Trials Fusion officially outsells Evolution | Forums

[D2Dahaka]

Id use webchat if i knew where it was.

http://www.redlynx.com/chat.php

[sparkierjonesz]

Id use webchat if i knew where it was.

any irc client works, but personally i use mibbit
you can find it on chat.mibbit.com
server: irc.redlynxtrials.com
channel: #redlynx or #trials2

or d2's link

important stuff you should know about irc
most of the time the people are doing other stuff while still having chat open so it might take a while before they notice someone started speaking
saying hi improves your chances that you get noticed, be sure to stick around for a couple of minutes, you can always do some other stuff too while you wait

[D2Dahaka]

holy crap, we can't go away for a few hours of this forum without seeing a mess when we're back ;-)

Not the courage to answer tonight, I'll answer later in the week end.

PS: Nobody told me for the giant cash bonus! bastards! ;-) (or maybe your story was pure fiction with no insight at all though that was cute )

haha this response is classic

[geordiedeviant]

I wonder what the stats show for people buying multiple copies. I bought day one just base game on 360, then bought retail PS4. I've read of people on this forum that have all 4 platforms rocking the action.

[Happyflow]

@Eno
Don't forget Anba sold Redlynx once, maybe he's back.

[En0-]

Hello!

So I noted I wanted to answer one specific post this week end. Without being neither mean nor particularly constructive, this post shows we could do a better job at communicating our vision about the game and its lifecycle. So here it is.

I just wish it would not go into the patch things up, addon direction since I am in my third term of software development at collage and would much rather develope a game till it is finished and not try to monetize every little transaction (not talking about fusion right now). People get what they want/pay for that is the way the world works. It shows that selling an average game and selling an extremly awsm game equals out as long as the name fits. And I think Fusion although it is very enjoyable (I am not such a mega giga pro that i would make such a fuss about coffin runs and stuff) , I think you have to admit that it is just not the masterpiece HD and Evo where at their time.

(What you call "the way the worlds works")
The traditional average model of developing and selling video games is as follow: You develop for 3 or 4 years your idea, you launch it and you do 80% of your sales in the first 2 months. Because of that, you can't leave the team on the project after launch (too expensive and not interesting financially). So the team is sent on another project.
- If players are lucky, they'll have 1 or 2 patchs to fix what was clearly not working.
- Publisher can try to extend sales by launching a DLC at the end of the first wave sales (it's at the same time people starts to finish the game and may be motivated to pay to get more of the same).
- That's really risky for the studio/publisher because the team makes a lot of assumptions for 3 or 4 years and if they are wrong, there is no way to recover.

(What I call "the way the world should works")
But in the last years, another model started to show up: some games have been sold in a constantly way on a really long period (examples: Minecraft, CS:GO, DayZ...). These games had 2 common points: They are community based and their studios supported them long after launch.
- When the game is launched, the team can have a real understanding of what's good and what needs to be improved. The team can exchange with the community to make better decisions.
- It's really good for the player as well. The player doesn't need to spend 60 euros upfront. He can buy the game for a small part of that and enjoys for a while. If he doesn't like what he has, he didn't spend the full price of a game. If he's happy with what he has and doesn't need more, he's not forced to pay more. If he thinks it's awesome and wants more content, he can spend more.

I have a lot of game in my collection that I bought for 60 euros and I have played 4 or 5 hours only. It's quite an expensive purchase looking at the ratio time of fun/price. With Trials Fusion, I think we have an awesome amount of fun for a cheap amount of money (I don't think we're abusing anyone contrary as what has been suggested on this forum, I also don't think we're doing "commercial crap", we're trying to work in the smartest possible way, as close as possible of the community). Also, really important, we try to update the game really regularly with patches (like last week), with DLC (like next week) and with game updates (like Tournaments, Teams, Multiplayer). Note that only DLCs are priced, the updates are totally free for everyone. I can't communicate the planning of all these updates, but it's really dense. This also means instead of reducing the team when the game has been launched, we kept everyone on the project and even kept hiring.

One of the fundamental difference, and it's where the analogy with the car falls short, is the traditional way was to sell a product (the consumer pays for exactly what is in the box, not more) whereas now the consumer pays to access a service (with an initial set of features but with the expectation it's going to evolve, at least for a year). There are different variation of this business (you know what we call subscriptions, free to play, etc...) In our case, it's an hybrid model (a little bit like Guild Wars does). The different variations are more or less adapted to some type of games, there is not one definitely better than another one.

I can't really comment the discussion about HD/Evo compared to Fusion. I didn't work on the first ones and I didn't play them that much. I don't really know how they were at launch. Though I firmly believe Fusion will be the reference because we keep improving and we have no plan to stop doing so at the moment. Also, I believe our decision to take our time to develop an awesome multiplayer mode is the right one. We could have made the decision to develop a quick one and launch it quickly because there was a sticker on the box (I can't comment that), but we decided to aim for the highest quality and take the time it needs even if it pisses off part of the players. Why? Because the game and the community deserve to have the best possible features.

So this should answer the question about "HD/EVO > Fusion". The truth of one day is not always the truth of the next day.

Regards,

EnO

PS: If you're in software development at college, you can have a look at "agile software development", it's a dev philosophy that invites to bring users and devs closer to each other to increase the quality of what is developed by collaborating together. Also, "develop a game till it's finished" never happens and is risky (because of what I explained above). I believe it's better to get feedback as soon as possible, as often as possible. But it needs to be managed, and that's not easy. (and that may go against usual business practices also). That's an interesting topic that is not studied enough in Universities. I studied it a little bit during my master but mostly after.

[D2Dahaka]

youtube has been deactivated.
Do you accept the use of cookies to display and allow you to watch the video content?

[stllbreathnbdy]

Nice post En0-.

But it brings to my mind exactly what bothers me about fusions release. You compared its development strategy to minecraft and day z, etc. however, those games never hid the fact that they weren't complete, and anyone that purchased the game was getting early access to a work in progress. Trials fusion was never so humble. It was dished out as a finished game, rare and to go, but with more free stuff to come. We all saw where the game fell so short of evo on day 1.

Now, fusions whole idea sounds fine and dandy. Release more and more stuff as time goes on and hypothetically, it'll be grand when it's finished. But here's the thing, we all bought a game we were made to believe was finished, and now we must trust that you guys will make it worth our while with the free updates. I'd rather know exactly what I'm getting when I pay for it. I figured with fusion, surely it'd be on par, at least feature-wise, with evolution. After all, why steal away evolutions community for a new game that doesnt do what the old one did, even at its launch?

Which brings me to the other thing that drives me absolutely nuts about this development style. It must be understood, minecraft is a cultural phenomenon, and it's rampaging success is basically impossible to match for a long time. Fusion has already had a significant drop off in activity, and the game isn't even finished yet. People have seen what was on offer and they've had their fill and moved on. Evolution had still a very strong amount of activity for almost a year(yes, boosted by some dlcs, but even still, it had an unwavering crowd that never wanted to stop). So, by the time fusion is finally done, there isn't going to be the same flood of community as there was at launch. So in essence, we're left with a marvelous(hopefully) city, with only a few people living in it. What's ubisoft going to do to bring people back? Throw a grand reopening ceremony?

And lastly, what bothers me is the amount of "prime" time we get. Evolution was excellent at launch. The 48hr feed made it shine even more. We had almost 2 years of that game in its prime state. Now, with fusion, we must wait and wait several months for it to come together, after evolution has been starved to death, leaving only fusion as the place to congregate(yeah, we can play evo too, but while it totally rocks, without the spotlight, it feels like its been discarded). So, my fear is that we will get a fully finished game to enjoy, probably only 1 year before the next one comes out, and with only a fraction of the community left over.

Oh yeah, side note. These updates that fix lots of bugs do tend to alter the way existing works will behave, occasionally breaking them. This sort of thing is not very becoming of a "finished" game, as fusion was toted by advertising. With games such as minecraft and day z, since they never hid the fact that they weren't done, people really had no reason to be pi$sed that an update would ruin something, as it is all an evolving process. It's just an unsettling feeling knowing that an update can ruin something we worked hard to make, and had no say in the changes that alter our work. I will admit, even evolutions updates busted a couple of my projects a bit, and I never really saw how the updates helped me(even though I trust they were absolutely necessary).

Anyway, thats how i feel. Thank you for being thorough with us.I hope my points came accross. I, and I think lots of us LOVE transparency, even if we don't quite like what we hear. It sure beats the hell out of silence, and ubisoft propaganda.

[En0-]

Hi SBBY,

A few things to precise:
- I started my post with "we could do a better job at communicating our vision about the game and its lifecycle", so I agree with your statement of "we kind of discover it late". It has been communicated in Anba's interview, I believe, explaining there would be a heavily supported post launch, but it may have not been enough highlighted. We'll learn from that.
- Fusion was not in an "early access" state at launch (compared to the games I took as examples), the game was noted as 80% on metacritic where EVO was 90% (I don't like metacritic as an absolute indicator of quality but in this case, it's representative). Though reviewers didn't take into account the problems in Track Central (you need to be an advanced player to see the issue) but they also didn't take into account the improvements of the in-game editor.
- It's not because a feature is in a game that it should be in the sequel. It's not automatic We learn from what we do and sometimes we find out that the cost/value of something is not worth it anymore (or we prioritize other new features). Also, doing a new Trials made sense with the launch of new consoles. It runs smoothly (60fps) and looks great. I think lot of players enjoy the game on X1/PS4 and are really happy to have it.
- I repeat: Fusion is a great game (with some flaws agreed, as all games) and will be the best Trials ever. Lot of things to do in it, lot of improvements coming and soon the one with the best user generated tracks (if it's not already the case).

Then I think that it's also up to everyone to improve things. Yes, mostly to Ubisoft/Redlynx but it's a game heavily community based and the community is not without resources or power.
Several members already do great stuff (FatShady with University Of Trials, the thread about world records, the OTHG buddies, Morrillo with the videos, XRacer with the post about multiplayer (even if it's actually kind of hard to use as we didn't communicate the base of the concept, but still a good post), Terixeri bug reports, Morfyboy/Xracer video and a lot of other things). I have lot of ideas of other things that could be done outside of the game itself that would bring a lot of great fun for everyone. But I don't think the problem is to have ideas (everyone has), the problem is the attitude, the time, the skills to realize them. So it's more on an individual basis: What can I do to make bring something awesome to this community and have fun at the same time?

My own endeavor is to dedicate a good amount of my own personal time to answer on the forum and give insights. It may not be the usual way for developers to communicate with players but I believe it's important for a game like this one and it can make a difference.

Regards

[xzamplez]

I don't understand how you can claim that Fusion will be the best Trials so far (extremely subjective). Even with all the features and add-ons, its physics alone falls short to its console predecessors.