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[FoxSpirit]

The problem here is two-fold...

1. They used those stretch goals to get more money, then during development they cut those community funded features, spending money on things that werent in the KS, like the console version instead.

2. They only admitted to cutting the content after days of being confronted by the fact on twitter, facebook, official forums and reddit. They were going to launch the game without ever informing the community of the cut content, especially damming in the case of the italian language translation.

Inxile is very much in the wrong here

The switched from more companions to less but more indepth and the Oasis got cut down because the Bloom became so large. And the codex is now out of game.

Oh wow, HUGE changes here. I hope you at least backed it if you go on this rant.

 

[Vic_Viper]

anyone here that has the EA version, how much of the game is available to play?

 

[HashtagLapsed]

I didn't back this, so it doesn't directly effect me. I still hope the game comes out and is actually good.

This will likely damage any future crowd funding they try and do though, why would anyone give money to help them push for stretch goals after how badly they handled this whole thing.

 

[Purkake4]

I didn't back this, so it doesn't directly effect me. I still hope the game comes out and is actually good.

This will likely damage any future crowd funding they try and do though, why would anyone give money to help them push for stretch goals after how badly they handled this whole thing.

They were clever enough to wrap Wasteland 3 up on Fig before this.

 

[Sarek]

The switched from more companions to less but more indepth and the Oasis got cut down because the Bloom became so large. And the codex is now out of game.

Oh wow, HUGE changes here. I hope you at least backed it if you go on this rant.

The thing is that those companions were always marketed as very in depth. So using we made them in depth as argument for cutting third of them doesn't really work that well. Also you conveniently ignore the fact they were clearly trying to hide this which is the main sticking point for many.

 

[The Wart]

Nice choice pickings... not very balanced. I see several posters on there countering the bullshit too.

Which proves my point about the wide brush.

I do agree some fo those comments should have resulted in instant bans.

You seem to be under the impression that people criticizing the codex are saying that every single person posting there is constantly spewing racial slurs. That is not the claim.

A forum or organization is judged based on the social norms of conduct that it maintains, either through official means or implicit ones. RPGCodex is a place racism/misogyny/etc are entirely commonplace and go largely unremarked upon or censured* in any meaningful way. Participating in such a forum without pushing back against such behavior implies that vicious bigotry is an acceptable form of conduct in that forum. It doesn't make any specific individual a vile person or a "social imbecile", but neither does the presence of non-vile individuals make RPGCodex a non-vile place.

So yeah, it's important to avoid attributing the properties of the forum to each individual on it. But we can still call out the properties of the forum.

*Note that censure and censor are different words.

 

[Xisiqomelir]

This entire thing could have been a resolved if inXile would have just informed the backers itself. Just incredibly stupid mishandling of the whole situation.

I agree. Dev mishaps are to be expected, but this kind of behaviour only makes you think "what else are they hiding?".

 

[Rolodzeo]

Cutting out Italian localisation less than a month out is pretty fucked up.

This speaks really poor about inXile.

 

[StereoVsn]

I agree. Dev mishaps are to be expected, but this kind of behaviour only makes you think "what else are they hiding?".

Well, that plus console release can't make you but think "Aha, that's where the money went" whether true or not. A bit of transparency and better communication (witness Lariant's approach to D:OS) would have resolved most of the complains ahead of time.

 

[Messofanego]

Nice choice pickings... not very balanced. I see several posters on there countering the bullshit too.

Which proves my point about the wide brush.

I do agree some fo those comments should have resulted in instant bans.

Your point isn't proven unless if you're creating a strawman that people are literally saying 100% of posters on RPGCodex are hateful bigots. Those people countering are also saying slurs, willy nilly.

 

[MisterShine]

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/torment-tides-of-numenera/posts/1770943

New backer update, and they address the changes and why they did them, with an appropriate apology:

"...But our focus on the game led to a different disservice. Namely, our lack of communication. We have always been major proponents of openness during development, but we did not communicate these changes earlier, and we should have done so sooner. For this, you have the entire team’s sincerest apologies. Going forward both with Torment and our future games, we hope to increase our efforts in making sure that you know the status and future plans for inXile’s projects."

We cool, inXile.

 

[duckroll]

Italian Localization

One other topic: the Italian localization. When we set out to create Torment, our planned size was significantly smaller. Torment in its final form grew to a much bigger, deeper RPG, and has over 1.2 million words. When we chose our planned localizations for the game, that word count and expanded scope for the game didn't exist yet. Unfortunately, it turns out that localization a game script of such a magnitude to a good standard of quality is extremely costly.

With Wasteland 2, we could turn to many of our backers, who volunteered their time and talent to help build the game's localization. With Torment, we wanted to pursue professional localization efforts. Unfortunately, during this process, we made the difficult decision to drop support for Italian - both our backer numbers and the sales of our prior RPGs in Italy meant it was unlikely we'd be able to field the very high costs.

We’re looking into ways to bring you Italian in a post-release capacity, such as community translations. The producers will keep you informed on that if we have any news on that. Regardless, we understand that some of our Italian fans backed the game hoping to play that version. If you are an Italian backer and unable to play the game in English, and you would like a pledge refund, please contact us at our customer support page.

I don't think this is cool at all. Very poor allocation of resources. Stuff like localization budget should have been locked away from the start after funding if it is a campaign promise. If it means you have less money to make the rest of the game, so be it, but languages are important, especially for a RPG.

 

[Bar81]

They're giving full refunds to Italians. What exactly is the horrible offense they've committed against those backers now that they're made whole.

 

[epmode]

They're giving full refunds to Italians. What exactly is the horrible offense they've committed against those backers now that they're made whole.

Disappointing all backers that wanted to play the game in Italian is pretty lousy. Localization options shouldn't ever be on the chopping block once they've been confirmed. Definitely a bad call.

 

[HamsterExAstris]

Stuff like localization budget should have been locked away from the start after funding if it is a campaign promise. If it means you have less money to make the rest of the game, so be it, but languages are important, especially for a RPG.

Even if they had locked it away, it sounds like it wouldn't have been enough because they let the scope of the rest of the game creep.

 

[duckroll]

They're giving full refunds to Italians. What exactly is the horrible offense they've committed against those backers now that they're made whole.

It's not a horrible offense at all. It's just a sign of not taking localization very seriously. Italian isn't some niche language. The argument that Italian specific sales would not justify it is kinda lame because I don't think that's how it should be looked at. To me it's very much like implementing stuff like subtitles/close captioning and colorblind options. You want to make sure as many people can enjoy the game as possible. You should look at the overall cost for implementing these features and set that aside.

Even if they had locked it away, it sounds like it wouldn't have been enough because they let the scope of the rest of the game creep.

Well that's a project management issue.

 

[QFNS]

I don't think this is cool at all. Very poor allocation of resources. Stuff like localization budget should have been locked away from the start after funding if it is a campaign promise. If it means you have less money to make the rest of the game, so be it, but languages are important, especially for a RPG.

I'm gong to guess their argument is that "Oh we expanded the scope so much we didn't realize the localization budget would expand so greatly!" Not that I'm taking their side here, but playing Devil's Advocate this is what I expect they would respond with.


It completely sucks, though you're right.

InXile has not had the greatest track record over the years with their fund allocation. Wasteland 2 had issues delivering all the promises also, and now here we are again. I didn't back Wasteland 3 because of it. I sincerely hope that Torment ends up wonderful and amazing, but inXile could really use some better management of their kickstarter promises.

It's a really bad look when part way though development they announce bonus platforms that no one was asking for (PS4, Xbone) and then break their promises to backers about the stretch goals. I don't even care that much about the city one. They claim to have fleshed out a different city instead, whatever, make the choice that makes for a better game. That's great. But removing companions without communicating is a REALLY shitty thing to do. They could have made that clear much earlier in development and I might have given them a pass, but basically at release? Bad form. 4 months ago (or whenever I dunno how long this stuff takes), if they had come out and said, "Hey, these companions aren't working out the way we hoped. So we decided to take the resources from them and expand all the others to have an extra quest or two each. We're really sorry, but we think this is better for reasons X, Y, Z and so forth." That might have been ok. But this is just sleazy.

 

[Instro]

The localization being pulled strikes me as an actual issue vs the content changes. The latter seems normal in the course of development, the former is a very clear management issue. I understand it from a business perspective, there is minimal ROI to bothering with the Italian localization, but they should have done something about it ages ago rather than a month before release.

I'm perfectly fine with the other changes, now that 6 characters is the confirmed number. That is plenty if they are all fully fleshed out, which remains to be seen of course.