Tigranes

What it is is that they made a decision out of best intentions, one which is not significantly deviating from the norm of many publisher AND kickstarted games. If you disagree and are disappointed, OK, I can understand that. I think it's baseless to try and argue that this is somehow quite clearly a calculated show of disrespect and distrust.

You really think the difference between a two-weeks old build and the release build is THAT big? In that case Obsidian's time management or QE just sucked again... And obviously the streamers mostly liked the game although it's not the final build. So why trusting them and distrusting the backers? It's not like backers HAD to play the game before release. Everybody could wait for the day-one patch. But you'd have a choice... It's not a question of trust. I'm sure it looks that way to you, because you're determined that every decision Obsidian has taken must have had something to do with trust and respect. Why not just get rid of the 'release' then, by your logic? Backers should have a choice to play the gold master build, the 2 month build, the beta build, the alpha build, the pre-alpha build... Obsidian has the right to decide when the game is done, and to offer that finished game on the release day. Obsidian also has a right to offer media copies, like many many other games - both Kickstarted and publisher - have done. I don't find that disrespectful. But then, I have a feeling nothing will persuade you.

its important for those of us with **** internet. I can barely get 300kb down its going to take me days to get the game. If I were treated equally to someone on steam I could be downloading it now while at work so come release day I can actually play like everyone else.. I agree that preload is useful. That's why, as BAdler said in this very thread: "I told Steam to start the preloading. We are going to be giving backers keys in the next few hours and if we didn't tell them to enable preloading we wouldn't have been able to enable it until tomorrow." I assume handing out 70,000 keys is complicated business, which is why it's taking some time. Every KS I've been on has had problems with keys.

Or maybe, you know, Obsidian would like the backers to play a finished version of the game, and not deal with 70,000 backers crapping all over the Internet saying I BACKED THIS GAME BUT ITS BUGGY, GOD OBSIDIAN DOESN'T RESPECT ITS BACKERS. (Oh, that's right, many backers did get to play the Backer Beta. For months. But I guess that doesn't count as respect either?)

I wonder why it's so important if somebody else in the world has preloaded the game a few hours before me. You know, they get to have the warm joy of sitting there with a preloaded game. Ostensibly, it's about respect. OK, that makes sense. Or it would, if this was something consequential. Where do you draw the line between 'respecting backers' and 'some backers being petty and impatient for no good reason'? The big thing for me will be how the real launch is handled. Will backer keys be distributed properly, and will the global launch across Steam and GOG work fine, so that all backers on all platforms, not to mention other paying gamers, can fire it up properly on Day 1? That's what matters. I paid Obsidian so they can focus on making a great game. Not so that they bow to me and pretend they are my slave, and waste time "telling me nice things" when they should be working day and night to get the release done.

Maybe everybody who makes games should do exactly what Chris Roberts does, then. Never mind that Obsidian remains a 100+ person company handling multiple publisher projects, and Obsidian's funding didn't raise 75 million... Now, since this thread is about preloading, let's keep it to that, you can talk about youtube streaming in the correct thread. Worth requoting Brandon:

You're having a different discussion than me. You're talking about whether you like those changes or not and whether they seem fun to you. I obviously can't prove you wrong on that. What I'm saying is that those aspects show a very clear divergence from how D&D CRPGs of the past played, so much so that the combat gameplay we see in that video doesn't really evoke games like Baldur's Gate or NWN. That much is quite obvious from that video - unless you think we need to read the manual and play the full game to be able to tell. From what I know of you personally, I think you don't really enjoy hardcore RPG mechanics and would prefer a relatively casual and actiony romp. I don't mean that as an insult - and I don't think you'll take it as one, given your self-professed preferences. I think you may well enjoy SCL. Which is my point. I don't have a bone to grind with SCL not being my cup of tea - that's not a problem. I do think it was disingenious of them to announce themselves as the return of good old D&D CRPGs.

See my previous posts in this thread. The combat plays out in a way that has no similarity to all previous D&D CRPGs worth their salt. Its closer referents would be Dragon Age: Origins. Unless casting a spell called Fireball qualifies.

Well, forget 2E, 5E, whatever. Does it have much in common with the D&D CRPGs we used to play? IE games, Gold Boxes, even NWN? Nope, not really. That much is crystal clear from how the combat plays in that gameplay video. Will it still be fun? Well that's up to you. If you like how it looks, that's your call. But what's indisputable is that it's not got much to do with any of the D&D CRPGs it namedrops.

Well that's a much broader topic about everything they did and didn't do during the last couple of years. My point here is that this entire thread doesn't have much of a leg to stand on. Now, when 26th comes, that's when the whole place will explode. Fun times.

Well I'm glad you recognize that Nonek because I have found you to be particularly biased on a number of issues, accepting of a problem is the first step to fixing it. So good luck on improving your posting etiquette Yep, classic Bruce... Bruce always makes me think of those movie characters who invite you over for dinner and are real polite and everything, but then when you mistakingly begin to eat your steak with your pastry fork instead of your main entree fork, then he pulls a gun on you because you ruined the perfection that is his life and now you must pay. That or Ned Flanders. Yknow, from that episode where he cracks and starts swearing a lot. You guys are being silly, Bruce is as usual the master of self-deprecating wit. After all, the Bruce we know and love will never, ever reach the first step!

No, that's not what we're mad about. We're mad about not getting the option to play the game early as well. We're mad about how Obsidian treats us backers and the whole development of this game in general. And this is a game funded by fans. IMHO other rules should apply here than for a traditional game funded by a publisher or by the devs' own money. Simple. And why should any of us get to play the game early? You might as well argue that the Backer Beta should also have let us play the whole game, because if we want to play a game before it's done then by God it is our right as Kickstarter backers. I don't see a great reason that we should play the game before its release. (Especially since, in cases like the physical shipping problem, they went out of their way to hold a poll and indeed give us the option on how it's done.) You already got your solid arguments. Youtube streamers are reviewers today insofar as their impact on sales is concerned. That's not something Obsidian or me or you decides (I wish I could, I think most of them suck). They need to get the game 3 days before because, you know, you'd prefer them to review the game having played more than half an hour of it. Or, you know, you'd like them to get the game on the 26th, perhaps not get it if the mail is late, and then they can spend their Day One stream showing everyone how they install the game and then fiddle with the graphics settings and then die to the very first spider because they have no idea how anything works. If we wanted to use the kind of arguments you guys are using, though, I could just say: I don't see what's so terrible about ten Youtube dudes playing 3 days before me, and poor old me having to wait until the actual release date.

So, uh... people are mad that journalists get to play 3 days before the game is released, something that every single game in the universe does unless they want to make sure there's nobody to review the game and they would really like to declare bankruptcy? Ooooooookay. (Unless you think Obsidian should take exactly this moment to stand on a soapbox and declare to the world, Guess what guys Youtube streamers shouldn't qualify as journalists and shouldn't have as much influence! Everyone, stop paying so much attention to Youtube streamers! I'm sure that would work really well for everybody.)

Sapphire R9 280 has arrived. Installed it without fiddling with the cooler for now, tested, seems money, as always, has fixed all of life's problems. Thanks all!

It's very simple. Do you like the tactical decision-making offered in classic D&D CRPGs? Do you expect a highly polished, graphically powerful, AAA title? Either way, don't bother with this game. On the other hand, do you enjoy MMO combat? Or, as Indira says, do you enjoy fairly tactically light combat where you don't have to pause so often and just let things fly? Did the party banter in that video seem enjoyable? If so, go for it.

Meh. It's basically what an unlicensed, slightly cheaper and worse clone would look like if NWN1 sold like hotcakes and people wanted to clone it. Everything it changes from D&D or from older D&D CRPGs, it makes worse. Shall I narrate the ways? (1) Wizards don't have D&D magic. They don't have casting time, they don't have memorisation, they automatically cast lower level spells over and over again, spells 'level up' (Magic Missile II, III...). This has nothing to do with D&D magic except some spell names and damage specs are copied. What that means is your wizard isn't substantially different from your archer with special abilities in terms of how they play. (2) As Darkpriest points out, there may not be any to-hit rolls. Combined with 1, this makes the game play like an MMO, and not like a D&D game. In a D&D game, you are constantly fighting AC / THACO / etc to make sure you can land a hit on your enemy and not get hit yourself; getting hit becomes a pretty big deal. Meanwhile your wizard becomes a glass cannon, meaning even if there was the problem that fighters are relatively boring, you, as a party controller, always had a decision to make every round. If everyone hits each other more consistently and wizards are the way they are, all those decisions go out the window; the very nature of the combat changes. It becomes DPS calculation and a matter of setting up an equilibrium where you do more damage than they do. The wizard can also be left on autopilot. The decisions about spells to use diminishes if some spells repeat and other spells are on a cooldown so they can also be used again. This results in situations like that boss fight, which is very similar to how boss fights in DA:O work - you find a combination where your DPS is higher than their regen/heal and their DPS is lower than your regen/heal, then you just sit there and rinse/repeat ad nauseum until you inevitably win. (3) Given the way people ice-skate all over the place all over the video, there won't be much in the way of tactical positioning going on, except at the beginning of the battle. This is of course endemic to the 3D era, but Pillars attempts to address it with engagement, and in any case, other games like NWN2 and DAO weren't this bad with the skating. This reduces the importance of space, and once again, makes combat fairly same-same and repetitive. (4) The town looks nice enough but generally low textures abound, artistic style is super-generic (check the item icons or the models in the inventory window, as opposed to the beautiful paper dolls and item graphics in BG2 or even the ones in Pillars). It looks like dialogue will be kept to the very basics with the Biowarian Three Choices, but the dialogue probably lower quality than Bioware. It can still turn out to be a decently fun game, especially if you liked DA:O, especially if you like MMOs. A D&D game it is not. Is it worth buying? Well, I liked DA:O, but this probably will be a lesser clone, and not as good as DA:O. I also don't like the dishonest and frankly stupid way they came into the room shouting OMG D&D IS BACK GUYS when it is hardly the case. I doubt this is worth more than $10.

Thanks all. I ordered a Sapphire on Amazon then came to work, but I'll check the EVGA warranty tonight. Reviews seem to suggest the dual X cooler is pretty decent, but I haven't looked very far. ~$160 is an acceptable expenditure for me.

I don't even have a desk fan! At one point I thought if I was going to spend $50 on desk fan and thermal paste and air spray.... I suppose anything cheaper than R9 280 would be difficult? I wish I could just pick up the same card again but that's not how the market works. Edit: this right? http://www.amazon.com/Sapphire-Radeon-PCI-Express-Graphics-11230-00-20G/dp/B00IZXOW80/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1426742378&sr=8-1&keywords=r9+280 Edit2: I suppose another option is to get a spanking great card then use it a year later in a new build, but back in the day that wasn't really worthwhile given the rate of new releases...

No, nothing, since I built this when moving to the US. So my thought was to ask if there's anything obvious I haven't tried, and if not, ask what might be a good cheap replacement. I odn't need an 'upgrade', really.

Not much story relation. You should play because it is the best game.

Looking for some troubleshooting from those who know better. Self-built desktop in its 4th year falling apart. Frequent hard PC crashes when playing games, a display driver timeout (bccode 0x117). Used to be that the PC had one of those days and I needed to give it some time, a few months later it happens super-reliably. Used to be that the PC sometimes recovered from it with a 'display driver stopped responding' error, now almost always crashes. In general it seems to happen with 3D graphics intensive games, e.g. DOSBox games are fine, BG2 is fine. I tried a bunch - Halo and Darkest Dungeon crash almost like clockwork, EU4 is usually fine, FIFA 15 is usually fine for some weird reason, I suppose I should try something like Witcher 2 too for comparison. In any case I want to fix this in case Pillars is affected. Gaming seemed to rack up 90-95C on the card which is a bit high. I tried various graphics drivers, air-spraying the graphics card, cleaning the rest of the case, reseating the card. Temps a bit lower but crashes not any better. I'm not sure what else I should try before I determine that in fact, I do need a new graphics card. And if I do need one, I'd like some recommendations - I want to spend as little on this rig as possible and just build a new one in a year or so. Ref: GIGABYTE GA-P67A-UD3-B3 LGA 1155 Intel P67 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard Intel Core i5-2500K Sandy Bridge 3.3GHz (3.7GHz Turbo Boost) LGA 1155 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor BX80623I52500K EVGA SuperClocked 012-P3-1573-AR GeForce GTX 570 HD w/Display-Port (Fermi) 1280MB 320-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card SeaSonic X Series X650 Gold ((SS-650KM Active PFC F3)) 650W ATX12V V2.3/EPS 12V V2.91 SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply

Just one bear moves his toe, and the entire menagerie will go flying out at top speeds in every direction. You're playing with Bethesda physics fire, my friend.

I don't see anything super interesting yet. Lots of stuff about DMs and various previews but they worm and dodge their way past answering how and to what degree they're adopting 5e rules. Cooldowns or ray of frost 'making wizards archers' isn't bad by itself, but they haven't given solid confirmation that this is the return of D&D gaming like we know it. It could just as easily be Dark Alliance with a party at this point, especially with console porting. I'll buy it if it's largely a faithful implementation of D&D, but despite selling itself as D&D Reborn, even that isn't clear.

Then they (the project promoters) need to start disclosing it, and how much. With a 600k minimum, I'm not sure what to think. KS supporters are starting to hold projects at greater levels scrutiny than ever before. They don't. Divinity: OS had external funding. Broken Age and Wasteland 2 had funding exceeding their KS earnings, which they filled in mostly through sales of their own backlogs. I can't remember if there's clear details about POE and Shadowrun. Otherside have said that they have external funding, which puts them in the same camp as those other projects. I haven't read the 200k comment marelooke mentions, so I can't be sure, but I suspect that's not all of it. The point is that many projects look for funding from many sources and manage it, and there's no obligation to tell us which cents come from whom. It would be different if they had to sign with a publisher, or any other arrangement where the artistic vision of the project is compromised by the unknown funder. Should there be such an obligation? Perhaps. I think too much information for the public can easily be a bad thing, but it wouldn't hurt if all projects laid out pretty simply that some of the money comes from a bank, etc. (E.g. D:OS used a lot of Belgian government subsidy of some kind, but we didn't know until the postmortem.) I suspect they didn't really think of it. It hasn't been a very well managed KS. I'm backing because I like Neurath, Looking Glass and UU, but they certainly could have raised more if they did a better job and stopped focusing on stupid "OMG BONUS SLING" / VR stuff.

They already have private funding.