I...have serious doubts about this. I'm sorry, but I view with considerable cynicism a claim of needing more money when the last, I dunno, half-decade or so has seen a ton of unfulfilled promises and such. He's saying that Sryth is his main method of making money, so he's been focusing on multi-player scenarios and special packages and heaven knows what, at the cost of actual game development and interesting adventures. It's not completely dead, but it's...wobbly, at the least. The way you keep people playing is by giving them more of what they like, not by becoming aggressively interested in the money of your players.

In other words, I hope this does, in fact, precede new and better things, but I'm not in a position to consider backing, and even if I were, I'm not sure I would.

I, like Jade, must be one hell of a cynic. I don't actually see anything in the Kickstarter page that would imply that the game becomes less focused on getting more money out of you. All I see is another avenue for income. He doesn't promise any easement of costs, and in fact the backer rewards are full of nothing but adventurer tokens, which sounds like the financial floodgates are gonna remain wide open.

I have no issues paying to play a game I love, but man. The money required to play Sryth? Do you know how many AAA titles I could buy with that, full of voice acting, awesome audio engineering, and (not that it matters to us) spectacular graphics, all of which Sryth just can't boast.

I appreciate that Sryth is an amazing adventure. It's wonderfully accessible. It's astoundingly addictive and intriguing... It's also bloody well expensive. I've bought books with more content that cost so much less, so I think I'll just live my epic fantasy dreams through those, and through muds.

Kai

I'm afraid I lost all confidence in Sryth when it became clear that it was entirely a a pay to win game, I was there at the start in 2004, and occasionally have been back since, but  all the new updates were all about paying for advantage, this after you've actually subscribed to the game.
I'm more than happy to pay to support a developer, I'm even happy to buy in game items if they will let me play more of the game, but just having to buy bigger and bigger weapons or lottery tickets to get those bigger weapons just seems like a cash grab to me, and now the kickstarter just sounds like another. especially when you consider how dam much some of those huge damage weapons are!

The irony is if the gm of sryth had actually focused on more paid modules and selling adventures, as he did back with the original secret of stoneback hill, I'd have probably supported the project, since I'm always up to pay for game content, but  just to even keep pace with current content, especially when that content doesn't actually let me explore much, no thanks, there are plenty of other games I can look to a good experience of textual rpgs and the like.

Its sad, I still hold nostalgic associations about Sryth, it was there that I first ran into Bryan p who introduced me to audiogames, but really it seems the game has gone down a very bad direction, and each and everytime I checked back in, it just seemed to be getting worse.

Seems like I haven't missed much since I stopped playing the game back in 2009.

I have great memories of Sryth also like dark and jade. I was back there with dark in the early days, and it was very exciting and oh so fun and new. I've sunk hundreds into sryth also and its been fun, but I'll go no further.
Thanks anyway.

Now we'll see if he actually follows through on his promises. I have my doubts, but I hope I'm wrong.

I backed it, so I hope things improve also.  it's been a long time since I last played, so I'm in discovery mode again which is great.  Interestingly enough, the experience on a phone is pretty nice.  Just wish I was better at mapping dungeons...

I'm pleased to have seen it succeed, but when I saw all the rewards people could get, I was very conflicted. On one hand, if I was a millionaire I might've helped out in a big way just to wield a big stick, because wow. At the same time, though? So, so, so many random boosts and stuff, so that there are constant ways to use them to effect against others. It's not just about you having a "click to win" button, essentially, but with the huge focus on multiplayer stuff, having bonuses to skill checks, improved stamina and such, not to mention all the other benefits? It's just a lot.
So I will be interested to see how many of the literally hundreds of loose ends he fixes in the next year. I will be watching carefully.