2+ hours for tutorial dialogs - thats insane!

[HardRock]

The Steam trial period before refund is 2 hours. But in first 2 hours of the game there is barely 15 minutes of gameplay with 1 minute of looped NSFW content. Everything else is endless dialogs, without proper animation for talking characters. It supposed to be a SHMUP or tactical combat game, but not a linear visual novel.

I understand, its an early access, and there is alot of missing content. But I'm sure that many people will refund this game simply because it doesnt show its actual gameplay in the first 2 hours.

In every good game story progression and cutscenes are a reward for successful mission, not the other way around, when you are rewarded with few minutes of gameplay for listening a long dialog. Its not so hard to add more random shooting or tactical missions between dialogs, to keep players engaged.

PS: I'd like this game to succeed, but it needs to change, before steam reviews become negative because of poor start.

[Luis]

Cliff Bleszinski used to say you had to hook the player in the first 5min or your game was doomed... but that was a whole era ago. Now you can just promise tiddies will show up eventually eventually, and players will crawl naked through 2km of razer wire :)

Anyway, jokes and hyperbole aside, the game should balance its downtime vs playtime in a far more favorable way to the latter - and just like you, I hope things will improve as the dev team grows in experience :)

[Raw Jamo]

I'm just glad OP didn't skip the good stuff.

[Carighan]

Well, that's one downside of this way of releasing. You intentionally release a poor unfinished state, but while hiding behind "but it's early access!!!!" is easy, factually it doesn't mean anything.

It's a for-profit product, sold for profit, commercially, openly to anybody. There's nothing early access about that, it's just a product being sold. One in a comparatively shoddy state since it's extremely unfinished.

That being said, what is there already is IMO quite cool. No HuniePop 1/2 in terms of lewd games, but not terrible either.

[Red_Theory]

Originally posted by Luis:

Cliff Bleszinski used to say you had to hook the player in the first 5min or your game was doomed... but that was a whole era ago. Now you can just promise tiddies will show up eventually eventually, and players will crawl naked through 2km of razer wire :)

Anyway, jokes and hyperbole aside, the game should balance its downtime vs playtime in a far more favorable way to the latter - and just like you, I hope things will improve as the dev team grows in experience :)

Cliff Bleszinski is also the guy that made Law Breakers

[Carighan]

That game hooked you within 5 minutes for sure. You got in, spent 5 minutes, then refunded it. Really good ad for that part of the process, tbh.

[Hotair]

Originally posted by VLX11387:

Cliff Bleszinski is also the guy that made Law Breakers

In which he skipped his own advice and forgot to hook the player at all.

[ion00]

They could have at least provided the player with dialogue options for the captain. Even if they lead to the same outcome it's still better to have something to do rather than watch 10 minute long cutscenes.

[Experimantal]

Originally posted by ion00:

They could have at least provided the player with dialogue options for the captain. Even if they lead to the same outcome it's still better to have something to do rather than watch 10 minute long cutscenes.

Let not forget FOW is primarily an animation studio, not a game one, I went in expecting a visual novel with gameplay sequence: linear, some mini games, and very crude over the top humor like in the trailers. The first 5 minutes were exactly that and so I got what I paid for

[Kuro]

Hey, at least it autosaves unlike Nier Automata prologue!

[Luis]

Originally posted by VigilantPhase449:

players play TLOU2 and other movie "games" and no one bats a freaking eye. but FOW has dialog in it and its reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

People swim in water and other liquids and no one bats a freaking eye, but drop them on a pool of acid and it's reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

See, it doesn't work that way. It's not about the fact that there's a "cinematic" element. It's about the story, characters, pacing and a myriad other factors.

[ion00]

Originally posted by Experimantal:

Originally posted by ion00:

They could have at least provided the player with dialogue options for the captain. Even if they lead to the same outcome it's still better to have something to do rather than watch 10 minute long cutscenes.

Let not forget FOW is primarily an animation studio, not a game one, I went in expecting a visual novel with gameplay sequence: linear, some mini games, and very crude over the top humor like in the trailers. The first 5 minutes were exactly that and so I got what I paid for

Visual novels have dialogue choices.

[Luis]

Originally posted by VLX11387:

Originally posted by Luis:

Cliff Bleszinski used to say you had to hook the player in the first 5min or your game was doomed... but that was a whole era ago. Now you can just promise tiddies will show up eventually eventually, and players will crawl naked through 2km of razer wire :)

Anyway, jokes and hyperbole aside, the game should balance its downtime vs playtime in a far more favorable way to the latter - and just like you, I hope things will improve as the dev team grows in experience :)

Cliff Bleszinski is also the guy that made Law Breakers

"Do as I say, not as I do"? :P

I'm sure everyone has messed up at some point in their career (ahem, John Romero) but It's not like he didn't have ANY success in the game industry...

[Experimantal]

Originally posted by ion00:

Originally posted by Experimantal:

Let not forget FOW is primarily an animation studio, not a game one, I went in expecting a visual novel with gameplay sequence: linear, some mini games, and very crude over the top humor like in the trailers. The first 5 minutes were exactly that and so I got what I paid for

Visual novels have dialogue choices.

Not all of them, some are simply well.. Novels with visuals, no choice, you just read from point A to point B

[Elvick]

Originally posted by Experimantal:

Not all of them, some are simply well.. Novels with visuals, no choice, you just read from point A to point B

If they don't have choices they're kinetic novels.

[Aru]

Voice acting is freaking banger in this game. When it comes to Pandora stuff it seems to be a little too barebones for me, though I know more stuff will be added it's pretty simplistic and I will not spend as much time in it as I anticipated.

The only thing so far that I do not enjoy at all are tactical battles. If I managed to die multiple times in the Tibalt battle, which was pretty much tutorial boss battle, I dread to think how actual non-tutorial bossess will be like. I kinda hope there will be a button to skip some fight segments.