Let's brainstorm a little bit (as I have been extremely impressed by
the success of the Order of the Stick Kickstarter fundraiser): If we (that's Jochen and me) would decide to do a fundraising campaign to push ADOM ahead...
- What kind of features and improvements would you love to see? Meaning "love to see" in the sense of "love so much that I'd add money to a fund raising effort"?
- And what kind of rewards would you like to see?
For those who don't know how this works... fundraising campaigns like those on
Kickstarter work like this:
- A campaign is created by defining a goal (e.g. release ADOM 2.0 with a 3D engine") and a monetary goal is defined (e.g. $50.000).
- People can pledge money and for certain levels specific rewards are offered (e.g. "pledge $10 and be mentioned in the credits", "pledge $25 and get a character in the named according to your choice", "pledge $1000 and have a character designed after your wishes" or "pledge $25.000 and receive a leather-bound copy of the ADOM sources, personally delivered to you by Thomas Biskup, wherever you live, combined with a day of Q&A").
- If the monetary goal is reached (or exceeded) people will have to pay the money at the end of the fundraising campaign (e.g. after 30 days), otherwise nothing happens.
- Afterwards the goal gets implemented.
So let me hear your thoughts (and we'll repeat this for ADOM II soon, but now please just think about the original ADOM): What goals would you be willing to fund and what rewards would motivate you?)
TBH, current Jade roadmap would suffice for a $10 Kickstarter donation from me.
ReplyDeleteMore suitable "focused funding campaign" would be original ADoM bugfix and polish (corruption-free play mode FTW).
In general, I've never participated in any of these sort of funding ventures, good an idea as they may be and netting some success. I just prefer "normal" Alpha/Beta pre-ordering/early access like I intended to take the utmost advantage of for ADOM II: Deluxe(save for any recurring charges aspects), though part of it comes down to:
ReplyDelete1.Only capable of paying via credit card and would sooner not use Paypal
2. The "boom" of these sorts of funding initiatives struck at a time, ongoing sadly, where I have next to no funds to really do any personal damage even for ones I would, and have been, sorely tempted on given the good rewards/show of support.
Note: non-americans can't set up Kickstarter projects. You may want to consider something like Rockethub instead. It is more open, allows you to take donations even if you don't hit the scheduled goal, etcetera. It also doesn't depend on the absolutely dreadful Amazon Payments system which is a hassle for non-american users.
ReplyDeleteNever heard of Rockethub.
Delete8-bit funding or indiegogo sound a safer bet.
I don't know what I would like to see added to adom, maybe the ability to manipulate values such as xp, stats, skills, spells, and such.
ReplyDeleteThough what I would be even more happy to sink some money into is adomII: Deluxe pre-order :)
I would certainly pre-pay the Ultimate Edition cost via something like Kickstarter for the earlier-listed benefits. I might go another $15-20 for, say, an autographed Ancardia map poster? :)
ReplyDeleteDesura alpha-funding FTW.
DeleteAlso, seconded.
Oh hell yeah, Ancardia map poster would go straight onto my mantle!
DeleteWhy won't you just sell the A2D before it is made? You would sell rights to obtain copy when it's ready. I would pay for that :) I guess that gathering funds this way could bring you quite a fortune quite fast ;)
ReplyDeleteThe other option is to team up with one of those indie bundles. The can attract a lot of attencion and raise lots of money really fast.
What would this be for? If you'd asked this before the ADOM port to iPad got started, I'd have suggested that. You could use it to answer those who keep asking for an Android/phone port I guess?
ReplyDeleteIncidentally, I'd have been interested in neither. The biggest barrier to me for paying for something is that I'd have to sort out some kind of currency exchange (I've let my PayPal lapse now, and I'm too lazy to fix that to pay for something which I can play for free anyway!)
OOTS worked because they've lured in millions of people over the years, and even just a small fraction paying for a project can raise a lot of money. I suspect ADOM is still a little too niche for something like kickstarter to be really viable for anything substantial - but then, I don't know how many regular players there are. It's always easier to persuade yourself to spend money to have some physical object as a result of a purchase too, which is harder to achieve for a game than a comic.
UNRESOLVED MYSTERIES
ReplyDeletehttp://www.adomgb.info/adomgb-5.html
We also need more artifact body armours, helmets and girdles in ADOM, there weren't many of these.
You also had a post once, somewhere, which had some plans for things you wanted to add to ADOM - I can't remember all of them, but you wanted to add the Ratling race, more Dwarf races, the Pirate class, etc.
I would make a pledge for any of these three.
I would gladly donate something to see the aforementioned features! :)
Delete"Die like the low scum that you are!"
*Boom rifle shot*
- Dirty Skewer, the Ratling Pirate -
I would actually pay for anything that could remind my name(or anagram if possible) like Mad Minstrel song or grave annotation.It could be rolled each time randomly from pool of people who actually donated to the project till the current version of game
ReplyDeleteSeconded!!
DeleteI'd donate for any of the following goals:
ReplyDelete- Official ADOM server, with highscores, observer mode, tournaments, etc.
- Release of the source code with a free license.
To be honest I'd donate like most of my money. Roguelikes is the best of genres.
ReplyDeleteI don't think you'd get a whole lot total though... I think I know some people who could donate smaller sums though... and I'm sure people at other roguelike websites would hear too. No millions though.
Spontaneously I can think of two new features I'd like in AdoM:
1) ability to run the game in a twice as large window or something similar instead of a tiny window that only takes up about 15% of my monitor.
2) greater character creation freedom. I'd love to be able to pick AT LEAST my own starsign. To be honest you're not making the game more "balanced" or anything, random starsigns is just a sorry waste of time if I've already decided I want to play a barbarian and roll Salamander or something like that. I'm not going to play a Salamander barbarian, I'm going to restart the game... which just takes me a lot of time.
I'd also like to be able to tailor my starting attributes. Same argument. If I want to play a strong character why won't you let me? You're not preventing me from doing it, you're just making it take a lot longer for me to roll a character I'm happy about playing.
I still think there should be a [r]andom option though, quite obviously.
Other than those I wouldn't see anything in ADoM changed really... I think any more work should be saved for ADoM II. Once ADoM II has gotten a bit more developed we can think about adding content to ADoM again.
i'd throw down some clams to be able to read the weird tome and scroll of omnipotence. and definately more girdles and cloaks. id pay your salary if you just sat around all day reading ideas of the message boards and implementing them. i have read some insanely awesome ideas on there. too stoned to remember them right now though. definately that old idea about being able to play as any race in the game.
ReplyDeleteFor features and improvements I'd just like the bugs taken out. Skilled talents suck, but they should be a choice (or just remove them). Peity overfow, dragon doubling (is dragon doubling a bug? People generally assume so, but it may not be) fix jackels, ignots, item overflow, the infamous monk circle kick thing, item pickup bugs, etc. As for new stuff, I'd pay an official server. Jaakos seems like a nice guy. I think he'd help with that if needed. I agree with the above about starsign chooser and character roller too. If you don't include it, people will still do it. And creation of challenge games enforced on the server would be nice. Not just the insanely hard ones either. As for rewards, having a contributers section to the credits is nice. Or perhaps, YOU could sent ME a postcard back for a $15 donation or somthing. Signed stuff is always cool. Or T-Shirts. I'd totally wear an ADOM t-shirt. Maybe have an option to include an easter egg for a big donation named after the contriubter. Like, name your character Thomas Biskup (if you donated a lot) and he'll start Lucky, Fate Smiles and blessed.
ReplyDeleteOr name him gut and start doomed...
@THE DUDE: Paying my salary :-) ? Hell, if someone pays my salary I promise to work on ADOM (II that is, but also the original) all day ;-)
ReplyDeleteFor funded projects, it seems like physical rewards are a good draw: a map, a t-shirt, a copy of the ADOM PnP RPG perhaps...
ReplyDeleteI think that ADOM II would benefit from this a lot more than the original ADOM... I know you're dedicated to working on both, but I think that a great idea for ADOM II would be campaign selection. I'm not a programmer, so I'm sure this is asking a lot. I think (especially if you wound up over your requested funds) that implementing the ability to load different campaigns before you start would be a great way to add even more replay-ability to the game. You could then develop campaigns at your leisure and make them available for download (you could even charge for them if you wanted), and then when you start the game you could select which campaign you wish to play (King of the Orcs, original ADOM storyline, etc). I'm just thinking out loud at this point, so I'll stop. Just my two cents.
I would definitely donate $25 or so for a copy of the Ultimate Edition, name in the credits, plus a cool fold-out map and t-shirt.
ReplyDeleteOne way you could really make the map interesting is if you make the flipside a buried treasure map, with directions that can lead you to a seemingly normal looking location on the wilderness map which really contains the hidden entrance to a one or two level special dungeon filled with at least one artifact of moderate usefulness. (maybe a Phial of Caladriel v2.0 which gives a small luck boost and occasionally casts undead turning)
I'm sure the location would inevitably end up being spoiled on GameFAQs, but it would still give those of us with maps something special to play around with, especially if you make it pretty difficult to find, even *with* the map.
Oh, and a few other higher level donation rewards you might consider:
ReplyDelete* Being able to design a new artifact or spell that will appear in the game! (probably worth at least $50 to some folks)
* Being able to design a new monster that will appear in the game! (I'm sure a lot of people would shell out $100 or more just for the bragging rights of being able to claim that *they* were the one who came up with the idea for Prairie Squids, Reverse Vampires, Animated Shoetrees, Penguins of Doom, or whatever.)
My proposal would be a revamp of the talent system.
ReplyDeleteAt present, the system has too much breadth and not enough depth--you have many 30 talents to choose on creation, but most talents don't actually lead anywhere, and of those that do, most of the talent trees are pretty short. What I'd love to see would be that most starting talents lead to a talent tree, maybe possibly 3-4 talents deep, or even longer. Make more talent trees based on skill/stat or even weapon skill to enhance customizability. Overall, increase the effects of talents, especially of the deeper ones, because after about level 12 or 15, most of the talent bonuses are pretty paltry. The effects of some talents (pious line, charged, all +1 stat talents) are too weak to be noticeable at any point in the game, honestly.
As an example, instead of simply the Affinity to Swords (+2 to hit) skill, and nothing further, I might like to see something like this:
Affinity to swords (starting talent) +2 weapon skill levels with swords.
Leads to...
Fencer (with Aggressive and rank 7 in swords) +3 to hit and damage with swords while using Aggressive or higher tactics
and...
Improved parry (with Careful and rank 7 in sword) +5 DV with swords while using Defensive or lower tactics settings
Getting both of these leads to...
Quick strike (with 20+ Dexterity) sword attacks take 200 less energy)
Which leads to...
Blademaster (requires rank 11 in swords): +10% critical hit rate while using a sword.
Stop making things complicated. Don't let people pay for game features. People are bad game designers and they don't know what they want. Keep a donation path open and KEEP RELEASING. The game will start paying for itself once more and more people get on board and it matures. Don't do anything complex. No different pay-for versions, no bullshit.
ReplyDeleteI think some people are confused about whether we're talking about ADOM 1 or ADOM 2...
ReplyDeleteI would donate for an isometric ASCII-inspired (like those rendered pictures at the front page) GUI frontend.
ReplyDelete