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Takedown: Red Sabre Post-Mortem
........ And now I know. Very very limited. As in none. You can only use Serellan's version of the level editor, and unfortunately there was no time to produce documentation nor complete debugging. Making any map on it would basically break in some way. On the other hand, this is the only company I know of where the development team is available in the forums and E-mail to immediately help you with any issues on the level editor. Sadly, the game failed to gain any interest for anyone to make mods for it (or at least the mod section of the forums don't show any recent posts), so it doesn't really matter if the tools were left unrefined.
This leads to why I resurrected this thread despite being over a year old. I want to apologize for encouraging people to buy this game, only to be burned by the issues everyone encountered. Honestly, this launch was worse than Battlefield 4, since the resources to fix it weren't available for a small team like Serellan. In fact, the launch party Twitch stream, and the giveaway contest was interrupted and cancelled because nobody could get matchmaking to work online. And what hurts is that Serellan regularly communicated with their customers during development, and somehow still managed to gain so much hate against them. I mean they kept talking and sharing information, yet we as gamers basically wanted them and their families dead for this poorly developed game. I'm sorry I asked all of you to help revive the tactical shooter genre by giving this game a chance. I failed to see the quality issues before it was released, and I failed to be suspicious about their one-year development cycle for PC and Xbox 360, and how difficult that would be for a small team.
I don't blame Serellan, and I don't want them to ever give up. They had the worst luck, and many people (few of them backers) failed to realize the Kickstarter goal wasn't for the money ($220K is chump change when it comes to game development), but rather as a way to show proof interest still existed in the tactical shooter genre. The plan was to get an investor to notice the success of the Kickstarter campaign and then fund the actual development of the game. So everyone at Serellan was forced to swallow in all that hate with a smile. Sometimes, they can't stomach it and just unleash pure rage at the pain of working in this industry. I mean, it doesn't help when your face is literally smashed in and people say it's karma. Their luck as a company is either on-par or worse than Lab Zero Games or Hello Games. One suffered a car accident, and the other suffered a facial injury. Heck the founder Christian Allen made a video to teach others how to avoid such an accident at his expense. How many people do you know share these things in consideration for others? Then there's the loved ones who are dead... Yet all we feel like saying is the AI sucks, please die so someone more competent can take your place and give us the R6/SWAT game we want (Ubisoft isn't doing the one we want).
Sad how nobody even noticed "over the past seven months, [they] have released eight major patches, several hotfix updates, and free DLC" (not that they could charge for DLC after a launch like that). But in the end, the game legitimately has enough issues to prevent it from being a good game. Totalbiscuit supported this game long before it was released, is a Kickstarter backer, and is completely confused at some of the criticisms about the AI when recording footage for his WTF video...... Until he ran into it himself. From there he had no choice, but to warn gamers everywhere to avoid buying this until it is properly fixed. That PSA (in place of what would've been a WTF video) is still there today, telling everyone to avoid the game until Totalbiscuit reports back. He never did play the game again of course, but that's because it still doesn't contain everything he expected it to have (and Christian Allen doesn't realize this, and tried to contact Totalbiscuit numerous times to give the game another try), nor does Totalbiscuit really have time to replay games (especially now that he's recovering from cancer surgery/chemotherapy). Still, it was more than enough to end any chance of a profit for Serellan (they had difficulty selling the game at $0.99 USD for goodness sake).
I just realized I still didn't really explain myself for why I'm resurrecting this thread... Sorry. So as I said already, it's been a year. What some of you may not know is that Serellan (as part of their open communication with their customers) promised a post-mortem explanation on the state of Serellan, and the lessons learned from producing Takedown: Red Sabre. I hope you guys will take a look at the video (originally planned to be a blog post as Christian's face was smashed in, but it looks like they decided to cram it all into a 32 min video) and understand why the game is what it is.
To be honest, I have a gift copy of Takedown purchased during its $1 promotion price, because I wanted to support Serellan and spread the word by giving a copy of the game. Problem is, with the bad impression Takedown left with everyone, I don't know what to do with it, because nobody would like it (the only friends I know who play tactical shooters are in another country and are hard to reach online). I'm also disappointed to hear that Serellan wanted to work with Overkill Software to produce a crossover DLC involving Takedown: Red Sabre and Payday 2, but the plans fell through. Rather sad, because it would REALLY BE SO DAMN FITTING to see the PMC Red Sabre go up against Bain's men (well... Sort of Bain's men, more like the Payday gang), though I doubt that would be the actual DLC if it did happen. Probably just a gun or a mask and that's it. Eventually 505 Games stopped supporting Serellan and basically acted as if the game never existed, going as far as shutting the official servers down due to lack of popularity (you can still run your own dedicated servers of course).
I just hope Serellan doesn't give up after this. The video shows some promise with them experimenting around with Unreal Engine 3 and producing a prototype, but they're still gauging the audience and seeing what it is they should do, if anything at all. If people want them to stop, they'll stop and go their separate ways. And from there we'll have to rely on other independent developers to make tactical shooters. We're not out of options, as there's Insurgency, Due Process, and..... Whatever that game is that uses voice and radio chatter based on distance (Zips, help with a link please, you covered it in a newspost on TGN)... But the point is, it would be nice to have more developers build on a genre that used to be so fun to play. It's now a minority niche genre that struggles to sustain itself. And Serellan is a good company that communicates with gamers. Please give them one more chance and tell them to keep trying. At least give them credit for not converting Takedown: Red Sabre into a Free To Play, Pay To Win model. They were THIS DAMN CLOSE to doing so.
Thanks for your time everyone. And no, nobody at Serellan and its community knows who I am. I'm only saying all this because I'm bothered by it all. Thanks again.
Originally posted by K-16
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This leads to why I resurrected this thread despite being over a year old. I want to apologize for encouraging people to buy this game, only to be burned by the issues everyone encountered. Honestly, this launch was worse than Battlefield 4, since the resources to fix it weren't available for a small team like Serellan. In fact, the launch party Twitch stream, and the giveaway contest was interrupted and cancelled because nobody could get matchmaking to work online. And what hurts is that Serellan regularly communicated with their customers during development, and somehow still managed to gain so much hate against them. I mean they kept talking and sharing information, yet we as gamers basically wanted them and their families dead for this poorly developed game. I'm sorry I asked all of you to help revive the tactical shooter genre by giving this game a chance. I failed to see the quality issues before it was released, and I failed to be suspicious about their one-year development cycle for PC and Xbox 360, and how difficult that would be for a small team.
I don't blame Serellan, and I don't want them to ever give up. They had the worst luck, and many people (few of them backers) failed to realize the Kickstarter goal wasn't for the money ($220K is chump change when it comes to game development), but rather as a way to show proof interest still existed in the tactical shooter genre. The plan was to get an investor to notice the success of the Kickstarter campaign and then fund the actual development of the game. So everyone at Serellan was forced to swallow in all that hate with a smile. Sometimes, they can't stomach it and just unleash pure rage at the pain of working in this industry. I mean, it doesn't help when your face is literally smashed in and people say it's karma. Their luck as a company is either on-par or worse than Lab Zero Games or Hello Games. One suffered a car accident, and the other suffered a facial injury. Heck the founder Christian Allen made a video to teach others how to avoid such an accident at his expense. How many people do you know share these things in consideration for others? Then there's the loved ones who are dead... Yet all we feel like saying is the AI sucks, please die so someone more competent can take your place and give us the R6/SWAT game we want (Ubisoft isn't doing the one we want).
Sad how nobody even noticed "over the past seven months, [they] have released eight major patches, several hotfix updates, and free DLC" (not that they could charge for DLC after a launch like that). But in the end, the game legitimately has enough issues to prevent it from being a good game. Totalbiscuit supported this game long before it was released, is a Kickstarter backer, and is completely confused at some of the criticisms about the AI when recording footage for his WTF video...... Until he ran into it himself. From there he had no choice, but to warn gamers everywhere to avoid buying this until it is properly fixed. That PSA (in place of what would've been a WTF video) is still there today, telling everyone to avoid the game until Totalbiscuit reports back. He never did play the game again of course, but that's because it still doesn't contain everything he expected it to have (and Christian Allen doesn't realize this, and tried to contact Totalbiscuit numerous times to give the game another try), nor does Totalbiscuit really have time to replay games (especially now that he's recovering from cancer surgery/chemotherapy). Still, it was more than enough to end any chance of a profit for Serellan (they had difficulty selling the game at $0.99 USD for goodness sake).
I just realized I still didn't really explain myself for why I'm resurrecting this thread... Sorry. So as I said already, it's been a year. What some of you may not know is that Serellan (as part of their open communication with their customers) promised a post-mortem explanation on the state of Serellan, and the lessons learned from producing Takedown: Red Sabre. I hope you guys will take a look at the video (originally planned to be a blog post as Christian's face was smashed in, but it looks like they decided to cram it all into a 32 min video) and understand why the game is what it is.
To be honest, I have a gift copy of Takedown purchased during its $1 promotion price, because I wanted to support Serellan and spread the word by giving a copy of the game. Problem is, with the bad impression Takedown left with everyone, I don't know what to do with it, because nobody would like it (the only friends I know who play tactical shooters are in another country and are hard to reach online). I'm also disappointed to hear that Serellan wanted to work with Overkill Software to produce a crossover DLC involving Takedown: Red Sabre and Payday 2, but the plans fell through. Rather sad, because it would REALLY BE SO DAMN FITTING to see the PMC Red Sabre go up against Bain's men (well... Sort of Bain's men, more like the Payday gang), though I doubt that would be the actual DLC if it did happen. Probably just a gun or a mask and that's it. Eventually 505 Games stopped supporting Serellan and basically acted as if the game never existed, going as far as shutting the official servers down due to lack of popularity (you can still run your own dedicated servers of course).
I just hope Serellan doesn't give up after this. The video shows some promise with them experimenting around with Unreal Engine 3 and producing a prototype, but they're still gauging the audience and seeing what it is they should do, if anything at all. If people want them to stop, they'll stop and go their separate ways. And from there we'll have to rely on other independent developers to make tactical shooters. We're not out of options, as there's Insurgency, Due Process, and..... Whatever that game is that uses voice and radio chatter based on distance (Zips, help with a link please, you covered it in a newspost on TGN)... But the point is, it would be nice to have more developers build on a genre that used to be so fun to play. It's now a minority niche genre that struggles to sustain itself. And Serellan is a good company that communicates with gamers. Please give them one more chance and tell them to keep trying. At least give them credit for not converting Takedown: Red Sabre into a Free To Play, Pay To Win model. They were THIS DAMN CLOSE to doing so.
Thanks for your time everyone. And no, nobody at Serellan and its community knows who I am. I'm only saying all this because I'm bothered by it all. Thanks again.
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