The Banner Saga - Factions (pvp-only, turn-based)

[Falconeer]

You probably have heard about The Banner Saga, little game that got kickstarted (asked 100,000$, got 700,000$) about a year ago from some folks who left Bioware and with the music of Austin Wintory. That's the single player game.
Well, a few weeks ago "Factions", the competitive multiplayer side of it has been released, and it's on Steam. You have to go through the official website, http://stoicstudio.com/forum/the-banner-saga-factions.php in order to buy access to beta for 5 dollars, but then you get TWO keys you can use to activate the game for you and a friend on Steam. I think it's a real bargain.

The game itself is the child of Disgaea, Final Fantasy Tactics and Dofus in Viking sauce, if you know what I mean. Game takes place on chess-like board. You have to make up a team of 6 out of 12 classes so far. Characters have different stats and skills, and can be improved between matches thanks to XP and stuff like that. They also promise to release more classes over time. Seriously, if you played Dofus you know this part.

Sadly, like Dofus, the art style screams of Adobe Flash. It's not that it doesn't look good (it's inspired by Eyvind Earle's 1959 Sleeping Beauty), it's just that somehow it feels very 2D to me, but I guess this is a matter of personal taste.




The UI seems decent so far, intuitive enough. The tactical level seems very deep, you can't even "just attack" the enemy, you have to at least decide if you are going to attack their armour or their strength (to decrease their damage). This is confusing at first, you always want to go for health in order to reduce their damage, but after a while you realize why it's important to take away their armour in order for some of your smaller hitters to kill what they couldn't have killed otherwise. Also, thousands of ways to customize your banner including lots of player submitted ones. This seemded to be a big deal at the time of the Kickstarter, although as far as I can tell this is not yet in the beta.

This video can definitely help give you a better idea of the game. Very informative.

It reminds me of Blood Bowl here and there more than Final Fantasy Tactics, but I guess it's because they all share a certain boardgame nature. It's definitely a TRPG, not a blood sport mayhem.
Apparently, by playing online you participate in a ladder which gives you a rank that theoretically pits you against similarly skilled opponent. I have little faith the systems works well at this stage of beta but it's supposedly there.

Definitely worth a look.

** BEWARE! EVEN IF IT'S A BARGAIN, AS OF JANUARY 17th MANY FEATURES ARE MISSING FROM THE BETA **


P.S. (Trivia): Ashen Temper from Shadowbane is the Commmunity Manager.

[Ingmar]

Looks like it has potential, added to my 'once I finish the 10 games' list.

[Margalis]

Sounds cool but paying for beta is against my religion. I'll download the Fire Emblem 3DS demo instead.

[Rendakor]

Looks cool but I'm more interested in the single player than a PVP-only sort of thing. Also good call on the Fire Emblem demo Marg, didn't realize that was up.

[Falconeer]

Speaking of the Single Player, they published a VERY long and detailed Kickstarter update a few weeks ago. It's quite exciting, if you ask me.

In other, and more relevant to thread news, Factions, the multuiplayer-only version has just gone live on Steam and is free to play. Here's the Launch Trailer.

[Rokal]

As someone that backed The Banner Saga, I was less enthusiastic that they spent all this time/money from the Kickstarter working on a multiplayer F2P spin-off instead of the single-player game they actually pitched. I get that delays happen and maybe projects don't turn out as well as you'd have wanted them to: those are the expected risks of Kickstarter. This feels much less expected, like someone asked me to invest in an apple orchard they wanted to grow and then turned up a year later with a bag of prunes. This is the sort of shit that makes me much less comfortable investing in Kickstarter than outright (but honest) failures like Haunts.

There is a decent Gamasutra article up echoing my sentiments

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/187713/Opinion_Why_I_wont_be_Kickstarting_anymore.php

As a result of the work on this multiplayer standalone -- a release that I do not care about in any way, shape or form -- work on the single-player campaign has been pushed back once again. "Our best guess right now is between mid and late this year," says the team.

Essentially, what has happened is that the team decided to build this free-to-play game due to the huge influx of extra cash that it received during the Kickstarter, and is now no doubt focusing a good portion of its attention on balancing and building addition content for this game, rather than actually making the game that myself and many others pledged towards.

In simpler terms, I was coerced into funding a game that I have absolutely no interest in, with the promise that the thing I actually do want will be coming at some point. This free-to-play game will also bring extra cash in for the team, meaning that it will no doubt slowly but surely begin to focus on the desires of its Factions players, rather than the people who gave it a voice in the first place.

[Falconeer]

I will use the words of our truly dearest Lum Jennings echo my sentiments about the article you linked. Scott just posted about it, and I agree in full.

So, a whole lot of discussion on this article this morning. I think that people aren't really understanding the reasoning behind Kickstarter - it's for teams to get funded, not for customers to buy a copy of your product early. Projects change, and more importantly projects fail (3 out of the last 5 game projects I worked on were cancelled, 2 before ever being announced). Kickstarter is for the empowered fan who wants to take the role of venture capitalist, not for the avid consumer. The fact that few seem to get this is a failure of education for all concerned - Kickstarter itself, the teams seeking funding on Kickstarter, and the article's author (who, being a member of the news media covering gaming, you would think would know better than most how the industry actually works) who took his frustration at one project's change in focus into a jeremiad against all Kickstarter-funded development.

EDIT to add, in case you don't like the idea of being a "venture capitalist", or you think that comparison doesn't work (someone else said it's Capitalism RPG, but with real money) here's another quote (not Scott's) I like a lot which I think still describes Kickstarter better than what people seem to think it is (preordering a product):

Kickstarter is begging. That's not bad and wrong -- but it is what Kickstarter is.

[Rokal]

I'm not suggesting that Kickstarter is like buying a game: it's more like being a patron for a developer. I understood that projects might not ever be finished, or might turn out shitty. What I didn't expect was the dishonest bait-and-switch. If you pitched a single player game and people backed it at 7x the funds you asked for, why would you decided to invest that money into a multiplayer game instead? Why not do a Kickstarter for the multiplayer game and see how many people respond to that idea instead, if that's the game you actually want to make?

[HaemishM]

Because the money's in the MOBA? 

[Falconeer]

I understand that. But specifically about Banner Saga, I can't really see that much effort put into the multiplayer game. Seriously, the combat is the same that will be in the Single Player game, and there's not much stuff specific to the multiplayer. I don't feel (I might be wrong) the multiplayer has anything to do with the delay of the single player. More like "hey, we are horribly late, let's pack a multiplayer version to get out before we get pitchforks at our doorstep considering we are going to be a year late anyway".

[Rokal]

I don't feel (I might be wrong) the multiplayer has anything to do with the delay of the single player. More like "hey, we are horribly late, let's pack a multiplayer version to get out before we get pitchforks at our doorstep considering we are going to be a year late anyway".

The recent Q&A they put up suggests otherwise.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/stoic/the-banner-saga/posts/410956

[Trippy]

I will use the words of our truly dearest Lum Jennings echo my sentiments about the article you linked. Scott just posted about it, and I agree in full.

So, a whole lot of discussion on this article this morning. I think that people aren't really understanding the reasoning behind Kickstarter - it's for teams to get funded, not for customers to buy a copy of your product early. Projects change, and more importantly projects fail (3 out of the last 5 game projects I worked on were cancelled, 2 before ever being announced). Kickstarter is for the empowered fan who wants to take the role of venture capitalist, not for the avid consumer. The fact that few seem to get this is a failure of education for all concerned - Kickstarter itself, the teams seeking funding on Kickstarter, and the article's author (who, being a member of the news media covering gaming, you would think would know better than most how the industry actually works) who took his frustration at one project's change in focus into a jeremiad against all Kickstarter-funded development.

EDIT to add, in case you don't like the idea of being a "venture capitalist", or you think that comparison doesn't work (someone else said it's Capitalism RPG, but with real money) here's another quote (not Scott's) I like a lot which I think still describes Kickstarter better than what people seem to think it is (preordering a product):

Kickstarter is begging. That's not bad and wrong -- but it is what Kickstarter is.

You aren't being a VC, though, in even quotes. VCs almost always have a significant say in the company they've invested in -- in many cases they control the company outright (own a majority of the voting shares) or have seats on the Board.

[Paelos]

The VC comparison is laughable. VC's get to have direction, control, and returns on their money if the project succeeds.

Then again, you mostly know my feelings on Kickstarters policies already.

[HaemishM]

At best, a Kickstarter who puts in money is an angel investor who doesn't give two shits if their money gets returned or not.

Or, in other words, a sucker. 

[Fabricated]

I backed Banner Saga and I could give a shit that they released the MP game.

[pxib]

My guess is that they realized their original timeline was ridiculously optimistic and that having more money with which to implement it didn't actually make things any faster: Brooks's Law strikes again. So they focused on (and released) this multi-player version to drum up interest, get some open beta testing of their class design, and kick the can down the road while they get the single-player campaign finished.

The idea that this is a sinister bait-and-switch rather than a FREE BONUS making the best out of an awkward situation is more than a bit petty.

[Rokal]

The idea that this is a sinister bait-and-switch rather than a FREE BONUS making the best out of an awkward situation is more than a bit petty.

This is based on the Q&A I linked where they talk about how much time they have spent on the Multiplayer, how much harder it was to create than they thought, and how this has contributed to additional delays.

Also, it's not a "free bonus" if they spent a large portion of the last year working on it. Time=money and in the case of Kickstarter, that money is coming directly from backers. In this case those most backers probably would have preferred that large amounts of time & money actually be spent on the single player game that was pitched instead of a F2P pvp-only multiplayer game with a cashshop.

[Severian]

Stoic has responded at length to that Gamasutra article. Recommended.

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/AlexThomas/20130304/187768/Developing_a_Kickstarterfunded_game_a_look_from_inside.php

(but he doesn't address why their overfunded project added a cash shop)

[UnSub]

I think there's a big difference between a free multiplayer release and a F2P multiplayer release. If backers saw Factions released and then knew that the single player was coming out next month, I don't think there'd be the outcry. But there still isn't a solid release date on The Banner Saga and now Stoic has a revenue generating multiplayer title to keep operational as well.

[Rokal]

Stoic has responded at length to that Gamasutra article. Recommended.

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/AlexThomas/20130304/187768/Developing_a_Kickstarterfunded_game_a_look_from_inside.php

(but he doesn't address why their overfunded project added a cash shop)

He also glazes over how much additional work the multiplayer component took, insisting that all the assets and other work are re-usable. I find it hard to believe that adding working netcode and a working cash shop/cash shop items was a small amount of work for such a tiny team, all of which will be entirely useless in the single player game. Unless they have hired past their original team size when they pitched the game, they have only one programmer.

Fair enough though. Maybe they've been talking about the multiplayer non-stop since the project started and this shouldn't have come as much of a surprise. Like the author suggests, I really haven't been paying attention.

[Falconeer]

To call it "netcode" is almost an exaggeration. This game is SO turn based it could be played by email.

[Margalis]

I would be willing to accept the argument that the multiplayer is a good test for the combat if the multiplayer wasn't packed with pay-to-win gouging.

If you want players to test your combat system you don't attach an onerous payment system to it.

[Rendakor]

I would be willing to accept the argument that the multiplayer is a good test for the combat if the multiplayer wasn't packed with pay-to-win gouging.

If you want players to test your combat system you don't attach an onerous payment system to it.

That's particularly offensive after begging for Kickstarter money and still not delivering the single player game.

[rk47]

glad i skipped it. Heh. Greedy fucks.

[Hoax]

ARISE!@!!   (Falc can edit the title) 

The single player game is out now and I'm hearing mutterings of people having fun with it. But most people on my steam who have it haven't played it much at all which is usually a not so good sign.

I'm hearing viking oregon trail with good music/atmosphere but the combat may be too slow for me. Thank god for the F2P MP thing I should be able to test out the pace and zzz factor.

[Tebonas]

The discussion got buried in the Kickstarter thread, but thats about the same conclusion we came to there. And yes, it isn't terribly long, either. Good chance those people already finished it and are resting up for a second playthrough sometime later (I know I am).

[Ingmar]

I'm not really planning to buy it until it has a complete story arc. This is apparently just episode 1 and doesn't conclude at a satisfying break, from what I'm told.

[Hoax]

Episode 1 costs $25? Huh. I guess that's one way to do it.

[Margalis]

Kickstarter projects abruptly becoming episodic is quite trendy.

[Pezzle]

That even happened to the 9 year old girl making her mom some easy money kickstarter, or so I read somewhere. 

[trias_e]

Kind of an a-side, but in today's era of youtube playthroughs and twitch streams, making story-based games episodic should pretty much be mandatory at this point.

More on point with the thread:  This is certainly a very good game...for certain people.  If you like bleak stories and dry (not trying to be derogatory, just can't think of a better term) determinstic turn based gameplay, get this game.  It's also, somewhat surprisingly for me, and audio-visual masterpiece.  It's ridiculously beautiful.  The soundtrack is fucking amazing.  If not for the A-V part of the game, I wouldn't have liked the game as much as I did (and I usually don't care too much for that side of things)

[Speedy Cerviche]

Got got this, 40% off on steam for next 24 hours. haven't tried multiplayer yet but the single player is very cool. Great aesthetics & story. Gameplay is pretty good too, solid turn based strategy RPG. Chess-like unit abilities.