C2B

If you don't mind me asking. Why did you decide to try out 8 slots in the first place? Did 16 seem a bit too much previously?

I mean Avellone as a creative lead for BGIII. All for it. As the design lead. Eh. There are others. (Not talking about Sawyer)

I agree. I like PoE, but i would like their next game to not follow the same direction, to be designed in a per case way with little to no uniformity in the system and hard counters turned to eleven. If it was completely alien/original setting on top of that, i would donate way more than i did in PoE. (and Avellone as the lead designer) Avellone as the lead designer?Be careful what you wish for here. Also how would Avellone on top of a alien setting lead to BG3? PS:T = best RPG ever createdKOTOR 2 = Second best game Obsidian ever made behind MotB as far as i'm concerned Alpha Protocol = the ideas in the game were terrific. The execution not so much but i was under the impresion that Chris came late on the project to salvage it, so to blame it on him would be like blaming NWN2 OC on Sawyer. FNV DLCs > Base FNV. Granted, they were made on top of Sawyer's system, but it's not as if i want Avellone to design the systems of the new game, just to decide the vision and the overal direction. And the only BG3 i want is the one Ziets described on formspring, which was prety original/alien. Hard counters galore and no uniformity in the system are the things i want, or to put it differently, BG2 design sensibilities instead of IWD2/Sawyer ones. Avellone isn't good at all at gameplay. (None of the games you mentioned didn't have big problems in that department) And I'm not sure at all he wouod go for BG design sensibilities or the things you seem to want. What makes you think that he would go exactly for it? Also AP is a bit of a different situation than NWN2, but ok. Edit: to clarify. I think Avellone has lots of cool ideas and approaches to gameplay, but his execution is.. lacking so far to say the least to the point where it can negativly influence the experience. And I say that with all love for Chris.

Several things. However it came down to one of two alien related project getting cancelled. Guess which one they chose to survive? ... Hint: They didn't just choose poorly, they made an ungodly abomination of a bad decision that bit them in the ass in more ways than one.

It was 16 in the E3 demo. I doubt the current configuration is going to be the final number of inventory slots considering the beta reactions.

I agree. I like PoE, but i would like their next game to not follow the same direction, to be designed in a per case way with little to no uniformity in the system and hard counters turned to eleven. If it was completely alien/original setting on top of that, i would donate way more than i did in PoE. (and Avellone as the lead designer) Avellone as the lead designer? Be careful what you wish for here. Also how would Avellone on top of a alien setting lead to BG3?

Notch left.

Pillars 2 is definitly planned. First there will be the expansion though. In general they want to make Eora (Pillar's setting) a whole franchise if possible. PoE II will most likely be financed through the sales of the first game. (Of course it has to be decently successfull for that)

I'm sure he can access the forum itself. I think he means he can't access his dev account. Which is certainly a possibility.

Eh, its a fair complaint (Not posting enough here). I think Monte also misses the time when Obsidian devs generally seem to have posted more on these forums. (I wasn't actually around back then, so that might be wrong)

I don't think we govern Josh's private life just yet. Ok, snarkiness aside I don't get the problem so feel free to ignore my post. Anyway, as fearrabit mentioned Josh doesn't have access from home to his work account here. Thats why he doesn't post here during times he isn't at the office. Generally I wouldn't expect a full answer on the problem till later last week. For the same reason that it was posted on friday and its the weekend.

Yes, companies usually shy away from giving out system requirements early because of it.

Already said it, but great proposal. Will spark an interesting discussion at the veeeery least.

That goes your way too. (Also get off that horse) In fact Chris Avellone himself would disagree with you. He actually complained about how a 3D environment and voice acting made things different. Showing things is not the same as reading them in descriptive text. It does not have the same effect on the player. Its not the same experience. The charachter Christine in Dead Money is based out of Chris frustration about it.

Finances heavily restrict which design options(not to mention how many at once) are available to you. It's always also a question of finances. The point is even if you have unlimited money and all options are open to you, fully voiced free-world isn't the best design direction, just one direction among many If you have unlimited money than that is the best design decision lol. You can fill that world with best stories, quests, reactivity, have NPCs all be voiced by talented voice or movie actors, everything that modern sandbox games like Skyrim don't have but fools still come on these boards and boast how they are better. You can hire an army of good developers and good team managers and have it done in reasonable time. You should not have said unlimited money lol. You also didn't say that the sales of such game should be more than the cost :D PS:T story couldn't be told as effectively in an open World game, it would screw the pacing too much. And sure as hell i wouldn't want all those walls of text( i love text) voiced, it would be tedious and i can read them way faster than the actor can voice them. And i can't imagine a voice actor voicing a novel's worth of text and managing to keep his voice fresh and passionate and not sound bored. Wall of text was because half of it was descriptions. With unlimited money you could pay for next gen graphics and those descriptions would play in front of your while the well paid professional actor would not falter in his job or would be replaced by another better one. You have unlimited money and don't care to scrap what first one did so far. Open world filled with PST level of story and conversations would be epic. Of course you would still have acces s to text and you could choose to read while in options you can turn on option to have voice sound off during conversations. It would not be a problem with unlimited money. Except those descriptions are a big part of what makes pst pst. Changing that stuff makes it have a different effect on the player. All of the arguments you bring up actually have a completly different effect. That isn't just 100% replacable like you seem to think. And how you tell the story, how you approach narrative design or design in general, that changes in an open world automatically.

Hmm a good RPG is just Good. Some modern RPGs dont have a Free World - I dont Play them like what happened from Witcher 1 to Witcher 2 and Gothic 1-3 to Risen Some RPGs dont have Sound and exciting Gameplay - So.. same thing Good Games have Deep Gameplay, a Free World AND.. Good Gameplay. because of that they are Good And I hoped that crowdfunding will do that, but err.... Not really what happened to it all. .... Just because it's through crowdfunding does not mean they can do whatever they want. There is still a budget. Sometimes I honestly wonder what the hell people think the financial goal means. I.... I don't get it. It's not always a question of finances. There's no theoretical super-rpg that would come with independence+money. Sometimes the design is just different. I would strongly argue Zahnfee's argument that a good game needs to have/or even wants to have a *free-world* for example.

As we know that was originally the plan

Yes In its current state it can still fail at its goal however. It's definitly getting there though.

I disagree with Sensukis views as often as I do with Sawyers, but he's a cool self-confident dude with strong opinions. And thats an immensly helpful quality for giving feedback and sparking discussions.

Certainly an interesting thing to ask in a interview/post-mortem on the game if combat xp was never really discussed. Edit: On the public side I agree by the way. Internally (at the beginning) eh, I doubt it. Doesn't matter anyway.

Not a literal one. A discussion where everyone voiced their opinions on it and stood their case. I do. k I don't. For one because it was still very early in the development period where there wasn't any incentive to go forward, for the other because thats really not the impression I have of Josh. (At least not without making a strong case for the approach/convincing the others or adapting the system he wants for a solution that satisfies.) Similiar to here Sawyer is probably the one Obsidian dev I have seen most ex-Obsidian devs praise. Annie, Tony, Kevin, George, Anthony said (who wrote the previous quote and is at Obsidian again after resolving personal stuff). Everyone more or less said something nice about him. I mean I can certainly buy *Has a clear direction and leads to it*. I just don't buy *Goes over peoples heads that disagree/Dictator*.

I believe it is. There would no doubt have been others that agree with him, but it's something he's wanted to do for a while. Ask Roguey. He would probably be able to pull a quote for you about it.Yeah, I definitly don't need selective Roguey quoting (I have read enough posts from people who actually know/knew Sawyer to have an impression of him. )And I don't doubt Sawyer wanted to do it. What I'm arguing against is the picture of Sawyer as some dictactor that forced it in.

He is the project lead though. Final decision. Yes. (Of course any of the owners could overrule him) But I really doubt Sawyer would have done it if a visible majority was set against it.

Not the best example because the Lead Designer was set on that from the beginning. Other members of the development team were not. The CEO of their own company prefers combat XP.You're continued attitude of "the developers are better than you" is tiresome. Careful here. I very much doubt quest xp is in because Sawyer set himself over everyone. (Despite what Volourn thinks) Like everything else this was most likely discussed internally with the majority being for Quest/Objective XP in the end.

The positives outweigh the negatives in my opinion. Even disgruntled beta players will find their way back eventually. I know the concern. It's the same with early access. But, here its restricted to backers that opted for beta participation. For most people the release version will decide their impression of the game.