Archaven

I'm not sure if anyone plays Dungeon Siege 3 before. It was made by Obsidian. Go look at the game if folks thing they don't make bad decisions. Go look at Sacred 3. Although they are different genre, the direction and goal was same. For greener pastures.

Things changed.. ahem even number of party members *chuckles*. But i can see the reason why this empower became per rest. It's kind of hard to mix per encounters with per rest. It's one of the reason that greatly discouraged me to play as a Wizard. My first character in PoE was a Cipher.. and it was kinda broken, IMO or exceeds far better than any characters. This new concepts sounds quite interesting though. I may have to put some thoughts onto it. But props to Josh, he can figure out such mechanics!

Me too! I keep refreshing the figstarter page.. and it seems the number will be updated on it's own that i don't realy need to spam F5

Not really. We've made almost 50k in 18 hours or so. That has been the norm since the initial rush of the first couple days. The middlish days of the campaign always slow down, and $60ish K a day isn't bad. If that holds as the average, then by the final couple days (where another big push will come) it will have around $3m. Usually the last two days make around the same as the first two. Maybe a little less. The first couple days made around $1.4m. That means a total of around $4.5m, if the trend holds. I certainly hope so!. The first was only around 3.9M. To me, PoE is really a great franchise and it certainly deserves more. Kinda suxs to see some exploding kittens card game made more than 5M and such a masterpiece to a successor of Baldur's Gate isn't holding up. Edit And no.. i was wrong.. exploding kittens funded 8M+. What has the world gone to. If i have to play a card game, i go for Magic The Gathering.

Goddamnit. I didn't see the Twitch stream, but if this is the case I'm canceling my pledge. PoE was supposed to be about reviving the IE style of game for hardcore cRPG fans, a NICHE MARKET. This news sounds like they're trying to eventually go down the old dumb down/simplify road in order to pander to the masses and *shudder* attempt to release to consoles. Do I go too far in saying that I'm starting to have doubts, to thinking that maybe Obsidian has capitalized on their fanbase and is gearing towards abandoning them for the sake of the almighty dollar? I'm beyond disappointed. Looks like Beamdog (the creators of the Enhanced Editions) are my only hope now. I really have no issue if they were to release on consoles. More money to them, it's great. But i really hate it things has to be simplify, if that's really the case :/

Erm... no. It's quite possible that the reasons for reducing the party size were one thing (path finding, tweaking encounters, whatever) but that once this change was made, and the UI was adjusted to accommodate it, the UI becomes the main obstacle to modding the game to allow larger parties. I've already explained couple of times. Path-finding is contradictory. You can find answers in earlier posts and even think for yourself. And about tweaking encounters, this is subjective. You can easily argue that encounters were tweaked for 4 party or even 3 party characters too. To even prove that encounters are scalable, they even mentioned something about dynamic AI with with backend data they've coded to adapt to certain combat situations. This whole reduction is simply an UI issue. To look good on big TVs, you can't have too many characters or even big encounters TBH. And the worst part of all, they've said it modding is quite difficult even with PoE1. With this UI restrictions, for modding 6 characters, it's even out of the questions.

So i was right after all.. based on the Twitch Q&A video session, he revealed that we are not allowed to mod 5-6 characters simply because the "UI" doesn't allow for that. So all these path-finding issues and game-design is now debunked. And i was right.. it was done in "favor" of the UI.. basically plays better on big monitors... like big TVs and possibly plays well too on controllers (more or less you get what that means). This is the worst things to happen to this franchise, TBH. And i've said it again, the best party size for big TVs would be 4. They knew that the backlash would even be worst if they were to reduced it to 4, so they go with 5. Will the gameplay suxs? No. Certainly not at all. It's just no longer the old school cRPG that i love to play. If i wanted 4, i've already completed one which is Dragon Age Inquisition. One truly disappointed fan here.

things are slowing to a crawl.. obsidian really has to do something when the next goal is hit. they need to announce the big guns already.

I like more variety of armors too. Many forget that if you dont like that armor you don't have to wear it. It's same like if you like 5 characters or less, you dont have to make everyone to have to follow you... just like what Obsidian is doing

I wont be able to watch the stream due to timing issues. I hope someone would be good enough to post it up on youtube. I believe you can watch the stream from twitch when ever you want to. Maybe i'm not good in using Twitch.. most of the time i clicked the links to Twitch.. it was something like "Offline" and i can't see stuff.

I said something similar earlier in the thread. Say what you will about your preferences on Romance... but it's an incredibly popular request. If they can get the news out to Bioware's fan base it could cause a huge boost in new backers and upped pledges. If they have the time and desire to do them properly then I have no issue as long as it isn't to the detriment of other areas of the game. We will see. I expect the $2M stretch will be hit a little after this time tomorrow, but I could be overly optimistic there. If I were a decision maker at Obsidian, I would make Romances a late late late stretch goal. Get other systems first, and use Romances as a final push at the end of the campaign. That could be why they have avoided any discussion on it in Fig's comments, as well. It's a late campaign stretch goal, and they don't want to get people's hopes up this early in the campaign just in case they don't get near it. Or they aren't doing it at all. Both are possibilities. That's not good either. If it's the last stretch goal.. Most probably would be the ones that's most difficult to achieve. Most backers have already pledged. The only thing possible would be through post funding options like paypal and such.

I wont be able to watch the stream due to timing issues. I hope someone would be good enough to post it up on youtube.

They really need romance as stretch goals. I think that may out of a sudden pull a big crowd from the Bioware fans to start pledging.

Too bad instead of quality painted NPC portraits, they went the cartoony water colored version. I don't really mind that for quest givers but how about quality, painted portraits that available for custom party or the main PC? I think they have leave that for the community i guess? I myself have to find a good NPC portrait for my character when i first play PoE. And thanks to the community! for the big library of custom portraits. They were really very good. So basically, i think this water color NPC portraits as a stretch goal wasn't really necessary. It may not suits the tone or the settings for the game.

I would be surprised if Obsidian has not mass email spamming previous backers to come back for reinforcements. This is the first thing i would do, personally.

So far those stretch goals were kinda boring.. it's all localization, NPC portraits and level cap. The most interesting one for me is Xoti (thank god we hit that goal). I hope for more companions, more story/side content and i personally love the Mega Dungeon. It was bad simply because.. it became too boring when it's too easy. If this time around they have dynamic AI (as the claim?) it would be really interesting to see 5 vs 5 party fights!

I like Durance character. I know it's MCA character and he didn't part with Obsidian in a good way i think. So Durance is as much as RIP. On the other hand.. i actually like Iselmyr. Sadly she was trapped in Aloth's body? If they can actually (story-wise) transfer Iselmyr to a real character that be awesome. But then Aloth will lose that interesting banter and dialogues.

I think you were right. That's sagani. I think the pic in the kickstarter background got me confused if she was lashing a whip or something.

I think it's Cadegund. I found out by watching the KS again. :D.. one thing i notice Tim Cain wasn't feature in the figstarter campaign video though. Damn, you're right, of course it's Cadegund. My bad. I love Pallegina. My first reaction when i first play PoE (i didn't back it).. i was thinking .. man could i romance her? .. and you know the disappointment . But anyway, just wondering if Cadegund will make an appearance as the 8th companion? But looking at her design.. it's too similar with Pallegina. Basically that role has already been taken, so perhaps that's one reason she was cut. Now with multi-class i really like to see MORE companions (i know we probably can't have many) but i dont mind if they add it later to expansions. I really love more companions though. I'm hopeful to get 8th companion but companions are the single most important thing for me in this game.

I think it's Cadegund. I found out by watching the KS again. :D.. one thing i notice Tim Cain wasn't feature in the figstarter campaign video though.

I go to kickstarter page of PoE1 and i saw the background art which consists number of characters and only 2 that i recognized: Aloth and Zahua. Who's the guy beside Aloth? And who's that women in platemail with Arquebus? And also a shorter female character lashing out the whip? I don't think that's Sagani right? So where are these characters, are they cut? Or they were reworked? Any chance of seeing them again?

I would love for special ammo TBH. That would make encourage folks to have a range character. If my memory serve me right, Sagani wasn't as great as the other classes.

So i read on Fig is that most characters will have it's own look regardless of what armor or weapons you equip your party characters. With multi-classing, it's actually possible that Eder can be a Fighter/Wizard or a Rogue/Priest. Feargue mentioned someone actually equipped Eder with a robe and he said they'll disallow that. What's folk thoughts about this? If Eder is a fighter/wizard or a rogue/priest, then having him wearing a robe actually matches his role. Is it not? Also i'm a little worried over pure classes here. If multi-class being too viable (as devs mentioned it will be around 75-85%) of what pure class would be, then there would essentially be no benefits of choosing pure classes over multi-class?

Actually.. since the custom UI is a stretch goal.. if the goal is hit.. i would like to see something like... Sharing UI / menu settings. Would that be possible? Say Ashen Rohk made his own customised UI and shown it on youtube, it would be great we can download the .ini files or something? So that we can use it on our own? Just my 2 cents. @mumbogumshoe thanks for providing your insights about my thoughts. the reason why i mentioned less backers are not good because it could mean that those original backers who backed the game, don't really like how the game has turned out (although it was commercially successful). it possibly means people are actually less interested in the genre as a whole (which i really hope not).

Game design forces you. The game is designed around played with party cap. If you play with 4 or 5 you increase the difficulty when you don't want to. As for Sawyer's post about multiclassing, we still don't know how it's gonna play. After all, if devs say it'll play better with 5 than 6, I trust them more than any speculating fan. Sorry but until I see a gameplay demo/video of a combat encounter that proves 6 is better, I cannot support this. This is where i hate that some fans think that devs make no mistakes. They do and they made plenty of them. If older infinity games that have multi-class and with 6 characters and works well i don't see a problem with PoE2. So are you gonna buy what devs said 4 plays better than 5 and actually 3 would be the best? They are making multi-class/dual-class for PoE2 meaning that they want more freedom/options for the players. By hard-capping the players to 5 is doing the opposite. They mentioned about pathing issues which is not game design related. You said it yourself.. you can't prove 6 or 5 is better simply because.. you cant? Allow it then. We'll see and compare it for ourselves. It seems the pathing issues was fixed with simple reduction of characters to 5. They even mentioned they have re-written the whole pathing code and making the circles bigger. But this explanation was debunked because you can possibly create 5 custom party yourself all with a pet and summons which essentially more than 10 party characters. Reduction of 6 characters to 4 or 5 could possibly save "space" in the HUD/UI on a big TV screen and even input devices like a controller. In that case, TBH 3-4 are really the BEST number. Then again, that's not the game i really wanted to play. Is 4 party character RPGs going to sux? No. Even with 1 party character that RPG can be a 10/10 game. There are no games in the market that is similar to Baldur's Gate anymore with 6 party characters and with RTwP and awesome settings/lore. Seeing it to get reduced to 5... and possibly 4 in PoE3.. is not really the direction i like to see this franchise going. Feargus himself hinted they are monitoring how it goes for the 5 party characters on how the audience reception to 2018 and beyond. It's technically possible with 6 or even more. It's just that they want to restrict it on purpose. What's the real reason? I cannot tell.