As far as i know there only game KOAR, and my opinion of it was that it was kinda average + Show Spoiler +
I played on hardest difficulty and did all the side quests in the first area, which took about 6 hours, was incredibly boring and made you overpowered as shit. The faction system was an absolute piece of crap and you simply couldn't do any side quest, even on hard... even the very few "fun" ones, since you would get to overpowerd and 1 shoot everything. The "story" picked up a little bit in the 3rd/4th areas, and it was really nice at the very beginning of area 4. That said the "final" area, which should have been the "epic" battle that rewarded you for having all the abilities you do by throwing hard enemies and a very hard boss, was a face roll... The last fucking boss, which lore wise had god like power and thus they had a lot of potential with it.... was FUCKING DOG SHIT !
And i would have "forgiven" KOA, many would have, if you actually had something to fucking fight that doesn't die from 1 button press, koa had great combat mechanics and specs... and most of all it had "mobility" in terms of which spec you chose to use, it was really easy to change gear with crafting every 5-10 level and respec to something new, and it was fun to change from mage to mage-warrior to mage-rogue... but the game was still a complete face roll.
Now putting out an averag/kinda bad rpg won't make me kill you, especially if its not a sequel to great rpg ( like DA2 and ME3 were, to give recent examples )... most critics encouraged it, but the problem was that this game might have had more content than skyrim, and it was done by a team that obviously had less experience ( tho most of them were "big names" in the industry, they didn't had the synergy of Bethesda )... problem is that most of the "side" content was shit compared to skyrim.
That basically made it a high cost development, high development time, no hype to have millions of pre orders and cows buying it blindly due to sequel/developer, A game like that doesn't afford being anything else than close to game of the year if it wants to be success and still needs to be a very good game if it wants to "cover" its cost an average profit.
It wasn't, and if anyone thought it was/thought they could make it, that person was a retard and its better to see these great developers take jobs for other studious with better leadership.
On June 08 2012 03:45 Jinsho wrote: It was a bad game. Too long, too stretched, incredibly bad camera. Boring fetchquests that would take you through the entire map to complete, quest items and bosses that would only spawn once you had the quest leading to tons of backtracking into explored areas...
Like Skyrim, I didn't even finish it I was so bored by the end.
I thought it was way worse than Skyrim... at least skyrim can be pretty good with mods and looks very pretty. KOA:R was the biggest disappointment I've had in my entire gamer life. I also think it's among the worst stories in a video game ever.
On June 08 2012 03:55 gullberg wrote: Some horrible management basically. Reckoning sold over a million copies, which is fucking fantastic for a first game and it still wasn't enough to keep them afloat (they had to sell 3 million).
They sunk most of their time/money into developing the actual KoA MMO. I'm not sure, but I would assume Reckoning only happened when they realized they're already in a huge mess and needed to sell a game ASAP, and sell it big.
That said, the game was marketed very aggressively, hit the market at a perfect time and oversold by a lot. I doubt the next Amalur IP game would have gotten anywhere near the same sales.
Overall, even disregarding business and management, they did a lot of things textbook wrong when it comes to actual development and design.
you make it sound like games can just be created instantly. not every company is similar to EA that can spew out a new football game every couple of weeks if they wanted to.
Well this makes me feel pretty bad for pirating it, but I wouldn't have even played it otherwise. Was a fun enough game, but I wouldn't pay over £15 for it. Edit: Also played through it all on hard and was no challenge at all, didn't even do many side quests because it just felt too easy that it was simply running round doing chores. Almost as imbalanced as + Show Spoiler +
I played the demo on PS3, the combat was pretty fun but nothing in the game made me interested in continuing any further, much less actually buying the game. They made the dumbest move you can in the entire industry, they tried to break into the market with an MMORPG which as many of you know, it's pretty much impossible to compete with WoW. When they realized it wasn't going to work without an established name, they turned it into a single player game that had no single player appeal at all. They put all of their money on this hand so they kinda deserve this happening, although it's sad so many lost their jobs because of shit business decisions from the executives.
The game was waaay overhyped with EA publishing it and Salvatore writing the lore for it. I'm sorry that the employees lost their job except for the ones who designed the inventory system. I mean, Sykrim's inventory system was archaic too but this was 2 steps below that.
On June 09 2012 01:33 valaki wrote: The game was waaay overhyped with EA publishing it and Salvatore writing the lore for it. I'm sorry that the employees lost their job except for the ones who designed the inventory system. I mean, Sykrim's inventory system was archaic too but this was 2 steps below that.
i totally agree, although i think it's one of the smaller things, i still can't believe RPGs these days could take such gigantic leaps backwards in terms of basic things such as inventory.
Such a shame. I was looking forward to what ideas they had with their upcoming MMO.
On June 08 2012 03:45 Jinsho wrote: It was a bad game. Too long, too stretched, incredibly bad camera. Boring fetchquests that would take you through the entire map to complete, quest items and bosses that would only spawn once you had the quest leading to tons of backtracking into explored areas...
Like Skyrim, I didn't even finish it I was so bored by the end.
On June 08 2012 03:45 Jinsho wrote: It was a bad game. Too long, too stretched, incredibly bad camera. Boring fetchquests that would take you through the entire map to complete, quest items and bosses that would only spawn once you had the quest leading to tons of backtracking into explored areas...
Like Skyrim, I didn't even finish it I was so bored by the end.
I loved Skyrim. I guess I'll try KoA then.
Dont, Skyrim is amazing. KoA is just crap with more crap controls. I only tried it because of day9, never will try anything again. (its that bad)
On June 09 2012 02:18 1ntrigue wrote: Such a shame. I was looking forward to what ideas they had with their upcoming MMO.
On June 08 2012 03:45 Jinsho wrote: It was a bad game. Too long, too stretched, incredibly bad camera. Boring fetchquests that would take you through the entire map to complete, quest items and bosses that would only spawn once you had the quest leading to tons of backtracking into explored areas...
Like Skyrim, I didn't even finish it I was so bored by the end.
I loved Skyrim. I guess I'll try KoA then.
Dont, Skyrim is amazing. KoA is just crap with more crap controls. I only tried it because of day9, never will try anything again. (its that bad)
My cousin/friend swears its the best game. I was bored to tears watching it.
I find the story behind KoA:R and Curt Schilling and 38 Studios fascinating, to be honest. That company going under is one of the biggest failures in video game history, I think.
That's a terrific article on the whole thing, and I recommend reading it. It's largely Curt Schilling's fault, it seems, but he's not a bad guy.
1. One of the most incompetent people you could ever put in control of a company
or
2. It was run by a thief with a degree who cashed out big time by burning the place to the ground.
The ammount of debt they build up, contrasting with the work they did, just doesn't add up. They were 150 million in debt, but only had 22 million in assets.
Are you kidding me? There is a serious case of fraud, or the people behind the wheel just didn't know what the hell they were doing.
But thats not really the point, TL members not liking it or not is irrelevent, the game was still decently successful. It sold 1.2M copies which is great for such a game, from a relativly unknown studios. And its also a new IP.
The problem was just the debt the studio endured was out of proportion for such a small company. If a company relies on its first game selling 3Million just to break even, either its a big management failure or the project is just too big. I mean all this is sad but it really looks amateurish and poor decisions, the game quality isn't to blame.
I find the story behind KoA:R and Curt Schilling and 38 Studios fascinating, to be honest. That company going under is one of the biggest failures in video game history, I think.
That's a terrific article on the whole thing, and I recommend reading it. It's largely Curt Schilling's fault, it seems, but he's not a bad guy.
Great article, thanks for linking. My favorite part was when a former employee described the company's downfall as the result of Curt Schilling's "rampant and destructive optimism."
EPT
