Ieo

ARRRR YES. Big city! Juicy lore bits. And..... seriously, that's photorealistic. Nice. Campaign Almanac Looks like a good compromise for people wanting to play their own PnP of the world? My friends will love that. I sense layers of mystery and intrigue surrounding the truth between the war of two (or more) faiths... (Edit: I just got back from lunch, too. Heh.)

Go to lunch already It's not even 11am here yet! I see Bobby is in the thread--he's probably laughing at everyone...

Don't worry, everyone, the update will come the moment I go to lunch. ಠ_ಠ

Planescape: Torment - The Dead Nations.

I refuse even to go so far as to call it abuse. It's just use. Calling it abuse requires a foundationless value judgment I'm not willing to make. "Abuse" in gaming terms to me really means exploit, which in turn indicates unintential use, not "working as intended," leading to game imbalance. So what cases of save-game exploits exist? Those are abuses. At-will saving doesn't fall under that. All other game balances, where the onus is on the developers, should try to take into account in-game tactical difficulty rather than metagame reload "strategy," and that is a difficult thing to implement well, judging by the framework put forth by Sawyer (earlier Formspring quote somewhere in this thread). Since they're the devs who both play games and design and develop at the highest conceptual levels, I'll trust they can find the good balance for default play. Everyone else can then ramp up or down to their liking (with cherry-pick options, which I suspect will be available). There is really nothing else to say about it. I'll play my way in this single-player game, and you mind your own business, thankyouverymuch. ಠ_ಠ

Jennifer Hale... As a side note, I hope for more artwork along the lines of --- all companions in concept art form (the sepia stuff) and the IWD-style posed painting (Salani the dwarf ranger)....

Well, how did you feel about the Baldur's Gate implementation? Main storyline, looooots of side quests. BG1 and BG2 implementations were a bit different in that BG1 was more "open" and thus you had a better chance to lose track of the main story. BG2 was a better balance in that you could definitely do major side quests (chaining) but you could ignore them and just head down the main storyline. DA:O felt like a horrible railroad comparatively, to me. I suspect PE is going to be big on the multi-faction world exploration and cultural bit, so there's going to be quite a bit of breadth and definitely not a railroad. The trick is to allow players to skip all side quests and go straight through a main storyline, if they want--this was possible in BG. Yeah, and with cultural vectors and reputation factions, I fully expect mutually exclusive paths. Even PS:T had that up to a point.

Look for the existing co-op threads. Also, many official dev answers in my sig.

Meh, orcs. I'd rather not see them unless they're subverted a bit like the boreal Dwarf ranger... maybe as a native trading civilization with better technology than some of those in the world, with building obsession like Tolkien Dwarves and food obsession like Tolkien Hobbits and a deeply rooted 2-god religion, and maybe you could build reputation. I dunno. If the Tolkien-esque races so far in PE (elves and dwarves) are more original, then orcs must follow the same pattern and not be plain ol' "enemies" for no good reason, which would be dumbing down a bit...

And it's pretty much irrelevant anyway. From the very beginning. Because Obsidian is designing the default saving to IE normal mode most likely, and there's always Trial of Iron and everything else. Some people just can't give up the stupid idea that their preferred way of playing is the correct way and everyone else's preferences exist only to break the game. (Wat.)

Companion depth and opportunties to influence them (without breaking the sense of individuality unless we're talking about a major identity crisis anyway). At least some quests/chains that have multiple endings, not just 'good/bad'. Please no dragons... unless they're subverted or more original or something. ...It's too early for me to think of anything more, but the Darkspawn problem......... I became so frustrated with them and offended by their design that I dialed the game difficulty all the way down just to splat large herds of them with single fireballs because I GOT SO SICK OF IT AAAAAUUUUGH.

Don't forget his recent Matt Chat interview, which may have more or different information. http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/61168-matt-chat-interview-with-sawyer-about-eternity/ I'd add more, but it's time for bed...

Sounds like you combined the captain and burglar classes of LotRO. I don't like many aspects of MMO threat/aggro mechanics in an SP party game, though (details in the aggro thread). And to be honest, I think we have enough classes now (with paladin and chanter). They have to work on all the combat mechanics and class skills and balance everything....

No, no mounts... there have been a few other threads about this already. The necessary animations and links to combat state and whatever--a lot of work for no content gain and minimal mechanics advantage. Obs has already confirmed that travel will be basically on foot, like in the IE games.

As a random note, I remember a BG2 mod that included a battle against clones of your own party with all the same gear and skills. That was really tough, though I don't remember the exact mod.

Yes, thank you. That's one way to do it. Ieo, I should've explained better (I call upon the power of hindsight!). It doesn't necessarily have to be "behind cover" in the same sense as I portray it with my OP~ Shadenaut provides an excellent point and solution. Kudos. Ah. So perhaps a simpler mechanic appropriate for iso would be similar to the stealth bonus for a stealth class in a shadowed area. That would work. For combat behind a solid, though, any penalties/bonuses should apply based on directional variables from enemies beyond the solid versus within sight or... something. That's a better proposal than true LOS, which would really only work in 3D zoom rotating camera environments like Dragon Age, Mass Effect, MMOs, etc., which is why I would never support it for PE...

Calling out this quote again. I liked that the IE games didn't have too many weapon immunities (or easily overcome by a broad collection of weapon types based only on magical level), and I didn't believe PE would have this problem--inventory is a critical asset for games in general. Some intelligent quest setup and world building and I think it'll work out nicely... The only times I have ever seen gear swapping of that level were in the two MMOs I've played. Because MMOs are generally just combat and combat grinding with minimal storyline/lore tacked on as glue, one of the ways to keep that combat "interesting" is to require extremes in gear for exceptional situations (e.g. 24-man boss raid), both defensive and offensive. Weapons, jewelry, all armor slots, you name it--I once had to carry three different, full armor sets (7 pieces each) and three weapons for raiding, and that was on the conservative side since I didn't switch jewelry. It got pretty ridiculous. You know what I'd love to see in PE? Temporary specific-damage bonuses that are craftable for your weapon(s). MMOs are gear-grind-fests, the complete opposite of, say, Baldur's Gate where you could go through all of BG2+ToB with only 2 weapons; for the latter, depending on just what immunities and resistances you might find out there, I think it makes sense to be prepared on the consumable side but you just really love your trusty mace that you inherited from your grandfather... However, if you run into that Dread Gazebo in your PE adventure and don't have any fire handy, you could use a flaming oil you had crafted and stored before to add to your arrows and mace...

It's already up, $20

Thumb drive keychain?

The remaining amount is most likely due to PayPal pledges. Hopefully those keeps increasing as well AHA, right, totally forgot about that.

Or, you know, they were always planned and part of the design philosophy for the game. Possible. Man, there's a lot of chatter about the KS tiers in this last Q&A, and Obs is still going to add/change things... The last KS day will be interesting to watch.

They removed the 2.6k picture and incorparated it into the big one. So, the links aren't there anymore It was a tongue-in-cheek freakout, but I do appreciate the paste. Thanks. Ah, well. Ticker is currently at $2,565,486, not $2.6. Wonder if the instability is due to add-ons or the general tier massaging. Welp.

IMAGES BROKEN *FREAKOUT*

The answer is very simple... In the matter of trust, you put down the amount of money you're willing to risk and potentially lose in the venture (whether failure to deliver--not gonna happen--or "subpar" to your expectations, which is possible). This is the mantra of Kickstarter. All stop.

(1) I don't agree. EDIT: Because I believe it could be done with an isometric view. I said it in another post "Envisioning" it. It would require lots more work as you state in (2-4) of course, doesn't mean that it would be "poor usability". I feel as if the isometric view is highly underrated* (2-4) makes sense, thanks does sound like it could take an awful lot of time. Though as I said, as well, X-COM looks like this today, and it started development 2 years ago according to Wikipedia. Though X-COM and Baldur's Gate are different in playstyle, strategy, interface and much much more. X-COM is much more "Mission-by-Mission" based whilst Baldur's Gate is more of an exploration type RPG. * As we see in the modern day isometric takes on it. Look at STASIS for example: http://forums.obsidi...large-pictures/ The "2 years ago" is really irrelevant, though--you're talking about a different genre of game; your statement skates dangerously close to "because it's an older game with a 3D rotating zoom camera with topographical environment, PE graphics should be 'improved' to match that tech." That's a shooter that doesn't have to take into account timed skills across many different classes, among other things. In several instances of the video example, it looks like the player would have to zoom in completely with the free rotating camera to get a good view of an enemy target and "lay of the land" (e.g. 3:45-ish)--if the video showed the entire battle being played out in pure isometric mode, it would be much better evidence. But this isn't the case. STASIS looks like an iso with good graphics. I don't see how that's relevant to this thread, unless you can produce video/screenshots of it using cover mechanics in pure iso mode. The prone positioning mechanics are a separate thing... Trying to mix genres--like people asking for Dragon Age-style full VO and cinematics on top of console-style finishing moves and stuff--that would never fly with the type of game Obsidian intends Project Eternity to be and with the audience it targets. So, yeah, I just don't see it happening.