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You raise fair arguments, but at the same time £6.99 is high enough to push away people from impulse purchases en mass.

In addition, it isn't helping the bad rep issue when you push a game on steam as beta but not under early access. Yes, the game may well be nearly finished, but from a consumer perspective that's immoral. Early Access is intended for unfinished games.

Your game is in beta, ergo it is unfinished and should have an early access label, not sold as a finished product in the full library of steam. Not to be harsh, but that gives people the -idea- you may be trying to rake in money by not putting it under early access, where typically games do not sell overly well until release even if you did stick (BETA) in the title.

I like how my posting that video seems to have turned the thread completely in the opposite direction. People are starting to see just how much cloning has been done.

 Kentonio wrote:

 Juvieus Kaine wrote:
@Kentonio: While we, the 40k community, appreciate the time and effort that you and your team has spent on making a 40k game, is it not an interesting problem where a direct footage comparison of your game VS a previous title of yours is show near-identical interface, gameplay and customisation? It doesn't bode well when it appears, to the customer, that your dev team decided to reuse assets from an existing game then slap a 40k makeover on it and charge lots more.

It's just one of those things that I don't think is really a fair judgement on the game. We've never tried to conceal in any way that Storm of Vengeance is an evolution of Ninja Cats, in fact we discussed it quite openly. We pointed out that we took gameplay we'd previously tested with Ninja Cats and built a lot more on top of it for SOV, including building the game in 3D (which is far from a small task) and the entire cross platform multiplayer system (which isn't exactly an industry standard).

We're genuinely talking about over six months of hard work by a sizable development team. We don't want to come out and start waving our fists in the air and shouting and wailing about it, but you can understand I hope why it's quite a frustrating thing for us. We're releasing Storm of Vengeance at what we think is a pretty reasonable price point (£6.99 on Steam) that we think is fully justified by the huge amount of man hours of development the project has taken.

As much as you may dislike it, the fan of 40k are not th ones who like this game, which is your target audience gone. I am sorry that you wasted your manpower but saying that we should put a fair judgement n a game made by those who made the "worst game of 2013", not going to happen, sorry.

I say on this thing, if a game is released to public and is a clone of a previous title. It just shows you the game developers and game designers as lazy and inconsiderate.

The critics will wail on you and you will be disliked by the industry at large. Your game developers! Learn to use the tools and skills you have learned! Learn from other games, play your old games see where you went wrong. For you all I suggest you just watch extra credits for dos and do nots.

This is just something as the industry we need to avoid. I understand you just need a game out there. But you need to scrap it and think of a new game plan. Look at extra credits, look at other games. Study those games, learn from those games. Become better from experience! (But this does not mean copy from other game! This means using ideas and implementing them in your own unquie way. Just as Hemingway used John Donne in his book!)

This is something as an industry that needs to happen more often.

The gameplay itself is repetitive and no overall strategy is seen or is prevalent.

You need to re evaluate this game and compare and contrast.

Plus you need to redeem yourselves of a previous failure it may be hard, but you need to all work together and think about it as a team and discuss what should we change? What should we do next? How are we going to change the way we do things?

 Overlord Thraka wrote:
I like how my posting that video seems to have turned the thread completely in the opposite direction. People are starting to see just how much cloning has been done.

/

I knew who they were at the beginning XD, I was like. I've heard that name before. Then I remembered. "Ah yes! Ride to Hell Retribution!"

I personally didn't see this thread. But right now there is a monopolization on warhammer 40k ip. But eh thats just me.

I'm still waiting for my inquisitor 16 bit JRPG

I think it's Naive to scold a developer for re-using mechanics with such misplaced indignation. It's been a practice of game developers since the dawn of the industry, what is Rogue trader but a 're-skin' of the Warhammer ruleset?

The thing is, Ninja Dogs vs Pirate Cats or whatever looks just as boring to play.

The dubious 'beta' status of this product is however harder to defend.

 Perkustin wrote:
I think it's Naive to scold a developer for re-using mechanics with such misplaced indignation. It's been a practice of game developers since the dawn of the industry, what is Rogue trader but a 're-skin' of the Warhammer ruleset?

The thing is, Ninja Dogs vs Pirate Cats or whatever looks just as boring to play.

The dubious 'beta' status of this product is however harder to defend.

And then charging full price?

Well if they reuse a game's pathing and systems instead of improving on those systems then it can be blamed and can be scolded for not doing something different.

While people are keeping a pretty open mind, giving the devs the credit of "Borrowing assets and mechanics" also seems to be going a little far. During the side-by-side comparison in TotalBiscuit's review, he not only shows that mechanics and even the setup of the purchase screen are almost identical, he shows that three entire screens are word for word copied and pasted.

I think it is pretty deceptive for a dev to say this is a complete redesign that builds on the previous game, when they cant even, in their "Six months of hard work", take the five seconds it would require to write new instruction screens.

 Kentonio wrote:

 Juvieus Kaine wrote:
@Kentonio: While we, the 40k community, appreciate the time and effort that you and your team has spent on making a 40k game, is it not an interesting problem where a direct footage comparison of your game VS a previous title of yours is show near-identical interface, gameplay and customisation? It doesn't bode well when it appears, to the customer, that your dev team decided to reuse assets from an existing game then slap a 40k makeover on it and charge lots more.

It's just one of those things that I don't think is really a fair judgement on the game. We've never tried to conceal in any way that Storm of Vengeance is an evolution of Ninja Cats, in fact we discussed it quite openly. We pointed out that we took gameplay we'd previously tested with Ninja Cats and built a lot more on top of it for SOV, including building the game in 3D (which is far from a small task) and the entire cross platform multiplayer system (which isn't exactly an industry standard).

We're genuinely talking about over six months of hard work by a sizable development team. We don't want to come out and start waving our fists in the air and shouting and wailing about it, but you can understand I hope why it's quite a frustrating thing for us. We're releasing Storm of Vengeance at what we think is a pretty reasonable price point (£6.99 on Steam) that we think is fully justified by the huge amount of man hours of development the project has taken.

I understand and sympathize with the hard work that was done by your development team to create this title, but I don't understand WHY that work was done in the first place. From what I understand, Warhammer 40k is a tabletop turn-based strategy game, and a great deal of its player base consists of individuals who enjoy the game's serious and complex military strategy gameplay. However, the game which Storm of Vengeance bares more than just a little resemblance to, Ninja Cats, is a casual lane-based tower defense mobile game similar to Plants vs. Zombies. That genre simply does not coincide with the audience or the subject matter of Warhammer 40k. In fact, Storm of Vengeance is probably the last thing I would envision if I were a developer that wanted to create a game with the 40k license. No matter how I look at the situation, it seems that there could have been far better ways to utilize the development team's time and energy than the realization of this ill-conceived idea.

I'm genuinely curious as to what reasoning (or indeed, what motives) whoever greenlit this project had in mind, but for the sake of both the Eutechnyx team's financial success and the gaming community at large, I hope they reevaluate their approach and/or their priorities in the future.

(Personal bias disclaimer: I have little to no knowledge of the Warhammer 40k series, and I am an active subscriber of TotalBiscuit's Youtube channel, which clearly may influence my opinions.)

Well.. without adding the insulting comments towards devs gracious enough to speak with us I only mean to add a pointer towards entering into this niche market:

If you're going into the mobile and steam market to entice this community you have to realize a few things:

1. For the most part, the community disagrees with most of GW's policies and is becoming increasingly jaded and unwelcoming of any title that doesn't wish to be extremely ambitious since the downfall of SM.

2. Although a tug of war mechanic type game is clever, it works a lot better when it is cute like Plants vs. Zombie's or your previous title and can be marketed to a wide audience. 40k fans are not interested in a title that even remotely looks like a game of tug of war even though it clearly has some serious investment in the stragetic element within.

3. 40k fans are interested in a strategic, horrifying, and violent game with RPG and story elements that give it depth. A tug of war game doesn't fit the niche market. If you were asking me 10 dollars for a mobile game, I would pay it if it looked like an M version of AdvancedWars from the Gameboy Advance.

Yeah, this one:



It's "tug of war" element is really just an aside, a visual representation of a RISK style game where tactics determine the winner.

Honestly, I would definitely pay you 10 dollars to play a 40k version of Advance Wars with a mobile graphics update. Hell, I'd pay 15 if it was multiplayer.

Perkustin wrote:
The dubious 'beta' status of this product is however harder to defend.

I'm genuinely confused by this. We not only wrote BETA in the game title, but then overlaid every screenshot with the word BETA, and the game description repeatedly talks about it being a BETA. We chose originally not to go Early Access because we made the call that Early Access games are usually starting out from an earlier stage of development, and as we only wanted to run a month of Beta time that it might confuse people.

Obviously the wrong call as we seemingly confused people anyway (which is why we've now moved the game into Early Access) but I have absolutely no idea how this is supposed to somehow translate into a 'dubious' practice. How exactly is being open and upfront about the fact your game is in Beta not being straightforward?

Asherian Command wrote:
And then charging full price?

The game cost's £6.99. It's not exactly like we're trying to charge people £29.99 for the title, is it?

Perkustin wrote:
I think it is pretty deceptive for a dev to say this is a complete redesign that builds on the previous game, when they cant even, in their "Six months of hard work", take the five seconds it would require to write new instruction screens.

The game is in Beta. There's various bits of placeholder text in there at the moment. While writing the text is an important job, it's not at the very top of the priority list during development.

Rhombohedron wrote:
I understand and sympathize with the hard work that was done by your development team to create this title, but I don't understand WHY that work was done in the first place. From what I understand, Warhammer 40k is a tabletop turn-based strategy game, and a great deal of its player base consists of individuals who enjoy the game's serious and complex military strategy gameplay.

There's an awful lot of 40K fans out there who simply don't have the time in their lives any more for heavy duty strategy that's going to require big chunks of game time, due to work, kids etc. There's also plenty of people who just want a dose of 40K that they can play in small chunks between other activities. Not everyone's going to like the game and we've always been well aware of that, but it's incredible how widespread the love for 40K actually including amongst people who really aren't hardcore strategy people but were introduced to the universe as kids and loved it.

Will the game's price go up after it leaves beta?

As Demetri Saids, this is all a big mistake you've wasted 6 months of your dev team that are famous for their lack of talent, on a game who's main target audience has NO interest in. It is like making a star wars game for middle aged stay at him moms.

 Kentonio wrote:
There's an awful lot of 40K fans out there who simply don't have the time in their lives any more for heavy duty strategy that's going to require big chunks of game time, due to work, kids etc. There's also plenty of people who just want a dose of 40K that they can play in small chunks between other activities. Not everyone's going to like the game and we've always been well aware of that, but it's incredible how widespread the love for 40K actually including amongst people who really aren't hardcore strategy people but were introduced to the universe as kids and loved it.

The problem is that it's the wrong genre for the franchise. Make a bullet hell game based on Bommerz over da Sulphur River and you'd give people the 40k they want in casual-friendly gameplay. This... doesn't.

 The Dark Apostle wrote:
As Demetri Saids, this is all a big mistake you've wasted 6 months of your dev team that are famous for their lack of talent, on a game who's main target audience has NO interest in. It is like making a star wars game for middle aged stay at him moms.

Woah there kid! That's pretty out of order, there's no need to be rude. One thing that can't be ignored is that Kentonio has been kind enough to take the time out to engage with fans of 40k and has done so with tact and patience. (Even if he did attribute something i didn't say to me )

These were the people who made ride to hell retribution, a famously bad a lazy game, something I feel should be discouraged heavily in the gaming industry, I'm not saying every game needs to be a master piece but each game should have heart and soul in it! No be a reskin of a 99c PvZ clone. And then bumping the price by €6. And as the guy above you said, it's the wrong genre for the wrong fans

 Perkustin wrote:
(Even if he did attribute something i didn't say to me )

Urg, sorry I was having a bit of a quote nightmare earlier.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Will the game's price go up after it leaves beta?

Nope. Plus with Steam sales etc it will be available even lower than it is currently at various times.

 The Dark Apostle wrote:
These were the people who made ride to hell retribution, a famously bad a lazy game, something I feel should be discouraged heavily in the gaming industry, I'm not saying every game needs to be a master piece but each game should have heart and soul in it! No be a reskin of a 99c PvZ clone. And then bumping the price by €6. And as the guy above you said, it's the wrong genre for the wrong fans

Regardless, I think you owe Kentonio an apology. The game may not be to your tastes, but effort has clearly been put in. The 3D models are decent (better than Dawn Of War) even with a bland art style. I agree that the game seems to be a poor fit, in terms of genre, but maybe play it before you condemn it eh?

Thanks to Kentonio for attempting to engage with the community, by the way.

Cheers guys.

 AlexHolker wrote:
The problem is that it's the wrong genre for the franchise. Make a bullet hell game based on Bommerz over da Sulphur River and you'd give people the 40k they want in casual-friendly gameplay. This... doesn't.

Fans asked for many different types of games which is why GW gave licences to something like a dozen studios. If this isn't your thing have a look at Carnage or Space Wolf.

I don't think many people were asking for low budget 40k games...

 Soladrin wrote:
I don't think many people were asking for low budget 40k games...

Yeah, we want them to be like our miniatures, way too expensive!

I will probably give the game a try.

 The Dark Apostle wrote:
As Demetri Saids, this is all a big mistake you've wasted 6 months of your dev team that are famous for their lack of talent, on a game who's main target audience has NO interest in. It is like making a star wars game for middle aged stay at him moms.

Don't even presume to agree with my viewpoint with that chagrin. I am not condescending a developers efforts, merely suggesting my opinion what the 40k fans would likely play on a mobile device.

We both share an opinion, even if mine is a stronger one.

 Kentonio wrote:
There's an awful lot of 40K fans out there who simply don't have the time in their lives any more for heavy duty strategy that's going to require big chunks of game time, due to work, kids etc. There's also plenty of people who just want a dose of 40K that they can play in small chunks between other activities. Not everyone's going to like the game and we've always been well aware of that, but it's incredible how widespread the love for 40K actually including amongst people who really aren't hardcore strategy people but were introduced to the universe as kids and loved it.

It may be true that there is a demand for the sort of game you've described, but I don't agree that Storm of Vengeance has accurately met that demand. I would argue that the game you have made is too simple and will not appeal to many fans of the 40k franchise, including those who are seeking a less time-intensive, mobile 40k title. While Storm of Vengeance may be accessible and simple to learn, it does not (in my own opinion) offer a significant amount of strategy or depth to warrant any extended interest or replayability beyond initial purchase. I think DemetriDominov's idea for an Advance Wars-inspired mobile game set in the 40k universe would have been better suited for that purpose by creating an easy to learn yet difficult to master strategy game.

Take the classic strategy board game Reversi (AKA Othello) for example. The rules and game mechanics are remarkably simple to learn, yet the game still requires a great deal of strategy and experience to master. This is precisely what gives Reversi its depth and replayability, which is what any game needs to justify its price tag and maintain an active player base for multiplayer. These qualities are inherently subjective of course, but I find Storm of Vengeance to be lacking in this regard and I am confident that the game's sales and player counts will reflect those shortcomings.

I think SoV will have a place, yes. But it's unlikely to be overly successful unless some severe overhauling is done, alternately you could make a different title under the same licence that has much more strategic depth and action. As personally I don't call rock-paper-scissors and lane-based combat to be very tactical at all.

The game appears too long to play while sitting on the loo, but it's far too shallow to enjoy for long periods. For a mobile market; where does it fit in time-wise? And what benefit is there to the PC version? As said it lacks the depth to sit and play it for too long.

 The Dark Apostle wrote:
We both share an opinion, even if mine is a stronger one.

I disagree that you share an opinion. Do you plan to apologise to Kentonio, or are you leave that remark about him wasting 6 months of Dev time? Because that breaks Dakka Rule #1. It's not polite.

I apologise to Kentonio, thats with my thought perception that he is more of a community manager or along those lines. I think this was all a bad move on GW and Eut-whatever-the-name-is and I admit I focused all my rage on only the devs rather than GW and their poor control over the IP.

I wish them all the best they can with the metaphorical cone of shame they have branded on their foreheads.

 The Dark Apostle wrote:
I apologise to Kentonio, thats with my thought perception that he is more of a community manager or along those lines. I think this was all a bad move on GW and Eut-whatever-the-name-is and I admit I focused all my rage on only the devs rather than GW and their poor control over the IP.

Big of you to apologize!

 The Dark Apostle wrote:
I wish them all the best they can with the metaphorical come of shame they have branded on their foreheads.

Oh, wait.

 The Dark Apostle wrote:
come of shame...on their foreheads

Oh, my... *cue George Takei laugh*

Well played, darktraveler777. You had me snickering.