Infinitron

And will those people who see the beta experiences and like them have any way to buy into it themselves? Would be kind of a shame if they didn't.

I'm advocating for a system that would avoid the need for level scaling in the first place, so I don't see why you would bring that up. Just a preference. I don't know whether Pillars of Eternity intends to have crazy power disparities between low level and high level. It'd be interesting if Josh could weigh in on this.

OK. Just saying, in low level AD&D, the long-term end result of being a completionist was often being just a single level above a non-completionist. Of course, these games also had relatively few levels compared to modern RPGs, so a single level represented a significant advantage. Generally, I am in favor of mild power curves where you can't become "a LOT more powerful", as I don't like the numbers inflation seen in modern RPGs. I find it hard to take seriously a world where people do 1-8 damage at level 1 and hundreds of points of damage at level 20. I'm not interested in power fantasies. If a "low level" enemy still has ways of f*cking my characters up even after I've done all the sidequests in the world, I find that awesome.

It's basically the same thing in that the encounters are scaled in the same way; by removing or adding enemies, not by decreasing or increasing the power level of individual enemies. Encounter scaling, not level scaling: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/60889-level-scaling-dont-scale-individual-enemies-scale-encounters/ I'm saying that Obsidian could leverage their existing difficulty system to scale the critical path, by setting a "maximum difficulty" for critical path encounters depending on the player's level.

It's funny that you say that, because in Pillars of Eternity, turning the difficulty down and scaling the encounters down is basically the same thing. So one of way solving the problem without having to design additional encounters ala BG2 would be to force the easier version of the encounter on people who are under-levelled.

In other words, minimize the rewards for people who take the time to do everything. No thanks. There's already a level cap. They should just design end-game battles to be challenging for those who've reached the cap, and very difficult for those who haven't. And that's it. No need to scale anything. So you're demanding that the game be designed for completionists, and screw the non-completionists. OK, that's a legitimate demand, but prepare yourself for possible disappointment. Uh, yes it does. If it takes you twice as much experience to go from level 3 to level 4 than it does to go from level 2 to level 3, and so on for the rest of the levels, then the experience value of sidequests becomes ever more diminished as you progress through the game. If I'm not mistaken, high level AD&D eventually switches to constant level-up thresholds, which is why BG2 sidequests are more valuable, as you stated. But (regardless of what experience system it will use) Pillars of Eternity isn't being modeled after the BG2 high-level experience, as you've discovered to your frustration.

The problem that Sensuki describes is real, and anything that makes the game harder is good in my book. That said, one way to avoid having to "encounter scale" the game's critical path is to make the game's power curve relatively shallow, such that completionists simply don't get to be that much more powerful than non-completionists in the first place. The geometrically increasing level-up experience thresholds in AD&D were conducive to this; if most sidequests gave you relatively paltry amounts of experience, the payoff from being a completionist simply wasn't that high - their main benefit was in loot, not in experience.

Fair enough. By the way, the jury is still out on the exact nature of PoE's beta, IMO. I know Josh said a long time ago he wanted it to minimize spoilers, but I'm not sure whether they'll actually succeed at that goal. Creating unique spoiler-free content for a beta seems like it might be more work than they have time for. But I guess we'll see.

Eh, even without Steam, you still have thousands of backers with beta access. Obsidian is still selling beta tiers on their site right now. That's "Early Access" too, isn't it? Steam Early Access just means more people get to buy the beta after it's already released.

I'd be hesitant to speak for "most gamers". The kind of people you see whining on a game's Steam Community Hub discussion forum or Kickstarter comments aren't representative of the entire audience. I'm sure not too long ago one could get the impression from reading certain forums that "most gamers" hate Steam itself, but things change. Well, whatever. Here's an idea: If they're not going to go the Early Access route, they can at least offer the game for regular pre-order on Steam, sans beta. Even the AAAs do that, so it's hardly a sign of a "weak game".

Almost all of the high profile oldschool RPGs of the "RPG revival" to be released since 2012 took advantage of Early Access. The two that have been released, Might & Magic X and Blackguards, turned out pretty nicely. One that didn't use Early Access was Shadowrun Returns. Ahem ahem, correlation does not imply causation, but yeah. My point is, it's almost become an expectation that these games have a stint through Early Access before their final release. It's like the new way of making games. If Obsidian aren't going to go that route, it'd be interesting to know exactly why.

Ah, I see. You're afraid of reinforcing the "Bugsidian" stigma. Yeah, I could see how gaming journalists would pounce on you for bugs in the Early Access version of the game, as absurd as that is. Still, I assume many of them are going to get their hands on beta keys anyway...

There is an additional pro. The beta costs more than the final game, since you need to match its price to the beta Kickstarter tier. As Wasteland 2 has demonstrated, there are plenty of people out there willing to pay $60 for an unfinished RPG. It'd be a shame to leave that money in their pockets.

No, he doesn't mean sentences like that. He means sentences like...this.

You could just look at the E3 site. http://e314.mapyourshow.com/5_0/exhibitor_details.cfm?exhid=par1183

Boreal dwarves are eskimos.

You'd also to have to read an RPG Codex thread to think that the Wasteland 2 beta was poorly received.

OK, I think they're doing it on purpose now.

I can understand why people are bored of them, but I don't understand how can you be a serious CRPG fan and viscerally dislike them. "Generic fantasy" is the foundation of our genre. Then again, Chris Avellone. Although I think it's just elves in his case.

This is simply untrue. Many things were revealed about the basic design principles of PoE during the KS campaign, including the fact that it was going to have a "generic high fantasy" setting with dwarves and elves.

“If you don’t like to read, don’t play this game” -Josh Sawyer, project director and lead designer

I realize that Obsidian is beholden to others and can't afford to be quite as "sassy" as I might like, but there's still plenty of room to improve.

https://twitter.com/Obsidian WTF? Seriously, you guys have your own game now. You're allowed to post whatever you want about it. Take a look at Brian Fargo's Twitter feed. He's always posting all sorts of little news tidbits, photos and screenshots from the development of inXile's games, or commenting on various news from the gaming world. In comparison, Obsidian's Twitter feed is 1) much less active 2) used mainly for replying to tech support-type requests. Boring! Come on, you guys are a much bigger company than inXile. You can do better than this.

Could be that Tutu broke something. I've always been faithful to vanilla BG1 and morale failure was very common in fights against "trash mobs" there.

really? I recall that you could use fear or confusion which made creatures to lose control and wander around, but I don't recall a morale system in bg\bg2 and neither in PoE for that matter :/ Edit: maybe you mean "morality" i.e. the alignment system? When some enemy forces started to crumble and became outnumbered, some would break, turn their selection ring yellow, and try to flee. I thought it was a nice touch. Yup.