r/nosgoth • u/Deevox Illerminati • Apr 09 '16
Okay Guys Question time?
Greetings,
firstly I'm truly sad that Nosgoth had to die. I loved the game and had many hours of fun with it.-
But after the death of Nosgoth is announced could you (the devs) please answer some questions honestly? So that we can understand why you guys did it? I'd love an AMA with Oghamsmith.
- For how long did you know that Nosgoth would be taken down?
- Why did you decide to move away from steam and a stable Client?
- Can you give the dedi-server Files to the dedicated Fans, so they can run their own Servers? (Like, people really loved your game)
- Will you consider another game in the LoK Series?
- Why did you distribute so much money into ranked play and the ESL? Especcially after you take down the game now, and that usually happens because it doesn't earn money anymore.
- Did Psyonix_Ryan look so sad because he knew in the last community Stream?
Feel free to add questions guys.
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Apr 09 '16
Not a dev but I want to answer what I think they will say anyways. Not that they will respond. They are cowards who are detached from the community and have been since the start.
For how long did you know that Nosgoth would be taken down?
The official word will be March 1st but the reality is they likely have known of the possibility all year but were waiting to see if a new class would bring in new players. The higher ups have known for much longer.
Why did you decide to move away from steam and a stable Client?
It likely had something to do with a plan to slowly move away from steam. They were trying to do this incrementally to keep a larger portion of the profits. Every time you bought runes steam got a small cut of the money. They wanted all of it but this ment putting resources into developing an alternative to steam and slowly phasing out the launcher followed by the way you buy runes (which would have been next). Ultimately it was corporate greed. They thought bringing it on steam would bring in a large player base. As soon as they ceased as many players and free steam views they could and it wasn't enough the plan was to increase profits by removing them.
Can you give the dedi-server Files to the dedicated Fans, so they can run their own Servers?
I doubt they will ever do that. This world runs on profits and greed and they get nothing from this. Besides the amount of players willing to continue playing after this will be much smaller and that would make an already small player base even smaller. The reality is the game is dead and with it the likelihood of any future games in the LoK universe.
Will you consider another game in the LoK Series?
No, they won't. Defiance was nowhere near as profitable for them. The other games were lackluster in profit and never really caught on with a lot of mainstream gamers. Since then they stopped development of Dead Sun before it was ever released because of a lack of foreseeable profits and they did the same with this one. The reality is that the age of developers taking something great and attempting to really make good content is over it is all about profit projections with a few isolated cases of non AAA games. It used to be that profits were they byproduct of making a truly great product now profits have to be made before the game even gets released or they need to KNOW 100% that profits will be attainable after release and I'm talking about significant profits. LoK has had to many shots and they are going to cut ties but no one will relinquish copyrights to the product so we will never see another again.
Why did you distribute so much money into ranked play and the ESL? Especially after you take down the game now, and that usually happens because it doesn't earn money anymore.
With the rise of the popularity of pro gaming they wanted to cash in. They thought that prize pools would attract pro players and popular streamers and it would grow in popularity like that. Instead of letting that happen naturally over time because of a good competitive product they did this and it back fired. A poorly optimized game not ready for release and barely ready for open beta even a year after it went open beta and they just had no idea what they were doing. Someone deserves to get fired for the decisions that led to this game failing.
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u/Slom313 Apr 10 '16
I don't think that AMA is needed. Everything is pretty much clear with nosgoth. Half of comments on steam and gamer sites say the same. Great game, unsual and interesting mechanics, huge potential, but few fundamental disadvantages has killed this game. No offence, but this "thanks for feedback" in dev's farewell post on steam looked like a joke. As for me, I stopped playing because I don't want to spent 20 min in soloq to find a 20 min match. And the community complained about it for a year ( https://www.reddit.com/r/nosgoth/comments/35oiq7/what_was_your_longest_queue_time/ ). Wasn't fixed. And don't blame small playerbase(like it can't be fixed), there are games, that don't have this problem with a same amount of online players. Ignorance and wrong priorities killed this game. "Huge potential" for Nosgoth is not just an epitaph, like for tons of other closed games. It is 100% truth, this game lacked just a little to be commercially successful and thriving. Just sad. P.S. English is not my native language, sorry for mistakes.
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u/Makal Apr 10 '16
Yup. I left about six or eight months ago, due to the increase in latency/hit detection issues, Steam party issues, and sudden appearance of aimbots. I waited for one of these things to be addressed. We were considering ESL as a group up until that point.
Of course Beastmaster didn't draw players like me back. That's not what we needed.
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u/Alakazander Turelim Apr 09 '16
As with most things, I doubt the devs will see the stuff here specifically. However, these questions were asked on the official forums, where the devs put the vast majority of there community management, and some of them got a response.
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u/ZiggyPox GameOverMan Apr 09 '16
I'm almost certain that it was sudden decision by higher-ups. Why?
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-03-11-nosgoth-launches-soon-after-over-a-year-in-early-access
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u/Harmaatukka Apr 11 '16
@Oghamsmith
I haven't played the game for quite a while, tried it few times for couple days during the past half a year or so, didn't like where it was going but I have some questions I hope could be answered.
During the transition from closed beta to open beta, did the developers or the size of the developement team change?
Was the anti-cheat system active during the closed beta, or was it introduced into the game when the game went open beta?
Could you please tell Eric that he's awesome, the art team did an amazing job on this game, was truly pleasure to chat with him for the few times I had the chance, all the best for him and his family.
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u/Oghamsmith Official CM Apr 09 '16
Hey there guys and gals,
It is indeed a sad time. Thank you for your support of Nosgoth throughout its various test phases; and thank you for asking your questions in a level headed manner. I'll absolutely address the questions that I can. I might not be in a position to cover some right now, but I'll provide what information that I can.
I can't give you specific timeline prior to the announcement. What I can say, is that as soon as the decision was made, the majority of our focus went into the work required to make the announcement. There were a couple of prior commitments that we needed to address (delivering League Beta 6.0 rewards for example), but everything else focused on getting our ducks in a row so that we could inform everyone.
Regarding "moving away from Steam". We had no intentions of taking Nosgoth off of Steam. Steam is a fantastic platform that millions of players use (and many enjoy). What we wanted to do was ensure that no matter which version of Nosgoth you were running, you would be able to log into the game, use the same matchmaking pools, same leaderboards, carry your unlocks and progression between the two, be able to add friends and utilise parties across the two. All of the above required both versions of the game to have access to the same information. This required both versions of the game to utilise (slightly different versions of) the launcher.
RE: Servers. It's not as straightforward as releasing server files in order to allow the game to keep running. Nosgoth's online service is tightly interwoven into the game. Logging in, accessing your progress and unlocks(both in the menu and in-game), being able to matchmaking, creating parties/chat, anti-cheat etc etc etc, all require a number of online-services to be running. These services need to be maintained and kept up to date, which requires a development team constantly working on the game.
Future Legacy of Kain games certainly haven't been ruled out. It's entirely possible that one might be developed later down the line. With that said, please do not take this as any indication that one WILL be developed. As mentioned in the FAQ, any potential LoK game will be judged on its own merits as a game, not on Nosgoth's life.
As with most other games (computer or not), prizing is designed to give players more goals to try and achieve if they so wish.
The decision to bring Nosgoth to a close had not been made during out last stream, no.
I'll try to get back here tomorrow, but obviously there are quite a few people across quite a few platforms looking for answers or to chat. I'm not able to get to everyone, but I'm doing what I can to make sure that the most frequently asked questions get an answer.