A year and a half later, back on Greenlight

After being successfully Greenlit in April 2015
My game, Blood Sweat Gold is back on Greenlight.

It’s a pretty odd situation. I’ve never heard of a game that was Greenlit going back through Steam’s voting system. Let me explain…

In December 2015, I scrapped the entire design and a half complete game and went back to the drawing board. Originally, this was a traditional hex based tactical RPG, along the same vein as a Final Fantasy Tactics. And that was the problem. At core, the game didn’t feel like much more than a crappy version of a thousand other turn based games. It didn’t really do anything new or different.

A year later, I finally have something that I believe is really good.
But I didn't feel it was right to launch under the same Greenlight campaign I ran over a year ago. The game has changed far too dramatically and almost nothing from the original remains.

Why should the game be Greenlit at all? Well, let me tell you about the design I worked very hard on:

Combat on a solid foundation: hybrid Real Time + Turn Based
Inspired by classic isometric games like Divinity Original Sin / Infinity Engine Games

Divinity Original Sin boasts one of the most innovative designs in RPG gaming I’ve ever seen. Most people think of the elemental combat system as their main innovation, and it is truly amazing, but DoS has smaller fundamental innovations beneath that, a combination of:

• Gridless Map (and the complications that come from this)
• Seamless Combat Transition
• Action Point Based Movement

It’s surprising how few (western) turn based games opt for the Gridless map, but there are very real complications and compromises that arise from it. The way that exploration seamlessly transitions into turn based combat in DoS is elegant, and the gridless system meant that they could build a rich world, with rolling hills and rich environment.

Something about movement in DoS felt liberating because of the map. I felt liberated, free to make my own choices unrestrained by squares or hexes.

I tried to take that feeling of freedom and lack of restraint to the next level.

A zoomed out camera in real time mode​

Flexible control over the camera both at 3rd person and top town view.

Close up and personal​

Analog style controls to make the player feel as connected to his characters as possible
Mordheim, City of the Damned was my main inspiration for the analog style WASD controls and use of 3rd person camera, Valkyria Chronicles also played a huge role in designing core system, and of course the Firaxis' XCOM reboot in changing the sensibilities of turn based games in general.

My goal was to make turn based combat into something more visceral, more immersive and more fluid than you generally find in western turn based games.

Turn Based Mechanics are kind of Surreal
So I tried to build in a subtle, but surreal visual representation of time

I believe that turn based game designers have taken for granted the fact that most turn based players accept the bizarre mechanics of turn based movement. “You go, I go, you go...”. I felt that it was important that we as a genre start to address the idea of how time works.

But, truth is, time in turn based games is a very odd beast. You cannot truly make sense of the mechanics involved without really getting into crazy super hero stuff. So I compromised.

My approach then was not to entirely freeze time. Instead time is presented in a warped semi surreal state. Wind still blows through trees and grass, characters are allowed to move very slightly, but will often be frozen in place. I apply a partial desaturation to the camera.

It's hard to tell here, but the primary character is moving his head - time isn't totally frozen

Peasants frozen in place as they flee​

Manipulating animation and 'time' like this was technically challenging
The development of this system was surprisingly technically complex. Animation is run using Root Motion 100% for movement, and handling very rapid shifts in animation speed along with navigation, animation, and responsiveness to attacks and other events got very tricky very fast.




AI movement had to run simultaneously in order to keep consistent with 'time'
The player still needs to be presented critical events, like when they're getting attacked. So these attacks and other critical events are clearly presented and never interrupted.





A side benefit of implementing AI this way is that the game can support engagements that are huge by turn based standards. I can introduce large scale combat in a way that I've never seen done in turn based gaming.

Here's an early prototype of a larger scale AI vs AI battle running in realtime:

Very few turn based games are capable of presenting these kinds of scenarios because the turn time becomes absurdly long. I haven't had a chance to build this functionality into actual scenarios yet, but it's a huge area to explore, with potentially great gaming moments.

Combining all of this together in a turn based game posed real challenges.
Traditionally, most turn based games have very limited viewing areas. By allowing full real time movement and turn based combat with a camera that can be dropped over shoulder, there were problems.

Originally I had hoped to follow convention and dramatically limit the players view, I did research on Fog of War systems, and experimented with some very strange ideas.

Experimenting with Fog of War + 3rd person camera. Yikes!​

In the end, I had to just allow the player a natural viewing area, and although I do use heavy fog, it’s for atmosphere, not to obscure the player’s view.

Instead of cheating by limiting view, I just allowed the AI and the player to interact at potentially long ranges. AI will begin to respond to you at ranges of up to around 100 meteres. This ends up creating some very unusual game play patterns.

Interacting at about 50 meters

Enemies visible at distance​

Since enemies can rush in to reinforce each other from long range, combat can have a more fluid feel. You don’t have reinforcement timers or scripted events, instead, you just look at the reinforcements, try to judge how far they are and how long it’ll take to get to you. It ends up becoming fluid and has even very minor emergent qualities.

There are trade-offs here, you lose some of the distinct separation in having entirely disconnected encounters one screen away from the next as one combat encounter can bleed into another. But I believe in this case, it’s an overall positive as it builds a cohesive experience.

Not "A SUPER REVOLUTION IN GAMING"
But it is a unique spin on Turn Based Combat.
I worked very hard to contribute something to the genre and try to do something new.

Although nothing in BSG is revolutionary the total package is something that I've never seen done before in Turn Based games. I believe that there are meaningful contributions to the genre, things that really haven't been done much (or at all), while still feeling natural to turn based veterans.

If you're interested, you can view some raw game play footage here

Unfortunately, it isn't doing particularly well on Greenlight.
It can't break the all important 50% yes vote barrier and that's a very real concern. The voting has flatlined and steam is not pushing many people to it. I'm worried about the games future, and more importantly, about the release I'm hoping for very soon.

The total voting flatline has me a little worried, I won't lie.​

I spent a tremendous amount of time and effort building this. I am proud of the work, I'm proud of the design, and I really think it deserves a little exposure.

I would really appreciate your help with a vote on the Greenlight page
maybe even sending your friend a link

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=835778142​

Thanks guys (and girls),
Frosted



PS: @BoredMormon and @MV10 I still owe you guys a build!

 

Wow! This looks & feels (just based on the video) so much better.
I voted yes and posted on my Twitter about it here.

 

Thanks a ton man. I've really worked myself to death over the last 6 weeks trying to get this thing ready for Greenlight.

I'm really tired - and it's nice to hear someone excited

 

I'm sorry but starting a new Greenlight campaing sounds like a total waste of time. You already have an AppId, you should be focusing in getting the store page ready. With the market so saturated you should be getting more eyes in your product and a store page does it much better than a Greenlight campaign.

I can't avoid believing that you are a victim of your own insecurity.

 

Maybe you're right @Kondor0

I just honestly imagined my first few comments on the store page being "WTF THIS IS NOT THE GAME WE VOTED FOR". I wanted to keep respectful of the Steam community.

I also felt that this design was new and innovative and that maybe there would be some fresh interest. It's really kind of unique in the genre. Obviously it was wishful thinking, but I thought maybe it'd even attract the eye of a website or streamer or something.

I still think it was the right thing to do, even if it's going a little rough.

 

Looks awesome. It's just a detail/my opinion, but I think it'd be more fluid if you played the death animation right away instead of stopping time for a bit after killing blows. Also, good luck with your campaign.

 

You got a vote from me. Hammer and Sickle built a love for tactical RPGs into me and this looks like it has really interesting combat.

I will say, it doesn't look like you're focusing very much on the story or the setting. And I'm not saying that's necessary, but for me it really is--I'm not likely to play a game unless the story intrigues me on some level.

You have to consider what you're presenting. The combat looks interesting, but the environment...doesn't, really. Nor does the story or "conceit" seem important. It just looks like a bunch of combat. And if that's all you want, fine--but you may lose people because of that.

 

@EternalAmbiguity,
I very much agree with you. I've been working to build out the rest of the game to match the quality of the combat, but this area (the strategic layer) has been challenging to say the least.

I'm trying to build out an agent driven environment, similar to Mount and Blade (in the family of Sid Meier's Pirates). But I'm not sure exactly how it's all going to end up, as it's still very raw.

I didn't want to promise features I couldn't deliver.

Here's the map as of a few days ago:

 

I think you are self-sabotaging because you could have explained the changes in your forum and I'm pretty sure most people wouldn't care but whatever the damage is already done.

Regarding your votes count, I wouldn't worry. My last game passed with less than 400 votes in 20 days.

 

Went to vote and discovered I had already voted. I don't remember doing it either. Must have been half asleep.

 

The trailer seems horrible to me.

First of all, the first 15 seconds you can completely cut. Then it says that it's a turn-based game, but the dude is running around in real time. Confusing. Some time later, the turn based system kicks in. Too late in regards to the claim that it's a turn based game.

Then i dont really know what's going on even with your dev comments, and since you're playing the game the camera jumps too frequently to make pleasant viewing.

"The camera is fully customizable" is your first bullet point... Is that REALLY your most important feature? Well, it's not actually the first, the first bullet point is that the game is turn based while we see your dude running around in real time.

And the trailer is 7 minutes long. Im not gonna watch that.

Dont understand me wrong, the game does look very nice. Music is nice too.
But the trailer is horrid imho. Horrid.

 

But im not interested to do background research. Im assuming the OP is looking for feedback on his presentation rather than just creating traffic for his greenlight campaign.
Pretend im a greenlight customer. Im not researching raw gameplay footage after a 7 minute trailer. It doesnt work like that.

 

You're right.

 

@AndreasU, I think you're right.

I really need to address the presentation.

You didn't even mention that the absolute first moment of the combat looks buggy and backward and that I have some broken text.

I need to address the video images and overall presentation.

 

If I'm not mistaken the 7 minute video is not the trailer, it's the gameplay footage (confusing though that it's on slot #1 on the steam greenlight page).

This one is the actual trailer it seems:

 

@Martin_H,
Thanks for the link. A very talented guy helped me produce that trailer.

My worry is that my writing for that video didn't highlight the strategy enough (he even warned me that this may be the case).

 

You should try switching the position of the trailer, so the seven minute is not first

 

ok the first thing i noticed, is that the just combat video is at the front on steam, while i think the trailer should be definitely taking it's place.
second thing, congratulations, your game looks awesome and i can definitely see and "feel" the influence of mount and blade, I actually loved those games, so you will get an upvote from me
third thing....At this moment your game seems to have no obvious goal and that makes it seem as if it is a glorified medieval combat simulator I can see that you tried adding some humor in textform and I think your game has alot of potential...and maybe I'm just not seeing what the goal is, but I have to say, making the goal more clear as example: Overthrow kingdoms, survive as hired swordsman, make a living, make morale choices (helping the poor or only collecting bounties on dangerous criminals or helping anyone who offers enough money with dire consequences) etc.

At the moment I just don't see why I would want to play the game, besides the feeling of mount and blade combat and the turn based very interesting system, which could be mainly technical interest, than the normal players interest.

 

Thanks for the comments guys.

@Jacob_Unity,
I am going to spend a bit of time improving the materials, then #madewithunity hopefully for next friday! I really need to, at least, replace the gameplay video with a slightly improved version. Thanks.

@Aiursrage2k, @Farelle,
I hesitate to put the trailer up first. Everyone I showed the trailer to liked it, except the gamers. Gamer feedback was "but... whats the game?" - "what do I do other than hire drunks?" - "is it just a bad looking skyrim?". The yes/no vote rate was negative until I replaced the video with game play.

The game play video also has the same problems - like @Farelle mentions, "what's the point?" - but at least people can see some actual game play. I think gamers, especially greenlight voters appreciate that.

It's tough setting aside finishing up important implementation work that needs to get done for release, but right now, improving the materials is first priority.

 

I agree with Jacob. I would be surprised if you got any backlash and even if you did get some backlash I don't think it would affect your reputation or sales very much. I would just stick with your original greenlight.

 

tbh it's kind of confusing that you say "atleast they can see some gameplay" a trailer should showcase a game as best as possible, especially on greenlight. Is there maybe a way that you can change the trailer to incorporate more of the interesting stuff, like scenes from the combat video, maybe less "cinematographic" scenes and more about how the players can progress in the game? or as a second trailer even. I'm sure it's not too late to add more to the greenlight post

 

It's possible, and maybe you guys are correct. Here's what I imagined. I release, and am given a very small window with a lot of exposure from Steam's front page. The first comment is:

• "WTF THIS IS NOT THE GAME I THOUGHT IT WAS. IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE HEX BASED. WHAT HAPPENED TO THE PLOT?!"
• ...no second comment.

The impact that the first few reviews and the like have can be significant, it's not like I'm rolling with a huge ad budget and can play to the averages. Just one impassioned comment can carry a lot of weight, and when dealing with gamers especially, those impassioned voices (even if a distinct minority) are very loud.

I also just felt like the revamp was good enough that Greenlight wouldn't be an issue at all. But hey, we all make mistakes

@Farelle,
I'm working on a revised script for a new video right now. Even if it doesn't make a huge difference for the Greenlight as is, I will need it for the store page. Including more about what happens between fights and the progression, in addition to the combat, is the goal.

 

I am no video marketing expert but I don't see what is wrong with the video you have up there now. In fact, it was that video that caused me to have a great impression about the game. And reason I included that video in my post on twitter (I dislike "tweet" we are not birds).

The only thing I think needs to be improved is the beginning of the video where IIRC it had some seconds worth of a black screen and looked like a part that was supposed to have been edited out.

Other than that the video focuses on each cool thing in the game from the perspective of a gamer. That is exactly the kind of stuff I want to see as a gamer.

Many videos on the other hand are a bunch of crap that tell gamers nothing about a game at all. Just a bunch of little clip highlights here and there all fluff and no real value. I think that's great for like an early reveal / early sneak peek kind of thing. Those videos are for generating interest.

They are great for marketing at other places to generate curiosity & interest to encourage people to click over to the Steam page for the game. However when I am on the game's landing page checking out the game... the moment of buying or greenlighting or saying "nah" and leaving I need to actually see something worthwhile to make the decision.

I suppose you could perhaps shorten the video but people are not so stupid as to not realize they can fast forward ahead in a video. And if they don't want to watch a 7 minute video they don't have to.

Often for a long video like this I skip the first 5 to 15 seconds which is generally just stuff I don't care about (company logo and sometimes an intro sequence) then watch 10 seconds or so. Then skip ahead watch 10 seconds or so. And so forth. If I see something very interesting or enough of the segments I watched appealed to me I may well go back to beginning and watch the entire video.

 

Voted yes and not just as a favor, I think it looks really cool. The presentation is a little lacking as others have mentioned but I find the combat system very intriguing.

 

You got to remember that was 1.5 years ago. I mean Ryiah didnt even remember voting for the game already (and that was only a few days ago). The worst thing that would happen is people would see your game and say thats not what I was interested in, Im not going to buy it.

If I look at your greenlight campaigns, the old animated gif was alot more exciting which probably got more people to click on your game

 

Has anyone ever bought or decided not to buy a game based on the look of the store page? I haven't.

As Tanel stated I'm also intrigued by the combat mechanics - as a gamer as well as a developer so I voted yes.

A couple things I noticed - but I don't have much in the way of suggestions to correct them.
- The camera is still odd and jerky-ish throughout. See between 3:30-3:40. The zoom in is fine but the zoom out is awkward. It's just not right. The camera moves then begins to rotate, fast out then slow ease in. It just feels off.
- The lighting to me seems a little dark. I think this may have been intentional, but there is something missing from the lighting that I can't place. Maybe specularity?
- There is a high level of brown/yellow/redish-brown throughout the game. It reminds me of late gen ps2 - first gen ps3 era muddy combat games.
- I really like the map. I think it's a pretty cool presentation, though - the colors are still very brown.

 

Sometimes, I found tom vs the armies of hell while looking at new top down shooters and then I decided I liked the concept.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/262630/

 

If by "the look" you mean the screenshots and videos of the game sure. That is what I mainly go by. Not so much screenshots but videos so I can see the actual gameplay. A screenshot just doesn't tell a person much.

I've bought some games based entirely on the video(s). But more often it is that I decide to NOT buy games based completely on the videos. And if a game does not have a video I often don't spend any more time checking into it.

Basically if the videos haven't convinced me to not buy and I am kind of interested (videos also haven't convinced me to buy) then I read the reviews trying to find out more about the game (to find if the game has things in it I don't want or has things in it that I want... and wasn't able to determine by the page's content alone). Finally I often then check YT for a lets play.

So yeah if I am somewhat interested and the page is well done and answers all of my questions (any great landing page should do that) and the answers don't put me off then I will buy right then. But mostly the landing pages are not very good so I need to dig and find answers elsewhere so I can decide. OR from what I can see in a video I decide not to buy.

 

No that's not what I meant, I was talking about everything else on the store page.
My purchase decisions are made by this order, genre, video, description, rating, and if I'm still a little hesitant, depending upon genre - if there is controller support or not.

I totally mis-understood this meaning. I agree a store page is better than a greenlight campaign, but frosted made an educated decision and its one I can see his side on.

 

That's basically the same as me except I often need to go to the reviews and then YT LP before I understand the game experience enough to decide to buy or not.

 

Voted and tweeted, look's solid

 

Actually, I'm quite sure I did it on couple of occasions.

Basically, in certain genres you can determine by one screenshot that the game is probably either subpar or garbage. There's a thing about attention to details in art, and when there's lack of effort, it is instantly noticeable.

In addition to that there's matter of artistic style. If the art is simple, but has a consistent style, that sparks interest.

Basically, it goes like this:

1. You see initial screenshot somewhere.
2. You go to store page and scroll through the screenshots.
3. You skip through the video on the store page.
4. You scroll down and and read actual description.
5. You scroll further down and read reviews.
6. You go to community hub and see screenshots/discussions.
7. At this point it is either buy, do not buy or "add to wishlist and completely forget about it".

^^^ In this order. The whole process takes from 10 seconds to 2 maybe 3 minutes.

After each step you might decide to buy, not to buy, or investigate further, based on what you saw or read.

 

Steam being in the state that it is I almost never visit the community hub. Any relevant reddit hubs are good, but usually I head straight to YouTube for a Let's Play to see the game in action.

 

The point of visiting community hub is not to read the thing. It is to scroll down trough the "overview" page and see screenshots that highlight the game and check for stuff like thousands of posts complaining about the game not starting.

 

hey guys, sorry if i didn't respond to anything. i just spent close to 40 solid hours trying to put together some new video. I think I'm going to go with this version for a trailer:

I'm looking for feedback, I know it still needs to be edited up a little. But what do you guys think?

Should I just stop trying to be fancy and go with really game play rooted video or is this good enough to work as a teaser that helps promote the game as a whole?

 

A trailer that gives us the premise of the game and lists key features. It's definitely an improvement over the earlier ones but it wouldn't hurt for the key features to be more prominent. Having them disappear so quickly meant I only saw half of them.

From memory most of the trailers I've bothered to watch were like advertisements. They were meant to draw my attention long enough to make me look the game up on the appropriate store. From there they usually presented a longer video of actual gameplay footage, some screenshots, and reviews.

 

I think at a glance this trailer gives the wrong impressions too. It starts off suggesting some kind of mystery or strange meta aspect that as far as I can tell is not represented on the gameplay side. Then it kind of suggests you are not a decision-maker, but one of those sellsword dudes running around in 3rd person combat. You go on implying that one of these dudes might rise above the others, which imho further underlines the train of thought that the player IS a pawn in the game and will just do fighting. The map doesn't get presented as "look, this is gameplay too", it's presented like some cutscene or other stuff that isn't actually in the game. Wouldn't be the first time a trailer shows stuff that is far removed from what you do in a game, so it's fair to assume no one thinks "well it was in the trailer, the map must be some kind of gameplay element", especially with the very obviously scripted camera flythrough.

Imho this trailer also fails at clearly communicating the gameplay and is even worse at communicating why the player should care at all about the scenario. The other trailer showed elements of adversity and making the best of a dire situation against all odds, implying some kind of challenging and interesting struggle. The new trailer spends more time "stripping away agency from the player" than telling you why you should care.

Imho people that come to your store page through organic traffic have two questions: "What do I do in this game and why should I care?" and they bring at most 5 seconds to decide between "don't care - next!" and "I'm intrigued, what's this about?". On average I don't watch a second of trailers when going through a discovery queue on steam. I only ever watch parts of a trailer or even a whole trailer when I'm already seriously considering a purchase and want to know more about a game or verify my assumptions. If I was someone looking for a hardcore turn-based tactics experience with high stakes, meaningful choices, lots of player agency and a sense of progression, watching the old trailer would make me think "That's nice and all, but didn't answer any of my questions, where's the gameplay video?", and watching the new trailer would make me say "Ok, that's clearly not the game I'm looking for - next!".

I've recently realized that it seems more likely I'm not buying a game because I've seen the store page and it didn't give me the right impression, than me never having heard about a game ever. It further reinforces my impression that just driving more people to a storepage via aggressive marketing is largely a waste of time if the page itself isn't set up to perfectly and quickly communicate the qualities of a far above average product, backed by positive reviews.

This. I'm a slow reader and easily distracted, I would have missed the turn-based part for example. "In the wild", I'd probably not even have watched that far.

 

I think the main issue with the new trailer is there's a lack of cohesion between what you see and what is written. Basically all you see is combat while the trailer traverses a range of 'philosophical' points - the visual information has to show some more context.

Here are my thoughts:

• You bring up the idea of the soldiers being mere pawns, but where do we see the emotion and the character to offset that, to challenge that idea? Some close-ups of a character, or a distant shot of a figure shown gazing off into the mountains, or something like that would make these philosophical points have much more depth.

• You bring into the narrative the idea of 'Great Men' and challenging kings, but I don't see any characters that are presented as such. At this point you need to show some kind of clear contrast in the visual display to symbolise the struggle between rising weaker force and the established stronger force.

• Don't answer the question in the narrative!! Leave it open and let the player feel like they have the power to decide the answer.

• When you describe (through the clang and the written text) the different mechanics/attributes of the game at the end, it needs to be shown with examples - for example a 3 or 4 second demonstration between each that highlights it. There's nothing more disappointing than a trailer which presented something and then lists a bunch of other things at the end.

• The name of the game should be presented in a clearly different way (font, color, style) from the information that preceeded it, to make it really stick in people's minds.

 

This is a big problem, and you're right. Most people I showed it to assumed that the map was just rigged up to make a game of thrones style intro.

If people assume the map is a trailer prop and not gameplay, then it won't work... for the trailer to work - people need to understand that the map is gameplay.

I need to figure out how to solve this or I need to scrap the trailer ... again.

 

I absolutely agree you should spend a good deal of time polishing the script on this one, and have it checked by a few people who work in this sort of area, before you work on the trailer.

 

maybe I've read too much about 'teaser trailers' and whatever. I was approaching this as "try to express the feeling of the ideal game session".

Every iteration of video has focused trying to communicate a sense of overcoming difficult adversity and guys dying. So from the first "Korman is dead" teaser to the this "Are we just pawns?" (and two other versions I scrapped without showing you guys). I've tried to communicate that sense of making it through a dire situation.

Past gameplay mechanics, the idea of teetering on the edge of disaster (permadeath) - is the core emotional experience. So I tried to build some kind of narrative around that.

But yeah, I think that the idea of a teaser trailer in general is maybe a luxury that an operation as small as... like one dude.. doesn't really have the luxury for.

I need to focus on meat and potatoes game play.

Back to the drawing board. Thanks guys!

 

This is really the core thing.

I should not be trying to build a teaser trailer at all. Not only am I a tiny unknown developer, but the game doesn't LOOK like the genre it falls into (I really worked hard to make sure it doesn't!).

The result is just confusion.

Goals for next step: Focus on the game. Focus on the fun. Focus on the player.

 

so you say the gameboard kind of thing that you show in the beginning, so you can actually interact with it?

 

The thing is, to me it seems like you are changing focus so often that I no longer know what your goals really are. For the first short trailer of the second greenlight campaign I was under the assumption that the thing is supposed to a) intrigue rather than explain, b) is mainly intended for getting greenlit (aka selling hopes and dreams and not requiring anyone to put real money on the table), and c) will be accompanied by a gameplay video that answers all the questions with voiceover and you explaining the game, and maybe also getting some sympathy points for being an authentic and passionate solo-indie who isn't in it for the quick assetflip buck, but really gives a S*** and makes huge sacrifices to get this game out properly. You've linked me these other 2 trailers as a reference what you were going for, that had some very detailed mechanics explanations as far as I can remember. Now as far as I can tell from reading things here and on slack, you kinda half-assed the gameplay video with barely understandable voiceover and then redid it on the quick and put on a video that does not have voiceover, nor a proper introduction to your game. No context, straight to combat and some unimportant details like camera perspective, skipping all the who, what, when, and why questions and probably leaving way more people confused than there should be at this point. Not sure if you have stats about dropoff points for the video on youtube, but I'd imagine most either started skipping ahead or dropping out rather quickly.
When you've asked me whether I think it's a good idea to focus on building those map mechanics now, I told you I don't feel like that will really help you answer the "why should I care?" question to players right now. But you chose to go for the map, and now you put the map into a new trailer without even really explaining what's cool about it, which I understand even less.
Imho you're dancing around the fact that you have - to my knowledge - never implemented a linear and compelling narrative. From what you've told me you've started to commit towards a more sandboxy approach with the mechanics, but you don't properly communicate it in the trailer. You neither show how the gameplay on the world map works, nor grant us a proper look at how the combat actually works. If you want to lure in people with compelling narrative, you need to make that narrative first. If you want to sell them on choice-based dynamic openworld sandbox gameplay, then you need to make it abundandly clear that that is what your game is about and they shouldn't go into it expecting tons of linear narrative.
Basically this seems the way to go for me too:

That's pretty much what I've tried to get you to figure out some weeks ago. Imho "bottom up" as you called it just doesn't work for this.

Yes! But remember that you can't "explain fun", you can just explain facts about your game that you hope the right people will find compelling. You need to make sure people who buy the game get what they are expecting, or else you'll get bad reviews and enter the downward spiral. You need to prime the right people with the right expectations for a product that is able to deliver or exceed those expectations. That's what gets you happy customers.

I've recently played 3 games where I thought "wow, that really was much cooler than I thought it would be", I'm glad none of their devs overhyped their games or made misleading promises. The games were Gunpoint, Gone Home, and Beginner's Guide. All have thousands of positive reviews on steam. But I could also easily see how people could leave bad reviews for all of those games if they went in with different expectations.

And frankly, I can't remember if I even watched any of their trailers. I've seen a GDC talk on Gunpoint, heard a lot of Gone Home, and went out of my way to not hear too much about Beginners Guide. I see you spending weeks on making and scrapping trailers, but so far I haven't seen you put nearly enough effort into designing everything else about the store page. Imho you should focus some more on that, as it may also make it easier to work towards a clear goal with your trailer and your gamedesign.
Like I and many others have said before, it's a multi-stage process where each step along the way you lose x% of people and you'll want to make sure that at the end the right group of people remains and buys the game. Your trailer is no good if I don't even watch it because the screenshots and description turned me away already.

p.s.: pretty sure I've linked you my old thread on this twice already, but in case someone stumbles over this thread via search, it might be interesting to them:
https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/making-people-care.400484/

 

Yeah that trailer is really weird we got 2 types of gameplay and I dont see how they work together. Try hiring like a AAA voice actor to do the few lines in your trailer