ELEX - Review @ Niche Gamer

I haven't even purchased Witcher 3 and am not too interested to do so

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Well, if those "messy concessions" lead to games like The Witcher 2 + 3 or the Original Sins which were both made by big teams then it's fine with me if it gets a little "messy" ;) .



No one suggested to grow "needlessly". If you look at Larian Studios and CD Projekt they have both grown fairly organically with the demands of their development projects.

The Witcher series is a near perfect crescendo of quality games from a good game to start with to an even better sequel and to a huge smash hit RPG that many folks consider to be the best RPG of all time.

The way I see it as a ex-PB fan, PB could definitely use more manpower in just about every area (especially writing, animations, game systems design (= combat et al)) and this need has existed at least since Risen 2.

Strictly IMHO it is either masochism or plain stupid stubbornness at this point to refuse to grow with the tasks at hand (with the tasks is the key phrase here… as I said, no one talked about growing senselessly and creating jobs where no work even needs to be done).

They've survived 20 years making games so I think they know what they're doing. :)

And personally, I'd take RPGs from small teams like InXile, Troika, PB, etc., over massive productions most of the time. CDPR and Larian have thrived, but for every one of those companies there are many that have had bad deals with publishers and have to please suits and investors, leading to concessions to appeal to a larger audience and hit a certain threshold of sales.

In other words, they lose the creative freedom that the smaller teams generally have.

ELEX is also PB's dream game according to Bjorn, so kudos to them for being able to do that 20 years into their existence and to be able to pull it off in 2017. :party:
 
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Every major game has had a preorder discount not just Elex.

ELEX's discount was 10% on release, So $40-ish. It's normal price is $49.99 which is still cheaper than a typical AAA game.

I have no problem paying that for a game like ELEX but YMMV.
 
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ELEX's discount was 10% on release, So $40-ish. It's normal price is $49.99 which is still cheaper than a typical AAA game.

I have no problem paying that for a game like ELEX but YMMV.

There's no official price tag for a AAA game, but they typically range from $50-$60, so I'm not sure what point you're trying to make with this. Whether or not the price is right depends entirely on the person.
 
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27, not 29 ;) .

However, you can definitely add a few dozen more to that number because of outsourcing, freelancers etc.
It still remains true that they have not had hundreds of people working on the game but it's also not right to say that it was made by less than 30 people.

That would still really put them at less than 40 people, the only things they outsourced was the voices(which CD Projekt dont add to their dev count) and translations.


Also, it is their deliberate choice (per Pankratz), or their fault, depending on point of view, to be and to stay this small and they are playing ball with the big guys in the full price segment.

TW3 was selling for the same price at release as Elex so I think it is fair to compare the games regardless of team size. It is PB's own problem that they refuse to grow (up) :biggrin: .

TW3 was not selling at full price at launch, it is an outlier. Most AAA games sell for about 20% or more. Skyrim PC costs $60 USD at launch and Elex costs $50. Its a B-tier price.
 
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Yeah, I've always associated $60 as the price of a typical AAA game. But I also don't buy AAA games much and don't keep up with the latest happenings, so I could very well be wrong.

Regardless, I've personally played for 150 hours so far and haven't even seen 50% of the map yet, let alone 50% of the core game (so many choices and unseen consequences in some spots, to be frank it baffles me at times), so I feel it's well worth the $45 I paid for it.

Pleeeeease PB, do a Night of the Raven-type expansion! :)
 
TW3 was not selling at full price at launch, it is an outlier. Most AAA games sell for about 20% or more. Skyrim PC costs $60 USD at launch and Elex costs $50. Its a B-tier price.

I think you guys are splitting hairs with the price thing. A $10 difference is not very significant to most people.
 
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Where did you get that from? It is most definitely incorrect :) .
Here is a list of the people who worked only on the German version of Elex and it does not yet include any outsourcing but what it does include apparently is the freelancers who were directly employed by PB since it is way more than 27 names under "Piranha Bytes".
At a quick count this is already a little over 40 with no outsourcing yet (and also excluding double mentions and the social media people ;) ).

The final section of that list that is headed "Synchronsprecher" are the German voices. Everything else is development and publishing

As you can see, outsourcing was managed by the asset outsourcing manager Horst Dworczak (a PB veteran by the way who is/was an artist himself). They also specifically credited the PH Outsourcing GmbH further down the list which might actually be one of the many PB/Pluto13 subsidiaries since you can not find any public info on PH Outsourcing GmbH on Google.
My guess is that PB uses this PH Outsourcing GmbH to outsource their asset creation needs to Eastern European gigs.

Anyway, back on the actual outsourcing: I have personally watched/read interviews with Björn where he said that they outsourced some of the animations (except for the human/character animations… they did those themselves apparently).
He also said that they outsourced the creation of most of the -as he put it- "tedious" art assets which, to my understanding, means the many, many basic items that are simply required to be there but that are zero fun to design (e.g. chairs, tables, spoons, knives, forks, rocks, toilet paper and crap like that :) ).

It is anyone's guess how many people exactly laid hands on Elex beyond the at least 40+ on the list (sans outsourcing!) just for the German version. 60? 80? Who knows?
But the outsourced art assets and animations are a time consuming and tedious task that simply requires a lot of manpower and man hours to get shit done within a reasonable timeframe (or even within a deadline at which point stuff needs to be returned to PB for implementation).

So, please forget about 27 people. That is their very bare bone core team of employees with a fixed contract but all of their games have had many more people working on them due to freelancing/contractors and outsourcing.

Fair enough.
 
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I think you guys are splitting hairs with the price thing. A $10 difference is not very significant to most people.

~20% is something that may or maybe not significant to most people, however that is the B-teir game price.
 
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I am absolutely loving this game. I certainly didn't buy it for $30 on a cd-key peddling website. World is a blast to explore, and the difficulty acquiring ~whatever~ adds a sense of purpose. Looking forward to seeing more of the game, total PB feel just updated for 2017. Oh and surprisingly, I like playing it with a controller *shrug*
 
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I generally agree that ELEX is Good to Very Good. But, anyone done "The Abessa Dispute" questline yet, This quest is pretty messed up in my view. Particularly

this is messed up IMO in combination with "The Claws". Specifically there seems to be no good outcome for "The Abessa Dispute" with the result that player gets locked out of the main entrance to the claws area. Have to use hard to find and use secret entrance. Plus all the dead ppl. Recommend don't trigger this quest (if ever) until after Claws is complete. Quest needs fixin' IMO

Regards.

__
 
I generally agree that ELEX is Good to Very Good. But, anyone done "The Abessa Dispute" questline yet, This quest is pretty messed up in my view. Particularly

this is messed up IMO in combination with "The Claws". Specifically there seems to be no good outcome for "The Abessa Dispute" with the result that player gets locked out of the main entrance to the claws area. Have to use hard to find and use secret entrance. Plus all the dead ppl. Recommend don't trigger this quest (if ever) until after Claws is complete. Quest needs fixin' IMO

Regards.

__

the Abessa Dispute ends up with the town taken over by albs if you side with the outlaws, if you side with the Clerics, none of that happens
 
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I generally agree that ELEX is Good to Very Good. But, anyone done "The Abessa Dispute" questline yet, This quest is pretty messed up in my view.

The only thing I'd change about that questline would be to make the player's choices a little more transparent in regards to the impact they're going to have.

Other than that, I really liked that whole sequence of events and that they provided the player with C&C of some actual significance.
 
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The only thing I'd change about that questline would be to make the player's choices a little more transparent in regards to the impact they're going to have.

Other than that, I really liked that whole sequence of events and that they provided the player with C&C of some actual significance.

At first i was shocked at the result, but I love it after thinking about it for a while. I disagree with the idea of revealing consequences of actions prior to doing them, but I guess different strokes on that.
 
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