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Post by Drath on Mar 2, 2016 7:46:25 GMT -8
Noting Steamspy figures for owners and players for existing games right before Liberation Day launch: Sunrider: Mask of ArcadiusOwners: 434,685 ± 15,523 Players total: 127,771 ± 8,420 (29.39%) Sunrider Academy (which by the way is having a hefty discount at the moment) Owners: 23,866 ± 3,640 Players total: 20,083 ± 3,339 (84.15%) So uhm wanna make bets on how sales and activity (owners and players) for Liberation Day will look like in 1 month's time, 2 month's time, etc?  (It's not accurate for 2 weeks post launch, so early data could be skewed or wrong) Let's hear some predictions perhaps based on MoA and SA figures. Also I say the devs should promise us something if they hit certain sales figures... you know like making a free voice over mod (I mean you should see the hoo-ha on Steam forums over English voices not being there anymore), not that I'm forcing them or anything like that of course ...totally no coercion here  Lately I've found this article from them quite interesting (especially the part on things to watch for when watching others play) and thought I'd share as perhaps others might find it intriguing as well. Old thread on MoA/SA sales at Hyperspace forums for comparison of sales figures about 1 year ago. Gamer profile ( how it was developed, what it does) and the tool itself. Here's a recent article from them looking at strategy games and age, based on their data from the profiles... Their conclusion was the interest is relatively stable for strategy games and doesn't fluctuate much with age. Well d'uh they didn't need to tell me that... I've been playing TBS for years so I know how it is Hopefully next time they'll tell me something I don't know Here's another article looking at strategy games, "Easy fun" and "Hard fun".... makes me wonder where Sunrider falls if plotted on those graphs (say Excitement vs Strategy xD). I don't necessarily endorse their views (and I'd like to think I know what's fun for me ) but it's nice to consider other views, especially if you think such a viewpoint makes good sense to a sizable audience and could lead to better sales if taken into consideration. Old thread on Gamer motivation profile at Hyperspace forumsAnyhow this is me wishing the devs a successful Liberation Day launch and many sales ahead. Hope the articles above are able to provide some very limited help/insight for you guys and if not, well hope they gave you a good laugh at least |
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Post by vaendryl on Mar 2, 2016 7:55:27 GMT -8
great stuff quite enjoyed the marketing article, though doing that stuff sounds expensive (in various ways). |
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Post by Marx-93 on Mar 2, 2016 14:40:01 GMT -8
Thanks for doing this topic again Drath, helpful as always! |
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Post by Marx-93 on Mar 22, 2016 5:13:44 GMT -8
Bumping this thread for some careful considerations about Liberation day (sorry for the double post) now that there has been some time and data. Let's look at the Steamspy page here. First, it counts around 2500 sales. However, that number is not likely very accurate; Steamspy numbers only get really accurate once you pass the threshold of 30.000, and before 5.000 sales it's only a very ballpark number. The big fluctuations also point to this. Liberation Day could have sold from 2000 to 3000 copies (and of course this also counts the KS backers and people from patreon; you have to take out around 1700 in the worst case). Now, on the interesting tidbits. The average playtime has a median of 7:40 hours, and even the mean (which in Steam tends to be very contaminated by people who still haven't played or only touched it for a while) is not that far off. Furthermore, there's likely contamination from beta-testers like me (I have, I think, around 5.5 hours?) who just didn't bother replaying and redid everything from a save of the previous beta. Even with 2.0 it seems very unlikely a Waifu mode player would have reached that playtime, or even someone playing on casual. We can thus affirm that, unlike what everyone started believing just after the release, that the average player of Sunrider plays on Ensign mode. While the chunk playing on Captain or higher is unknown for me, I suppose Samu-kun has the stats for the "Captain" achievement and thus knows the true number. In all cases, all points to it being a remarkably high percentage of the players. Furthermore, even the median and mean of the playtime of these last 2 weeks is significantly high (median of 7.02 hours). While the release of 2.00 can explain this, I find it unlikely that the bulk of people would entirely replay the game 3 days after it again in captain mode just to see the extra scenes: either they would use the same trick that I did, loading from a battle save, or they did a very quick playthrough skipping everything in waifu mode.
All of this is very significant, because it points towards a very high degree of bias on the initial reception: the first players only interested in the VN part made a very quick playthrough and thus reviewed the game first, clearly dominating over the one who played for the gameplay, that took their sweet time finishing (and thus took more time to make the review) Even the scores reflect this; even with 2.00 the change on ratings (and even the "most helpful" reviews) is pretty astounding. Thus, the initially very bad impression is more due to a bias in the type of players than the game's intrinsic worth. TLDR: The thought that this game's audience is mostly people who rushes through battles in waifu mode is pure bullshit. The earlier impression is due to a bias in the time they took to finish the game |
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Post by Blackhead on Mar 22, 2016 8:34:10 GMT -8
We can thus affirm that, unlike what everyone started believing just after the release, that the average player of Sunrider plays on Ensign mode. While the chunk playing on Captain or higher is unknown for me, I suppose Samu-kun has the stats for the "Captain" achievement and thus knows the true number. In all cases, all points to it being a remarkably high percentage of the players. Just to add to that. Global gameplay stats (achievements) are openly accessible on Steam. Finished complete game on Captain: 13,5% Finished complete game on Admiral: 2,4% Finished complete game on Space Whale: 1,8% Sadly there are no achievements for easier difficulties. I presume that a considerable amount of players didn't even play through the whole thing, hard to prove without any stats though. It would be great to have an achievement for every mode in the next game, but simply having one for finishing the game (regardless of mode) would already help out a great deal in these discussions. |
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Post by Marx-93 on Mar 22, 2016 9:34:40 GMT -8
Just to add to that. Global gameplay stats (achievements) are openly accessible on Steam. Finished complete game on Captain: 13,5% Finished complete game on Admiral: 2,4% Finished complete game on Space Whale: 1,8% Sadly there are no achievements for easier difficulties. I presume that a considerable amount of players didn't even play through the whole thing, hard to prove without any stats though. It would be great to have an achievement for every mode in the next game, but simply having one for finishing the game (regardless of mode) would already help out a great deal in these discussions. Oh, they were accessible? Tried during half an hour from my phone, but had no luck. Thanks Overall however, 13.5% is already relatively significant. From the previous data it appears roughly 65% of the players played during the last 2 weeks, and as that includes just before 2.0 went live, it's likely a good approximation of the percentage of "active players" who have finished the game (and thus went for 2.0); this translates to an overall 20% playing on captain or higher, which, while not as high as I hoped, continues being a decent chunk of the total. It's very likely ensign (as the default difficulty) has 40-50% of the players and a mix of casual and waifu have the rest. |
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Post by Drath on Mar 22, 2016 10:12:31 GMT -8
Bumping this thread for some careful considerations about Liberation day (sorry for the double post) now that there has been some time and data. Let's look at the Steamspy page here. First, it counts around 2500 sales. However, that number is not likely very accurate; Steamspy numbers only get really accurate once you pass the threshold of 30.000, and before 5.000 sales it's only a very ballpark number. The big fluctuations also point to this. Liberation Day could have sold from 2000 to 3000 copies (and of course this also counts the KS backers and people from patreon; you have to take out around 1700 in the worst case). I didn't bump this mostly because as we all know sales were not encouraging and I didn't want to be a downer. The other issue being that values tend to be inaccurate in the first few weeks. But since you've brought it up, let's go through it together. On sales, I'm worried that the fluctuations may also be due to players returning the game after purchase. Quoting Steam: You will be issued a full refund of your purchase within a week of approval. Hence the drop off and fluctuation in owners, a week after launch. Samu-kun mentioned that the vast majority of people rushed through the game on day 1 on Waifu mode. Some were saying if you skipped all the battles in Fire Emblem and just read the story, it would probably suck too. As Blackhead stated, we don't really have enough public data to verify this, which is a pity, but everyone can plainly see % completion on Captain is disappointing enough that this is quite possibly the case and as you've mentioned, the median playtime doesn't point strongly to players doing Lib Day on recommended difficulty or higher. We can thus affirm that, unlike what everyone started believing just after the release, that the average player of Sunrider plays on Ensign mode. While the chunk playing on Captain or higher is unknown for me, I suppose Samu-kun has the stats for the "Captain" achievement and thus knows the true number. In all cases, all points to it being a remarkably high percentage of the players. Blackhead has already mentioned the raw global achievement figures. My interpretation based on global Steam achievements and Steamspy figures: I define players as 'people who finished the prologue', which should take less than 30 mins on Captain. If you didn't, I consider you an owner. Player/Owner% = 73.6% These conclusions are somewhat supported by Steamspy figures which show: Players total: 1,572 ± 925 (64.71%) with Owners: 2,429 ± 1,150 Yea as usual there are a good number of people who buy the game but don't really play it. All percentages below are based on players, NOT owners. If you finish on a higher difficulty, you count towards achievements for lower difficulties as well. Therefore % players (over total players) who finished on: Captain = 11.1/73.6 = 15.1% Admiral = 0.6/73.6 = 0.8% Space Whale = 1.8/73.6 = 2.4% These figures ignore possible use of Steam achievement managers as hacks. And of course figures from Denpa sales which don't activate Steam overlays are not available. It also assumes that if you bought the game at launch, 17 days (or 2.5 weeks) of play is enough time to finish the game for interested players. All of this is very significant, because it points towards a very high degree of bias on the initial reception: the first players only interested in the VN part made a very quick playthrough and thus reviewed the game first, clearly dominating over the one who played for the gameplay, that took their sweet time finishing (and thus took more time to make the review) Even the scores reflect this; even with 2.00 the change on ratings (and even the "most helpful" reviews) is pretty astounding. Thus, the initially very bad impression is more due to a bias in the type of players than the game's intrinsic worth. Agreed! The wrong community tags didn't help matters either. Apparently ppl thought it was a dating sim. When I was promoting the game on the turn based strategy group on facebook, I ran into the same issue. The turn based fans there thought this one was similar to Sunrider Academy (since that was the last game) and so didn't hype it as a turn based game. Not having enough correct marketing before launch didn't help. Of course I've corrected that misconception for said TBS group before the game was launched but it'd be a chore to keep doing that for separate communities. So yes once again, get those tags fixed for starters so that anyone on the Steam store page can plainly see what it is. It's good to promote the new art but having only 2 late screens on battlefield and the rest of the Steam vids and pics being focussed on the girls wasn't ideal either. TLDR: The thought that this game's audience is mostly people who rushes through battles in waifu mode is pure bullshit. The earlier impression is due to a bias in the time they took to finish the game I agree with your observations/conclusion. I regret to say that from a purely financial perspective if I were a dev, I'd be more than a little miffed too if I spent a year of development trying to cater to TBS folks to get this as a result. If gameplay reception and % completion on Captain does not improve, I don't see why I shouldn't screw the turn based players over and focus on romance, simulation, nudity and mindless clicking. I guess there's a reason why the Sakura games do so well. Lowest common denominator wins... sorry folks... I think we should give more support/encourage the modding community if we would like to see works that cater to specific needs. The devs have financial considerations to think about and as stated above, it currently doesn't look good at all for turn based fans. |
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Post by worstwaifu on Mar 22, 2016 10:18:08 GMT -8
Yeah! I went back through on casual after I learned that upgrading offensively was the way to be.
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Post by Techercizer on Mar 22, 2016 10:30:57 GMT -8
If gameplay reception and % completion on Captain does not improve, I don't see why I shouldn't screw the turn based players over and focus on romance, simulation, nudity and mindless clicking. I guess there's a reason why the Sakura games do so well. Because that's all the series has to offer beyond gameplay? Some of us actually like the plot and characters, which started to get pretty thought-provoking after Ongress. If you see the plot as nothing but a contrived conveyance for nudity, that's one thing, but it doesn't mean other people can't enjoy it. |
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Post by Drath on Mar 22, 2016 10:44:32 GMT -8
TechercizerI'm not saying the plot isn't important. I've mentioned in previous/other threads that I do like the writing and the characters as well but felt Lib Day felt a little short in that regard. What I'm trying to convey here is that turn based component is likely to be under appreciated based on the data from reviews, achievements, sales.
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Post by Marx-93 on Mar 22, 2016 11:20:34 GMT -8
What I'm trying to convey here is that turn based component is likely to be under appreciated based on the data from reviews, achievements, sales. To be honest, that's actually as someone can expect from the context of the game. It's a game made by a developer called "Love in Space" with famous VN publisher "Sekai project" and advertising anime art style and Japanese voiceover (despite being originally English). I mean, imagine for example Dark Souls but with a group of schoolgirls, skimpy outfits instead of armours, a brighter palette, and made by Compile Heart. I can't imagine it would have sold well either... The way the game had basically 0 advertising beyond "having waifus" didn't help; none of the trailers had even a speck of gameplay, and as someone who tends to follow up to dozens of currents JRPGs, I can assure you most of us have this as a pretty big "not good" prospect. It has been quite a while since MoA too, so most people have probably already forgot about it, specially if they had 0 interest in Academy. And the price doesn't help either. I mean, for example, Drath , if you had found the original MoA for 20$ would you have paid it? Specially with the mixed reviews this is having? On other matters, the market audience of this game is originally very low from the beginning. Most games of the type really need prices around 10$ to really have tons of owners, because with the original niche market you simply won't reach it. Even monsters like Grisaia and Clannad, with entire franchises and anime adaptations build around them, general praise for both writing and technical aspects, having each a length of 50+ hours and a ginormous Kickstarter each still haven't reached the 20k. The only way to really go above that is through sales. Academy had very big results due to a combination of factors including numerous sales, a lot of people remembering MoA and buying it because of that (wanting to support the devs) and even luck. Lib Day could really try targeting that audience, but as of now it's a little too alienated from them. I mean, I myself though that the combat part of the game was being shafted in the early development, and I was a beta tester! If I was confused, then imagine the MoA players who tried it because it was free and then found the developer going all VN with Academy and the earlier trailer. Heck, even the first screenshots amongst the ones found in the steam page have no gameplay. There really needs to be a gameplay video (like with MoA) to simply show what the game is; I can really imagine some people going "oh, it's the sequel of Sunrider, that free game. Man, the game was laggy as hell, but the gameplay had promise. Huh, the OP and the Art is improved... wait, no gameplay on the trailer? Oh, man, it's going to be like Academy, right? Yeah, mostly positive ratings, uah, the reviews say under 4 hours... Oh, well, a shame, but 20$ are kinda a lot too, I think I can get Valkyria Chronicles with that..." |
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Post by Graph on Mar 22, 2016 11:31:59 GMT -8
Hmm, I actually play the game offline even though I bought it on Steam. I'm not sure if the achievements can sync to the Steam Cloud, or if that's possible with this game. Judging by the numbers on the low-hanging achievements though, it probably wouldn't change much even if it did sync stuff earned offline.
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Post by Blackhead on Mar 22, 2016 12:14:42 GMT -8
Techercizer I'm not saying the plot isn't important. I've mentioned in previous/other threads that I do like the writing and the characters as well but felt Lib Day felt a little short in that regard. What I'm trying to convey here is that turn based component is likely to be under appreciated based on the data from reviews, achievements, sales. Especially in relation to the time that was put into it. I'll be honest here. Cutting/dumbing down gameplay in favor of more story, waifu service etc, might help the game in regards of the general, casual audience. But the core fanbase (Typically people you find here on the forums) won't approve of this. We can't underestimate the importance of a strong core-community. In the end it's not casuals, who play the game for a week and then forget about it, who keep the game alive. I can only speak for myself but gameplay was the main reason why I kept playing Sunrider in the first place. Depending on how much the game forfeits in that department it could very well be enough so that I'd have to say "I respect the direction the devs chose to take, but here's where we part ways." Marx last post: Good breakdown on underappreciating strategy aspect, wrong expectations and reasons why the game ultimately flopped. Despite all the problems LibDay had in marketing, writing, etc, I'm still shocked that Academy is received better, because that game was truly unbearable.  |
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Post by SharrOfRyuvia on Mar 22, 2016 12:41:39 GMT -8
Bumping this thread for some careful considerations about Liberation day (sorry for the double post) now that there has been some time and data. Let's look at the Steamspy page here. First, it counts around 2500 sales. However, that number is not likely very accurate; Steamspy numbers only get really accurate once you pass the threshold of 30.000, and before 5.000 sales it's only a very ballpark number. The big fluctuations also point to this. Liberation Day could have sold from 2000 to 3000 copies (and of course this also counts the KS backers and people from patreon; you have to take out around 1700 in the worst case). Now, on the interesting tidbits. The average playtime has a median of 7:40 hours, and even the mean (which in Steam tends to be very contaminated by people who still haven't played or only touched it for a while) is not that far off. Furthermore, there's likely contamination from beta-testers like me (I have, I think, around 5.5 hours?) who just didn't bother replaying and redid everything from a save of the previous beta. Even with 2.0 it seems very unlikely a Waifu mode player would have reached that playtime, or even someone playing on casual. We can thus affirm that, unlike what everyone started believing just after the release, that the average player of Sunrider plays on Ensign mode. While the chunk playing on Captain or higher is unknown for me, I suppose Samu-kun has the stats for the "Captain" achievement and thus knows the true number. In all cases, all points to it being a remarkably high percentage of the players. Furthermore, even the median and mean of the playtime of these last 2 weeks is significantly high (median of 7.02 hours). While the release of 2.00 can explain this, I find it unlikely that the bulk of people would entirely replay the game 3 days after it again in captain mode just to see the extra scenes: either they would use the same trick that I did, loading from a battle save, or they did a very quick playthrough skipping everything in waifu mode.
All of this is very significant, because it points towards a very high degree of bias on the initial reception: the first players only interested in the VN part made a very quick playthrough and thus reviewed the game first, clearly dominating over the one who played for the gameplay, that took their sweet time finishing (and thus took more time to make the review) Even the scores reflect this; even with 2.00 the change on ratings (and even the "most helpful" reviews) is pretty astounding. Thus, the initially very bad impression is more due to a bias in the type of players than the game's intrinsic worth. TLDR: The thought that this game's audience is mostly people who rushes through battles in waifu mode is pure bullshit. The earlier impression is due to a bias in the time they took to finish the game Just throwing my own tidbit in, but I think it was more they didn't feel the story was worth the battles; In Captain mode or higher, you tend to put a lot of emotional investment in the story-payoff being worth the hell you went through to win the tougher battles. Anything lower then Ensign is people seeing if the story is worth it without the strain of investment caused by the latter. Short version - I'm of the opinion that the people who complained the loudest was largely because of their opinion of the story and not the gameplay, but NOT that gameplay was ignored; rather I think that playing on higher difficulties probably made it sting worse when they felt the plot failed to make it feel worth the effort ( Then again, I admit this might be a biased opinion since it's practically my own experience; my first playthrough was on Captain and... well, my initial thoughts at the time are a dead horse that's been very, very well beaten by this point, ^_^; Suffice to say I didn't think the good gameplay alone was enough). Point being... you're really just arguing semantics, I think - good gameplay needs a good story to serve as the payoff for the hard work you put into it, otherwise it'll probably just piss people off worse. It's been brought up before, but that was Mass Effect 3's big mistake for many as well; if something as big as the story fails, the point's moot. And TBH, I really don't think the first reviews were just "waifu-runners" - I beat the game in 7-9 hours the day it came out (stayed up and played from 6:00 PM to around 3:00 AM straight, minus bathroom breaks and dinner-time), on Captain difficulty. I personally don't think it's fair to say the first players were only interested in the VN or that the average player uses Ensign Mode; that speaks more to casual players coming later as opposed to the diehard-fans who would be first in line to play. It might simply be that Sunrider was lucky enough to have players who were that devoted, you know (again, possible bias here since I'd be one of those after-mentioned devotees and am using my own playtime as a benchmark to judge ). |
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Post by SharrOfRyuvia on Mar 22, 2016 12:51:25 GMT -8
Techercizer I'm not saying the plot isn't important. I've mentioned in previous/other threads that I do like the writing and the characters as well but felt Lib Day felt a little short in that regard. What I'm trying to convey here is that turn based component is likely to be under appreciated based on the data from reviews, achievements, sales. Especially in relation to the time that was put into it. I'll be honest here. Cutting/dumbing down gameplay in favor of more story, waifu service etc, might help the game in regards of the general, casual audience. But the core fanbase (Typically people you find here on the forums) won't approve of this. We can't underestimate the importance of a strong core-community. In the end it's not casuals, who play the game for a week and then forget about it, who keep the game alive. I can only speak for myself but gameplay was the main reason why I kept playing Sunrider in the first place. Depending on how much the game forfeits in that department it could very well be enough so that I'd have to say "I respect the direction the devs chose to take, but here's where we part ways." Marx last post: Good breakdown on underappreciating strategy aspect, wrong expectations and reasons why the game ultimately flopped. Despite all the problems LibDay had in marketing, writing, etc, I'm still shocked that Academy is received better, because that game was truly unbearable. In all honesty, I'm not sure dumbing it down would be something we'd have to see. The pre-existing assets from LibDay ought to ensure that they don't need to start from square one when it comes to combat. The thing is though that I think Gameplay is made important because of the STORY just as much as it is vice-versa - a story satisfies more when you have to work for it because the triumphs and hardships feel more real; more personal. LibDay's failing was that it's story (V1.00 at least) didn't make many players feel like the fights they went through were worth the narrative they were given - a deficiency that can make practically any battle, no matter how good it is on it's own, feel hollow and pointless. I mean, it's why I think Academy was better received - I think people felt the story they were getting was worth the tedium of the life-simulator (which is why those who see it as "truly unbearable" seem to be such a minority  ) - a balance of effort and reward. LibDay failed to make a story that felt like good payoff for the strategy element in the eyes of many players, and good strategy might just have been salt in the wound if they felt the payoff wasn't there. People seemed to feel it was a case of failed expectations, not wrong expectations - or rather, that they feel the game's own strategy wasn't appreciated by it, because it didn't have a good story to balance it with. If YOU went into it for strategy alone, that's fine - but you might want to acknowledge that focusing too much on that was Samu-Kun's admitted reason the story wasn't focused on; ergo, focusing solely on strategy was what caused the very deficiency that people said was LibDay's big failing. What's needed is a balanced blend of it all - and if either side is more hefty then the other, it'll likely fail. |
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Post by Techercizer on Mar 22, 2016 16:41:37 GMT -8
Gonna back up SOR on this one. The TBS component is fun, but not exactly revolutionary, while the plot is hefty in some places, and paper-thin in others. Sunrider is at its greatest when it uses gameplay to reinforce and bolster plot - when you feel like you know what you're up against, and when it uses plot to shore up its gameplay - when you know what you're fighting for.
When you get down to it, the story can't really exist without a solid TBS component; it's just not the kind of thing to stand on its own, and the reverse is just as true. Even if you just want to pander, you've got to focus on what can hook your audience and keep them happy. I think Liberation Day showed us that Chigara's boobs alone aren't enough to capture a base.
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Post by Drath on Mar 22, 2016 22:36:22 GMT -8
To be honest, that's actually as someone can expect from the context of the game. It's a game made by a developer called "Love in Space" with famous VN publisher "Sekai project" and advertising anime art style and Japanese voiceover (despite being originally English). I mean, imagine for example Dark Souls but with a group of schoolgirls, skimpy outfits instead of armours, a brighter palette, and made by Compile Heart. I can't imagine it would have sold well either... The way the game had basically 0 advertising beyond "having waifus" didn't help; none of the trailers had even a speck of gameplay, and as someone who tends to follow up to dozens of currents JRPGs, I can assure you most of us have this as a pretty big "not good" prospect. It has been quite a while since MoA too, so most people have probably already forgot about it, specially if they had 0 interest in Academy. Yea, I quite agree with that. It's not really something the regular forumers can relate to so easily though. Some of us have been following the series for a good while, posting on and off and we're mostly fairly in touch with game direction and recent developments. The majority of players probably don't follow the game that closely though and on hindsight, it'd be hardly surprising to find that they have a good many questions and/or are confused by the way the game is shown and tagged on Steam. To be fair, Samu-kun did describe it as the "continuation of MoA, hardcore turn based tactics with heavy story elements", but well I already know that not everyone reads the wiki... so it's not really surprising that there are some people who don't read store descriptions either. And the price doesn't help either. I mean, for example, Drath , if you had found the original MoA for 20$ would you have paid it? Specially with the mixed reviews this is having? Well I didn't really want to touch on price very much for a few reasons: 1)It's fairly subjective. What's expensive or not, largely depends on your financial standing and how you perceive the worth of a certain piece of software. A corporate executive earning a good salary every month would probably not bat an eye if that's truly something he's interested in. His time is more important than trying to nickel and dime things. A postgrad student fresh out of college still struggling to repay old loans might decide to wait for a sale. I don't think there's a definite right or wrong really and everyone is entitled to their opinion. 2)It appears to be pretty dependent on regional pricing. I believe the actual price is 25 USD as per Steamspy. However on my Steam store page it's currently 47 in local currency for me or about 12 USD going by current exchange rate. From chatting with Magpie, I know it's very substantially pricier in terms of pound sterling for him, roughly twice (assuming we both converted our local prices to USD). Of course this is all just price discussion per se as we both got our Steam codes via Patreon. But since you've brought it up, my answer would be I do think it's worth $10 as in 10 USD for beta testing benefits, the full game on release and the Sunrider: Veniczar novel. In other words, the Patreon package. That being said, I have been labelled as "rather cheap" by people I know. I'm not really going to defend the $25 price tag. If people are happy paying that, well sure, don't let me (or Marx or anyone else for that matter) deter you from doing so. Supporting the devs is certainly good in my book. But here are prices for comparison for some other turn based/real time with pause titles I've bought off Steam (these are not initial prices, but the actual price I paid in USD): Divinity: Original Sin - 39.99 XCOM: Enemy Unknown - 29.99 Pillars of Eternity - 21.25 The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky - 16.99 Avadon2 - 9.99 Avernum: Escape from the Pit - 9.99 Valkyria Chronicles - 8.55 Shadowrun: Dragonfall - 7.75 Warhammer Quest - 6.20 Blackguards + Blackguards2 + DLC - 6.19 (best purchase EVER!) Aarklash Legacy - 5.00 Shadowrun: Hong Kong - 4.75 (and the devs provided FREE extended content later on) Lords of Xulima - 4.75 (best purchase EVER!) Expeditions: Conquistador - 2.38 Avadon - 1.99 You'll note that with the exception of the first 4 which are more or less AAA titles with many hours of gameplay, the rest were bought cheaper than Lib Day. All are IMHO pretty good games which have their own charm. That being said it's also possible Sam prefers to price higher now as he anticipates doing heavy sales in future. Sunrider Academy was at 80% off at one point, so who is to say something similar will never happen to Lib Day. Academy had very big results due to a combination of factors including numerous sales, a lot of people remembering MoA and buying it because of that (wanting to support the devs) and even luck. I was telling Mags the other day, that Sunrider Academy remains the ONLY dating sim on my list of Steam games, the vast majority of which are TBS or RPG titles. I did like the humor and writing in Sunrider Academy, but if I had not come across First Arrival, the chances that I would have bought it would be miniscule. I mean, I myself though that the combat part of the game was being shafted in the early development, and I was a beta tester! True. In beta 8 and 9, all we had was mostly story and just 1 battle. I don't think anybody could tell that things would turn out to be short on the VN side back then. The testers saw lots of text, a few choices (sparing Cosette, preserving Havoc, branching paths for Ava's response, etc) and truth be told, I felt things were more or less fine then on the VN side. It wasn't until beta 10 where we had a revamped Intel/Funds system, and suddenly had a stretch of an additional 4 battles with 3 being back to back. Beta 11 saw a meager 2 pages of feedback and everyone was too caught up throttling bugs and testing new features (ie achievements) by beta 12. Hmm, I actually play the game offline even though I bought it on Steam. I'm not sure if the achievements can sync to the Steam Cloud, or if that's possible with this game. Judging by the numbers on the low-hanging achievements though, it probably wouldn't change much even if it did sync stuff earned offline. Yea, that might be an important consideration that I failed to mention. I had the impression previously that some games tend to sync with Steam, so achievements earned offline do get updated when you go online again but now I'm not so sure. Maybe the devs can clarify matters. I can only speak for myself but gameplay was the main reason why I kept playing Sunrider in the first place. Depending on how much the game forfeits in that department it could very well be enough so that I'd have to say "I respect the direction the devs chose to take, but here's where we part ways." Let's be proactive, brainstorm some ideas on what we want to see for new units, new abilities, new mechanics, new battle objectives, etc. And then see if we can code it ourselves. The modding section is still sadly quite empty (apart from Histidine 's Arcade mod) and while bigfoot has done quite a bit already, pity feedback on his previous efforts isn't as much as it could be. Contributing to feedback is part and parcel of fine tuning the modding process and is certainly NOT trivial. In the end I'm hoping it might help the devs a bit and save them a little time if they had something to start with. Not claiming we can actually do it but better to have tried and failed than to not have tried at all. As for Academy, I honestly felt it was pretty funny even if the management parts could feel a little slow... hmm should I chat about Politics or Weather xD ... but then again I'm not a semi-pro real time strategist used to rapid play lol. |
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Post by Marx-93 on Mar 23, 2016 2:21:27 GMT -8
Just throwing my own tidbit in, but I think it was more they didn't feel the story was worth the battles; In Captain mode or higher, you tend to put a lot of emotional investment in the story-payoff being worth the hell you went through to win the tougher battles. Anything lower then Ensign is people seeing if the story is worth it without the strain of investment caused by the latter. Short version - I'm of the opinion that the people who complained the loudest was largely because of their opinion of the story and not the gameplay, but NOT that gameplay was ignored; rather I think that playing on higher difficulties probably made it sting worse when they felt the plot failed to make it feel worth the effort ( Then again, I admit this might be a biased opinion since it's practically my own experience; my first playthrough was on Captain and... well, my initial thoughts at the time are a dead horse that's been very, very well beaten by this point, ^_^; Suffice to say I didn't think the good gameplay alone was enough). Point being... you're really just arguing semantics, I think - good gameplay needs a good story to serve as the payoff for the hard work you put into it, otherwise it'll probably just piss people off worse. It's been brought up before, but that was Mass Effect 3's big mistake for many as well; if something as big as the story fails, the point's moot. And TBH, I really don't think the first reviews were just "waifu-runners" - I beat the game in 7-9 hours the day it came out (stayed up and played from 6:00 PM to around 3:00 AM straight, minus bathroom breaks and dinner-time), on Captain difficulty. I personally don't think it's fair to say the first players were only interested in the VN or that the average player uses Ensign Mode; that speaks more to casual players coming later as opposed to the diehard-fans who would be first in line to play. It might simply be that Sunrider was lucky enough to have players who were that devoted, you know (again, possible bias here since I'd be one of those after-mentioned devotees and am using my own playtime as a benchmark to judge ). I don't think we're really arguing about semantics when some people actively shun the gameplay element. Neither I'm trying to talk about reception depending on them playing it on Captain or not, though there's definitely a correlation. The main point was that the initial reception and reactions were highly biased by the "waifu-runners", and that's a fact, not something you can really argue: -The rating and reviews started hitting by 9-10 hours after release; while this gives time to some passionate fans like you to make a run in Captain, I think we can agree the percentage of this is statistically insignificant, because it requires non-stop playing in very differing timezones. I'm not saying that there weren't people who played in Captain in them, but that in those first hours there was a high bias towards those that finished earlier because of being in waifu mode; in all cases, we're talking about the first hours of the game so the divide between "casual" and "hardcore" does not even enter the divide. Taking 2 "days" to finish the game still enters as a "hardcore" fan, just in a harder difficulty that makes battles longer; and likewise decrying people who play in waifu mode as all casual is ignoring that a lot of people were fans of VNs and Academy and followed Sunrider because of that -All the reviews considered as "most helpful" in Steam in the first days had the main point against the game being its shortness. All decried different decisions, but to the point to which they offered more consensus was the game "lasting 4 hours" (even more than decry against the ending and with only decry against railroading Chigara being somewhat comparable). This obviously points to at least casual difficulty selection, if not lower. And the average player is certainly ensign; not only has numbers been offered that at most 20% of the players plays on Captain or higher, but it's even the default difficulty. To be honest, I agree on most of what you say about combining story and gameplay, but dude, facts are facts. The entire point of the post was to make clear that Samu-kun's idea of "most players playing on waifu mode and going through the battle at top speed" is actually false, and due to a bias in the most initial reviews of the game just after the release. Now, that even players on Captain or higher criticize the writing or some decisions it's obvious, but at least they won't claim that the game does indeed lasts less than 5 hours. |
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Post by SharrOfRyuvia on Mar 23, 2016 8:25:45 GMT -8
Just throwing my own tidbit in, but I think it was more they didn't feel the story was worth the battles; In Captain mode or higher, you tend to put a lot of emotional investment in the story-payoff being worth the hell you went through to win the tougher battles. Anything lower then Ensign is people seeing if the story is worth it without the strain of investment caused by the latter. Short version - I'm of the opinion that the people who complained the loudest was largely because of their opinion of the story and not the gameplay, but NOT that gameplay was ignored; rather I think that playing on higher difficulties probably made it sting worse when they felt the plot failed to make it feel worth the effort ( Then again, I admit this might be a biased opinion since it's practically my own experience; my first playthrough was on Captain and... well, my initial thoughts at the time are a dead horse that's been very, very well beaten by this point, ^_^; Suffice to say I didn't think the good gameplay alone was enough). Point being... you're really just arguing semantics, I think - good gameplay needs a good story to serve as the payoff for the hard work you put into it, otherwise it'll probably just piss people off worse. It's been brought up before, but that was Mass Effect 3's big mistake for many as well; if something as big as the story fails, the point's moot. And TBH, I really don't think the first reviews were just "waifu-runners" - I beat the game in 7-9 hours the day it came out (stayed up and played from 6:00 PM to around 3:00 AM straight, minus bathroom breaks and dinner-time), on Captain difficulty. I personally don't think it's fair to say the first players were only interested in the VN or that the average player uses Ensign Mode; that speaks more to casual players coming later as opposed to the diehard-fans who would be first in line to play. It might simply be that Sunrider was lucky enough to have players who were that devoted, you know (again, possible bias here since I'd be one of those after-mentioned devotees and am using my own playtime as a benchmark to judge ). I don't think we're really arguing about semantics when some people actively shun the gameplay element. Neither I'm trying to talk about reception depending on them playing it on Captain or not, though there's definitely a correlation. The main point was that the initial reception and reactions were highly biased by the "waifu-runners", and that's a fact, not something you can really argue: -The rating and reviews started hitting by 9-10 hours after release; while this gives time to some passionate fans like you to make a run in Captain, I think we can agree the percentage of this is statistically insignificant, because it requires non-stop playing in very differing timezones. I'm not saying that there weren't people who played in Captain in them, but that in those first hours there was a high bias towards those that finished earlier because of being in waifu mode; in all cases, we're talking about the first hours of the game so the divide between "casual" and "hardcore" does not even enter the divide. Taking 2 "days" to finish the game still enters as a "hardcore" fan, just in a harder difficulty that makes battles longer; and likewise decrying people who play in waifu mode as all casual is ignoring that a lot of people were fans of VNs and Academy and followed Sunrider because of that -All the reviews considered as "most helpful" in Steam in the first days had the main point against the game being its shortness. All decried different decisions, but to the point to which they offered more consensus was the game "lasting 4 hours" (even more than decry against the ending and with only decry against railroading Chigara being somewhat comparable). This obviously points to at least casual difficulty selection, if not lower. And the average player is certainly ensign; not only has numbers been offered that at most 20% of the players plays on Captain or higher, but it's even the default difficulty. To be honest, I agree on most of what you say about combining story and gameplay, but dude, facts are facts. The entire point of the post was to make clear that Samu-kun's idea of "most players playing on waifu mode and going through the battle at top speed" is actually false, and due to a bias in the most initial reviews of the game just after the release. Now, that even players on Captain or higher criticize the writing or some decisions it's obvious, but at least they won't claim that the game does indeed lasts less than 5 hours. Keyword - "some." And no, I really disagree on there being any correlation - at least not the way you're saying. My main point is that I don't think there was any such bias as it flat out does not matter if they were "waifu-runners" or not since it's utterly moot because; A) - It means not acknowledging that if the story fails, the game is going to be frustrating to everyone no matter what difficulty they play at. B) - It means presumptively assuming that nobody can beat the game in seven-to-nine hours - which I fail to see as being "a fact, not something (I) can really argue." Yes, I know - again, I finished the game in around 7-9 hours, so I'd formed my opinion well before I learned it was shared by quite a few people. And I point out that this may simply be the case you know - because it suggests that all those players were casual players as opposed to the many people who paid for the game via Patreon or were waiting for it to come out. "Statistically speaking", most of those players would logically have been the diehards to the series because they would have been the people who pledged and got Steam codes for the game; people who'd been waiting and anticipating it for a year. Now yes, it's supposition, but I don't see anything directly invalidating it. Also, let me point out something - when people talk about "lasting 4 hours" in the reviews... they're probably talking about STORY CONTENT ALONE. They mean LibDay's overall story length is about 4 hours MINUS GAME TIME. That doesn't point to "casual difficulty selection" - that points to them opting to subtract gameplay length when reviewing the story. And the thing that makes it funny? Even if you ended up being right, I really don't think it would change anything - because I think your belief ignores the fact that the gameplay difficulty really DOES NOT MATTER in the long run because it's a semantical point regarding those early reviews; LibDay's failing was regarded as being it's story, and if the story fails then the gameplay is just going to be more likely to frustrate anyone suffering through the higher difficulties. Say for argument's sake it was just "waifu-runners" making most of the early reviews - it changes a whopping zilch because if the story fails, playing (or struggling through) at a higher difficulty isn't going to magically make the overall opinion that much better. Hell, like I said before, I think it would actually risk pissing people off worse because it would show there WAS effort put into the game - just not everywhere/in the story/in the payoff for the battles. I really think it never mattered either way if the story was a case of "most players playing on Waifu mode or not" because it's secondary to the point. So likewise, I'd think it's just as much a bias for you to assume that "waifu-runners" were the cause of LibDay's initial negative response - plus it seems to misinterpret people talking about the STORY being 4-5 hours, not the whole game itself. And again, consider that perhaps that 20% might have been largely contributing to the reviews since the number there isn't even really 10% of the 2,500-sale ballpark you put the game in. |
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Post by worstwaifu on Mar 23, 2016 11:50:02 GMT -8
As a waifu-runner who later learned well enough to play it on casual, I would disagree with the notion that those of us who do not understand the tactical side of things as well as some wizards here are the cause of the game's bad reviews, as well.
I would TORTURE the plot and the writing there around in a review, but the game play has actually gotten better since MoA.
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Post by Marx-93 on Mar 24, 2016 1:50:26 GMT -8
...You realize all this was to point out that Samu's statements of most of the players going through the game in waifu mode was false, do you? It's even in the TLDR in my first post...I only talked about bad reviews in one or two times in pointing that the longer the time passed after the initial batch of reviews 10-12 hours after the fact, the more the reviews improved, indicating a small correlation between time spent playing the game and general reception; which is normal, as you will enjoy the game for more things if you enjoy the gameplay, duh (and of course you don't talk about story length in a normal game as a its real length; do you know anyone saying "Ugh, Skyrim is so short"?). And then, that some of the initial problems (short-length for example, which as I said before was the one criticized most consistently in those reviews) will then be biased by that, as a normal consequence.
All in all, I just won't bother anymore; the fact that you're assuming that a group of people going through the game in a total of 9 hours of playing can contribute to the reviews 12 hours after release just as the same as a group that goes through it in 4 hours tells everything. The focus was never on writing, so for you it will be a "non-consequence", but rather wanting to address some kind of misunderstanding the devs might have had about their audience.
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Post by SharrOfRyuvia on Mar 24, 2016 8:40:04 GMT -8
...You realize all this was to point out that Samu's statements of most of the players going through the game in waifu mode was false, do you? It's even in the TLDR in my first post...I only talked about bad reviews in one or two times in pointing that the longer the time passed after the initial batch of reviews 10-12 hours after the fact, the more the reviews improved, indicating a small correlation between time spent playing the game and general reception; which is normal, as you will enjoy the game for more things if you enjoy the gameplay, duh (and of course you don't talk about story length in a normal game as a its real length; do you know anyone saying "Ugh, Skyrim is so short"?). And then, that some of the initial problems (short-length for example, which as I said before was the one criticized most consistently in those reviews) will then be biased by that, as a normal consequence. All in all, I just won't bother anymore; the fact that you're assuming that a group of people going through the game in a total of 9 hours of playing can contribute to the reviews 12 hours after release just as the same as a group that goes through it in 4 hours tells everything. The focus was never on writing, so for you it will be a "non-consequence", but rather wanting to address some kind of misunderstanding the devs might have had about their audience. And you realize my point was that it didn't really matter either way, right? That if a story flops, the whole game isn't going to be received well regardless of what difficulty level you play it at. And again, reviews after that were probably more likely to be from casual players the longer out they were as opposed to core players - who I'd believe actually would be among the first ones to finish (and that's kind of a misnomer to say as well since, for the most part, the reviews stayed pretty consistent at 50%/50%-60%/40% until after V2.00 was released). Plus, I'd point that practically half those positive reviews ALSO claimed/complained about the story being botched, mishandled or even outright bad regardless of if the gameplay was good or not. And I'm going to come out and say you're outright wrong about people not judging game-length on story alone - I've seen it be differentiated from gameplay time before (do you know anyone who counts time walking from place to place as actual gameplay instead of busywork?), especially if (A) the story is what they play for or (B) the story isn't worth the gameplay itself. So no, as a result, I still don't believe the time was biased as a "normal consequence" and persist in saying it really doesn't matter either way. The thing with that though - you're not even acknowledging the fact that some of those "4 hours" was likely them talking about story-length instead of their full game-time. Or considering beta-players who'd had saves near the end anyway. Or that the number of reviews that were in that fast were extremely limited to begin with. Or even that difficulty setting doesn't even matter in the slightest since it doesn't make a story fail any more or less. You're just lumping them all together - that says "everything" just as much. Plus, the past two games kinda disagree with you big-time - it was EQUALLY about writing as much as gameplay because one is inartistically tied to the other as being it's payoff. Samu-Kun even had a poll on his twitter - and gameplay rated in last, behind story and waifus. Based on just the last games alone there was a direction that LibDay deviated from, and the players seemed to feel it would be obvious that things had to be balanced. |
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(It's not accurate for 2 weeks post launch, so early data could be skewed or wrong) Let's hear some predictions perhaps based on MoA and SA figures.
) - a balance of effort and reward.
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