Rugby '15 announced

[DuncTheDoodle]

Yeah, nothing. I sense I may have outstayed my never-existent welcome.

 

[Groundhog]

Threaten to kidnap his kids Dunc, that's always worked for me.

 

[j-dawg]

Got to admire this marketing strategy

 

[Floody]

I've just been talking over twitter with Peter Garcin, he's an executive producer an HB Studios. I asked him just a few simple questions in the hope that he might reply.

Here's the small conversation we had. It's not much but I thought I'd share it.

@rawktron hey pete, do you have any news on Rugby 15? The community needs more information man. Cheers

@Floody_Mike soon! Everyone is working hard on the game-rebuilt the entire thing from the ground up. So big changes.

@rawktron is there any chance we will see customization available in the game like the golf club. For instance a stadium creator?

@Floody_Mike we're really focused on the core game this time: gameplay, AI-get it right so we can build from there.

@rawktron sounds good. How far down the line do you think it will be until things like screenshots and trailers could be released?

@Floody_Mike you'll start seeing that stuff really soon I'd say. Another month or so?

@rawktron thats awesome man. Thanks for taking the time to answer some questions from the community. Cheers

@Floody_Mike no prob! Have a good one!

Feel free to tweet the guy and ask some questions for yourself, or perhaps we could get together and pile up all our questions and just fire them all at Pete.

 

[TRF C A Iversen]

Sounds like not much in the customisation area, hopefully it's not as sparse as RWC 2011, which was diabolical.

 

[Stobart13]

People will never seem to be happy, HB and Bigben have a good idea at rebuilding the game and not focusing on all the fancy stuff with it, of course it would be nice to have a game with good gameplay and customization but its not possible, lets get the groundwork first which in games is all about how well it plays and how well the AI reacts to certain things before we worry about customization etc.

 

[HemiBro]

People will never seem to be happy, HB and Bigben have a good idea at rebuilding the game and not focusing on all the fancy stuff with it, of course it would be nice to have a game with good gameplay and customization but its not possible, lets get the groundwork first which in games is all about how well it plays and how well the AI reacts to certain things before we worry about customization etc.

Exactly, the fact that they've said they plan to put a new one out each year plus saying they want to start from scratch as far as gameplay is concerned is a great sign. The first release may be lacking customization and online but personally I would rather they get the AI and gameplay right from the beginning and then build from there. Positive signs in my opinion, cant wait to see some screenshots etc!

 

[TRF C A Iversen]

People will never seem to be happy, HB and Bigben have a good idea at rebuilding the game and not focusing on all the fancy stuff with it, of course it would be nice to have a game with good gameplay and customization but its not possible, lets get the groundwork first which in games is all about how well it plays and how well the AI reacts to certain things before we worry about customization etc.

People will never seem to be happy? That's rubbish. There's whining about customisation, wanting a ridiculous level of ability to edit a game and then there's hoping for something basic to be incorporated for good reason.

If you can't customise names, faces, stats, teams and basic uniform colours, then you're literally miles behind a much smaller market in Rugby League. Has Rugby League suddenly sprung up to be a global powerhouse, that has more worldwide fans than Rugby Union? Did this happen when I wasn't looking? The Rugby League Live series is selling well and has great editing and a much smaller market. Even it's first edition (whilst basic) allowed people to customise whole competitions along with just about anything else.

If there is zero customisation, not only does that put this game behind Rugby League, you also make the game highly unmarketable outside of the areas of the licensed competitions. For example if International teams cannot be licensed you have a situation where England play with players like Martin Tully, Rob Elliott & Jack Redbeard against France with Andre Martin, Sebastian Petit & Lucas Durand. For a Southern Hemisphere (currently not mentioned) competition, instead of the ACT Brumbies playing the Wellington Hurricanes, you could have the ACT Wild Horses, playing the Wellington Windstorms.

I mean having 2/3rd's of the World's teams completely and immovably set as non-entities is going to cause no problems at all. The market place will surely respond well. Does anyone seriously think that if they completely leave out all forms of customisation that this game will sell well?


I'm not at all saying that the game won't have customisation at all, but I merely suggested that it would be good if it were a little better than Rugby World Cup 2011's almost non existent offerings. Hopefully it will have some.

Finally, developers do keep an eye on larger discussion communities and have in the past responded to requests, maybe not so late in the cycle as they sound like they are with this iteration, but it's still important to not come across like you'll accept anything just because it's got the word rugby on the box.

HB Studios do (or at least did) with their previous team care about Rugby games and wished they could make more and keep improving them, but one thing they haven't ever been that great about is community interaction. It seems they are travelling that road again this time. I'll wait and see how things go, but I am hopeful for the product. It's just there hasn't been much out about it at all to know in any meaningful way.

 

[Don't Skip Leg Day]

I think it's fair for people to moan.

Everyone has always said they want

Good simulated rugby
Good AI
Good customisation
Good carrier mode
As many liscenced content as possible


If someone is putting out a game that doesn't have that they deserve to moaned at because we are the customer!

Sidhe did so well apart from carrier mode and computer AI. The only two things that keep you interested really!

 

[TRF C A Iversen]

Sidhe did so well apart from carrier mode and computer AI. The only two things that keep you interested really!

Yeah, they were a fair way off on decent AI and career mode alright.

As for this game, I'm open minded that it could be a great game and yes, I do know that gameplay and a good foundation come first. I just think it's a bit early to judge either way.

 

[Stobart13]

All I was saying is that I'd prefer to have a good solid game that works before we start adding all the extra bits on, isnt that the reason we buy games, to play the game based on the gameplay? At the end of the day the FIFA series doesnt have that much customization, barring the Creation Centre (which isnt on next gen for some reason) so tournaments, kits and teams etc. cannot be added to the game and its still successful

 

[nickdnz]

I don't understand why Rugby 2015 hasn't had any real releases or involvement with the public. This could be the worst promoted game I can think of.

I'd generally be pretty stoked if they managed to grab the licenses they had in EA 06, 08 - and tweaked up the game play to a standard suitable to a PS3 game (and RWC 2011 really wasn't..).

 

[TRF C A Iversen]

All I was saying is that I'd prefer to have a good solid game that works before we start adding all the extra bits on, isnt that the reason we buy games, to play the game based on the gameplay?

Yes and I'm a huge proponent of gameplay first. There's no reason that a game can't have a degree of customisation.

At the end of the day the FIFA series doesnt have that much customization, barring the Creation Centre (which isnt on next gen for some reason) so tournaments, kits and teams etc. cannot be added to the game and its still successful

I was talking about far, far less than FIFA and apparently that was complaining. Fifa has an astronomically huge amount of customisation compared to Rugby World Cup 2011.

When it comes to licensing and customisation, those two reasons were one of the major reasons Fifa was still successful at all in the early 2000's. It was nowhere near as good a game as it has become, although it had so many licenses, that it sold. It had so much customisation, that it could make up for what licenses it didn't have, so it sold. They were huge reasons for the success of those ***les, particularly at that time. PES was very strong, particularly then, with customisation once again a huge selling point along with the gameplay.

To say FIFA would have been as successful if it had only two nations club licenses and you couldn't edit anything, would be to deny common sense.

 

[Don't Skip Leg Day]

I think what gets me is that in rugby wc 11 they didn't even put any thought into longevity of the game.

The had all the 6 nations teams but no 6 nations? They had tours, but no player management in those tours.

It was such a rushed job and it feels like HB are saying that it's ok not to offer those things!

 

[euanmc21]

people keep saying no custimisation so far from what that french company talked about we can create leagues and tournaments so we do have some custimisation in the game and hopefully there'll be more options on what to create such as teams players etc

 

[TRF C A Iversen]

people keep saying no custimisation so far from what that french company talked about we can create leagues and tournaments so we do have some custimisation in the game and hopefully there'll be more options on what to create such as teams players etc

No-one is saying there isn't any. It was originally said that I hope there'll be more than Rugby World Cup 2011 and was then twisted by others, now including yourself.

 

[Rugbybrain]

I still say, they just have to take the gameplay and graphics from Rugby Challenge 2 and the run-on plays of RWC11.. take the best out of both games and make a AWESOME one!

 

[Zoso]

....they just have to take the gameplay from Rugby Challenge 2....

mmmh no, please stop arcade gameplay

 

[Don't Skip Leg Day]

The AI needs some intelligence, in fact needs loads more intelligence for supporting you when you have the ball and playing a AI that will score properly and not from a 1000meter offload!

 

[Rhys4Wales]

Guinness announced as new Pro 12 Sponsor so hopefully a announcement will happen soon