Piccolo

When people end up using it in excess, yes. And I think Chris Avellone would agree with that.

It's perfectly natural for me to think that my approach is best. Why would I even start this thread otherwise? I strongly believe that allowing the player to walk in and out of a mega dungeon at their own leisure trivializes the experience and panders to people who either want to sell all the loot they find in a typically grindy fashion, or people who don't appreciate huge dungeons to begin with. With that in mind I fail to see why I should humour people who favour exits by pretending to like their opinions. At the very most, I respect that they have a different opinion to my own, but i'm not going to pat them on the back and say they're right.

Really? You're unable to grasp how making a game too easy and accessible is bad design? That image was obviously a generalization. It wasn't meant to imply that ALL games from the 90s were as challenging as they should be, or that ALL modern games are far too easy and full of hand-holding features.

Allow me to quote myself: I mean really... it's called a mega dungeon for a reason. If going through a large dungeon is a pain to you, then take a ****ing clue from the name and don't enter it.

Some people have raised some interesting points and some acceptable alternatives, but i've yet to see an argument that changes my opinion or discredits the points I made in my original post.

Nope. There's never a time when More Options are a bad thing. And You can call it "hand holding", and a product of the "modern era", or whatever, but dungeon exits at every level have existed in RPGs since like, forever. BG2's watcher's keep had them. Temple of Elemental evil, not only had exits on just about every level, but it also gave mages the Teleport Spell, so that they, and their entire party, could instantly exit the dungeon from anywhere in it. Of course more options can sometimes be a bad thing. If you shove a bunch of features in the game that make it too easy, just to give people the "option" of an easier experience, that's bad design... even if players can technically choose to ignore such features. And mentioning games like BG2 and ToEE to try and justify being able to leave a dungeon mid-way through just because they're older games is irrelevant. Those games were wrong to do it also.

You are not telling us that Diablo is one of the "new games" that are too easy, are you? And as I recall, BG and Icewind Dale also used the "3 levels, one shortcut"-approach. No. Diablo and the IE games are nowhere near as bad as a lot of newer games for holding the player's hand, but I still think allowing the player to enter and exit a dungeon freely every few levels is far too convenient and undermines the the feeling you should get from being lost in a huge, seemingly endless dungeon.

Sorry, but the more options excuse is BS. Bethesda use that same excuse to justify all the hand-holding features they ruin their games with. What it really boils down to is this. Developers are afraid to frustrate gamers anymore, so they design overly accessible games that hold your hand, then rely on players to choose to ignore all the hand-holding that's shoved in their face to experience the game as it should be experienced.

I've seen a lot of people in dungeon-related threads asking for exits to the surface at every other level. Personally, I think this is a bad idea. In my opinion, the dungeon should be something you should finish once you've started, but obviously not in one sitting (which is why games have a save function). Even if it takes several days, or even more than a week to get through (depending on how often you play video-games). The idea of being able to return to the surface whenever you want willy-nilly to sell loot and pick flowers, before returning later on is ridiculous. It completely undermines the idea of being lost in the depths of an ominous, epic dungeon. Look at The Lord of the Rings for example. I'm pretty sure the fellowship didn't return to the surface from Moria every half hour to sell loot. Besides, I actually like the idea of being forced to make choices with regards to which loot I take and which loot I leave behind, rather than being able to clean the whole place out completely. It makes things a lot more interesting and also adds some replay value to the dungeon in another playthrough. And if you're someone who really finds the idea of dungeon crawling so tedious that you can't stand the idea of being stuck in a dungeon for any great length of time, the answer is simple - the mega dungeon isn't for you. Stick to the smaller dungeons. Hopefully it'll be tied to a sidequest anyway instead of the main storyline, and therefore be completely optional.

No. I hate the idea of levels being locked based on progression through the main storyline. Awful idea.

@The Guildmaster Why are you planning to take Paypal down so soon? This is a little disappointing, as I was really hoping to grab one of the mid-high tiers in a couple of week's time. If you're worried about being fair to the people who pledged early via kickstarter under the assumption that the rewards were limited availability, I think a much better solution would simply be to change some of the Paypal tiers to make them a bit less compelling. For instance, the exclusive in-game items, signed physical items, beta keys, memorial stones, wasteland 2 downloads, and expansion downloads could all be removed from the Paypal tiers... along with the really expensive tiers ($1k-$10k) offering design your own content. Or perhaps bump some stuff up like the signed collectors edition to $1000 as the new highest tier, without NPC design.

Considering how prominently that concept artwork has featured throughout the Kickstarter, I would be very surprised if they decided to leave the statue out. What role it will play in the dungeon's story though, i'm not sure. Maybe the "failed experiments" will look like the statue?

For what it's worth, selection sounds could be turned on/off in the Infinity Engine games. I'm thinking Obsidian will implement an option for this too. Really? It's been so long since I last played any of them. Perhaps I was just too dumb at the time to figure that out. That could've saved me a lot of unnecessary annoyance... I still think it's a waste of time and resources even including that kind of thing in the game though.

People silently doing your bidding is also pretty unrealistic though, and lack of feedback for your orders would also add nothing to the game. Instead of getting rid of what doesn't quite work, I'd like to see efforts made to make it worthwile, realistic, satisfying and something that enhances our gaming experience. I disagree completely. Silence is much more realistic. I'm a player in front of a computer screen, and they're characters inside a gameworld. Why the hell should they be responding to my orders like that? Don't you think it's kind of silly though hearing characters comment every time the player clicks to move them...?

Ok, so you haven't played it, but nevertheless think that it's a good game and good mechanic. Okay. Then let me tell you one thing - I haven't played it either and I even don't know what is this game about. But I played all IE games that Obsidian use as an example of what they want to do, and they wanted us to believe, that they will do it right way. And I was 100% sure, that they will keep their promise. Right now, I'm only 90% sure and my faith can be pushed only so far, you know. Play Darklands.

I vote for no audio when selecting / giving orders. It's ****ing annoying, cheesy, unrealistic, and adds nothing whatsoever to the game.

What's the current paypal figure? 4 million is inevitable anyway, if you take into consideration the funds paypal will generate after the kickstarter has ended.

Whoever they are, we'll see more of his/her work soon according to the Reddit Q&A. Really looking forward to it.

Why do you think that these ideas are great in the first place? I, for example, don't think that regenerating "health" is a good thing. And who is right? I've seen a similar stamina/health system in other games, and it's worked well. The people who have the biggest problem with it don't seem to understand how it works.

I really wish people would stop asking for multiplayer. The developers have said repeatedly that they want to focus on making the best single player experience possible. Even with extra funds, multiplayer is a distraction from that goal. I think that's how games should be in general personally - either exclusively single player, or exclusively multiplayer - not both.

They were organizing the Obsidian Order of Eternity backers group, so had high visability I suppose... For the sake of the game though, I really hope it takes more than a few vocal whiners (even ones consided "high profile" like dlux) to make Obsidian back out of a good idea. Especially something as significant as how health or XP works.

Yep. Like the rest of the minority who are moaning, I think part of the problem is they don't fully understand how things such as the health/stamina system or the objective based XP system will really work. Those of us who do understand how they'll work generally agree that they're great ideas.

Why is dlux considered high profile? Were they one of the 10k backers? Anyway, the way experience is being handled is a big improvement. If some self-important little ****s are going to throw a tantrum because they can't grind anymore, then good riddance. Regarding future updates once the kickstarter ends, something once a week would be nice. I'm sure they'll have plenty to talk about (without spoiling too much), and plenty of artwork and screenshots to show.

Personally, I think there should be no exits until you do the whole thing. Or at least keep the shortcut exits at a minimum. You don't need to complete the dungeon in one sitting (in fact I hope it's so big and complex that doing so would be impossible). Or even in several days, if you're a part time gamer. That's why we have a wonderful feature called "saving".