Piccolo

Constructive criticism is fine, but you're not going to get anywhere with this approach.

Very subtle level-scaling isn't necessarily bad... as long as it doesn't feel like the whole gameworld is revolving around you.

Not bad... but I really prefer Justin Sweet's style.

Bleh. No thanks,

I don't mind loot being slightly random, as long as it's still plausible (e.g wolves shouldn't carry money), and doesn't feel scaled to my character's level in any way (looking for loot or opening a big chest just isn't exciting if you know you're only ever going to get some junk that the devs feel is appropriate to your character's level).

This doesn't concern me. I'm sure they think every stretch goal through carefully to ensure that everything fits with their overall vision for the game. I'm more concerned about them feeling obliged (because of the nature of kickstarters) later on in the development cycle to listen to fan feedback a bit too much, and make decisions / changes that go against their overall vision.

The only lame thing about it is perhaps the name "mega dungeon". The actual idea of having an enormous and complex dungeon with multiple levels is great. I don't see why it should have to be a simple hackfest either. Aside from combat, a large dungeon can offer a ton of exploration value, interesting lore, and maybe even some problem solving. If anything, it's the small caves that are more likely to turn into simple hackfests. Huge dungeons can really tell their own story and offer a lot more than just 'kill the horde, beat the boss, get the loot'.

I'd rather have a small crypt or cave with an interesting encounter, a strange scroll and a weird feel about it.. than a myriad of dungeon levels that are built just because more people backed the project, and not because it makes sense. I don't see it as them just adding more and more levels because more people back the project. They want to do a mega dungeon with many levels, if funds will allow it. The extra level per 2.5k backers thing is just a fun way of involving the community to get more funds. They could just as easily have added a mega dungeon as a stretch goal.

I disagree - I think it's great. I really love the idea of a seemingly endless, epic dungeon you can get lost in... rather than having tons of glorified caves you can breeze through. The more levels the better.

These are all excellent ideas. I was just about to suggest an additional big city, as well as a stretch goal related to the overall scale of the game.

Indeed. This was a great idea to step things up a bit. The only thing missing is some nice concept art for the dungeon as a tease.

I'm not going to play the game for hundreds of hours. I still want to be able to 'beat' the game, I still want to feel that I've accomplished something. A game where I've progressed from being able to kill 2 bandits to being able to kill 10 isn't very interesting. I LIKE being able to do cool things. Okay, so let's say you finish the game's main storylines after 30 hours and end up with a very powerful character; but somewhere, in the depths of the world, there may be characters or monsters not directly tied to the game's main storyline who are more powerful than your character. Would that really be a bad thing?

Agreed. Even upto the 3mil mark would be great. Surely the whole idea of a stretch goal is to really try and motivate people to pledge / raise their pledges, and to spread the word. People aren't going to be as motivated if they see the goals as being easy to reach under the normal rate of pledges coming in. I guess it's not the easiest thing to gauge though. They probably don't want to get too far ahead of themselves and start getting peoples hopes up about new features for goals that might not be reached.

But what it the story is only 25hrs, but covers a timespan of many years? And it's divided into multiple chapters and there's a training montage between the chapters! Nah, it all depends on the story and how it's made to work. Maybe the hero will swallow the souls of defeated opponents, gaining all their strength? Why does the player-character necessarily have to be the most powerful character by the end of the storyline? Even if the game pretty much ends with the main storyline, I don't think this is necessarily - but it's especially unnecessary if there's stuff to do after. This really just conforms to the whole player-character being special and 'chosen' concept, which i'm sick of in RPGs.

Great news! I've been hoping for a mega dungeon.

Yes, but progression should be very slow so it takes hundreds of hours (at least) for such a goal to be achieved.

Nice! Looks good enough to be in a fantasy novel.

As others have said, the kickstarter has already been a huge success even though it's slowed down now... and will likely pick up a bit towards the end. They can do more though. Some exciting updates will help promote interest, like a batch of concept art, etc. Stuff that will end up on gaming news sites like Gameinformer, Eurogamer, VG247, etc. as news stories and really grab peoples' attention. The video updates they've been doing are great, but they seem to be aimed at people who are already aware of / following / backing PE.

I really don't care that much. I am sick of that kind of thing though, along with being 'the Chosen One'. I just want to roleplay an ordinary character caught up in an interesting storyline, and then make them unique through my choices / actions.

Indeed. Their target did seem a little on the conservative side to me. I guess they could not have anticipated the great reaction they received though. And from media interviews, they seem pretty confident that 1.1m would have been enough to produce a great CRPG.

Obsidian are already guaranteed a lot more funds than they needed to make this game a reality, so in that sense, it's already been a huge success. I do agree though that a little more could've been done to keep the momentum and hype of the first couple of days going. There's still quite a way to go anyway. I'm not very familiar with kickstarter, but I imagine there's often a slight surge of backers towards the end...

- Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura - Darklands - Might and Magic VI: The Mandate of Heaven - Might and Magic VII: For Blood and Honor - Arx Fatalis - Gothic - Gothic II - Deus Ex - System Shock 2 - The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall - The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind - Realms of Arkania: Blade of Destiny - Realms of Arkania: Star Trail - Betrayal at Krondor - Amberstar - Ambermoon - Planescape: Torment - Baldur's Gate - Baldur's Gate 2 - Mount & Blade: Warband - The Witcher - Icewind Dale On my 'to play' list - games I either haven't played, or only played a little of: - The Temple of Elemental Evil - Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines - Icewind Dale 2 - Fallout - Fallout 2 - Fallout: New Vegas - Wizardry 8 - Neverwinter Nights - Ultima 7 - Divine Divinity

I'm pointing at the Wizardry series right now (amongst others), and if you have long term knowledge of Western RPG influence on the East I hope you know why. That's true... forgot all about Wizardry.

I don't think there's much hope of a western cRPG gaining anything more than an underground following in Asia without gaudy colours/artwork, and a 'Blizzard' logo slapped on the box. As for Europe - still waiting for GOG.com to put something about Project Eternity on their homepage. Obviously that's not the only way to attract European interest... but it's a pretty big way. I bet a good chunk of European cRPG fans use GOG.com on a regular basis.

I can't get enough medieval / Tolkien-esque fantasy RPGs - so i'm happy. (Note "Tolkien-esque", not "Peter Jackson-esque - no Scottish dwarves please) People say the setting has been done to death, but if I wanted a typical medieval fantasy cRPG in the style of the IE games, what would my options be? Not many. That said, i'm not against the devs putting their own unique cultural twists on races like elves and dwarves to make them slightly more unique. I'm also hoping that some of the races not yet revealed will be very unique.