Ieo

Speaking of sub-optimal, I'm enjoying my current run through BG:EE on my Cleric/Thief (favorite oddball combination) and one of the least popular weapons in the franchise, the staff (until the Staff of the Magi, yes). I'll add a point in club later, perhaps. I just wish I could choose any race.... and back-stab with a blunt weapon... and have better THAC0.... Heh.

Well... Personally, I'd like to see a range of miss-minor stamina damage-minor stamina and health damage-regular damage-critical hit. But... eh. I'll live with whatever. Eh. Yeah, I'm sure I'll adapt to whatever Obsidian eventually hammers down this year, but I still agree (with whomever, previously) that splitting the stamina/health application with miss/hit seems like a tidy way to approach this. (I mean, a "miss".... really a "whish miss"... should not logically knock off the health resource for which you must rest to "heal" back.) Miss/avoidance and glancing/mitigation, not conceptually the same, but the math is all back-end anyway so I'm sure I won't think about overmuch during actual gameplay. Anyway, back to my BG:EE 90% miss rates... !&@#%* Also-- LOL

It's an interesting idea, but there'd be extra work and may be quite awkward to implement given that Project Eternity will be translated into several other (real) languages. So the question there is return on investment for a detailed in-game language barrier, including effort in real PE translation, as opposed to a more general approach tied to content like in PS:T. Hm.

The PS:T approach can certainly be expanded. I think the trick such that it's not a frustrating minigame for many players is creative integration with general game content, so the emphasis must be placed less on the language puzzle particulars and more on the content related to it. In the Dak'kon/Fell translation interaction (requiring also PC stats), the whole language barrier bit provided a layer of party intrigue and plot information. It was a brilliant piece of work, really. So rather than a Myst-exploration-puzzle approach that doesn't have any additional content value beyond the language puzzle itself, language as a hook to highlight content is a much richer path: Party companion = Companions have their own backgrounds and experiences and may know bits of other languages. Maybe they interrupt ongoing PC/NPC dialogue; may serve as translator, perhaps requiring a level of relationship with the PC, or perhaps a preexisting relationship with the third party NPC. Maybe they can learn a language instead of the PC. Maybe if the PC has a particular relationship with a companion, the companion will offer to teach the language, as Nonek suggests. This approach places much more emphasis on character interaction than the language itself. Faction, quest = Earning faction reputation indirectly may open a content door for the PC to learn a language by quest. This in turn can open up more opportunities for more quest content, not necessarily only for that faction proper. Perhaps enemy factions may recognize the speech and react to you accordingly; or in your wanderings, you're able to overhear rumors and such. Like TNO learning the extinct language of Uyo or the zombie language of the Dead Nations, quest-based language learning places much more emphasis on general content than the language itself. The thing about PC stats, though--I'd say the biggest content imbalance in PS:T was the stat-based speech skills where the only way to get the most out of the game was to play a charismatic and wise mage. This was virtually impossible as a fighter/thief type without gimping TNO. Hopefully Obsidian will work the speech skill/WIS/INT/CHA stuff to be more class-friendly...

You missed my point. Your suggestion doesn't merely want to shift this genre into a completely different one, but by tying pause to difficulty levels, you're making an evaluation across the game types that's inappropriate. Pause is a key feature in this genre that makes it different from those game types I cited. Different. That's different. Not more or less difficult. I've raided in MMOs and played plenty of SP games with pause, whatever challenges either game type presents are different. You can't fairly or logically conclude an evaluation or "difficulty" across completely different game types like this.

Shush, you know what video game players are really talking about when saying "finishing move." Slowing down breaks combat flow in the sense that it completely removes the screen action from the player's control (compared to pause); the same feeling applies to the crit-screen-shake. I hated the "let's make the little console boy player feel better about himself!" slow-mo crap in DA:O and in other places. Just get into combat and get on with it, get it done. Excepting the minimalist things that don't break combat flow like BG's giblets, any other additional animations through the regular game areas should be optional, but otherwise I think it's a waste of time for Obsidian to work on that. The only class of enemy that can be separated from the general treatment would be boss fights--finishing moves, even full cinematics, those are fine because they're rare and special. Obsidian should invest their resources making those fights stand out. But for those players who want this sort of thing, consider how big the game is going to be in terms of size and thus hours; this isn't going to be a short linear action CRPG like DA:O or any of your typical console games. And then how many days and weeks later you get tired of it and will turn it off anyway, so what's the point? Unless you only play an hour every weekend, I suppose. But a slow-mo finishing move every 10 feet into the mega-dungeon would piss me off so much...

No. Pause as an external player mechanic should never be limited into "difficulty" modes. My feelings here. And to expand on S_P/PrimeJunta's observation: The idea of reducing or impeding the pause function of a game in this genre implies you believe twitch games and real-time like MMOs without pause functionality are somehow inherently more difficult, challenging, and thus "better" in gameplay. This is a completely wrong frame of mind. Get out.

Uh, none of the I.E. games had button spamming. It was impossible. Physical combat (auto-attack) was maintained by either AI script trigger or manual initiation and ended when the baddies died--one click of the attack button at most. Casters couldn't spam, period (Vancian magic). Well, unless you count 5 magic missile spells as spamming. I don't think Obs has released any detailed information about the Monk class just yet, so you'll have to wait on that. But the monk class is there, and we're all assuming it's primarily unarmed... Hear, hear.

I think I would have tolerated and even enjoyed the DA:O party interactions more if there wasn't a GIANT BLINKING NUMERICAL SCOREBOARD. Seriously, those open scoring systems piss me off to no end. Cheap, patronising, assumes up and down the entire spine of the game that the player is a ****ing stupid socially retarded adolescent and illiterate moron. Ooh, I didn't like how you handled the last two quests (-6) but since you're bribing me with this pretty bauble, I'll like you again (+6)! Hey you, party member, I want (A: RENEGADE OPTION! -4 //// B: PARAGON OPTION! +4). Are we good?

I'm not against the OP idea per se, but I'd have to question the amount of resources that can be invested in something like that alongside predicted levels of frustration for those players who aren't interested in that sort of thing. Given the KS, the target audiences have a very, very wide range. So I would rather it be quest-based like in PS:T with the Dead Nations (though that was also heavily influenced by character stats, IIRC).

I was never big into D&D number-crunching, but I honestly never understood why "miss" chance existed as a concept at all beyond environmental variables (being blinded, covered in sticky goo, whatever). Especially for melee. Maybe I'm misunderstanding it? This is how I'd conceptualize a basic combat scenario: A attacks, B can't avoid it and gets hit A attacks, B dodges completely and avoids damage A attacks, B partially blocks and mitigates damage A attacks, B parries completely and avoids damage From the perspective of A, he missed B half the time--but it's purely a perception, not an abstracted RNG mechanic. The reality is that B countered. When the environment places the individuals on equal footing in a given combat situation, the only variables that realistically matter (IMO) are the classes, weapon skills, weapon equipped, level, and offensive/defensive stats per individual. So from the balancing point of view, it makes much more sense to me to simply tally those individually localized variables and pit them against each other. Like if B is level 20 and A is 15, B is going to be able to block/parry/dodge better and A will perceptually "miss" more. But with a base "miss" chance pivoting on something like armor class, we get stupid scenarios like casting Hold Person on a baddie and somehow "missing" him several times in a row just because he's higher level with better armor. I'd rather see "miss" as a product of environmental affliction like darkness or some magical effect like the blind spell but not as a base application in normal combat. Then there's ranged attacks. Just as stealth bonuses apply in an area where there's shade, perhaps "miss" handicaps can apply in areas with obstacles (like tree cover). Distance can also matter as well as positioning (from behind, etc.). Well. I don't have any concrete ideas for this sort of thing, so I'll just wait. Back to playing BG:EE and suffering 90% miss rates with rest-spamming every single fight after casting 5 cure light wounds during combat against something that would 2-shot my party....* Now there was a comment upstream about "miss" (mitigations and avoidance) applying damage to stamina and not health, which makes sense to me and seems like a really good way to parallel the stam/health system with this particular proposal. On paper, anyway. *No, I don't find that particularly fun. If anything, the early levels certainly amplify the severe "unfun" aspects of the game mechanics.

There will not be actual "healing" available outside of resting. The stamina bar will regenerate. I suggest you read the entire official Update #24 thread (including Josh's comments, that is) along with his points in this thread.

This whole exercise skirts around the real issue: How do you design a riddle/puzzle where players are far more likely to stick around and attempt to solve it rather than instantly search the internet? Hint: I suspect the "free-form type in words" model would rank high in the frustration scale and encourage the most metagaming/cheating/what-have-you. And keep in mind that the game example cited in OP was actually released before the World Wide Web. It's not terribly important what the few posters here insist they would never do--Obsidian has to think about the thousands of backers and future potential players of the game in the currently completely-connected (consonance!) world. Here are other implementation examples from the games I expect the vast majority of PE backers to have played: Lore memory riddles -> Durlag's Tower in BG1 or Amaunator's temple in BG2 (i.e. "pay attention and read, you dope") Physical object-word puzzles -> Asylum in BG2, the room with the chest and statues Multiple choice dialogue options -> Watcher's Keep in BG2 with the imp, or the djinn in the Athkatla circus tent Physical puzzles -> DA:O bridge pressure plate puzzle Crossword-type minigame -> I've never actually seen this, but limiting word length and cross-referencing letter locations might work out Personally, I like #1 and #2 best. Limitations on both word length and available letters would certainly simplify things. As for your last comment: In other words, now that you have Internet, you wouldn't unhappily be forced to pick up a dictionary and translate.

Obsidian did not say anything about global reputation, only faction reputation. That implicitly negates global applications of fame/infamy ("high profile") so it's better to look at reputation in terms of faction type. For example, if there was a secretive thieves' guild of sorts and you gain high rep with them, it stands to reason that you could be recognized by their members across geographies due to their internal communication channels but not by the general populace at all. And there's no such thing as the good/evil alignment bits either, as far as Obsidian has said (thank goodness), so you can toss that entire dimension of the discussion out the window. No alignments. What breaks the OP is that it assumes global reputation. The question is then--will there even be global rep? That doesn't work with the PE faction-based concepts Obsidian has thus far proposed.

I never played NWN2. But in the BG series, unless I'm mistaken, all forced cut-scenes with the dialogue box auto-paused your party so timers wouldn't run down. As for party spokesperson, previous discussion: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/61681-does-the-player-created-character-have-to-act-as-party-spokesperson/

Sounds like an excellent way to produce a split/chilling effect. Frankly, that the mods decided to split the Project Eternity forum into four separate subfora has already produced certain chilling effects, IMO (e.g. where more technical/mechanical discussions would have gotten a lot more attention in the main/general forum, they're now shoved into a subforum that always has less traffic, and humans are by nature lazy). It's an understandable decision and better to organize categorical information by exclusion, but there's a distinct downside. A backer-private forum is not a good idea. All of that leads to various chilling effects. The only truly private forum structure that makes any sense is a beta testing venue.

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/60674-finishing-moves/ No finishing moves at all, please.

I'll disagree. Maybe you are underestimating what a huge pull the name Baldur's Gate has. For a generation of players a bit younger than me, it's a defining game of their childhood/ youth. Big picture. You really want Obsidian to dilute their potential earnings down to 10% for the retail model? To boot, your argument relies strictly on nostalgia for an old-school-style game; you can't possibly say there's a strong market for this type of game right now: Significant amounts of text that require actual literacy No cinematics No full VO No 3D roaming landscape with rotating camera Tactical non-twitch party play Etc. When it comes to high-level business decisions, any company must decide whether the reward will reasonably outweigh all of the risks that go into the highly competitive retail store venue; you didn't read the article. Then we go back to why PE was a Kickstarter, and judging by your post, you don't seem to understand why Obsidian did a Kickstarter in the first place. Baldur's Gate was a heavyweight D&D-licensed title backed by the traditional game industry retail machinery. All the IE games, as far as I know, were released before consoles really took off, and now we have even more computing devices/platforms that dilute the playing field across the entire game industry (e.g. mobile apps, tablet and smartphone). It's very difficult to broadly market a specialist to this environment, and I definitely wouldn't want Project Eternity to be dumbed down and diluted for such a purpose; that's not to say there won't be new customers for this genre, but I doubt there will be enough to pull PE out of "niche" status. (I wouldn't mind being proven wrong, but even then we're still strictly talking about digital sales.) Rather than risking the tremendous time and resources required to get into the retail channels, it's far better for them to reap higher profit margins and go right into making the next sequel--look at it this way: Project Eternity already has significant media backing and social media power without requiring a retail store presence. This is the direction all shopping habits have been moving in the past few years (at least in the U.S.). Edit: See Stun's link. That said, saying definitively that "there will be retail boxes" or even "probably" is plain irresponsible and naive. Counting chickens before they hatch. To answer the OP: Don't count on a post-launch retail copy. Look for auctions. Something else to consider: Some companies that distribute digitally will charge a fee for a mere disc copy for manual installation. It's not usually something pretty. If that's the primary issue for folks with limited bandwidth, then I wonder how much of a burden that would be for Obsidian to do a minimal on-demand print. It's definitely not the same as a properly dressed up retail copy or CE on rented store shelves, as this would require an online purchase. A simple disc label-printing in sleeves would probably be enough for that purpose. Maybe Obsidian can consider this. Dunno.

Just a few points to keep in mind. Collector's editions by definition have always had limiters: time available, higher cost, number offered. In this case, the CE was limited by all three. The onus is always on the consumer to realize this and drop for it or not (whether or not they can, based on price and such). And yes, I'd interpret that quote to mean all physical items. A retail boxset is physical. The optical disc(s) is physical. Whether a paper box or plastic case--physical. In this situation, it would be wise to assume the stricter straight-up interpretation. I have absolutely no doubt that boxsets will end up going on eBay, both the regular and CE, whether piecemeal or whole. As for a retail box... None of the $4.x million Kickstarter funding can go to the creation and distribution of physical media beyond the actual contribution tiers; this is because it was made very clear that all the creation and shipping charges were bundled in the original KS tier prices. Since the cost of any subsequent physical media creation, packaging, distribution channels (freight and employees to move product), marketing, and rent of competing retail space must come out of subsequent sales... This means either Obsidian must pay out of pocket for simultaneous retail release (and conceptually thus be in the red) or they'll have to wait a while until there's enough profit to cover all of that for a retail stint and hope that the boxes sell to gain profit over cost. Keep in mind that the physical retail channels represent risk. Here's an interesting article from 2008 about what's generally involved in getting software onto retail store shelves and how the developer gets paid: Selling your software in retail stores (all that glitters is not gold) What was the point of Kickstarter again? Oh, right. The only other option is for Obsidian to create physical boxsets and warehouse on their own premises (perhaps rented) and hire more people to handle orders, packaging, shipping. That's still money out of their own pockets. I'll counter some of you who say there will definitely be a retail box--you're underestimating just how niche this game is. The parties that have significant insight into what actually sells at retail these days are the publishers and distributors; certainly, Obsidian has some experience too. But Obsidian tried to pitch a game like this to those current/trending-market people already; remember how that went? Personally... I think Project Eternity's first game (whatever it'll be called) should remain digital-only up until there's enough profit to start an actual franchise. When Obsidian is quite happy and comfortable that they can deliver a sequel based on those profits, they can avoid Kickstarter and do a preorder setup of some kind where it is possible to lay down funding for physical media creation and shipping without risking anything themselves--such an offer can include the sequel, the original, maybe both in a bundle. Well, that's just my idea. Everything should go into the actual development of the game itself at this point, IMO. Obsidian should not be worrying themselves over the complicated and costly risk that is the retail world.

You're clearly in the wrong forum and, well.... are a bit wrong in the head when you claim "overuse" of a basic mechanism will ruin someone else's game experience from their own point of view. And there isn't even a balance argument at all. This is the exact same illogic used by a very small minority who say players shouldn't be allowed to save whenever and wherever and however many times they want "otherwise they will omg abuse it and ruin their own play experience even though they won't realize it!" Project Eternity is not for you. Nor did you play the Infinity Engine games (or if you did, probably didn't like them). Pausing was one of the few fundamental mechanisms mentioned in the Kickstarter and for this genre of game; good luck convincing Obsidian that it should be removed or severely hampered after all they've stated about pause being a core function of PE tactical gaming, player choice, and the presence of many auto-pause features. If someone wants to "waste his own time" to reload 30 times, that's his prerogative. If someone wants to enable every single auto-pause option and smack the spacebar once every four seconds, that's his prerogative. Stick to your own little corner of the basement, ye who believe so strongly that your personal preferences in gameplay is the only possible and correct one. Seriously.... pause?

? ?????? ? What the woof? I kept checking the URL to see if it was misspelled and then checking the calendar to see if it was the wrong month. I don't even... (Oh, and an elaboration: http://www.escapistm...aising-Campaign ) NO. (Edit: To elaborate pink disagreement, "The money raised will go toward the development of a 'proof of concept' prototype, which will then be used to attract further investment required to finish the game." from the article. Uhh, no. The monies should into the actual product. :/ Are there really KSes for mere prototypes? I haven't heard of such a thing. Hmph.)

I've never really dealt with pets in the I.E. games compared to MMOs. The mage familiar was more like a pocket pet that I pulled out sometimes. I rarely ever summoned creatures, if I could help it, because I wasn't fond of not being able to micromanage them well (lack of skillset, AI, pathing, whatever) and/or I simply didn't feel attached. Or something. I guess my problem is that "pets" should necessarily be of less value than a party NPC, especially when party NPCs have significant writing, in which case--why bother having "pets" around at all besides as battle fodder? (Which then kinda feels wrong.) Mechanically, such pets would require significant combat ability and/or (can't be both if Obs is putting a ton of resources in the party NPCs) writing. I'm betting the former would make more sense.

I'm constantly reminded that it's great that Project Eternity isn't targeting an audience like a friend of mine who says a CRPG isn't worth playing if it doesn't have romances in it. Granted, she also has exceptionally low self esteem. She also once repeated the same completely fallacious argument that "romance is the highest form of love and gives so much more depth in character development." I easily countered with "Oh, so if the building was burning and you had to choose between your spouse and your child, you'd choose your spouse every single time without blinking an eye." "Romanticized romance" is so stupid.... Anyway, why hasn't anyone quoted Josh's most recent Gamers.de interview with a question about game romances? So if it should happen, so long as Obsidian doesn't go the route of BGEE/BG2 where, if you don't/can't romance a character, that NPC has absolutely nothing else to say to you, I'm fine with it... (Because being unable to be close friends with someone with whom you tromp about for months, as opposed to having sex in a tent, is totally realistic. Not.)

If you seriously don't understand why, then you should read the actual thread, quotes, and related links found inside, because that addresses your post. Including the idea that Obsidian should vet hundreds or potentially thousands of amateur fan recordings (which may not be bad for random unimportant NPCs but is probably way more work than it's worth; leave it to fan mods). There should be a KS Q&A quote somewhere in here about specific dollar amounts per recording session too, and if Obsidian, which actually has tons of video game industry experience compared to you and everyone else on this forum, says VO is too expensive, then it's too expensive. Besides, this thread was moot when it was started. New players who come in without reading the Kickstarter updates and interviews keep repeating things like "the game shouldn't have/should have"---but Obsidian made the high-level decision back in September. Partial VO only. Done and done. Now people should get onto more relevant topics like weapon damage types and class skill advancement.

I'm guessing you didn't read the other Kickstarter updates. These are only the four core classes. There are... a whole bunch of other classes too. Not to mention specialization options for each. So go forth and read! Although Obsidian hasn't detailed several of the other classes just yet. (Wait, combat isn't the focus of PE? I think you really completely missed the Kickstarter, then. The IWD series was all combat. PE is supposed to be a complete trifecta with plenty of good combat along with the narrative and questing.)