The post of Fipsie made me think about strat future.
Also, what's with everyone saying that strat is getting wiped anytime soon? Because of what harald posted some time ago? Lol, yeah right. He just simply stated that strat will be wiped again at some point. That could be tomorrow or in one year.
I share Fips' sentimets. Obviously it is up to devs, and we all know that - in all their wisdom - they are capable of doing most fucked up turns and corners. But let's think about this in reasonable manner and try to forsee the future.
I asked myself what I would do being a developer, with new project under costruction, with community that will (and is needed to) support this new project, with strat and crpg in full run. This is what I think:
- I (the theoretical developer) need the community to stay interested in strat/crpg cause this is my basic playerbase of the new game. A lot of guys showed their interest in project by
donating investing in it, so the only thing I need to do is to keep this interest up. Hence the dev blogs. But it also means that all forum - game - drama is more than welcome! It keeps community alive... - At the same time I (the theoretical developer) do not want this game to conclude too quickly. My new project is still under construction, so I do want all these guys play the game, but do it slowly, untill I am ready to release the new game. Hence I would keep the 1/3 rule as long as possible and focus on most important bugs. I dont want to lose players cause they got bored, or wiped, or discouraged from playing in any other way...
- Just before the relase of the new game things will need to speed up a bit, just to draw even more guys into game - old players who lost their interest and the new ones who will got involved in new project soon after. So I (the theoretical developer) will change major things shortly before the release of new game. (I dont even mention more direct ways of gaining people's interest mentioned in NDA'd sections)
For that reasons I would not expect anything major, inlcuding wipe, until the new project gets to the final stage. Unless devs will need to test some features to find out how the
lab rats beta testers react and behave - then the wipe and the new strat will happen earlier; in such case we will see some mechanics to be used in the new project in the new strat. But I seriously doubt it. This things already happened. This strat tests some good shit and let devs learn a lot. The rest will need to be balanced out in live environment of new game's beta.
Considering the level of development of the new, fantastic, most brilliant melee game of all times, I think that we will play this Strat round for some time. We will see the 1/3 rule gone, maybe increased xp, or other things like that changed when the new project is close to release. This will cause a lot of battles, lots of fun... and the mod will be dead soon after that...
What do you think???