Merin

Boy, am I late to the game. 1) Big Goals: Two words: Expansion, sequel. I think it is a mistake to build up this first indie project too big, and to expect sales to pay for a sequel. I think we've just about reached the top-out goal for adding content with the mega dungeon and adventurer's hall. I'd love to see paladin and bard added, but I don't actually think more companions or classes or races at this point is probably a good idea. So I would strongly suggest that if the game hits $3 million you will promise an expansion, old school IE kind (Tales of the Sword Coast, Heart of Winter, Trial of the Luremaster)... but that the stretch goals between 2.6 or 2.7 be nothing until $3 million. And anyone who pitched in $25 or more (getting a copy of the game) will also get a copy of the expansion for free. at $4 million, full-on sequel is added. Like Fallout 2, Icewind Dale 2, etc. Will that million between 3 and 4 pay for it? Not likely... but will 1 million plus sales of PE pay for a sequel? Magic 8 ball keeps coming up "almost certainly." 2) Backer Rewards: You have to watch costs, and physical items are bad after a certain point. It's probably best to now look at providing design notes, digital images of characters, and other low cost, no shipping involved, additional tiers. Unless you mean "we hit X number of backers, now we add this!" For that - I don't know. It seems a weird goal to shoot for... I mean, more backers, more the word spreads, sure. But maybe it should represent what more backers would mean? If an increase in backers is what you want, the reward should support those backers I would say... those increased numbers. So I would suggest something BioWare did with the BSN and Dragon Age: Origins, or what Saints Row the Third did... allow uploading of character and story to the Obsidian Forums - a new website addition for Project Eternity. Something along that line would make more sense to me - larger community, a reward that represents the large community. 3) Other Stretch/Backer Feedback?: Well, again, I think there's a point where, despite knowing you COULD do more, that you should stop and be satisfied with getting done what you've already put on the itinerary. More stretch goals should be outside the main game at this point. Backer enticement - new reward tiers, especially ones designed just a few dollars above the glutted tiers to entice a few more bucks out of people, need to provide nice special goodies that aren't physical items that need to be shipped, but would garner people to throw a few dollars more in the pot - again, exclusive images as digital files is good, design notes, short stories (I know this stuff will still take time and effort to make, but I cannot stress how big the shipping nightmare is on back rewards!) Other than that... my advice is only reveal stretch goals as the previous ones are hit (don't put big ones that are too far out there out too earlier), and create more reward tiers to draw up from the overcrowded tiers. That's the best way, IMO, to raise more money.

I've just finally been playing Mask of the Betrayer.... and while I have physical copies of NWN 2 and MoB... I bought SoZ online somewhere. And I can't figure it out, either... so now if I erase it, or have to reformat my drive or something... I'll need to buy it again.

I'm not meaning to pick on you in particular, norolim, so don't take it personally - I'm just branching off of what you are saying here. Aren't doing well as compared to what? Most Kickstarter campaigns don't succeed. But let's put that aside for a moment. Of the game campaigns I've seen succeed, maybe a third hit their goal in a day. Many of them just barely squeaked by at the end, barely going over their requested amount, like Takedown, Leisure Suit Larry, Director's Cut, Shadowrun Online... most succesful KS campaigns don't raise double their goals. Seriously, look at Shadowrun Online and Takedown for good examples of how unpredictable it can be. Don't count out a campaign until the last day, and even then you never know. They are 1/10th of the way there with over 90% of their campaign left. It could fail, but there's nothing right now you can point to that would really project that it is going to.

Does this help anyone? http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lootdrop/an-old-school-rpg-by-brenda-brathwaite-and-tom-hal/posts/322220 Personally, I love the sound of this concept. A lot.

Quote of the day: "I don't like a class, so they must be childish" ^^ But seriously, if you don't like Paladins, then that is okay. I don't really like Monks either, but I know that many people enjoy this class and that is why I think they should be in the game. It is as simple as that. Are we just voting on classes, and are limited to certain ones? If we're playing that game, I'm spending all my votes on getting rid of rogues. And I'll buy some votes, too. .... or, we could just let Obsidian see how many people want them and decide if the next (increasingly unlikely to be reached) stretch goal would make sense to include Bards & Paladins. I think that's better. Let us pay for it, and the "resources needed" will be the stretch goal.

Paladins are also divine spell casters and use auras in addition to being very good fighters. Barbarians are fighters with clothing issues and anger management problems. Druids are tree-hugging clerics. Rogues are light-armored fighters who prefer flanking, stealing and ducking behind corners.

Make the game so the default difficulty of completing the game without dying or feeling the need to reload is easily accomplished for the average player (more skilled than a newbie, nowhere near as versed and practiced as hardcore.) Make any of the tasks in the game easily identifiable as likely to succeed or likely to fail on a given attempt, so players know better than to try something they will constantly fail at, on the default setting for the average player. Remove any "succeed or die" and "succeed or never be allowed to try again" common tasks from the default setting for the average player. In short, do your best to design the game to create very few situations where abusing the game becomes desirable (or, in some cases, an almost necessity.) And then have different toggles and difficulty settings for those who actually want no notification of potential for success, and want the "succeed or else" conditions present. Default game should be "winnable" without death or reload for average player, and the difficulty settings and other sliders / mode can adjust that. Really should eliminate the concern about "abuse" as long as the game mechanics are well designed and tested for exploits. One really quick example - even if there's an infinite gold bug, or more likely, a pattern of buying from one merchant and selling to another for profit, make the distribution of normally found gold and treasure sufficient that it's easier, quicker and more fun to get the gold and items you need by playing the game right than by wasting the time exploiting the bug for unlimited funds that in the end really don't give you that much of an advantage.

There is a certain mindset amongst certain players that Paladins are a useless, pointless, stupid class. Usually amongst players of rogues or necromancers, or generally evil aligned players... or players who hate alignment. "Lawful stupid" I'm sure you've heard before.

But that doesn't mean we can't have some original and unique. I don't see it as all or nothing. True. I do think, however, the "original and unique" we will get is in implementation of tropes. In the world lore. Not in the basic D&D established fantasy role-playing nodes. And, honestly, they are quoting IE games and three in particular for inspiration. That's all D&D. It shouldn't be surprising. Obsidian will have their own unique spin on it. But I think the hopes for Geomancers or Pirates or Alchemists or Musketeers is probably forlorn hope.

Double Fine was a lot of big name support and Tim Schaeffer being funny, as well as being the first signs of "hey, maybe we can end run around publishers." Wasteland is an older game with a smaller cult following than Planescape: Torment, let alone Baldur's Gate, so this doesn't surprise me.

Yup. A paladin is basically a warrior or knight that can cast a few divine spells and also has auras, etc. They are quite different. A Paladin is a very good fighter too. Clerics/priests are not. Hey! A yo momma D&D class / combat powa comparison. A 3E Fighter / Cleric trumps a paladin of an equivalent level every time. Gah. Multi-classing, especially 3E multi-classing, shouldn't be used as reasoning for not including a class.

I'm going to be a broken record here. When the question is asked, I always push for new. Bards and Paladins aren't new. The classes we already have announced aren't new either, but that's a lost battle for me. I've only played one computer fantasy roleplaying game that had psionics in it, so as far as I'm concerned that's pretty exciting. I'm not against using classics, don't get me wrong. But if we only have two possible classes left, I want to see something I haven't seen as much before. I'll still be excited and hopeful for the game if all the classes and races are things I've seen before. So until that's set in stone, I'm going to push for new things. Because if I can carve out just a tiny little hole where there's a four-armed insectoid race or playable blob and a class where the theme is throwing furniture or long-distance spitting, I'll be ecstatic. Not to say that I should derail this thread with nay-saying. But you asked why not. Let me clarify something, too, that wouldn't be knowable at all in this discussion - I'd rather PE be as far from D&D as possible. Magic system, how "gods" fit in the world, as well as races and classes. We don't have that, however. We have a very D&D-esque, homage-to-Tolkien game being designed. At least in the fantasy tropes. I'd rather it hadn't been this way. But it IS this way. So, since we have a pseudo-vancian system (spell books or queues or however it ends up working, that have to swapped out to have access to different packages of spells), and we have elves and dwarves, and we see the "druid, monk, psion, barbarian and ranger" tropey-trope classes... ...since we are already here... ... I'll advocate for the tropey-trope classes that are missing that I feel are core and I like. Paladin has been a class for D&D more consistently and longer than barbarian, monk or psion. It's no more "a subset of cleric/fighter" than druid is a subset of "ranger/cleric." So I'm with you on wanting original and unique. But we aren't getting it. We're getting elves, dwarves, clerics, druids, etc., etc.

And that's fine. As it is fine if they had made barbarians a sub-class of fighter, ciphers a sub-class of mages, rangers a subclass of rogues and druids a sub-class of clerics. It can be done. But there are stretch goals for all the sub-classes - why not one more for bards and paladins? I don't understand the resistance, except for those who "hate bards and paladins." I don't get it. If bards and paladins don't fit Obsidian's vision, that's one thing. That hasn't been said by Obsidian, though. If they would have stuck to 4 core and just had "builds" under them, that'd be great. But Obsidian has very blatantly opened the the door to more specialized classes - druids, monks, ciphers, barbarians, rangers... ... the door is open to specialized sub-classes. There's no real sense to wanting to close it now.

I disagree. Vehemently. Thanks for you extensive contribution to the conversation. He's asking me to be more verbose. I do not believe he understands what a favor it was for me to be quite terse and to the point.

I disagree. Vehemently.

So many meh stretch goals to get past to the one I want. I want the 2.6!

If we don't need paladins, then we don't need ciphers or druids or barbarians or rangers. And the truth is, with the "core four", you don't need those others. But we want them. For role-playing and specialization rules. It's not "we want to swing a sword and worship a god" nonsense.

Wizardry had a lot of Sci-Fi. Which did you play? Wizardry and Ultima had a lot of sci-fi. Mixing fantasy and sci-fi WAS old school cRPG. You know, what was old school before Baldur's Gate was even conceived of.

That's bull****. Why? Seriously why? Do you need some kind of war with them. What do you care if they reuse the Obsidian design ESPECIALLY WHEN OBSIDIAN ITSELF SUPPORTS THE PROJECT. What is wrong with you people? I don't get it, either. When PE came out there were plenty of "they need to give more information" geniuses and "this was poorly started" intellectuals. As if there's some guidebook on how to do it, how much information must be shared, what constitutes... you know what... people just want to whine and complain. People want something to mock. People like to attack something to feel better about what they like or themselves. It's silly and pointless. I just hope brainiacs like these people don't actually affect the rest of us who like the project and want to see it succeed.

Where did you see that? Not that I mind, mind you. Just didn't see that mentioned anywhere on the pledge tiers. I wouldn't be in that group... but I'd still be for it.

If they fit the world that Obsidian is creating (and with clerics, druids, ciphers and rogues... I can't see why not) then I'd really like to see bards and especially paladins as well. If they can squeeze out one more stretch goal, and they have the place in their story for it, I'd like to see these classes added.

I chuckled when I saw this. I'm a Catholic, but I like to play sober fast talking mages. lol When I was in junior high and high school, one of my friends' parents (a hard charging holy roller) told me I'd go to hell if I played DnD. I don't think that attitude is prevalent today, but it sure as hell was a lot more common back in the day. I come from a Catholic family and my mom wasn't QUITE there (I played at friends houses who had parents or grandparents who DID and would preach at us!), but she did say she worried I'd get in with a bad crowd. I kept pointing to the knight with the holy symbol killing the demons and said "but mom I'm playing a saint!" to try and ease her mind. In a fantasy setting I think clerics, paladins and gods are fascinating. I love Greek myths... I don't let my personal real-world view, for example, make me unable to enjoy Dragonlance and find Fizban a fun character.

Yeah, I'm an atheist but my favorite class to play is paladin, go figure. I'd like to see a paladin stretch goal!

Yeah, I'm an atheist, but if the fictional world has established gods and the characters of that world have regular examples of their gods existing, being an atheist is pretty silly. Now being someone who chooses to not worship the gods despite knowing they exist, that's absolutely doable and should probably be as often an option as being able to play evil.