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birne

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birne last won the day on July 6 2013

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    Felix
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  1. Gameplay footage coming soon! Also there are a few new gameplay screenshots ... (http://kotaku.com/http-www-youtube-com-watch-v-8yu0xuntmvy-sacred-3-bri-1526026859) What they did change are the AI buddies ... they're gone.
  2. S3 will not be released in 2013, of course http://forum.deepsilver.com/forum/showthread.php/68438-Sacred-3-end-of-year-update The big question here, why not?, is a little more complicated I guess. Since there is absolutely nothing of news since the first previews, there is nothing we can do but speculating. Which, to be honest, leads us nowhere right now ...
  3. Ok, I'll have to doublepost here :S I just came across a link to a Polygon article about Ride to Hell: Retribution. A game published by DeepSilver just recently and a game recieving extremely bad reviews. Metascore of 20 / 100, userscores between 0.9 and 1.6 ... Look it up via youtube, it's kinda hilarious. Anyway, the article is from end of May, before the game was released and so before those reviews came out. In the article DS creative director Guido Eickmeyer gives a little insight into what DS is trying to do with its small franchises. And finally I'm actually a little stunned by this. What I read and heard about Sacred 3 and its direction I always thought they needed and wanted to appeal to more than just the old audience because from their point of view there wasn't much left anyway. But reading this ... they were actually trying to aim Sacred 3 at its core audience? Wow ...
  4. It's also a good example for a case where information or in that matter distribution via proxy leads to false impressions.
  5. You're missing my point by an inch It's not about the amount of fans overall. It's the number of people that actually saw the game. Not screenshots, not previews on gaming sites or in magazines. I'm talking about first hand (hands-off) footage of the game. Well ... no. I don't know how many copies of Sacred / Underworld / 2 / Ice&Blood were sold, maybe it were 2 mio maybe less. Whatever it is that number is not of importance right now. Because how many of those 2 mio are "fans" really carring for the franchise? A mere fraction of that. I can't speak for the SIF but the german board has an active user count of 183. Meaning in the last 30 days 183 different users logged into their accounts. I doubt the numbers at SIF are much higher. Not everyone visiting the forums logs in just to check out if there are news. Right now 70 Users are reading the german forums. Minus some search engine bots, let's just say there are 60 people. And this is were actual calculation stops. You can't go on from here without a huge amount of speculation up to a point where it's just geussing. I don't know whether, tomorrow at the same time, if there are again 60 people, those are the same or others ... and so on. I'll ask around to get some google analytics data but even then ... Again, as I said above, the "us" was not referencing every fan ... but just those who actually saw Sacred 3. I get that. I do ... But there are some things to consider: Back in the day when Ascaron was still around we were talking to the developers. Now we're trying to talk to a publisher. That is a huge difference. Additionally, Ascaron was small. DS might not be big, but bigger than Ascaron nonetheless. Ascaron didn't so much care about PR and such on the forums. DS has soem kind of masterplan and sticks with it. Although I don't like that I can at least understand their motivation. edit: As I see this is an emotional topic and even I don't like to argue in DS' favor because I actually don't like some to most of their decision either, maybe we should give this thread a rest? All we can do right now is speculating anyway. Which leads to nothing but high blood pressure. After all we'll have to wait and see what's ahead of us. Maybe there's news at gamescom ... I just don't see any good coming from just speculating and getting worked up about it
  6. Afaik the "us" is very limited right now. Some press at gc and some visitors of PAX east last year. That's it. And there were not few sites / magezines providing false information. So, DS has shown "us" next to nothing. Screenshots and some second hand info via press. Plus some interviews with producers. What I'm saying: I've seen the presentation at gc12 and even I don't think that is enough to judge the game just yet. Yes, I've wrote in my preview that it doesn't "look" like much of a Sacred game. But I wouldn't go so far to just say it's something like Street Fighter. We know so little about so many aspects of the game that judging it right now isn't worth the bytes. Being sceptical about it, yes, criticising DS for not communicating, yes, saying what we don't like of what little we know, yes. But dumping it before further information?
  7. I should visit more frequently ... The threads were moved to the archives after finishing ... german: http://forum.deepsilver.com/forum/showthread.php/45298-Aufruf-Wünsche-für-Sacred-3 english: http://forum.deepsilver.com/forum/showthread.php/45297-Suggestions-and-Wishes-for-Sacred-3 I'll look into it For the open world: I don't know any facts so take this with a grain of salt ... I can aimagine some reasons for the lack of open world. One might be the engine. Keen already had an engine ready for development that they developed on their own. Since Keen has had little to none experience with large desktop development the engine might just not be able to handle an open world. Another cause might be the difficulty an open world brings to development. You have to fill the world with life. Something Ascaron struggled with as well ... And as I've said before I think one of the key goals to development for DS and Keen was a budget not suddenly exploding. An open world is something that can blow up pretty quickly. I think this is something DS had in mind. They just came to another conclusion. (whether they are right or not is up for debate ...) The problem imho is the obsession of PR and that lot with numbers and just numbers. How many likes did we get in the last week? How many people are talking about us? How can we increase that? That doesn't take into account the quality of those numbers. Just by looking at the numbers of visitors on the forums and so on you could conclude that there was not much left of the community. So, DS might have thought, well, there is hardly anybody left to "please", let's do something else. Afaik Citadel was aimed to lead some new players not knowing Sacred to the franchise. That didn't work out ... So in conclusion I don't think DS forgot about fans. They just underestimated them. The numbers of them. The quality ... About replayability: Different paths within a level, different solutions to those ecounters, paths you can opnly take if you have a specific combat art equipped and so on. How well that works remains unknown untill we get a hands-on experience but just from the sound of it ... I can see replayabilty there. It was / is. No official word about any change there. Personally I highly doubt it will be released this year. For various reasons ... DS recently bought the Saints Row franchise and its developer Volition. That is the only development studio currently owned by DS. There was a studio in Vienna before but it was closed due to economic reasons a few years ago. But: It's not like DS hasn't a word in the development. Creative Producers and such from DS are involed in the development of Sacred 3 as well. It's not just Keen games on their own. A few former devs are working on it. Or were working on it. I don't know what the current count is but there were at least three I know of. I don't think Birne is underestimating how INVESTED people have become to the Sacred series. Without a doubt, almost no one will argue that they loved the games when they played them and would love to see similar (and better) versions and sequels come out. There's certainly a lot of heart there from those who play. What I think Birne is getting at is the AMOUNT of people who are invested. I agree with him on this point here. Earlier you said that DarkMatters has about 27-30 thousand members. I'd wager about 2,000 of them come from something completely unrelated to Sacred (guild wars, Ogame, etc.). And even saying that maybe Clan DA has the same (doubtful because we are a lot of duplicates over there), and then the SIF, you're only looking at somewhere around 100,000 caring players. I'm sorry, but heart can only carry you so far with a triple 'A' publisher and the economy. Am I being pessimistic? Yes. But I am being pessimistic because the facts scare me. Yup ... I was only looking at numbers there. I know how invested people are in the Sacred games. I'm one of them Estimating numbers here is difficult. Since we don't know at how many the game is aimed at and how many copies they need to sell before breaking even it's not really something we can talk about without huge speculation. I agree with you that you have to take in account what the hardcore fans want to use them as the word spreaders. But you still need to please enough of the none harcore fans to sell the game to enough people. Finding the right mix there is the difficult part. I'll try to get the comparison between the threads and what I know about Sacred 3 up quickly ...
  8. No. They could take the map and rebuild it in another engine. But I don't think thy could just take the Sacred 2 engine. Again, those tools and servers are absolutely vital for working with the engine. This is a custom engine after all. There are no standards you can just attach to. Those tools were written and developed by Studio 2. Plus, even if they had those tools and servers, they had no idea how the engine works. They'd need to analyse and learn it, which consumes a lot of time. That's still up for debate. Since it's only semantics I'll just leave it there You'd end up with hundreds of opinions. Contradicting opinions. And even those which are not wouldn't make a good game just tossed together. You need to have a vision, you need to have art direction and so on ... It's not just "let's look at what they want and make that happen". You need to choose from so many options ... And this is not even taking in account what the developers want to do. I see your point from a player's perspective wanting the developers to be mere servants to the demands of the fans. But that's not how games development works. Yes, developers should get opinions from the players, look at the legacy of the game. But let the players dictate the new game? No. Until what point? It's not like you can just change the direction the game is headed middevelopment just because there was a good idea on the forums. You have to make decisions early on in development and stick with them (mostly). Which brings me to ... did someone actually look at the thread in the official forums at DS where they asked for ideas? Yes, I know there are tons of threads around other forums about that but for some legal reasons they couldn't use that (their statement). So did somebody check that list and actually compared tht list to what we've seen so far? I didn't ... but maybe I should and come back with some analysis. True. Sadly ... I can't say too much of anything because NDA and such, so you just have to believe me that I'm constantly trying to hammer "COMMUNICATION" into the heads of those involved with community and PR over at DS :/
  9. I actually don't think so. They have the rights to the brand Sacred and its assets. But I wouldn't be so sure about the code itself. They could redo the map and everything from Sacred 2 though ... Again, I'm not that sure about this. Ice & Blood was done by Studio2. The patch was done by one or two former Studio2 employees. I don't know how they did it, but they did not have the server and tool infrastructure Studio2 had while developing the game. And how many hardcore players would that be? Not nearly enough to pay for the development ... "Failure" in a financial manner. Yes, it wasn't only because Sacred2 sold poor, it was mainly because it was just too expensive. That is your point of view and I can see what you mean. But that's not the only truth. Evolve might have been a poor choice of words, but I still stand by what I meant: You can't redo just what you've done before. You have to take it further. Whatever that means is up to the producers and developers. Whether you or the audience agree with them in the end is another story. Again, this is your opinion. And I know it is shared by the majority of the old Sacred fans. But then again, how much of them are left? It's common knowledge that on the internet those with a negative opinion are the loudest which often leads to the impression of a majority against the thing in question. Whether this is really the case is hard to determine. But it might not be that easy just by looking at the internet. I don't want to argue so much in favor of the Sacred 3 we've seen and read about although one could argue I'm playing the devil's advocate in this case. Because introducing new franchises is always more dificult, expensive and risky. Sacred is at least a known name. Plus, it's still in Ancaria and so on ... Doing what they want might be easy, getting to know what "they" want is not. Even figuring out who "they" are is a scientific field on its own. Doing what the hardcore fans want might alienate the casual players and vice versa. If this was so easy, don't you think every developer with a right mind would do what "the players" want? But they don't. Because it's extremly hard to tell what is the right mix between getting old fans on board and open it up for everybody else. The only way to do what the hardcore fans want is to develop a game that fits axactly in its niche ... and nowhere else. You don't make profit with those games if you're bigger than a little indie studio. What fan base? I was there when Sacred 2 was released, I knew the (german) fan base when Sacred2 was released. Most of the people active on the forums after the release were not those, who hung around for years before. Nope ... Those most active were those drawn to the forums by the new Sacred 2. Yes, most likely there won't be much more of the old fans around. When they don't like the new game, they're going to search something new. But there will be new users and players. If that new community will be bigger than the old one is something that might be argued about. And even I think it's going to be smaller ... for various reasons. So again ... I didn't like what I saw in 2012. And I'd really like to see that changed to something more "sacred". But I also know it is not that easy. It's impossible to make everybody happy. You need to find the mix. We agree on Sacred 3 not beeing the right mix. So, please, don't take this post too personal or anything. I just want to put things in perspective from my point of view which might be a little more moderate than that from a hardcore fan. (which does not mean I'm not a fan, I played Sacred1 1.0 ... I'm just used to balance my opinion and the knowledge about the stuff.)
  10. Well ... it's not that easy (with the source code). Sacred 1 had and has nothing to do with DS. But that's too old anyway ... Even if DS managed to find a hard drive with "the code" on it, they couldn't do much with it. To decompile and analyse it, it's required to have a whole bunch of tools and servers running those tools. All of which died with Ascaron and Studio 2. There are however some things they could look at, just like the CM Patch guys do, but not more. Also, I don't think a game mirroring Sacred 2 would be that succesfull. You need to evolve the genre. Many players were alienated by Diablo and sort of made the ARPG genre a little harder for everybody else. (At least that's what the DS producers told me at gc 2012 when we were given the Sacred 3 presentation.) As for the lack of news ... hard to tell what's going on. I don't think we'll see extremely big differences between the hands-off preview version from 2012 and what it might look like whenever it resurfaces. Simply because it's pretty expensive to start nearly again from scratch when you're already 2 or 3 years into development. I personally don't think DS planned to make a huge amount of money with Sacred 3 anyway after the "failure" of Sacred 2. Without digging it up again, Sacred 2 was way too expensive to be profitable, so DS' first aim needed to be a development without exploding costs. But going back to the drawing board would mean exactly that. There might be some smaller changes to some features we've criticised but I really don't think that's going to be something major like an open world ...
  11. Remember these screenshots are very early footage of the game. I don't know what it will look like in the end but I wouldn't lose all hope for the art design just now
  12. DS actually is at E3, but shows Saints Row IV mainly, I guess. No news on Sacred3 so far :/ But, well, do the math. We haven't heard anything about the game in almost a year. If they still want to release it this year they'd better be beta testing right now. Since we didn't hear anything about that - which imho would be something noteworthy PR-wise - I doubt they are. We'll see whether we're going to have another look at it at gamescom this year, but if they do not show Sacred3 there ... Bear in mind though that I'm just speculating here!
  13. As I have said before, Sacred 3 looks like "Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light".
  14. That was the absolute first thing I said during the presentation at gamescom and afterwards while talking to the producers. "It looks like Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light ..."
  15. Well, at least the camera is oldschool It's like it was with Sacred1 and I'm actually okay with that. Imho it helps keeping track of everything easier and to not lose focus on enemies or yoruself during action driven fights.
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