Director

Yeah - I was pretty keen to see that happen, and could care less about the Iron Man / Hardcore Modes stretch goal - but not everything has to go my way. People have to realise that the game isn't being made specifically for them.

You see, your girlfriend found a solution that satisfies everybody. Everyone except the company that wants to sell the game to my GF, or a sequel to that game. If putting in a "easy" mode is all it takes to make those extra sales - who cares. I could care less for all these Iron Man / Hardcore modes, it's a complete waste of a stretch goal as far as I'm concerned. I'm not gonna scream about it - because it's not going to affect the way I play the game, and other people want it. I have zero idea why adding an "easy" mode on the other end of the spectrum would upset you - if it's not going to affect you, and other people want it.

Wha? I played all the "old school" games and really enjoyed DA1 as well. I even enjoyed DA2 a bit, but I'm not gonna say DA2 was a great game.

What is the "Jennifer Hepler BS" ? Is this people ragging on about the Bioware writer that the said Shock / Horror "Not everyone cares about combat in video games" ? I still can't believe that people go ape**** over such blindly obvious statements. I've played Fallout 1+2, Baldur's Gate 1+2, PS:T and million other RPGs - do I remember the "combat" from any of them? Nope. I remember the stories and the characters. If I want Tactical Combat - I can just play XCom, (and I have - for hundreds of hours). But my girlfriend hates XCom, and when she plays PS:T, or Mass Effect 1,2,3 - the combat is just a barrier between her and the next character interaction. If the combat gets to frustrating, she goes and plays The Sims. (This happened on Dragon Age:Origins because she picked a fighter).

Source? When a developer says the publisher won't grant us permission to patch a title, what they really mean is that the publisher doesn't want to spend more money on the title. People have to eat, they can't work for free. Additionally, staff hired to work on a title aren't retained to write patches, the entire coding team might not be around after the title ships - or could be working on another title.

Yeah... the real issue when this happens is "The Publisher isn't gonna PAY for the developer to make a patch". The developer can't have people working for free, QA isn't free, so no patch. That's gonna be a big issue for ArcanaGate:Torment, (final title of Project: Eternity), because you can't have a Kickstarter to patch a game. Well, you could I guess, but it would be a bit lame. The only hope really is that additional sales on release will provide cash to patch critical game-breaking issues.

Should accrue a 5% XP penalty per difficulty mode enabled. It's supposed to make things harder, after all.

As someone who read about Planescape:Torment and thought "Sounds Terrible", and then ABSOLUTELY LOVED IT, I'm prepared to have my preconceptions on things challenged. I think it's dangerous to just blindly list GAME WILL BE BAD IF IT HAS MORE THAN OR LESS THAN 3 BADGERS. Which is basically what everyone is doing. If your not prepared to get out of your box - your not gonna find any new to like. Also - anyone who didn't like Minsc and Boo has no soul.

It's a good point. Things are a bit different this time though: 1. No way the game will be done by April 2013. (Or whenever it was planned for). Obsidian are gonna say "Yeah - we need more time" and we'll say "OK". 2. If they let the feature creep get in, and go over budget, well, we're screwed. They can't hit up a publisher for extra cash to keep the lights on here. 3. We're the beta testers, and we're paying for the "privilege". So if any bugs make it into release, if we missed them - our fault. So yeah, it's an issue. We will be a lot easier to deal with than a publisher though, since we don't expect a return above a game and a t-shirt. Also - they can hopefully be pretty honest and say "Look - we had to drop Wererats as a playable race, we just don't have any more money for the art team", or "Yeah - the Teleport spell wasn't working, after 2 weeks, we couldn't get it to not crash the game, so we dropped it". This kind of info usually doesn't reach us, so it will be kinda cool to see what features get dropped and why - and I assure you that features will get dropped.

Complete waste of time. If they take the time to design a stack of different armour / helms / weapons - why then have an option to turn it all off? Hell - the game will probably only have Cloth / Leather / Chain / Plate appearances anyhow... I doubt that each suit of armour will look different.

ArcanaGate: Torment.

It also was a bit lame for the non-spell using characters, since you never saw them - unless they got used on you. Course - in this game every character will likely have a power that would justify an extra special spell effect. Also - we know that gods exist, so there could be abilities that involve calling on them directly.

Looking forward to seeing a lot of RPG Tropes turned upside down and inside out.

If I make a combat heavy character, I'm going to achieve the goals in the game by killing people, and not wasting time finding other routes. I fail to see how I'm prevented from doing that.

No Design difference between that and awarding a "skill" each level. Your just hiding the leveling system.

Uh - but BG + IWD didn't have any options for getting things done, it was either kill all the bad guys and complete the quest for full xp, or kill some of the bad guys and complete the quest for less xp. That's kinda dull, and what they seem to want to avoid. Possibly they are injecting some Fallout into your IWD.

Loved them - they were awesome. Totally vote for them, but I doubt we have the resources Not even sure how they are gonna put this game together on such a small budget. They were also unintentionally hilarious in PS:T, you cast a spell that summons demons from the PLANES OF HELL to DEVOUR YOUR OPPONENT! <Opponent Saves> : 0 damage. Always made me laugh.

Wait ... of all the complaints I have EVER heard of Bloodlines and ME2, (and I've heard a lot of them), I've NEVER heard anyone complain about how xp worked. In fact - I had no idea that this was how ME2 worked, I never even noticed.

"Avoiding combat does not lead to less experience gain. You shouldn't go up levels any slower by using your non-combat skills rather than your combat skills. We plan to reward you for your accomplishments, not for your body count." - Tim Cain Update 7. Agree that he doesn't specifically say that you only get xp for achieving objectives. This could mean you get xp for every potion made, every conversation, every lock picked.

If it's using the Vampire:Bloodlines model, (previous Tim Cain game), then you just get xp for each objective you achieve. Say you need to talk to a dude on the top floor of a building, the first objective is "Get inside the building". Whether you kill the guards / talk your way past the guards / turn invisible and walk past the guards / sneak in via the sewers, as soon as you get inside: "Objective Complete - XP awarded". The next objective is then "Get to the top floor" with similar options, as soon as you reach the top floor: Objective Complete. Next Objective: Confront Dude. And so on.

How are you going to play the game without doing quests / achieving objectives?, (it might be better to think of them as "objectives" rather than "quests"). This isn't going to be an open world game where you just wander around aimlessly for hours exploring random caves, filled with random boxes and random traps/creatures to loot/disarm/kill for xp. Like Vampire:Bloodlines, (guessing), your character will have a list of objectives to achieve, and when you achieve them, regardless of how - you get skill points / xp - however they choose to work that. If your in a dungeon - it will be for a specific objective, find an item, find a person - whatever. If your spending all your time crafting magic potions in your house - well great - those potions might help you achieve your next objective, but why would you get xp for them as well? Your only going to be rewarded for advancing the plot. This helps with balance as well - if I know exactly how many skill points a player will have accrued by a certain point, the designer can create appropriate challenges. If someone can level to over 9000 by making potions of food colouring in their basement - it gets harder to predict the power level of the player at a given point. It's not like Tim / Chris / Josh eta al, haven't made games where you get xp for EVERYTHING!, (Fallout / Arcanum / New Vegas), but they have chosen this method, (Bloodlines), for this game, and I suspect - have good reasons for doing so. It's not something they would choose to do without cause.

Then just divide the stats into Physical / Mental / Social - with Primary / Secondary / Tertiary picks. (Like the WoD Storyteller system) I'm not opposed to the idea, but it does raise potential balance issues eg. A Mage with a really high Dex/Str, and a specific ability - say one that increases strength, might become unstoppable. Not that it matters a huge amount in a Single-Player game.

I winced when I think about Loghain cause he had so much potential in the beginning and he just didn't deliver as a character. Not only is he not the main villain he also didn't do that much after the initial betrayal. He also didn't make it that personal. So his betrayal led to the deaths of almost all the wardens, I don't care the wardens didn't do that much anyway and I just joined it so why should I care and he was doing so to because in his mind was for the good of the kingdom. So I can't hate him that much either and he can join my party at the end at the expense of the whiny Alaster! Just so much potential but failed for me as a bad guy. That's kinda the point of Loghain though - it's Alistair that hates him, not the player. The idea that Loghain is being controlled by Blood Magic, is kinda toyed with, but in the end, you find out that he's just doing what he thought was right, and he's not actually the bad guy that you thought he was. So if you can get over the fact that he left you to die, you can recruit him, and ditch Alistair.

Sweet! - now to fill in a detailed page on the Steam Train network and several other features I want to introduce!

I think it implies that all adventurers will have "supernatural" abilities. So warriors may have "spell-like" powers: Shouts that stun. Skin hard enough to to deflect sword-blows. Short distance teleports, (or great leap or whatever). The ability to channel their soul energy into their sword, adding elemental damage. I think that's fine - everyone should get cool powers.