Ieo

My god, why is this thing still a point of discussion. It's 2014, and the new people who whine for adding MP or consoles or whateverthe**** didn't even read and back the KS. Any underlying technical change of this nature that would actually affect both mechanics and content should be a separate entity entirely, more like a spinoff. Give both MP and consoles a PE spinoff Kickstarter and let those people fund it. PE proper, THIS game, is SP and should stay SP+PC-only through its particular series. Didn't Dragon Age go down the clustertubes due to their adding console support and then MP through the franchise? Pure SP allows for the highest standards of consistent quality in story-based gameplay, since the devs can ignore the technical mess that comes with the other crap, and that consistency shouldn't be sacrificed in a desperate bid for "market share" like Bioware's ****--we're talking about a crowdfunded game, for pete's sake. It was never Obsidian's intention to go for the AAA title competition that way. And PE was crowdfunded for a reason: For anyone who so desperately wants MP or consoles, you already have your AAA choices, so shut up and go away.

I already dropped $250, so I fully expect a perfect first pass for the base game, price including PS:T-depth companions (and yes there are enough companions--anyone who complains there aren't enough obviously never played PS:T and only expect the shallow Baldur's Gate style companions, bah!) and lengthy, deep, variable questlines and factions that affect one's overall story. Obs already promised a balance of wilderness areas in BG2 style, and that's fine with me. I don't want console ports or MP to be part of stretch goals, though--I think those are better off as separate Kickstarters after PE is already established as a PC franchise. But I'd pay more for well-crafted dynamic encounters: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/63134-dynamic-encounters-patrols-respawns-spawn-points/

Something occurred to me (and maybe someone else in this thread).... There's only talk of stretch goals for companions (and wilderness, but I'll concentrate on companions) in the monetary sense and without any comment about time commitment. It's a well-known fact by now that it takes Avellone 2-3 months to write a party NPC "at his speediest" from an interview, and he's going to be moving to that Tides of whatever out of this project, so who would be writing the companions? My expectations are at PS:T level, and Avellone wrote all of those characters; if someone else ends up writing the additional ones, I'm even less interested... Hmm.

The only thing that kinda bothers me is the avatar bipedal posture-gait animation. Seen more clearly at around 0:43 of the trailer, the avatar elbows seem to be held too far from the torso and center of gravity while running? Also in the prior scene, the bipedal avatars seem to be leaning too far forward, or maybe it's the camera angle. Looks a wee bit awkward, but since it's isometric, eh.... Otherwise, mm, juicy, nice spell effects. The animation fluidity and combination of 3D/3D-retouched-into-2D elements are very nice.

But..... but the Green Hulk K doesn't really match well with my shiny silver square..... But completism. But visual noise! But it's a form of proof that I backed the Kickstarter unlike the unwashed late-to-the-party masses! BUT GREEN YUK. .... ..... ....... .....

NNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO-------- Oh, you don't expect the game to be fully voiced? Carry on, then. I'm surprised no one has linked one of the previous threads about this already. Although that other thread's approach is a bit different (hence OP, some of us might expect this thread to go down a similar road ). http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/60051-merged-voice-acting-suggestion/

Too small (few) number of companions? I pity the fools who never played PS:T. I say no to additional super-late stretch goals and burdening the already EXTREMELY HIGH expectations we have for the base game. This requires polish first. We're already expecting significant textual-RP content. Save the everything else for proper retail sequels, because that's the entire point of a franchise, eh?

I want it all... short,discrete quests; moderate questlines spanning maybe 3-4 separate quests unto closure; at least one or two longer questlines that string along a particular objective (PS:T's bronze sphere) but you get tossed along its quests into branching areas. Now, I'd rather have a long questline that opens constant branches with possible misdirection instead of just a plain long questline (multiple linear quests that go obviously from A->B->C etc.). Mmm yes.

Rather than rehash all the oooold arguments, just visit one of the original threads and leave it at that: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/61179-minimizing-save-scumming-or-is-it-too-much-of-a-hassle/

That's ironic. Would you be disappointed to if gameplay had walls of text? Because that's actually what a lot of backers would like to see in-game as well.

That's some badass project management. And those players who are always saying "it can't be that hard to implement" and "wouldn't take long to do this" or "can't be too expensive" and whatnot. Oh, just can it.

Oh, what do we have here. Well done, troll. Well done. You started a useless thread just to get people posting again since it's been awfully quiet these days. Good job! Oh, you weren't actually.... srs, were you? I hope not, because only an idiot--and a useless idiot who didn't back the KS--would complain about something that was decided before the Kickstarter even began last year. Nice work on pretending to have relevant thoughts, though. Now add some Twilight sex-romance angst, console angst, cinematic cutscene angst, emoticons, and probably a couple other things I don't remember, and we'll have this year wrapped up nice and round-like. Hey y'all, lively in here!

Honestly, I'd expect Surface Pro 1 to play PE well, besides the whole screen res thing making everything impossible to see. I might have to see how my Surface 2 will play it on my desktop via remote login.

My answer is the same since Update 15 in 2012. Multi-classing with highly flexible classes as those described above would be hell. In terms of technical balancing and resource management, I really think that we should either have very narrow classes plus multi-classing OR highly flexible classes with no multi-classing. It sounds like the latter, so I'm good with that. Edit to add: The problem with a lot of people saying "yes" to multiclassing is that they're stuck in the early AD&D mentality of narrow classes -> multiclassing, in other words Baldur's Gate/IWD. You guys aren't actually looking at the Project Eternity classes and flexibility Obsidian wants to put into them. I'm a multiclasser--all my IE games besides PST were multiclassed or dual. But built-in flexibility is great too, and I hope Obsidian sticks with that.

Yes, the live feed was an absolute pathetic cesspit... Add to the stereotypical "adolescent male gamer wants only smut" things (or the stereotypical "female gamer wants only romanceable Twilight vampires"), I would add these to answer the OP title-- 3D rotating camera with zoom-in on every full-animation kill effect, possibly slow motion Fully voiced NPCs with zoom-in animation Color-coded dialogue options denoting good/bad and with matching emoticon effects Console porting and multiplayer (meh, it's about the SP role-playing, man) Are you saying that these "features" have been added to Project Eternity? Ewww ... I supported a spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate. If Project Eternity lacks comparable latitude to play it in a way I find enjoyable it will be the last Obsidian game I buy/support. You have to understand that Gfted1 is gifted in seeing and only talking about half the picture. Unless some things have changed drastically since I last saw, "cool downs" here isn't the instantaneous MMO-style type. No healing/rez is because there is no death, but there is permanent maiming, so you still have to play smart. The unlimited inventory is offset by having only part of your inventory available during combat (or something, I didn't read into that in great detail)--face it, everyone got the Bags of Holding in BG2 whenever they could. No kill xp is the "glass half empty" take on objective-based xp, which was added to make all play styles viable for roleplay purposes, like being able to talk your way out of a fight if you didn't want to fight, but you'd get rewarded somehow either way. You'd better read all the original updates and discussion threads about those topics rather than take anything that poster says at face value.

I want to see the power-up sequence and battle cry for that. I understand the WIP argument elsewhere but I still agree with this. In my experience, and I know I'm missing some examples, there are a few specific cases for real corporate-level "NDA" (not alpha-testing product) being in effect--employees are coming or going (it's too late in this production cycle to do that, I think); company is being sued (yeah, not relevant); new products and services for retail competition (not relevant); or when a third party partnership is involved and the contract and public relationships tack are still being developed. So I wonder if it's an announcement about fulfillment partnership.

A cross between Noober and Morte.

HUZZAH!

I thought Wasteland 2's data entry was also being handled by DS, so that's a misunderstanding on my part: other Kickstarters have outsourced the entire fulfillment process including the initial data entry (it seems like a natural package to me). But even with that, consider that the Wasteland 2 Kickstarter ended in April 2012 with over 60k backers, and they got their fulfillment website up in July 2012. That's still a minus on Obsidian's part.

No, it shouldn't. Why would you even remotly want that?That would be bad money management. People invested in them making a game, not a backer site. They also invested 5% of their total backing amount into amazon, 5% into kickstarter and I don't know how much for postage and random loot that collects dust on their wall or in a cupboard. Sadly a kickstarter campaign has a lot of non-game-related costs and the understanding is that projects don't need to loan money from the bank to finance kickstarter costs itself. So the only question is if fullfillment is done completely inhouse or partly outsourced. Protest would only make sense if outsourcing cost more than inhouse fullfillment. Yes, that doesn't say.... anything? Keeping these costs low is the point. *Well, we already have these costs so.... Let's make more of it" is BAD money management. And they didn't *invest* that in Amazon. What a weird phrasing. That's a fee. Anyway, they are working on it. We know that much and we even know who is. It can still fullfill its function for quite a while, so there's no real use in putting on pressure. And demanding to invest money into it to get it finished faster is just counterproductive. You are indeed missing the entire point. Also, try to think about the big picture just a little. I get the feeling logistics is definitely not your strong point. Read about the Deep Silver arrangement: Then my next questions to you are these, since you think it's such a terrible idea: Let's say only a fraction of the PE backers requested physical items, like 10000 unique addresses out of the 70k+. The different physical items will require probably more than one printer/producer. Multiple physical items will need to be shipped to a holding area to be packaged into the backer "orders." Is Obsidian's studio large enough to house all of that? How many people will Obsidian need to hire to package and ship 10k orders? What is a reasonable amount of time backers can be expected to wait for their items after the game is announced complete? What carrier corporate services (contractual) will Obsidian need for large-scale distribution across country borders, if they don't have agreements already in place? When you add in all the time, work, money from Kickstarter funds that would go into figuring out distro above and beyond merely a fulfillment website, please, do explain why hiring an outsource option to cover those bases would be a terrible idea. By the way, PE got more backers than Wasteland 2.

Thinking more on this and considering that Wasteland2's fulfillment has now been outsourced due to volume, I think it's reasonable to assume that: The "one person" information we got from Obsidian or whatever some time ago is null and void, especially when said person is supposed to be working hard on the game itself anyway. Having a website front-end and database back-end capable of handling over 70k backers' data AND taking into account actual distribution of material goods is outside Obsidian's capacity short of hiring a whole bunch more people. It makes sense, I think, that a fully outsourced option from data-gathering to packaging to distribution in a warehouse environment is going to be more efficient than recreating the wheel from scratch in-house and dealing with shipping logistics on an international scale. Obsidian just needs to admit this and get into talks with potential outsourcing partners ; I expect a cut from the Kickstarter will necessarily go towards that, too, but that's a matter of balance, I suppose.

Of course they will, but people would like to know when. A little bit of information on that subject is common courtesy in my opinion. I mean, the backers have made it possible to have Project Eternity, so that's that. I have to agree. An official announcement with brief explanation--like my assumed explanations above--would go a very long way. The last official information we ever got, however, was merely "soon!" But that's really not good enough from the public relations standpoint; I've heard that excuse far, far too often in the gaming industry to take it seriously and to be convinced of proper resolution. Even if it was just a "we plan on building the fulfillment backend in early 2014," that's infinitely better than "soon." "Soon" means nothing. "Soon" was an excuse used by devs of a particular game I played when it became clear they couldn't deliver certain game content on schedule in any meaningful fashion; and you know, I was fine with that because I'd rather push back content release than deal with bugs. But a fulfillment website should be infinitely easier to design and program than the game itself. If Obsidian decides to hire a 3rd party like the people of Wasteland 2 did to handle fulfillment, fine--tell us or at least let us know you're thinking about it (with over 70k backers not including Paypal contributors, you might end up doing that). ANY official commentary about this can only be a good thing right now. Edit to add: I'm not clear on this since I didn't back Wasteland 2, but have fulfillment surveys even gone out for that project yet?

I believe Kickstarter projects normally release survey/fulfillment information shortly after the Kickstarter ends. At least the ones I've backed sent surveys the week after. It is confirmation of a noncontractual agreement ("You pay this, you get that.... fine print") and a finalization of choices if you had add-ons and the like. This is important: Fulfillment surveys for physical items are critical in determining exactly how much of each item to produce because Kickstarter's add-on structure doesn't allow specification. If this was a pure digital product with nothing physical, Obsidian could just email the info to the backer registered email addresses and the Paypal addresses. In relation to that, probably the only reason why Obsidian hasn't used Kickstarter's built-in survey tool is due to many slacker-backers who ran through Paypal. The only other good reason why Obsidian hasn't put up a fulfillment website or sent fulfillment surveys is that a lot can happen into 2014--specifically, many backers may have moved to new addresses, and rather than dealing with a bunch of corrections since late 2012, it's probably cleaner to do the final survey closer to product release. I expect Obsidian won't take fulfillment seriously until they need to figure out the physical item production, and that seems to be coming much later in the development side of things.

Huh, I decided to explore some of the other subforums today and came across this thread. Well. OP may have already gotten something, but I thought I'd post my experiences anyway. First a bit of tech user background: I have two ultramobile laptops that were cutting edge in their day. Several tower rigs, though my current desktop is really a mini-chassis. In terms of tablets, I've had Windows 7 tablets, iPad2, and have had the Surface RT since early this year (not at release). I have a Sony e-reader too, though I really haven't used it in a long while. I hated the iPad. I wanted to use it for school and play, but except for basic email, it's impossible to use for any real productivity--at least for me, which meant MS Office and running at least two things at the same time (like listening to music while browsing/writing). Excel spreadsheets and graphs, Powerpoint presentations, and advanced Word features because my schoolwork involved writing and editing other student papers between 20-40 pages long; track changes, spellcheck, footnoting, complex outlines/lists and tables, style templates. So on. Unfortunately, OneNote RT doesn't include synched voice recording, but I got around that using a free recorder app to record on the side while I typed my notes in OneNote or Word. And I required an external keyboard for iPad or any other tablet in order to be productive (including email), really, so that sort of setup would get awkward. The iPad was fine for reading books, but my Sony e-reader was better because e-ink didn't tire my eyes out after hours of staring. The web browser never worked as well as I wanted because of its mobile limitations. So I ended up only using the iPad for little app games and watching the occasional video. Good thing I received it as a gift, otherwise I'd have been much more pissed off paying so much for something that can't do a fraction of what I wanted. (To clarify: I'm not saying the iPad is a POS, but if you're only after light "productivity" and 90% light fun-times, then the iPad is where it's at. My company has attempted to deploy iPads as "productivity" devices, but the most they can manage is email, and there are problems with the corporate archiving rules. You'd really pay mid-$$$ for just email?) Now, my sort of productivity works perfectly fine with the Surface RT, though I don't know when the new version is supposed to come out (this year?), because you'll have whatever app games and then the meaty MS Office 2013 RT student/home version and two installations of a full web browser that's not a stripped-down mobile version (only IE10/11, though). I get a minimum of 8 hours of battery life on my RT doing "real" things, and though I'm not a fan of the IE browser, I figured out I didn't need a special Facebook app or anything because the browser supports the full website anyway. A great plus for me was the matching, super-light keyboard with non-chiclet keys, so I can type normally without the awkward wireless-travel-keyboard-requires-battery thing going on with other tablets. Altogether, my package of Surface RT with the nicer matching keyboard comes in at 2 lbs total for a day of productivity. Not bad. There were lots of complaints about the app store when the Surface RT first came out, where some critics said the barren app store was the WORST THING EVER. To that, I can only say this. If downloading and installing 236 apps is one's highest priority, then a Windows machine isn't it. The Surface Pro is another beast entirely, outside of form factor. It's a full Win8 machine, and there are plenty of demos on Youtube showing people playing real desktop games, working with Photoshop using the inking pen, and so on. The first generation of Pro actually does have decent battery life--as a tiny ultrabook. But MS is releasing keyboard-battery accessories this year as well, so with the price cut, that may be an option for some people if they don't want to spring for a new Pro 2. Having owned the mobile devices I have, I think what's different about the Surface even compared to other Win8 hybrids--and some are really neat--is that the form factor is a true ultralight tablet hybrid. The keyboard is the cover can literally just rip off and toss aside, so no wasted space there, and the tablet functionality works perfectly fine. The problem in the media was, quite simply, too many reviewers tried to compare either Surface to the wrong things. Surface RT isn't anything like the iPad. Surface Pro has ultrabook internals with a tablet and pen interface, but it's still not merely a combination of both. I think going to an MS store is best to look at the various Windows 8 hybrids on the market right now and to actually play with the options in your hands (Surface kickstand is not for everyone). If someone would rather get an Apple product, obviously the Apple physical stores are the same idea. The Surface Pro 2 "news" (really just a whole bunch of rumors) point to an autumn release of the new version to coincide with Windows 8.1. It's supposed to have at least 2 more hours of battery life simply from a Haswell CPU. I personally have no interest in a full-OS tablet because I do all my other heavy-duty things like Photoshop and gaming on my desktop rig with big LCD monitor. Although I did end up "remoting" from my Surface RT into my desktop to use Photoshop at one point. When looking at my options, the biggest draw for me to the Surface Pro was actually the pen input (drawing and handwritten notes), but I knew I wouldn't use it that much just for that. If anyone has specific questions, feel free to pm. Exciting things are on market or coming to market since Win8 was released late last year (though I agree Win8 sucks in a pure desktop experience).