nikolokolus

Sorry, don't get it.

I feel like there's an awful lot of modern thinking going on in here when it comes to mind altering subsstances and restricting/endorsing their use. Who's to say that drugs are even illegal ior taboo n the world of PE?

This bears repeating. Kickstarter is not a storefront.

All true. And after sitting back and rolling my eyes at people expressing a lot of fear, I think I've actually found some empathy. EA/Bioware (and many, many others besides) have released an awful lot of games with cut content that you can buy via "micro transactions" (I bet George Orwell would have loved that one?). This cut content instead gets called "DLC." I even got suckered into it with DA:O and that stupid stone golem companion. What a sorry state gaming is in, where the expectation is that companies are mainly interested in screwing people over instead of actually entertaining them.

Since we've heard that the expansion is likely to come out about 6 months after PE, the whole, "Oh god, day one DLC" fretting needs to go away.

I think historians will look back on the first half of the 21st century as the "Age of Entitlement." For the love of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, some people really need an ego check.

No, I'm sorry but a lack of maturity will not dissuade me from expressing my opinion about a game I've funded. It's still a dishonest practice, because it promises something that may rely on commercial success of the game which they have no way of guaranteeing. See, this is why we can't have anything nice.

I usually like just enough to get a feel for a character, after that I'm pretty good at filling in the blanks when I read their dialogue. Torment and Arcanum had it about right IMO.

The "zerg rush" as some have called it, seems to come in the last 3 days or so ... we'll see.

As long as they make a satisfying "whomf!" noise and release a small cloud of dust. A little light hacking and coughing would be a nice touch too.

When the design specs get released showing the internal formats used by the game engine, I definitely think you should mod these into your own game.

If by "people" you mean "I" then agree it's what "people" want.

I don't know if it's reasonable to expect the surge that DFA got, but we should see a bump. A lot of it probably depends on a last minute info dump about the game and getting the word out to a lot of different game related websites promoting the hell out of it. Also, if they dangle a really big carrot out there as a stretch goal that might drum up pledges from existing backers ... although I can't for the life of me think out what that should be.

Once you subtract kickstarter's cut plus the costs of the boxes/shipping/assorted swag, they'll probably end up with about $2million. That's less that the budget of most xbox live arcade games that'll last you a few hours. 8 hours might actually be on the optimistic side. But then, maybe they can save a lot of money in some areas. Who knows. Feargus was on Kickstarter's comment page last night and he mentioned that between paypal, kickstarter and amazon, about 9-10% of the money raised would be taken off the top. Assuming they get to 3 million (a reasonable number I think?) that's 300K, leaving them with 2.7 million ... the number of boxed copies and swag they have to make is in the low thousands, not tens of thousands, so the costs of production and distribution will cut into that some, but shouldn't leave them with any less than 2.6 m That's more than enough money to make a game that far exceeds an 8 hour playthrough.

I just want the Avellone created companions to make snide comments about how bland and/or boring other NPCs are from the Adventurer's Hall. if you have one in your party.

Whoa, whoa, whoa ... that's a gross misrepresentation of that conversation from the KS page. Somebody made that suggestion and all Feargus replied was "that sounds kind of neat." That's not confirmation of a a feature. But this is all spot on. Nobody is going to be forced to ditch the game's custom made companions and given the quality of Chirs Avellone's writing, most people won't, but on subsequent playthroughs I think the idea does add some replay value.

The short answer is that I don't think the developers are even sure how it's going to work. On general principle I don't particularly like the idea of a PC being able to become a master craftsman over the course of a game ... a journeyman or apprentice? Sure. But true masterwork craftsmanship should be reserved for people who spend a lifetime perfecting their craft, not a part-time nail-pounder.

Wait.... I thought I read something about this too.... somewhere. Anyone have a cite? Or maybe it was just an idea Josh was tossing around? Tim Cain said it in the first reddit Q&A if I recall? "We aren't going to reward you for your body count" or some such. EDIT: Correction, I think it was actually his first video update http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/obsidian/project-eternity/posts/314089

Good point.

Mandatory checkpoints just scream "funneling." The developer telling you something important is about to happen (or just happened) and can really break any sense of exploration of experimentation. They're fine for treadmill shooters like Gears of War or Halo, but leave them the hell out of my RPG.

Even with a 3 million dollar budget, that's still pretty small potatoes in today's world of computer game development. So as Gorth noted, more money probably just means more warm bodies diverted to the project: artists, programmers, scripters, modelers, etc. The initial goal of 1.1 million was going to be a pretty lean game I'd reckon.

Ok, so what the hell exactly is a healing surge supposed to be simulating? It might be a fine mechanic, but utterly breaks immersion for me ... it's as bad as "taking a knee" in NWN 2, or hiding behind a wall in a shooter. I Just Can't Do It!!!

Feh. Any self respecting DM would have forced a player to spend a round digging around for a potion back in the day.

Sounds like a zero level NPC.