DescentBB

Is this game dead in the water? I haven't seen anything from the High Octane boys in weeks, not even an update on their website.

Is it finally time to become a ground pounder?

Check this: http://coredecision.highoctane.biz

You expect a new game just in development to just drop on your lap? They don't have to update us on every line of code they put in you know

For 2 years before D3 came out I used to visit Outrage's website every day and they updated it maybe 3 times. =)

Suncho this could have been their first mistake. Keep the community interested and growing not ignored and shrinking. Take gamers for granted and Ha, Ha, Ha KaBoom.

Let em concentrate on making their game, not keeping you buzzards oohing and ahhing over every advance they make. Each hour they spend updating the site is an hour they take away from making the game.

Stryker wrote:.. not keeping you buzzards oohing and ahhing over every advance they make. Each hour they spend updating the site is an hour they take away from making the game.

Wrong -- it's called "customer relationship & marketing". Remember we are the ones responsible for getting the word out. If we get desillusioned/desinterested, well, flop.

Nexus_One wrote:Is this game dead in the water? I haven't seen anything from the High Octane boys in weeks, not even an update on their website.

Is it finally time to become a ground pounder?

It is NEVER time to become a ground pounder.

Actually their first mistake was announcing they were even making a game to you guys so early in the process. They should have waited until they had something more substantial where they could keep us up to date more frequently.

I understand why they did what they did though. They needed feedback. They got their feedback and now they're working on the game. When they need more feedback we'll hear more news on the matter. Until then some of you need to chill out. The whole 1.5 fiasco over the last couple of years have gotten you all twitchy.

CD will arrive sooner than the 1.5 patch, so thats why everyone is so twitchy.

Its good to see your interest in Core Decision.

I don't feel our announcement of the game was premature. We had been working on it already for over a year. I understand that you have a desire to keep up with it, but if we update you consistantly it will take the joy out of the finally product because you will have already seen it.

It's kind of like when you go to the movies and see the previews and they show all the best parts from the upcoming movie. Then when the movie comes out you have already seen all of the best parts.

Yes, it will help greatly for you to get the word out, but lets not forget that this isn't an open source, community project, it is a full production commercial game with a publisher. The Descent community is not going to be our only source of buyers. The internet and stores will be vending the game.

However, I do recognize that word of mouth is the best seller. We update our site almost every day. Mainly in the forums area and the FAQ. We release teasers when appropriate. Hold polls to help with the development of the game. We even do Q & A sessions to get feedback and inform the public of the work.

We appreciate your input and interest in Core Decision and look forward to meeting you on the battle field in the near future. Until then feel free to visit the Core Decision Portal, read up, and ask questions.

Sincerely,
Zachary Briggs, Executive Producer
HighOctane Software
(269)506-3116 Feel free any time 24/7.

zbriggs wrote:Yes, it will help greatly for you to get the word out, but lets not forget that this isn't an open source, community project, it is a full production commercial game with a publisher. The Descent community is not going to be our only source of buyers. The internet and stores will be vending the game.

when will we start seeing commercials? you need to advertise. thats the most common answer given when you ask people why d3 was a flop: bad marketing/advertising. alot of people never even knew d3 existed. this game doesnt have the same buzz doom 3 or halflife 2 have/had. nobody's heard of core decision. i just hope you plan to change that.

Yeah, I want to see some "Core Decision > Doom 3" commercials.

"Who needs an alien to be scared to death?" *picture of ship1 hunting ship2 down*

The responsibility for marketing/advertising falls on the publisher. However, I'm certain there will be plenty of it.

Zach

kurupt wrote: when will we start seeing commercials? you need to advertise. thats the most common answer given when you ask people why d3 was a flop: bad marketing/advertising. alot of people never even knew d3 existed. this game doesnt have the same buzz doom 3 or halflife 2 have/had. nobody's heard of core decision. i just hope you plan to change that.

That may be the most common answer but it's not the most accurate. D3 didn't sell well for 2 main reasons:

1. System requirements were too high.
2. The singleplayer sucked so people who bought it were telling their friends that it sucked... without giving the multiplayer much thought.

in 2. your totaly wrong suncho, singleplayer + coop in d3 rocks. we probably have 10 or 20 times more d3 sp player who never show up on any forum then we have mp player.

the problem d3 had is very simple. most d1 d2 player worldwide did not know that it exists. at the time d3 came out other big-hiters came on the shelf with great hype and d3 was complete forgoten, thats all.

DigiJo wrote:in 2. your totaly wrong suncho, singleplayer + coop in d3 rocks. we probably have 10 or 20 times more d3 sp player who never show up on any forum then we have mp player.

Is that why I got bored and never finished it... whereas I did finish the singleplayer of D1?

Hardly anyone plays D3 just for the single player. There are a few, I can imagine, but generally, the multiplayer is why people that stuck with it bought the game, and what keeps people going these days.

The single-player mission was adequate, but compared to D1 or even D2 its pace was non-existent, and it didn't really hold much to interest players.

Undoubtedly an add-on mission could do better, but no-one has ever really made one.

Guys, give them a break, I mean sheesh, commercials already? You only see commercials for games that are really close to coming out, like when I saw LOTR The Two Towers, they had a Warcraft III advertisment. The game came out only like 3 months after...

i asked them if they planned on advertising better than d3 was. ie were there gonna be any commercials etc. i never asked how come i havent seen one yet. learn to read. thanks.

eh he, oops, my mistake....


Though you could be a little less Sarcastic....

Thenior wrote:eh he, oops, my mistake....


Though you could be a little less Sarcastic....

Kurupt? Less sarcastic? bWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! UR funny.

Descent 3 had several issues that lead to it not going as far as it should have. I could sit here and discuss them all day. It is easy to point out the mistakes that other people make after the fact, thatâ??s why itâ??s the past. The past is generally much easier to read than the future. I'm sure that we will have our share of mistakes just like any game. The important this is that we analyze the mistakes or shortfall of other products and companies and attempt to avoid the same ones.

With that said please note that I spend a great deal of time analyzing the rise and falls of other companies and products as well as our own. Some we will be able to correct after the fact, some we will have to correct on the next release. I am open to thoughts, observations, and opinions that you have about this sort of thing.

Please feel free to email me. I do read every message regardless of whether I am able to respond in a timely manner. Please forgive me in advance for the response time.

Sincerely,
Zachary Briggs, Executive Producer
HighOctane Software
zach@highoctane.biz

To put it in a simple phrase, dont pull and Invisible War, thats it.

Why are you guys so mean? Nexus_One just wanted to know if the game was still alive.

Descent 3 also didn't sell well because of Half-Life. Half-Life blew everyone out of the water with marketing, and because of that, and other problems, D3 just fell into obscurity.

I think Suncho has something there. Most people, when they try a game, they try the single-player first to see if they like it. If the single-player sucks, then what does that say about the rest of the game? That's their way of thinking. I liked the D3 single-player because I like action games. While D3 single-player would have been good for an action game, apparently it's not good for an FPS, considering most people think D3 SP sucks.

Nice thread revival .

While I personally liked D3's singleplayer, it was really slow in getting started. The first mission (which was all you had in Demo2) was REALLY boring.

But that was just one problem, and is all I have to say for now .

I thought Descent 3's singleplayer was rather weak because compared to the pace of the first two, it was a snail. And oddly, although there were more things to do in each level, you felt like you jumped in with a laundry list of things to do. By the time the larger levels roll around, the whole thing got ridiculous.

A lot of games rely on mission objectives, but the best games don't spell out every little point. It's intrinsic and masked by fun that you don't realize it's a laundry list. Same is true for "button mashers." Many game magazines, for God knows what reason, knock "button mashing" games. But there aren't many games that aren't on some level about button mashing, even those which meet the acclaim of 9.0+ scores. It's about how much fun you have doing it and the good ones hide it under substance.

Part of why Descent 3 probably started so sluggishly is that it might have assumed neophytes would be playing the game for the first time. Unless you get quickly accustomed to the whole 360º mechanic, you're going to get dinged a lot. Look at the typical Quake fan play Descent, same deal. That's why level 1 was so boring. Because the concept of 360º is so foreign, Descent doesn't have the luxury the normal FPS does. Half-Life, Doom, Quake, Battlefield and Unreal all control in essentially the same way - WASD and mouselook. You know how to play one, you know basically how to play the others. Descent has no template to draw from, which new players would find very confusing. Which is why I always thought that if a Descent game was going to be big, it needed to have some element of WASD - be it getting out of the ship or dumbing down the controls so they wind up being WASD (Unreal's Raptor is a pretty decent compromise between WASD functionality and full-on flight, though you really can't spin vertically in it).