The Bard's Tale IV Update 48: Update on Bard's Tale Trilogy Remasters

[phimseto]

Hi all, in this latest update, we talk about the revised release schedule for the Bard's Tale Trilogy remasters. The particulars can be found here:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/in ... ts/2246121

[balinor]

I understand, but to say I am disappointed would be a huge understatement and unfortunately that has been the norm with this kickstarter.

[barsiem]

Sheesh can you not be honest and say it’s not ready? The update makes no sense...

“hey guys - the game works great! So great we won’t give it to you when we said but will make you wait a few more weeks... and we thought we’d wait until the day we said you’d get it to break this awesome news to you! Ok thanks bye”

Really poor. By all means wait until it’s ready, but don’t insult our intelligence

[Lanatir]

Sheesh can you not be honest and say it’s not ready? The update makes no sense...

“hey guys - the game works great! So great we won’t give it to you when we said but will make you wait a few more weeks... and we thought we’d wait until the day we said you’d get it to break this awesome news to you! Ok thanks bye”

Really poor. By all means wait until it’s ready, but don’t insult our intelligence

You are doing it wrong. You are only getting an answer from them when you tell them how awesome it is what they are doing. Everything else they either dont read, ignore, or delete.

[barsiem]

Sheesh can you not be honest and say it’s not ready? The update makes no sense...

“hey guys - the game works great! So great we won’t give it to you when we said but will make you wait a few more weeks... and we thought we’d wait until the day we said you’d get it to break this awesome news to you! Ok thanks bye”

Really poor. By all means wait until it’s ready, but don’t insult our intelligence

You are doing it wrong. You are only getting an answer from them when you tell them how awesome it is what they are doing. Everything else they either dont read, ignore, or delete.

Tbf my post had to be approved by a moderator before appearing, and I was a little surprised it did, so maybe some of them aren’t so bad.

Communication is 90% common sense. Rule no 1 - don’t treat your customers like idiots. Makes it so frustrating when companies get it wrong, and the approach with todays announcement changes my mood from what would have been disappointment to being seriously annoyed

[thebruce]

I can only imagine a decision like that can't be easy to make, knowing that there'd be heavy criticism from excited fans itching to get their hands on an early release.
Rest assured, the remasters ARE coming - this is just as described, a delay, which is for being "closer to a final build than we thought it would be at this point in development", rather than in worse condition than expected. Personally I think just like any game, I'd rather have a delay with a better product than a hasty release with bugs or tweaks that could have been done. If that happens, usually the creators get flack for not delaying the release :P. Or more relevant here, delaying for more time to spend on finishing the product than delaying that for the sake of spending extra time to test and release an interim partial product. And it sounds like an added bonus of GOG support.

What it seems like is development is going along so swimmingly that it would have slowed them down to make a pitstop to ensure a viable partial release (maybe an analogy could be that I hate when I'm in a programming 'zone' and get interrupted; it takes more work to get back into the zone afterwards). I suppose whether that's good or bad for the remasters is pretty subjective, but at least so far there's no reported delay due to problems or heavy negative feedback. Don't be too quick to criticize for this turn of events!

I know for my BT nostalgia itch right now, I'm more excited for the remasters than IV. But no rush!

[Rizmel]

I would be willing to bet that if put to a vote the majority would prefer "give us what you have now and patch it in August" to "don't give us anything til August"

[phimseto]

Communication is 90% common sense. Rule no 1 - don’t treat your customers like idiots. Makes it so frustrating when companies get it wrong, and the approach with todays announcement changes my mood from what would have been disappointment to being seriously annoyed

Really not sure where you are coming from with that. It's all right there in the update. Today's build was going to be Early Access, but as we were setting up the release for it, things transpired as I laid out. Originally, GOG backers were going to be stuck waiting until the game came out of EA. Now they've got a chance to get in at the same time as the other backers. From my vantage, this was the better move for that reason alone.

I get the disappointment, though. The remasters have been a long time coming. All I can tell you is that we, Krome, and others have been working to get these things to you as soon as we possibly can.

[Rizmel]

I think the two issues are that the announcement didn't come out til today - though it is certainly possible that the decision was made at the last minute, it seems unlikely that the package was being put together today for a release today, so maybe the announcement could've come sooner - and that bringing GOG into it doesn't make sense; after all, the Beta (backer reward) wasn't delayed to make it available for GOG and Steam at the same time, why should this (backer reward)?

[barsiem]

Communication is 90% common sense. Rule no 1 - don’t treat your customers like idiots. Makes it so frustrating when companies get it wrong, and the approach with todays announcement changes my mood from what would have been disappointment to being seriously annoyed

Really not sure where you are coming from with that. It's all right there in the update. Today's build was going to be Early Access, but as we were setting up the release for it, things transpired as I laid out. Originally, GOG backers were going to be stuck waiting until the game came out of EA. Now they've got a chance to get in at the same time as the other backers. From my vantage, this was the better move for that reason alone.

I get the disappointment, though. The remasters have been a long time coming. All I can tell you is that we, Krome, and others have been working to get these things to you as soon as we possibly can.

I think you dressing up today as good news is disingenuous, and I'm surprised you don't see that. I'd be very surprised if we've been given the full story about why it's delayed, and strongly suspect the game just isn't ready. I agree it's fairer for gog backers, but that begs the question as to why you decided to release it to steam users early in the first place. Surely gog should have been considered at that point.

Like I say, if we'd had a message saying sorry, the game's not ready and we don't want to give you an inferior experience, I'd have been disappointed but supportive. However the message we have been given reeks of BS, and that's makes me, and I'm sure others, annoyed. You've dressed this up in completely the wrong way.

[phimseto]

I think the two issues are that the announcement didn't come out til today - though it is certainly possible that the decision was made at the last minute, it seems unlikely that the package was being put together today for a release today, so maybe the announcement could've come sooner - and that bringing GOG into it doesn't make sense; after all, the Beta (backer reward) wasn't delayed to make it available for GOG and Steam at the same time, why should this (backer reward)?

Hi Rizmel, the decision came about as we spent last week prepping the release, then had to coordinate with Krome, and get everyone on agreement that we could deliver when we wanted and to both platforms. Bottom line: the administrative process to get everyone on board took a few additional days.

As for remasters and the trilogy, two different circumstances. How we handle one doesn't dictate how we handle the other. In the case of the remasters, we had an opportunity to structure things in a way that got GOG users the remasters at the same time as everyone else, so that was part of our motivation for this.

[thebruce]

Let's take a step back. Look at the details objectively.
Has the final release date changed?
What is the extent of this announcement?
No early release, and a confirmation of mid-August for the full BT1, on Steam and GOG?
Other than no early (incomplete) release, how is this still bad?

[barsiem]

Let's take a step back. Look at the details objectively.
Has the final release date changed?
What is the extent of this announcement?
No early release, and a confirmation of mid-August for the full BT1, on Steam and GOG?
Other than no early (incomplete) release, how is this still bad?

What's bad is not the message, but how it was communicated

[Drool]

Tbf my post had to be approved by a moderator before appearing, and I was a little surprised it did, so maybe some of them aren’t so bad.

It wasn't because of the content of your post. The first few posts go through the moderator queue to stop spambots. For awhile there, we were getting dozens of them a day.

[_noblesse_oblige_]

Let's take a step back. Look at the details objectively.
Has the final release date changed?
What is the extent of this announcement?
No early release, and a confirmation of mid-August for the full BT1, on Steam and GOG?
Other than no early (incomplete) release, how is this still bad?

What's bad is not the message, but how it was communicated

I do agree that the timing and content of the communication could've been different than they were. In the few years I've been around this forum, communication has been a continual sticking point with inXile. However, like thebruce says, I don't feel much is being lost here and am generally supportive of the decision... as long as it doesn't involve stuffing BT IV content into the remasters in an attempt to connect the games or something like that.

[DNACowboy]

Update on the remastered Bards Tale series

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018 ... -next-week

[Themadcow]

Update on the remastered Bards Tale series

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018 ... -next-week

Similar in RPS.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/0 ... ster-date/

[Flanker_27]

If I'm to judge based on my experience in waiting for video game releases, it seems that game developers can't have a break and take a really good decision ; if they take time to polish the game, they're criticised for being slow, teasing their audience etc, and if they release a game quickly, they'll be criticised for botching it. One of the most striking examples is the STALKER game trilogy, the first game took years and years to be developed and even received a vaporware award, while the second one was made in a much shorter time, and was filled with bugs that tarnish its reputation up to these days, a decade after the patches fixing most of the bugs came.
Another example is the Wargame Cold War themed RTS trilogy : after the last game came out, the community criticized it to no end (even if they did like it), so the developer decided to do other games instead of continuing the series, and then the community got mad that the developer dared not to add a fourth game to the series!