Money in and of itself is not the problem for me. From my private account I can invest up to, and in between EURO 2.000,- to 5.000,-
But I would demand a guarantee and a prospect outline of what game features to be developed.
From my business account I would maybe be able to invest more; theoretically speaking.
But.
What bugs me is the communication and the strategy behind it. Not only in this case, but overall. I read that the game was developed (partly) as experiment in working with smaller and/or flexible teams, or something like that?
I find that very strange. From a business perspective. The ancient world is a best seller when it comes to area. Furthermore, there is a huge amount of variety overall. Most game developers would put a monster crew on such a title. In terms of amount of people. Placed in that light I understand why the game was lacking a launch with a relatively small crew.
The events, missions, characters and developing multiple distinct government types along, is really a lot of work (settled tribe, migratory tribe, republic, kingdom, etc,). That is just the basis.
Tribes (settled) are left hanging. Migratory tribes are OK although a bit of a gimmicky. But settled tribes really, really need an overhaul.
They are unfinished to the point of irrelevance IMO.
The IR team has done really great work and kudos for that
It is also most probably not their decision to make. So, no hard feelings or something. Off course not I would say.
But this is no way to leave a game hanging. It resembles the 'strategy' used at launch.
I work as consultant, also with software amongst other things (offshore / maritime industry). I understand the decision taken with a game mostly topping at 1K players. But I do feel the same mistake is being as the one at and around game launch. It was unfinished and that damaged Imperator Rome in its development.
PDX at least could have given it a good sign of, and (final) resting place. PDX says: 'maybe we come back to the game in the future'. But will there be a player base?
If this was communicated early and packaged differently it would have anchored the game for now, with a slightly disappointed, but overall a content player base.
Just leaving this hanging unfinished all of a sudden is not going to do IR and PDX any favors I think.
However.
What's done is, is done.
C'est la Vie
What I would have done?
Combine the news of stopping development for now with a annunciation of a last patch & DLC. Charge for the DLC and update if necessary.
I don't understand that overall decision to not charge for big updates. Developing costs money. Companies need money to stay afloat. 1 + 1 = 2 IMO.
Why did PDX not charge for 2.0 f.i.? I have the feeling that strategy change resulted in negative forecasting figures for IR and a decision to pull the plug (for now).
So, I would humbly suggest PDX to develop one more DLC / update. Just to tie up the really, loose ends.
Primary theme:
Redesign the tribal mechanics as mean theme.
Secondary theme:
Smooth out characters
(no more scorned families + tie families to holdings in a more intricate sense or something like that).
Tertiary theme:
Small trade and economics update. Based on player suggestions and what PDX can do.
This is all meant as positive criticism. You've done a great job with IR.
Thank you for the music!
Hope you reconsider
.png){kind=avatar}
.png){kind=avatar}
