# SCL: Stumbled coming out of the gate or simply fallen on it's face?



## Corpsetaker (Oct 22, 2015)

Well the game is finally here but I'm afraid it appears to have not gotten a warm welcome. 

So far we have a rather painful review of the game here. Link

We have reviews over on Steam that have the positives at 57% and dropping. Link

Here is another review from Game Watcher who gave it a poor rating. Link

Here is a review from PC Gamer who gave it a 55. Link

We have loads of people that are seeking refunds at the moment at an alarming rate. 

In my personal opinion, it looks like the game has fallen flat on it's face and it really saddens me because I really wanted this game to be great. Fortunately I did receive my money back so I want to thank them for that, but unfortunately a friend of mine, who didn't listen to me, did not and now has the game. 

Well my friend invited me over and since he had the game we figured we would sit down and play the hell out of it to see if there is any kind of dignity we could salvage from the game. Well the full game isn't far off from the head start to be honest. 

Here are a few things we noticed:

1: The loading times are awful. You can sometimes sit there for 5 minutes waiting on the game to load.

2: The graphics are abysmal. They look like something from an early 2000's game. There is no excuse for that in this day and age.

3: The interface is very dated as well. It's very reminiscent of early games as well.

4: Manual camera movement is just plain clunky and a pain. The camera should follow your part as you move. 

5: Character creation is extremely limited and the portraits are just plain ugly. The weapons all look like they are made from plastic.

6: Every time you click you on something your PC says something which gets really annoying. The only way to stop that is mute everyone. 

7: The "fade to black" thing is a nitpick but still a pain.

8: The "Burning Dawn" gear you get is not that great and if you choose the fighter it only comes with a greatsword. I made a two weapon fighter so I couldn't use the greatsword. 

9: The landscape is very ugly and bland.

10: The way you get loot is awful. I killed some spiders on the beginning and ended up getting gold and magic items from their bodies. 

11: I don't like the skill trees so this is a major turn off for me. 

12: Still contains a lot of bugs. I was having the NPC's disappear on me and their voices weren't matching up with the scenes. 

13: The DM tools are very limited and to be honest are a joke. You get to change around some pre-generated areas. 

14: No orcs, dragons, giants, warlocks, druids, bards, or barbarians in sight.

15: Branded as using 5th edition rules but they are no where in sight. 

This whole thing kind of reminds me of the whole Aliens: Colonial Marines and Duke Nuk'em Forever fiasco where we saw one thing leading up to the launch and got something else totally different in the end. 

Their cross-multimedia platform isn't starting out on a good foot. It's a shame this is the kind of game we are left with after turning their attention away from the TTRPG. I expected a AAA game, not this mockery. 

I'm not sure if SCL will ever get out of this hole because first impressions are always important.


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## pukunui (Oct 22, 2015)

How did you get your money back, out of curiosity?


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## Corpsetaker (Oct 22, 2015)

pukunui said:


> How did you get your money back, out of curiosity?




I did a dispute through Paypal. I felt the what I got wasn't what was advertised.


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## pukunui (Oct 22, 2015)

Ah. I was foolish and paid by debit card. I guess I'm outta luck.


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## Sacrosanct (Oct 22, 2015)

I am really disappointed.  I'm having flashbacks to when Daggerfall was released.  I don't mind the interface all that much, but the game keeps crashing.  I can't get past the first quest in story mode. It always crashes at the "loading" screen for the High Road.  and since you can't save your progress up to that point yet, it's doubly frustrating.  The graphics also befuddle me.  I can play Neverwinter NIghts II on max resolution no probs.  These graphics look worse than NWN, but I have to go low res just to play it.  Doesn't make a whole lot of sense.


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## CaptainGemini (Oct 22, 2015)

This game and Shadowrun Online both were my big disappointments of recent video game development. Both had so much promise. Both did very little with it.


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## Corpsetaker (Oct 23, 2015)

At the moment SCL is being destroyed on Angryjoe.


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## Corpsetaker (Oct 23, 2015)

Just updated my OP. Added another link to another review.


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## Jester David (Oct 24, 2015)

I want to give it a few more hours but then I plan on destroying it in my review as well.


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## darjr (Oct 24, 2015)

I was so tempted to preorder. As more and more reviews come in I am so very glad I did not. For those of you who took the hit and reviewed it, good and bad reviews, I thank you. Even the good reviews, for me, show that the game is not something I want.


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## Jester David (Oct 24, 2015)

I like to divide my reviews into the Good, the Bad, the Ugly, and the Awesome. So I can always look for the positive and be fair. 
But, man am I having a hard time finding "the awesome" in this game...


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## Sacrosanct (Oct 25, 2015)

The awesome is that STEAM refunded me my money today


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## Zalbar The Mad (Oct 25, 2015)

question: Now for someone who plays D&D, this is such an in deep tool set. Explain how they can literally take their campaign from a tabletop pen and paper into this digitally digital game?

"One of the things I put to the designers when we framed this all up for them was, I want you to take this campaign, and I actually gave them the 5th edition starter set and I said I want you to take this campaign and I want you to reproduce it, I want you to reproduce it, and I want anybody to be able to reproduce it. And if they can't, the tools aren't done. And so uh, I think we got to a place where you can create that content real quickly and real easy and uh and just recreate your favorite homebrew or your favorite module or whatever your heart desires."

-Dan Tudge

 https://youtu.be/pdUxKRlKTDU?t=3m29s <-- last quote

Yeah, I feel cheated. They really screwed the pooch on this one.


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## Dargrimm (Oct 25, 2015)

Zalbar The Mad said:


> Yeah, I feel cheated. They really screwed the pooch on this one.




Cheated and lied to. They lied to us, as plain and simple as that. The game itself is bad (*very bad*) but the way they lied to us all is what's really driving me mad about all this fiasco of a game.

The reviews are destroying the game but they're still way too kind.


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## Sacrosanct (Oct 25, 2015)

I feel like we're repeating history when the first D&D movie came out.  You get all excited, then when it finally arrives, you realize just how much of a piece of garbage it is.  You know, actually I wouldn't think it would be all that bad if it were even remotely stable and playable, and had the basic content from the PHB in it as options.  I could probably still manage to enjoy that.  But the constant crashing, lagging, choppiness, horrible interface, and lack of content dooms this game.


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## darjr (Oct 25, 2015)

Normally I would not go so far as to call a developer a lier. And technically in the quote above he did not. But it's worded in such a way that it sounds like he says the released game has these features, and it clearly does not, at least from the many reviews so far. Even the good reviews.


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## Mirtek (Oct 25, 2015)

Really wanted to like the game, but I too did just request the refund from steam


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## Cody C. Lewis (Oct 27, 2015)

Steam refund requested.

If I made a bad purchase, and didn't really have fun with a game, shame on me. 

However, I'm really trying not to  curse here, if a S.O.B. game developer releases a game that can ************************* one or both of my $500 GPUs... let's just say I'm getting a refund. Oh yeah, I'm getting a refund.


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## Jester David (Oct 27, 2015)

Metacritic gave it a 63 while users gave it a 5.4:
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/sword-coast-legends

However there's a curious number of really high reviews on the game. That always seem to match the negative reviews in number. And all posted by people whose only review & rating is Sword Coast Legends. Which is curious to say the least.


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## Sacrosanct (Oct 27, 2015)

Jester Canuck said:


> Metacritic gave it a 63 while users gave it a 5.4:
> http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/sword-coast-legends
> 
> However there's a curious number of really high reviews on the game. That always seem to match the negative reviews in number. And all posted by people whose only review & rating is Sword Coast Legends. Which is curious to say the least.




Extra curious when many of those high reviews all say the same thing:  "The voice acting is great!"  Odd thing to measure a game by, to say the least.


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## Jester David (Oct 28, 2015)

Finally decided I should go live with my review:
http://www.5mwd.com/archives/3120



Sacrosanct said:


> Extra curious when many of those high reviews all say the same thing:  "The voice acting is great!"  Odd thing to measure a game by, to say the least.



Which is weird, because it was amateur hour at the voice actor factory. There's not even an IMDb page. 
Which is ironic given: https://twitter.com/matthewmercer/status/565976368198873088


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## Warmaster Horus (Oct 28, 2015)

I preordered and will keep it since it can be a little bit of a time waster.  If run the 'right' way, with a crew of people who have hours to play together, complete with DM to keep the story rolling, it can be okay.  I'm also waiting to see what happens with any updates or modding.  But yeah, all said and done it spent its' wad on fighting and put nearly nothing into creating interesting story frameworks.  The fact that it's sold as 5e when it really has very little to do with 5e is a farce.  Probably my biggest gripe is the 'level-less' monster system.  Beating beholders at 1st level and being beaten by a handful of goblins at 10th just feels wrong to me.


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## Jester David (Oct 30, 2015)

State of the Game post is out:
https://swordcoast.com/content/sword-coast-legends-state-game

Summary "wait, we have fixes coming. By December the game should be how it should have worked at launch!!"
And they have the Rage of Demons module coming out at some point, which means it might be released closer to the next storyline. 
It might get better, but the game is unlikely to catch the public eye again, nor warrant a second round of reviews.



Jester Canuck said:


> Metacritic gave it a 63 while users gave it a 5.4:
> http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/sword-coast-legends
> 
> However there's a curious number of really high reviews on the game. That always seem to match the negative reviews in number. And all posted by people whose only review & rating is Sword Coast Legends. Which is curious to say the least.




Since I wrote this there have been 3 or 4 more negative reviews posted. Each time, within a few hours, there's another positive review countering the negative.
It really feels like something hinky is going on there.


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## darjr (Oct 30, 2015)

Yea, it does seem weird. Like they are trying to keep it at just above a 50% rating. What happens on Steam if it drops below that 50%?


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## Dire Bare (Oct 31, 2015)

Jester Canuck said:


> Finally decided I should go live with my review:
> http://www.5mwd.com/archives/3120
> 
> 
> ...




I enjoyed the voice acting! Or, at least, the voice acting I've heard so far, I'm not nearly as far into the game as you are. While I'm not as disappointed as you are with the game, I like your review, it's very thorough and fair!


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## Uder (Oct 31, 2015)

darjr said:


> Yea, it does seem weird. Like they are trying to keep it at just above a 50% rating. What happens on Steam if it drops below that 50%?




I don't think anything happens on Steam. Steam will only take down games if they are active scams for the most part. They'll still take their 30% of revenue (BTW, if that number bothers you, Humble Store only takes a 5% cut and you still get Steam keys).

The problem is with publishing. Some contracts may have a bonus contingent on a certain Metascore. Publishers may not want to touch your next product if you have a long string of low scores, or even one particular stinker. NSpace churns out licensed products and sequels, so maybe Metascore ratings don't matter so much in that particular sausage factory.


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## Jester David (Nov 2, 2015)

The main isometric competitor for SCL right now is the Enhanced Edition of Divinity: Original Sin. How's that doing in comparison. Well metacritic has it as an 89 & 8.3:
http://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-4/divinity-original-sin-enhanced-edition

And even with the weekend play boost Sword Coast Legends hasn't managed to recapture it's initial release play numbers: 
http://steamcharts.com/app/325600#1m

Meanwhile, Divinity is sneaking up in numbers: 
http://steamcharts.com/app/373420#48h
Despite 20k people already having played the game:
http://steamcharts.com/app/230230

It really doesn't look good for the game unless they have a tonne of improvements fast, great word of mouth, and a Steam sale that captures attention.


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## Dire Bare (Nov 2, 2015)

Jester Canuck said:


> The main isometric competitor for SCL right now is the Enhanced Edition of Divinity: Original Sin. How's that doing in comparison. Well metacritic has it as an 89 & 8.3:
> http://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-4/divinity-original-sin-enhanced-edition
> 
> And even with the weekend play boost Sword Coast Legends hasn't managed to recapture it's initial release play numbers:
> ...




I'm not worried. Divinity by all means is an awesome game (don't have it yet, but its on my wishlist). But I could care less how games rank against each other. The low reviews and play numbers for SCL is a bummer all by itself, regardless of how well other similar games are doing. And like other have said, classic D&D titles like Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights had rough launches and are only remembered as classics over time (and many patches, updates, and expansions).

If N-Space just crosses their fingers and hope for the best, yeah, SCL won't stick around long. But they are already responding to gamer criticism and will be actively supporting the game through the end of the year at least, and probably easily well into 2016. We'll see how it goes!

It would have been cool if N-Space could have delivered a game right out of the gate that knocked everybody's socks off, with glowing comparisons to classics like Baldur's Gate and modern games like Divinity. But the doom-and-gloom talk is premature. And, ultimately, if SCL slides into obscurity without finding a lasting audience, it won't be a tragedy, just a missed opportunity and a bit of a longer wait until somebody does finally knock a D&D title out of the park!

In the meantime, I'm having fun with the game!


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## Noctem (Nov 2, 2015)

I've played SCL.  It is an "ok" game.  Voice acting isn't great, bugs everywhere, we were promised 5e ruleset which was not delivered AT ALL, DM tools are a joke, etc..  I would give the game 3/10.  I requested a refund as well but because I spent 4 hours trying to make the game work (crashes) and trying out the DM tools / online only to realize how bad the game is and how much it's not what was promised I was refused by STEAM.  I'll be trying again over the phone and any other means possible and if those don't work I'll be going through my bank ASAP.  I bought the deluxe edition of this game.  Total regret.


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## Dire Bare (Nov 2, 2015)

Noctem said:


> I've played SCL.  It is an "ok" game.  Voice acting isn't great, bugs everywhere, we were promised 5e ruleset which was not delivered AT ALL, DM tools are a joke, etc..  I would give the game 3/10.  I requested a refund as well but because I spent 4 hours trying to make the game work (crashes) and trying out the DM tools / online only to realize how bad the game is and how much it's not what was promised I was refused by STEAM.  I'll be trying again over the phone and any other means possible and if those don't work I'll be going through my bank ASAP.  I bought the deluxe edition of this game.  Total regret.




When you purchase a game, or other piece of art, and find yourself disappointed in the quality, you do not deserve a refund. That is part of the risk of purchase, and to badger a company for a refund is poor form (customer service people hate you).

If you purchase a movie (DVD, Blu-Ray, streaming, or at the theater) and decide it was a crappy movie, is the retailer going to give you a refund? No. Nor should they.

If you purchase a novel, read it part way, and decide it's terrible, will the bookstore give you a refund? Nope.

Likewise when you purchase a computer game, and decide it's lousy, do you deserve a refund? No.

Now if the game claims it works on your device, but it doesn't, that's refund-worthy. Or if they game truly is broken, incomplete, or not-as-advertised, those are refund worthy situations. But SCL is not broken, incomplete, or not-as-advertised. A bunch of folks are unhappy with the quality of the game and it's adventure creation tools, but that's not the same thing.

It sucks to drop $40-60 on a new game only to find it's crap-ware. But such is life. This probably wasn't the first disappointing game you've purchased, and it certainly won't be the last.


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## Noctem (Nov 2, 2015)

Dire Bare said:


> When you purchase a game, or other piece of art, and find yourself disappointed in the quality, you do not deserve a refund. That is part of the risk of purchase, and to badger a company for a refund is poor form (customer service people hate you).
> 
> 
> If you purchase a movie (DVD, Blu-Ray, streaming, or at the theater) and decide it was a crappy movie, is the retailer going to give you a refund? No. Nor should they.
> ...





I'm sorry but you're incorrect on a number of points in the post above.  However, I'm not interested in having a debate over it since what you believe is basically irrelevant to my situation.  I'll be getting a refund and will move on   I suggest you do the same.

And btw colonial marines, arkham knight, sim city, etc..  all say hello.

EDIT:  After reading my response I realized that it was curt.  But here's the rub, you decided to quote me and basically tell me that I wasn't entitled to a refund because reasons and that it was "poor form" to ask for one even though hundreds if not thousands of others are doing so.  You also stated that I intended to badger a company and that customer service people hated me.  Basically, you turned the discussion into a personal one by making ad hominem statements about someone you have never met in your life and know basically nothing about.  And all of this of course after ignoring the OP, the mass reviews everywhere, etc..  that point out the same things.  I think what I meant to say with my first reply was much more simple:  Go  yourself.


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## Uder (Nov 2, 2015)

Meh, customer service people hate everyone anyway.

Edit: Noctem, don't feed the bares.


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## Morrus (Nov 2, 2015)

Noctem said:


> Go  yourself.




Utterly unacceptable. Please do not post again in this thread.


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## Noctem (Nov 2, 2015)

I'm sorry but I felt it needed to be said.  I won't use profanity again though since it's taboo on this forum.  Thank you for the warning.


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## Dire Bare (Nov 2, 2015)

Noctem said:


> Go  yourself.




Obviously, we disagree.

_EDIT: Nevermind, my response probably wasn't helpful._


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## Dargrimm (Nov 3, 2015)

Dire Bare said:


> When you purchase a game, or other piece of art, and find yourself disappointed in the quality, you do not deserve a refund. That is part of the risk of purchase, and to badger a company for a refund is poor form (customer service people hate you).
> 
> If you purchase a movie (DVD, Blu-Ray, streaming, or at the theater) and decide it was a crappy movie, is the retailer going to give you a refund? No. Nor should they.
> 
> ...




If you buy a game and find it is not of your liking, a refund shouldn't be requested, so I agree with you in many points there, but I disagree with others. Specially considering that the game it is *NOT* as advertised. That alone deserves a refund for misleading marketing.

Which exactly what made me request a refund (which was granted).


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## Sacrosanct (Nov 3, 2015)

Dargrimm said:


> If you buy a game and find it is not of your liking, a refund shouldn't be requested, so I agree with you in many points there, but I disagree with others. Specially considering that the game it is *NOT* as advertised. That alone deserves a refund for misleading marketing.
> 
> Which exactly what made me request a refund (which was granted).




Same here.  Actually, the biggest reason I wanted (and got) a refund was because the game  was unplayable.  It kept crashing, and I couldn't progress past the first introductory quest in the single player mode.  The fact that the game was a lot more limited and I expected, and the other issues I mentioned earlier, just reinforced my request for a refund.

And FWIW, this is the first game I've ever requested a refund on.  It simply was not the game they sold it as.


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## Jester David (Nov 6, 2015)

Dire Bare said:


> When you purchase a game, or other piece of art, and find yourself disappointed in the quality, you do not deserve a refund. That is part of the risk of purchase, and to badger a company for a refund is poor form (customer service people hate you).
> 
> If you purchase a movie (DVD, Blu-Ray, streaming, or at the theater) and decide it was a crappy movie, is the retailer going to give you a refund? No. Nor should they.
> 
> ...



Okay, I know you bowed out, but just a quick clarification: most movie theaters _do_ have a refund window. If you leave within a certain window they will refund you. Usually 10-20 minutes. That's just policy. But if you get the managers involved and make a fuss, they might extend that or give you a comped movie admission (which, really, costs them nothing and just gets you to buy more popcorn).

Similarly, Steam has a set refund policy based on time played. But you can appeal. Because they can track that. 

Never tried it with my cable company, but they could probably track if I finished a rental or not. If you're willing to wait on hold and argue enough, you could probably get an account credit, even if just a partial credit. 

Because unlike other media like a book or a DVD, you can track if you actually played the content or just said finished things and said you didn't like it. If you stopped partway it can be confirmed. Customer service people hate it, but they're often allowed to make compromises to shut you up while also keeping you as a customer. 



Dire Bare said:


> *Now if the game claims it works on your device, but it doesn't, that's refund-worthy*. Or if they game truly is broken, incomplete, or not-as-advertised, those are refund worthy situations. But SCL is not broken, incomplete, or not-as-advertised. A bunch of folks are unhappy with the quality of the game and it's adventure creation tools, but that's not the same thing.



Emphasis added. 
If you read his post he actually says some of the time was spent trying to get the game to run despite bugs and crashes. Which is an issue. I suffered a lot of crashes and hard locks from the game myself, and it did weird things with my mouse 2-3 times that pretty much left me unable to interact with menues and trapped in the middle character creation. 

And how you define "broken" in terms of video games might very well apply, in that the game is not well optimized and can run very, very poorly on otherwise good systems. Based on how my system was burning through resources, you'd think I was running a AAA shooter game (or Arkham Knight). It could do horrible things to the lifespan of your video card.


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## Noctem (Nov 6, 2015)

good post [MENTION=37579]Jester Canuck[/MENTION]


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## Dire Bare (Nov 6, 2015)

Jester Canuck said:


> Okay, I know you bowed out, but just a quick clarification: most movie theaters _do_ have a refund window. If you leave within a certain window they will refund you. Usually 10-20 minutes. That's just policy. But if you get the managers involved and make a fuss, they might extend that or give you a comped movie admission (which, really, costs them nothing and just gets you to buy more popcorn).
> 
> Similarly, Steam has a set refund policy based on time played. But you can appeal. Because they can track that.
> 
> ...




Yes, I am done with this conversation.

Soooo . . . .

Without taking the time to go back and look at my own comment (sooo lazy), of course a company can decide to offer refunds if you have consumed a piece of art and decided, "You know what? I really didn't like that."

But should they do so? IMO, no they shouldn't. You (the colloquial "you") don't deserve one. Art is subjective, and just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's broke.

But many companies will offer you a refund anyway if you complain, because 1) they don't agree with my opinion, 2) they want you to go away and stop making loud noises, and/or 3) they want to retain your business and continue getting your money, even if they have to take an unfair hit to do so.

Ages ago, I used to work for DirecTV. And people would call in all the time screaming for refunds on Pay-Per-View movies for all sorts of reasons, including, "That movie sucked!". Policy was to say, "No." If you put the customer on hold and asked a supervisor, they would remind you of the policy. And then if you transferred the angry, screaming customer to your supervisor, they would of course grant the refund. Perhaps it is these traumatic memories to have such a strong opinion on whether "you" deserve a refund for not liking a piece of artwork.



> If you read his post he actually says some of the time was spent trying to get the game to run despite bugs and crashes. Which is an issue. I suffered a lot of crashes and hard locks from the game myself, and it did weird things with my mouse 2-3 times that pretty much left me unable to interact with menues and trapped in the middle character creation.
> 
> And how you define "broken" in terms of video games might very well apply, in that the game is not well optimized and can run very, very poorly on otherwise good systems. Based on how my system was burning through resources, you'd think I was running a AAA shooter game (or Arkham Knight). It could do horrible things to the lifespan of your video card.




Again, with being too lazy to go back and read my own comment or the one I was responding to . . . certainly, if you purchase a video game and it starts doing strange and unnerving things to your computer systems, possibly involving strange whirring noises, intense heat, smoke and/or steam, and maybe some strange burnt chemical smells . . . you should uninstall that bad boy and ask for a refund.

Or, use the excuse to go buy a new maxed out rig.


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## BoldItalic (Nov 7, 2015)

SCL hasn't disappointed me, nor do I feel that the pre-release publicity misled me. Indeed, it's because of that publicity that I haven't bought it and don't expect to. Feel free to stop reading at this point.

It was obvious early on, when it was first announced, that the developers of SCL believed that "D&D is a game where the DM gets his kicks by killing the PCs." Once you realise that, a lot of the design decisions make sense.

Now, I don't play D&D that way. For me, D&D is about collaborative story-telling and SCL isn't designed for doing that, so it's not very useful to me. That's not to say that it isn't useful and fun for other people, just not for me. I'm getting the impression that there are people who only realised too late, after they ordered it, that it was also the wrong product for them too. It would have been better if the SCL publicists had made it clearer early on, what the underlying assumption was; but to be charitable, it probably didn't occur to them that not everyone who plays D&D plays it the way they do, so it didn't occur to them to spell it out.

SCL was promoted as a successor to games like BG and NWN, but it isn't and that in itself has disappointed some people. BG was all about the story. NWN was about making up your own stories (people forget that originally NWN was conceived as a toolset, and the single-player campaign was written as an illustration of what you could do with it). One of the strengths of NWN was its open-ness; Bioware not only allowed people to publish custom content (new monsters, new tilesets, new races and classes, and so on) but actively encouraged it. SCL isn't that. Story-telling is not what it is designed for and custom content is expressly forbidden. So not only is it not what I want, but it can't be made into something I want.

I've saved my money and I'm content.


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## Corpsetaker (Nov 7, 2015)

BoldItalic said:


> SCL hasn't disappointed me, nor do I feel that the pre-release publicity misled me. Indeed, it's because of that publicity that I haven't bought it and don't expect to. Feel free to stop reading at this point.
> 
> It was obvious early on, when it was first announced, that the developers of SCL believed that "D&D is a game where the DM gets his kicks by killing the PCs." Once you realise that, a lot of the design decisions make sense.
> 
> ...




They knew "exactly" what they were doing. Coming out with a demo and then letting people pre-order after that would have been the smart move because it would have allowed people to make up their minds instead of locking them in to a game they may not like. They essentially made it where in order to play the demo, head start, we needed to pre-order the game first so if you didn't like it then you were stuck. They didn't make their non-refundable policy clear at all because they had it mixed in with all the other stuff in their disclaimer. What happened was it all blew up in their faces and were left with no choice but to refund people. Luckily for some Steam has it's refund policy, but for people like me, I bought directly from the website so I had to fight for my refund. Lucky enough I paid with Paypal and opened up a dispute with them.

This is one of those CEO situations where he claims he didn't know what was going on so we have to look at two things, neither which are good. 

1: You are either so unobservant that you have failed in your role and therefore should be let go.

2: You are lying. 

I'm sure N-space did their research and knew that people wanted a game that was as close to the rules as possible. I think what we have here is another example of trying to push something else across the table despite telling them it isn't what we want.


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## Jester David (Nov 7, 2015)

Corpsetaker said:


> This is one of those CEO situations where he claims he didn't know what was going on so we have to look at two things, neither which are good.
> 1: You are either so unobservant that you have failed in your role and therefore should be let go.
> 2: You are lying.
> I'm sure N-space did their research and knew that people wanted a game that was as close to the rules as possible. I think what we have here is another example of trying to push something else across the table despite telling them it isn't what we want.



How would they have done this theoretical research? Do you remember seeing a survey up? Did you ever answer a survey on what type of D&D you game you wanted? Did N-space have a booth at GenCon polling gamers?

You see deliberate maliciousness, I just see general ineptitude. They made the game they wanted without seeing if it was what everyone else wanted, if it was what their primary audience wanted. 
I didn't see a lot of community management either. Which, now, strikes me as being really out of touch. They didn't even reach out to ENWorld or Morrus and focused on video game sites. They did nothing to manage the false expectations for the game and sell what it actually was. They likely had no community or social media staff, or had the marketing people doing that but no idea what they were doing. 

People don't set out to make a bad game. And this game has a lot of flaws divorced from the divergence from the D&D rules. Really, they likely tried their best to make a game, and just were not up to the task. And that's going to hurt. As you asked in the first post:


Corpsetaker said:


> I'm not sure if SCL will ever get out of this hole because first impressions are always important.



And that's the issue. Can they get out of this hole. 
Well, it looks like a LOT of people cancelled their preorders or sought refunds. And their play numbers have been declining regularly. They've maybe sold 5,000 copies of the game and might get a few more sales when it moves to consoles. It really doesn't look like they'll make much money from things. Well under a quarter of a million dollars. 
Given they had to pay for the D&D licence and a lot of staff:


It's no small team. A few million dollars in expenses easily. 
To get out of the giant financial hole, they need to fix the game and get people back in. Which is super hard. Or they need to double down on DLC to milk the people who did sign up. But given the small numbers, there seems to be insufficient people to even support a skeletal team making DLC, let alone paying off debts. 

This might end up a very costly venture.


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## darjr (Nov 9, 2015)

Well now they are saying that the play style and mechanics were ok'd by WotC and that they worked very closely with wotc every step of the way.


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## Jester David (Nov 9, 2015)

darjr said:


> Well now they are saying that the play style and mechanics were ok'd by WotC and that they worked very closely with wotc every step of the way.



We knew they worked closely with WotC and there was oversight. I don't know how much authority WotC had to veto changes. But there was a lot of talk of the game on the official D&D podcast. 
(Not that the D&D staff would have said the game was terrible even if they hated it. I don't even think they'd be allowed to remain silent. They pretty much had to hype the product.)

Regardless, the problem _isn't_ that the play style and mechanics were bad or didn't work, it's that we _thought_ they'd be closer to the actual rules. The problem was one of expectations.


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## Reinhart (Nov 9, 2015)

According to Steam's API I think at least 64,500 licenses for SCL have been sold and not returned. That's unfortunately still less than they had at their peek two days after launch. Of those, it looks like about 50k actually installed it. Those numbers sound good compared to 5,000, but it's not a great return, especially when you consider that Valve gets a distribution cut on all of those sales. The above is not a huge development team, but they are skilled workers that will easily cost several million dollars to employ during a couple of years of development. So I agree with Jester, it's possible that they're still in the hole, and it's not clear there's enough income to justify supporting this product unless something dramatically changes.


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## Reinhart (Nov 9, 2015)

Jester Canuck said:


> We know they worked closely with WotC and there was oversight. I don't know how much authority WotC had to veto changes.
> 
> Regardless, the problem _isn't_ that the play style and mechanics were bad or didn't work, it's that we _thought_ they'd be closer to the actual rules. The problem was one of expectations.




WotC at least had editorial power over the story and dialogue elements of the game. That much has been revealed by the players who have cracked open the scripts and found edits and comments left by WotC staff.


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## Jester David (Nov 9, 2015)

Reinhart said:


> WotC at least had editorial power over the story and dialogue elements of the game. That much has been revealed by the players who have cracked open the scripts and found edits and comments left by WotC staff.



Do you have a link? I'd love to look at that and see how much they responded to WotC's feedback. And what feedback was left.


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## Mirtek (Nov 9, 2015)

Jester Canuck said:


> (Not that the D&D staff would have said the game was terrible even if they hated it. I don't even think they'd be allowed to remain silent. They pretty much had to hype the product.)



Remember how one of the DL creators was praising the awful Dragonlance animated movie in Dragon Magazine just before it's release


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## darjr (Nov 9, 2015)

I too would love to read those editorial comments.


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## Reinhart (Nov 9, 2015)

Jester Canuck said:


> Do you have a link? I'd love to look at that and see how much they responded to WotC's feedback. And what feedback was left.




I saw it a few weeks ago on the official swordcoast.com forums from a user named "Mad.Hatter" who outlined which game files contained what data, and what it meant for the game's future updates and mod-ability. I skimmed the first few pages of the General Discussion forum and didn't see the thread anymore, but I did see a few people discussing it in other threads. Wish I could be more helpful than that, but hopefully that's enough for you to find what you're looking for.


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## Corpsetaker (Nov 9, 2015)

Reinhart said:


> According to Steam's API I think at least 64,500 licenses for SCL have been sold and not returned. That's unfortunately still less than they had at their peek two days after launch. Of those, it looks like about 50k actually installed it. Those numbers sound good compared to 5,000, but it's not a great return, especially when you consider that Valve gets a distribution cut on all of those sales. The above is not a huge development team, but they are skilled workers that will easily cost several million dollars to employ during a couple of years of development. So I agree with Jester, it's possible that they're still in the hole, and it's not clear there's enough income to justify supporting this product unless something dramatically changes.




Don't forget those may also contain people who purchased the deluxe which came with 5 copies I believe.


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## Reinhart (Nov 10, 2015)

Corpsetaker said:


> Don't forget those may also contain people who purchased the deluxe which came with 5 copies I believe.




Good point. I wonder if that accounts for some of the ~14,000 uninstalled but sold copies of the game.


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## Celtavian (Nov 10, 2015)

I wanted to pick this game up. I read the reviews specifically stating it was not like _Neverwinter Nights_ and _Baldur's Gate_. I loved both of those games. I was hoping for a similar experience. I didn't want to play an ARPG with constant monsters and auto-generated tile sets and populations. I wanted more of a story and an interesting static world. I also was turned off by the game engine not using the 5E rules. If I wanted a fantasy ARPG, I'd play Diablo is my feeling.


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## amerigoV (Nov 12, 2015)

Celtavian said:


> I didn't want to play an ARPG with constant monsters and auto-generated tile sets and populations. I wanted more of a story and an interesting static world....If I wanted a fantasy ARPG, I'd play Diablo is my feeling.




Ok, tongue in cheek I have to say this: Some people are upset that you fight in dungeons that may not make sense (random) while killing hordes of monsters and taking their stuff in this game. I mean, what the heck do these people DO when they play D&D?


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## darjr (Nov 12, 2015)

I wonder if someone at that company is thinking just that.


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## Jester David (Nov 13, 2015)

amerigoV said:


> Ok, tongue in cheek I have to say this: Some people are upset that you fight in dungeons that may not make sense (random) while killing hordes of monsters and taking their stuff in this game. I mean, what the heck do these people DO when they play D&D?



Its great for Dungeon Delve and its a start, but you need some reason to go into the dungeon. Even Diablo gave you some quest.


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## Jester David (Nov 19, 2015)

Looking for something data on Fallout I found these sites: http://steamspy.com/ and https://steamdb.info

Because I find this stuff interesting, here's the SCL pages: http://steamspy.com/app/325600 and https://steamdb.info/app/325600/graphs/

It pegs SCL at 62k owners with 50k players. It looks like half the players have stopped playing in the last two weeks and the number of owners dropped by 10k. 
The charts on the second page (you need to scroll down a ways) are interesting and watching the numbers dip up and down is rather, well, disturbing. 

It's also down to the 220s in the Top Selling SteamChart:
http://store.steampowered.com/searc..._ASC&sort_order=ASC&filter=topsellers&page=10
(Which I mention because the official D&D podcast said it was near the top of the chart at launch day. I just listened and got curious.)

When you compare this to other games, the flat number of owners is pretty remarkable. And unfortunate. 
I actually feel kinda sorry for N-Space at this point...


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## Obryn (Nov 19, 2015)

So a friend of mine got a free gift key as a mea-culpa-slash-attempt-to-expand thing. He gave it to me, and it's so far failed to catch my interest. 

But if you see install numbers going up, this is likely why. They're literally giving it away already.


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## Reinhart (Nov 19, 2015)

One of the frequent problems with multiplayer computer games is participant critical mass. Simply put, multiplayer games need a certain number of players present at any given time in order to reliably deliver their game experience. Of course, it varies significantly based on the style of game-play and what the players expect. 40 players makes a full Battlefield scenario but a pretty empty World of Warcraft server.

One of the common complaints I've seen about Sword Coast Legends is the lack players online. It sounds like this is a major problem for players outside of North and South America who play in less than peak hours. Lately the peak concurrent players are on steady decline, but the minimum players concurrently online tends to regularly dip just below 200 players.

Now Steam's not reporting whether those ~200 players are actually playing multiplayer or not. I would be surprised if the majority of them were actually participating in multiplayer. Still, let's be generous and say that half of them are.  then that means there are probably about 20-30 games being hosted during the slow hours. Then you have to factor into compatibility issues: We're talking games being hosted on servers all over the world and SCL is available in Spanish, French, Russian, Italian, and German. So before you get to figuring out if you're compatible as far as play style and personal chemistry, you're probably already limited to only a handful of possible games, if any.


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## Dargrimm (Nov 20, 2015)

I'm sorry to say so (honestly, I really am), but they've reaped what they've sown.


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## darjr (Nov 20, 2015)

Oh one of their video characters is on the cover of SCAG

Somehow it makes clear that scags and this game two facets of a wotc release. I knew that but it didn't really sink in till now.


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## Jester David (Nov 21, 2015)

Obryn said:


> So a friend of mine got a free gift key as a mea-culpa-slash-attempt-to-expand thing. He gave it to me, and it's so far failed to catch my interest.
> 
> But if you see install numbers going up, this is likely why. They're literally giving it away already.




I actually wondered at the spikes in users on a few days. That makes a lot of sense.
(edit - it's worth noting that while lllydia Maethellyn is from SCL, the tiefling Makos is from Neverwinter. So they tied into both.)



darjr said:


> Oh one of their video characters is on the cover of SCAG
> 
> 
> Somehow it makes clear that scags and this game two facets of a wotc release. I knew that but it didn't really sink in till now.



Which is very likely why we got this book now rather than the earlier _Adventurer's Handbook_ or a different splatbook. They really wanted to synergize releases.


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## Corpsetaker (Nov 21, 2015)

Jester Canuck said:


> When you compare this to other games, the flat number of owners is pretty remarkable. And unfortunate.
> I actually feel kinda sorry for N-Space at this point...




I don't feel sorry for them at all because they tried to pass this steaming pile of poo off as a great game that held true to the 5th edition ruleset and was basically an updated version of Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights. 

They tried to deceive the public and got burned for it. They deserve it.


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## Jester David (Nov 21, 2015)

Corpsetaker said:


> I don't feel sorry for them at all because they tried to pass this steaming pile of poo off as a great game that held true to the 5th edition ruleset and was basically an updated version of Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights.
> 
> They tried to deceive the public and got burned for it. They deserve it.



No one sets out to make a bad game. They likely wanted this to be good, or thought people would like this. And there's likely a whole lot of people in the company who had nothing to do with the marketing end who will be hurt by this.


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## darjr (Nov 21, 2015)

Yea, I feel bad for them. There are folks who worked on Balders gate and some very enthusiastic table top gamers on their payroll. I wonder what happened? I'd love to know some details. It seemed so great, E3 was gushing over them, so was Nerdist, I can't reconcile what those 'reviews' said with what was released.


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## Obryn (Nov 21, 2015)

Jester Canuck said:


> No one sets out to make a bad game. They likely wanted this to be good, or thought people would like this. And there's likely a whole lot of people in the company who had nothing to do with the marketing end who will be hurt by this.



Not to mention a diminishing chance we'll ever see a better game. I mean, this one making no money is an argument against a bigger budget.


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## darjr (Nov 22, 2015)

I hope not. The games on GOG and mmo seem to be doing ok


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## Daern (Nov 22, 2015)

Celtavian said:


> I wanted to pick this game up. I read the reviews specifically stating it was not like _Neverwinter Nights_ and _Baldur's Gate_. I loved both of those games. I was hoping for a similar experience. I didn't want to play an ARPG with constant monsters and auto-generated tile sets and populations. I wanted more of a story and an interesting static world. I also was turned off by the game engine not using the 5E rules. If I wanted a fantasy ARPG, I'd play Diablo is my feeling.




The story version of the game is exactly this.  It may not be the best story in the world, but its not at all random.


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## freeAgent (Nov 23, 2015)

Corpsetaker said:


> I don't feel sorry for them at all because they tried to pass this steaming pile of poo off as a great game that held true to the 5th edition ruleset and was basically an updated version of Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights.
> 
> They tried to deceive the public and got burned for it. They deserve it.




I have to agree.  I really feel deceived about the game.  They claimed the Baldur's Gate lineage, but have no lived up to it at all.  They said that the game would be similar to pen & paper D&D, but it isn't similar to it at all beyond the surface.  I'm not happy with the game at all.  I was one of the poor fools who purchased the GM pack of 5 copies and was planning to play co-op, but the game isn't interesting enough for me to even attempt it.  I gave copies to my friends and they also aren't playing it.


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## The-Magic-Sword (Nov 26, 2015)

I have to disagree on this one, while I certainly understand the frustration with the tools being lackluster the campaign plays quite well in terms of story and gameplay, and it's lengthy enough to justify the game's price tag. I particularly dislike the complaints that it wasn't 5e enough, with the sheer level of "talk to your dm" present in that rule system I don't think it would have ever been practical, nor a particularly good video game system- as things stand i think we got an excellent combat system that pays plenty of homage to DND while still preserving an actual playable experience. I also have to wonder if anyone complaining that it feels like diablo has actually ever played diablo, this is a far more strategic system, It plays much more like DND on higher difficulties as well, i've found.


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## Dargrimm (Nov 26, 2015)

The-Magic-Sword said:


> [...]I particularly dislike the complaints that it wasn't 5e enough[...]




What most people are complaining about is not that the game itself is not D&D 5e but that the developers (and Wizards) advertised it as being a very close adaptation to the actual rules. And that is just not true.

My complaints are with companies that make misleading marketing and give customers false expectations promising one thing and delivering another totally different thing.

The game *might* (note the emphasis) be a fun game but the false promises just destroyed any fun I might have had with it.


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