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Rabain

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  1. Rabain
    No need to get depressed Caranthir, put your happy face back on . I think the Facebook stuff etc is fine, my logic behind this is that they already plan to do a 10 level dungeon (or whatever number of levels) and are just making up entertaining publicity as reasons to do it. I think they'll do it anyway. Lots of people have voiced concerns about things like the Xpac not selling if it was included as an Addon before the KS ends. Personally I'd be off the opinion that the fans of PE (Obsidian Order included) should act as an additional marketing tool, go out and publicise the game ourselves. Make it sell more, big it up to everyone we know etc. Make it a success. Use Facebook and Twitter and a megaphone if you have one, whatever helps. We all know that even ****ty games can be huge sales successes (*cough*Diablo3*cough*). Of course PE will be awesome but I'd like to see it be a sales success too, so we get more companies following Obsidians lead and making good games instead of pandering to the flavour of the month and churning out AAA crapola.
  2. Rabain
    It is magic gold that goes through the local goverments counting houses and is imbued to not weigh anything, also why it cannot be forged, also why it doesn't take up massive amounts of space. I'm for gold, silver and copper, it allows the pricing of items to be kept low making it easier to manage the economy. Not for weight, silly feature that is more frustrating than real, either invent banks and credit or stick with fantasy weightless gold (same result).
  3. Rabain
    Even if Feargus has said that no money from the KS will go to the expansion, so what. They can still make an Addon to draw more pledges in return for a "free" digital download of the expansion. People understand english, they can understand the logic. Even if this KS ends with 100k backers and they ALL buy an Xpac Addon I doubt the imaginary lost revenue from Xpac sales will even be a concern. PST sold something like 400k copies in its first year or two of release and that was the worst sales figures of all the IE games. BG2 sold something like 2 million copies and the entire BG Saga is over 5million combined. If PE only sells half of what PST sold it will still be enough to cover the announced Xpac, another 2 xpacs and probably a full fledged sequel. So personally I think it would really boost pledges if an Xpac Addon is announced in the next day or two and is priced in the $25-30 range. Edit: personally I've already pledged the 250 tier, so for me I don't have much to worry about with regards to the Xpac but base funds for the main game is my concern right now and from my point of view the more cash the better to make the game bigger and hit every current Stretch goal before the KS ends.
  4. Rabain
    They cannot make the Xpac out of profit from the sales of the Xpac, unless they invent Time travel. So considering we are already in the situation were the funding of an Xpac depends on people not involved in the KS right now in any way, we might as well have a KS Addon for the Xpac in order to get more money for the main game. The Xpac needs to be funded by main game sales unrelated to current pledges, this is obvious (no one pledging more than $20 right now needs to buy the game on release). The Xpac won't get made at all if those unknown people don't buy the main game, so who cares if the Xpac sales are hit by an Xpac Addon if we are talking about sales that haven't even occured yet? We can assume if the game is a success on release that those people will also purchase the Xpac. So yeah, might as well make an Xpac Addon for KS, no reason not to.
  5. Rabain
    It is not about the numbers of people, it is about the logic behind what is being done. On one hand they are saying making an Addon for the Xpac might be awkward considering all KS funds do to the main game while at the same time saying all $165+ tiers get the Xpac free. What you are saying by doing that is that the reward for pledging 165+ is a free Xpac, so essentially you have paid for it. Just as if you had paid for an Addon. Anyway I am highly doubtful that the 30-40k people in the $20-50 pledge tiers would have a dramatic effect on the profitability of an Xpac. In order to make the game a success and give them funds to make an Xpac they need people to buy the main game, not the Xpac. The people pledging $20-50 already have the main game so giving them an Addon only gives more cash to the development of the main game. Also I think people are being a bit excessive with estimates for the main game and the Xpac. I'd expect to see the main game available digitally for not more than $40 (it is a KS funded game, not AAA, you can't expect massive pricing), I'd expect an Xpac to be almost half that price. Talking about $100 dollar Xpacs is fantasy.
  6. Rabain
    This doesn't really make sense considering the Xpac is being offered as part of 165+ KS tiers. So if you up your pledge to 165+ you get the expansion but aren't paying for it? You are paying for the main game and a "free" Xpac? Isn't that the same as asking for a pledge increase for a "free" Xpac via an Addon?
  7. Rabain
    You could look at it like this: if there is an Xpac addon the money will go towards the main game development but you get the Xpac "free" if/when it is completed. This is basically what is happening with the $165+ tiers right now anyway. If you have upped your pledge to a $165+ tier you have not paid for the Xpac, you have paid more for the main game but get the Xpac free. And Addon would be the same thing.
  8. Rabain
    Well considering the core game digital download is on KS for $20, I'd guess the expansion will go for $10 as a digital download, so why not make an Addon on KS that people on any tier can add to their pledge? This way the 45k people in the $20-50 pledge range might be enticed to increase their pledge by $10.
  9. Rabain
    I think including the Expansion as an Add-on on KS would pull in a much bigger increase in pledges. The Expansion is being made regardless of increases in pledges at this stage, right? Adding it for free to $165 tiers and above is great but is really only a bonus for those people. The majority of pledges are in the $20-$50 range, surely making an Addon at $10-$15 for the expansion could pull in big numbers from the people in those lower tiers. Far more likely 10k poeple would increase their pledge by $10-$15 than by $100.
  10. Rabain
    Perhaps luring should be allowed in specific circumstance or require some stat roll to alllow or disallow. For example the monster positioned to guard a door is either intelligent or under strict rules. It is perfectly valid to assume if it was a human guard he might consider pursuing you out of the room in order to keep combat pressure on you instead of leaving you to do anything in the rest of the building or even just prepare a stronger return to the room (buffed, throwing a fireball ahead of you etc). Setting a fixed rule of no luring limits the players options and is as bad as an AI that always makes an enemy follow you. There should be some happy medium we can find. For example imagine that guard in the room, as you retreat a roll is made based on the Int of the last character to attack him vs his own Int, he loses the roll and pursues the party (lure succeeds), he wins the role he stays put (lure failed). It doesn't have to be Int or even stat based but the ability for two different responses should be possible.
  11. Rabain
    Well that would depend on the riddle right? How many forum posters does it take to change a lightbulb? A. 1, B. 4, C. 42. Even a low Int/Wis character could come up with those answers. Or like Fallout offer some stupid answers like A. Huh?, B. Duh? C. Lightbub? that have nothing at all to do with the riddle. Your character is so stupid that no answer is the right answer, find some other way past the riddle block or just never receive the reward. Your only other option is to limit the minimum int/wis roll allowed for any playable character so they cannot be truly stupid. Fill in the blanks is a very difficult system to implement because if it really works it is subject to spelling, translation issues etc and if you try to implement multiple correct answers they system becomes so simple you just can't get it wrong and you might as well have had ABC options.
  12. Rabain
    The IE games and PE are pretty much single player games (yes we had co-op in IE but it was never big), throwing a carrot around this early is perfectly fine. After all Obsidian are trying to get as much cash as they can and we get a bigger game. The effect of cosmetic items on players who don't have them is minimal. I trust them not to give out +10 swords of awesomesauce to high pledges but enticing some more money by putting cosmetic game content in certain brackets is a good idea.
  13. Rabain
    I really don't understand what you are trying to say, in every way the DAO system works exactly like the IE system if you want it to OR you can make is as complicated as you want or you can turn it off completely. If you ask me that is a great system to have at your disposal. Where are the compromises? The fact that you could let the game play itself with a complicated enough script? That only really works if the combat encounters are not challenging and that has nothing to do with scripts but with encounter design. Managing your party yourself is always a much better system if you want the maximum benefit from all abilities of the entire party. The scripts don't interact with each other for example, if one fighter is chugging a potion, a healer could already be casting a heal and it is wasted, stuns aren't chained for maximum effect. However there are many combats where you don't really care about detailed management, killing a few dogs in a corridor, a guard or two in a room, some bandits on the road. You don't need to micro manage everything for that and can let the scripts run along while only controlling one character. Personally I found in DAO that on most boss fights I ended up managing the healer mostly, while letting the others do their thing. On some fights I would turn off the AI completely and control everything, I usually did this on boss fights where the boss had some minor monsters to help him. I needed to use stuns and control spells etc to limit the incoming damage but once only the boss was left I switched to controlling the healer and reactivating the AI for the others so they wouldn't just stand around if the boss went out of range etc. I don't see how a system that allows various levels of control even so far as total control (script off) implies any kind of compromise.
  14. Rabain
    This is your opinion and not a fact, as mentioned above it is purely preference. You even say "to me" which implies it is your opinion. There are no hard facts about this, unless you can pull some out of some study that has been done. I can as easily say that my sense of atmosphere and feeling of danger are in the moment, not because I am afraid of having to reload a save from 15 minutes ago but because the dungeon music, lighting, design and actually not knowing what is around the corner are all adding to it. That to me seems a better design goal than trying to force atmosphere by making me afraid to die because of reloading so far back along my path. There may be players who have no lockpicking, trap setting or stealth abilities because they are playing one class solo. So they should just live with being surprised around a corner and dying and having to replay 15 minutes of dungeon to get back to the same spot? Doesn't sound like fun to me. I think this is where your argument falls apart, everything you are asking for is denying something to other people. If we can save anywhere then we choose to save when we want, if you want to save every 15 minutes then you do that and live with the consequences, I can save every 30 seconds if I want to. Forcing me to play your way would not improve my sense of danger or atmosphere, instead it is more likely to make me just play less because I am punished for actually being surprised by the game and dying or I play so slowly, looking around every corner and crawling along that the game is actually no fun. For any atmosphere you think you have added you have equally removed something and made the game feel repetitive before I have even completed my first play through. What if a fight takes 6 times to beat it because you are it is just a challenging fight but the nearest save is 15 minutes before the fight, you should play for 1hr 30 minutes the exact same corridors and trash monsters to get to the problem fight? Rather than being atmospheric that would feel so frustrating I would just quit and go do something else. That sounds like bad design to me.
  15. Rabain
    No offense but what is the difference? It is another class that uses "spells" to do stuff, basically it is a soulmage/sorceror. The mechanics will probably be 99% the same as either caster type. You could say the same about Priests I guess though there is enough difference in our minds between priest and mage that it is a valid option to have them as separate classes. There are many fantasy worlds both in books, games and film where magic is just an affinity someone has and can be used for both damage and healing. We apply our own consensus on what a priest vs a mage should be because we understand what these classes traditionally represent. I don't really mind what they call a paladin but I'd like to have that goody goody warrior type in the game without having to just RP it in my head. I'd rather the world had some compelling lore behind that holy warrior type. I think that is what many players are asking for when they ask for additional classes or subclasses, they are asking for their favourite class type to have representation so that when they play it they feel more invested in it and in the game world. Every game that has had some paladin/holy warrior type class that I have played, I have always used that class on my first playthrough. I would like that for PE too, just because I would like it.
  16. Rabain
    In pretty much every rpg with AI scripts the general rule is that you turn scripts on or off and when they are on you have a selection of combat types to choose from ranging from basic "attack the enemy on sight" to "use this ability, then this ability or this if you are low health" etc. I don't think anyone here is asking for a no-option AI script forced on your party members whether you like it or not. That is the type of thing you see in Diablo 3 and everyone complains about it all the time even though the companion hardly matters at all to combat.
  17. Rabain
    There are only so many variations on abilities, no matter what you make up it will probably be similar to something someone has done before. Regardless of what a Cipher actually does in game I'd imagine it is going to be pretty much the same as a mage except the "spells" will all be mind related etc. I doubt it will be truly something new and never seen before like a class that uses clouds to focus rain or sunlight on an opponent, it might sound mad and be impossible but that is the stage we are at if we want something never seen before. You can make a class of warrior priests that go out into the world and use their godgiven abilities to purge evil...call them Tempestians, they will basically be paladins, just like Ciphers will be mages/sorcerors. I'm not trying to say that making up new classes and trying is a bad thing, I'm saying that players asking for paladins or bards are really asking for a class that reflects the idea behind the meaning of those classes. Call the paladin a Templar, call the bard a Troubadour, who cares, it is the holy warrior or singing rogue that people want. It is up to the dev team to add PE uniqueness to them, paladins that can read your soul or make you submit to a truth test, bards that can sing to your soul and imbue you with power or crush your hopes etc. That kind of thing.
  18. Rabain
    The DAO system at least had customisation that made it at worst exactly like the IE games combat scripts and at best meant you hardly needed to manage your group in certain combats. Scripts don't overwrite your control, you can still pause at any time and tell someone to do something. If you don't want a character using a specific interrupt you could just leave the skill out of the AI script, which meant at any point you felt you could interrupt an enemy, you switch to that character and use the interrupt, at other times you could be commanding another character while the interrupter is still using a basic script to do things. The one good thing over most AI scripts I've seen that DAO has is that scripts can be built per character. One fighter doesn't use his interrupts, the other does. The level of control is yours. You could build a basic combat script that would apply to any character if you want some automation, attack enemy, use potion etc or you could build a detailed script telling which priority to use abilities. The DAO system had default Defender, Scrapper fighter scripts as well as melee/ranged subsets, offensive, defensive, supportive and healing scripts for casters, disabling scripts for rogues and mages. I find it hard how anyone could say DAO scripting was done badly, there was so much variation ranging from Scripts Off to play my game for me and pretty much everything in between. You just had to spend some time getting to know the system to build what you wanted.
  19. Rabain
    If the system is identical to the IE games I will be happy, you can save at any time so long as you are not in combat. I don't really like the system Trashman seems to be implying where you are arbitrarily punished by the game design because they think you shouldn't die unless you are being stupid. That is basically what you are saying. If I save my game before opening a door that I have no idea what is behind, then to me that is good design and a good idea on my behalf. If I die because I wasn't expecting something that is behind the door then I will be very happy I saved the game. I would be nothing but pissed off if the game forced me back to some save 15 minutes before the door, down 3 levels, to fight through 20 mobs just to get back to the door and try again. That is not punishing death, that is just punishing for no reason at all. It implies that every combat is possible to beat 1st time every time which means either combat will be boring and not challenging or I am required to be perfect in combat every time. I don't mind dying and having to do a fight 5 or 6 times, I expect it, I like challenging combat. Fighting my way back to that combat just because I can't save before it is not a challenge, it is not a punishment, it is ONLY frustrating.
  20. Rabain
    I guess because with the addition of the two extra classes as stretch goals the freeform progression seems to be out the window. Barbarians on the face of it are Fighters with some special abilities and Ciphers to me just seem to be soulmages/sorcerors. Both could easily be freeform options within fighter and mage but we've been told they will be classes (if the goals are reached). I don't see there being much in the way of freeforming within classes, you might be able to make a mage who wears platemail but that is only an item restriction being lifted. From what I've seen so far I get the impression that fighters will be fighters and distinct from mages, fighters won't be learning mage spells and mages won't be learning fighter abilities. You might be able to make a combat mage but he will most likely be using a specific set of mage spells, not some set of abilities picked from a fighter skillset. It would seem very weak design to me if a fighter could learn some priest spells and be a paladin in everything but name while Barbarian gets to be its own class...just because of some design whim.
  21. Rabain
    I'd much prefer if the mega dungeon had some structure to it instead of random levels. From the concept art it would seem it gets more primitive or aged as the levels go down, I like that idea. First few levels are stone, then maybe a catacomb, then a cave system, then some things lair, then some ancient races ruins etc.
  22. Rabain
    If there was some valid reason or mechanic behind the death of your party members or whatever it might be worth considering limiting the ability to save. However I doubt party deaths in average combat will have any major significance to the other party members other than perhaps a line of dialogue popping up like in BG where most party members said something entertaining when their "partner" died in combat. But it was never followed on, Minsc didn't harp on about Dynaheirs death in BG1 even if she died and I never bothered resurrecting her. He did it in BG2 because he death was a part of the storyline. If you were forced to only save at specific points many players would just become frustrated with the system and the game would suffer for it (negative review). On the other hand I very much disliked the DAO system of autosaving before any major event, it was too much handholding. Saving should be up to the player, if I forget to save for a long time and get killed by some dragon then its my own fault and I should play from my last save.
  23. Rabain
    It depends how you think of XP, killing a rat at level 10 might seem like it doesn't offer any new experience but you could ask yourself why you need to kill a rat at level 10. Perhaps the reason for your action is what provides the XP. At level 1 I kill rats because the Innkeeper needs his cellar cleaned out and its about all I can manage, at level 10 I kill rats because the Lord I'm looking to get a job from wants me to kill rats. Either way I still learned something worthy of XP, at level 1 I learned some combat, at level 10 I learned Lords are ****.
  24. Rabain
    BG1 map beats BG2 hands down, it offered you a whole world and felt much more real for doing that. BG2 kind of felt like the only important parts of the world were the ones relating to your main quest. Part of the change between the two though might be down to the player having been through BG1 and the developers not wanting to bother a high level player with worgs, xvarts and cows etc.
  25. Rabain
    Just curious if anyone knows: do the paypal donations automatically get added to the kickstarter numbers? Or do we wait until the KS ends before Obsidian tells us what the total is or does the paypal continue after KS ends?
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