires."

-Dan Tudge

Is that clear enough for you?

While I read your quote from Tudge, I didn't go back to watch the linked video the quote came from. So if the video holds more context, I've missed it. But based on what I'm reading, it seems that this isn't a problem of Tudge promising more than N-Space delivered so much as folks interpreting what he said and expecting the whole-nine-yards on Day One. I'm not going to bother getting into an over-analyzing developer speak match with anybody, I'll just leave it at I strongly disagree that N-Space delivered a unfinished game or a game severely different from stated goals (or raised perceptions through marketing).

I paid for the digital deluxe version, the game matches what I expected from the marketing I was exposed to, I'm having fun, and (as usual for me) I'm not really understanding certain types of complaints about the game. I've got no problem with folks not enjoying the game or giving it zero stars (out of however many), I just don't see the complaints of the game being unfinished or different than expectations as justifiable.

Jester Canuck said:
Other than [MENTION=52905]darjr[/MENTION] 's quote, there's also this fun image from the official video:

View attachment 71506

Okay, yes, what that means is unclear. Which seems to be the best defense they can offer. Everything they said and did suggested a return to a Baldur's Gate style game but they never actually explicitly said that. Almost carefully so.
So, no, they didn't "lie". They just spoke in an unclear way that gave a false impression and never corrected that impression or clarified the truth. Completely different than lying.

N-Space, to my knowledge, isn't claiming that their marketing is unclear and led to false expectations. That is the complaint, or attack, of some gamers. And I strongly disagree that N-Space has been dishonest, purposefully or through neglectful marketing.

They advertised the game as a return to classic D&D RPGs . . . the only sensical way to take that claim is as a reference to D&D computer RPGs, like Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights, not any version of the p-n-p game. And as far as I'm concerned, they are 100% on that claim. If you personally don't feel that SCL lives up to classics like BG or NN, that's fair, but it is definitely the same type of game.

Dire Bare · Oct 31, 2015

ppaladin123 said:
Yes but there are levels of fidelity to the rules. I think a lot of people were expecting a Neverwinter Nights or Baldur's Gate-level of fidelity....adapted for real-time but with spell slots and feats and domains and opportunity attacks and per rest abilities and skills and so forth intact. Some of those are the things that make d&d different from other tabletop games and contribute to its feel.

This video game does not have any of those things. It does have skill trees and skill cool downs and "magic missile III." So yeah, there is no platonic form of "d&d" and people are free to call this whatever they want but I think we can at least agree that there were more dramatic changes to the ruleset in this adaptation than 1. were expected and 2. strictly necessary to make a video game (see games above) and that A. many of the things that were removed are things that draw people to d&d games (video or otherwise) and B. many of the things added turn off some people who prefer the approach to such things taken in the tabletop rules.

Heh, I think it's obvious that we all don't agree. Which is fine. I agree that SCL is a looser adaptation of 5E than earlier games are adaptations of the earlier 2E and 3E D&D rulesets, but not significantly IMO. None of them were tight adaptations, IMO. BG was certainly more turn based with abilities that required a rest to recharge, while SCL has abilities on a cool-down . . . and if that breaks the game for you, okay. But it doesn't for me, and again I think some of the complaints/attacks on SCL are unjustified. Dislike, disappointment, fully justified, just not the claims of being an unfinished game or a game shipped differently than expectations were led to believe.

Jester David · Oct 31, 2015

Dire Bare said:
N-Space, to my knowledge, isn't claiming that their marketing is unclear and led to false expectations. That is the complaint, or attack, of some gamers. And I strongly disagree that N-Space has been dishonest, purposefully or through neglectful marketing.

Again, they weren't dishonest. But neither did they go out of their way to temper expectations or focus on the strengths of the game. They didn't go around correcting people who expected it to be Baldur's Gate: Redux, which is a *huge* problem, not just for the appearance of lying but because you're not marketing to the right people. There's lots of hack-and-slash fans of action RPGs who might have dismissed this game as being too "turn based".
Even at the time I noted the silence from the company and the lack of hard information. They were not a transparent game company. They said their talking points and then just let the fan hype build. They did nothing to manage expectations. Which probably seemed like a good thing at the time, since it was free publicity, but it should have been easy to see how it could backfire.

But I really do feel there was something... disingenuous... about their marketing campaign. They focused on just the right phrases to make people think of BG and the like, even mentioning the CEO's relation to BioWare and DragonAge over his many other credits with other companies (he was a director, which is very managerial. And even then he was more involved in Sonic than DA:O). They really wanted to attract the D&D/Baldur's Gate crowd even though the game was very different.

Dire Bare said:
They advertised the game as a return to classic D&D RPGs . . . the only sensical way to take that claim is as a reference to D&D computer RPGs, like Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights, not any version of the p-n-p game. And as far as I'm concerned, they are 100% on that claim. If you personally don't feel that SCL lives up to classics like BG or NN, that's fair, but it is definitely the same type of game.

I find it much more like Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance in that it's more inspired by D&D and is focused on multiplayer hack-and-slash against endless waves of enemies.
The thing is, there's lots of "classic" D&D games and a wide variety of different genres and styles. You have the Baldur's Gate or Dark Sun Shattered Lands games but you also have the first person Eye of the Beholder games, beat-em-ups, realm management, action side scroller, fighting, and so many others. They could have emphasized what classic game they were emulating. Instead, they just said "classic" and hyped the DM tools and let people speculate away.

Dire Bare said:
I enjoyed the voice acting! Or, at least, the voice acting I've heard so far, I'm not nearly as far into the game as you are.

There are some weak voices. There are some great voice actors in the industry, and many have a fondness for D&D. Instead, they hired people who's biggest role was bit parts as unnamed characters in movies, little more than extras. Sometimes it shows, with weak or even silly readings of lines. There are still some good voices, but it's uneven and there is a lot of ridiculous accents.
It's not the worst part of the game, but it's certainly not as praise worthy as some reviews single out.

Dire Bare said:
While I'm not as disappointed as you are with the game, I like your review, it's very thorough and fair!

Thanks. I'm hard and critical but I try really hard to point out both the good and bad and give fair criticisms.

Is the game unfinished?
Y'know, I might disagree with that as well. I've played a lot more games where the end is patched or DLC. Heck, you could make that complaint regarding Baldur's Gate II or Diablo 2 or Dragon Age Inquisition. The game feels fairly complete.
Now, the DM tools are a different story. Whether or not you include them as "the game" is something else. Those are woefully incomplete and lack some basic functionality (the ability to write quest text that is more than just "accept" or "decline" for one, basic monsters, some very simple scripting, more details quests like finding or delivering an object, and the like). Plus features like being able to run though with a pregen party to test. Whether or not that counts towards the game as a whole being "unfinished" depends on if you were looking forward to running for friends or not.

JValeur · Oct 31, 2015

It's good for all of those who enjoy SCL''s gameplay. Unfortunately, I don't. Obviously I would have loved a closer adaptation to 5e - something like DoS' with d&d rules is my wet dream - but I could have lived with these alternate mechanics had they at least been enjoyable. They aren't, to me. Thus the campaign editor (which I loved the basic engine for, albeit fairly lacking in functionality) become useless.

At least I can stop hoping the game will bee something it won't. I hope the rest of you enjoy it, it looks like some great improvements will be happening

discosoc · Oct 31, 2015

Am I the only one who was turned off by the "real time combat" thing? I never did give the game a try because of that. Does it work better than it seems, for someone who's more into P&P RPG's than Diablo? Or is it sort of a GM-controlled diablo game?

Henry · Oct 31, 2015

smiteworks said:
I disagree. It's not as tactical as it would be with a turn-based approach (my preference), but you still have similar tactics that you have in Baldur's Gate and other RTwP style games. .

I have to say, for the complaint from the reviews that it's "not D&D", that your description of tactics just now sounded an awful lot like D&D to me.

I'm hoping that not a lot of people really had the expectation that it was going to be a faithful rule translation, because the design team interviews for months have said that it wasn't going to be a duplication of the rules.

SCL is likely not going to be for me (all my effort and fun cash right now is going to Fallout 4) but it may pick it up in a few months, because if Morrus is to be believed, it's very similar in feel to NWN, and I was a sucker for that game back when it was released.

Morrus · Oct 31, 2015

Jester Canuck said:
Again, they weren't dishonest. But neither did they go out of their way to temper expectations or focus on the strengths of the game. They didn't go around correcting people who expected it to be Baldur's Gate: Redux, which is a *huge* problem, not just for the appearance of lying but because you're not marketing to the right people. There's lots of hack-and-slash fans of action RPGs who might have dismissed this game as being too "turn based".
Even at the time I noted the silence from the company and the lack of hard information. They were not a transparent game company. They said their talking points and then just let the fan hype build. They did nothing to manage expectations. Which probably seemed like a good thing at the time, since it was free publicity, but it should have been easy to see how it could backfire.

But I really do feel there was something... disingenuous... about their marketing campaign. They focused on just the right phrases to make people think of BG and the like, even mentioning the CEO's relation to BioWare and DragonAge over his many other credits with other companies (he was a director, which is very managerial. And even then he was more involved in Sonic than DA:O). They really wanted to attract the D&D/Baldur's Gate crowd even though the game was very different.

I don't think it's that - I think it's more that us tableletop gamers literally aren't on their radar. I couldn't even get myself on their press mailing list, and I tried! They didn't make it for us. To them - and to the majority of folks, who don't play tabletop 5E - it is very similar to Baldur's Gate or NWN. The people who would distinguish between rule sets - us - are a niche of a niche.

Kramodlog · Oct 31, 2015

Morrus said:
I don't think it's that - I think it's more that us tableletop gamers literally aren't on their radar. I couldn't even get myself on their press mailing list, and I tried! They didn't make it for us. To them - and to the majority of folks, who don't play tabletop 5E - it is very similar to Baldur's Gate or NWN. The people who would distinguish between rule sets - us - are a niche of a niche.

Ok, but why does tabletop D&D seem so tied to SCL? All the APs are set on the Sword Coast and the FR source book they just released is named Sword Coast Adventurer's Handbook. In the OP of this thread N-space said it was going to put the Rage of Demon storyline in its game.

Sword Coast Legends To Introduce RAGE OF DEMONS and Tile Based Editor

JonArkanix

Explorer

Dire Bare

Legend

Dire Bare

Legend

Dire Bare

Legend

Jester David

Hero

JValeur

Explorer

discosoc

First Post

Henry

Autoexreginated

Morrus

Well, that was fun

Kramodlog

Naked and living in a barrel

Similar Threads

Voidrunner's Codex

Related Articles

Voidrunner's Codex