Comments - Alandauron

Verbally abusing others...lmao so a smear campaign on me.

The truth is I told Dan that if he had expectations of me then to let me know otherwise just remove me from the team. I joined on because I wanted to help but also had real life issues that were more important than a mod I wasn't going to be paid to create. Someone else joined with the time to work on the co-op and did a wonderful job with that. The team is great and I wish them all the best but I find it funny that Dan wants to claim I was removed for verbal abuse of any kind.

1. Dan said HE was going to do the co-op mod himself and I told him to let me know when he decided to start on it and I would help out. I was not going to make the mod for him for free though without his contribution to it.

2. I got along great with the other members and only ever exchanged words with Dan because I was willing to question his decisions. I kept those exchanges between myself and Dan though.

3. I have given Dan plenty of credit, it is very time consuming working with companies and keeping fans involved in development which he has done a great job at.

4. I volunteered to help in other ways, updating the website which hasn't changed in over a year, making some small mods that involved rescuing "Team Dragonpunk", and some other things and he told me that wasn't until later so I returned to my own projects.

Dan I'll say this again, I hope you succeed at this but considering your sensitivity to criticism I fear you don't have it in you to do business in the game industry. Also as I stated on your FB before you deleted it I'm not surprised that 2K didn't go for it because your support is relatively small in comparison to the other mod team that is being supported and really small in the scope of a publisher looking for potential profits. Good luck, please try and stop being so sensitive though, you need thicker skin in the game industry. Look at the amount of criticism XCom 2 received, also Destiny at launch.

Lol, yea that was my thoughts while they were actively working toward the Kickstarter. I couldn't help thinking that it would have been better to create mods without trying to be so high profile and then, if they gained popularity, taken the road they started out with.

Dan, the one who came up with the concept, was trying to attach Dragonpunk to 2K and to get support and funding towards making an "official" paid dlc to XCom 2. So not so much a paid mod as an expansion pack of some sort. Also over 90% of the coding has been done by one person, Elad who has done a great job, but Dan has to work his job as well as deal with all the business aspects so he hasn't been as helpful as he had hoped to be on the project.

Dan made a big statement before XCom 2 even launched and talked about committing a large amount of funds to developing the project. With the C&D he is now backing out of that statement and commitments he talked about, for good reason of course, and is changing focus to trying to make a "AAA" demo to show the concept. I hope they manage but I have grown skeptical about whether or not Dan will manage in the game industry, especially with him taking down a comment I made(on their Facebook page) that merely pointed out that Dragonpunk has relatively small support [in comparison] which is most likely why 2K didn't go for the pitch. 1200 signatures is nothing when Long War(a mod for XCom Enemy Unknown) was done completely for free and received much more recognition and support than Dragonpunk. I think Long War had 100,000 unique downloads and over 15,000(compared to 1200 signatures) endorsements before Firaxis and 2K ever made any acknowledgements about supporting them.

The Sci-Fi Fantasy overhaul won't be done on XCom 2. Currently they have a few mods out but nothing that makes a significant change to XCom 2 anywhere close to their desired goal. If you're interested in Dragonpunk keep an eye on their Twitter account as that's where they make all their announcements, but don't buy XCom 2 for that Sci-Fi fantasy experience, it isn't there.

They were planning on make the Long War 2 mod 4-player co-op in tactical missions but have abandoned that since receiving the C&D...if it can be called a C&D, it was a weird one to be sure. They were only told not to request support from Firaxis/2K in continuing their plans and to not solicit money from players, which makes sense. If for some reason Dragonpunk wasn't delivered, or if the delivery was extremely lacking 2K would receive the same amount of criticism as Team Dragonpunk, and they would be impacted more by the criticism.

Dan, the one who came up with the Dragonpunk concept, wants to lead a AAA development team, or at least that's what it sounds like from everything I've gathered while following this project. He has been busy working in another job so hasn't had the time to contribute to the project and has been paying others with the money he earns to work toward his goals.

Overall it's a very ambitious project that I hope succeeds, but I've grown skeptical as Dan made a bunch of promises that he's now backing out on. Life happens and plans change and all that, but their support is relatively small in the scheme of things and the goals are way too big given the low amount of support. I think the focus should be changed to indie otherwise this is all likely to go absolutely nowhere, but only time will tell.

From the other article it looks as if Take Two was very professional, they denied the Kickstarter because it would attach Dragonpunk to them, but were fine with the continuation of modding for XCom 2. From how it reads Dan wants to make sure he can pay his artists so doesn't want to continue with modding, which is his right, and so technically shut that part down himself.

We can't really blame Take Two in this regard because comparatively speaking there is very little real support for Dragonpunk and there is also relatively little to show for their work so far. Such is what happens when working primarily on paying artists rather than developing the mod with existing assets though. Very costly to pay artists and modelers for their time.