SSR: System Shock Kickstarter

[67475d8724eb9ThiefsieFool]

Underrail actually lets you choose between XP from killing mobs and using skills, and only finding XP in the form of artifacts like SS2's cyber modules. And the latter system is actually directly influenced by SS2, and quite popular with players.

[67475d8725344ZylonBane]

...they're actually modules, not points, and they're for software and hardware upgrades...

This guy has to be trolling. He has to be. Nobody can be this obtuse unless it's on purpose.

[67475d87254ebHikari]

I dunno Zylon. You put on a pretty good show of it most days.

[67475d8725834RocketMan]

This kickstarter is out of control.  All our expectations that 900k was a lofty goal were way off the mark.  They'll have it in a week.

[67475d8725ab3XKILLJOY98]

This kickstarter is out of control.  All our expectations that 900k was a lofty goal were way off the mark.  They'll have it in a week.

What stretch goals do you think they'll reach?

[67475d8725ba5Hikari]

A week? they'll have it before the end of tomorrow!

[67475d8725ce4RocketMan]

Things like this usually follow an exponential decay curve.  The initial hype dies down quickly and you get a more sustained but lower flow... usually.  But who knows.  Shock fans are fucked right

[67475d8725f1cRocketMan]

What stretch goals do you think they'll reach?

Don't know but I'm going with Icemann on the 1.3 figure.  I'm not the slightest bit interested in the other stretch goals.

[67475d8726231DKDArtagnan]

This guy has to be trolling. He has to be. Nobody can be this obtuse unless it's on purpose.

Yes, let's leave out some relevant parts in the quote and pretend we're a bad journalist going for a sensationalist troll headline.

Or.... Let's wake up and realise we're just having a discussion about a computer game. You think cybernetic modules function exactly like experience points - and I'm saying they're not experience points in the traditional sense, partially because you don't get them for killing things and because they're physical items you can find lying around - which I've never tried with experience points.

Are they similar in function, though? Yeah. They symbolise progression just like experience points - but, thematically, they're a better fit for the game than traditional XP would be.

The overall point, in case you missed it, is that you can create RPG progression without turning the entire game into a traditional RPG. As in, you can do it "in the spirit" of System Shock - so you don't have to fret about your beloved game changing too much in this entirely new version of it.

[67475d8726571Nameless Voice]

This is interesting:

http://sidekick.epfl.ch/campaign/1314258248-system-shock


This site is supposed to be very accurate at predicting if a project will succeed or fail (be backed or not.)
Most of the projects that it tracks, it has extremely high confidence (giving them either a <10% chance or a >90% chance); with System Shock, it's very unsure and is giving it a 42% chance of being backed right now.

To me, that sounds like it's going to be a very close thing, and that Night Dive really need to do something to entice more backers if they want to succeed.

[67475d8726702fox]

Right now it states a 26% probability. But it seems like this number is about reaching all of its stretch goals. Funding for the game itself is missing just 15,84% (actually less, since the current funding is already higher) with 25 days remaining. Seems extremely likely to me that they'll reach that.

[67475d87267edNameless Voice]

I think it's meant to be about just getting funded (e.g. $900k.)

The chart shows it fluctuating fairly wildly.

[67475d87268d6fox]

If that's the case (and it most likely is, looking closer at that chart), their probability-calculation seems rather useless.

[67475d8726a45RocketMan]

It's doing the same thing I did:  Curve fitting the data and  projecting out for the next 25 days.  Since the empirical formula that fits this social phenomenon best(funding something over time) is 'almost' asymptotic at the end, the first few days have a strong effect on the rest, especially when the projection is so close to hitting the target.  It's like NV said.  If it's not 10% or 90% it means the 'asymptote' is dancing back and forth of the target line with each fluctuation in daily price action.  Yesterday was weaker than I predicted a day ago so now it's below the target line.  Another strong day might push it back.  Ultimately we'll just have to wait and see.  While human behaviour often does follow a mathematical model it never does so perfectly so we could see some renewed pledging later or it could fizzle out completely.  Only time will tell.  I'm still gonna stick to a guess of roughly $1M for now.

[67475d8726be2fox]

On their About-page, they link to this short paper which goes into a bit more detail about their calculations: http://vincent.etter.io/publications/etter2013cosn.pdf

Apparently their crawlers sift through the campaigns and collect data about every 15 minutes. But they also combine it with more esoteric numbers like the amount of tweets containing a link to the campaign etc.

[67475d8726d7cvoodoo47]

even if things go bad, a "panic mode, can't allow this to fail" is very likely to strike should 900k not be reached a few days before the end, so I wouldn't be afraid about the project not getting funded. however, stuff like 1.5m seems unlikely at the moment.

1.1 would be nice though (linux and mac).

[67475d8726e7bHikari]

As someone that reinstalled windows 10 after uninstalling when he heard about microsoft's upgrade tool acting like malware not actually letting you not upgrade?

SHODAN made me reinstall windows.

[67475d87270eaRocketMan]

even if things go bad, a "panic mode, can't allow this to fail" is very likely to strike should 900k not be reached a few days before the end,

Yes, I believe you're right.

[67475d87272a5ludo1800]

Hope they reach it ! Think they will anyway !

I would rather prefer they swap the $1.4 and $1.7 goals as I don't want too much changes except for visuals and controls... and additions are good anyway !

I think the $1.2 goal is pretty useless, as modders can and probably will do the job...
And "localisation" nowadays... Hmmm, generally, not so good ! Even on the AAA stuff...
Still remembering the "to boldly go" of Star Trek Online, harshly translated in French with an "Aller à Boldly" (to go to "Boldly"), like "Boldly" is a location... But that's funny  !
And they keep using Google Trad apparently...
Same (or worst) fight with TV shows subtitles and some times horrifyingly funny, but it's not the right place to discuss about that !

Why spending money on things like the $1.5 or the $1.9 goals ? Seriously, "orchestral score" ?
A good video game musician fully equipped and with his team can't do the job well ?

[67475d8727510ZylonBane]

even if things go bad, a "panic mode, can't allow this to fail" is very likely to strike should 900k not be reached a few days before the end

Successful KS campaigns almost always follow a U-shaped contribution curve anyway. Heavy pledging at the beginning and end, and a steady trickle in-between.

[67475d872779dunn_atropos]

When 1.5 is an all new orchestral score (why not the original score done by orchestra?) and 1.9 is the remix (why more expensive?) what will they do if they don't reach that? Will they be using the original music? The Chicajo remixes? No music at all?

[67475d87278eeKolya]

Or something the sound engineer came up with. Or stock ambience sounds. Or some cool electronic musician that the programmer's wife met lately at a concert.

[67475d8727bc5fox]

This is interesting:
http://sidekick.epfl.ch/campaign/1314258248-system-shock

Success probability 9%

[67475d8728a40Marvin]

I was away for a week so I don't know if this belongs to another thread now. Move the post if necessary.

I've not played Daikatana so can't speak on that game. Warcraft 3 has RPG elements, but is first and foremost a RTS.
If all you did was play as the heroes then sure that'd be a RPG. But you don't, so it's not. And no I'm not talking about MOBA's or however you spell it.

Fair enough. But how is that different from SS2 which has a substantial amount of FPS and survival horror gameplay, the first of which could reasonably be said to dwarf the RPG elements?

As you mentioned Daikatana - Far Cry 3 has quests, XP and upgradable abiltiies, but it's more a FPS with RPG elements.

Yep.

Do you read what you post here?

The ending was set; your path was set. If, at one point, there was a moment where you could've made one decision that changed the ending, that would've made it a barebones role-playing game, and a good one.

This is the one contrivance that you have in Bioshock with the gatherers, one silly decision to change the ending.

First of all, that is a logical fallacy. He stated that SS2 would have been a RPG if it added such a choice. That is not the same as saying that BS is a RPG because it did or did not do such a thing.  So yes, I do read what I post, thank you.

Furthermore, you're wrong on two accounts:
1) Yes, Bioshock has two endings and which one you get is influenced by how you treat the little sisters. However, this is not based on an informed player decision. If you kill a single LS in the game but save all other ones, you still get the bad ending in which you're Hitler enslaving the rest of the LS to gather all of the Adam and nuke the world. They changed it in a later patch so that you need to harvest at least 2 instead of 1 as you probably know but that hardly matters: The choice and its consequence are completely separate, making the choice itself meaningless as you noted. Now, I'm not Chris Avellone, but since he hated Bioshock and chose a different design path in all his games (meaningful C&C), I'm fairly certain he thinks along the same lines.
2) While BS did a tiny, meaningless step towards more player agency when compared to SS2, it cut down severely on the character building. It completely removed the non-combat related skills, made almost all upgrade choices non-permanent in the form of swappable tonics and plasmids, removed the need to differentiate into different weapon builds and removed the inventory. And to top it off, the potentially very influential choice of how you deal with the LS is made meaningless (again) by letting the LS hand out gifts which almost nullify the Adam advantage you obtain through harvesting. Even if the ending was actually connected to the decisions you make in the game, butchering the character building systems makes BS much less of an RPG than SS2 is, in any case.

Of course it's different. Weapon loadout can be changed at any time. Character stats are permanent decisions.

SS2 has experience points. It has upgradable character stats. Nearly everything your character can do is influenced by the upgrade choices you've made. Performance of technical tasks is based on character skill, not player skill. The way you play is strongly influenced by the build of your character. It's an RPG.

If you're one of those wonks who insists that an RPG must have a branching plot and dialog trees... well, you're wrong. Plain old point-and-click adventure games can have those. What makes an RPG an RPG is the character growth simulation. Everything else is secondary.

Having a character building system is necessary for a game to be called an RPG but it is not sufficient. Would you call Half-Life an RPG if it made you choose between shotgun and MP5? Probably not. Here's why: In SS2, almost all character building decisions account for how you want to kill your enemies, practically everything is combat-related. Even the few technical skills have few applications outside the world of combat save for hacking. And none of those are actually required to beat the game.
What SS2 lacks is a way to shape the narrative of the game, preferably through your character build choices. There is no actual role to play in SS2, no way to differentiate the type of character you are assuming from that of any other player's, except of course for how you deal with enemies. You follow a fixed, linear path through the story without any alternative. Do you intend your Googles to follow SHODAN at the mid-point, maybe betray her later? Do you think the Many is a viable alternative? If you are a super-wizard class hacker having Hack at 6, shouldn't you maybe be able to set up one or two failsafes against your unreliably ally, as Delacroix tried to do? Or blast through the door in Command leading up to the shuttle bays, saving Delacroix in the process if you're a Heavy weapons expert? Well you can't. You're just dragged along the same thread like the hundred thousand players before and after you.

It's rich how you say that everything is secondary to character growth when tabletop RPGs, the place where the genre originated from, could simply not exist without the gamemaster-player relationship where the players come up with different ways to tackle a problem or progress through a story and the master tries to find a logical solution to the player's decisions. You're perfectly right of course that adventures can only consist of branching. It's almost as if that type of game was called a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure.
Again, necessary, but not sufficient. Only both co-existing can make a game a role playing game.

Now, I know you will never agree with me, and you don't need to. You can call the sky green and the Sahara wet for all I care, but here are two reasons I'd consider my definition the more practical one:
1) Calling SS2 an RPG is simply inadequate and inaccurate It has as many FPS elements as RPG ones, yet calling it an FPS would be equally stupid. A sizable portion of the game belongs firmly in the survival horror genre, yet it's not Silent Hill. If both of us were to describe SS2 to a friend who never heard of it, what do you think would give a better impression: "It's an RPG" or "It's a FPS-RPG hybrid with survival horror elements"? Yes, I know the second one's longer, that's the point.
2) Skills and stats are so ubiquitous that it's unpractical to make them the sole basis of defining an RPG. Here'a a tiny list of games (only from my collection) which would have to be called RPGs based on your definition:
Undying
Severance
The later GTAs
Several Tomb Raider titles
Rune
Jedi Knight & Jedi Academy
Tron 2.0
Dark Messiah of Might and Magic
All Heroes of Might and Magic games
Bioshock (or not )