nipsen: Well, my problem is a little bit more about to what degree they'll actually make the ruleset part of the game-design. Judging by how Shadowrun turned out - the ruleset would be sound, even if simplified. But it won't actually make much of a difference in how the game develops, or really how it's played.
I respect that successfully designing a game that takes into account the world's ruleset as something more than static variables balanced towards milestones to beat as the story progresses, that this is difficult. So is writing multiple branching paths in general - it's a planning nightmare when you're trying to get something done over time. And the most populated and busy nodes are perhaps not visited as often as the ones that were spent the most time on actually completing.
But it's also something that your average reviewer as well as fan could, statistically speaking, not care less about. While they write off fundamental problems with the entire game's setup as "bugs" that forever will be fixed with the next patch. And so on.
I mean, I've bought mulitiple games now that had the best experience throughout the game's lifecycle - during the pre-release version, before it was "adjusted" for user feedback.
Is this game going to be another one of those? A great idea, a good concept, fantastic setting - but where none of the elements come together, and they don't shine individually either, in the final product. Which then is still successfully sold to "fans" with a purchased youtube-campaign, and a fancy trailer?
Plenty of retorical questions and you are not wanting a discussion or an answer, it seems, but just to make your point (what is your point, anyway?)
I am going to agree with you about the dangers of big market strategies and campaigns that lead to bluffs sold just with the hype. I don't like that tactics, also. I deeply dislike those tactics, in fact.
Now, no one can answer you, of course. Will this be a game which those of us who enjoyed it during the beta pre-release are going to enjoy or we will see something so different and full of bad design, boring and bugged that we will regret the pre-purchase? I don't think this is gonna happen, but no one can answer that to you, and you know it.
So, if your intention was not to ask others about incentives/features/whatever to pre-purchase, what was your intention?
As already said to you, as a general rule, wait. If you don't like what you are seeing and you are so frustrated about past pre-purchases, of course, wait.
If you, on the contrary and against of what it seems, were sincerely asking, i would like to answer just this carefully worded sentence you made in your initial post:
"And should I pre-purchase before I know anything about the game other than that it's a shameless tie-in to an old darling in the PC-community that everyone there would like to see a good remake of?"
Well, what a sentence! Should you pre-purchase? Don't know, you only know that. But, about "shameless tie-in to an old darling...", etc, i can say that the "shameless tie-in" is promoted and controlled by one of the original creators of the "old darling", and while it is obvious that they want to sell the game, i think that fact should, at the very least, earn him a bit of respect to avoid the "shameless" tag you happily added to this.
If this were a random company and a random guy who bought a license he don't know anything about just to make some quick cash...then yes, of course, i will agree with you. But it's not the case, there's a developer there which has all the rights to make another game of a, yes, old darling franchise, and i woud like to add that a lot of us were waiting for this to happen. I don't want others who do not care to do a BT game, i want the original FASA guy (the creative one, also, not the one who managed the finances) to do a lot of BT games from now on, and i hope it can happen (and i hope no one, not even him, screws the opportunity lol)
Now, and again, if you are not convinced, just don't buy and wait. I admit i'm buying because i trust and i miss BT games in PC (and don't like only-online PVP games plagued with premium and overpriced skins but real games i can enjoy) and i never, never trust in any marketing campaign, specially from "AAA" publishers so i almost never pre-purchase anything. I don't trust in hype, in youtoubers, in "fantastic" pre-purchase offers, in known magazines which sell their reviews to those big publishers (or others not so big but with some national or friendly interest) and, of course, in what others think about something i am interested on, except just to know about their experience when playing, if that's the case.
But i am glad, in this case, that i could enjoy the Beta so much and i am happy that now i can wait for the game knowing that i am going to enjoy it even if just for the skirmish part and i don't really know how well the rest would be designed and free of bugs. I am an old fan, yes, but from the BT universe, and the only i can say is that i see no better reason to have backed this than to finally have a Jordan Weisman BT PC game in my hands. Again, at last.
