Rostere

Why are people so obsessed with bugs? It's ridiculous.

I think that's sensible, but it's risky to assume that the best way of achieving that is doing things the way they have always been done. Kickstarter games are inherently different. You have a huge built in audience that are more invested in the game, but paid you for it years ago so don't bring in any actual cash on launch day. The value of existing marketing is known to agree (except the 75k people most likely to be interested in your game won't be, because they already backed it) but there are other questions to consider. What would the value of giving backers access the same time as the reviewers, but ahead of the general public be? There's a lot of things that factor into that choice - the big ones being how reliant you are on that day-one patch for stability (especially if you're Obsidian), the other being if you plan on going back to Kickstarter for the follow-up next game, and if so, when. Other than the game itself, that launch is the last window to talk to most casual backers. I think it would be wrong to underestimate the effect on them of saying "as a reward for supporting us, you'll get access to the game a week before the general public". Is that expected? No. Are backers entitled to it? No. But is there value in doing that? Yes. Early review copies are handed around like free candy in the games business, especially smaller companies after any sort of coverage, but to the casual fan, getting that early copy can be super-cool. Even if they don't play it, it makes them feel special, it has a big positive effect on backer engagement. You're far more likely to get that backer back again for the next project. And there's the negative flip-side too. Backers that have forgotten about the project see all the videos and so on, get excited, but don't get a call to action. They don't need to pre-order, but they can't play it either. Currently there's not even a pre-load/key available. That inability to take any action can lead to the game being forgotten about again. Now, for all those pro points of releasing to backers early, there are absolutely drawbacks too. Does one outweigh the other? I don't know. My issue is that the impression I get from various responses is that no one really thought about it. They just did it this way because it's the way it's always been done. And that's where it can get dangerously short-sighted - to assume that your Kickstarter game, once you have the money, works exactly the same as any other game. There are differences, a lot of them aren't even fully understood yet, but they need thinking about, not ignoring. [As an aside, this is a more complicated case - PoE has publisher funding now too, and it's huge, and there are issues with spoilers... but the first time I encountered this sort of thing was backing an album from a musician. That was a lot more straight-forward: the backers literally paid for the studio time and production, and then the album was sent out to reviewers first. Backers had to wait a couple of weeks. ] If delaying the game a week for the general public would make PoE sell more I would be for it. But IMO this would only lead to piracy and even more flak. Personally, I only care about the game being good enough. If I get it now or in 3 months does not matter, so delaying the game for the general public would not be a "reward" for me. I think it's easier to build hype among YouTube personalities if you make them feel special, I think that is the rationale behind this marketing trick.

Source This sounds like complete overkill to me for the kind of MP that the IE games had. "Network programmers" in plural and a dedicated online QA staff? I don't understand how dev time would rise by 33%, that sounds absurd - but maybe I'm underestimating what Roby means with "proper multiplayer". I am talking about the very rudimentary MP the IE games had, with no fancy stuff. Maybe I'm also underestimating how difficult it would be to get it running smoothly. But Obsidian have made MP games before, so they should not need to wrestle with the theoretical questions behind constructing an efficient MP solution.

Wait. What? I'm all for MP, but it's a very large technical process. They have already got the Unity engine, in either case they have already made games before (DS3) which you can play online over Steam. To implement the functionality in PoE from there onwards should not be particularly hard. Well of course all labels such as "hard" are subjective. What I'm saying is that it's IMO not hard to write a program in Java or C# which communicates over an internet connection. It is not very hard to communicate positions on the map of players, creatures, et.c. (especially not if you have already written code that does exactly this, then you don't need to do any deeper thinking about how you want these things to work out in theory). Then you already have pre-alpha multiplayer right there. I have no idea if it's hard or easy to make it efficient, though. Personally, I have never made a multiplayer game so I don't know exactly what would be necessary (although I have many friends who are working on that kind of stuff). I have done some rudimentary stuff using sockets in Java (which is on a comparable level with C#), for example a chat program (pretty much a homebrew MSN Messenger with uglier graphics ). I have also done a lot of other programming of course, but mostly I do sciency stuff, I guess the closest I get to programming multiplayer games is cluster programming with MPICH in C, at least that is about message passing over connections. EDIT: If anyone should believe otherwise, to clarify I am talking about multiplayer as it worked in the IE games. Nothing more, nothing less.

No way. Expansion is, you know, an expansion. Additional content for the game. Writing network code and hooking it to the engine* doesn't really fit under expansion thing and going to cost a lot of programming and debugging time among other things. Maybe in a sequel. Maybe. Wouldn't hold breath, though. *I'm assuming devs threw all Unity's default networking out as PoE was intended to be strictly SP. I don't want MP myself, I just want Obsidian to do whatever they need to cash in to make other stuff that I like. Since MP does not force a compromise with the stuff I like, I am for MP.

You should think of these guys as a black box generating revenue for Obsidian and nothing more, maybe then you'll feel better about it. If they need to play pop music while playing or commit other types of heresy, so be it. I'm one of those guys you should never listen to if this was the WH40K universe. Apparently, if some YouTube guy plays a game people will buy it. You and I and everyone else who don't buy games depending on what YouTube personalities say are clearly not the target audience for this marketing effort, but we have already bought the game so... I'm not 100% but I also believe that Paradox are in charge of handing out stuff. The heavy focus on YouTube reviewers as opposed to magazine reviewers only seems like their style.

Yeah. If you ever played MP in the IE games, you'd know it was just "tacked on" - it didn't change they game in any way, except that other players could control some characters. Doesn't sound hard to implement to me.

IMO Obsidian should add MP in an expansion. I have never enjoyed the IE games in multiplayer, but since they had MP it would be fair to consider it for PoE as well. I think MP can be added fairly easily "on top" without breaking the experience for others in any way.

Yeah, it's possible to have a very sheltered existence posting on the Obsidian boards (and other civilized places). You kind of forget how stupid people are out there in the real world.

Cool, they seem to have fixed the duplicate top sellers entries now PoE at #3 and still going strong, yay!

Yeah, and not only is it #3, it is also #32

I just want Obsidian and Paradox to do whatever is in their power to earn as much $$$ as is possible, and then to burn everything on a sequel in a similar format. If that means sending early versions to YouTube personalities, polka-dotted flying pigs and your mom then hell yes, I'm all for it.

Ping all devs. Why is this? If this is an error, you should contact Steam immediately. You are losing out on the higher spots on the Steam charts, which you might achieve if the sales numbers of the two identical(?) PoEs are added together.

Seems to be two data points for every time tick. Indeed, there are two Pillars of Eternity on Steam's own chart as well.

I really don't see what is the problem with Obsidian/Paradox' approach in this matter.

When I run out of good ideas for names, I always use real-world male and female names starting with an "r" prepended by a "b". Examples would be: Brobert Brudolf Brune Brupert Brobin/Brobyn Brunar Bronja Bragnhild And so on.

I'm currently thinking I'll play a Death Godlike Wizard. Culture Rauatai or Old Vailia, background Mystic (preferably) or Aristocrat. Stats MIG 10 CON 3 DEX 19 PER 18 INT 20 RES 8 I most often play a cleric or a paladin so I figure a wizard would be a welcome change. So would going so low on CON be considered dirty min/maxing, or would it be a grave handicap in the game?

So... Which backgrounds can you choose for each of the cultures? Halp.

Okay, so what are people actually planning to do to make others buy this game? Remember to write metacritic reviews. Write Steam reviews. Talk about the game on forums and recommend it to people. It is only through us that games like this continue to be made, also remember that the sales of this game will decide Obsidian's future prospects of making more games like this. What happens now is at least as important as the Kickstarter campaign.

Maybe we should initiate a counter-information campaign on the Steam forums then, posting topics such as these over there, to drown out all the haters who are sore because of no PC romance in the game.

So... Still not anyone who has a list of the achievements? Might the devs share more about this with us perhaps?

I would like Arcanum 2. Sadly, Obsidian, does not own the IP. Ah, what the heck. They should just do it and then call it "TimCainum" or something instead.

Yeah, that's like entirely crazy, like if they would do a kobold bard or something.

Don't you have some type of governmental food inspection agencies, and maximum legal concentrations of toxic substances in food? Maybe you should alert them to this.

But what are you going to use tactical nukes for when your adversary has already used strategical nukes on you? I don't understand, it seems pointless. Same with those giant flying piñatas - has zero use in warfare between two advanced nations. Might be useful if Russia wants to deploy their troops for Iraq-style interventions though.