don't be discouraged by any hate devs

[anon474]

Don't get discouraged by hate comments if you see them devs, a lot of people have this idea that if they're passionate about something that leaving super negative hypercritical comments on social media will "make the dev do the right thing" but often the criticism is unjustified or stupid, and the comment isn't like "I think it would be better this way" it's more like "devs are money hungry predators and vultures eating our wallets" and super personal, vitriolic, designed to insult people personally as much as possible.

I saw one guy on steam go off and write a mega critical review saying the game is dead because they ruined one of the mercs' look and they didn't even ruin the look they just changed it (I think it was steroid or something), it was some random merc he was attached to and basically said "oh because this merc is poorly designed the game is over and finished" basically writing the entire game off right off the bat, which is really bad for developers to listen to because they might get discouraged by somebody freaking out over a very small change which is not even negative, and think "whats the point to even trying" if this is the kind of audience and reception they're going to get, who freak out over 1 merc's slight redesign and ignore all other work or changes done at the heart of the title.

 

As a likely future customer and a fan of the series, I would just like to say that we are not all like this, and at least I am very supportive of your efforts, and don't believe in attacking dev teams over mild BS (or at all, as long as the dev team wants to make a good game which i think is a lot of teams, maybe most teams in the games industry).

[Solaris_Wave]

While I have seen a lot of negativity on the Steam forum for JA3, hopefully you haven't interpreted any posts in the official forums here as solely negative. Posts here have been constructive while remaining positive. Any comments that show concern, from others or myself, shouldn't be classed as negativity.

Edited March 20, 2023 by Solaris_Wave

[anon474]

1 hour ago, Solaris_Wave said:

While I have seen a lot of negativity on the Steam forum for JA3, hopefully you haven't interpreted any posts in the official forums here as solely negative. Posts here have been constructive while remaining positive.

no idea, and the attitude on the official forums is better but not free of hate. for example there was some guy talking about how "cosmetic MTs shouldn't be implemented but they probably will" again implying developers have immoral greedy intent, dismissing the project, dismissing developers, etc.

My comments are primarily about social media in general, which is not solely contained to the official forums (and in fact official forums might be more important in some respects, but they might also be less important in others, like judging everyday public perception).

[GODSPEED]

I think there is unecessary comments about everything everywhere. I doubt the dev team would waste time reading stupid comments.

I do want to make clear though, criticism (when shared for positive reasons) should be an important part of feedback!

 

Just jumping on a hype train and letting our hopes make us see the project as something that CAN'T fail is a disservice to everyone.

Edited March 31, 2023 by GODSPEED
typo

[anon474]

3 hours ago, GODSPEED said:

I think there is unecessary comments about everything everywhere. I doubt the dev team would waste time reading stupid comments.

I do want to make clear though, criticism (when shared for positive reasons) should be an important part of feedback!

 

Just jumping on a hype train and letting our hopes make us see the project as something that CAN'T fail is a disservice to everyone.

So basically, this is a very complicated topic but:

1 there's no nice way to tell somebody "their ideas are wrong" or something equivalent to that, which is why I try to never criticize, I merely try to give my opinion on the matter that I clearly label as my opinion, and try to provide alternative options that I imply would be better, without trying to force or insult the person making the project into doing what I think they should do.

2 a lot of criticism isn't just "this decision is bad" it's "this decision is bad, and the person making it is stupid for making this decision" or "this decision is bad, and the person making this decision is bad for making this decision, and they are only led by money, and somebody else should have their job".

therefore the best way to tell somebody you disagree with a particular decision for a project, is to do just that - make it about the decision, about the thing that's being worked on, not about the worker. De-personalizing and de-escalating any kind of conflict or antagonism between you and the person making the decisions is the best way to persuade them if you do think you have a better way of doing things, and it's the best way to avoid trying to create this kind of "us vs them" dynamic which is combatative, and is bad for objectivity (people who are in a combatative situation often will not leave their side even if their side is clearly wrong, and this can go both ways, because they're dug in and their self-respect is on the line, because a lot of criticism is insulting and disrespectful), or it's bad because the developer has best intentions and all he hears is angry yelling, dismissal bullying from the critics/haters.

being passionate about a field like strategies is good, being critical and criticizing, even with all of its negative connotations is good BUT, it's good until you meet the person and if you have to talk to them, you're not going to get a normal conversation if you attack them and tell them that they should be fired or have an energy in your conversation that's similar to that.

Edited March 31, 2023 by anon474

[Bloodcat]

I did not find "hate comment" on steam. I did find a very critical comment, where a guy is critical about the design of "Grunty" and other things.

But i think with the history of Jagged Alliance, ist normal to have doubts.

But for the more cosmetic things, there is always the solution of modding support. So if some players are unhappy with there favorite mercs from JA, they should be able to change some parts, in the end this are 2D pictures, i dont see the problem.

 

I am also afraid, that the developers try to be too funny, because they seem to focus on quirky mercs. The other thing are the outfits. So you have a group of strange looking mercs running through the field. Like others told before, it is nice to have one or two quirky characters on the team, but you can exaggerate it fast.

 

I dont know, how the devs are doing this, but with some games, not speaking for JA3, it feels, like devs lived in a bubble. I think its good to take a look outside of the bubble. It is true that devs shouldnt be discouraged, but strong critical feedback can also be a hint to question yourself.

 

Most of the people here are JA veterans and no childs.

 

[Solaris_Wave]

46 minutes ago, Bloodcat said:

I am also afraid, that the developers try to be too funny, because they seem to focus on quirky mercs. The other thing are the outfits. So you have a group of strange looking mercs running through the field. Like others told before, it is nice to have one or two quirky characters on the team, but you can exaggerate it fast.

I am wondering about that as well. The use of humour is fine and part of Jagged Alliance. I wouldn't want to see mercs that are too gimmicky. In the past, I have often used the merc, Smiley as my focus of criticism in that regard. He is probably a cheap, easily hireable merc but the way he is dressed makes him look like a cross between a 1940s private detective and someone who is visiting a gambling joint in Harlem.

I am half-expecting another quirky mercenary to appear who is wearing golfing attire, with a white cap, pink Pringle shirt and loud chequered trousers. His name will be T. Doff and will be nicknamed 'The Driver'. An expert in melee, thanks to his golf club, nicknamed 'Big Iron'.

[anon474]

51 minutes ago, Solaris_Wave said:

I am wondering about that as well. The use of humour is fine and part of Jagged Alliance. I wouldn't want to see mercs that are too gimmicky. In the past, I have often used the merc, Smiley as my focus of criticism in that regard. He is probably a cheap, easily hireable merc but the way he is dressed makes him look like a cross between a 1940s private detective and someone who is visiting a gambling joint in Harlem.

I am half-expecting another quirky mercenary to appear who is wearing golfing attire, with a white cap, pink Pringle shirt and loud chequered trousers. His name will be T. Doff and will be nicknamed 'The Driver'. An expert in melee, thanks to his golf club, nicknamed 'Big Iron'.

It's true, you don't want to make a saints row game where you're flying around on jetpacks and you parachute icecream vans down from the sky and everything is comic relief 24/7. But humor is very easy to scale back, just take certain lines out of characters.

At the same time, in JA2 almost every character was funny, or at least so exaggerated that they ended up being funny not on purpose. Deidranna, elliot, lots of mercs, lots of characters. You could argue mercs like Dmitiri despite being a serious character is also very exaggerated, has a heavy accent, has questionable English because of his accent and english not being a first language. But maybe you could argue Dmitri is a good example of a colorful vs a comedic character, or an unintentionally funny character.

The best way to do tone for JA is to remember that JA still takes place within an action based universe. The tone oscillates between cool action, lots of muscled dudes shooting cool guns yelling cool sounding commands into their radios...and then more ridiculous characters and moments. Die Hard (the movie) had a blonde norwegian who I think yelled something with a heavy norwegian accent when he was shooting John McLane (and for that matter the main villain was a german or norwegian or something), and despite having a heavy accent, and being very exaggerated as a character, wasn't necessarily light hearted or comedic in nature. So the devs should perhaps consider being sensitive to this so they do have very colorful characters but maybe not necessarily comedic, sometimes villainous.

btw, earlier somebody said something about shadow not being a colorful or exaggerated merc but he definitely was. a guy in full camo, quiet, spec ops specialist? how cool is that?? he's mega colorful. being cool is a feature of a character.

Edited March 31, 2023 by anon474

[anon474]

2 hours ago, Bloodcat said:

I did not find "hate comment" on steam. I did find a very critical comment, where a guy is critical about the design of "Grunty" and other things.

But i think with the history of Jagged Alliance, ist normal to have doubts.

But for the more cosmetic things, there is always the solution of modding support. So if some players are unhappy with there favorite mercs from JA, they should be able to change some parts, in the end this are 2D pictures, i dont see the problem.

 

I am also afraid, that the developers try to be too funny, because they seem to focus on quirky mercs. The other thing are the outfits. So you have a group of strange looking mercs running through the field. Like others told before, it is nice to have one or two quirky characters on the team, but you can exaggerate it fast.

 

I dont know, how the devs are doing this, but with some games, not speaking for JA3, it feels, like devs lived in a bubble. I think its good to take a look outside of the bubble. It is true that devs shouldnt be discouraged, but strong critical feedback can also be a hint to question yourself.

 

Most of the people here are JA veterans and no childs.

 

AND. Bro being passionate 1 doesn't give you license to attack things for no reason, and 2 why do you think devs hearing lots of hate towards the work they're doing is going to help them make a better game. All it'll do is make them discouraged knowing that this is the kind of reception and audience they'll receive/already get, and they might even leave the industry altogether. People should want to support dev teams, assuming they're motivated by the right thing and most dev teams are with very minor exceptions, and then if you think they're going in the wrong direction sincerely, you give feedback in a definite but non personal and non insulting way.

"I dont know, how the devs are doing this, but with some games, not speaking for JA3, it feels, like devs lived in a bubble." That's what I mean. This is the whole idea that the devs are like these laughing greedy men in suits smoking cigars in a closed room. Developers are usually over-worked extremely passionate people working on tiny amounts of resources. If they do make a mistake, or compromise on the depth of an RPG, it's not because of a lack of trying, it's usually due to outside constraints like their publisher telling them to make the mechanics more mass-appeal and simpler.

Do you think back in action flashback devs were living in a bubble? if so why. All of the systems from JA2 are in JA:flashback, and a lot more, they have unique versions of most weapons afaik with slight stat boosts, and they have tons of attachments (although not as much as I would like ofc, but that's another matter). And they remarkably made the game feature complete despite having no budget of 200k or whatever it was, which is not enough to run a 2 year minimum project. What about back in action. Back in action people were another clearly underfunded team of devs who didn't even have the resources to make the merc faces look different who also went out of business promptly after the release of the title. The biggest mistake of back in action was to make the action real time, which turns it into some kind of SWAT simulator. I don't know if they were trying to make things more or less complex with that, or what their decision was governed by, whether it was their publisher saying "this genre is too complicated we need to make it mass appeal", but I can say that even that I wouldn't necessarily go after the developer I'd just be like "ok well, I'm probably not going to buy it, I would suggest maybe putting in turn-based instead...".

The only project that I can clearly paint as exploitative was JA online because it had very clear P2W elements and even then I can't say that they didn't do it for the right reasons of creating a financial foundation to use for a "real" jagged alliance single player title later on down the line. And that's not this project, and not this dev team, not anywhere close, nor is it most dev teams who took a shot at JA series.

Edited March 31, 2023 by anon474

[GODSPEED]

I believe the high level of "hate" you see within the Jagged Alliance community, is simply from the lack of understanding, listening and complete disregard from devs on the previous attempts at "reviving" the name... all the way since Jagged Alliance 2.

Most of us - who don't live with rose-tinted glasses and/or a blindfold - have become wary of modern game development! We've experienced promises, nice words, nice marketing but have ultimately been completely let down by any attempt thus far. So let down, that sometimes we study the games that came afterwards and we even start appreciating titles like Back in Action (that apart from the fact you hire mercenaries, had little in common with JA).

I agree, "abusive" speech, insult and personal words towards a dev team is not a valid way to take discourse or provide feedback.

But, on the flipside, part of that stems from that exact feeling of "oh no!! here we go again!! Can't they understand what the f*** we simply want?"

Most die-hard fans don't want a modern "twist", we don't want game mechanics that are taken by some other popular modern titles, we don't want funky new designs. Most of us don't care about modern social/political drama. Most of us are at an age where we simply want a fresh JA2, not a whole rework and modern re-interpretation of something that became an icon and niche category and unique game... to become some streamlined modern "corner-cut" game with the JA name slapped on the "box".


The anger simply stems from that. We would RATHER have the same old JA2 with an HD coating, scaled UI for modern systems and spruced-up graphics, because we don't trust anyone to be able to handle a new game.


I consider myself very easy when I talk about the game, I try to provide my opinion without going into insult... but even then, there is so much one can say. The devs have THEIR vision. It is THEIR work, not mine.


At the end of the day, what will speak louder than words is our wallets. Either they will have our money, or they won't. Many of us have grown tired of sharing our passion, because - ultimately - it feels like our words (the ones who are the most passionate, the most devoted, the long time fans) mean absolutely nothing!

Edited April 1, 2023 by GODSPEED
Typo

[Solaris_Wave]

I never played any of the JA games beyond JA2, due to bad reviews. I have read plenty of comments on here about those of you that did buy those 'sequels' and were disappointed and frustrated by them. Sometimes it feels as if it is just too much to ask to have a modern version of an old favourite that respects that game. Some publishers and developers feel that it needs to adopt current trends, regardless of whether the fans want that sort of thing.

It looks like that with JA3, we can finally get a game that follows in the footsteps of JA2 in a successful manner. It is obviously still too early too tell but other than modernisation and the things that we are requesting to see in the game, the developers are respecting the classic JA games as much as possible. With all the other JA games after JA2, there was always something that immediately let the series down, whether it was the graphics, the gameplay or the fact that  they didn't have much in common, other than being called Jagged Alliance.

Was there any feedback between fans and developers of those sequels during the development or is JA3 unique in that aspect?

[GODSPEED]

3 hours ago, Solaris_Wave said:

Was there any feedback between fans and developers of those sequels during the development or is JA3 unique in that aspect?

Feedback?

Look, I'll explain what I understood transpired with Flashback as an example.

Back on the Bears Pit forums, I believe one of the founding members is Shanga. He worked closely as and "advisor" with the team working on Flashback. But they promised too much, didn't listen to feedback, decided to do it their own way... we all know what transpired next.

The Jagged Alliance community is a pretty vocal one when it comes to sequels.

[Solaris_Wave]

I can imagine how difficult it is, working on a Jagged Alliance game because it always has a lot to live up to. From my memory, JA2 wasn't high profile. JA1 was average in its reception (and I never bought it myself) and at the time of JA2, people were busy looking at other games that were getting the hype.

The demo for JA2 came along and I instantly fell in love with what I saw, placing an order for the full game. The full game ends up being absolutely brilliant and I loved everything about it. It also got top rated reviews and goes down in history as a classic.

The point I am making here is that the developers of JA2 weren't taking too many risks. It was a low profile game, coming in under the radar and yet they knocked it out of the park, as the expression goes. Any development team after that had big shoes to fill for any sequel. Therefore, it makes me wonder if JA: Flashback's development team got overwhelmed by what fans wanted and the legacy of JA2, causing them to silently ignore all feedback and advice. Am I excusing them? No, far from it. I am trying to provide advice and feedback to Haemimont myself, just like so many others here on this forum. It is disappointing to read how a developer will decide to abandon all advice, do it their way and create a far inferior product because of it. They end up pleasing nobody, create a game that is poorly reviewed and poorly received, which in turn gives the false impression that the license should be left to the past and to gather dust. That then just gives the excuse to create more 'safer' games or clones of the flavour of the year/month.

Haemimont seem to be going in the right direction and even the work in progress videos and screenshots look better than the failed sequels that were considered finished and ready for public consumption. There is still plenty to do and more to discuss, debate and advise but I can certainly see that Haemimont has a lot to deal with, and each failed sequel from other developers has inadvertently made that task feel all the more difficult.

[Acid]

13 hours ago, Solaris_Wave said:

I never played any of the JA games beyond JA2, due to bad reviews. I have read plenty of comments on here about those of you that did buy those 'sequels' and were disappointed and frustrated by them. Sometimes it feels as if it is just too much to ask to have a modern version of an old favourite that respects that game. Some publishers and developers feel that it needs to adopt current trends, regardless of whether the fans want that sort of thing.

It looks like that with JA3, we can finally get a game that follows in the footsteps of JA2 in a successful manner. It is obviously still too early too tell but other than modernisation and the things that we are requesting to see in the game, the developers are respecting the classic JA games as much as possible. With all the other JA games after JA2, there was always something that immediately let the series down, whether it was the graphics, the gameplay or the fact that  they didn't have much in common, other than being called Jagged Alliance.

Was there any feedback between fans and developers of those sequels during the development or is JA3 unique in that aspect?

The games set in early 2000's, it doesn't have to have modern.. should I say it.. "woke" themes, and not every game needs to copy Xcom or whatever the popular trend is, be creative and do your own thing.

 

[anon474]

3 hours ago, Acid said:

The games set in early 2000's, it doesn't have to have modern.. should I say it.. "woke" themes, and not every game needs to copy Xcom or whatever the popular trend is, be creative and do your own thing.

 

I doubt it'll have too much woke propaganda in it, they already kind of made fauda a bit mary sue-ish by making her some super elite OP middle eastern sniper (because that's what that region is known for, gender progressivism and female soldiers), and giving her very masculine angular features, giving her a very masculine wardrobe, and giving her a permanent smug expression on her face (basically she's an extremely OP character for no reason), but aside from that I'm sure there's not gonna be too many shennanigans.

Or not any more than there has to be.

Definitely living in interesting times gentlemen.

 

Edited April 2, 2023 by anon474

[WILDFIRE]

I was following all the JA projects that came after JA2 and was always in contact with the developers to give constructive feedback. I also know the Bears Pit forum since I guess 15 years. So we are extremely dedicated veterans and try to help as good as we can.

 

My goal is that we all can enjoy the best JA3 we can get and that task can only be achieved when constructive criticism is heard by the devs. We must work together and surely also the veterans opinions can be wrong sometimes. No one is perfect. But together we can find the best solutions.

 

Sadly most of the last projects were not worth of the name Jagged Alliance, even if the devs tried their best. So when you as a veteran poured your heart and soul in it and the result was so disappointing it really hurts. We simply feel burned out.

 

So for every new attempt that tries to create a worthy Jagged Alliance successor we are very skeptical. Is it really worth it? For JA3 I waited consciously to jump on the train. But the more I saw of this project the more I liked it.

 

Many parts of JA3 look great like the beautiful maps, talents, skills, deep combat, destructible environments and so on but elements like some mercs/npcs that are too cartoony, colorful or the missing animated portraits/hire screen need more work. Maybe some decisions are well thought through and just need some explanation. Maybe some things work well but only the future can tell.

 

But the die hard fans studied Jagged Alliance for over 20 years so they know what they are talking about. So if the devs listen together we can create a game that is worthy of the name Jagged Alliance 3.

[Solaris_Wave]

10 hours ago, Acid said:

The games set in early 2000's, it doesn't have to have modern.. should I say it.. "woke" themes, and not every game needs to copy Xcom or whatever the popular trend is, be creative and do your own thing.

 

When I said 'modern', I was referring to modern computer technology rather than setting. Certainly nothing woke, thankfully. If JA3 had to incorporate "today's progressive values", we would end up with a white male being an African warlord, Shadow would be transgender (and not wear camo paint but 'fabulous' colours), all female characters would have to be labelled 'empowered, strong and independent', the carrion eating crows would now be Vegan, and there would be an uproar if the I.M.P. didn't include gay and transgender options. Not only that, but I suspect that there would be at least four coffee shops in every settlement in Grand Chien.

If people want to play that, I am sure somebody will create Woke Alliance.

 

7 hours ago, anon474 said:

I doubt it'll have too much woke propaganda in it, they already kind of made fauda a bit mary sue-ish by making her some super elite OP middle eastern sniper (because that's what that region is known for, gender progressivism and female soldiers), and giving her very masculine angular features, giving her a very masculine wardrobe, and giving her a permanent smug expression on her face (basically she's an extremely OP character for no reason), but aside from that I'm sure there's not gonna be too many shennanigans.

I think she is styled on (and even has it in her bio) female Kurdish soldiers that were fighting ISIS some years ago. I remember seeing a few female snipers on the news.

Edited April 2, 2023 by Solaris_Wave

[trueman11]

Don't be discouraged. Make what you want to make. Just don't call it Jagged Alliance, if it's not going to resemble Jagged Alliance at all. How I see it.

[anon474]

On 4/2/2023 at 7:55 PM, Solaris_Wave said:

I think she is styled on (and even has it in her bio) female Kurdish soldiers that were fighting ISIS some years ago. I remember seeing a few female snipers on the news.

This is interesting and I was wondering if somebody would pick up on this. What if I told you that a lot of these photographs and media of women in the military especially on front lines is doctored footage, and intentional photo ops created with the purpose of boosting recruitment and swaying perception of the conflict to be more positive? The only time there has been a significant contingent of women fighting as soldiers has been in ww2 by USSR, and it wasn't because they were particularly feminist, it was because they ran out of almost all of age-eligible men and were down to drafting 14 year old children. USSR lost something like 80% of men from one generation in ww2.

TL;DR a lot of sniper women in uniform, these recent ukranian girls in uniform dancing on tiktok, they take off the uniform as soon as the photoshoot is done and go back to doing whatever they were doing before that. It's purely a photo op or low-level propaganda designed to affect perceptions and PR.

Edited April 4, 2023 by anon474

[Solaris_Wave]

I don't use TikTok (or any social media networks) but I have seen photos of female Russian soldiers with plenty of makeup on. When I see that, I am not really convinced they are soldiers but if they are, they knew a photo shoot was going to take place. As you say, it is definitely to boost recruitment.

As for the Kurdish women fighting ISIS, they are genuine. Seeing as there was footage of English speaking ISIS members boasting and laughing about having female slaves because it was apparently allowed, I can totally understand why the Kurdish women would want to fight ISIS. Also, women from other countries joined them. One died and it was reported in the news. There was also a female Kurdish sniper who was being filmed, that fired a shot and then received counter-fire. I was thinking that despite wearing camo BDUs, her blue head scarf wasn't the best thing to have if she wanted to hide her profile.

[trueman11]

On 4/4/2023 at 9:41 AM, anon474 said:

the devs have no other choice, because they can't get access to the kind of financing you can get off a successful sequel/first game

If devs want to create real spiritual successor to JA - they should just crowdfund. Xenonauts and ATOM RPG pulled it off, so why not an alternative Jagged Alliance title? I think that would have been preferable. And I think that likely to happen still, a game with another title will be the next Jagged Alliance.

[anon474]

6 hours ago, trueman11 said:

If devs want to create real spiritual successor to JA - they should just crowdfund. Xenonauts and ATOM RPG pulled it off, so why not an alternative Jagged Alliance title? I think that would have been preferable. And I think that likely to happen still, a game with another title will be the next Jagged Alliance.

That's a nice idea. Sometimes crowdfunding campaigns don't work. ATOM rpg worked because it's a fallout derivative, and people know fallout. Wasteland worked for the same reason.

The way marketing works is that even people who are fans of RPGs need to first be familiar with the genre or sub-genre of RPG to want to buy or show interest in the title, and then they need to be familiar with the franchise (for all intents and purposes wasteland was a fallout equivalent).

We already had a crowdfunding attempt for JA, it was with flashback, and it netted only 200k or so, not really enough for a big studio that may require a few years development. Xenonauts also didn't have a huge crowdfunding campaign afaik.

A lot of your comments are positive, but delusionally positive, naively optimistic and energetic, agitatory. "Yea guys cmon! We can do it! We can just get a million dollars! Cmon!" that's neither how that works, and nor do you want it to work that way (I mean, if JA gets a million dollars or more in budget it should do that for the right reasons not because people think money falls out of the sky for no reason). I want to live in reality, and in reality, getting a title like JA going is very very tough, both on the development side and coming up with actually good ideas, systems, understanding how RPGs work, etc, and on the front end of marketing, getting customers on board, and getting investors/financiers on board. It's a very very hard job that I think you're a bit simplifying in your responses, it's not just a matter of "wanting it bad enough", in fact that kind of attitude blinds you to the nuances of life and development.

[Solaris_Wave]

The thing is, what precisely is a 'spiritual successor'? How far do you go with it? How much do you modernise it after many years have passed? Do you give it the same kind of graphics or leave them looking similar to the game of 20 years ago? Will people mind that or will they be okay with it? I'm not disagreeing here, but what I am getting at is that everybody will have different ideas of what a sequel could be. For me, I don't want anything cartoony and I want the combat to have as realistic calculations as possible, but only because I eventually saw the flaws and limitations with JA2 when I started to want more.

Also, throwing money at something doesn't guarantee anything anymore, especially in the days of Early Access. Look at Star Citizen. So much money has been given by the public and the game looks amazing but it is still not even in Beta a decade later. Some people will say how incredible the game is right now but is it because their imagination is filling in the blanks for what the game currently doesn't have but might promise? Others will say it is still a bug-ridden mess and their patience is exhausted. You get jokes made about the game being something that someone backed and that one day, their eventual grandkids will get to enjoy the game. I have joked that by the time the game comes out, humanity will have achieved outer space colonisation for real, so nobody will need the game. Chris Roberts has spent so long trying to achieve his dream that he is probably using left over money to build an artificial body for himself, so when his current human body dies out, he can port his brain profile over, just so he can carry on development of the game.

You also have to take into account that Star Citizen is a spiritual successor to his earlier game, Freelancer (a game he also couldn't finish making, so it was finished for him). The ambition with the new game is through the roof and into the stratosphere. No amount of money has helped it get finished.

That means that a true successor to JA2, if JA3 is considered to not be it, could potentially be anything. One thing Haemimont have said that they are determined to do is to make JA3 moddable. How moddable remains to be seen but at least if anybody wants to add or change something, the potential for keeping JA3 going long after release is there, whether Haemimont's finished article satisfies or not.

[Lunokhod]

On 3/20/2023 at 7:07 AM, anon474 said:

Don't get discouraged by hate comments if you see them devs, a lot of people have this idea that if they're passionate about something that leaving super negative hypercritical comments on social media will "make the dev do the right thing" but often the criticism is unjustified or stupid, and the comment isn't like "I think it would be better this way" it's more like "devs are money hungry predators and vultures eating our wallets" and super personal, vitriolic, designed to insult people personally as much as possible.

Mb because "a lot of people" dont want to eat any sh*t called Jagged Alliance? Like it was with Flashback, BiA and Rage. I think this game will be better, but still far away from JA2 fans expectations. Like someone in steam says "the real insane is that with modern software and hardware devs can't make a better game than 24 years ago". Just think about it.

[anon474]

20 minutes ago, Lunokhod said:

Mb because "a lot of people" dont want to eat any sh*t called Jagged Alliance? Like it was with Flashback, BiA and Rage. I think this game will be better, but still far away from JA2 fans expectations. Like someone in steam says "the real insane is that with modern software and hardware devs can't make a better game than 24 years ago". Just think about it.

Elliot?