No DVD in the "Commemorative limited edition full size box"?

Re: No DVD in the "Commemorative limited edition full size b

My vote for adding a physical disc for the box tier. I was genuinely disappointed by this when I found out and hope this wil be reconsidered, or offered via a survey after the fact, at a cost if need be.

Re: No DVD in the "Commemorative limited edition full size b

You gravely underestimate the costs of printing something in such a small number - or at all.

Same goes for the game disk, PK. The initial cost for getting a place to print discs is mindboggling. The only discount you'll receive is an increasingly lower "per disc total cost" the more you have printed before it's reset once more.

Re: No DVD in the "Commemorative limited edition full size b

I honestly don't understand why this is something people want.

The disk is going to be outdated before we even ship it. It's basically a pretty coaster.

You guys do realize this game is going to get updated often, right?

Regardless we are looking into making this available somehow for those who really want it.

Re: No DVD in the "Commemorative limited edition full size b

The reasons have been addressed, if you'd bother to read rather than flailing about with your "death of / to physical media" shield-beating. As to updates, I'd rather download a 500MB delta patch than a 20GB game on my 2Mb/s connection that randomly drops, thus making me start over from scratch.

EDIT:
And at US$250 dollars, I'd say a pretty coaster, at a cost of sharpy + 10 minutes + US$0.05 blank disk, is a pretty reasonable request so I don't have to spend a week trying to download it and hope that it doesn't get interrupted and restart.

Re: No DVD in the "Commemorative limited edition full size b

Uber forever! \o/

Re: No DVD in the "Commemorative limited edition full size b

What about a USB stick instead?

Honestly this isn't some kind of vendetta against physical media. It's that physical media doesn't meet the requirements of our medium anymore. And it's going to cost us a lot of time to deal with this that we aren't putting into the game (the whole gold master issue). E.g. it's not just the cost of making disks, it's the cost of making the version that goes on the disk unless it's just a downloader.

Re: No DVD in the "Commemorative limited edition full size b

Hmmm, this might not be the best time to talk about German diplomacy, but seriously, I don't think it is a great idea to wail at the guy who is going to give you the physical media regardless.

I would settle for a USB stick (or a bunch of floppies or a tape), but I feel people fear that you can 'overwrite' a USB stick, and thus not safe from one own's stupidity. But I felt we did find in the good old floppy days!

Re: No DVD in the "Commemorative limited edition full size b

But if the files are old they can get nuked.

I'm just trying to come up with a good solution here to make people happy, that's all.

Re: No DVD in the "Commemorative limited edition full size b

I'm not sure why USB sticks have not caught on more as 'official' distribution channels, perhaps because digital distribution rose at the same time and it seemed like a waste. But it seems a lot here are using 'download time' as an argument against digital distribution, and would prefer something physical, even if it means it is outdated by the time it arrives.

I honestly do not care if my game is distributed digitally or not; I always make sure to have a backup lying around and if the time ever comes that the digital distribution channel is gone, then I am sure I can find some CD-cracks or whatever online. But that hasn't happened yet.

And to most people's surprise, a lot of games purchased through Steam are playable without the Steam client, just sayin'.

Re: No DVD in the "Commemorative limited edition full size b

Hell, give me a nice custom PA USB Stick with the v1.0 game on it and i'll be more than happy.
It can even be read only (and should be, wouldn't like to erase my precious PA copy by mistake ).

I just want to be sure that whatever happens, i can find my awesome game in the safe i've hidden it, even 15 years later.
(and would'nt this be a premiere ? A game distributed by USB and not CD anymore ? a big step in the future !)

Re: No DVD in the "Commemorative limited edition full size b

I really like the USB stick idea.

Re: No DVD in the "Commemorative limited edition full size b

I don't want the physical disc (or USB-stick) to use instead of downloading. I just like collecting awsome games physically. It just feels like something is missing in a box without a game.

Re: No DVD in the "Commemorative limited edition full size b

I'd be amazed to hear that a USB device was cheaper than a disk, but yes, a USB stick would be just as acceptable. The point, in my mind, is having the vast majority of the data on hand, rather than being at the mercy of a ridiculously slow internet connection that randomly craps out (but with enough frequency to make downloading anything without wget a nightmare.)

Sorry for getting snappish in the last post, but I read it as another attack on physical media (which one can hope never dies out entirely). I'm not joking when I say stick a blank in the computer, burn the disk, and take a sharpy to it. In all likelihood it would take less time and headache to wait for the disk to arrive than trying to download it myself. All I care about is not going through the nightmare of downloading tens of GB over an unstable and horrifically slow connection, especially not if I can't use wget or something similar that can actually resume without having to start over from scratch.

Realistically, how much change (in MB) is there in the last week or month of development on a project like this? Typically, maps and art assets are your biggest space-suckers, but by that point those should largely be set in stone, right? So realistically we'd be looking at what for a launch-day patch? 200MB? 500MB? Out of a total of 5-20GB based on games these days? That's a massive difference in how much I have to depend on my connection for.

I get the concerns, I get the costs, I'm just trying to minimize my (and others) reliance on crappy connections to get at the game. Nothing is more annoying than the game you wanted finally coming out and then not being able to play because the servers got slammed, you couldn't download it, etc. Just look at all the backlash with recent releases from companies unwilling / unable to do proper QA and testing before launch, and then no one gets to play those first weeks. Here's one that's totally preventable: reduce the amount people need to download the first time. It'd probably help with your own server load as well, since then you have 50k people downloading 500MB instead of 5-20GB.

Re: No DVD in the "Commemorative limited edition full size b

I'd love to see 'USB-stick' PA packages in the gameshops!
So novel!

Re: No DVD in the "Commemorative limited edition full size b

If there was an official torrent for people who bought it drops wouldn't be a problem. And since you need to login to play online and it's drm-free you don't need to worry about piracy anyway. I always prefer official torrents, less taxing on their servers as well.

Re: No DVD in the "Commemorative limited edition full size b

That's because you are comparing it to home burning, which is very cheap, but produces second rate discs. Whenever a software company of any kind prints discs, they need to set up a production. And setting up such a production does not make sense, unless you are going to print thousands if not hundreds of thousands (or millions) of copies, because setting up the production cost in the first place is incredibly expensive.

It is a lot less cheaper and a lot more flexible when it comes to USB-sticks. They are much cheaper to produce of high quality that printed discs. As such, Uber may only need to order the number they want, and do it ad hoc, whenever new requests come in.

Re: No DVD in the "Commemorative limited edition full size b

I never said a USB stick was cheaper. It is better though.

Re: No DVD in the "Commemorative limited edition full size b

Having a hardcopy of the game was one the reason I took the physical stretch. But I'd be happy with a kicking-*** box to show off in my livingroom, that's the main goal

I like the USB-key idea though. Physical copy is a plus, but not a deal breaker. TA is still widely available, as it SupCom/FA (Steam). I'll always be able to keep a copy of the downloaded version / installer somewhere that'll be more up-to-date and less prone to die to Time than a CD.

Re: No DVD in the "Commemorative limited edition full size b

If there's a USB stick in the box I will be happy because well... free USB stick... but using the internet to download things doesn't seem unreasonable nowadays.

Are there really people out there who will wait possibly weeks following release of the game to receive a DVD, just so that you don't have to download a file? You can always get a free download manager so you can resume if your connection drops.

Re: No DVD in the "Commemorative limited edition full size b

Our downloader can resume as well.