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Post by mikehg on Nov 7, 2015 11:00:18 GMT -5
First up, let me say I love the game. Very impressed by the core mechanics, the amount of customisation you can do, the presumed replayability (haven't got that far yet), and it seems a lot of attention has gone into balancing the various classes and getting the difficulty curve right.
So well done on those scores.
On the text, not so well done. I know you're a small studio, and where you can focus your effort is limited. But some of the text looks like it's been hastily typed out then never read again before publication. Does that matter? To a lot of people, maybe not, but to some, yes. It really detracts from the perception of professionalism, and I suspect quite a few people (including, importantly, reviewers) won't look past that and give it a proper chance.
So, a plea: you could get away with this more when doing freemium. If you're charging £6 or more up front for a game on Android, however, people expect a fairly polished experience, and I fear you're going to hurt sales by rushing it out when an aspect like that has been neglected. Even if you find editing bloody tedious, there's gotta be somebody you know who can read through a dump of every string in the game over a few hours in exchange for a nice dinner - they wouldn't need to get *everything* right, but they could pick up most of the obvious ones.
Thanks for reading, and sorry for the gripey first post - I'd love this game to succeed and keep getting updated, so I'm complaining because I fear you're shooting yourselves in the foot.
Mike.
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Post by xdesperado on Nov 7, 2015 12:09:54 GMT -5
Long time fan and supporter of TB here. You guys are awesome but Mike is right, two squads through tutorial missions and Ferarai Lance and the various typos and grammatical errors are cringeworthy. Love the game but the text which is suppossed to help create the mood gets rather disjointed.
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Post by Kanly on Nov 7, 2015 13:18:18 GMT -5
BTW the best thing you can do to help them is to report bugs, typos, and other grammatical errors. If you can point out anything specific, they can fix them.
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Post by mikehg on Nov 7, 2015 13:26:15 GMT -5
There are *literally* hundreds. If they want to pay me to fix the text, I'll do it, but I'm sure as heck not going to do it for free.
I paid for the game, and when you pay for a game you expect a certain level of quality. I enjoy it despite this failing, so I'm going to keep playing, but I imagine a lot of people looked at the number of basic errors in the first few hours of play, thought "These people haven't bothered finishing this before releasing it - no thanks", and got a refund.
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Post by CdrPlatypus on Nov 7, 2015 14:34:51 GMT -5
I'm disappointed by your attitude regarding not wanting to "fix it for free" Community has been a big part of TB games. My English isn't the best, but when I notice something I make a note of it and report it in the respective bug thread. TB is always quick to respond and push fixes whether language or bugs.
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Post by mikehg on Nov 7, 2015 15:10:55 GMT -5
How many lines of text do you estimate there are in the game?
I paid something like £6 for it, and you're now suggesting I proofread it?
I'd do that for an open source game, sure. But no - for a commercial project that simply isn't realistic.
The point is if the developers aren't great at English, which, fair enough, some people aren't (I personally can write fairly well, but I can't code for toffee), they should find a friend who can do it for a reasonable rate. It would take a matter of hours if given every string.
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Post by ntsheep on Nov 7, 2015 16:24:42 GMT -5
No one is perfect. I got A's in my English classes in high school and college but I still make mistakes. In this day and age, typos at any level of business are the norm for anything it seems. The spell checker built into this forum has a bad habit of flagging some words as wrong when they aren't. As others have mentioned, the TB's do their best where other game companies do nothing at all in most cases. They've been known to fix bugs in just a few hours after they were reported. If you really liked the game and thought that the TB's deserve to succeed then you wouldn't think it wrong or a trouble to you to point out things like spelling errors. If there are *literally* hundreds as you say, then you've already taken the time to note them and count them. Your attitude of "I'll fix it if they pay me" is nothing more than a blackmail attempt and you sir are nothing but a crook.
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Post by Cory Trese on Nov 7, 2015 16:36:28 GMT -5
Thanks a lot for all the feedback. We'll work to improve!
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Post by mikehg on Nov 7, 2015 16:50:23 GMT -5
No one is perfect. I got A's in my English classes in high school and college but I still make mistakes. In this day and age, typos at any level of business are the norm for anything it seems. The spell checker built into this forum has a bad habit of flagging some words as wrong when they aren't. As others have mentioned, the TB's do their best where other game companies do nothing at all in most cases. They've been known to fix bugs in just a few hours after they were reported. If you really liked the game and thought that the TB's deserve to succeed then you wouldn't think it wrong or a trouble to you to point out things like spelling errors. If there are *literally* hundreds as you say, then you've already taken the time to note them and count them. Your attitude of "I'll fix it if they pay me" is nothing more than a blackmail attempt and you sir are nothing but a crook. Are you God-damn serious? You want me to painstakingly go through a commercial game noting down all spelling and grammar errors for free, because... well, I like playing it? Your English is pretty good. Presumably you've just volunteered to proofread the entire thing when the Trese brothers send you the text. Very generous of you - cheers. |
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Post by fallen on Nov 7, 2015 17:02:28 GMT -5
Are you God-damn serious? You want me to painstakingly go through a commercial game noting down all spelling and grammar errors for free, because... well, I like playing it? Your English is pretty good. Presumably you've just volunteered to proofread the entire thing when the Trese brothers send you the text. Very generous of you - cheers. - thanks for the posts and for the feedback. We're always working hard to improve. As a very small studio, that has meant we have relied on our community for years to help us do so. The posters on the thread have helped us improve the games in many ways by posting over the years, not just typos, but balance issues, new ideas, feature requests etc. I hope you'll take this all with more of a ... "these developers are here, listening and working hard to improve even though they have a small budget and a tiny team. And, they work very closely with their community" ... vibe than anything else. All that said, thanks for the kick in the pants. It's time to grow up in the English department. Thanks to everyone for being nice, friendly, and understanding we all have very different perspectives on this. |
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Post by Cory Trese on Nov 7, 2015 17:04:31 GMT -5
Be mad at me, not each other. Seriously, I'm the one that is responsible for all the messed up text.
We're already searching for an editor and of course taking feedback from players.
The money is really tight here, so we had to balance the expenses between dozens of competing parts.
Hopefully over the next few releases we'll be able to increase the quality to a level you find more acceptable.
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Post by Cory Trese on Nov 7, 2015 17:08:15 GMT -5
Locked: This thread isn't going anywhere positive.
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