Sensuki

Won't be. Skill and Attribute checks are not auto-win dialogue options in PE, I'm not sure which ones are checked more often in dialogue, but you won't be locked out of any content by not having a high amount of points in a specific attribute. Reactions from people are also based off the factional and disposition reputations.

Oppressed Minority.

SJW really is a boring internet fad atm *yawn*.

You don't have to be any of those things? There's no Charisma.

A lot of people seem to take a delay like a failure of a promise and a sign that something is wrong. I don't know how many of you read Josh Sawyer's posts very often, but a couple of the things he pointed out are: Scope is important for PE, thus amount of content/quests. They will only cut content if it isn't fun, if it is fun but could use a bit more work, they will probably keep it despite not being able to do any more design passes on it. Another thing he pointed out is that because they've taken creatures to a blockout stage before moving onto the next one, they've been able to get more creatures into the game than they would by going to a final version first. However this does create a situation where despite having more creatures, some of them will just not get as much love as others, so some will have "final" level of polish whereas others may only get a little bit of animation work done in the post production. They only have three animators AFAIK - Shon Stewart, Seth McCaughey and Antonio Govela. A longer beta would allow them to get to a few more of these quests that need a little more work (loot passes, encounter passes, narrative passes, additional solutions) and creatures that could use another animation pass and stuff like that. In my books that's a good thing. They're up to about three dozen at the moment I think. I know of 34 current, but there might be more. Josh Sawyer - Project Director / Lead Designer Tim Cain - Senior Programmer Chris Avellone - Narrative Designer Eric Fenstermaker - Lead Narrative Designer / Creative Lead Adam Brennecke - Executive Producer / Lead Programmer Brandon Adler - Producer Steve Weatherly - Senior Programmer Brian Macintosh - Programming Intern Bobby Null - Lead Area Designer Jorge Salgado - Area Designer Rob Nesler - Art Director Kazunori Aruga - Concept Artist Polina Hristova - Concept Artist Dimitri Berman - Lead Character Artist James Chea - Character Artist J.D. Cerince - Artist (unknown field, maybe FX) Hector Espinoza - Lead Environment Artist Sean Dunny - Environment Artist Holly Prado - Environment Artist April Giron - Junior Environment Artist Shon Stewart - Lead Animator Antonio Govela - Lead Technical Animator Seth McCaughey - Animator Jeff Husges - Area Designer Constant Gaw - Area Designer Liam Esler - Designer Dini McMurry - Designer Matthew Perez - Designer Ryan Torres - Design Intern (haven't heard an update on him for ages) Carrie Patel - Narrative Designer Roby Atadero - Junior Programmer Matthew Sheets - QA Lead Rose Gomez - Associate Producer Justin Bell - Composer / Audio Lead Perhaps a bored dev can fill in the blanks, errors.

It doesn't.

My understanding is that the PE beta will have: Final 2D paintovers & animations on the levels in the beta / demo - thus VG++ visual quality Semi final to final main character animations Semi final to final spell and ability FX and animations Semi final GUI / Menus Final voice overs for the voiced content (PC voice sets, CNPC voice sets, NPCs in the beta, incantations) etc The stuff that they'll want to get feedback on during the beta are Bugs Performance over a variety of hardware Feedback on the systems / balance Feedback on the presented content General feedback Allow players to get used to the ruleset before playing the game Localization bugs / feedback The reason for the limited beta is to avoid story spoilers to the general public (and beta testers themselves) which I think is good. It does however kind of limit the feedback that they get on the majority of areas and content, so they'll have to rely on their in-house beta testers and Paradox's beta testers initially. No different than a publisher title.

Because they don't know the consequences. We as a player know that because we have been told the lore, but in this setting, people in the setting don't understand a lot of things - such as the nature of souls, reincarnation/death and the nature of the gods.

Expert Mode, Path of the Damned and Trial of Iron must be selected when you begin a game, then they are locked for that playthrough.

There would be cases where one person would be able to complete an action such as "move a boulder" and others where the party is required to (as a whole) complete an action, such as swim. There'll be a rule for how these are done, but the simplest way is probably to just use the PC's skills (and attributes) for group tasks.

Not yet, but I think it might only be four including Path of the Damned (which is a mode that you toggle at the start of the game). Easy, Normal, Hard, Path of the Damned. The IE games had Easiest and Hardest as well, but Obsidian might just go with 3 I think.

The other thing to consider is that in working out their deal with Paradox, they might have said that release by the end of the year produces the best sales numbers, so despite getting more money, they may wish to keep it anyway to maximize profit margins.

I actually didn't jump to any conclusions. I stated some information about Steam Early Access, PE's development cycle, posed a question to the devs and said that I thought that a delay into 2015 is possible. A few people have also misinterpreted the tone of the delay as "Delay because the game isn't ready" instead of "Delay because we got some more money", and since a game is literally "never finished", they could use that money for further polish - more monsters would get better animations, more bug fixes etc etc. I asked whether the devs would spend the Steam Early Access money on the game, or piggy bank it for the expansion - a question that they probably don't know the answer to yet, so there will probably not be an answer. Also regarding the schedule slippage, there have been (at least three) schedule slippages that I know about #1 - The delay of the backer website slowed down the implementation of the Kickstarter reward tiers such as Backer Inns, Adventuring Parties, Items etc #2 - The Narrative team came on a bit later than expected #3 - I think it took them a while to get a VFX artist for the game Nothing major of course, I'm sure they did some jumbling.

All of the generic PSUs I have had over the years have blown up. The best one was a 500w Codegen one I got with a case I purchased in 2001. That thing lasted almost 10 years I think. I've never had a brand name PSU blow up.

Whoops I meant December I have heard nothing about the first alpha milestone being very close. They are in Alpha 1 now. Brandon Adler and Josh Sawyer have talked about it on forums, and that's it I think. But if you have a quote, please provide it.

What? We're asking for more unique and less generic effects than present.

Skills are checked in conversation and scripted interactions, and only the PC's skills are checked AFAIK, so it will be impossible to "cover everything". To make up for that, mechanics have an in-combat benefit, which players may end up picking skills for over their out of combat benefit.

No you'd have to read the RPGCodex thread. It's more for mechanics/design reasons I think.

I hate the limited edit time on this forum. I forgot to mention that The PE beta will not be the full game, it will be more like a demo and contain a small, discrete portion of the game. The devs have have (at least when last asked about it) not yet figured out how they're going to do the beta, or what content it will have, but it will be limited to avoid main story spoilers.

I agree, I think inXile released the "beta" too early, but they also may have done it for that extra money. Mind you I was a Kickstarter backer, and I updgraded my pledge through their backer website to get beta access, about a year before the beta came out. After playing that, I probably won't be playing the game again. That is not because of how unpolished it was though, it is mostly because the design of a lot of things sucks and stuff they campaigned on, such as reactivity and C&C was almost absent. They also have absolutely no clue about some stuff - such as UI design. Divinity: Original Sin however, despite being in an even less polished state than Wasteland 2, looked very good. They won't. The PE team has very good project managers and the development is well scheduled.

Almost useless factual correction: Combination (6, 2, non-repetitive) = 15 (6! / (5! * 2!) = 6 * 5 / 2 = 15). Or intuitively, take the above list, and add 5 new entries with the Crafting skill + each of the existing skills, 10 + 5 = 15. Quite right.

PE is scheduled for release in Winter 2014 (which is mid-November onwards). The team entered post-production somewhere between the start of April and the beginning of May. The Production spreadsheet has two alpha phases and a beta phase planned. Beta is when the backers get their first access. This is also the stage at which other Kickstarter games, notably Wasteland 2 and Divinity: Original Sin among others made use of "Steam Early Access". A phenomenon which has really taken off over the last couple of years. If reports from the Wasteland 2 producers can be believed, Steam Early Access provided the Wasteland 2 team with enough money for a few more months worth of development. Nowadays, 90% of games are available on Steam Early Access in an unfinished state to milk the enthusiastic gamers and steam library hoarders of all they are worth. This is simple economics, and it simply allows developers (and publishers) to capitalize on the top percentile of demand at which a customer will pay a higher price. With Kickstarter games, you are obliged to offer early access for at least the same amount as backers paid during the Kickstarter. In Pillars of Eternity's case, this was the $110 tier. However currently on the Pillars of Eternity website, the cheapest amount you can purchase the beta for is $60 (Digital copy of the game for $35, plus an additional $25 for a beta key). I think the Wasteland 2 early access was around the same price (if not exactly the same price). With a good gameplay video available on launch, Pillars of Eternity has the potential to capitalize on at least around the same amount of money that Wasteland 2 brought in from it's own steam early access. The PE team themselves are probably not ready to answer questions about this, but if PE is able to bring in enough money during the early access for another development month, would that money be used on the vanilla game, or put in the piggy bank for the expansion ? There's between 5-6 months of development time left, of which there are three post production milestones - Alpha 1, Alpha 2 and Beta. Beta might get 2-3 months tops out of that. Steam Early Access is not guaranteed money, so planning for it in a schedule is probably too big of a risk to take. But I wouldn't be surprised if the devs use the extra $ for a longer beta period, and a possible Q1 2015 release. Steam Early Access is essentially free money and publicity.

I don't like the "Magic Missle" animation. Too bright/flashy, should be more red like the original, but that's just me. Arcane Veil/Globe of Invulnerability could be less opaque too. Call Lightning is "okay" but the Baldur's Gate animation is way more natural looking.

you mean also South Park (Additional QA)

I wouldn't be surprised if that's all of them actually. Skills seem to have shrunk in scope immensely since Tim Cain's Kickstarter video. with 5 skills they can create 10 combinations (5 x 2) Athletics Mechanics Athletics Stealth Athletics Lore (Priest) Athletics Survival Mechanics Stealth (Rogue) Mechanics Lore (Wizard, Chanter) Mechanics Survival Stealth Lore Stealth Survival (Ranger) Lore Survival If it's okay for classes to share the same bonuses such as Wizard and Chanter, then there are no more skills needed. The crafting skill would have made 12 possible combinations, enough for unique combos for all classes, but it was cut.