Marketing

[Nick]

First of all, sorry if these questions have been asked before!

I have a question regarding marketing around Oort. It seems you guys have a great idea for a great game, but i dont hear a lot about it.

Is this something you are waiting for untill the product is more complete or?
Just wondering because i truly want Oort to succeed and it would be great if more people knew about it (i mean the more donations, the more the game will grow).

Also, and this is nothing regarding the question above: I donated 15$, but now i want acces faster. Is there a way for me to upgrade my donation and then get alpha or Beta acces (i think you are still in alpha right)?

Argh, all the questions i have and the lust to play this game keep increasing!!

[Havok40k]

Oort is only in pre-alpha, and alpha access has not started yet. I don’t know their marketing plans latter, but for now it’s mostly word of mouth.

You can upgrade your donation package, just mention you made a previous donation when you place your second donation 🙂

[Nick]

Ah thanks for the fast reply! It seems i didn’t miss anything then regarding marketing;)

As for the donations, i’ll try it the way you described later on.

While i’m writing this, another question popped up: A while ago, we needed to fill in some questions about future Oort development. Will there be some feedback on what people answered / wanted or what will be the plan?

[Mr Bismarck]

The update page has already featured the results of the first survey.

PVP was the feature that least excited the userbase, so of course it was the first thing added…

[Nick]

Thanks for the links, will keep an eye on them.

Hmm your comment is spot on.. Looking at the scores one would think this is ignoring the players who gave their input. Beating the whole purpose of the survey.

After reading the comments tho, i kinda understand why they did it. Because this game is still in pre-alpha, i guess they want to implement as much content as possible so that when the game will be playable, it will be exciting for more then just the “creative & exploring” type of player (like me).

Still.. when i first read about Oort, the last thing that came to my mind was pvp (actually it still isn’t comming to my mind). If they spend to much on this point, it will break the focus point wich in my opinion should still be pve (like 85%-90% pve and 10% pvp). Eventually, if this is not the case, i wont be playing for a long time (pvp get’s boring so fast).

Dammit, all my words are based on air.. need to play if i want to have a valid input.. I notice i’m comparing the game allot to minecraft as a minecraft 2.0 with more adventuring / PVE

[Mr Bismarck]

I suspect the combat aspect was already in design for roll-out before they sent out the surveys and so it’s just, (unintentionally), funny timing.

Even so, I’ve back-burnered the game for now and will come back to it when one of the things the community prioritised – crafting or extra exploration – come in.

[James]

Hey everyone, let me give some official answers and background here:

1. Our next step from a marketing perspective is to get the game onto Steam Early Access. This will allow people to discover the game via Steam, pay via Steam, download a native standalone app, and validates the game a little. Once this is done, we’ll be in a better position to promote the game wider.

2. Everyone who buys the game on Steam will also be able to play in the browser.

3. Everyone who buys the game on oortonline.com will also get keys to play on Steam.

4. The perks will only be available on oortonline.com.

5. You can upgrade your purchase – email us and we’ll help you do it. Lots of people have already done this.

6. When we hit the next milestone – we’ll send out another player survey to gather feedback on the direction of the game. However, we read all the forums, and talk with players on twitch, youtube and twitter – so there are lots of opportunities to give feedback. The advantage of the surveys is that _everyone_ is given an equal opportunity even if they’re not hanging on the forums or twitter daily.

7. PvP is quite a polarising feature. Some people want it badly, others aren’t interested. We’re going to make sure both groups are equally satisfied. There will be dangerous PvP worlds and safe non-PvP / pure PvE worlds. Players can then pick the experience they want. PvP will be opt in.

8. We didn’t ignore the feedback and we use it daily and weekly when focusing the team and making priority decision. It’s crazy valuable.

9. We will do an amazing job of the highest priorities (exploring, for example). Look how varied the world generation currently is – now just think how we’ll deal with dungeon generation. It’ll be special.

10. We did start the combat before the survey results were returned. (Thanks, Mr Bismarck).

11. We also crafted the core combat mechanics so that they will be shared between PvE and PvP. We wanted to share the mechanics with the players as quickly as possible and it was much quicker to enable some simple beacon PvP than to create mobs with AI, models, animation, etc. So the PvP was just a short cut.

12. We’re listening to the community and we hope to get better at communicating so that everyone is confident that we’re “on track”. At this early stage of development we’re spending quite a bit of time create systems to enable features, once these are in place you’ll hopefully see more rapid feature releases.

Hope this answers your questions and concerns – shout if there is anything else.

[Nick]

Thanks James for your reply. Good to have some extra info on the subject.

9. We will do an amazing job of the highest priorities (exploring, for example). Look how varied the world generation currently is – now just think how we’ll deal with dungeon generation. It’ll be special.

This is what i’m looking forward to! I think this will determine if the game makes it or breaks 😉

11. We also crafted the core combat mechanics so that they will be shared between PvE and PvP. We wanted to share the mechanics with the players as quickly as possible and it was much quicker to enable some simple beacon PvP than to create mobs with AI, models, animation, etc. So the PvP was just a short cut.

This makes sense. In a way, you guys brought out pvp, but I gues it would be better to look at it as: the main combat mechanics have been created and you guys made it available for player versus player content.

After reading what you wrote: Do you guys have any idea how pvp mechanics will be different from pve mechanics? As follow-up on this question: could you specify this for fighting titans? Is it different from fighting guardians or players?

[Author]

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