Class of Heroes 2 - PSN Release Date is 6/4.

astronautcowboy3

Well, yeah, that whole part is just shady/desperate.

This whole thing pretty much highlights the reason why I decided to stop playing Japanese games in English, and just play them in their original form.

blaze_zero

So, aside from this whole kickstarter thing, is there a vague release date yet?

I want this game.

Magic Pink

Oh, hells, me too. I may not want to kickstart this physical crap but the G version will be day 1 download. I'm guessing we won't hear about a date till after the kickstarter ends tho.

Raggie

I wish they'd opted for a smaller scale CE that doesn't take 500,000 to produce. I'd be happy with just one of those old-style RPG manuals, hardcover or not.

I wish they'd put more effort on this kickstarter because I *really* wanted it to happen.

Are they even planning on releasing more info on the contents? There must be people out there who have been holding off until they know exactly what the package is going to include.

Edit: now this is how to push a kickstarter project: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1613260297/shadowrun-returns

astronautcowboy3

For me a JRPG is determined by the language it was originally produced in. Korea can't make JRPGs and neither can America. But the reason I play games has changed a lot recently, so that has something to do with why I think so simplistically.

cj iwakura

It's probably a lost cause , but hey:

The funding situation isn't great right now, but we're stll raising awareness and not giving up. If it funds, it funds. I really want to do this awesome deluxe pack and really show what they should be, and I think the character voices we could do would be fun (losing John Truitt as Galenos, the creepy school doctor, would be a crime) but if the support's not there, we'll just do a basic localization and digital release then move on. It would suck, but it's better than not getting the game at all which was the case before we picked it up. The game had zero chance of coming over before we picked it up, and it's one of the best fun riffs on Wizardry in long time. We're not giving up until it's over. I've done more interviews in the last week than I've done in the last two years, and we still have a bunch more to do.

(losing John Truitt as Galenos, the creepy school doctor, would be a crime)

!! Come on now, that's awesome.


Also there's a video now. It really looks a lot better than CoH1.

SteevL

Huh, John Truitt. There's a name I haven't heard in a while.

Doesn't look like he's done anything on the VA front since Working Designs died.

Donnicton

Raggie wrote: »

I wish they'd opted for a smaller scale CE that doesn't take 500,000 to produce. I'd be happy with just one of those old-style RPG manuals, hardcover or not.

I wish they'd put more effort on this kickstarter because I *really* wanted it to happen.

Are they even planning on releasing more info on the contents? There must be people out there who have been holding off until they know exactly what the package is going to include.

Edit: now this is how to push a kickstarter project: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1613260297/shadowrun-returns

There were two gigantic problems that largely were responsible for this thing failing.

1. The original Class of Heroes had a particularly lukewarm reception outside of its niche(admit it) fanbase. If it had been a more "legendarily" good game like Shadowrun, or Wasteland, or pretty much anything Tim Shafer was involved in back in the day, there would be much greater support. All three of those examples also prove that the game doesn't necessarily have to be universally known at the onset either, they just have to be good.

2. No digital code in earlier tiers. Hell, they did this with Wasteland 2's kickstarter for god's sake, where they're openly admitting that $15 is not going to be the final price of the game, but if you pitch in to the kickstarter, you'll get it anyway for that special price as a thank you. What do you get for pitching in to CoH2? A thank you letter and the ability to see other people get their deluxe boxes if the kickstarter succeeds. Great. I'm all for the selflessness of mankind but not when someone's borderline abusing it.

RainbowDespair

cj iwakura wrote: »

Also there's a video now. It really looks a lot better than CoH1.

Isn't the video of the PS3 remake? Not exactly a fair comparison.

Xenogears of Bore

CoH1 doesn't even have a particularly good reputation even in its niche.

cj iwakura

RainbowDespair wrote: »

cj iwakura wrote: »

Also there's a video now. It really looks a lot better than CoH1.

Isn't the video of the PS3 remake? Not exactly a fair comparison.

It is, but I imagine the game is largely similar, according to Vic. That was the only way they could get a video of it.


I honestly think they could've earned twice as much if they'd spent an extra week laying out things like this and extra groundwork(and maybe learned from the successful KSes), but I suppose Vic's learned a valuable lesson if nothing else.


Worse case scenario, at least we're still getting it.

RainbowDespair

Well, hopefully the lesson Vic learns is that this is a very different world now and that digital copies should be the priority of niche localization companies and not expensive special edition boxes.

To be honest, I have no clue how you'd make a kickstarter work with a console or portable localization project. People are willing to spend money to bring over games they want that wouldn't come out otherwise but the only way you can do a kickstarter is if you've already got permission to bring the game over so then, what's the point from the backers point of view? The fact that it's difficult to provide a copy of the game at a low reward tier just makes things worse.

Maddoc

Vic's comments above seem to show that he has no idea why this Kickstarter failed to spectacularly.

If he had made an improved localization the focus of this Kickstarter, given digital copies of the game at a reasonable reward tier, and kept the goal reasonably low, it probably would have funded despite any issues with the game being niche as hell and the fact that we're getting the game even if the kickstarter fails.

People don't want UMDs, an obsolete media that can't even be played on the newest hardware, and they don't want to spend sixty bucks on a UMD and a bunch of deluxe crap which I'll remind everyone he never actually elaborated upon what would be in the deluxe edition.

Aoi

Eh, Xseed, NIS, and Atlus have done just fine with their nifty box sets on the PSP. Difference is, people give a shit about the games they're releasing, and trust them because they've recently released good stuff. But even they have the sense to cut it out with the deluxe boxes now that the system is dead. I still firmly believe that this was Vic believing his name still had far more worth than it actually did, while having zero understanding of the platform market he was stepping into.

vagrant_winds

cj iwakura wrote: »

It is, but I imagine the game is largely similar, according to Vic. That was the only way they could get a video of it.

Not really. CFW PSP's can stream straight to a computer screen. It's how we get most fan footage of PSP games.

Donnicton

Aoi wrote: »

Eh, Xseed, NIS, and Atlus have done just fine with their nifty box sets on the PSP. Difference is, people give a shit about the games they're releasing, and trust them because they've recently released good stuff. But even they have the sense to cut it out with the deluxe boxes now that the system is dead. I still firmly believe that this was Vic believing his name still had far more worth than it actually did, while having zero understanding of the platform market he was stepping into.

Well, to be fair, in Atlus' case it was because of their staunchly sluggish response with regard to price drops on the playstation network. Every one of their PSP titles were still sitting at full MSRP on the PSN up until about a month ago, when fans finally managed to convince them to drop their prices. People were buying the physical copies because they were so much cheaper than the PSN copies. Hell, that's the only reason I got the UMD versions of the Persona games, because there was no way I was paying $120 for the three Persona games on PSN when I could get them for a total of $60 for the UMDs.

Aoi

Donnicton wrote: »

Aoi wrote: »

Eh, Xseed, NIS, and Atlus have done just fine with their nifty box sets on the PSP. Difference is, people give a shit about the games they're releasing, and trust them because they've recently released good stuff. But even they have the sense to cut it out with the deluxe boxes now that the system is dead. I still firmly believe that this was Vic believing his name still had far more worth than it actually did, while having zero understanding of the platform market he was stepping into.

Well, to be fair, in Atlus' case it was because of their staunchly sluggish response with regard to price drops on the playstation network. Every one of their PSP titles were still sitting at full MSRP on the PSN up until about a month ago, when fans finally managed to convince them to drop their prices. People were buying the physical copies because they were so much cheaper than the PSN copies. Hell, that's the only reason I got the UMD versions of the Persona games, because there was no way I was paying $120 for the three Persona games on PSN when I could get them for a total of $60 for the UMDs.

I was referring to the CE versions of their games, not just the physical releases.

Reynolds

The Class of Heroes 2 campaign is far from being funded, but if (and that looks like a big if) Gaijinworks makes a retail version the $59 retail package will include a copy of the PSP game on UMD, soundtrack CD, character standees, soft faux-leather embossed manual & art book in an embossed box and three other items voted by Kickstarter backers. Possible items include: watch, pendant, cloth map, dagger letter opener, coin bank, inflatable sword, or a pen/pencil set.

cj iwakura

That all sounds like much nicer stuff than the average CE. Shame it's probably not happening.

Mojo_Jojo

Well at least they finally announced what the deluxe edition was. Even if they waited until the project failed beforehand.

Raggie

Donnicton wrote: »

1. The original Class of Heroes had a particularly lukewarm reception outside of its niche(admit it) fanbase. If it had been a more "legendarily" good game like Shadowrun, or Wasteland, or pretty much anything Tim Shafer was involved in back in the day, there would be much greater support. All three of those examples also prove that the game doesn't necessarily have to be universally known at the onset either, they just have to be good.

It's unfortunate how bad the reputation of the first game is because IMO it's much better than that, and I highly enjoyed it. But it is a very niche game, you're right about that.

Donnicton wrote: »

2. No digital code in earlier tiers. Hell, they did this with Wasteland 2's kickstarter for god's sake, where they're openly admitting that $15 is not going to be the final price of the game, but if you pitch in to the kickstarter, you'll get it anyway for that special price as a thank you. What do you get for pitching in to CoH2? A thank you letter and the ability to see other people get their deluxe boxes if the kickstarter succeeds. Great. I'm all for the selflessness of mankind but not when someone's borderline abusing it.

Yup. The whole thing would have better even with a "give a buck to support better localization, get exclusive wallpapers" approach. The "better localization" part was missed by a lot of people.

chocobolicious

People giving all these complex descriptions. Hah.

This failed because the launch was a fucking disaster. First impressions matter the most in this kind of thing. They had a single chance to make it right and they failed when they had the press.

Had they had pictures, video, actual non-stupid tiers that made /sense/, better defined what they wanted to do and had an actual mockup of what the deluxe edition would be? I think they would have made it. Or at least done much, much better.

Mojo_Jojo

A reasonable target and less emphasis on the deluxe edition too, but that would have been a different Kickstarter entirely.

Maddoc

Mojo_Jojo wrote: »

A reasonable target and less emphasis on the deluxe edition too, but that would have been a different Kickstarter entirely.

A deluxe physical edition for a PSP game would be a hard sell these days even under ideal conditions.

Even had the target been greatly lower, it'd probably need to be a more well regarded game to have a reasonable shot a funding.

Trying to sell people UMDs right now doesn't strike me as a terribly realistic business decision.

RainbowDespair

What they should have done is have a low tier that's the same price as the digital copy will sell for that gives you a digital copy and then make the special edition tier something really high like $250. Forget the price advantage of bulk - there's no way that you're selling 7k+ special editions of a less popular PSP RPG series in this day and age at $60, but you could probably sell a couple hundred at $250. I don't care how inefficient that is, I doubt it costs more than $100-$150 to make each special edition.

Also, I just had a terrible thought - what price are they planning on selling the digital version of this game? I had just assumed it would be $15-$20 since that's what Wizardry PSN & Grimrock cost, but with all the bad decisions made in this kickstarter, they might very well be planning on selling it for $30-$40. If that's the case, then forget them - I hope it bombs.

Reynolds

The Deluxe Pack is $60 and the Deluxe + Digital Pack is $100.

So yeah, he's planning to sell it for $40 on PSN. Further proof he has no idea what he's doing.

cj iwakura

The launch was a botch, no doubt. If it had released with video, images, anything, I bet it would've made twice the money it has by now.

KiTA

It kinda depresses me how poorly this is doing. At this rate, we won't see Class of Heroes 3.

RainbowDespair

KiTA wrote: »

It kinda depresses me how poorly this is doing. At this rate, we won't see Class of Heroes 3.

I really don't understand why they didn't just jump ahead to 3 or Final instead of trying to do the whole series. If you think the PSP is dead now, it's going to be even worse in a year or two.

astronautcowboy3

I still say they should have just done one tier, two ways - $60 and it gets you either a digital game in the deluxe pack or a physical game in the deluxe pack. All these extra tiers that give nothing are pointless, because at the end of the day they still needed 7000 commitments for the collector's edition.

And something that really annoys me about this Kickstarter is that Vic insists that it's an important step for Japanese developers to take, and if it fails, it probably won't be a model they can be convinced to use again. So if that's true, he just screwed Western consumers with his poorly planned project. Thanks, jerk.

astronautcowboy3

I'm sorry for the double post, but I keep getting errors when trying to edit. Anyway, I wanted to add that their comments show they clearly just don't get "it."

If this does fund, we'll probably do a Physical Deluxe pack + extra localization KS for all of them. If it doesn't fund? We'll have to see, but in that case it probably would be better to just go digital only with successive releases. If less than 7000 fans can't be found to pledge for a Physical Deluxe pack on this project, the support probably isn't there for future ones. We're still working hard to raise awareness and incorporate fan suggestions and we won't give up on helping this Fund until the KS is over.

Vita owners are fine if they get the $100 level pledge because they get the UMD AND a download code to play on their PSP or Vita. A number have written us to say they will get this level and sell the UMD, perhaps coming out ahead of even the $59 pledges considering how rare this release will be if this funds.

cj iwakura

RainbowDespair wrote: »

KiTA wrote: »

It kinda depresses me how poorly this is doing. At this rate, we won't see Class of Heroes 3.

I really don't understand why they didn't just jump ahead to 3 or Final instead of trying to do the whole series. If you think the PSP is dead now, it's going to be even worse in a year or two.

Maybe 2 is that worth playing? I have heard good things.

Ninja Snarl P

astronautcowboy3 wrote: »

And something that really annoys me about this Kickstarter is that Vic insists that it's an important step for Japanese developers to take, and if it fails, it probably won't be a model they can be convinced to use again. So if that's true, he just screwed Western consumers with his poorly planned project. Thanks, jerk.

That assumes Japanese devs will have even heard about this attempt. Which, given the support the game has, isn't that likely.

In other words, he screwed it up so badly that not even enough people know about it in order to prevent future attempts.

EvilRedEye

If this does fund, we'll probably do a Physical Deluxe pack + extra localization KS for all of them. If it doesn't fund? We'll have to see, but in that case it probably would be better to just go digital only with successive releases. If less than 7000 fans can't be found to pledge for a Physical Deluxe pack on this project, the support probably isn't there for future ones. We're still working hard to raise awareness and incorporate fan suggestions and we won't give up on helping this Fund until the KS is over.

"If less than 7000 fans can't be found to pledge for a Physical Deluxe pack for a dying, increasingly download-reliant format then no-one will ever support one for ANY game, EVER, IN THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF THE FUTURE!"

Vita owners are fine if they get the $100 level pledge because they get the UMD AND a download code to play on their PSP or Vita. A number have written us to say they will get this level and sell the UMD, perhaps coming out ahead of even the $59 pledges considering how rare this release will be if this funds.

"What are you complaining about Vita owners? Just buy the collector's pack for $100 and then sell part of it, THAT'S WHAT REAL COLLECTORS DO! Every time you look at the empty UMD-case hole in your deluxe packaging a part of your soul will wither up and die, but NEVER MIND!"

Raggie

The Shadowrun special editition for backers costs 125 bucks (plus 15 for overseas shipping), and nobody knows if the game is even going to be good.

Maddoc

Raggie wrote: »

The Shadowrun special editition for backers costs 125 bucks (plus 15 for overseas shipping), and nobody knows if the game is even going to be good.

It also has roughly two thousand more backers on that reward tier than the CoH2 $59 tier.

Shadowrun's $125 tier backers would make up the bulk of CoH2's entire funding goal, in fact.

I don't know exactly what information you can take away from that, I just felt like pointing out how ultimately meaningless the price difference is. What matters more is whether you're selling something that people actually want.

Magic Pink

cj iwakura wrote: »

RainbowDespair wrote: »

KiTA wrote: »

It kinda depresses me how poorly this is doing. At this rate, we won't see Class of Heroes 3.

I really don't understand why they didn't just jump ahead to 3 or Final instead of trying to do the whole series. If you think the PSP is dead now, it's going to be even worse in a year or two.

Maybe 2 is that worth playing? I have heard good things.

I have too but I've also heard that 3 and Final are still leagues better.

AZChristopher

Raggie wrote: »

The Shadowrun special editition for backers costs 125 bucks (plus 15 for overseas shipping), and nobody knows if the game is even going to be good.

Maybe the game will disappoint. However, Shadowrun isn't going to be on a dead format for a system that already has a successor.

chocobolicious

AZChristopher wrote: »

Raggie wrote: »

The Shadowrun special editition for backers costs 125 bucks (plus 15 for overseas shipping), and nobody knows if the game is even going to be good.

Maybe the game will disappoint. However, Shadowrun isn't going to be on a dead format for a system that already has a successor.

The Shadowrun dudes are also pretty awesome, one even letting himself get pegged in apology for a horrible Shadowrun FPS.


Vic Ireland is a dick, has always been a dick, and blames it on everything but his own dickishness.

Goodwill goes a long way towards people giving you money.

RainbowDespair

I listened to a recent podcast with Vic Ireland on it and he seemed like a nice guy.

The big problem is that he's coming at this from a Japanese perspective and not a US one. If you look at the Japanese industry right now, selling overpriced special editions to a small but fanatical fanbase is a very common and successful tactic - hence all the otaku-pandering games and anime. However, in the US, digital distribution is getting more and more popular and people are becoming accustomed to buying games at dirt-cheap prices. The way you make money here these days is usually by focusing on quantity, not quality of sale.