MountainWest said:
It's funny how '5000' at the same time can sound as such a small number and as such a huge fucking gigantic number. I see the same small group of people discussing the game every week - hardly a base big enough to infuse a sense of "AoD will sell like motherfucker" - but there must be tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousand people out there sufing the waves who'd love an intelligent RPG.
Well, PST and Arcanum sales tell me that this group is very, very small. Arcanum sold what? 80,000 copies? And that was a properly published and advertised game.
Even starving for a good TB RPG. In the light of the latter 5000 sound like a drop in the ocean.
I track AoD's reaction and see what people think and the results aren't in my favor. The graphics seem to be the deal-breaker for a LOT of people. Even NMA - a bastion of die-hard Fallout fans - is following the trend:
"i dont like the playmobil-ish graphics style...
just look at the characters, they look very amateurish.
the whole game looks amateurish... but it still could get a really cool game. looks like the gameplay will be good and that's an important point."
"Well....yea, it looks amateurish. They're using an engine that hasn't been updated since about 1996. Even by the graphics standards of two or three years later, it looks pretty crappy, and they acknowledge that in one of the sections of AoD's website.
Regardless of the graphics, it looks great, and I really do hope they pull it off. If they do, I'll buy a copy. Despite the fact that I've got a Mac. It's just a good idea to help out people who are actually trying to make interesting turn-based RPGs."
"While I don't think the 3D is that bad, the interface designer certainly needs a little bit more education when it comes to graphical contrast.
Intentional or not, the lack of visual distinction between some of the interface elements and the background is an eye-sore."
"These screenshots look like they could benefit from pure renderer improvements,i.e. shader effects. "
These are not bad comments, but the question of graphics is there. And that's NMA, like I said. So, overall, I think I can count on 500-600 orders. Anything above that is...