SHAMEFULLY UNDERDEVELOPED!

[parabolee]

Over a year old and no new game modes! Pitiful! Embarrassing! Shameful!

It would take very little work to get leagues and club teams in this game, the fact that it has not happened shows how little care is going into this game. Indie games like Active Soccer, New Star Soccer, Super Arcade Football are all light years ahead of this game in features.

It's like Dino released the game too early, which led to poor reviews, and then he lost all will to work on the game!

The core gameplay is great, and I loved it and bought it twice (UK PSN for store for PS4 and US for the Vita version), and I would buy it again for PC. But with nothing to do but play online or play a Euro Cup, there is little reason to come back.

A year later and it still feels like an Early Access game on the other platforms and this version is the same bare bones game! I vocally supported the game everywhere when it was released, telling people the core gameplay is great and that the other features would come. They have not and I feel burned.

Until the developers show some good faith towards those of us that bought this game and actually get some real game modes in the game, I can not recommend the game at all. Instead, go play New Star Soccer 5, Super Arcade Football, Active Soccer 2 DX or Behold the Kickmen.

Or really stick it to Dino and just wait for Sociable Soccer. This game could have been amazing, instead, it represents a failed promise.

[bburn_78]

New Star Soccer is absolutely great game :) That game is something very different than anything else in virtual football fields/world. Really can’t compare that game to "this genre".

Active Soccer 2 DX is very poor. Boring and not addictive gameplay.

[parabolee]

NSS compares to Player Manager. I liked Active Soccer, though I agree it is a bit slow. It has a ful career mode though which is more than can be said for this.1 year after release and essentialy zero improvments after the first patch. Makes me sad as a huge Kick Off fan.

[Olpus Bonzo]

Basically Dino Dini is developing this game alone, that's why new features are added very slowly. And he had to rewrite from scratch the netcode for the Steam edition, something that slowed the addition of other planned features.

[parabolee]

Active Soccer is also one person (with less experience), go see how many features he has in that game. KOR has had ZERO real upgrades since launch. He should be delivering a decent game to those that already bought it rather than working on another crap version for another platform!

[Bisch]

:( I really hoped the new release of KOR will finally bring back a REAL Kick Off with HD and online play

[76561198026910651]

Blach, KOR brings kick off back in HD and online.

[TheSecondo]

Hi Parabolee, yes we had to put priorities on development. Only Dino & Florian are developing the game and we have to develop the Vita after PS4, it tooks a very long time to optimize Unity code on Vita and after Dino reworked all the matchmaking code and we start the Steam version. After the Steam release, we can start developing more content, and add cups, league, stats...please be patient. And it is not a reason to say that we do a 'crap' version on every platforms because we didn't add club and leagues and more teams. The community is enjoying playing every minutes at KOR, they share us so many good goals every day. They are happy with the gameplay now after 1 year. That was our priority. Cosmetic will follow up along the new platform ports.

[dmekersa]

"KOR has had ZERO real upgrades since launch.". If you have any experience in game development, you should know that porting a game to different platforms take months. I know the team and they are working SO HARD, sometime 24/7. You can dislike the game, but not pretend how hard the team works on the project.

[parabolee]

Originally posted by dmekersa:

"KOR has had ZERO real upgrades since launch.". If you have any experience in game development, you should know that porting a game to different platforms take months. I know the team and they are working SO HARD, sometime 24/7. You can dislike the game, but not pretend how hard the team works on the project.

I don't dislike the game, I dislike the state it is in and the choices the devlopers are making! As a game developer myself, I am well aware of the difficulties in development and porting. I also understand the importance of putting your development time in the right features!

Adding some more modes (like leagues or club teams) to this game would not have been hard (it's basically database back end stuff!). And as I have said, making the game that is already out and sold to people into something worth coming back to SHOULD be more important than releasing the same underwhelming version that lacks the features that would make it worthy of your time on another platform. They may be working hard, but they are working hard in the WRONG areas!

I was a very vocal defender of this game when it first came out. If you go back to the official Facebook page and many Kick Off forums in the launch months you will see many of my posts praising the gameplay, defending the lack of features, posting my best goals and telling people to give the small development team time. Saying they had been forced to rush the game out for the European Cup and that given some time they would get the features in there that everyone wants. The first patch was a good step in the right direction, and then essentially NOTHING for a year! So the European Cup excuse was pretty much BS. Leaving a game in this state and moving on to other platforms to sell it to more people is a bad choice. The WRONG choice.

And I say all of this as a HUGE Kick Off fan, hell even as a HUGE Kick Off Revival fan! I want to buy this game for the PC and love it (making it my third purchase of the game!), but until there is more of a game there I simply cannot, and I cannot advocate that anyone else does.

I think the core gameplay is fantastic, and with the development in the right places, it could be a great success. But I have lost faith that this game is going to survive when some basic features that should have been there at launch have failed to materialise after a year. The fact is that leagues and club teams is not a big ask and it is not a lot of work! However, it won't bring in as much money as shoving it on a new platform in the short term.

Originally posted by BibiPrime:

Hi Parabolee, yes we had to put priorities on development. Only Dino & Florian are developing the game and we have to develop the Vita after PS4, it tooks a very long time to optimize Unity code on Vita and after Dino reworked all the matchmaking code and we start the Steam version. After the Steam release, we can start developing more content, and add cups, league, stats...please be patient. And it is not a reason to say that we do a 'crap' version on every platforms because we didn't add club and leagues and more teams. The community is enjoying playing every minutes at KOR, they share us so many good goals every day. They are happy with the gameplay now after 1 year. That was our priority. Cosmetic will follow up along the new platform ports.

I have been patient for a year (and a decade before that) but I am losing faith and I worry that the incentive to get the features that should be in the game done is vanishing quickly. KOR was vilified on its previous releases for being such a bare bones offering, why would you repeat that mistake again instead of taking the opportunity to make things right? First by getting the needed features into the versions you already sold people a year ago and then by actually being able to launch the game to a new platform in a worthy condition so that it doesn't just arrive to a new audience to the same reaction as before?

Releasing the game to another platform in its current condition is guaranteed to see the same negative response as the previous launches. This was a chance to fix that. Having this launch come out to bad reviews and more negative buzz will ensure that it is DOA. Fixing the missing features later will be too little, too late. Might as well move on to a whole new version KOR 2 or Player Manager Revival. And even then people may have moved on.

Soon enough Sociable Soccer will actually come out (well over a year after KOR), but with all the features KOR lacked, and the Revival will be a dead dream. To the great dismay of all Kick Off fans like myself.

[TheSecondo]

Again, Parabole, thanks for your great support! we had an agreement with Sony to deliver the VITA version. We had no CHOICE! We had to optimize and debbug Unity to get this version running at 60 fps! it tooks 6 MONTHS to do it! And we only have Dino and Florian working to optimize, create the tools, and in the same time, updating the PS4 version, new updates, new QA, new submission...and I, as the publisher, was also waiting for additionnal features discussed with Dino: team customs, stats, injuries... I can tell you that we have already a database of thousand and thousand of players full of different stats, but we can't using yet...filling and updating a database in Unity is a big task! Having lot of options in Unity is a big task, do you want to help us? We have a Google Docs filled by us and the community since 1 year, with tons of improvements and this is on our todo. But we had a "technical debt" to manage and Dino create many tools to help us running the dev much better and he also refactored the netplay. "Development is a journey, you know when it starts, but you never know when it stops". But we have a great core gameplay where people can enjoy. I'm player of KO2 on Amiga 500 as well. I test the game for more than 2 years. I'm able to do tricks on the Steam version that I wasn't able to do them on PS4. Every match is a new story, a new trick to learn.I love it. It was one of my dream to get Dino back again on development. This is just the beginning of the journey. I really don't care about the competition, but I know that it takes time to deliver a quality and well polished product, and we have many other gameplay ideas to develop and many other platforms to address. No promise. Stay tuned.

[76561198026910651]

Lee.
This game never promised the moon and the stars, it promised local multiplayer, a world cup and online play. I believe your expectations are out of sync.

You said yourself the core gameplay is great. That's what was promised.

You won't get leagues, I doubt you ever will. How much did the game cost, less than a tenner. This is a budget game, and a brilliant game in my opinion.

What you have got are 11 updates in the last 12 months all for the price of 2 pints.

[bburn_78]

Originally posted by Dandy(DK):

Originally posted by bburn_78:

New Star Soccer is absolutely great game :) That game is something very different than anything else in virtual football fields/world. Really can’t compare that game to "this genre".

Active Soccer 2 DX is very poor. Boring and not addictive gameplay.

New Star Soccer

Positive (170)
Negative (94)

so ? every game get negative comments, especially in the internet... there are so many trolls. Then there isn't any good computer or videogame if you use that in your criteria what is good game.

btw KOR core gameplay is much better than NSS series (football field) gameplay, as I said that game NSS is really unique and "something different",

[parabolee]

Originally posted by BibiPrime:

Again, Parabole, thanks for your great support! we had an agreement with Sony to deliver the VITA version. We had no CHOICE! We had to optimize and debbug Unity to get this version running at 60 fps! it tooks 6 MONTHS to do it! And we only have Dino and Florian working to optimize, create the tools, and in the same time, updating the PS4 version, new updates, new QA, new submission...and I, as the publisher, was also waiting for additionnal features discussed with Dino: team customs, stats, injuries... I can tell you that we have already a database of thousand and thousand of players full of different stats, but we can't using yet...filling and updating a database in Unity is a big task! Having lot of options in Unity is a big task, do you want to help us? We have a Google Docs filled by us and the community since 1 year, with tons of improvements and this is on our todo. But we had a "technical debt" to manage and Dino create many tools to help us running the dev much better and he also refactored the netplay. "Development is a journey, you know when it starts, but you never know when it stops". But we have a great core gameplay where people can enjoy. I'm player of KO2 on Amiga 500 as well. I test the game for more than 2 years. I'm able to do tricks on the Steam version that I wasn't able to do them on PS4. Every match is a new story, a new trick to learn.I love it. It was one of my dream to get Dino back again on development. This is just the beginning of the journey. I really don't care about the competition, but I know that it takes time to deliver a quality and well polished product, and we have many other gameplay ideas to develop and many other platforms to address. No promise. Stay tuned.

Well if this game eventually delivers, you will have my 100% support again. Kick Off remains one of the greatest games of all times in my eyes and I want KOR to succeed. But as of now, I am an unhappy Kick Off fan that has purchased 2 underwhelming copies of the game. All your explanations for the Vita version make sense, but you did not have any reason to release the PC version in the same state as the PS4/Vita version. It should have come as an improved version with more features and therefore a better chance to succeed and a better chance to be well received. It pains me that the first release of KOR was so badly panned in reviews. And I strongly feel that getting this release right was essential and that this version is not good enough.

At least some of those features you have been working on should have been made ready for this launch. Even if it meant waiting for 6 more months. Releasing what is essentially the same version to another platform 1 year later just looks bad and the bad reception the previous versions were met with will inevitably follow.

But please, prove me wrong. I want you to. I want this game to shine, I want it to succeed. And if you get some of these much-needed features in the game, I will buy it again. But I am telling you as a fan and as much needed constructive criticism, you are going about it the wrong way. And cementing a bad reputation for the game too early in its life.

[P90 | <AKA>Attila]

My friend and me were HUGE fans of Kick Off back in the days on my Amiga500. So I bought it on Steam today. I would like to share my first impression, not because I want to be a pain, but because I care and really would like to play Kick Off again.

Somehow, even after going through the tutorials, I still can't play the game properly. First I had the troubles getting my gamepad to work. When I finally had set it right, I noticed it somehow interferes with my mouse. When I stop playing and get back to Windows, my mouse isn't working anymore... But that is not the most important issue.

It frustrates me that the ball is going outside the field that quickly. I know Kick Off is known for the ball not sticking to your players foot, but I really think that the values should be brought back to something more enjoyable. I get it that there are 'techniques', but if this game wants to build a players base, it shouldn't be that hard. Just bring down the physics a bit, make the ball virtually heavier or the field less greasy, I know it's just a setting away. Probably, back in the days, the game was better playable because the resolution of the movements was lower.

That brings me to another issue. It frustrates me that the bar to decide force to put on the ball is that small and pretty much unmanageable. You need to, during a fast game where the enemy is running towards you, carefully try to touch your gamepad that little, that you could get the strenght to put on the ball you desire. But that is actually so hard, that you either barely touch the ball, or you shoot the ball... outside.

I played the original Kick Off for hours, days, months,... so why does this Steam version makes me want to uninstall the game ? I really hope that Dino or anyone else from development team is open to these remarks.

[TheSecondo]

Hi Attila, I have played KO and KO2 as well a lot on Amiga, but did you play GOAL too? the initial idea of Dino about the Revival, was to offers to the fans, the best of KO, KO2 and GOAL. Also, it is a creative choice from Dino to have the game "hardcore" that requires a LOT of investment on the Revival. I am playing the Revival since 2015, and I still don't master all the tricks in the game, the learning curve is so long to master. but it doesn't affect my feeling: every match is a new challenge and in every match I enjoyed every moments. I don't force anyone to invest your time on the Revival, we have a lot's of players around in Kormunity who masters the game and who's sharing their new goals and tricks every day. I talked to Dino about adding an "Amateur Mode" for youngs or others players who doesn't have the time to invest into the game. This is something I really want to add on our next version.