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Ew, F2P. At least they're not a major studio, so hopefully they don't get too predatory with monetization.
I'm seeing F2P and "powerful heroes", so this is starting to feel like League of Legends with a few drops of RTS sprinkled on top.
Don't judge a book by its cover. There is plenty of gameplay out there, RTS players worldwide have played the alpha. It's basically Starcraft 2, meshed with Warcraft 3, with creep camps. They are targetting a 1v1 PvP mode, and a 3vE mode where you play against AI, similar to how SC2 has the commanders 2vE mode.
It's basically Starcraft 2, meshed with Warcraft 3, with creep camps.
So... a moba with some RTS in it? Because that's exactly what WC3 plays like, with a huge focus on levelling your heroes, and everything else a sidenote. That's why I liked SC2 much more, it's actually an realtime tactics game, not a moba with baggage.
Don't get me wrong, I like the 3vE concept, and the story campaign. But I hate the moba-style hero focus.
... Moba started with a warcraft mod. You might have heard of it, it's called DOTA. Warcraft is a staple of RTS, and so is Starcraft. Both had "hero units" since forever - with the campaigns in Starcraft featuring hunter killers (hero hydralisks) for example, later in 2 featuring Jim, Kerrigan, Artanis. It's nothing new really, and it's really unfair to say that an rts that features heroes, like Warcraft, makes it a moba with some RTS in it.
There's a huge gap between the SC2 (and especially SC1) heroes, or C&C/RA heroes, and the WC3 hero units. For starters, in SC they only appeared in the campaign, not multiplayer, and that's totally fine with a narrative story campaign. In WC3 the heroes were absolutely the most game-defining feature, if you played a slightly suboptimal creep-run and didn't level your heroes quickly enough, it didn't matter one bit how well you did everything else. Hero-micro was absolutely the main component of most multiplayer matches, kill the enemy hero and you win.
The problem isn't having heroes in the game. The problem is when they become WC3-powerful, because then the game stops being tactics and troops and RTS, and starts play like a moba with slightly better creep-control. There's nothing with a Moba+RTSelements game, if it's fun, it's fun and all power to them. But I'm really hoping it won't be that. Gimme SC2/C&C gameplay any day over WC3
What does the hero unit's strength matter if they're just in the campaign or coop modes?
It doesn't. But are they?
Yeah, they are campaign and coop only. No hero units in 1v1. Also, even in the campaign, there is no levelling them up. They're just beefy named units with unique abilities.
Looks cool but financing via kickstarter, I don't know. If they have a history of delivering, sure I guess. Isn't this just a different way of "early access"?
They are fully funded already, this is for a collector's edition, and beta access so they can scale the infrastructure before the game itself is ready for release.
Shovel Knight was kickstarted and they have a total flat hierarchy, fair payment system, and evenly distributed wages and bonuses.
I work for a major games studio and if I started my own studio, I would 100% use crowdfunding. Financing in games is broken.
You tend to need someone with deep pockets willing to eat costs for 2-5 years for 10-100 people (depending on project size) in the gamble it'll pay off. Because it's a gamble, the financer (in most cases China's tencent) are constantly breathing over your shoulder and demanding the impossible (oh all the devs say this'll take three years? You have six months) and the motive changes from "make enough money for the studio to survive" to "make enough money so your financial backers can get a new boat".
Then with F2P and live service (where I work) you get the constant demand for growth and perpetual play. Forget that churn is inevitable as people's moods and desires change. Forget that there's a maximum number of people in the world that are interested in your game. You have to grow at all costs all the time. That's what leads to the predatory F2P system.
We also have to remember F2P was born out of Shareware, perhaps my favourite distribution model. In non-corporate hands, it can be a fantastic thing.
Shit ain't easy for devs. Give them some slack.
Have to pass because there's no mention of Linux