Shards Online: Project Update; New Crowdfunding Campaign Planned
The Shards Online team posted a news update about a month ago, which (yes, I know, I know!) I only just took note of this last week:
Hello everyone. We have been pretty heads-down the last few weeks and I wanted to fill you all in on what we have been up to. As most of you know, we previously refocused our goals and tightened up our plan for alpha. Since then, our team’s focus has shifted towards future alpha versions and finding means to fund the project.
Our current funding plan is to launch a crowdfunding campaign in the very near future with a modest funding goal. We have been fine-tuning our reward levels and incentives and look forward to showing you all what we have to offer. We are also planning some great events during the campaign.
The most exciting part is that we will be opening our pre-alpha 1 servers every weekend during the campaign for contributors. Although our development team is focused on upcoming alpha versions, we have managed to squeeze some great changes into the current pre-alpha 1 build, including camera rotation, UI enhancements, pvp incentives, new weapons, and even a (partially) playable female character.
The female character is, I assume, the one depicted in the image that was included in their news post, which also sits atop this article.
There hasn’t been any word — that I can see — concerning when this new crowdfunding effort of theirs will open, so we’ll just have to keep an eye out for news of it. Hopefully they fare better this time around than they did on their last attempt at Kickstarting the project.
There’s no telling, as far as a successful Kickstarter is concerned. Things have gotten a little weird there lately. Maybe it should be renamed Kickfinisher, as it seems the majority of funded projects don’t need the money and/or are already mostly finished. Perhaps its core concept (facilitating the creation of something by pre-funding it), is no longer viable.
I’ve yet to see a single product where that is the case, that they have a truly finished product and have no need of funding. The most common complaint I’ve seen of Kickstarter projects is that they all get delayed and release late. That wouldn’t be the case if all these Kickstarters were for finished products.
Now, I think projects that are at least partially finished and have more to show are likely to be more successful. Why should I throw money at a project if they have nothing to show for it, so I have no idea if they are capable of finishing, or what it might be like?
At least initially, the core concept of Kickstarter was to provide people with the funds necessary to create a project of some kind. Of course having something to show constitutes evidence that you’re capable to delivering on your promise and increases your chance of being successfully funded, but having something to show also means you’ve been working your ass off with no money from Kickstarter. So there’s a bit of a contradiction there. The more you have to show, the less you need Kickstarter, and the less you have to show, the more you need Kickstarter. There’s a divide between the intention of the service and what it takes to be successful using it.
The basic idea was that you’d pledge money to a project because you want it to exist, with the risk being that even with the requested funding the project could still fail for various reasons. Kickstarter has stated repeatedly it’s not a pre-order service, although that’s largely what it has turned into. The most popular pledge is almost always the one that gets you a copy of the game. If people pledged according to the intention of the service, they’d pledge as much as they could afford with the goal of maximizing the project’s chance of success, not just enough to secure a free copy.
I was excited when they announced this project, I have an incredible amount of nostalgia for UO but i can’t see myself playing it in it’s current state.. and the admin abuse on T2A servers I played on turned me off..
sometimes I feel like just setting up a personal server to run around the land.. I still do that a lot with Ultima 7.
Shards seemed like something I’d enjoy.. I’ve pledged SOTA at the $90 level and every update I see it turn into a game I think I could enjoy, I’m still not a huge fan of the crafting but I think there’s still time for that to be improved.. but there’s just something about the isometric POV, I wish SOTA was isometric, I think the gameplay makes these games much more immersive than a FPS or 3RD Person POV could ever achieve.
I was extremely disappointed with shards, without any industry icon, trying to push a concept that didn’t exactly look modern and was banking mostly on UO nostalgia, they needed something more finished to showcase their game.
I thinking what perspective is found to be most immersive must be a matter of what you grew up with rather than something with a definitive answer. Personally I find first person and (to a lesser extent) 3rd person shoulder to be more immersive. I betting I was spoiled by Thief (the original games) and all the fan missions made for them.
Out of curiosity what don’t you like about the crafting? I haven’t played the game yet.
Crafting is only half implemented at this point. Not all gathering, refining and crafting skills are implemented. Not all recipes are implemented. Not all tools, resources, etc. are implemented.
They are adding some cooking and alchemy in this weekend’s release.
I’m not a huge fan of the recipes.. that you have to put a tool on the crafting table to complete a recipe, to make a weapon to need to make a specific mold.. I get what they want to achieve and I’m not entirely sure it’s a bad idea.. I might have just been intimidated by all the steps needed to craft something..
The way they want to do it is to make crafted items as dropable loot.. in other mmos, crafting seems to be there just to make money.. it’s not that I don’t think crafting shouldn’t be complex and require effort.. I just thought the process could look and feel better.
Isometric means a fixed camera angle. You can’t see from a first person perspective, and you can’t freely explore by moving the camera around.
I think a wide, overhead view that isometric provides is sometimes a particularly good view. When I play games, I often pull the camera back to an isometric-like view, but I also enjoy the freedom of moving the camera to better explore and see everything.
I’m not sure how locking the camera is inherently more immersive, or not being able to see everything is inherently better. I think some of this stems from associations.
Old 2D games with isometric views often had more text and beautifully painted backdrops. Early 3D games looked worse and often had less dialogue since there was so much more focus on making tons of different models and textures, or shifting to voice recorded dialogue was so much more expensive, there was less of it. That isn’t to say that a moving camera can’t produce an immersive experience.
2d games certainly age better than 3d games.. in most cases.
I’m not sure what the term i was looking for.. but I didn’t mean a locked camera, I grew up playing Underworld as well as The Ultimas but I never felt like any of them had a better immersion than the other because of their POV..
but there’s something about looking over NPCs in an isometric view, it feels like you’re observing life as it’s happening.
Isometric is a fixed camera angle, but it also has to do with a very specific angle from an overhead perspective. For instance, League of Legends isn’t isometric, it’s an angle top down view.
I prefer isometriclike perspectives because I get the greatest amount of view area. Immersion is a finicky word to use for it in my case. I would say it’s more engaging as I can see more of what’s going on around me than in first or third person perspective. I feel first person is the least desirable as I have less vision of my surroundings than I would in real life. Third person being a decent median between the two.
Well here’s the latest teaser. With more polish for the look and feel, as well as improvements to the underlying core technologies to improve performance and stability.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knYdbwO8Wuc
As the back end capabilities are implemented, this will also manifest in extended capabilities and improvements in the UI and game experience.
Thanks for the update; we’ll get some news up about that this evening!