Stun

We absolutely allow people to try it and we will probably not put much effort into balancing it. We do not design anything with the assumption you will have additional party members. Wow! that's a refreshingly profound thing to hear. As someone who approaches games with an experimenter/tinkerer mindset, I read this statement and rejoice. The IE games were all soloable, but because they weren't particularly balanced for solo play, the player felt like he was venturing into uncharted territory when he soloed. And there was a pure rush when you discovered something about gameplay that the devs didn't intend. I live for moments like that. And when an RPG manages to deliver a distinctly different experience with solo play than it does with party-based (intended or not), that game goes up a few notches in my mind. I give it tons of bonus points. That is why I Rank BG2 as the greatest game ever made. Soloing in BG2 was super different from party-play... and more, even solo runs with one of the classes leads to wildly different experiences than one with a different class..

Since when are "colorful lavish displays of wealth" and "evil -master-necromancer-lover-of-death" contradictory concepts? They certainly aren't. Which is why you'll be able to build a dungeon underneath your keep... complete with torture devices and wailing prisoners, even as you grow your beautiful poisonous flower garden in the yard.

First off, your claim that this is some sort of "Huge Step Back" in game design is an opinion and not a tangeable fact at all. The FACT of the matter is that a 2d, Isometric, text-heavy, party based computer game happens to be a much better delivery system for an RPG in every conceivable way than the various models used today, save for maybe graphics (which was never a primary selling point for RPG fans anyway... ever.) If anything, the industry itself has been suffering from a decade-long degeneration. What you're seeing from Obsidian and IN-Xile today is an attempt to get things back up to the high it used to be. Second, the reasons they're doing this game has absolutely nothing to do with logic. Even lower costs is simply a bonus and not a reason. It has everything to do with the Developers' artistic desires. While you may not want to play such a game, there is a sizable niche of gamers who do, and interestingly, a group of developers is among them... devs who actually dream about going back to their roots and making another one of these games. You're a little late. It has already succeeded. They did not put up a single dime to fund the development of this game. We did. Therefore, every sale, every single dollar of actual post release revenue from this game will go to Obsidian as pure profit. You really can't ask for better. Well, I suppose you could ask for everything to be on a larger scale.... but we don't know what the future holds. It very well could get there eventually.

To keep costs to the bare minimum, however, you do need to turn in your production order to the distributor before a certain point in time. And I'm 99% certain that time has come and gone for Obsidian. Because again, why else would they not be offering any physical goods to slacker backers? Is it because they simply don't like you guys? lol In any event, I don't think all hope is lost for the "late comers". There might be a very limited promotion just before the game's release where Obsidian will come on here and announce that they have X number of Boxed copies up for grabs for the first x number of people who pre-order during the promotional period. But again, that would be nothing more than the result of forsight on their part - extra boxed copies that they ordered during the kickstarter, above and beyond what is reserved for the backers.

Nope. A finite distribution deal where an exact number of copies is specified all at once and well ahead of time will always be far less expensive than...well... what you're describing. If you disagree then by all means, tell us why Obsidian isn't still offering a boxed copy to new backers. After all, as you say, the game is still several months from going gold. The fullfillment site isn't even up yet. There's literally nothing stopping them from doing what you're suggesting..... except that it would skyrocket their distribution costs.

Well, let's see... Considering the manufacture/procurement of something can, and often does, occur at not-the-exact-same-time as an order is placed, I'd say that, so long as you haven't actually made the manufacturing run yet, you can take as many orders as you want, as many times as you want, at whatever varying times you want to. Oh? Can you show me the details of this completely open-ended distribution deal? I'm curious to see it. Specificaly the part that gives Obsidian more than a year to turn in their orders to the distributer.

Well, lets see... Considering the boxed version fulfillment offers ended one year ago, any future orders for boxed versions (what you've been swearing up and down on this thread as possible and simple!) would require order placement and consequent distribution to be on going, wouldn't it. Or do you have another theory as to how Obsidian will be able to create boxed versions out of thin air and ship them out to people who decide to to order them today, tomorrow or 6 months from now...? Oh wait, I know. I hear Chris Avellone is a good artist. Perhaps he can go to the nearest art supplies store and buy some cardboard and personally create a box, then draw its cover art, then burn PE on to a DVD, then type up the manual, then stuff both of them in the box, then shrink-wrap the box, then mail it out. And he can do this with every new order as it comes in.

Lephys.... THINK. C'mon. Who's "you"? Obsidian is not a publisher. Nor do they own a distribution center. The physical goods that were offered to the backers in the month-long kickstarter were likely the result of a one-time deal they made with a small distributer. And the costs came straight out of the funding from the kickstarter. That period is now done. For them to offer an on-going distribution service would cost more than what they have to make the game itself. This is why the only avaliable options in the Slacker-backer program are DIGITAL goods, to be distributed through Steam, GoG, and whatever they decide to use as a download site for the Mac version.

This. It's like a lunch run for the office. "Hey, who wants a sandwich from Subway? You, you, you, and you? Okay, each of you give me $6, and I'm driving up to Subway, and I'll have them construct me 4 sandwiches, and I'll use this money you gave me to fund the sandwich-manufacturing process." So long as you take orders prior to actually having the physical goods made, you can pretty much take as many orders as you'd like. So... made-to-order mass distribution through a Distributer? LOL Sure. But really, don't hold your breath.

With who's money will they be doing this? Hopefully not with 1) The $4,000,000 we funded them or 2) The profits from the game's actual sales. Because they promised us that #1 would be used for the game, and #2 would be much better spent growing the franchise via future content, like expansion packs and a sequel. But hey, Keep an eye on Ebay if you want a boxed version. I opted for the $140 tier, which means I'm getting a collector's box + a digital copy. I'll be playing this game with the digital copy, and I'll be keeping my collectors edition box unopened and unhandled. If the whim takes me, I might decide to sell it.

Of course story is paramount. It's also not mutually exclusive to dungeons. The trick to making a dungeon memorable is to give it a good story. A story that ends up being just as compelling as the combat itself. And when they pull that off, there's nothing better in all of gaming. Often times though, developers fail. Even the dungeons in the IE games were hit-and-miss in that regard. But.... Durlag's Tower, for example. That was one of the times that they hit it out of the park! It dripped with story and combat. To the point where I was more interested in it than I was for the main game's plot. That's what I want from PE's Mega Dungeon.

Getting what you want is not always good. After equiping all the armor and weapons in pile 2 you encounter 10 more piles, all with stuff weaker than pile2. Instead of being happy at finding stuff you just feel bored. So... you're saying we should pick pile 1? Will that cure our unhappiness and boredom?

There's 11 classes. And be thankful. We had to fight hard during the kickstarter to get that many. Most of them were stretch goals.

Oh, I can assure you that the world will be positivily littered with magic loot. Have you been reading Josh's tweets? It's his favorite part of the job, creating magic items. A month or so ago he tweeted that he's already designing 50+ unique magic weapons. Now, considering how early they still are in production (relatively speaking) Look for every corner to be shiny by the time they're done. And why not. Lets face it. We all say we want a low magic world, but we're just lying to ourselves. Here's a scenario. You're "adventuring" and you come across 2 piles. The 1st one has a bunch of plain old non-magical equipment, while the 2nd one has a bunch of unique-looking magical equipment. 99 out of 100 gamers will walk right past pile 1 to get to pile 2.

Not me. I don't understand why they chose to do Midieval European fantasy. You can't really describe the IE games as such (Planescape: Torment certainly wasn't). They were all Tolkienesque, yes. But that goes with the territory due to D&D and the forgotten Realms setting that they were based on. Agreed. I think we're going to be pleasantly surprized by how fresh and unique the setting is going to feel, at least. I don't know about you, but I haven't played that many RPGs with true historical european influences. But the way Josh describes it, it sounds like this is going to be a game that world history buffs are going to love. And that's something you can't say about the Infinity engine games.

Wait, what? Is there a story behind this? Or is he simply finished doing what he was assigned to do?

Yes. And I don't understand why that's not everyone's preferred system when we're talking about character creation. Volumes of Books have been written about the different combinations offered by 3ed D&D. Even Neverwinter Nights, which only went about half way with what true 3e D&D allowed, STILL gave you enough customization options to fuel whole message boards of build discussion.... for years. I really do miss that level of build choice.

It's pretty simple. I want them to be the same as the IE games, simple as that. That's not really answering his question. "Immersion" in a video game is that feeling you get when the game sucks you into its world. When your attention is fully on what's going on -be it during combat, or exploration, or dialogue. Saying "because I like the way Baldurs Gate had green circles under my characters" does not explain why Blue circles will suddenly break your attention span. Or to put it another way, if the color of the circles under your characters is breaking your immersion, then the game is probably failing in other ways and you're not even realizing it. Me personally, I can't think of a more trivial issue than the colors of the sprites lol. Incidently, A couple of the IE games (IWD2, PS:T) allowed you to play with them turned off, ie. no circles at all! And the others allowed you to adjust their size and brightness so that they were barely even visible.

Note: like others have pointed out, we're kinda at a disadvantage here on this thread because we really don't know that much yet about anything, so this will be a tiny list of stuff I'm concerned about - stuff that sounds like it's going in an un-cool direction. 1) The inventory system 2) The resting mechanic #1 should never be. By the end days of the IE game era, Black Isle and Bioware had finally gotten the inventory system problems licked. IWD2 had the best working, neatest, perfectly designed inventory system. It was... well... perfect. Yet here we are today, watching Obsidian as they overhaul perfect, and slap on layers and layers of convolution and unnecessary nonsense to something that shouldn't be complex. #2 The resting mechanic for PE, as Josh is describing it, reeks of Obsidian's tiresome crusade to stamp out "degenerate gameplay" at any cost, including fun. But even that's not a huge deal. Game developers tend to forget that Gamers are supremely intelligent. If PE ends up being mod friendy, look for a "rest anywhere" mod within 1 week of the game's official release.

I'm looking forward to the mega-dungeon. Not just playing through it, but seeing how Obsidian approaches its design from level 1 to level 15. Will there be one giant, driving narrative? (ala Durlag's tower) Or a series of loosely connected plots strung together to justify the existance of the Super-boss at the bottom (ie. Watcher's keep) Or will it be something different that we've never seen the likes of before?

That is a really great way of describing "Multi-Paths" actually. Start off as a plain "Fighter" but become a "Wizard Slayer" as the game progresses. In this idea, or vision, you wouldn't be able to pick "Wizard Slayer" at character creation, but it'd be something your character would become after a couple of levels depending on how you allocate points and build your character~ that's the essence of "Multi-Paths" (as I like to call it). More inspiration here. And an elaboration: Character Creation - I pick Fighter Gameplay: - I progress and I allocate points, depending on how I build my character it essentially becomes one of these -- Berserker -- Wizard Slayer -- Kensai It is a semi-classless system idea I suppose, except more restricted and boxed in than TES or Fallout. If you pick a Fighter you wouldn't be able to deviate from the Fighter-path, but you could enhance it into a nisched Fighter role. But that's... not the way the BG series did it at all. Instead, the Kits (which btw, were introduced in BG2) completely replaced the vanilla class. They were actually a hamfisted ret-con if you were importing from the first game. An illogtical one, since in some cases (rangers, for example) just about all your acquired skills were replaced. What you're describing though, is just the uninspired nonsense from Dragon Age. And I'm not in favor of such a system because there's usually no valid reason NOT to "specialize". These specializations usually feature everything from the vanilla class + some special abilities, thereby rendering the choice of just staying vanilla pointless. The reason I strongly favor traditional multi-classing instead is because the above doesn't happen. A fully built single class fighter will always be a better fighter, than say, a multi-classed fighter/mage. And a straight up mage will (obviously) be a better mage than a multi-classed mage. But what you DO get from multi-classing is a completely different type of build. A different experience. And that's always the best way to go when you're designing a class system.

Me, I'm not that hard to please. For example, I'll be totally giddy if the 'very special update' that is coming in the 'near future' is a short writeup on the mega-dungeon, with perhaps something to look at... like a screenshot. As for fulfillment info... meh. That stuff doesn't really pique my interest right now. I want to know about the *game*.

That's exactly how they advertized it. And it's not humble. It's insanely ambitious.

Yep. This is what happens when you take a Greyhawk Module and strictly translate it to a video game. The Pen and paper version of TOEE was created as a bare-bones. Gygax's intention was to allow the DM to flesh out an epic, politically based storyline using the various plot figures and factions in the module. But Troika either didn't get the message or else just didn't care enough. Their idea of "fleshing out" was to bombard the player with dozens of the most boring, moronic, fragmented fetch quests ever.. So what we basically got was a computer version of the module, page by page. Utterly faithful rendition of it, and little else, and therein lies the problem. As for the game itself, had the graphics and combat not been so breathtakingly brilliant, the game would have been an embarrasing failure.

I've played some games that had a variation of this. You were still limited to 1 or 2 rings, but, these rings had 3 or 4 sockets... for gems. And of course, you could find enchanted gems in the game world, each of which had different powers, and then it was up to you to decide which combination of gems you were going to adorn your ring(s) with. Meh... It's an OK concept, but personally it's just a tad too.... "gamey" for my tastes. I'm far more in favor of magic items with pre-set lore and history. Being always able to upgrade every magic item you find has become a grotesquely overused cliche. Lets leave our rings the way they are.