Ieo

I disagree about making beta keys cheaper or free. As I posted elsewhere some time ago, people misunderstand what beta testing is, where quantity is absolutely not the same as quality feedback. Too often some random user will just say "there's a bug with X, please fix." I understand how having paid beta testing might rub some people the wrong way ("why should we pay to test for you?")*, but I look at this a bit differently: By placing a pay gate on beta testing, whether built into higher KS tiers or like this, I would hope that someone should think twice about the responsibilities of testing as a privilege (because good feedback should/will be taken seriously, so you'd have a hand in guiding development!) and that betas are by nature flawed--basically reducing the noise-to-signal ratio, theoretically. Obviously there are other traditional methods of initiating closed and open beta tests, like by invitation only (typically for closed testing and requires an NDA), but this way is fine. Clearly Obsidian has been getting enough quality feedback such that they pushed back the release date. If there wasn't enough good and detailed testing going on, releasing something half-baked is much worse. *My stance on this is in deep contrast to the situation where some companies actually release buggy games for retail purchase, hence forcing the final user to beta test for them and then releasing hotfixes and tons of patches later (the super bad way to go about beta testing).

I think you have to buy a Beta code. I hope that for their next Kickstarter project, Obsidian will offer the Beta to all backers, but in the situation of Pillars of Eternity, the Beta was available only for higher tiers. This basically means that it gave backers an incentive to back at those higher tiers if they really wanted Beta access. No plans for an open beta of that nature. It wasn't just the higher tiers, but Obsidian at some point added the $25 beta testing "add-on" to the Kickstarter, so there are no doubt a whole bunch of those beta keys with the lower tiers. How many are properly participating and filing detailed bug reports is another matter; I do not believe the beta software has any automated capabilities, but I could be wrong (that info goes in the beta forums). Also, while the cipher thing is a cool idea, I'm sure it'd cost more than the notepad Obsidian has proposed; a paperweight/d20 is still better either way.

A calendar wouldn't quite work because the game will be released months into 2015 instead of right at the beginning. Something nonconsumable would still be best, from a collector's point of view. I'd take a paperweight over the paper. A die with logos still seems most appropriate, though.

Just keep in mind they're not designing for touch screens. You'll still need external peripherals. (And the tablet obviously must have a FULL OS, Windows or Mac or Linux, NOT a mobile OS like most tablets have.)

Good luck. Josh listed the min resolution earlier, but the Surface screen size (anything before Pro 3) is only 10.6 inches, so even that lower res may be difficult to manage. There's always the external monitor, at least. I remember playing BG1/BG2 on a Japanese 10.4-inch subnotebook back in the day, which was doable, but that was a pretty low resolution game...

I skimmed some discussion on that and hope the visual problems can be resolved without too much trouble, but it should be done. Honestly, I must have missed Obsidian's reasoning for using that particular camera angle. None of the IE games had that, right? Or was it TOEE? The suggestions to move the characters further apart hopefully work (increasing the selection circles is a great idea), as I guess the camera angle in the art is now fixed and can't be changed. By the way, I don't know how those floating health bars work in PoE since I can't test at the moment, but in MMOs, they're typically fluid and change position if there's any occlusion, which makes the floaty bars (optional!) automatically move to a spot that still can be clicked. And besides a wad of collector's-paper-that-won't-be-used, another idea is a logo-ed foam sword. Hah, cosplay.

Ahhhhh, that Useful Physical Item That Cannot Be Used Because It's a Collector's Item.... bugs me! (I'd rather get an un-useful item like.. I don't know... a giant squishie 20-sided die with Pillars and Obsidian logos?) Well, that's neither here nor there. Carry on!

wanderon, the problem with forum polls isn't the opinion skew for the OP but basic statistical representation. Unless Obsidian blasted a survey about this through Kickstarter and gets at least 2000 cross-sectional player pips, there is never valid representation because we have a triple-sliced bias going on: self-selection bias, minority forum users, and beta testers. Rather than nitpick the quantification structure of this sort of poll, further discussion is best, though. I still want (vast majority) weight on objectives to allow multiple playstyles, but massaging the details, well... trap/lock xp and the others just aren't appealing to me and too much microbalancing just seems like more backend busywork while opening a can of worms for degenerate gameplay. On the other hand, I haven't been able to beta test, so maybe my nebulous opinion would solidify more later once I do get to beta test. There's a lot of "feels" testing that goes into character leveling.

But is the questionnaire identifiable? This poll isn't (you can't see who voted for what), and generally speaking, people are going to be much more honest about what they want on a gaming forum even if swimming against a majority. The whole idea of "loud minority" is born out of venues like this. I wouldn't worry about any shaming part. Especially for backers in beta, you're going to want to speak up about your desires anyway, and if someone doesn't want to, that's no one else's problem but theirs. Oh yeah, I voted 2,3,6.

The only thing about this situation that gives me real pause is that there has been no Kickstarter update for the actual KS backers. Forum venues are traditionally little used by a given population of shared interest, and Twitter only slightly better (especially for topics with an older age range). Other than that, well... People will get over it.

What? Please, if you're going to try going that route, my opinion obviously matters infinitely more than yours. (Hint: No, don't even try. Your vapid opinions aren't even relevant to the vast bulk of this project-that-you-didn't-back. I doubt you even played the IE games, especially PS:T.)

The best response to these threads is popcorn. Personally, I like toffee-covered popcorn.

It's kind of a Catch 22. On one hand, extending the release date increases expenses and may damage goodwill (the announcement wasn't posted to KS yet so who knows if, once it does, more backers will flock here to air opinions), and on the other hand, releasing something buggy wouldn't help Obsidian's already-questionable-reputation-according-to-some, which would definitely harm goodwill AND not help retail sales either. In terms of those risks, delaying seems the better risk. Only the people at the helm with financial and market data can make the best call for this project, and the one thing we can assume about the decision-making process for release date is that the company definitely wants to do this as well as possible; raising the bar, in this case, means releasing with polish.

So all you people who made wagers... what exactly did you wager?

All right. Well, it happens. Keep up the transparency, Obsidian, and forgiveness is easy. Bugs don't follow schedules, moreover. I'll end up trying Divinity:OS at some point because I hear good things about it, so I can get that out of the way while waiting!

I was sniffing around looking for information about retail physical boxes, but anyway.... There should not be a CE in retail that's identical to the Kickstarter CE: The KS backers footed ALL THE RISK for this venture, so we obviously deserve a whole lot more. If there is a retail physical CE, there should be fewer special things in it, definitely. But as for a regular physical retail box, I'm still looking around to see what the plans are for that since I haven't been up on the news for a long while. Anyone got something on that? I was sure that the retail version would strictly be digital, but I don't remember now.

Pillars is competing against other CRPGs in the generic market sense but is definitely not competing against other games in terms of target audience. This is exactly why there was a Kickstarter in 2012.

Leyphs, that approach MIGHT make sense for someone who just stumbled upon this forum and English isn't his first language, but this is incredibly basic: You read. You search for information because it's all out there. You read the Kickstarter page and all its updates. You put two and two together and figure out WHAT this crowdsourced project is supposed to be about. And if you decide to start multiple threads over multiple months trying to bring up the same idiotic complaints but not taking any of the counters to heart ever, the fault is not in the rest of us who did back the KS. It boils down to arguing about game genre and graphical subjective preferences as a qualitative assessment of what makes a "better" game. What is possibly objective about that approach?

Eh, I duck in here only for the update announcements these days, but I see little has changed in the way of periodic Illiterate Trolls Whining About Things Unrelated to a Game They Didn't Back. Rag doll physics indeed, hur hur hur! Incomplete voice-acting where full VA was laid to rest, when, 2012? Man, kids these days. Git off our lawn.

So retro. Now where to find me a copy...

Aw man, I wanted to participate in the beta properly, but IRL stuff conflicts and I can't give it due time. Oh well, I'll just trust things will work out. Thanks for the hard work.

I so wish I could import your armour models into the MMOs I've played/am playing.... especially for the female characters (typically not armour at all). That's amazing detail for a new-old-school iso game.

Hell no. I'm currently playing an MMO and have played two others, and I like my solidly-written single-player iso CRPGs. NEVER THE TWAIN SHALL MEET. Edit to add: Oh shoot, OP is trolling. Walked right over that trap, oh well.

Shiny!

Not as big a market as it might seem at first glance, since a big chunk of China loves its gaming piracy. They may play the game if it has a Chinese translation, but they won't necessarily pay for it. i'd be extremely happy to see PoE in 正體中文. Not sure if the Taiwan market is big enough to justify that, though. I agree that expending resources for a Chinese market that doesn't exist would be a waste, particularly when it comes to software, music, video (anything that can be digitally gotten), and also any other manufactured goods (clothes, purses, shoes, etc. are readily available in bootleg form, not to mention tons of clones for tech items). Also, I'm not sure the PRC Communist government would like all the gray area stuff purported to be in the game anyway.