phimseto

Crafting and enchanting are at 2.4 millions So they are. Then I hope they're not essential/necessary elements of the game, then!

Actually, the one that intrigues me is the backer number. I want to see this bonus dungeon have a ridiculous number of levels...and for Obsidian to find a way to make it one badass self-contained narrative.

If there is a bard party character and there is some degree of voice acting, can we get Cary Elwes to be the bard? )

That's mostly what I was thinking. Mainly, I'd just like to see it because the publicity could only help push funding further!

Repairing weapons and armor, having to craft items, excessive amounts of voice acting (and the budget it takes), etc.

...having Trey and Matt design a town or dungeon or party NPC? I'd love to see a little creative synergy there! Do they know about the Kickstarter?

Lol...I'm not sure I can remember the last time that I had a game-related dream. Well, I'm off to bed. Here's hoping for a repeat performance!

I think the only reason it was a zombie was for the humor of seeing a zombie hanging out in a window, just chillin' and enjoying his day, and then being able to converse with him, but with all the responses being a variant of "uUUUUUUHHHHhhhhh..."

Hey, it's Terror K. I see you've migrated over from the BSN! What would I like to see that I haven't seen in a cRPG before? Have I ever had the chance to have a family/raise a kid in a cRPG? If not, I'd love to see something like that...maybe even raising the kid to become a new party member.

By the way, Sensuki, I keep forgetting to say to you that I 100% approve and support your use of Geralt as your profile picture.

I like how "Above 25" is apparently the hinterlands according to the poll creator.

I would support gold having weight ONLY if I had the ability to bank/invest it somehow. Otherwise, gold weight is just a trite, pain in the ass addition.

Great poll. I'd love to see Obsidian make a series of similar ones for all the backers at the end, just so they can gauge the crowd's expectations. The polls wouldn't be binding obviously, but it couldn't hurt to have a lay of the land.

I had the funkiest dream last night about Project Eternity and for lack of anywhere better to share it, I'm writing it down here before I forget it all. Right before I went to bed, I was checking Twitter and a friend of mine had posted the P:E Kickstarter map, which I hadn't seen yet. I thought it was pretty cool. So I'm asleep and I have one of those Inception-like realer-than-real dreams. I dream that I'm looking at that stretch goal map, and there is a stretch goal for "Old Man in the Window" which is literally just an old guy leaning out a window, resting his arms on the windowsill, like you might see in some Saturday Evening Post cover back in the day. That's when my dream take a turn for the madcap when all of a sudden I'm playing the game (I wish!) and my dream looks like the computer screen and I'm interfacing with it - dialogue choices and all. The particulars are already starting to fade, so let me bullet-point them before I forget. - There's nothing special about the guy. Just someone random that you can talk with if you wander down the right street, and he asked that the party fetch him some food. Did that. - Come back later, and he talked with me about other stuff I did (already forgotten, but it was a few things). I distinctly remember thinking how cool it was that I could talk more about things I did that he heard as stories about me. - A few more favors, including fixing stuff in his house, getting more stuff, etc. Finding out that he has something of a colorful past without really being able to discern why. - Came back eventually and a zombified version of him was in the window, and all the dialogue responses from him were various zombie moans. Went inside his place and slew the zombie, only to have him come out of the bathroom where he was hiding. The old man wasn't the zombie, but the zombie was sent there to kill him! By way of offering explanation, he drags out this big treasure chest. As he starts to open it, it glows and the whole party gets sucked in. - Turns out the treasure chest is some kind of odd curse and the only way to truly get at the treasure is to survive the adventure it puts you through. We're all there but the old man is suddenly this badass pirate king, which is what it turns out his past was. He lost his original crew and somehow managed to get out (he doesn't remember how), but without unlocking the treasure. He kept the chest as a kind of "one day..." dream, but obviously that day never rolled around. - Suffice to say, we defeat the adventure (it involved trekking around jungles and an Incan temple). When we warp out, though, we're not back in his house. Turns out whoever sent the zombie came in and took the chest while we were trapped within. We slew the people outside the chest and it turned out we were on the island fortress of another rival pirate who wanted the treasure for himself. Oh...I don't recall what the treasure was. I don't think I ever defined it in my dream. - We had to go pillage the fortress and take it over for ourselves. It was at that point that I began waking up. Keep in mind that whole last part was like I was actually playing an isometric RPG. It was AWESOME! :-D I recommend isometric RPGs for all of you. I obviously have P:E on the brain! As for how the game looked...honestly, just projections of old games. The street and house looked like something out of BG and the island fortress looked like something like the mortuary in Planescape! Hey, my mind worked with what it had!

Weapon and armor repair is one of my least favorite elements in RPGs so I wouldn't be all that thrilled with it as a "feature". However, as something optional, I would support it for those who want it.

I'll be very curious to see how this poll looks in a few hundred votes. I'd rather have no voices and more content. However, with Obsidian developing this game entirely on their own, I would trust them to make the call if they wanted to have voice acting to the degree of a game like PS:T.

Thrilled to see the novella and player home appear as stretch goal items! I also threw in another $50 to help GameBanshee's "ChipIn" campaign.

I wouldn't be shocked to see them use Unity, building off of inXile's experience with it during the WL2 production.

I noticed the jump! Huzzah! The more money this game gets, the better. It's especially encouraging, too, because a properly-run Kickstarter (which so far this one has been) gets a significant bump at the tail end. The goals I listed above are definitely ones for mid-to-late in the process, accompanying new rounds of info on the game.

Truth be told, they probably have that exact plan (including exactly what they want to do), but - hey - on the off-chance they're open to additional ideas, I figured it wouldn't hurt to post my own thoughts and invite discussion from fans!

I definitely support hiring George Ziets as a stretch goal! And I like Justin Sweet, too, provided his art style fits what Obsidian wants to do. @Ausir, as for Minsc and Boo, I know he's someone else's IP but arrangements for something like this can be made. If Obsidian actually approached Atari, they'd be smart to play along. Reintroducing Minsc and Boo into the conversation helps fan the fuel for more Baldur's Gate.

Right...this is the kind of stuff that excites folks. They've committed to X number of playable races, so I'd say cap it off there. Use extra stretch goals/money to do more with the playable races that are there - race-specific quests or NPC reactions, etc. From all the RPG/adventure game-based Kickstarters that I've seen, people react very, very positively to pushes for more story content/more places to explore.

I am helping to write a smaller indie Kickstarter RPG and we've even had publishers approach us trying to buy out the project/get it under their aegis. Not quite the same as what happened with Obsidian, but either way, supporting a publisher that way certainly represents a betrayal of backer trust. If this is actually making publishers sweat, then...good. Really, though, I suspect it's a case of the greedy simply not having enough and wanting a piece of that sweet action. **** them.

A few disjointed thoughts on the Kickstarter and the game... - For me, I don't have a huge interest in playable races - at least not as a stretch goal. The only things that I would love to see a push for are more story and more party characters. - Regarding party characters, I have one extremely random suggestion. Much like the Space Hamster appeared in the Mass Effect games, I have always viewed Minsc and Boo as these characters who could show up in any game/any setting. Provided you can get a hassle-free allowance from whoever owns the rights to the character, I would love to see Minsc and Boo appear as characters in the game. If you're at all intrigued, it's worth at least a casual inquiry to see what it would take and I think it would make an interesting stretch goal. - Use a stretch goal to educate players beforehand about the new world. If a certain number is reached, commission a digital book of short stories/world atlas/lore to establish the setting and perhaps even some of the characters. It won't be necessary to read to enjoy the game or learn what you need to do to succeed in the game, but will give players a chance to delve into the world while waiting for the game and let them start to shape their own story/approach in their minds. - If you're planning on having a stronghold like NWN2, then note that and tie stretch goals into it. Dead State tied a number of their stretch goals into that particular feature, and it gave them a huge boost. Of course, their HQ is the centerpiece of the game, but in my observation and experience, RPG players love that feature and will want to see it as robustly developed as possible. Figure out some ways that you would expand on the concept given the extra money/manpower, and tie it into those additional stretch goals. - Something Echoes of Eternea did on their Kickstarter was ask for a boost to support post-main story content. If your game doesn't have a hard ending (ie you can keep exploring past the end), consider using a stretch goal to support additional content for that section. - Another stretch goal, again tied into party characters, would be to take those characters further. Traditionally, every party character has an arc which ends with them either utterly loyal to you or leaving the party. Use a stretch goal to develop more content beyond that traditional arc. Once you reach that character arc end, find ways to take that relationship further. In the case of love interests, give the players what Bioware fans are always bugging the Mass Effect devs for: a chance to romance, date, etc. their love interests. Tying that kind of stuff to stretch goals could be big. Anyways, those are some initial thoughts. Cannot wait to play this game, and glad Obsidian finally took the Kickstarter plunge!

Hey Chris, Like I wrote on FB, the most pie-in-the-sky hope would be to see a remake of FO1 and FO2, but those would really have to be AAA development cycles. For something like this, an Isometric/turn-based/SRPG approach works best. It sounds like folks are generally in agreement that *the* most important thing is a deep, choices and consequences storyline with lots of great characters and deep relationships. The other trick to elevating that kind of game would be the small things - a headquarters with lots of smaller features and party interactions (like in the Suikoden series), character specific storylines, towns and villages that you can invest in (like the original Wild Arms or your own NWN2), stuff like that. One thing that I loved in KOTOR2 and would love to see executed even more complexly is when the party splits. It's a compelling dynamic to have the focus shift to different characters within an overarching plot line. One game template to consider is Shining Force 3. That game was broken up into three releases, each one featuring a different main characters. However, all three featured in each game, and there was an overall narrative that brought the plot threads together. America only got the first game in that series, so I don't know how well it worked, only that the concept alone is amazing and one you guys could obviously do justice. Oh, and one last thing I would love - an ability to name my characters. Even better...a chance to name characters at the beginning of the game, and enjoy it as they get introduced over the course of the narrative. ) Good luck, and hoping I get a chance to donate to the cause!