Funding Fatigue?

Slapshot1188

So CoE, with great fanfare... announced their Kickstarter 2nd Anniversary celebration which included a month of sales with weekly unique and special items each week.  The sale is currently stated to end just a few days from now.

They really pulled out all the stops, reopening sales of Nobility packages which were supposed to have been gone,  a sale on "EP" their in house currency that you can use to buy perks and advantages, cute pets, new mounts, even jpeg ships!

They published stretch goals out to the $500k mark which included some big advantages such as guaranteed "Old" souls for backers which would given them one or more lifetimes advantage over later pledgers/customers,  extra soul packs, upgraded housing (for the higher donors. Just Aristocracy and Nobles) and even a new playable race.   

Yet sales have been... lukewarm at best.  With just a few days to go (scheduled to end by June 1) they have raised an anemic $141k.  Per Caspien:     "We just went for depth for this kickstarterversary instead of breadth, so there wasn't necessarily something for everyone. Lesson learned. We'll do it differently next year."

So why do you think the sales were so slow?

• Funding Fatigue
• Lack of Breadth of offerings
• Too much Pay 4 Advantage stuff
• Folks waiting for the last day to see if something better comes along for the sale
• Lowered interest in the game (note that activity here and on other sites is down dramatically)
• Something else?

Octagon7711

They aren't doing anything that would bring in new people.  The people with money have already spent most of theirs on the game.  Is there an alpha for people to play around in or is everything mostly theory still?  I'm mostly waiting to do hands on.

Dakeru

Slapshot1188 said:

"We'll do it differently next year."

My favorite part

Mendel

Slapshot1188 said:

So CoE, with great fanfare... announced their Kickstarter 2nd Anniversary celebration which included a month of sales with weekly unique and special items each week.  The sale is currently stated to end just a few days from now.

They really pulled out all the stops, reopening sales of Nobility packages which were supposed to have been gone,  a sale on "EP" their in house currency that you can use to buy perks and advantages, cute pets, new mounts, even jpeg ships!

They published stretch goals out to the $500k mark which included some big advantages such as guaranteed "Old" souls for backers which would given them one or more lifetimes advantage over later pledgers/customers,  extra soul packs, upgraded housing (for the higher donors. Just Aristocracy and Nobles) and even a new playable race.   

Yet sales have been... lukewarm at best.  With just a few days to go (scheduled to end by June 1) they have raised an anemic $141k.  Per Caspien:     "We just went for depth for this kickstarterversary instead of breadth, so there wasn't necessarily something for everyone. Lesson learned. We'll do it differently next year."

So why do you think the sales were so slow?

• Funding Fatigue
• Lack of Breadth of offerings
• Too much Pay 4 Advantage stuff
• Folks waiting for the last day to see if something better comes along for the sale
• Lowered interest in the game (note that activity here and on other sites is down dramatically)
• Something else?

Of the options listed, I'd suggest that there is a lowered interest in the game.  I think a lot of the discussion has shown some significant hurdles for COE, and the developers do not have a solid plan on what they want to implement.  I think that appeals for things like the 'voluntary source domain experts' on crafting demonstrated to the customers a fundamental weakness in the development staff -- they don't want to do the research, they appear to want someone else to do the work for them.   I equate the drop in COE discussion with that announcement from CIG, at least both seemed to occur at the same time.

Ultimately, the schedule for COE was always unrealistic and still is.  That bit of information seems to be taking hold in even the most fervent supporters.  This has created a major confidence problem for the development team -- their customers lost faith in them.  It appears that some of their most loyal followers have questions about CIG's ability to deliver on their promises and are backing away from continued support.  The answers received (or lack of answers) haven't inspired continued faith in the promises and schedules about this project.

In other industries, the most common way to address issues concerning the customer's belief in a company's product involves the removal of leadership.  Changing the CEO, president or project leadership is used to rebuild the community's belief in the project.  It can be used to bury bad promises and restart a struggling project.  At least, that's one way a company addresses a distressed development project.

I don't know the internal state of affairs, but to a complete outsider, there are signs that this is a project in trouble.  How CIG will address the situation will have a significant impact on their company's future.

Slapshot1188

@Mendel I think you mean SbS but I understand your points

jonp200

I'm in the "It will probably never launch" camp.

Kyleran

They didn't offer a $27K "ship package", clearly what the crowd funding market is after.

Kyleran

Octagon7711 said:

They aren't doing anything that would bring in new people.  The people with money have already spent most of theirs on the game.  Is there an alpha for people to play around in or is everything mostly theory still?  I'm mostly waiting to do hands on.

This is likely a factor, unlike some other titles (SC, CF, CU) which have visible game in development and accessable to potential backers this one still doesn't. 

They were supposed to be rolling in some backer tier into Vox Elyria by now, but if its happening theres been little news on it.

Certainly nothing people can buy in or upgrade to.

Wellspring

"We just went for depth for this kickstarterversary instead of breadth, so there wasn't necessarily something for everyone. Lesson learned. We'll do it differently next year."

What does that even mean? 

Onji12

The term Kickstarterversary is ridiculous to begin with. They will celebrate the first time we took our backers money by trying to get more of it? To top that off the whole thing reeks of p2w benefits for backers. To everyone else the whole thing is just screaming stay away. 

I am in the "it will probably never launch" camp as well. 

Scorchien

Wellspring said:

"We just went for depth for this kickstarterversary instead of breadth, so there wasn't necessarily something for everyone. Lesson learned. We'll do it differently next year."

What does that even mean? 

Well it sounds like the made a Deeper pile of Shit for the current backers to dig further into , rather than a Larger more encompassing Pile of Shit for new folks to step in..

Dvora

When was the last time they actually showed something new, some form of progress?  I would hope at the start of the anniversary sale they did some sort of progress report/press release but I don't see much if anything.

Wellspring

Regarding your question about why we think the funding didn't go as well as expected...

Speaking personally, as a former KS backer, I guess you can say I lost interest in the game.

Which pretty much all stemmed from how SBS has conducted themselves as a company since the KS ended. 

OrangeBoy

It's really funny when you look at the comments in the Kickstarter Anniversary post, a majority of them are just eating this up.

I can't tell whether this is pure comedy or dark humor because of the realization that ploys like these work en mass towards a certain type of people that are stupid enough to fall for it.

IceDark

Even if is not the case, I would really love to know that the real reason as to why sales were so slow , is because people woke up. And not only for this game, but for all KS scam MMO's.

Big love for those who have stopped or will stop to support KS MMo's.

Slapshot1188

OrangeBoy said:

It's really funny when you look at the comments in the Kickstarter Anniversary post, a majority of them are just eating this up.

I can't tell whether this is pure comedy or dark humor because of the realization that ploys like these work en mass towards a certain type of people that are stupid enough to fall for it.

But even the number of comments on that thread are very low...

OrangeBoy

Slapshot1188 said:

OrangeBoy said:

It's really funny when you look at the comments in the Kickstarter Anniversary post, a majority of them are just eating this up.

I can't tell whether this is pure comedy or dark humor because of the realization that ploys like these work en mass towards a certain type of people that are stupid enough to fall for it.

But even the number of comments on that thread are very low...

I forgot to mention that too. Not just that, but the number of likes has gone down as well.

I think the first few events like this one were welcoming, but I think everyone sort of slowed down and started asking questions at the bikini chain deviant package.

Slapshot1188

OrangeBoy said:

Slapshot1188 said:

OrangeBoy said:

It's really funny when you look at the comments in the Kickstarter Anniversary post, a majority of them are just eating this up.

I can't tell whether this is pure comedy or dark humor because of the realization that ploys like these work en mass towards a certain type of people that are stupid enough to fall for it.

But even the number of comments on that thread are very low...

I forgot to mention that too. Not just that, but the number of likes has gone down as well.

I think the first few events like this one were welcoming, but I think everyone sort of slowed down and started asking questions at the bikini chain deviant package.

Looks like Caspien was actually challenged on his timeline today.   Someone actually showed him that his math doesn't add up.  After the obligatory complaints by the Ivory Tower that asking questions like this takes away from development:

'❥Winterlynn❄ |⍲|St. Jude Stream - Today at 12:42 PM

I mean. We are taking away development time for this answer

------------------

We get an actual answer from Caspien that admits the math doesn't work and if you just add up his statements that it does add up to more than 2019:

Caspian-Today at 12:47 PM

It's fine folks. Every once in a while people feel the need to ask. And he's not wrong. if you take the statements I've said in here in conversation and add them up, it does total more than 2019. But it's something I'm already aware of. The short answer is, I plan to do what I can to keep it in 2019.

------------------

And then THIS statement seems to indicate that feature cuts might be in the cards in order to make that date:

Caspian-Today at 12:49 PM

And I think that's the real question and answer. Are we doing anything to keep it in 2019, given the summation of goals and estimates? The answer is yes. We're adjusting to the limits possible, while still delivering a high quality game, to keep it in 2019.

earlier-
 We always have a target date. That's the date we use to make decisions. Decisions such as "do we need more staff," "do we need to cut features to hit this date." etc. The target date is there as a guideline to give us frame of reference. But we won't ship until the game is ready. My aim is to make that late 2019, but I can't make any guarantees. Staff changes happen, people get stuck in jury duty for weeks, etc. So I don't believe there's a contradiction there. There's the plan we've stated publicly, we're working toward, and then there's the reality of not being able to predict the future, and we adjust our resources and planning accordingly to handle our changing circumstances.
------------------

So I think that reality may actually be starting to hit both the fan base AND the dev team.  While it may hurt short term funding... getting out of the Ivory Tower and into a more realistic feature scope and timeline is probably a much needed event.  We all know it's much easier to sell things but much harder to deliver them.  Maybe this sale's lackluster performance is the first step on a corrected and viable path.

Wizardry

Their system is way more of a turn off than enticing me to join.

Sorry but you have to build a game with your own money,i am not funding ANY developer to build a game so they can get rich.
So the more in game stuff they sell with packages,the further away i get and right now i am about 5 million miles away.

OrangeBoy

oh and 141k raised is anemic indeed, would explain why jeromy is looking a bit pasty on his Q&As

Iselin

Dakeru said:

Slapshot1188 said:

"We'll do it differently next year."

My favorite part

Definitely a game half full kind of dev to even think there will be a 2019 for them.

MadFrenchie

It's always baffled me how people could believe a dev team that can't even meet a ballpark estimate on progress would be able to successfully build a high-quality, innovative game.

I'm waiting to be shown the logic behind that.

Kyleran

MadFrenchie said:

It's always baffled me how people could believe a dev team that can't even meet a ballpark estimate on progress would be able to successfully build a high-quality, innovative game.

I'm waiting to be shown the logic behind that.

You are talking about Roberts Industries and Star Citizen, right? Or did you mean CU and City State Entertainment? 

craftseeker

Kyleran said:

MadFrenchie said:

It's always baffled me how people could believe a dev team that can't even meet a ballpark estimate on progress would be able to successfully build a high-quality, innovative game.

I'm waiting to be shown the logic behind that.

You are talking about Roberts Industries and Star Citizen, right? Or did you mean CU and City State Entertainment? 

Wouldn't have put City State Entertainment on that list, but maybe I haven't been paying close enough attention. But this game certainly makes the list. Actually I am pretty sure that  Chronicles of Elyria is the poster child for what is wrong with kickstarter

MadFrenchie

Kyleran said:

MadFrenchie said:

It's always baffled me how people could believe a dev team that can't even meet a ballpark estimate on progress would be able to successfully build a high-quality, innovative game.

I'm waiting to be shown the logic behind that.

You are talking about Roberts Industries and Star Citizen, right? Or did you mean CU and City State Entertainment? 

Haha, both.  It's nothing personal, I adore MJ for what was DAoC in its heyday, but if I'm approaching this rationally, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense that a team and project manager that can't even provide accurate ballpark estimates for completing portions of the overall project can manage to pull it together and create an entire MMORPG that's high-quality and as innovative as they all seem to want to be.

Slapshot1188

Well.  Looks like they had a nice uptick in the last few days.  Total currently sits at 221k

The main change was they added another ship jpeg to the store but this one was the "Cutter"

Also, the "layaways" end (again) on May 31st.  Per word on the street, the uptick was largely these being paid off.  Further looking into the layaways does not paint a good picture. Here is how Caspien has described the situation:

"We assumed some percentage of those layaways wouldn't be completed. But it appears the number will be significantly higher than we anticipated. But, it is what it is. We just don't have that revenue to count on."

And perhaps even more troubling:
"We make business decisions on revenue projections of those layaways. So when we've got hundreds of thousands of dollars tied up in layaways by people with no intention of actually completing them, it messes with our projections and makes our business decisions inaccurate"

Hundreds of thousands on unpaid layaways?  That just SCREAMS waning interest to me...