Kickstarter rewards as DLC?

I’d have to go with yes, as some of us only discovered kickstarter after Stonehearth had been backed… As you’re suggesting DLC, the backers would obviously get their fair share of free stuff, reflective of how much they pledged!

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Careful using “DLC”, that is a term with a lot of negative feelings associated with it. Especially if the place is about to get flooded with Steam users who will mistakenly believe Stonehearth is going to be microtransactioned up the you-know-where.

I have some mixed feelings about this. I have been regretting for quite some time now not backing the kickstarter at a higher level than I did. Unfortunately I stumbled upon Stonehearth quite by accident with only hours to spare in the campaign, and it was only the third project I ever backed. Being very new to Kickstarter, and knowing basically nothing about the team behind Stonehearth, $30 was all I was willing to risk. That means I’ll get a “Cuddly Kitten” but as soon as I figured out that Stonehearth was going to be a big deal, I wished I had backed at the $50 level or higher, which means I would also get a “Really Cute Puppy”. Knowing what I know now, I probably would’ve backed at the level to get the soundtrack and a t-shirt.

So all those things that were (probably) kickstarter exclusives, I want now and regret not getting. If they were available as add-ons now, even right now today, I would probably pay for them gladly.

On the other hand, I don’t want this to be a game that releases “pet packs” and other such things that probably should just be content everyone gets for free, especially if we’re talking about content that can easily be modded in.

So, why not let everyone who wants to chip in an extra $x to upgrade their kickstarter pledge after the fact, while the game is still in Alpha, and then when the game is officially released don’t do any DLCs. Early supporters can still get something special, and people late to the party can just be jealous, rather than feeling like they’re being milked a few dollars at a time.

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True, but I don’t know of any better term TBH. Can hardly call it an expansion pack after all :laughing: .

Up the wazoo?

Yeah, this is the thing I’ve been interested in with these polls. So far, people seem rather split WRT pet packs after launch, but there’s a large majority in favour of releasing the KS rewards as DLC at some point (not day 1 though).

Well, I doubt Radiant well end up turning SH into a Sims game with 300 “expansion packs” that add 2 new pieces of furniture each :smiley: .

I actually asked @Sdee about this several months ago & it wasn’t possible, at least not through Kickstarter etc. Radiant would likely have to set up a Paypal account & do it all that way. I’d happily do this as well mind you

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I already know it’s not possible through kickstarter, but I’m perfectly happy to throw more money at Radiant’s way if they set up a PayPal and have some way of checking against who already backed for however much.

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Pets are as innocent as TF2’s hats. I, for one, would gladly buy some of them just for the sake of having done so and supporting our masters at Radiant.

If others don’t want to buy pets, they don’t have to. As you’ve said there will probably be plenty of pet mods and possibly some more features to pets in the vanilla game.

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Eh Im indiffernt to the idea. It would be cool to have a fancy pet seeing I made it to the game a couple days after the kickstarted ended (I’m more upset because I didn’t get to back the game then get the loot perks), but I am fine with the idea of have fox friends as my town pet. They are equally as cute and a army of foxes is a force to be recorded with.

On the other hand if “DLC” was to come out in the far away future, I would be down to get it.

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So, for Kickstarter, I completely get and understand that those who were able to back early should get that perk. 1,000,000% behind that. That being said, I do think that some average version of pets should make it into the game for the rest of us who were forced, for whatever reason, to adopt late. I agree that doing it as a DLC thing is difficult at best with the modding community out there, so I think there’s not much other option out there other than letting the folks have some puppies and kittens, but possibly without a trick behavior or something else. Maybe the dog finds bones every once and a while, and brings them back to the hearthlings (bones alternatively coming as drops from defeated undead). The kitty could occasionally catch a fish or bird and bring it to the food stores. (And as I suggest this, I realize how awesome this would be, and desperately wish for this to just be normal pet behavior :sweat:) Or maybe they dance.

Either way, I love having pets in games, and would absolutely love to see more of them in SH.

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I’m VERY STEONGLY in the same shoes as @Bastiaan_Doolhoff, as I was a $30 backer, just for the kitty. If I knew it’d be a non exclusive later, and sorry to be that guy, I wouldn’t have backed as much. To see it as a chance of not being exclusive, I feel kinda ripped off.

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DLC pets and Kickstarter pets don’t have to be the same.

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Well the first poll is specifically about KS rewards being used as DLC rewards, but certainly the “pet packs” would presumably feature brand new stuff.

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I feel that people should be able to get those pets, as people (such as me) missed the kick-starter. I personally found it the day after it closed. I have purchased the game in support of the devs. I think it is unfair that people who missed the kick starter should be punished by not having access to elemnts of the game.

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ell in some ways the whole point of the kick-starter rewards is so that those who back the game can get uber awesome exclusives to make everyone else jealous…

however, that doesnt mean i dont want to get them in any way possible :wink:

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I’d like to share my story for a moment. @Paulsoaresjr introduced me to Stonehearth in his pre-pre-alpha video. I might have checked out the Kickstarter, but I forgot all about it and Stonehearth in general for quite some time. In fact, I only bought Stonehearth after he revisited it in Alpha 5 - more than a year later.

So, honestly, my bad memory is the only reason I won’t have a cuddly kitten.

It’s up to you all to decide whether that’s fair or not.

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That’s one side of the coin, now what about the other side? How is it fair to people that payed more than you, some even double what you did, and yet you get the same things as them?

I forgot how I found it, but at the time I was excited for it and backed it. Then I kinda forgot about it till a while later I got an email that I had access to this game I didn’t even remember backing at the time.

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The more I think about @Lepoard200’s comment, the more I think I’ve figured out a way to make everything fair. Charge the same amounts as the backers would have cost.

If you want the base game with kittens, $30.
Want it with dogs too? $50.
And so on.

Then people that missed the kickstarter could still get the benefits, FOR THE SAME PRICE.

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I thought that was a given! :smile:

imo that is a bad solution. Kickstarter payers still dont have their unique pet. Others have to pay too much for a pet.
Imagine at steam you have a DLC of $20 for a useless pet-dog. That is insane. It works for kickstarter, but not for selling DLC.

The only solution I see is to create a DLC package after release with pets in it. But OTHER pets. Free or a couple of $ I dont mind.

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Maybe not on Steam, but certainly Origin :wink:

I agree that the cat/dog should be reserved for Kickstarter backers. Perhaps, rather than being a DLC, the other pets you suggested could be unlocked through some achievements system in the game? Payed DLCs are quite unpopular, and if they are going to be free they might as well be in the game to begin with.

On a different note, I imagine as soon as the Kickstarter pets are added, someone will find them in the game files and make them into a mod. I hope Radiant will be able to stop this somehow, as it would render the Kickstarter reward useless.

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I wasn’t thinking of it like that, but more like games that have;

  • $20 Base Game
  • $30 Founder’s Pack
  • $50 Uber Pack
    and so on that only give a couple extra things per pack.

The only problem with the idea of DLC for this game is that people can mod in anything they can think of, so DLC for pets seems kinda pointless…

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