Ieo

Why does this thread still exist?

LotRO's system goes like this, automatic: 100 copper > 1000 silver > 1 gold There can be easily four levels, but I wouldn't want more than that; the weight discussion is relevant. Personally, I'd love to see something not based on precious metals. Wood? Precious stone coins? Cowry shells!

A scaly quetzalcoatl gets my vote.

Alrighty. Went ahead and did this since I can't quite make the leap across the 140-250 chasm at the moment. In celebration of Cadegund's awesomeness. I'd like to be....... White Gazebo of the Obsidian Order

No weight. But I'd rather we do away with the typical "precious metal" bit myself. I vote for cowry shells.

I'd much rather see a potential exotic creature companion. Not sure as a party member or as a ranger-type summon, hmmm.

I would disagree with #1 - I think it's easier to take a game made for MP and make it work well SP than to take a game made for SP and make it work well MP. (As long as you aren't talking about MMOs, most of which have fundamentally poor gameplay that would make a transition to SP impossible). If the core gameplay is fun, the social aspect would be icing on the cake, not the only reason to play. And yes, I know it's going to be a single player game. My comment was more of a lament on the fact that nobody makes good co-op RPGs. #1 is how it is because of the assumption that SP is the base game (i.e. Project Eternity, context under which Null posted). But to be honest, if development is easier with a game built ground-up for MP but with 'decent' SP developed afterwards, why haven't more companies done so? I mean, there are a number of SP games with MP tacked on, yes, so that really begs the question... SP = all types of players, solo, any play time MP = small groups with similar play expectation, 2-6, concurrent play times, and inability to do any other content if other partners are not present MMO = any number of players solo onwards, similar play expectations (or not, if solo), concurrent play times or can do other content on own time App games = extremely casual, 1-4+ players, any play time (turns), game doesn't proceed without other players (I think these are always pvp, not co-op, though) I kind of wonder if the reason games are missing the co-op target is because many "MP" games shifted to the app space, which has a much, much broader target audience than MP CRPGs but is fundamentally different in that those games are all pvp. MMOs overlap the intended audience in that players can play together as they wish in highly crunchy settings (LotRO has a much better 'storyline' than virtually all other MMOs, though), but the persistent worlds allow players with different schedules to play solo if they wish, so it's far more flexible than a typical MP CRPG. The market may simply be far too small. @Volourn: Don't discount the fact that half/most of the "fun" during MP is the socializing itself, independent of the game. That doesn't necessarily mean that the SP was poor or even that the "MP game" was good. Probably why a lot of people end up hanging around an MMO they no longer really 'play', but stick around only for the social aspect.

Yes, in PS:T, I can't imagine any room for an additional player-made character (besides which it's impossible given the narrative and everything) or playing without party members because that would strip a very substantial amount of content from the game. I doubt this is true of PE, however, so there would be room for self-made parties in the name of tactical replay value for single-player campaigns. In BG, the only way to create a self-made party was to first create in MP mode and then move it into SP mode, right? That's a workaround, not an intended self-made party mode for SP. IWD was different, if I remember right, because you're required to build your party anyway. So the implementations were not equivalent in the least. But because this would still be played in SP mode, adding this feature wouldn't require concessions in the content that adding MP would--so I'd support this for replay value and for those folks who do prefer the tactical side (I remember that after I replayed BG2 so many times, I started making my own partial parties too). Basically the party interactions would be lost, but I suspect the vast majority of players will still play an NPC party campaign before jumping straight into the self-made anyway. We know that MP won't be implemented for both technical and content reasons, but adding this doesn't seem like an awful stretch because it's technically SP.

I don't fault others for having interest in MP on its face at all; I think it'd be fun too (but I already play with friends on an MMO, so it's moot for me). I only fault others for pushing MP at the known expense of intended SP given the dev feedback we've already gotten. The same goes for pushing for console or Android/iOS support at the expense of complex PC implementation--there are absolutely requests that cannot be given full and equal treatment for technical reasons. MP/SP is one of those.

Actually, I'm fairly confident Obsidian already has the big picture down--it's the details for which they're interested in player feedback, but they may or may not take all of that into account. Example: Races are a huge deal in any fantasy world, and despite all the race threads, Obsidian came out showing they already had their ideas and here they are (but they had to show more to assuage fears of being too 'Tolkien classical' for some players). There is no point stuffing all these gigantic 'big picture constructive ideas' into a single thread like you suggest; forum reading was not designed for this. All threads should be limited in topic and scope, the better to manage and read by Obsidian. As others say--the time to discuss is NOW. The place to discuss is this forum.

And this is precisely what Bobby Null addressed in his post... I do agree that there's another underserved niche, but that niche ('awesome MP with substantial content') isn't one that can overlap with 'awesome SP', to which you agree in your last paragraph: Given Null's post and the admission that tacked-on is a bad MP experience, then the choices are-- (1) Great MP built from the ground up with required lossy SP (2) Bad MP built on top of great SP (3) Great SP with no MP #3 lacks the extra debugging/etc. complication Tim Cain talks about. The caveat is Null's implication that great MP+SP is possible only at a very high cost, something I'm not convinced KS can provide--but the entire point is rather moot in the case of PE: From the very beginning, Obsidian has reiterated that PE intends to be a great SP experience. Since PE is designed to be solidly single-player, there is no good ROI argument to try to build MP alongside it. So in practical terms, one's best bet in finding a good co-op game is to aim for games not designed to be single-player.

Read.... "Single-player gaming is our focus" You get a straight dev answer as to why it's a bad idea for an SP game and then a published interview saying explicitly that it's a complication that adds no content value, ergo Obsidian isn't doing it (Tim Cain interview). People who really want MP should start harrassing other game firms to make one, maybe on KS. PE isn't it. P.S.: By Null's post, if we're talking about a totally tacked-on crappy MP module created after SP development, sure. OP here however wants MP at the expense of SP--MP was absolutely not the best quality of the IE games (I'm sure he never played PS:T), I mean, really?

Oh yes, a bulge doesn't surprise me in the least, but there are key points from previous representations of fantasy female armour that I think of for the extremes/unrealistic: very distinct inframammary crease, the two-bulge problem, and nipple bulges. This has none of those... And it's really the best female warrior design I've seen for a game. Big kudos to the art direction and artist.

Happy belated 402nd, Chris! I just managed to revisit the Kickstarter page and spotted the change. My head about exploded. Can this possibly be? :wub: BEST FEMALE WARRIOR DESIGN EVER IN GAMING HISTORY? Yes, I know it's subjective, but from the 'realism' perspective... It's a "little" token thing, to be sure, relative to all the chain bikini or plate-midriff designs out there, but that this is up and shown to the public has really increased my faith in the project all the more. Sincere thanks from me. I really did not expect this. I'm even contemplating what things I can sacrifice this month to up my pledge...

Redundant. NO. Dev has answered this (harms SP game structure). and /thread KILL THIS THING WITH FIRE.

Yeah, there is, and given Bobby Null's response in this thread and the fact that Obsidian is very aware this is a Kickstarter venture means extremists should stop being hyperbolic whiny drama queens and trust Obsidian to balance the difficulty appropriately given their own goals in relation to the IE games. This thread is over--it's solely up to Obsidian to temper the difficulty range to the target audience they actually want when they're fully aware of the dilemmas surrounding this. The only thing extremists should be worried about in this KS is dumping more of your pocket money to make 2.3 happen.

The more I think about the Aristotelian view, the more I appreciate PS:T (if that was even possible). PS:T's ending was not bad; in fact, I wouldn't even classify it as a sad ending. The takeaways I think most people should get from Aristotle's classic literary definition is that a tragedy is not a social drama, and a tragedy doesn't necessarily have a "tragic" ending. @OP Oh, and to actually answer the title: Compared to what? But no. Dramatic content is very broad and depends on execution. (Tragedy, comedy, and satire are actually all classified as drama under the Poetics.) But about the specific dramatic punch of PS:T-- I think this is the perfect definition of what happened to TNO and critical in the treatment you're talking about in re PS:T compared to lay treatment of depressing tragedy. The reason why tragedy brought about by protagonist choice creates greater tension in the audience is explained in Poetics as what we might understand to be the fatal flaw. From the psychological point of view, as I see it, a mistake by a mortal that brings about tragedy is much easier for the audience to identify with than a "higher power" instigating some bad situation around the protagonist--the latter is more distant and lends more a feeling of powerlessness and absolute 'inevitability', nor would the audience necessarily feel compelled to support the protagonist if they believe in the higher power. Free will versus the heavens/hells is a concept constantly used to frame human struggles.

I decided to peruse stuff on the psychology of tragedy, comedy, and other things in classical literature, and the first thing I came across was: And now I can't stop laughing... *cough* Anyway. The Aristotelian definition of tragedy from the Poetics is really quite fascinating and I feel applies more to Planescape Torment than the modern usage, which basically requires a sad ending by layperson definition. If you continue to read the entire summary on Wikipedia above, then it does seem that PS:T falls squarely in this treatment (I could be wrong--I'm not a philosopher like Avellone): If we think about TNO's existence in the game, his reality hinged entirely upon his choices (not as a "chosen one" by external fate), and we know that he was/is a very capable person. The entire character study of TNO in Planescape: Torment revolved around his inner compulsions thus. There was catharsis in Deionarra's situation despite her sad "end." In fact, I rather liked PS:T's ending as it pertains to TNO even if it was abrupt--there was cathartic closure to the cycle. I just wish there was more closure for TNO's companions like in BG2. (P.S.: Aristotle's definition of tragedy says that the change in fortune from bad to good still counts, which I find intriguing. I'm not sure I've run across that in media.)

/thread Yeah, I know it won't happen. Really, it comes down to the devs' vision, not anything else - I do like that they have a clear focus and a clear vision and won't sway from that, because projects without that level of vision are simply doomed. I just find it disappointing, because I think this group has the talent to make a great multiplayer RPG if that was their goal. There are just so many great single-player RPGs and so few (if any) great multi-player RPGs that it's a bit disappointing when time after time the great teams of the industry won't take the road less traveled. Talent is only a fraction of what makes a marketable game, as it were. If the release date was, say, 2016 with target funding of over $10m, maybe? Only the devs could have any ballpark idea about that. But it's far, far more practical to design to current and expected funding based on the initial targets (at $1.1m and intended content). That "awesome MP" is the road less (or not) traveled has to do with a lot of factors, not just talent: market research, ROI, time to develop, number of dev teams to employ, and of course funding. All those things really have to come together well for that to happen, and maybe that will be some other Kickstarter venture down the road by some other talent. Per your comment about reading not being a team sport... Honestly, I think your experience is special and not indicative of more common MP play experience. That seems more akin to reading a story book between parent and child. Getting five other adults together in a MP party across a network with a text-heavy game, though? Everyone reads at different rates. Then in traditional group live storytelling, it's done orally--oral and reading are vastly different in social interaction. Narrative/dialogue sharing among a game group would thus make more sense if all the content was voiced, forcing parallel intake. That of course will never happen in PE either, and by virtue of having VA, the price shoots up and narrative/interactive content plummets. Seems kind of like a Catch 22 to me.

So besides Bobby Null's post in this thread about the content limitations, there's also this RPGamer interview with Tim Cain, this week (I think it's supposed to be dated 26SEP2012, but there's no actual date on the article itself, which is lame): /thread

Except that the resources spent on making optional easy modes are resources that could be better spent on more overall content. I don't get how people can't seem to grasp that this game is going to be made with a limited budget versus a AAA, publisher-backed title. It's quite literally a zero-sum game. Money spent on X will be money taken away from Y. And yet much harder modes are part of the 2.3 stretch goal--this can mean one of two things: (1) Obsidian only cares about catering to the hardcore gamers and carebears be damned. (2) Easy and normal modes (and probably a "regular harder mode," just not "hardcore") are already guaranteed. (1) makes no sense because Obsidian wants actual sales of the game post-production, and the only way to do that is to allow more casual play, however subjective that is. (2) makes far more sense because the I.E. games always had different options including easy. Probably all of Obsidian's other games too. The problem with your viewpoint is that you're stating it as an absolute binary when market forces dictate otherwise; in other words, this isn't like romances where you're going to get stuck in the game somewhere by a companion conversation. Combat mechanics are so pervasive and fundamental to the CRPG that allowing player adjustment is a very basic and absolutely necessary form of accessibility. Locking out a goodly number of potential players for a game that Obsidian wants to franchise on post-production sales is very dangerous--this sort of thing won't happen with/without stuff like romances or cosmetics or lack/presence of a given race. There must be, at minimum, easy/normal/hard modes. In terms of finer distinctions, this should be very easy for Obsidian to compartmentalize by discrete combat mechanics, as they explain the piecemeal nature of the 2.3 stretch modes. Aaannd, I totally missed Bobby Null's post earlier, so that's that.

The exile's fate was decided (in my opinion, changed) in the Revan novels, not KotOR 2, in order to bridge the gap between KotOR 2 and SWOTR. Both SWOTR and the Revan novels contradicted statements in KotOR 2 because George Lucas hates SW stories that aren't black and white, good and evil because he thinks his fans are idiots and thus believes that dumbing it down will make more sales. Oh yes, of that I'm aware--but I get very attached to my character(s), so knowing subsequent "canon," I don't really want to invest... It sounded like a right mess. Geez, I hate major plot spoilers--I can't un-know these things! On the other hand, I had lost all respect for George Lucas a while ago, so that helped in my decision not to bother. *cough* (Sorry, Obsidian, but KotOR2 will remain unplayed... Unless I'm struck by selective amnesia.)

NO PVP. That is an MMO thing, totally irrelevant here. Per co-op/MP, see the last post here: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/60065-merged-co-op-multiplayer-as-some-potential-future-stretchgoal/page__st__180#entry1212542

Their mods guide is essential. http://www.gog.com/en/news/mod_spotlight_planescape_torment_mods_guide/ It is a very different game, I'd say polar opposite to IWD in the IE trifecta; remember to manually talk to your party members often (banter doesn't start automatically like in BG2).

Yes, I made a cursory mention, and probably someone else did too. And that did help, though it didn't change things like actual plate color--which also made sense. In fact the color palettes that I remember in BG seemed mostly limited to the trim. I honestly think that was one advantage of the old BG1-BG2 itemization; armours were very limited, especially in BG1, where you might find one +1 full plate (-1 AC) in the entire game, one full plate (AC 0) and 1-2 breastplates (AC 1), and scale mail at AC 2-3 or whatever... Because the overall spread was small, that meant replacing one piece of gear for another on a sprite didn't create a huge mechanics deficit. There were two mage robe models I remember in particular: one for the 'sexy seductress sorceress' and the hooded archmage robe; I do confess to changing all my female mages to the hooded archmage robe because I thought it looked better. But the bonus differences were quite minor (excepting the very special robes like Robe of Vecna, etc.). For PE, it would be nice if there was a large design spread, cultural and otherwise, for given tiers of gear, but the base bonus spread of gear was narrow, with character progression relying on primarily character skills and class bonuses. Then.. some kind of external crafting whatever could add customized magical bonuses (dunno about that bit, discussion is better in the crafting threads).