Ieo

Has there ever been a closed-source software with fully public beta testing? I'm not talking about the public betas where a beta version is released to the public for final bug runs--those are only for major incompatibilities and not content feedback. Private betas, which I assume this will be given the tier limitation, has always been a minority affair. Resources--robust enough tracking software along with trained QA people to sift through thousands of reports. NDA issues--in closed beta, all participants are held to a strict NDA, and difficulty in maintaining that would increase exponentially if beta testing were fully open. That's a recipe for disaster on so many fronts, it's not even worth considering. Whether limited by $ tier like this or by lottery in another game I play, most people will be left out. It's a privilege and not a fundamental right whichever way it's cut. (In case I wasn't clear--no. )

With the discussion of subraces and distinct cultures, I'd like PE to have indigenous naming conventions: honorifics (social standing) normative syllabic structures female vs. male vs. age surnames, or lack of 1st person or 3rd person address varying by any of the above It doesn't need to be too complicated, but it'd be neat. It would also help me design my own characters. *cough* Examples: Chinese surname first and nongendered pronouns, Japanese honorifics and gender-connotated pronouns, Spanish gendered everything, Icelandic lack of family name in favor of immediate parental surname, etc.

<3 for GOG, and to repeat my reaction in the other thread: OMG BETA ACCESS COLLECTOR'S EDITION GO! Upped.

Uh, are we witnessing a new kind of graphic courtship over Twitter? Not that kind of graphic. Edit: Update #4. I'm about to up my pledge. Thank you. (I'm also pleased to se that PS:T is on GOG's top selling list right now!) Edit2: OMG BETA ACCESS COLLECTOR'S EDITION GO!

Was it? I really need to get it running on my 64 Win7... A great excuse to get back into the game. "I'm doing research."

I'd venture to say that introducing some slang or specialized terminology wouldn't be a bad thing at all and need not be a complete chant (I'm pretty sure PS:T had the chant, not cant). The only thing slang/terminology would affect is localization, something I favor for a larger international market... so it's down to translation cost.

I'd add that but can't seem to be able to edit the poll anymore. The results are pretty clear though, most want undead in the game and I'd guess most wont mind if they're handled in a new clever way. But it's a minority which either doesn't want them, or only wants them in some new context. Sorry, friend, but a forum self-selecting poll actually doesn't represent a decent enough number of players to make any clear conclusion. Even in my poll that has a much bigger sample than yours, where PS:T-biased fans appear to severely outnumber other game fans, I can't possibly say that represents the 40,000 backers. Still, with the qualifier, I wouldn't mind. I just find them terribly boring otherwise and expect more interesting new creatures in PE.

Yes, but "ONLY if they're awesomely original like in PS:T" isn't one of the options. So.

I'll raise your post with--- EOD As for the last bit.... If Obsidian thinks they could put together an awesome MP experience and SP can still expect PST-BG levels of content, that "very large budget" (whatever the heck it is) is not about to be met by Kickstarter for a niche game like this. Also consider the Eurogamer interview. SP cannot be sacrificed in the least since that's the point of PE; MP is fluff. If this handily beats Pebble, I'd change my mind.

I chose no. If I can't experience undead like in PS:T or something just as original, I'm not interested.

While I appreciate weapon differences and feel they add to realism.... I must warn against making the combat system--both magic and weaponry--overly complex. It is possible for mechanics to overpower setting and story, and I expect most people coming to Project Eternity expect a good balance. I already play an MMO, and MMOs have weak story but (in my experience) robust combat mechanics to the extent that combat mechanics in relation to gear and weaponry are the primary purposes/achievements for playing at all. Fans biased towards either IWD or PST, polar opposites on the Big Three range, will come into PE with differing expectations as well. The target audience in PE probably cuts the broadest swathe across the IE games--BG seems like the best compromise--such that there are dungeon-romping folks with MMO experience and then PNP gamers more interested in PST type content. It's a bit risky. PE will need some good beta testing on both ends...

Absence of Name = Absence of Identity = Absence of Purpose = Absence of Place in Multiverse = Null State = Loss.

That'd be other/multi at this point. Unfortunately it's past whatever time limit for editing the OP/poll, otherwise I'd also add NV to Fallout. Oops.

DA:O was to me like a mix between isometric party with pause and MMO tactics. Pulling, line of sight, laying traps and whatever. Since I also play an MMO, it felt more natural to me than my friends who rarely touch CRPGs and do mostly pen-paper. If Project Eternity is supposed to be in the same 'experience class' as the old IE games, I wouldn't expect that kind of hybrid combat system (which required mobile camera for best effects). I'm rather neutral on the topic so long as the actual combat mechanics are smooth, without cheese, and generally better than PS:T's.

These sorts of forum polls are always limited and are, to some extent, self-selecting samples. 300-whatever is a pretty tiny sample of the 30k+ people who've backed so far. Death isn't necessarily what people are thinking of in terms of combat difficulty/complexity--it would've been possible to impose a better combat system in PS:T, I imagine. As for unbalanced game, well... that's rather particular to PS:T and the protagonist's condition. Besides, enjoying PS:T tremendously as a favorite doesn't automatically negate the desire for stronger mechanics; it just becomes a relative evaluation.

They're not using a D&D system, so who knows what the stat mechanics will look like.

His last troll thread was locked, so he's just throwing more troll-tantrums now. Carry on.

I think Baldur's Gate had the best balance in this regard among the Big Three. Interesting companions with plenty of quest content with decent tactical situations (compared to PST, that's for sure), BUT you can create your own party if you want with a minor workaround. Or even solo.

Otherwise I am sure there would be plenty of people telling new players to choose X party combination because it has the best mix of stats/races/gender/whatever to get the best options every conversation. With all due respect, Rab, folks will do just that no matter what. First of all, that's what people do. Second of all, some folks will ask incessantly about on forums like these. Finally, there *will* be ideal party builds no matter how careful the devs are to provide balance. Allowing for people to use their party compositions in ways they find more fun is simply good, although I do agree that it will have to be a committed design decision. As a side note, I saw Elidar's name and thought I'd gone into a time warp. I thought I was seeing Eldar post, which would have been quite odd. I expect the player character class will be what balances against/with party NPC abilities; there's replay value there too. There's nothing wrong with min-max playing, and it'll happen regardless; thing is, after the first one or two party runs, those people who want ideal mechanical challenge will start powergaming with fewer and fewer party members anyway. Also, one reason why I'm pushing for PS:T-level depth in the party NPCs is because sometimes the character content simply trumps the 'group combat' value---like Fall-from-Grace, her spells weren't always useful depending on how you designed your character, but dang, she was worth bringing along just for her dialogue and view of the universe. Given the variety of subraces and cultures Obsidian wants to implement, that's a whole level of complexity that party NPCs can bring to our exploration. I have confidence that, looking at BG and PS:T party NPC and mechanics design, some balance can be struck by our dev team.

As I noted, I've got enough copies of the games that I'm not willing to pay for one that has activation or client dependency. Hm. Online activation is more problematic with games where longevity is expected (unlike productivity software), and Beamdog is so small and new, who knows if they'll be around in 10 years. Client dependency is a major turn-off, one reason why I'm just not interested in Steam. Guess I'm leaning towards giving this a pass now. A disc-check or offline reg code is fine with me otherwise, but digital-only distribution is troublesome in this way. Bugger.

Do you have specifics? This reads as a very general statement, nothing concrete, and very subjective. What was tedious to you? What exactly is outdated? Also, the main IE games quoted in the Kickstarter were "hardcore" in very different ways. I'm guessing you're only interested in the combat side?

Not from me. I was pretty stoked about the BG EE release but when I found out it would be tied to a client, I said "No sale". I've bought 4 copies of the BG series to date, the last from GOG (which is DRM free). No way I'm paying for another version that's tied to a client. Even with updates, it's not worth it to me. Mods + the GOG version will more than suit my needs. Answered here? No it doesn't. The Beamdog client is optional. If that's true, that's good news to me and I stand corrected Everywhere I search, I couldn't find any other alternative of buying the game except from Beamdog service. Its not even on GOG, unless something changed? It is only available from Beamdog, yes. But they've made using the client for it optional. I didn't know Beamdog had a special client like Steam, and my heart fell when I first read about it above, but hopefully it's true that the client is a distribution mechanic (like Amazon's downloader thing) that can be deleted later.

As much as I adore PS:T, Project Eternity's best bet is to cover the specific bases that those three IE giants did well and bring it all together in a ginormous, spreading ball of sticky glory. I honestly don't want this to be a "spiritual successor" to PS:T----PS:T deserves a straight sequel, but it probably will never happen due to licensing. That and I just really hate the phrase because DA:O ruined it for me, but eh. The IE bases really need to be covered, and I believe the Kickstarter has been successful under the assumption that it will be= IWD (mechanics): I honestly don't remember any of the quests/storyline, but the game mechanics were top-notch in the IE era. BG (breadth): This actually had the most replay value for me, with the giant character roster, freedom to powergame, breadth of story, and excellent exploration opportunities; it had strong main storylines as well, though rather classical in ToB. PST (depth): Novel-levels of dialogue, highly original in content implementation. You really could play this thing through with the absolute minimum of combat (except the stupid Modron maze ), bringing up the point that combat was a major weakness. This isn't everyone's cup of tea, and arguably most people today can't stand to sit down and read the newspaper much less a book, though this is really more like an adult version of those Choose Your Own Adventure books I used to love. The biggest weakness to PS:T, IMO, is lack of replayability--the ending is converging compared to BG and you have three basic avenues determined by class (I'm glad I first played it as a thief). So if PE can truly manage to take the major strengths of each of those, well... I might just wet myself.

Housing aside (I liked BG2's strongholds, and I think I had a house in Oblivion, but that's all I remember in terms of player housing ), I think localization is a more worthy expenditure of funds compared to something like co-op for the simple reason that this would be a far larger market. As someone else said, this is no different than adding platform support, but the accessibility net could be even wider. Of course, this conjecture doesn't take into account relative costs, and the ol' Kickstarter limitation still comes up. Only Obsidian would know that, I guess. As a side note, were the fan translations in other IE games any good?

If Chris Avellone is going to be the one who writes this game like he did PS:T.... He doesn't like writing game romances by a long shot, in various interviews, on his own blog, and all the ones he's been forced to write were undoubtedly demands from the publisher, and there isn't one now. And the side of "romance" he prefers for dramatic reasons is tragic and unrequited! Sure, other writers could be hired, but I'll be honest--I want Avellone on this, and muddying the pot with other romance writers on character development just seems... kinda awkward. There is no higher standard for video game text than in PS:T, as far as I'm concerned. And while there was some flirting in PS:T, it wasn't exactly a full romance path--between Annah and Grace, the potential romances were never completed for one reason or another; considering the tremendous textual quality of PS:T at ship, I'd argue PS:T did not suffer from that lack. If it turns out that there's a whole team of writers involved in this, maybe. Then have all scripts edited by Avellone for consistent quality.... and we'll have a bunch of depressing romance options. LOL