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 itâs intended to be an equalizer mechanic, to keep non-grindy players in the loop. i think i like it. itâs respectful to the playerâs 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 doesnât 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.
well depends. imagine i am a lvl 10 low bob and i canât 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 âcasualsâ. iâd 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.
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 (Wickedâs original publisher) from Take-Two isnât finalized. Most of Private Divisionâs 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 Divisionâs 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. Weâre all anxious for updates on the gameâs progress, but I imagine that Moon isnât 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.
I honestly donât understand what kind of moderation it isâŠsome comments are moved because they are judged to be irrelevant while others are not even if they are not relatedâŠ
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 everyoneâs 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.
It is so disheartening to imagine Wicked didnât have proper finish. I hope people would make some alleway and giving positive review while contribute in constructive feedback.
I mean, the thing is pretty simple in one regard: Steamâs review system asks you âDo you recommend that game?â If you donât, then thatâs a negative review. Calling that âreview bombingâ feels a little bit like âemotional blackmailâ 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 youâre 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 âreview bombingâ is just disingenuous. Nobody likes to hear it, but that is part of the job of a game studioâs 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 âvocalâ 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 doesnât sit right with me, no matter whom itâs coming from.
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 someoneâs mother, calling people names etc. nothing like âthis change did not work wellâ. 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 gameâs rating if the user does not update their review to the current build of the content.
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.
It was literally in the gameâs 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.
Itâs 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.
When a game is obviously very good, but many players donât recommend it, you know thereâs a problem.
In that case I would say that itâs because of two things: the game is initially difficult, plus it does have different game mechanics that people are not used to. It can be just « discouraging » (even if it gets quickly better); that first impression is just super important for a mass success.
So should it be more accessible? Yes if it wants to attract many different types of players and sold a lot of copies.
By accessible, I would say:
More forgiving (easier learning curve, more error proof when building character, maybe a couple early respec opportunities at a non punishing cost, less discouraging travelling when a new player is already in difficulty)
Better explanations (e.g ingame detailed infos, better introduction to game mechanics as part of the story, more up to date guides, targeted comâ).
From what I see these two points are already acknowledged and worked on. There should be a high priority on them to avoid the same damage during the next big release.
It doesnât have to be easier, just more accessible.
That said, I would also blame the gaming community tendency - and the social networks overall - to either fully praise or totally hate something. But that wonât change, and will probably get even worse. So we should get used to it anyway.
True, he also does full 1h interview every time a streamer ask for it, Youtube is full of interviews and long podcasts at different periods of Wicked (pre-breach, release).
I would say that itâs also because people expect A and then get B, so i.e Diablo fans expect the same formula without the greed and dullness of Blizzard, and so on with Soulslike and PoE fans. But the game is neither A or B, itâs Z. So being a new experience but catching other audiences itâs hard, and also it is to create this kind of quality from a indie context without risks. Somehow they need to reach for the widest range of audience without losing their original vision, and that itâs insanely crazy and bold, I hope them the best.
Most of the people get used to the same things and itâs very hard for them to embrace new experiences, systems and overall gameplay dynamics. It takes a lot of time and/or marketing budget but sadly Moon Studios doesnât have those.
This is why the game actually needs its community support 100%, if we like the game and we trust the devs, we should help in anyway. All the issues will be probably fixed and adressed. Itâs very toxic and dumb giving bad reviews because of an uncomfortable experience or due to disagreements in the gameplay desing while acknowleding that the game core is insanely good and original as well as addresing the potencial of the concept-art-history in the same review off a game that is on EARLY ACCESS.
