Rabain

Someone saw the opportunity for a cheap joke and took it. Sure that is a lot of people on the internet but I wouldn't say it was indicative of anyone who would consider themselves speaking for the majority of the fans of PE. I think Aumaua is a great name, doesn't sound weird to me. Kind of like sounds you would hear all through Polynesia, Hawaiian islands, some native american languages. If you stick it into google and ignore the PE results you will see links to Aumua family name popular in Samoa and other islands. Sounds like a good source for a race that lives on island and near the sea right? Do you think Aumaua sounds strange to some player living in Samoa who's surname is Aumua? Basically what this comes down to is many players are either too young to have experienced enough culture (or how to use google) or have not broadened their education enough to recognise a possible source of something. As I mentioned above the first time I saw Orlan I immediately thought of Orleans in France. When I see Orlais in DAO I think of Orleans too, I didn't look at Orlans and think Orlais from DAO but you probably would if you never heard of Orleans but did play DAO. tl:dr: Obsidian are good, cheap jokes are bad.

@Wirjos: Basically what InXile did is put some of the tier rewards on a "store" as a way of donating to development. For example the digital download tier on Kickstarter was $15, while on the store it is now $20. There is a $1000 tier on their store to add an npc, weapon or location to the game of your design, on the kickstarter the $1000 tier had a lot more items in it because it came with all the previous tiers loot added in. This tier on their store comes with a bunch of stuff too but not everything that would have been on the KS tier. Basically you can still get some tiers but either at a higher price or with reduced loot. What Feargus was saying was that it is important to Obsidian to make sure the backers who are backing now and making the KS a success don't feel like they got a kick in the nuts because a store opens after the KS where people can buy what they want when they want off the back of the money that the original pledgers gave that made the KS a success in the first place. I'm fine with them opening a store if it is in the same vein as InXiles, raise the price a few dollars on the lower tiers and remove some of the other rewards from the higher tiers so that the KS backers get something unique but the late pledgers can still donate.

What is opposite to fans though, you can already see in this thread that fans are pretty equally divided. So who is right? Who is to say that if they go with your idea that many potential players will look at the game at release time and say "well it has gnomes and orcs and elves and dwarves, nothing new, so I'll wait and buy it in 6months at half price". That is just as bad as them making a mistake and all the fans saying "we don't like orlans because they are just gnomes, why didn't you call them gnomes". I prefer to let them make up the world and then later we ask them about their design process and source of ideas. We learn something about their design process and they get to give us their world as they created it. You keep saying "fans" like it was one giant person with one mind. Fans are the most diverse bunch of minds of the planet, none of which ever agree totally on anything. This is why game forums are so often hotbeds of discussion, disagreement, whining and trolling. It really is better just to look at the guys making this game, know what they have done in the past and ask questions when something is announced but never believe it is a good idea for them to Poll the playerbase for game design decisions. Sure they can poll us for our desire for romances or strongholds or whatever but not for things like race names, game politics or storyline. That never ends well because the fans just don't agree on anything 100% with each other.

If it would turn out to be some kind of weird pony that magically disappears every combat or is totally immune to damage or whatever then I'd rather just have a larger backpack and forget the pony. Once you get a pony, you want to sit on it, then you want a horse, then a warhorse, then a chariot or a wagon, then combat on all of that etc. They already said there will be no mounts though there might be some form of fast travel (boats and/or teleports) and I'm fine with that.

That's funny, you are basically saying that anyone who even attempts to reinvent an existing racial type should just give up on renaming it and forget about language etc because that is bad. Strange that the whole reason we have Middle Earth and its massive world is because Tolkien was reinventing a racial type and decided to write a language for it and then a history and then a world with a dozen other racial types reinvented. In 5 years time there will be forums complaining that the Fnargyglians are exactly the same type of race as Aumaua. How you do think any fantasy gets written if people don't just make stuff up? On the point of Orlans, are people are saying they sound like Orlesians from DAO or just complaining that they sound like gnomes so we should just call them gnomes? Maybe some people have a very limited exposure to gnomes in fantasy but they range from fun loving kendertypes to serious businesstypes to stupid dwarftypes to little human types and in almost all versions they are renamed from gnomes to something else. Personally, my opinion is that PE is talking much of its cultural lore from medieval europe. We already have Italian citystates, the gaelic sounding Eir Glanfath (hell the gaelic for Ireland is Eire), my assumption would be that Orlan is a play off of Orleans in France and the culture is a derivative of the type of character you might have seen following Joan of Arc, peasants fighting for their freedom can easily be transposed to a race seeking freedom from persecution (it just happens to be their size making them targets). Dyrwood sounds vaguely like it is English, a mix of the modern multicultural state, the ancient outpost of the roman empire (aedyr) and the precarious medieval nations place in europe. The last thing I want to see is Obsidian start asking the players/backers/forum goers to vote on race names, that would be ridiculous and only be detrimental because no one would every fully agree with the decision. It also backs them into a corner creatively when players expect Orcs and then Orcs turn out to be civil peaceloving treehuggers etc.

If they go with the IE BG style UI and include a minimap the game screen is going to be crowded. Of course the DAO and NWN UI's have a different feel, because they were designed for those games. The layout though could be applied to any game and be fine. Imagine DAO layout done with PE textures and graphics etc, the portraits don't have to be circles, they don't even have to be in the upper left etc. Just that the layout itself leaves more of the screen for viewing the gameplay.

It is a concept art, Forton probably just got out of bed, still has his pyjamas on and is doing some kata or whatever he calls it. Maybe he fights in flipflops, maybe he doesn't, I'd guess he can wear at least some armors the other classes can wear, everything from cloth up to heavy leather with whatever positives and negatives come with that. Maybe he can even wear plate armor, we don't know that yet. I'd guess there will be some monk specific gear in the game but I doubt there will be a whole armor type dedicated to monks that no one else can wear (+6 flipflops of trippingover).

I'm thinking it will be a semi-aquatic race, they said it will be bipedal so I'd be thinking of something that looks along the lines of Abe Sapien from Hellboy without the need for goggles or any kind of breathing apparatus on land and a bit bigger and more muscular. It would mean the race could wear standard armors/weapons and not have too many issues doing stuff the other races can.

Very little logic to your point of view. This IS a game. The fun in a game is being challenged and overcoming the challenge to triumph. That can be as small as pickpocketing someone to as large as defeating a dragon. As far as I can see your design would throw in random killer encounters for no reason other than to remind the player he is playing a game. Here is a monster, it is so strong you cannot defeat it, look at it and tremble and continue on your way! Yawn, what a boring waste of time. Fine If I have to level up and come back later, fine if I have to try and try again to find the right combination of attacks and spells, fine if I need to recruit help from some faction, fine if I need some specific magical item. Not fine if I just have to ignore the monster because...what?...I need to be reminded my character is just a character in a game and not an awesome priest righting all the wrongs of the world? Why do you think just because everything is defeatable that it is pandering to the players ego? Because you think that way? How about people that just want an entertaining challenging game with the possibility to triumph over all adversity because that would actually be fun and entertaining? I live in the real world, I want to play in a world were I can blow up dragons (with some effort). Meaningless invincibility serves no purpose.

I don't think we need realistic armor types based on earth climates when PE world has magic in it. That can basically allow anyone to wear anything and avoid pretty much all real world issues as required. Cadegund's armor comes with magic air conditioning, problem solved!

Well you are right that it is an example of animated 3d models. The opinion of whether it is good detailed or not is personal. I don't like it and wouldn't want PE to look like that. Personally I'd rather have BG models than something that looked like that, I'd even prefer the Dungeon Siege models instead. Find a better example maybe.

If by unwinnable encounters you mean come back later and try again but it will still be hard, then yes that sounds good. If you mean no matter what you do you will never beat this monster, even though you can attack it or will be attacked by it then no, waste of time even putting it in the game. If there is a specific event like being captured by someone/something and first you fight it but eventually lose and are captured then yeah sure but that isn't really unwinnable in the sense that you can't beat the monster, just that storywise you aren't meant to.

If hobbits were guerilla fighters like the vietcong or something...maybe. Update 20 makes it sound like Orlan are little bullies that no one likes. Individually you might be able to push them around but as a group they are like piranha.

Someone shoot an email to Bill Gates, he has some spare cash.

I'd expect it to be some generic wilderness or small town maybe. I doubt they have all character models done etc, a lot of work in there. Maybe they are running around with basic monster models or something. Or perhaps the game is almost ready to release and it will be April 2013 instead of 2014...

Your opinion is as valid as any one elses but not more valid just because it is yours. This decision is up to the developers, perhaps they are reading this thread and taking score of who likes saving anytime vs specific save points. Personally I'm still with the option to save anytime. Also save scumming I don't think is a relevant term for what is being asked here by the people who disagree. Save scumming typically exists as a manual method of circumventing automatic deletion of saves in games where you only get one save file and it is reverted to a specific point on death. That would be a contravention of the developers goal and not acceptable in my opinion. However what a lot of people here are asking for is not save scumming but just a different legitimate method of saving. You have tried to attach a negative term to that type of game save when it doesn't apply, that is a cheap tactic to make your own viewpoint appear as if it is the only proper method. While this is true on the face of it, it also doesn't apply to absolutely every option that is possible to put into a game. If that was the case there would be no Options menu in any game and you would have to mod everything because the developers decided to go with X on every decision and tough luck for you. The reality is that when there is a decision to be made about giving Options, it is discussed and a decision to allow or disallow the Option as a choice is made. Two can play that game: people who want to save less often can save less often - people who want to save often can save as often as they like. Big whoopin loss. (Or Big whoopin gain as far as I can see but then that is just my opinion). I'd say the argument still stands that the "free to save anytime" method of saving is more of a compromise for everyone than the "you only save here" method. Yes both camps get a save file at some point but at least with the free method no one is restricted in where a save occurs, if is solely up to you. Because you are unwilling to accept any compromise then any compromise is unacceptable? I sincerely hope the game is not being developed for players with that type of attitude.

I'm pretty sure the character creation in Dragon Age Origins makes smiling possible though invariably it doesn't look real, at least not to me. There is always that voice saying "what is he smiling at?" or "That's not how I imagined my smile to be." etc. It would be funny (to me at least) if PE had a character customisation level of detail that you desire but actually had no bearing in game, other than maybe appearing on your character info screen. Like a mini game of character creation just before playing the actual game. I doubt this would happen though due to it being expensive and hardly worth it due to the isometric viewpoint. Given unlimited funds and time I'd not be against it either.

Myself, I don't really agree with the whole "we lose money if we give away the Xpac as an addon" idea. Really the game is costing nothing to make due to kickstarter funds, most of the sales of the main game will be profit. This goes to the Xpac. Only after the Xpac goes on sale will you know how many will buy it. It seems silly to limit initial KS funds based on some imaginary sale that may or may not happen. We know for sure any extra funds going into the KS will help make a better game. So Xpac addon away and have a good time, the main game will be even more awesome because of it.

I'd be pretty confident the Xpac addon will send the KS over 3million before it ends. Good stuff! Now I just want my tshirt tomorrow instead of year after next...

It is really hard to makeassumptions based on a stretch goal, for all we know the original 1.1million included a contingency for additional resources including hiring extra staff. It was already mentioned that the stretch goal values don't reflect a budget, reaching 2.8 from 2.7 million doesn't mean Ziets costs 100k, it just means at 2.8 Ziets is a go, the 2.7 million goal prior means nothing. I'd agree with Sordel also that the Ziets discussion has already happened and the stretch goal is a formality. You think Ziets is sitting on his hands waiting to see if the KS reaches 2.8 million, turning down other jobs offers etc on the "chance" of working on PE? It is like the mega dungeon, the goals for extra levels are silly facebook Likes and backer numbers, the levels are already planned out, the publicity side is just that, an interesting publicity stunt to get people involved and excited. I don't frown on that by the way, I think it's a good idea but really I believe we will get X levels of the dungeon anyway, whatever they had planned to do.

I wonder if it would be possible to get tshirts earlier than 2014...though I know there will be issues with the postage costs of two mailings. Even if there is just an option to get another tshirt from an online store or whatever after the KS, waiting until game release seems like a bit too long. I would like to get my tshirt now and be a walking advertisement for Obsidian and Project Eternity for the next 18 months.

All the links to other kickstarter games and now a bunch of stuff to Addon, my credit card is already groaning...or perhaps chanting...it's hard to tell... Good stuff in this update!

One of the things in Dragon Age Origins was to have injuries as well as just plain damage. Injuries had negative effects on you until removed, which could be done in combat with higher level spells or with injury kits (potions basically) at any level. http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Injuries

I think it is a bad idea to be worrying about sales numbers right now. If Obsidian are underselling the game with the $20 tier then I'm sure they have that factored into their budget. It is not a loss in the sense that they have to pay back a loan and they will have less cash to pay it back because of the underselling. The goal should be increasing the pledges, forget about Xpac funding, forget about sales numbers of the main game. Think about what would raise more pledges in the next week. Adding an Xpac Addon for $25-30 could potentially raise a lot of cash in the short time left. Now I don't mean adding the Xpac to the $20 tier for free, I mean having the ability to up your pledge by another $25-30 in order to get a "free" copy of the Xpac. Theoretically this money reduces the profit from sales of the Xpac but the money would go to make the main game bigger and better, potentially increasing its sales and consequently the sales of the Xpac. Everyone is happy. Another thing to think about is the actual case of what Obsidian could be doing to make money instead of doing a kickstarter for PE. I'm pretty sure they would make more money making any AAA game via a publisher. It might not be the game they want to make but it would probably sell 100 times more copies than PE will. So forget about "profits" etc that haven't even happened yet and focus on possible and reasonable options to encourage more pledges or existing pledgers to increase their current pledge amount.

Yes: