You two talking about the Shadowrun Universe forums?

Ugh. I just don't go there, anymore. Horrible, useless, counter-intuitive, STUPID ... really, it actually is the singularly WORST forum software I have ever had the misfortune of being exposed to.

Yep that one.

I am so excited about this project and I love the last few updates. It seemed like a lot of people may have written this off early due to some bad info. Hopefully we can get some of them to take a second look in the last week.

I agree Brannoc

As to the forums software: I felt that there was something wrong in the moment I first saw the forums. Sadly it was too late to have feedback considered. Luckily, that's not the case with the new forums that wi... erm I mean: yes, I agree and hope it'll get better soon ...

hah!

BTW, have you seen the new update with even more swag and the endorsement by Jason Hardy? I know Stahlseele has

Showed up in my email a few hours* ago.

*That is, sometime today, more than a minute ago.

And i will repeat my german sentiments here:
Mein. Gott.
Was für ein Trottel . .

Stahlseele is being Stahlseele-rific

i really like you!
people who can make me not sure wether some statement was an insult or a compliment are usually intelligent and thus worthwile people ^^

Just 4 days left, and as of now, it thankfully looks like this poorly thought out concept will tank.

If only this would have happened with the 360 game too.

I am interested to know the reasoning behind that opinion.

@Stahlseele Why thank you!

@almost normal: Why the hate for the concept? Being able to play a Shadowrun-themed game, solo or in coorp, sounds great to me.

My thoughts on a game appealing to the lowest common denominator haven't changed. Free To Play, Licensed, Browser Based, Crowd Sourced MMO? In a market where the well designed Star Wars MMO is tanking, this is just asking for punishment.

Not browser based, has a standalone client. Has A p2p server. Has private funding but also crowd source. And the swtor game is tanking due to idiotic management by EA.
This game has a decent chance because the shadowrun fans have been waiting for a decent game for years....

Well, it's a niche-game. Many of the bigger games are tanking because they require amounts of money to support that this game won't even have for development. On the other hand, that means that a smaller population with a smaller volume of revenue is sufficient to sustain it and the development of new content.

Also, there will be a Campaign-Server, allowing people to buy a game and play it as much as they want, without having to be on the same server with F2P-characters. Don't like the F2P-model? So did many others, that's why that server is going to be there. The browser based thing is another common misconception: Unity supports browser-support. However, it can be used to develop perfectly fine standard-3D-games. SRO for example will offer a client-version, and Wastelands 2, a very popular Kickstarter-project, will be developed with Unity3d too. Having a client is great (and there will be a boxed version of the game too for those who care about having something to touch ) but I think it's a great advantage that I'll be able to log my account when I visit my family and friends on their PCs, without having to install a client each time.

Yeah, i wa splanning on donating enough to get me the named item level and then buy the boxed set too . .

If you donate enough to name an epic item, you'll have the boxed version in any case send to your home. Or are you talking about the all-digital bundles?

With fans/friends like these...

You're kidding, right? I had a true fan of the game describe to me the steps to get from planet A to planet B ... all of it nothing more than a gigantic timesink, running through very large and featurelessly empty areas, complete with loading screens at every transition.

Or the bloody balloon ride on Tattooine, was it?

...

Yeal ... "well-designed" my posterior orifice.

Pax: It is well designed. 'True fans' tend to get really butthurt if something isn't going according to their view of the world.
Yes, planetary travel was tedious in the beginning. They quickly fixed it, because it was tedious
The balloon ride is a completely optional scenic tour of the dune sea. Which is empty and featureless, because it is a desert. Yet, I found it surprisingly well done. It conveyed the loneliness there very well.
The rest of the areas weren't really featureless nor empty. You met players and a lot of NPCs, even NPC groups fighting each other and the world felt alive. Well ... Except the main city areas, which is kind of weird
Mainly, ToR has very well done quests with awesome voice actors.
However, as has been stated, EA pushed for a release when the game wasn't ready yet, and it still did well for a time. I do not regret buying it nor the time spent in it, even when I quit after only 3 months.
It _did_ have design problems, but those were other, often minor details. For one thing, I personally don't see the wisdom in making this HUGE single player experience in the storyline quest in an MMO. Kind of defeats the purpose, even if the 8 stories were very well thought out, with twists and plots that were fun to play.
And of course it is a time sink. All monthly subscription games are supposed to be time sinks. This way the publisher can make money of them
Most important for me: It captured the feeling of the Old Republic games. It felt very star-wars-y, just not according to the 6 movies (3 of which many 'true fans' describe as utter crap;) ).

On topic though: What I've seen from the SRO videos, I like. As usual, almost normal's view on things is harsh and, in this case, uninformed (as seems to be a common theme). The doom & gloom crowd likes to damn things even before they've seen them finished.
I won't pour money in, simply due to the fact that RL issues weigh heavier and I already paid for MWO lately (which is awesome and I do not mean 3 PPCs awesome [but it also has this]), but I think the 500k was a very steep order indeed. A pity, but I hope they'll get it done sometime

No, i was talking about doing both. Probably buy a boxed copy for my SR RL friends too, if they don't do it themselves . .
And if the PayPal Donations for swag will be back after kickstarter, i will try it again too . .

Every single one of your concerns has been addressed. It's Free to Play -or- the Guild Wars model. Unity is a flexible development platform capable of publishing to (almost) any device. You wouldn't accuse Endless Space of being browser based, would you? Guess what, they could make it browser based in under 90 seconds. Crowd Sourced, really. You didn't have this problem with SRR or DoubleFine Adventure, or Wastelands 2, did you?

Seriously, the onyl bad thing i can find about SRO right now is this kickstarter mess right now . .
Else it's pretty much perfectly fine for anything i would want in an SR MMO. Aside from it being in the SNAFUBAR SR4 Setting/Timeline and Rules-System, which i don't like one bit . .

Just bumped up my kickstart another $20. Mrs. Crit made the mistake of agreeing that the t-shirts look cool. I chose to interpret her comment as a desire to buy all of them. If it later turns out not to be the case, it's her fault for being unclear, right? You guys'll back me up.

Sure. For a T-Shirt

*nods*
non-nerdy significant others be problematic money wise from time to time . .

I'm lovin' the positive vibes around here.

Also: I'll make sure to keep my riot-gear nearby. You know, with Mrs. Crit possible going on a rampage and all

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA aww man, that's a good one.

I've never seen someone try to *seriously* argue hearsay before, but that just takes the cake man. Well done.

This is really the core of the issue. SWToR didn't have anything special going for it, except for the voice acting. The actual gameplay was like any other MMO out there, with nothing special to make it stand out. And on top of that, a lot of features that people are used to from other games were poorly implemented at launch, mainly the shoddy auction house. Great atmosphere, poor gameplay (for a game that large).
Also doesn't help that they decided against allowing addons, which at least in the case of WoW helped a lot in addressing lacks in the basic UI.

He's a source I trust farther than you - by a dozen orders of magnitude, even.

Case in point, I trust him as a /friend n Facebook - which means he has my home address, real-world email, and even my landline and cellphone numbers.

You? Not so much.

So, yeah. What I've been told by him about TOR, I have no reason to doubt. Whereas, if you were to tell me the sky is blue, I'd look out the window to check, before agreeing with you.

...

Take that as you will.

I agree in some points, Halinn. Just didn't want to go into too many specifics, seeing as ToR isn't really the topic here.

Pax: It is still not a bad thing to check things out Even friends can be biased and then it can make you look like kind of a parrot. Your friend is entitled to his opinion of course, but a player base of 2 million at release speaks a lot louder for itself.

What speaks even louder is ToR going F2P, those 2 million initial subscribers didn't stick around, calling into question the support for its persistence.

Then I look over at a bunch of other persistent games seeking F2P models of support and they are not shoddy pieces of effort in development by any stretch of anything other than a deluded (or trolling) imagination of limited faculties.

If anything, SRO proposing F2P is a recognition of a viable strategy for supporting a persistent gameplay setting, thus a sign of business acumen that bespeaks intelligence and passion for maintaining and continuing the play of their players - who in turn by populating its persistent world and accepting them as co-creators of the narrative on tactical, strategic, progressive, and possibly even over arching levels enrich the experience for all, the developers included. Our stories are their stories.

Primetide and Sangius: Having observed from this end-users perspective other Alpha builds of games, I am amazed at the level of detail your placeholders, mockups, and scripted sequences to convey your intentions for the version 1.0 build in your gameplay videos. I sincerely hope you have a means within your frame work of tools us players can use to do something similar by putting together missions our characters instigate for themselves or as a Mr J for others, that I would hope would even have a sort of approval process (like the way spell checker might be considered an approval process, suggestions on how it could fit better into the world as to better vet it for others to play with as well). A drag and drop / tile based / high-level scripting language level editor if you will.

I know since Primetide first came here and displayed a very impressive level of involving us in the creative process, I am looking forward to this development's success, I have been hoping for a project like this to come along so I can play at the level of shared experience graceful interface I have been eagerly hoping desiring for years, finding others to roll dice with for any setting let alone this one is nigh impossible due to the distances between players. This feels like the impossible dream might actually be realized, would I have a Runner in a crew with CanRay, Critias, Kanis, Pbangarth, Snow Fox, and Ancient one day thanks to this? Oh man, wouldn't that be something...

Well Hell, i never actually considered that . .

@Sangius:

If you read up on these here boards, you know that traditionally CanRay can not play. Only GM.
What are your plans regarding this?

*runs for his life*

That speaks about how popular the franchise is.

The steadily declining population since release, speaks more about the design of the game itself.

Also note that I've never said the game is crap - that friend of mine is a fan of the game overall, and still plays on occasion. He's just the kind of fan who accepts and admits when the game has flaws. So my point wasn't "lol TOR sux", it was "lol TOR is not a shining example of 'good game design' perfection - it has flaws just like everything else".

Sick burn, bro.



Your frightening attempts to prove you have a friend aside, having all that information online, connected to an email address is a really, really stupid thing to do. Facebooks privacy filters are meaningless. Seriously, I get that you're trying to troll here, but I urge you to take most of that info off. (Elitist 'lol fb can't be hax0rd, idiot!' comment in 3...2...)



I'm also not kidding when I say I'm frightened by the weird friendship lines that you're drawing. I don't get it. The closest I can think is that you've reverted to some elementary school taunt, where the guy who disagrees with you has no friends. The part that frightens me though is that you stopped by claiming a single friend, like that was the pinnacle of the social ladder.



I take it like I've always taken it. You're arguing hearsay. At least have the common courtesy to lie and claim it was your opinion, so it could be debated openly. Instead, you're literally breaking down the argument to "I have a friend and he's awesome and you're not and he says you're stupid!" It's fucking childish, and I'm honestly concerned that you're suffering from some sort of mental breakdown.



BULLSHIT!



Moving onward,



Seriously? Your fallacious attempt at moving of the goalposts and complete misportrayal of my position is disingenuous and downright retarded.


Oh yeah. I can see where you got shining example and perfection from. Out of your ass. Like the rest of your argument.

Oh sweet, there is an ignore function on the forums.

Hm, back at the original topic:

Has anyone seen the newest update?. It features new reward-tiers, some Jeff Ricketts firefly-phun and the character creation in Shadowrun Online. It'll be a point-buy-system, just like in the PnP-original. And we reached over 300.000$ now. Nice! Four days to go, show some support if you can.

Thanks a lot

/Edit: There is an ignore function?? Where?

http://i48.tinypic.com/2w7llyt.png

(Almost Normal is merely a guinea pig)

Point buy? O.o
You mean . . you actually went and made that Mess of a Character Creation for SR4 useable via a GUI?
RESPECT!


Dude, is that really a Hitler-Saw in that Video? o.O

I however, as part of my duties can't use the ignore function.

Disagreements and civil discussion of such are acceptable.

Uncivil discussion is against the Terms of Service.

http://i47.tinypic.com/347hfyb.png

EDIT: I'm too slow!

@Stahlseele At first I was a tad shocked. Then I looked it up. Oh well, it's Austria after all, I guess they got these things lying around ...

About the point-buy-generator: Well, the prototype is still very, very far from release (which is why the kickstarter money is needed - btw, we are at 306k now, it's starting to move up quite quickly now), but the devs are very optimistic that they'll come up with something great. What I saw so far looked good as well

Right, I missed two questions (very busy day today): Sadly/luckily there won't be a way for us to prevent CanRay from setting up an account and becoming a closet-gamer. However, a reference to that fact might make it into the game as a kind of an easter-egg

As to the editor: It's one of the hot-topics ever since this project was announced. It's very hard to have such a thing in a game that is developed with pretty small funds and has a centralised server-architecture and a persistent game-world. The devs are valuing community-input very greatly though and made it clear that they are beating their brain's out, trying to find a solution for that problem. A full-fledged editor is something they would love to have, but it is clearly out of scope for the current project.

I am hyped, too, though about the possibilities to play with SR VIPs and players all around the world. My first SR-group is scattered around the planet by now - SRO might bring us all back to a (virtual) table again

@CanRay Situaton:
DOO EET! I Double Dog Dare You! *snickers* ^^

Let me add that waiting until you are personally neck deep in the flaming to report your nemesis for same is a pet peeve of mine. How about just NOT responding to a flame?

The last 48 hours have started now. Money pours in more quickly now, but it's still uncertain whether the Kickstarter will fail or succeed. If you thought about backing the project and find yourself in a position to be able to do so - please go ahead and back it at shadowrun.com/kickstarter . If it fails, you won't loose any money, if it succeeds we'll not 'only' get one but two great Shadowrun games in 2013. AWESOME!

i wish you luck.

Having already spammed the crap out of my Facebook account, this morning I took to launching an email to every one of my gmail contacts that I know is a geek (that doesn't already work for Shadowrun, at least).

Upgraded from $35 to $190. Still wondering why I'm paying so much for a video game (and a whole lot of goodies)...