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Open Letter to the Sacred 3 Devs


rhs408

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Dear Sacred 3 Devs,

 

I'm well aware that the game is already being worked on and it is probably not possible to make any huge changes to the road which is already being taken as far as developing S3, but I still feel the need to get this off my chest, especially since I just recently started playing Sacred 2 again (and am still enjoying the hell out of playing it).

 

Let's think about Sacred 2 for a minute, about the game that it was supposed to be, and the game that ended up making its way to store shelves. There was a huge team of software engineers working on this game for years. They probably didn't even know what they were getting into when they started. It is a HUGE game. The world map alone is enormous, and with so much detail. So many places to explore that don't really have much purpose, but are there anyways. A lot of other programmers would have just removed such places - why spend so much time on an area which has no real reason to be in the game in the first place? For example, there is an area in the Orc country that is high on a hill overlooking two or three rivers converging together into a waterfall beneath me. It is absolutely gorgeous. It serves zero purpose as far as the gameplay or story, but that is maybe why I thought it was so cool. I was just wandering around seeing where the wind would take me and trying to check out some unexplored areas, and I found this beautiful vista. In my opinion, this is one of the things which makes Sacred 2 so unique, but also serves to show how much potential the game had if the Sacred 2 developers just had more time to work on it. Sacred 2 is the ultimate unfinished gem.

 

That being said, anyone who played Sacred 2 and stuck with it long enough to realize what a great game it was already knew exactly what they wanted for Sacred 3 - they simply want a finished, polished version of Sacred 2. Sacred 3 was supposed to be everything that Sacred 2 was striving to be had there been enough time for it to be completed. It was supposed to build off of an already winning formula. The primary ingredients of this winning formula did not need to be changed at all, it only needed things fixed and added to it. Even the graphics didn't need to be upgraded - Sacred 2 players don't give two craps about fancy PS4-esque graphics and SFX. We just want solid, bug-free gameplay and a huge world to explore. S3 devs, you have to understand and keep in mind what it was that made Sacred 2 so unique and good and what made its players demand a 3rd installment. Sacred 2 players don't want another Diablo. They don't want a game that is similar to other popular games. Sacred 2 players want to play SACRED.

 

But it seems you devs at Deep Silver do not realize that you already had a winning formula sitting in your lap. Maybe all you saw were the average to poor reviews of Sacred 2 when it first came out and said to yourselves "ok, let's just start over and make something similar to Diablo - yea, that shouldn't be too hard." In order for Sacred 3 to be successful, you need to take a chance. You need to trust in the winning formula that was Sacred 2 and believe that when enough people realize how great of a game a polished Sacred is, they will come in droves to buy it. I've been playing video games for almost 30 years now and I can't believe how much of my free time I still put into Sacred 2 to this day. After my countless hours of playing, I'm still thoroughly enjoying this damn game. But wow, if there was a new, polished version of what I'm playing now? I'll be there with my wallet ready the first day it's out. You could sell it for $99 and I'd still buy it without a second thought. I don't think I could say that about any other game.

 

As I've stated before, if the new Sacred 3 stays on its present course and does not resemble the Sacred series in any meaningful way, I will absolutely not buy it, I'll instead purchase Ice and Blood (I still only play Fallen Angel). If you guys are going to change the things which made the Sacred series unique and awesome, please don't even bother with it. Or at least, PLEASE, don't call it Sacred.

Edited by rhs408
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Even though I can agree with most things written here, I have to say that it's a bit late to write such letters. The release date for Sacred 3 is set and it is set to this August. That means that the game is already finished, or almost finished. Most probably right now it goes through the testing phase and finishing touches. We already know that we won't see the vast world open for exploration. We already know that we won't see the same unusual approach to character design and the same diversity of character builds. Whether or not we would see a good ARPG remains to be seen. But regardless of anything else, it won't be made in the same way as Sacred 1 and 2.

 

Who knows, maybe the Deep Silver managers only knew that Sacred series is a Diablo-like RPG, the one that aspired to outdo Diablo but in the opinion of reviewers did not manage? Maybe they did not bother to figure out what made the concept of Sacred any different and just thought "If it's Diablo-like, let's look at Diablo and make a similar game". Maybe they just decided that the open world is a very expensive feature that most players won't bother using anyway, without understanding the obvious fact - the players who did not bother to explore Sacred usually decided that it's inferior to Diablo and quit playing it after a day or two. It's those who explored the difference in the world and character builds, learned more about the game and understood it, those people became fans and they would be the only ones who really looks forward to the next installment.

 

Putting it simple, there is still a chance that Sacred 3 would be a good game, but there is already no chance that it would be a polished version of Sacred 1 or 2.

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First of all I would like to stress what Flix already said, get Ice and Blood, get the CM-Patch and the CM-Patch-Item-Mod and enjoy an even better Sacred!

Then, I have to say, I only can underline what Silver_fox already said, a couple of years back down in the German speaking forum of Sacred Fallen Angel and later Ice and Blood there had been numerous threads about what the community would wish for a Sacred III to be like. Unfortunately it seemed that DS gave a .... about what had been written there.

Now the train has left for Sacred III and we will not see a improved Sacred II, as sad as it is. The only thing we, sorry for putting it this way, real Sacred fans now still can do is making our voices heard and not buy this game doesn't matter if it is good or not. To boycott Sacred III and bee it only to show that publishers cannot do what they want to just make money out of a very good series name. At least this is what I will do and I have no problem with it as there are more than enough alternatives to a Sacred III which are for sure better or, should it happen that it becomes a good game, at least equal.

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...That means that the game is already finished, or almost finished...

 

Lets face it, no modern game is bug/glitch/patch free anymore - its impossible to test out and fix all the scenarios in the short development time and limited internal communications. The game will be "presentable enough" for a release. :sigh:

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>"...no modern game is bug/glitch/patch free anymore..."

No, they always have something that can be fixed later, and it the devs tell you otherwise, it's just an advertisement trick. When I said that the game is finished, I did not mean that it's bug free, just that all important decisions about its looks and mechanics were already made and programmed, so it is unrealistic to expect any big change. I bet it goes or would go through testing phase. No program, game or otherwise is ever released completely untested. But no internal testing can catch all bugs in modern games...

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>"...no modern game is bug/glitch/patch free anymore..."

No, they always have something that can be fixed later, and it the devs tell you otherwise, it's just an advertisement trick. When I said that the game is finished, I did not mean that it's bug free, just that all important decisions about its looks and mechanics were already made and programmed, so it is unrealistic to expect any big change. I bet it goes or would go through testing phase. No program, game or otherwise is ever released completely untested. But no internal testing can catch all bugs in modern games...

Yes, that is true.

But in the last decade the devs (or to be more correct, the marketing) stopped even trying to hide their shabby workmanship to try and meat the dead line. They outright state "well patch it later" as an excuse for everything... which in some cases can KILL YOU.

I personally worked in a big team on developing automation software tools for huge factories, where they DIDN'T TEST for basic "on the receiver, the electric current gets converted into correct 1 and 0's". Lets just say, if you needed to convert sensor data into ANY decimal, you had to wait up to 6 months for an update. The marketing just pushed out the devices onto the market at FULL price, and only years later updated their software up to Betta version.

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