Feedback on announcements and updates

I wish them best of luck trying to sell this game when the update drops, if it ever drops at all this year. From Discord I gathered that we will have a teaser this month (what a fking joke), and after that teaser, I am speculating on more radio silence, after that we can proceed to a full on trailer with the actual reveal of whatever it is they have been working on for almost a year and a release date, followed by, you guessed it! More radio silence.

I really do wish them the best of luck trying to sell this as a AAA game, with the price that comes with AAA titles nowadays, when everyone on steam is fuming at this point and the reviews are going down at the speed of light.

I know the devs on Discord are very confident in their product, if that confidence doesnt translate into profit, thats all youre left with, lots of confidence and a dead game.

This title, since I cannot completely call it a game yet, its doomed to fail at this rate.

it brings up the question: does the game reward it less when i only have 1 day to play but 4h in a row compared to being able to play every day for 15 mins?

probably rewarded nearly equally. if you stay logged out for 6 days, the plague will spread a lot further than normal, and youll get far more more good loot to power yourself.

the plague sounds like it’s intended to be an equalizer mechanic, to keep non-grindy players in the loop. i think i like it. it’s respectful to the player’s time.

well this all depends on how much of an impact the plague has. if someone has to clear the plague on a map first n order to progress with quests etc, its not really fair for those who only play once a week.

i am just a bit sceptical, because of what we already have with the saturday merchant, which is pretty much useless for people working on saturdays. real life timers in games have never been a good thing. at least i can not think of one.

well this all depends on how much of an impact the plague has. if someone has to clear the plague on a map first n order to progress with quests etc, its not really fair for those who only play once a week.

no, the plague system doesn’t do anything like that. it just adds plague-type enemies to zones overtime and gives rarer drops. think of it like a more complex fog of war.

i do hope they change there minds about the plague system i realy dont like it

well depends. imagine i am a lvl 10 low bob and i can’t play for a month, do i have to deal with 100 lvl 20 plague mobs then?

what i mean is, even when it does not mechanically block quest progress, it can block my progression, by simply adding mass over class.

i like the basic idea of a plague spreading, after all thats kind of the core of the story, but tying it to an IRL timer is almost certainly slowing down progression and exploration for ā€œcasualsā€. i’d really love to be proven wrong, but i am still skeptical.

imo it would be better to tie it to character and world progression rather than real time.

the announcement of the announcement of the announcement… fantastic!

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Its a XXXXXXXX scam hahahahahaha

A mod should probably move these replies to Feedback on announcements and updates, so they don’t clog up this thread, lol. Sorry :slight_smile:

I imagine their hands are tied. Marketing material, release dates, official communication channel updates etc, are usually up to the publisher (not the development studio).

The sever of Private Division (Wicked’s original publisher) from Take-Two isn’t finalized. Most of Private Division’s projects got bundled in with the sale of the company, but it seems like Take-Two is keeping the rights to Wicked. I quote an article from The Verge, who spoke with Take Two directly:

"As part of this transaction, the buyer purchased our rights to substantially all of Private Division’s live and unreleased titles.
Take-Two will continue to support No Rest for the Wicked, which launched in Early Access on PC in April. "

Seems like Wicked will be in the hands of Take-Two, but not until the transfer of Private Division (to the unknown buyer) is complete. We’re all anxious for updates on the game’s progress, but I imagine that Moon isn’t legally obliged to say much about the situation currently. They are most likely being told to wait for big announcements, updates, etc. until the sale of their old publisher finishes legal proceedings. The layers of announcements are most likely a result of that.

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thx for letting me know. Moved it all here :slight_smile:

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I honestly don’t understand what kind of moderation it is…some comments are moved because they are judged to be irrelevant while others are not even if they are not related…

it has nothing to do with arbitrary deciding what is relevant and what is not. i just try my best to remove lengthy discussions from the thread, so people do not have to scroll for years until they reach the next actual update from discord.

and that is in everyone’s interest, is it not? or are u a fan of scrolling for ages to find the information you want? if so i am deeply sorry i ruined your scrolling experience.

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It is so disheartening to imagine Wicked didn’t have proper finish. I hope people would make some alleway and giving positive review while contribute in constructive feedback.

For now I can only hope for the best

I mean, the thing is pretty simple in one regard: Steam’s review system asks you ā€œDo you recommend that game?ā€ If you don’t, then that’s a negative review. Calling that ā€œreview bombingā€ feels a little bit like ā€œemotional blackmailā€ to be honest.

I empathize with Moon being an indie studio, but this is just the reality of Early Access games. You release a product you’re asking money for, on a platform with an open feedback system for every customer. You have to expect, account for, and plan for cases in which people are dissatisfied. Calling that ā€œreview bombingā€ is just disingenuous. Nobody likes to hear it, but that is part of the job of a game studio’s management: handling that risk. Asking for positive feedback is okay, but dooming and glooming publicly over negative feedback feels like… abdicating responsibilities. I do believe Thomas is creating more issues than he solves with being so ā€œvocalā€ most of the time. He is the CEO of Moon; in a worst-case scenario, the words HE chooses will not be used against him, but the studio itself and the products they create. That is an unfortunate reality he needs to think of as CEO.

Anyway, of course I do hope for the game to succeed. Emotional blackmail just doesn’t sit right with me, no matter whom it’s coming from.

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as some more information: thomas mentioned that turning the review system on in the first place was PD.

And i read a lot of the negative reviews, and some are just review bombing. they are insulting someone’s mother, calling people names etc. nothing like ā€œthis change did not work wellā€. its pure insults. if u look at the review graph u can clearly see that if in one day u get 700 negative reviews and after that mostly positive ones, its not too far fetched to call it review bombing.

and of course as company u have to plan around stuff like that, but being full indie also means, if they do not sell because of bad reviews, there is nobody pumping in marketing money to compensate.

What really bothers me about reviews is that Steam does not force users to update/validate reviews after a new build or hotfix.

So reviews based on outdated/changed content stay and continue to hurt the game and its potential sales even if the developer addressed the issue within the review.

Developers should lobby Steam to implement a review validation feature, where a review gets delisted or has significantly reduced weight in the average of a game’s rating if the user does not update their review to the current build of the content.

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to be honest, they could’ve properly communicated that (Strategy: going intermittently independent route), that they are in a vulnerable state after buying the rights from PD, that cash flow is pretty low right now and that they need the support of the people that actually believe in the vision. ( couldve also helped hedge against review bombing by priming the users properly)

Could’ve been a gamble, but in today’s day and age, with everybody hating AAA, that could’ve also swung in their favour, as people love being rescuers of great ideas and the makers of Ori.

They could’ve setup up a patreon for continuous development (similar to star citizen), told us that they are reaching out to tencent (which are pretty hands off) or another strategy. They knew it was a big gamble after buying out the IP and they fully bellieved in their game without a backup plan.

But doing the above would’ve required a level of communication that moon never had or always refused to use, because admitting one’s own imperfection/vulnerability has never been a special someone’s thing.

well they did just that. they could not say anything while being in the process for buying the rights back, i assume legal reasons, but now they communicate exactly those issues openly.

too late and on discord where only a handful of people are present at the time and it’s hard to get your hands on because you have to sift through the chat log. (that’s why you put it here, as proof that it isn’t actual easy to get information/communication), and NOT in the wicked inside before the breach update where it belongs. there, they only said that they bought the IP from PD, not that they are in the super vulnerable state and that they need our support now more than ever

It wasn’t just on Discord. Are you serious?

It was literally in the game’s youtube channel in the Wicked Inside trailer announcing the Breach update. It was 24 whole minutes of explanations and a showcase.

And they also announced this on Twitter.

Thomas even wades into the troll infested forums on Steam to answer questions and attacks almost daily.

He also answers Steam reviews.

It’s almost surreal that anyone would have the nerve to accuse Thomas of not being communicative.

The man is literally a never-ending, infinite stamina engagement machine. A total workaholic for his studio, posting on Twitter to engage the community.

I wish every studio had a dev a fraction as transparent and communicative as Thomas.