I pulled my pledge a little bit ago. The campaign has been over for a while, but rather than using that as an excuse to leave it there "because it won't deduct anyways," I decided against giving a backer count +1 and a small pledge sum. I was obviously incredibly excited about this whole project but over that past 40 days, like so many other people, that excitement was strangled any time it would rebuild by even a tiny bit. There's no way I can justify letting myself give imaginary money to a Kickstarter project that developers have given up on.
Every so often VR will comment about their hard work behind the scenes and if that's the case, they can get funded behind the scenes. They haven't got the slightest clue on how to run a Kickstarter campaign or crowd funding in general, and it's a fucking shame they didn't seek assistance before launching this. Dicking around with Unity assets isn't the transparency people keep talking about and more than half the team has gone completely ghost. Let me bring it up for the 30th time: where is your art? What's the last thing that was created for Pantheon besides hastily thrown together lore, brown class icons and some stock Unity crap? Is James truly on the team? Are people actually creating things? The best piece of anything Pantheon related is the ogre art created by some excited fan.
And all this talk about exposure is nonsense. I'd love to see the total page views because I bet there's plenty to have funded this fucker. People come in, see what's on the table, move on without pledging and never return. Removing myself from what Iwantedthis to be shows a project I would have never backed. That hurts to say because I was a total advocate in the beginning, but the illusion is gone. Tiers promise rewards that the Kickstarter pitch contradicts, the team doesn't appear to be all on the same page and half of them can't be bothered to seem excited about their project. Oh and as a pro-tip to VR: while community interaction is nice, you're bringing way more traffic to sites like the Rob and Dan show than they are to you. No offense to anyone, but they've got a tiny audience. That goes for KTAM, too.
I don't see any lessons being learned other, because the website is a mess. From taking money before they were even sure the money was being deposited to the right account to the completely jacked up layout and bad tiers. Sign me up for the people a bit offended by the $15 forum shit, too. The only people that will sub to that are the very people that have been absolutely toxic to the VR Kickstarter page. If they're giving feedback on what the game will be, count me out.
I'll get excited about Pantheon again when I'm given a reason to be excited. Get back with me when there's more to show.