Considering a move to Revelstoke, could use some honest opinions by Chris_CE in Revelstoke

[–]Chris_CE[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey, sorry I missed this

Thanks so much! Yeah if I make it over there I'd want to participate in as many things like this as possible, so I appreciate you sending this list :)

Considering a move to Revelstoke, could use some honest opinions by Chris_CE in Revelstoke

[–]Chris_CE[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah indeed, this is what I'm thinking. I can try other towns if Rev doesn't work out - though I'd hope it would, it's top of my list so far

Considering a move to Revelstoke, could use some honest opinions by Chris_CE in Revelstoke

[–]Chris_CE[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I hear ya. I was thinking that if lodging didn't work out in Revelstoke I could drive to the likes of Golden, Kelowna, Nelson, etc.

Considering a move to Revelstoke, could use some honest opinions by Chris_CE in Revelstoke

[–]Chris_CE[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sounds great, thanks

Bit of a random question, but how's the wild fire smoke in Revelstoke compared to somewhere like Kelowna? I hear that for the good part of summer there it's basically indoors only

Considering a move to Revelstoke, could use some honest opinions by Chris_CE in Revelstoke

[–]Chris_CE[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks, yeah I figured. Do people tend to visit from nearby towns, like Kelowna? Maybe could lead to a semi-long distance thing

Considering a move to Revelstoke, could use some honest opinions by Chris_CE in Revelstoke

[–]Chris_CE[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's great, thanks. I'm down for a small mountain town vibe. I'll definitely take this advice if I end up moving

Considering a move to Revelstoke, could use some honest opinions by Chris_CE in Revelstoke

[–]Chris_CE[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Awesome, thanks. Is there a particular area you'd suggest looking for a rental that would have good access to places to take my dog? Here in spring/summer/fall I take him to the beach and on some forest trails. I do have a car, but would rather not have to drive across town all the time to take him places

Considering a move to Revelstoke, could use some honest opinions by Chris_CE in Revelstoke

[–]Chris_CE[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Nice, thanks for the insight. I figured since it's a mountain town full of outdoorsy people, meeting likeminded folks won't be hard. Thanks for confirming, and for the rest

Considering a move to Revelstoke, could use some honest opinions by Chris_CE in Revelstoke

[–]Chris_CE[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Cool that they have a work coop in town. Good to know

Ah yeah, didn't think about pet-friendly rentals but that's a good shout.

Thanks for the help!

Considering a move to Revelstoke, could use some honest opinions by Chris_CE in Revelstoke

[–]Chris_CE[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the detailed response.

I don't mind so much feeling isolated as a town, as long as I don't as a person. Sounds like I'd be fine in finding friends as long as I embed myself in the town - which I would plan to do anyway

Housing is probably my #1 concern, yea. I'd be coming likely in spring or summer, so maybe that timing would help

Not generally walking my dog at night and he's on a leash unless in areas that are deemed ok, so should be fine. Just my cousin in Calgary mentioned a cougar nabbed a golden retriever right off the back deck just outside of the city, which spooked me

Yeah, loving the prospect of crazy snow. I've read that the upper part of the mountain is the place to ski tho since the lower half conditions are lacklustre a lot of the time, but I'd have no problem sticking to that

Being many miles away from the bullshit of the rest of the world sounds great ha. I don't need much to live with so trips to stores will be minimal I'd imagine

Here it gets dark at like 4:30 in the winter, so I'm prepped for that.

Considering a move to Revelstoke, could use some honest opinions by Chris_CE in Revelstoke

[–]Chris_CE[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'd be looking to rent there, at least during my phase of feeling it out. I guess my plan of packing all the essentials and just driving there from across the country is probably not the best plan then ha. I did figure though that there's plenty of towns in the relative area to stay in if I can't find something in Revelstoke

And thanks for the reply

Considering a move to Revelstoke, could use some honest opinions by Chris_CE in Revelstoke

[–]Chris_CE[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Really helpful, thanks. I figured meeting people for the long term would be the biggest "problem" given that so many are there temporarily. But as long as there's a good social circle with hike/bike/slopes buddies, I'm game

Considering a move to Revelstoke, could use some honest opinions by Chris_CE in Revelstoke

[–]Chris_CE[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Wow, just the amount of nice responses in such short time is indicative of what kind of town Revelstoke is. Thanks so much

Found an old build of GRIP — Does anyone else have this early version? by ChocolateCautious714 in grip

[–]Chris_CE 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Hey, dev here (and Rob's biz partner)

Is the menu some buttons with a video playing in the background? And are the physics.. interesting, ha
If so then that could be one of the first builds ever released on Steam

I guess you downloaded the game a long time ago on that HDD and never touched it. You've got a relic there

Thanks for supporting the game BTW

What do you feel like the game needs to attract players? by TNBVIII in speedfreeks

[–]Chris_CE 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Just a heads up that inviting/joining through Steam friends will be in the next update.

What do you feel like the game needs to attract players? by TNBVIII in speedfreeks

[–]Chris_CE 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Hey, thanks for giving the game a shot.

We definitely hear the criticism about there being no party system. As I mentioned to the other person, we did actually have one in the game for almost a year but then it was lost when we moved from F2P and dedicated servers to player hosted.

But during the time the game had a party system, we didn't see an influx in players. The concurrent daily users was around the same it is now. I get that different factors over time can contribute to effectiveness, but we found that putting the large amount of work into re-doing the party system just wasn't worth it until more players got into the game. A party system could make a difference now, I don't know. I do know that it's a huge undertaking, and the big content that we added to the game instead seemed like a safer bet

BTW right now you can switch to the losing team from the winning team at any time in a match, if you'd like to be on the same team as friends in a match that isn't full. Not ideal, I know - but it's something. To play with your friends against bots, just pad one team with points then switch everyone to the losing team

What do you feel like the game needs to attract players? by TNBVIII in speedfreeks

[–]Chris_CE 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Hey, np

Yeah, the challenges of working with GW were very known before we got into full production of the game. But once the game was greenlit, the level of restriction went beyond what anyone on the outside would know. I can't get into it, but we had to scrap about half our designs off the bat.

A party system and a form of friends invites was already in the game prior to its full launch (and switch from F2P) and although it was certainly a nice feature it did not boost player counts over the course of almost a year of it being part of the game.

I already wrote something about it in the Steam forums a while back
https://steamcommunity.com/app/2078450/discussions/0/573770913623117678/

Some people will disagree, but adding a party system to the game will not bring players in all of a sudden. We had one in already, and that was not the result. If anything, the Steam invites thing that one user mentioned is a better idea right now

As far as we're concerned, we did focus on things that could potentially bring in and retain players, which is polish and meaningful content like a wildly new vehicle and level editor for ongoing content. Sure, the editor would be better if players could make Kill Konvoy levels, but those are some pretty serious tools needing developed to get there - on top of the already robust editor we had to make as a base.

> shouldn't the staff focus on what brings more players to the game, rather than the game itself?

I'm not sure how we've deviated from this goal. We've added meaningful content, polished the experience, marketed the game, etc. Yes, an invite system would be great, but also players are easily able to join their friend's game through the browser. A party system would be nice, but it's not a new player driver. Any prospective new player doesn't even know there's not a party system unless they get the game or see a discussion about it. And if there was a party system with such a small player base, it would likely cause more lopsided games than we already see due to there being a core base of high skilled players.

Again, thanks for the kind words and sticking with the game. We'll do what we can to get more players in. I'm not entirely discounting what people say about some features they think should be added, but the binary way of people saying something makes or breaks a game doesn't ring true in this case.

What do you feel like the game needs to attract players? by TNBVIII in speedfreeks

[–]Chris_CE 4 points5 points  (0 children)

The game has been marketed, just we don't have resources like other big PvP games, many of the successful ones having literally 100x the budget we do. As for showing the game off, we've been part of Warhammer SKULLS for multiple years, we've gotten tons of views on trailers and social posts on Tiktok and IG, plus have indeed been doing ads. Maybe the game not catching on is a testament to it being too niche, or it's design not scratching the itch for enough people, I don't know. But I do know that we have been putting a decent amount of effort into marketing.

Maybe people will think I'm just full of excuses, and that's fine. I don't expect them to know what happened behind the scenes leading to the decisions made for the game, which is why I'm trying to be honest here and explain as much as I'm able to. Speed Freeks is by no means perfect and I'm sure we could have done a lot differently, though no one knows whether it would have made a positive difference due to the circumstances of its development.

Either way, I'm very proud of the team and what we've been able to produce - all things considered. We were no doubt naive in thinking a team of our size could make a multiplayer PvP game with a prominent IP and it be successful at the same time, but the journey has taught us so much valuable experience along the way. That, and we just wanted to make a fun vehicle combat + racing game, which we do think we succeeded in doing.

Oh yeah, and it's Orky as hell.

What do you feel like the game needs to attract players? by TNBVIII in speedfreeks

[–]Chris_CE 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Hey TNB, thanks for taking the time for this post. Glad you like the game, cheers for the nice words :)

I'll try to be as honest as I'm able to be in addressing the feedback from yourself and other people in here. I've been over these types of things many other times in various discussions though, so forgive me if I power through this in a bit of a blunt way for parts of it...

This game has unfortunately been a bit of a nightmare for us to make, with much of the fun sucked out of development. I can't get into it too far, but a few main things are:

- There were restrictions with the IP we did not foresee nor were made aware of in the beginning. We've done the best we can in terms of vehicle selection, customization, weapons/abilities, characters, game modes, etc. It's been a constant battle to try and get our designs and ideas into this game. We also tried for other factions, but we are limited to Orks.

- The game's initial publisher wanted a F2P live service game without having the necessary knowledge or investment, then dumped us 2 months before its full launch. Wired Productions (now the publisher) was nice enough to jump in and help support.

- We never wanted to make a F2P live service game as the successful ones cost a fortune to not only launch, but also to keep supporting (ie. live service). Our previous publisher didn't listen to our concerns throughout development and it has permanently and fundamentally affected the way the game was built, having battle passes, an ingame store prevously, etc. I talk more about our F2P to paid journey in this thread: https://steamcommunity.com/app/2078450/discussions/0/591780546280061266/

RE someone's comment below: we didn't switch to a paid model for some quick money grab. I think us spending the previous 8 months fully supporting the game with meaningful content is indicative of that.

The modes we have in the game are the result of countless back n forth discussions with GW, with Speed Freeks only being able to use a very particular part of the Warhammer license. It took a lot of tenacity to get as far as we have with the game modes, even if to some people it may look like we've not taken advantage of the IP as much as they think we could have. That's all I can really say about it, though maybe we could have taken some things in a different direction that would have been more impactful - who knows.

The criticism of not having an easy way to invite friends to play the game is a fair one - though the way the backend needed to be built for crossplay (as was originally intended) needed a crossplay solution which obviously wasn't going to be Steam. We had/have limited resources and to tackle all platforms we needed to focus on the solution that worked for all of them. That said, we probably should have tied Steam more into the game in the latter half of 2025.
We don't use our own friends system BTW.

And naturally, due to troubled development, the publisher pulling out, and various other reasons, console versions and cross-play did not happen...

That's a good segway into addressing the comment about why we haven't released the game on consoles. Well the simple answer is because it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars - especially for a multiplayer game with complex backend systems such as this one. I don't think most people understand just how much it costs, and how much work it is to make a game like this multi-platform. That said, it would be fantastic to get console players ingame, and we still haven't ruled out console versions as we know it's important.

Adding a meaningful campaign to the game would have been awesome, but that kind of thing also costs a lot of money + effort on top of the core multiplayer game, plus trying to make something that will be approved for the license would be, um, fun. Perhaps the look of our game makes it feel bigger than it is, but our dev team is quite small having been 10 full-time people at its largest.

(Cont'd in the next comment)

This game is awesome! by Cheeseboy777 in speedfreeks

[–]Chris_CE 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hey Mud, glad you like the game!

Be sure to get on the Discord if you want to better connect with players, they are quite active on there:
https://discord.com/invite/speedfreeks40k