@caliger_reborn said in Drukhari Battleships - You have my attention:
@lkhero Closest to official we have is 'some time in the coming months'.
Given there are meant to be 2 betas, and they thought about releasing the game in September, that tells me there will almost certainly be one in October, if not then November at the latest (provided there are no further delays).
This isn't targeted to you, but more to the devs, but SD44 had a pretty good "pre-order/beta" model up to release.
They released their divisions in waves, so they gave you like 4 divisions in the beginning, and then next week they released 2 more, then 2 more, then 2 more..etc. They did not release the last 2 divisions (I think it was 101st Airborne and something else ), and that was my biggest gripe with the entire thing because the 101st was way too strong upon release. There was no NDA, it was available to all pre-order, and you can stream all you want. BFG:A can do 2 weeks as well between factions being introduced, it all depends on the # of factions and the release schedule itself. Hell, release 1 per week. These factions can hide behind a feature flag that enables/disables them for MP. Since betas for these kinds of games are purely MP, you don't even need to turn on ranked or anything else.
With that said, I think this up-to release model is fantastic:
- No NDA means free streaming which means free advertisement for the game. Simple as that, it's free marketing, and you know damn well that I will finally turn on my Stream after months and months of inactivity (no RTS games to play really).
- The injection schedule of new factions per week is genius and here's why: It allows you to tease out factions and build hype. It builds anticipation. It ties into your weekly blog pots "spoiling" and teasing the fans on which faction will be release. Hype generates pre-orders because people will see your game being played (see above point) and will want to pre-order to try it. It allows the dev team to take feedback and apply it so by the time a new faction gets released, there might be immediate hotfixes to completely broken things. It ties heavily into any marketing campaign: For example, BFG:A2 right now has that FB post that blacks out a ship and you have to guess which ship. Now imagine that but with a faction. It's pretty much who's that Pokemon? but for factions.
- Start earlier than later. It allows you to receive feedback from players on all skill levels and apply it to the game for a better polished product at the end. There's no doubt that when I played SD44 (myself and a lot of top Wargame RD clans played as well) gave tons of feedback to the developer forum, and the game was in a much better position when the game came out. This was my absolute biggest gripe about the first game and this studio, and I hope they change this for the second game.