darkSpyro

So usually the content we see from the first announcement of the game is pretty polished and nearly ready to get into the consumers' hands. But from the first videos that surfaced a lot of the UI and stuff was temporary and still seems to be different every time a new video pops ups. I have complete faith that TFB will finish the game in time, but I am a little worried that they might have bit off more then they can chew in this timeline.
I've read articles that mention how this game is the LARGEST one so far, with the character creator, all the parts, not to mention all the regular skylanders stuff. So what do you think? Will it be polished and ready to play by October?

-Rov

Yeah, this seems like a problem, but to be honest... it's not as ridiculous as Trap team's development.

Depends if Pepper Jack makes it or not. #chefpepperjackforlife

But seriously, because it's tfb, it will probably have a few bugs just like trap team did. Game developers always change things up, so don't get worried about that. in all, it will be polished enough for it to be sold, but with bugs like every other game.

hopefully we don't have a Nightfall.........

They've managed to deliver before. And even if not I doubt it would be anything a patch couldn't fix.

Quote: AdamGregory03

They've managed to deliver before. And even if not I doubt it would be anything a patch couldn't fix.

Hey now, you know what, that's true.

3 months is a long time in game development terms, don't worry.

Yeah 3 months is quite some time and I can see the minor things being fixed with launch day patches if absolutely necessary. I just hope they find another magic moment because playing Superchargers all this time is making me sick of the swirling storm

I honestly do not care about the Magic Moment stuff, what I focus on is gameplay. HUD stuff is pretty important, though, and i actually like how it looked at E3.

My personal hell is seeing Superchargers swirling storm of insanity

Yeah I was thinking most problems could probably be fixed with patches.

-Rov

Excuse me, but the game RELEASES in three months, that means they've got 2 months TOPS before they have to ship the product to retailers, and considering that's probably more complicated with Skylanders than most video games, I'd say they only have somwhere between 45 and 60 days before they have to ship it out.

I'm not worried at all, I'm confident this will be a solid game.

What they've had available for people to test isn't the real full version of the game they've made so far. Just coz you only saw gameplay for a coupleof levels and charscters doesn't mean that that's all they've made.

what we've seen are just a bunch of random demo versions designed not to give away too much about everything the game offers. Most versions were slapped together months ago when they started crowd testing the game. The real game that's probably just being fine tuned and bug fixed, wouldn't have been let out of the development room yet.

You know, chances are if they're proclaiming this to be the "biggest Skylanders game yet", then that probably means they're first focusing on the more important stuff (like the story, the main levels, characters, and possibly additional modes) before they worry about the smaller details (like the magic moments). At the very least we haven't seen any glitches yet... Though then again no one's really gone out of their way to try and find any yet...

I am confident in TfB. They haven't failed me before! I'm sure they can add in all that Magic Moment stuff before the game releases in 3 months. They kinda have to at this point! If you pay attention to the Imaginator transition from Creator to Magic Moment, it is nonexistent! It does an awkward close-up and goes to the swirly Superchargers MM screen. It looks... unfinished to say the least! Have a little faith!

We don't actually have 3 months if at least part of a month is needed to pack things up and ship starter packs.

Quote: Bifrost

We don't actually have 3 months if at least part of a month is needed to pack things up and ship starter packs.

Day One Patch anyone? Plus, I think Activision handles all the toy production and shipping stuff. The devs just design the toys and make the game, IIRC. I'm sure the core games and modes are complete by now.

Again, they've had 2 years for this game. I'm sure they're focusing way more on the meat than the aesthetic stuff.

This has been bothering me, but I can tell they've been doing a lot of work to make it polished. I just hope it's not postponed.

This game looks almost the opposite of Trap Team, in terms of what has been shown.

The former blew me away with its Magic Moment, Traptanium Portal and other aesthetic features but ended up being lackluster under many points of view.
Imaginators has a really solid structure, with clear full-fledged innovations and is only lacking a proper "personality" in the form of small details and TfB touch.

Definitely a better choice, hope it will pay off in the end.

Quote: Drek95

This game looks almost the opposite of Trap Team, in terms of what has been shown.

The former blew me away with its Magic Moment, Traptanium Portal and other aesthetic features but ended up being lackluster under many points of view.
Imaginators has a really solid structure, with clear full-fledged innovations and is only lacking a proper "personality" in the form of small details and TfB touch.

Definitely a better choice, hope it will pay off in the end.

I do have to agree. But I think they'll add those touched later as we get closer, the little things make the game just THAT much better. I just don't want to see the game get stunted, due to time constraints. No mater how great the creator/imaginators are, they won't mean much to me unless the game is nice and fleshed out.


-Rov

Quote: Rovaulin

Quote: Drek95

This game looks almost the opposite of Trap Team, in terms of what has been shown.

The former blew me away with its Magic Moment, Traptanium Portal and other aesthetic features but ended up being lackluster under many points of view.
Imaginators has a really solid structure, with clear full-fledged innovations and is only lacking a proper "personality" in the form of small details and TfB touch.

Definitely a better choice, hope it will pay off in the end.

I do have to agree. But I think they'll add those touched later as we get closer, the little things make the game just THAT much better. I just don't want to see the game get stunted, due to time constraints. No mater how great the creator/imaginators are, they won't mean much to me unless the game is nice and fleshed out.


-Rov

Oh, sure, I was kind implying I'm confident TfB will eventually add those details, even via patches: after all they will surely be easier than big gameplay features to add later on.

I can tell you the game most likely is not really that finished yet. I know this cause ive been through this before. I worked with activision as a game tester for call of duty advanced warfare. 3 months before that game release and the game was a train wreck. You would fall through parts of the maps, the game would crash, we even had one build were the entire game was just black and white and flashed back and forth between them super fast, that build was unplayable. Hell the week the game launched we were working overtime testing out the latest builds to make sure all the major stuff got fixed in the day 1 patches. Sadly a lot of the stuff didnt get fixed, I can take you on a tour of some of the maps and point out all the small things they choose not to fix.This is all normal, fixing that stuff is actually really small, all the major development time goes into building the games engine and all the programming. The art is the easy part, it just takes a little bit longer to draw vs program. While I was there we also had to do some testing on Destiny and Trap team. Sadly I was not the one testing them but i did get to see them. We got a look at the first Destiny expansion 2 months before it came out and alot of the trap masters where there even thou they were in wave 4 and 5.

Anyways, long story short, most likely the game is quite broken right now but it will get fixed and get released on time.

Well, it depends if the QA is properly done. Trap Team, which you mentioned, got released with quite a lot of major bugs like crashes and save corruption.

Though from the look of things, Imaginators doesn't look bad on these fronts, but content is more important than extra polish after what happened with SC.

superchargers had a 200+mb update on the older consoles and a 400+mb on the newer after release. where they was bug fixing and adding new content. so i have no high hopes for the Imaginators are gonna be any better.

I had the save corruption problem with trap team. Sorry to say I never forgave the game for that.
There have only ever been three games to give me a save corruption.

Pokemon (missingno surprisingly I found him on my own without anyone telling me about him, i thought he was just a strange looking pokemon)
Saints Row 2

and Trap Team. But when it happened with Trap team there was NO reason for me to have gotten a save corruption.
Besides that Trap team just was not a finished game so yes I very much fear Imaginators to be an unfinished game. However Toysforbob went into Trap Team using the engine used by Swap Force and it was new to them. Now they've had longer to get used to it.

Ehhh, I give them hope!

patches are stupid... they should just release a good working, tested game, not what they did with Trap Team... heck why can't they just delay their games to smooth it up?

Quote: Kevin16

patches are stupid... they should just release a good working, tested game, not what they did with Trap Team... heck why can't they just delay their games to smooth it up?

Because they depend on annual Skylanders games to make a profit on the brand. Plus, they most likely have a lot of the toys already produced and ready for shipping so might as well release the game on time.

Also, that's not how the games industry works because of all the negativity surrounding delays, you can't just DO THAT!

Quote: Kevin16

patches are stupid... they should just release a good working, tested game, not what they did with Trap Team... heck why can't they just delay their games to smooth it up?

Because this is Activision we're talking about.

Also because they have a schedule, and Acti will fire everyone before allowing a delay.

honestly I'm more worried about toy availability than the game itself being "unfinished".....

You can play with a single toy that doesn't even need to be from this game. One thing is giving the middle finger to collectors which isn't good but it's still a small fraction of the fanbase,another is having an unplayable/badly polished game for EVERYONE.

Quote: Bifrost

You can play with a single toy that doesn't even need to be from this game. One thing is giving the middle finger to collectors which isn't good but it's still a small fraction of the fanbase,another is having an unplayable/badly polished game for EVERYONE.

yeah, that's true...but Skylanders is one of the few non-Nintendo franchises I feel like I don't have to worry about being released broken/unfinished/unplayable, hence my bigger concern over having another game where I have to import figures because Activision and/or the stores in my area are retarded. I never found any of the light & dark stuff from TT anywhere ( had to pay $120 combined to get the light & dark expansion packs on ebay ), Thrillipede was available for like 3 seconds on the TRU website, and even my local Gamestop has very little variety in the available toys lately. I personally couldn't care less about collecting all the trap molds, but those who do can't get the Yawn Traps without paying an arm and 6 legs and let's not forget about the busted Nightfall figures they released....sure the games have their glitches but they're rarely if ever game breaking ( worst I've gotten is a full crash & booted to the Xbox One dashboard but that's more of an Xbox issue than a Skylanders one ).

I'm also still hoping like crazy that our magic items will work like they should and that we get new Adventure Packs with Imaginators...oh, and that two of the few really good things from Superchargers return ( path switching for ALL, and Nightmare available from the start )

Quote: Luminous35

This has been bothering me, but I can tell they've been doing a lot of work to make it polished. I just hope it's not postponed.

Would you rather have a crappy deadline, or an exciting postponed, but finished product?

Quick question actually, have they been working on this game since Superchargers was released or since Trap Team was released? If the latter then it's probably safe to assume what we've seen are just demos of an earlier build of the game.

They have a few months of vacation in between, but keep in mind the first part of it is always developing tech for the new gimmick, the game itself comes after. It's what got Trap Team in its mess, since they wasted too much time developing the speaker that responds to the game.

...And the ridiculously large amount of new characters as well.

They used a lot of designs from Giants, I think that was the least of their troubles. Without the gimmick ready however,you can't really advance much with the game since the scripts have to make the speaker go off. And there are several scripts other than the villain ones in the wrong places or delayed(just try to play as Roller Brawl or someone else that's crazy with charge moves and watch the game struggle to keep up), so it was definately one thing dragging down the other.

Less the deisgns and more the, y'know, whole development of around 80 new characters. Modeling, programming, voice acting, animations, attacks... making a single character is a lot of work, making over 80 is monstrous.