UnHomeWorld Remaster

Homeworld Remastered Collection Remastered Discussion
#21

I see what your saying, but it seems a little absolute rather than realistic. why not say…a qualified success ? as we all can see their are issues still to deal with. Perhaps instead a scaled answer would be better ?

From my view point, I feel we are currently running at about 78% for HW1R, a score biased undoubtedly from a tendency I have to place more weight on the way a game plays rather than the way it looks or sounds. But I do expect the fixes to come will drive that score up somewhat. only time will tell by how much though.

I’m happy that Gearbox brought this game back to the masses, but I’m going to save my gratitude for things that are given freely rather than things I’ve paid for, as I feel this is an important distinction.
At the end of the day we most likely would be having a similar conversation on a some other developers forum if that auction for Relics old assets had gone another way. So I’ve no problem holding Gearbox to account with polite and persistent consumer pressure to get the best possible out come that I can.

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#22

Sales aren’t that good. They aren’t terrible, but HW remastered and done right should sell over a million in the first few weeks. Or at least 500k to be super conservative.
How is modding support good? It’s very very limited and if you try to join a match with a map or mod you don’t have, it doesn’t make it easy at all to get it yourself and join the match with it.

I think most of the good reviews are just “omergerd homeworld again!” because it’s such an iconic game. I read a number of reviews, and it’s clear they didn’t really play it like most game reviews these days. Most people don’t go by reviews now days, anyway. If they did, since it has such a high rating, it wouldn’t have only sold <200k copies.

If you just wanted HW2 with better graphics and a few new bugs, you’ll be happy with it. If you’re expecting more, well…

It could still be the best Homeworld game with enough attention to it quickly. Homeworld 2 wasn’t even very good and sets a low benchmark. But right now, though, it’s not.

I was expecting HW1RM to be better, and I was expecting HWRM MP to be HW2.5 and not HW1.99

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#23

What numbers or metrics are you basing your target sales figures off of?

#24

There was only about 2.5k peak players a week after release.

And 100k preorders were announced.

It was never top #1 on steam sales for more than a few hours, and then dropped to being below #15 which tends to representing a few thousand copies/day.

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#25

No I meant what do you base your number for considering a ‘done right’ HW to sell over a million copies? I’m assuming you don’t just pull it out of thin air?

#26

Ah! Gotcha Because word of mouth sells extremely well. Look at City Skylines, that sold 1-2 minute copies from preorders and within a few days after release. It hasn’t had much of an ad campaign.

Now days what sells games is mostly friends talking about it, streamers, and youtube personalities. (Or tons of money, like CoD and Battlefield) Not reviews.

#27

So type of game has nothing to do with it?

#28

I suppose it depends if your measuring success by how well it was liked by the people who bought it, or by the total number of units sold. For us it would most likely be the former and for Gearbox the later of those two propositions.

#29

IT certainly does. Lots of things have to do with it. But don’t you think if HW were done right it’d get a million sales?

HW1 sold 500k copies I believe (sold out and they didn’t stamp more, if I’m not mistaken).
In 1999, that was INSANE.

Now days, PC gaming is even larger, and small indie games like DustForce and GunPoint sell 300k-700k copies in a year or so. So I’d expect such a game as Homeworld to sell over a million now days. It’s not just a MP game either. HW1 had a fantastic single player story for an RTS that a lot of players would want to play if the game was just good enough to be talked about more and generate more hype.
It’s not like everyone who would want to play HW has bought it. HW1 only sold 500k copies, since it went out of print and wasn’t offered digitally.

I could be wrong. It’s actually fairly pointless to talk about such speculation, so we’ll just have agree to disagree if you think a well done re-release of the Homeworld series shouldn’t have been on track to sell a million in its first year.
But the objective fact is that it hasn’t sold very well, while you said it had. <200k copies the first two weeks including preorders is not good.

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#30

HW1 old timer.
For me, the remaster of Homeworld is a major disappointment. This may sound overly dramatic, but I genuinely found playing HW1:RM heartbreaking, which likely stems from the fact that I found HM1 an emotional experience. HW1 is still the favourite experience I have had gaming (and I cut my teeth on a VIC 20).

Obviously, I realise that not everyone has that level of attachment to the game, but I did expect the mechanics to be retained.

And I do get annoyed when forum users simply dismiss (and in some cases, belittle) the concerns many of us have. Concerns that I feel are valid.

For me, it’s not a remaster. It’s a reboot that suffers by comparison.

4 Likes
#31

I’ve heard something from a number of first timers that never played HW1, and bought HWRM: They started on HW1RM, then were told how the classic was better, and even having never played HW1 before were disappointed to see how much worse HW1RM played in compared to the 16 year old HW1C when they switched to it.

Though, to be fair, at least GBX had the foresight to include the originals running on modern hardware and OS’. It would have been far far worse if they hadn’t done that.
They could have not included it, and left most people without something to compare HW1RM to. They wouldn’t have been able to see it for themselves

#32

What you are doing is insinuating that HW:R was not well done. By putting forth the straw man argument that because HW had not sold over a million copies, it is not a well made game, disregarding any and all other factors. That’s stooping a bit low don’t you think.

And yes, that is what it is. All the online you tube game play videos were all extremely positive, even the ones that called it great but flawed. The market for a game like this is small, plain and simple. Going by what games get backed on kickstarter and how well other RTS ‘remakes’ do I’d say the market has probably shrunk as players are drawn to Mobas and MMOs. I have a large group of friends that like games like crusader kings, Universalis Europa, total war, etc. Quite complex, niche RTS games and for the most of them the whole 3D thing and the fact that it’s a remake (remakes having a bad rep lately) were the primary put offs for this game, not because it’s ‘not well made’. Get a bit of class and don’t rely on straw man arguments to make bad points.

#33

Almost the originals. Brought over to modern systems… minus multiplayer.

#34

Well, the HW1 source has been out there for 3 years. Someone else could have made a new MP service for it if they had the time and devotion to it.

#35

Please, talk about games here. Not other forum users.

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#36

Don’t make the mistake of establishing a false dichotomy where the game has to be perfect or perfectly awful, because it is provably neither of the above. In order to be successful, a game has to be released with all of its features working. Success is the achievement of stated design goals, not simply turning a profit on development (there have been many wonderful games that didn’t sell well, and I’d never call them unsuccessful). Right now, as it stands, the stated design goals have not yet been achieved. Therefore, the game is not successful. Yet. But it has the potential to be, and is therefore not a failure.

Formations don’t work, tactics are incomplete, there are game-breaking bugs that occur in several missions with some regularity (and some, like the suicidal strike craft in Mission 6, with 100% repeatability), and balance is all over the map with some ships trashing everything in their path and others unable to do anything but efficiently turn themselves into fireballs. Whatever your preference for HW2 vs Classic gameplay might be, the fact is that this game is objectively incomplete. It needs work. Lots of work.

So far Remastered is doing reasonably well for what it is, and it appears to be heading in the right direction, but we’re still playing a beta here (the MP component is even helpfully labeled as such). Right now, Remastered is only “successful” by virtue of having given the Homeworld series a new lease on life, a claim which it shares with Shipbreakers. By that measure, it is quite successful… but as a game it is still feature-incomplete and seriously buggy. The present state of Remastered does not represent the best that this developer is capable of delivering, and no one is doing anyone any favors by denouncing every criticism as ingratitude. Not only is this game not perfect, it can be and ought to be a great deal more than it presently is- and the only way to get there is to be vocal about what needs to change for the game to realize its fullest potential.

I honestly believe Gearbox is working diligently towards realizing that potential, and for that I am grateful. Grateful enough to spend my money on the game, just like everyone else did- because even if in the end it doesn’t live up to my expectations of what Homeworld should be, it’s worth the effort for someone to try and bring it back again. Even if I don’t like every single thing about the finished game, when we finally get to play it, if it is feature complete and stable then it will be a successful game… because it has a good foundation, and if the issues that currently plague it are resolved, then it will be fully fit to stand up with its predecessors.

I will happily recommend it to all of my friends. Hell, I’ll do that anyway- just to get more people interested in my all-time favorite strategy series, which is rather miraculously back from the grave after well over a decade. The work that Gearbox has put into this title is evident, and it is appreciated. I love almost all of their other work all the way back to the Half-Life expansions. I look forward to seeing what they’ve got cookin’.

But I’m still going to call as much attention as I can to rough edges and missing pieces that need to be addressed. When all of the advertised features are working, and half of the ships in the game are no longer nearly useless, then it will be possible to determine whether the project has been successful. Any final judgment rendered before that time is premature no matter who it comes from.

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#37

I was able to complete both HW1 and HW2 campaigns without a single crash or game stopping bug. The game shipped with the promised features intact, HW1 and 2 classic, HW1 and 2 Remastered (complete), MP Beta and improved mod support. Most importantly, their promise of supporting the game so far have also been met with the first patch and continuing support with finalizing the 2nd patch. A quick calculation and some guesstimating on copies sold show that they covered IP cost at least and according to dev cost research may be close to or past breaking even fiscally (depending on their specific dev costs of course).

Objectively the game is a success. Subjectively there are some(not all, not I, I have the original box sets to prove it) HW1 players that feel otherwise and that is their right. Let’s just not get those two mixed up. I am happy the devs are keen to look at improving formations and strike craft AI amongst other things, this is most definitely a good thing and I very much look forward to it.

#38

YES word for word. I enjoyed playing the game again.
And the some minor things I like less are being already being modded (before the devs are ready to help us - which they are enthusiastic about)
Some other “old” timers are just too oldfogy (yes coming from a mid 40s dev and gamer) and seeming determined to hate anything not 100% the same as HW1 (which going back to is not as great as I remembered at all - lots of real problems with it)
I am most interested in modding this to something other and this is a great platform for that.

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#39

Get this idioitic idea out of your head. We were told and expected to receive HW1 that played the same with a modern graphical finish, not a broken HW2 mod with HW1 models and assets

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#40

No kerfuffles. Keep things cool, please.

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