MReed

In your opinion, releasing this game on console won't hurt anyone -- but there are plenty of people in this thread who strongly disagree with that statement (including myself, obviously). I'm certainly not aware of any evidence that there is a large market for "PC-style, keyboard and mouse" games on consoles, and it should be observed that the PS4 is far from the first console that includes support for an optional keyboard, yet nobody has ever developed a game that requires the use of such an input device. Hmmmm.... Perhaps that indicates that people who play games on consoles expect their games to abide by their preferences?

firstarioch, my objection to a console port has nothing at all to do with the technical limits imposed by consoles, only to do with the game-style preferences of these players. Look, perhaps an anology would help you to understand: 95% of what I read today is fantasy of one description or another. Other people read exclusively historical romance novels, or spy thrillers, or hard sci-fi, or whatever, and that's fine -- different people, different strokes, whatever works for you is good. You seem to be arguing that this market segregation is somehow bad, and what the world really needs is to convince people who prefer fantasy novels that historical romances are good by erasing the differences between the genres. I'd oppose such an effort for the same reason that I oppose porting this game to consoles -- it is a GOOD thing to have different books cater to different preferences, as that allows EVERYONE the opportunity to have their preferences catered to (sometimes).

Just to reiterate what everyone else is saying: I funded a PC game, and ONLY a PC game. I would consider it a betrayal of the promises made to the backers for Obsidian to even consider releasing this game on consoles prior to the release on the PC -- and even if afterwords, I would strongly prefer that a console version not be developed for this game. Why? Two factors: 1) For every PC gamer (or PC & console gamers), there are at least 2, if not 3 or 4 "console-only" gamers. 2) Console-only gamers have different preferences than PC gamers -- in terms of UI, text v. voice-overs, mechanics, and many other elements. Therefore, assuming the game is even a moderate success after a console release, console gamers will outnumber PC games by 2 or 3 to 1 -- and future games will quite likely reflect their preferences. If you doubt this, take a look at DAO -> DA2 or ME1 -> ME2: the first game in both series catered to PC preferences -- the second game shows a distinct movement towards the preferences of console players. Now, there is nothing wrong with enjoying games on consoles or the preferences that console-only players have when it comes to their games. But those aren't /my/ preferences, and, to be blunt, I'm selfish enough to say outright "I want a game that caters to my preferences". The only way that I can imagine to do this is to ensure that console-only users never have the opportunity to play the game, and if a few "PC & console users who would be quite happy with a PC game ported as is on a console" are going to be disappointed... <shrug>

Now, I'm afraid, you are going too far -- what you are asking isn't achievable, and won't be achievable until we have working AI technology. Consider a fairly simple conversation with a quest giver NPC. This conversation will be 5 "layers" thick, with a layer being one or more statement(s) by the NPC, followed by the player making a selection. At each point where the player can make a selection, there will be 3 choices (for the sake of example). Each statement will be 10 words in length. As per your OP, all conversation paths are unique. So, for 5 layers, each layer being separated by 3 choices, we need a total of 3^5 = 243 possible responses for the PC. At 10 words each, the responses alone amount to 2,430 words. Each of these responses leads to a unique statement by the NPC as well, adding another 2,430 words. So we are up to 4,860 words of dialog for this single conversation. So, if we have 21 quest givers, we end up with 102,060 words of dialog -- for the sake of comparison, Gone With the Wind is 418,053 words in length, and a typical novel with in the 100k range. These numbers are, of course, estimates -- some conversation paths will terminate early for one reason or another, but some will be longer, and besides, I'm sure you want far more than 3 choices per NPC statement, right? If this is really important to you, you probably want to investigate Torment -- this kind of reactivity is more of a focus over there than over here, but you still aren't going to get 100% unique dialogs for each and every dialog choice.

@Ristora: Ah, I misread your original post -- my error. I thought you were holding up Baldur's Gate and Fallout as /examples/ of the type of reactivity that you were looking for, when you actually meant to point out that they were deficient in this area. My bad.

Obviously, this is possible, of course, although how economical it is another question altogether. However, I think that nostalgia is getting the better of you -- there are only three quests in BG2 (which I remember best) that are mutually exclusive: 1) You can side with either the vampires or the thieves, neither of which has any impact on the remainder of the plot. 2) You can betray the silver dragon in the Underdark sequence or not, with no impact on the rest of the plot 3) You can side with the shadow druids in Tradesmeet or not, with no impact on the rest of the plot The re-playability I suspect that you are thinking of is derived from your companions as they have different dialog and quests. This doesn't really fit your criteria, though, because all of the content IS accessible in a single playthrough -- if you swap members in and out to get their unique content. Not many people play like that, though, and if you do stick with a single party throughout then yes, your second play-through will be rather different than your first. But even then, it isn't as dramatic as you are implying. To the question of "Should Project: Eternity" feature exclusive content... Honestly, it really depends on how fun the game is. If the game is great, then I'll want to replay it and the extra content will make future playthroughs more interesting. If the game is only "good", though, I'd rather have all (or the vast majority -- 95%) of the content accessible on a single playthrough. Obviously, I'm hoping for it to be a great game, so I'd like to see something along these lines.

Not a unity developer myself, so this should all be taken with a grain of salt. Well, the Unity engine sets limits on what can be done graphically, but that's true of any engine that you might care to name. Further, it can be upgraded (by the Unity team) to address those limits as technology improvement or demand is created (note, though, only new games would take advantage of these new features). Honestly, I don't see this as a big limit. In regards to the story, mechanics, UI, and other elements that make up a game, the Unity engine really isn't relevant. All Unity does is provide a particular set of interfaces that can be used to place graphics on the screen (3D and otherwise) -- the remainder of the game engine is in the hands of the developers. So there is no limit to the type / nature of the stories that could be told, or the mechanics that could be told, relating to the Unity engine.

I wouldn't support a kickstarter for a project that I believed would be released on both PC & console release after failing to get funding via traditional means due to non-traditional mechanics / gameplay. Note that I'm referring to a kickstarter for "both a PC & console" release. I wouldn't support a console-only release simply because, not surprisingly, I don't own a console. On the tablets side, tablets != consoles. Generally speaking, I'd classify a platform as a "console" if more than 90% of the software targeting that platform are games and the primary input controller is a joystick or motion detection (e.g. Wii). I'd be less likely to support a kickstarter promising dual tablet & PC kickstarter, but that's because I'd be concerned that the divided development effort would hurt both releases, not because I'm concerned about "tablet players preferences overwhelming PC users preferences." While the average tablet gamer does have unique tastes (smaller / shorter / simpler / F2P games) any project that I'd be likely to support purely on its merits would be so far outside this market that the vast majority of tablet users would simply never consider supporting, or even buying, the game.

Untrue -- there are two problems with an eventual, post-release console port: 1) Any future game in the series would likely be designed to be ported. This would, based on past experience, lead to UI compromises -- and is very highly like to lead to "streamlining" of mechanics. 2) Console gamers have different interests and preferences than PC-only gamers -- and for every PC gamer, there is 2 or 3 console gamers. This means that any PC & console game will be driven by the preferences / interests / likes of the console gaming group rather than the PC group. Note that I'm not saying that PC-only games are better than games released both for the PC & console, only that they are different. My preference, and the preference of many of the other members of this forum & kickstarter is for the type of games that are designed and built exclusively for the PC. Speaking only for myself, I definitely would not support a future "Project: Eternity 2" kickstarter if the current game was ported to any console at any point in time (even post-release), and I would be highly unlikely to support any kickstarter that didn't specifically and explicitly state that "There will be no console release of this title". This isn't because "Oh, the game supports consoles, therefore it sucks" -- I've purchased and enjoyed many games that were designed and released on both consoles and PCs (Knights of the Old Republic comes to mind immediately). Instead, my justification for taking this stance is "If the game is being designed to be released on consoles and it is any good, then the developers should be able to secure funding from traditional publishers." The fact that it cannot (given that it is on Kickstarter) means to me that it probably isn't a very good game to start with, thus not worthy of my support.

This is an interesting mechanic -- but I'm not sure it is right for this game. I'd explain it this way: A successful rogue would have learned whether or not he/she can manage to sneak by (say) a set of guards in a particular circumstance -- based, for example, on the ambient lighting, other environmental effects, the alertness of the guards (are there any distractions?), and perhaps a dozen other factors. However, a normal RPG game doesn't have any way of conveying this information to the player, requiring a save / reload strategy. This mechanic provides a (awkward, admittedly) way for the game to communicate this information. However, it is a pretty elaborate mechanic -- if PE was going to revolve around stealth gameplay then it would be appropriate (think "Thief"), but in a more generic RPG I think the cost-benefit ratio is rather doubtful. But it is definitely a good idea.

Not the OP, but I'm fairly certain that the purpose of this thread was not for the developers (who, hopefully, are reading the threads as they occur) but for users that may be new to the forum and / or haven't been following the forum to closely, to ensure that they are actually contributing something new to the conversation if they bring up something that has already been discussed. That being said, though, the presentation should be very different than the way it was in the OP -- the PDFs that were posted are much better for this purpose.

If this thread is going to have any value at all, it should: 1) Be reworded to "These are items that have had polls with a large (> 100) number of votes cast, and the results were..." 2) Include a link to the poll threads so that users can read / learn about what has already been discussed (to avoid reiterating the same points again). Stating that the result of a poll show a consensus on an issue is... Misleading at best. "Consensus" implies that those opposed to the opinion of the majority have conceded the point (or, perhaps, a compromise was negotiated) and I can't think of any thread where that has happened.

No -- just no. In my opinion, there is no place in a stat driven role playing game for mechanics that reward this type of micro-management of character positioning. There are three reasons for this: 1) AI opponents cannot take advantage of it. Partly this is because it is difficult to implement, but even if you did, the AI would be 100% successful in evading all attacks of this sort. This creates a game with highly unbalanced mechanics, which encourages the developers to make monsters far "tougher" than they would otherwise in compensation. 2) The developers have to make a decision: Balance encounters assuming that the player will be micromanaging to evade all attacks where evasion is possible or not. If the assume that players won't do this, then encounters will be trivial for players who do -- and vice versa. As a practical matter, this means that the player must use these techniques if they are possible at all, and at least one person (myself) doesn't want to. 3) With multiple avatars, this becomes absurdly tedious very quickly. You quickly develop a "see an attack animation start, pause the game, give movement orders, unpause, verify that everyone is moving out of the way, and finally order everyone to get back to attacking". If you really want this sort of game, I'm sure that DA3 will satisfy you (mechanically) -- this is one of the "innovations" that was introduced in DA2, and I'm quite certain it will be included in DA3 as well.

Hey, I've got an idea -- maybe when the player dies, the game should notify a central server that you are no longer eligible to play, format your hard drive, then start a self-destruct sequence on your computer which will result in an explosion that will cause your house to burn down. That would be really hardcore, wouldn't it? And at the same time, if the player takes any damage at all, the player character dies, but monster's require roughly 2 billion hits to kill -- that way, there would be loads of strategy, because the only way to have any strategy in the game is if there are real consequences, right? Or, just maybe, the game developers should spend their time making a fun game, rather than attempting to dictate the "right way to play the game" to the player. Nah, that's obviously crazy talk -- there really is only one way to play the game, everybody else is doing it wrong, right?

Unless you are the fanatical religious type, modern morality has no bearing on whether or not you can find "believable" a fictional morality for a fictional society. Um, I'm 100% certain that I'm not a fanatical religious type, but I do in fact use modern standards of morality when evaluating the moral systems in fiction (games and books). If I'm reading a book that contains a society that rewards unwilling human sacrifice, practices chattel slavery, and treats rape as something praiseworthy, then... I'm going to evaluate that society as "evil", regardless of what words the book / game chooses to use to describe the morality of the society. In fact, I'd expect the members of that society (in character) to define their actions and society as "good" -- if they didn't, then that's where I would have a problem. The notion of a society of people who would say "Yes, slavery morally and ethically wrong -- in fact, it is evil -- but I do it anyway" seems absurd to me. However, fantasy novels quite often include entire races or societies that, apparently, do work in just this way. I'd be interested in seeing a work (novel or game) that tried to come up with a way to make this type of society believable. I don't know -- that would be up to the writers in practice, or the deity in-universe. Presumably, the deity is in charge of defining the words "good" and "evil", and can therefore define "evil" to be whatever behavior(s) he/she/it feels produces the desired results, and ensure that definition doesn't change over time. ONE way to do this would take an immense amount of "building", not because such a society is alien, but because you would have to clearly and convincingly show something that is extremely convoluted in its sense. The OTHER way is to make a game where it is simply easy to ignore the lack of sense in this part of the game's setting, in which case, dealing with moral questions in this game will probably be one of its least interesting parts (think of a cartoon Hell). And, obviously, I'd only be interested in a work that chose the first route. What are "philosophical systems"? I've never before seen one of these "systems". And it is ridiculously stupid to think that "good people" will always come out ahead of "evil people". Which philosophy even comes close to saying THAT? Philosophy covers (at a very, very superficial level) some of the more important philosophical systems. And yes, most of them (not all) do contain some element of "good inevitably triumphs over evil". Note that this isn't at the individual level (e.g. one person), but at the "big picture" level -- over the course of hundreds of years, societies that are based on "good" concepts will triumph over societies that are built on "evil" concepts, with "good" and "evil" being defined by the specific philosophical system. The concept of "the meek will inherit the earth" is hardly unique to Christianity.

Why would you want a game with a story/setting that makes no damn sense? A society where "being good" is punished? That's a ****ing paradox, buddy.... In the real world, a society defines what it allows or encourages as "good", so this is something of a moot point. There are numerous examples of societies that would be classified as "evil" by the standards of modern morality that survived and thrived for an extended period of time (for example, the Roman Empire). Yes, they all fell -- but they lasted longer than any currently existing society, so all that establishes is that all things eventually end, not that evil societies are necessarily unstable. Now, in a high fantasy world -- one with deities that are actively advocating and rewarding behavior that is explicitly defined (by the deities) as evil -- then it might be feasible for a stable society to develop where evil (as identified by modern morality) behavior is both identified as evil, such behavior is encouraged, and is stable (as stable as any society is, anyways). In the FR setting, for example, Thay and Drow society both operate (in theory) are examples of societies organized along these lines, and Mordor in LotR is another example. To make this work would require an immense amount of world building on the part of the writers as this type of society would be as alien to readers / players as the society of bug-men from Zeedak. But I don't think it is necessarily impossible. To reiterate the point that I made before, though: I'm very uncertain if it is possible to make a high-quality cRPG around such a society (without casting the player in the role of "freedom fighter"). Even if it is possible to do so, I don't think that such a game would be a financially successful, as the vast majority of the potential player base would be repulsed by the very concept of such a game. Although, now that I think of it, the "Grand Theft: Auto" series of games could be classified as games of this sort, and they are popular... In any case, while I think such a game would be interesting, I don't think it is the right way to go with P:E. I fully expect P:E to be a fairly standard fantasy game, one which the player is awarded for choosing "good" options and punished severely for choosing "evil" options -- after all, that's how all the games that are described as inspirations for it worked. And, intuitively, we believe the real world should work this way as well -- "pay it forward", "karma", all religions ("meet will inherit the world", anyone) and most, if not all, philosophical systems are based around the concept that good people will always come out ahead of evil people. To make a game that clashes with such a common and deeply held belief is just asking for trouble.

Um, that's how every single game written to date works -- the "good path" (typified by offering to help without asking for a reward, declining rewards when they are offered, opposing slavery, murder, and torture, and so forth) generates both greater in character rewards (XP and loot) as well as player awards (more dialogs, more quests, more areas, etc -- generally, longer game play). Originally, I think the ask in this thread is that this should be better balanced -- sometimes, if you don't ask for an award you... Shouldn't get an award, at all. No extra content, no extra quests, no extra allies, nothing. And, sometimes, if you do ask for an award, you should get one, with no further consequences. And sometimes, if you go and save a cat in a tree, you miss out on a much more lucrative quest that only appears if you refuse to save the cat. And sometimes, if you ally yourself with an obviously "evil" person, you actually get the award that you were promised (vs. getting stabbed in the back, as inevitably happens in cRPGs). All of the "Good character's should suffer every time they even consider doing something nice for someone" is overkill, at least for P:E. I would like to see a game that made this its core concept, though -- where the character is in a society or situation where being good was inevitably punished in the same way that evil behavior is punished in normal cRPGs, and vice versa for evil. I don't think such a game would be a financial success, though.

As far as I'm concerned, and I suspect most of the people in this thread would agree, no, this doesn't make you an evil / bad / not good person (regardless of whether or not there is a karma meter in the game). If your actions are indistinguishable from the actions of, say, a righteous paladin, then as far as I'm concerned (and, more to the point, as far as the game is concerned) you are a righteous paladin -- regardless of your motivations / role playing. This applies whether there is a karma meter in the game or not. Now, if the game offers two dialog choices: "Of course I'll rescue the kitten" and "Hmmmm... This little girl is quite well dressed -- her parents are likely wealthy and influential. I'll rescue the kitten to make a good impression", and both choices produce the exact same result, then... That's definitely a step in the right direction. It would be better if there were followup options that were only available if you selected the second option, however. The concept of "Things aren't as they seem" provides an interesting twist on morality, but... Only if the player has an opportunity to divine the correct course of action up-front. The example given is terrible -- all you are doing is punishing the player (whether they want to play "good", "evil", or something else), because there is no reasonable way for the character to make an informed decision (the player can, after reloading the game, but that's not the goal here). On the other hand, there is an excellent example of this in BG2, in the Paladin quest: You are tasked with guarding someone, and some NPCs come along and say "We are paladin's as well, sent to relieve you." If you accept this, you'll fail the quest -- however, if you say "Just a moment", then use the "Detect Evil" ability, you can determine that they aren't Paladins and can succeed in the quest. Something along these lines would be great, although it shouldn't be over-used.

I'm all for it, but... Its absurdly expensive, with just how expensive it is depending on where in the game the character can be changed. The problem is that much (if not all) of the dialog downstream of the earliest possible "change" point has to be written twice -- once for version "A" and once for version "B". If this is early, then it may exceed the cost of simply adding another companion (more complex dialogs means more QA vs. the two companion scenario). Therefore, these sorts of fundamental changes tend to be permitted to occur very late, most commonly when you are locked into the finale (Jade Empire is a classic example of this), or simply don't have any real impact beyond a "stat" change (KOTR 1&2 handled it this way). Neither is particularly satisfying. Given the budget constraints that P:E is under... I'm still holding out hope for one companion having a fundamental change of character, say, before the 50% point. That's probably as good as it gets, though.

This is where the meaning crossed, then--I was not considering MMORPGs, though it's all under a giant umbrella, because the co-op people here for PE are insisting they do not want to play an MMO because it's different; I'm addressing that scale of multiplayer. If taking into account MMOs, then yes, those combined numbers could very well surpass all SP gamers. Understood, and that matches my experience as well. Further, I believe the people here are honest when they indicate why and under what conditions they want multiplayer in the game and, in particular, that the Co-Op proponents have no more desire than you or I to have multiplayer "take over" the game. The ones that I'm worried about are the ones that might be attracted (in the future) to this game because it does have limited multiplayer capability.

Well, first of all, it is the number of people participating in the forum (e.g. providing feedback to developers) that drives future game development, so yes, I am looking at the right number. I agree that 90+ % of the people that purchase a game will never even visit the developer's forums, and only a tiny fraction of those will actually post comments, but that's irrelevant to the discussion at hand. And yes, I know a bit about population statistics... In regards to the overall popularity of multiplayer vs. single player, I direct you attention to World of Warcraft and other MMORPGs vs. single player game and rest my case. Now, it is perfectly correct to say that players who enjoy WoW may also enjoy dedicated single person games -- and, if they do, I welcome them with open arms. But there are some people (a fairly large hunk of those players, I think), that play MMORPGs exclusively, and wouldn't consider playing a game that lacked multiplayer options, and that's the group that I don't want to attract to this community. You may believe that the risk is small (PE, after all, even with co-op multiplayer, is a pretty different gaming experience than WoW, so these dedicated multiplayers might still not be interested), but that's a risk that I'd rather not take. Also, note that my concern isn't really in the context of PE itself (the game we are discussing today), but in the context of a future "PE:2" game. If PE is a big success (and we all hope for that, I think), then it will be because it successfully attracted users that haven't played / did not like Infinity Engine games. I don't want part of that group to include the "exclusive multiplayer" group, as this may change the focus of "PE:2". My two cents -- I'm not on a holy (or unholy) crusade against the inclusion of multiplayer, just someone answering the question of "Why do you oppose including co-op multiplayer as an optional component in a game that is separately funded and can be completely ignored."

Archer's wouldn't address the problem (a monster on a "point of power" who is getting shot with archers has no reason to move -- he'll get shot no matter where he goes, and he is more powerful where he is). Sneaking in with the thief would only help if the location was unoccupied by default (unlikely, but possible) -- even then, the thief would be left in a highly vulnerable situation once the combat began and should be highly unlikely to survive the expected hoard of enemies that would attack him after the rest of the party entered the room (to point out the obvious: Any form of stealth should be broken if someone actually runs into you trying to occupy the spot that you are standing on). In regards to luring (in general): In most cases, monsters are positioned where they are to guard a door (or, perhaps, a point of power in this scenario). Why should they leave a secure position to chase the party? The answer is that they really shouldn't (but do due to weak AI), and therefore I oppose luring monsters to another room on general principal.

To be clear: I don't think people who enjoy multiplayer (CoOp or PvP) are bad people, nor do I think that games that support multiplayer are necessarily bad games, or worse single-player games than they would have been had multi-player not been present. However... The community of multiplayer player's is very large in comparison to the single player only community. A game that supports both types of play will inevitably end up with a community that is dominated by multiplayer gamers (based on experience, I'd expect the split to be 75-25, but that's just a guess). As a consequence developers inevitably tend to allocate resources towards meeting the needs and requirements of the multiplayer community, and that is what I don't want to have happen. The only way I know of to prevent this from occurring is to simply not include multiplayer in the game at all -- in that case, the "die hard" multiplayers will stay away, and the mix in the community will be ~50-50 (due to some players who like both multiplayer and single player). I oppose the "Create your own party" Adventurer's Guild on the same basis. tl;dr: I welcome people who like both multiplayer and single player games with open arms -- it is the multiplayer only group that I don't want to be part of this community.

If by "appropriately" you mean less, then I agree with you -- but somehow I don't think that's what you meant. Extra XP (or, for that matter, extra loot) = easier game, which rather defeats the purpose for playing on a higher difficulty level, doesn't it? Anyway, my two cents: If this was an open world RPG (e.g all MMOs, Oblivion, etc.) then yes, you should award XP for whatever the player does. But this is off-topic. However, it isn't: This is a story driven game, and that means (at a 100k feet view) it is a game in which the player is forced / railroaded to a predefined conclusion via a series of per-determined events. Now, the player will have agency to chose the details of how you get from point A to point B, and that's what makes this a game instead of a movie / visual novel, but... Complaining that a game is "forcing you to complete quests" in a story based game is as silly as complaining that "I have to shoot bad guys in Call of Duty". Therefore, it is perfectly sensible to me to only aware XP for completing quests in P:E.

This is rather hard for to believe. I mean, they must have backed the stuff up to tape drives, cds and harddrives... but they still lost every backup? There was a long discussion about this (about 3-4 months ago, and I think it was split between twitter and the message boards). If I'm remembering correctly, the upshot was that the BG1/BG2 art assets (3D models & textures) were backed up -- but they were unable to find the backup after a through search of the Bioware offices. Keep in mind that it has been ~15 years since the last time anyone looked or cared about these assets, so it isn't that hard to believe.