Karkarov

I think they mentioned you will have some lore knowledge other players won't, but otherwise there will be no big effects. If they tied a specific set of events or game options to only characters with the deadfire as their home it would make being from any other region a "lesser choice", and I am sure Obsidian want's to avoid "only one good option" scenarios in character design.

I find this topic hilarious considering how many people hated on Eternity's health system. Even on this very forum. I am happy with whatever Obsidian want's to do, as long as it makes sense and isn't completely broken. Which it will, and it won't be.

So couple things. 1: Everyone's feedback is always valuable, even if you didn't play the game. After all, there is a reason you didn't play it. Some feedback will be better than others, but all feedback is useful. 2: People who thought Eternity was BG3 really annoy me, because they made it abundantly clear to anyone who looked that Eternity was a new IP, with a new ruleset, in a new world, that would have nothing to do with BG3 other than being "an Isometric 2d background RPG using real time with pause". If you thought you were backing BG3 that was your bad, not Obsidians. 3: Yes it was doomed to fight a nostalgia fight against BG2, which it was going to lose no matter what. Why? Because it is a nostalgia fight. Nostalgia isn't based on reason, or fair analysis, it is based on emotion. The new will always lose to the nostalgic, because the new doesn't have the same "feeling". It doesn't matter if that "feeling" is just in your head, or if the new is actually just as good, or superior in multiple ways.

Lol why did this turn into a discussion about Game of Thrones and the Witcher? That question out of the way, the Witcher 2 was very successful and had enormous positive spin. It was played by considerably more people than "a handful". The Witcher 1 is a pretty crap game though, it's combat is literally tic tac toe. What Witcher 1 allowed was for the creation of GoG, which made the money to fund Witcher 2, which made the money to make GoG bigger, which is why Witcher 3 was such a huge title. It took a lot of time, effort, and planning. That's how real businesses operate and succeed. As for Game of Thrones? It isn't Dark Fantasy, it is just bad Fantasy. I was there before it was "cool", I own a first printing of the first book (I should sell that on ebay to some mook), and the series did start strong but had very little to no "fantasy" elements. All the fantasy elements started becoming stronger in later books, as the writing and plot got weaker, and the story got sloppier. The Game of Thrones as it is now is something I watch on HBO and have no plan to buy the books. Mostly because the HBO version though different, is legitimately better as it drops all the retarded fluff, and has a more logical story. Well most of the time it does...

Can Eternity become a "mega mainstream hit"? Uh... no, not in it's current form. It is an isometric RPG, very much a niche genre that is outside anything involving the word "mainstream". The better question would be "can they make real money on Eternity and turn it into a franchise?" The answer to that is most definitely yes. Can they over time consider making an open world 3D action RPG similar to say the Witcher or Dark Souls based in the world of Eora? Sure they can, and that could be a game with much more mainstream appeal. The thing is that a game like that requires much more staff, and much more money, than Obsidian can commit at this time. Don't kid yourself, you are not going to kick/figstart a open world RPG on par with something like Fallout 4 or Mass Effect Andromeda. The budget required is way out of the realm of public funding. I will say that Josh Sawyer said in a live stream that he really liked the "Dark Souls formula" and would not be opposed to doing a game similar to that one day.

Sawyer has said due to the mechanics changes they will allow class and stat changes, but so far, do not plan to allow changing anything beyond that besides maybe appearance. Mostly because from a RP/continuity standpoint suddenly being a different race, sex, or having a different country of origin and background would be.... strange to say the least.

It could be a neat feature, depending on how detailed the models end up being. Not something I would consider must have or even important though. If they are near the end, they can throw it in with little effort, and there is nothing better to do... sure why not? It should definitely be a toggle though, not an always on, or even default on, feature.

It isn't, just a few people think the ability to walk somehow is required for a good RPG. If this were dark souls or something I would agree, but it isn't. In this game if I want to move slowly and cautiously I just turn on sneak mode. And by "a few people" I mean like 3-5.

You are overlooking the "they didn't test it" part. Obsidian will have to test it, in all maps, entering cutscenes, in combat, etc etc. Testing is almost always takes the most time when you include something new. So I don't disagree putting it in game would be "easy" but Obsidian is not two guys doing it for a buddy, they have to do it right.

Because they didn't care so they didn't even try. I think it was some loud voices on the codex that got them to do it. How hard was it to code? Don't know, but it couldn't have been too hard or Bester would not have done it as he didn't want to put a ton of effort into it. Here is the thing though. That was Eternity 1, on Unity 4. This is Eternity 2 with Unity 5. Just because it was "somewhat easy" on the old version doesn't mean the same is true now. We don't even know if they have made walking animations for the PC's, and if they haven't walking basically is a no go.

I had understood IE Mod is an amalgamation of mods that anyone can contribute to. So, I don't think it's remarkable that the other modders who worked on it didn't use it; there's probably lots of stuff in IE Mod they also don't use. I don't think it's relevant whether they used it or not, either. If he has any insight into the coding behind getting walking to work, I'd be interested in that. The vast majority of features the IE Mod has were put in from very early on. After Bester "passed the project on" very little new got added, it was mostly just patching what was there so it could continue to work with newer versions of the game. Which was a herculean task by itself. Interesting side note, the "move at full speed while in stealth" was added by Bester and Sensuki because they wanted to move faster in stealth. No one ever had to "ask" for it. They also added the "enhanced" increased game speed because they wanted to move across maps even faster than you could with the built in increased speed. I think that tells you pretty clearly where the principle designers of the mod landed on the "walk toggle" spectrum. Also the "intent" of a designer is always of huge importance in anything they produce. It informs their decisions, drives their design goals, and defines their priorities. In response to Leferd's last post, I can't say I concur. I feel that if they get that close to the 5 mil they should just go ahead and do the companion anyway. I suspect that is what will happen to, assuming they don't make 5 mil to begin with.

Lol, no, that's not what he said at all. He said they could do it, he didn't think it would be that hard, he just didn't see the value of it as a feature, and it was only requested by an extreme niche of players. In other words "It cost X amount of money to benefit Y amount of customers, but this other thing I could do costs X amount of money too but benefits more customers." it is a cost benefit analysis, it is how all intelligent businesses make decisions, and that is absolutely not "my opinion", it is a fact. The cost benefit analysis on Walk Toggle = not worth the effort. There is very little benefit to a walk toggle, because almost no one actually uses it. As for the IE Mod, it was put in there just as a request by a couple users, none of the designers of the IE mod ever used it or cared for the feature. They didn't even test it. It was just one more thing to throw in an already bloated and hard to manage mod so why the heck not?

Just as an aside, achievements are not an accurate view of who has done what. For example, I beat the game on GoG playing without their Steamlike GoG Galaxy, so I never scored a single achievement. Additionally playing games and then dropping them is insanely common these days, most people (especially PC gamers) haven't even beaten half the games they own. It is simply too easy and too cheap to get huge amounts of games now. Seriously, go look at pretty much any game. Unless the game is hilariously short or easy you will see normally 30% or less of people who played actually bothered to beat it.

Here is the thing, I am going to break some real world business analysis on you for a hot second. You are a company so your goal is always one thing, profit, AKA: money. How do you get money? By making a product your customer wants to buy, and you do that by making features/functions of your product that are desirable to your customer. So where does walk toggle come in? Here we go... Everything you do with your product requires a number of resources that all come down to what we like to call cost. Let's say the cost of the walk toggle is 10 work hours. Trust me it is more than that, A LOT more. That 10 hours costs say... 1000 dollars, again it would cost a ton more than this in reality. So it costs 1000 dollars to put this thing in game. Who needs this thing in game? What percentage of my customers will care that I made this thing happen? With the walk toggle I feel safe in saying it is say... 5% of customers. Actually probably less than that. So the question isn't just cost, now it has become "What else can I do for 1000 dollars that will benefit more than 5% of my customers?" As long as there is any answer to that question putting in the walk toggle is a poor use of resources, and it is that simple. Do you understand why the walk toggle isn't going to happen/is not a real issue to Obsidian now?

Not sure why you double posted this, but long story short, Obsidian has already said they are overhauling the UI in a number of ways. Specifically I think they said they wanted to make the effects of equipment and what they did much clearer in Eternity 2. Specifically so it would be easier to compare equipment .

Josh said Walk Toggle was a stretch goal in one of the streams. I believe he said it was the 7 million stretch goal specifically.

That is true. But that poll sucked, as I said in that thread, because it only let you pick your favorite. You could not rank them. If you could rank them, I am willing to bet Durance and GM would be significantly lower on the poll. They are characters you either like or hate, but the people who don't like them can't be reflected in a poll where you can only vote for your favorite. Meanwhile Eder was also #1 by a mile, it wasn't even close.

We don't know who the actual factions are yet, much less their motivations. The only confirmed factions are... The Valian Republics, or whatever group they are funding there. The Ruatai, they also have agents doing stuff in the Deadfire. The Principe San Patrena, AKA dirty pirates. The locals, they are the people that live there already The Thieves Guild/other Criminal Scum, this has been strongly hinted at but no real info has been given. I seriously doubt the potentially dead Fulvano, much less Eothas, represent factions. Let's not forget Berath is going to be "very interested" in things happening here as well. But yeah, you can say "screw em all", and go your own way too.

For those curious Avellone only wrote Durance and Grieving Mother, he was not involved in any other writing for Eternity 1. So he had nothing to do with the main plot, or any major story beats. While Durance was a "good character" he also had nothing to do with the main plot of the game, his reasons for traveling with you are iffy at the absolute best, and when you think about it logically there is no valid reason you would want to bring him along beyond "he is a priest". The most memorable, and best moments with him, are when other party members are mocking him. That says a lot. Grieving Mother is even worse, she is practically a non character. She never shows much of any personality, she has no opinion about anything other than Waidwen's Legacy, and there is absolutely no reason at all she should travel with you or you should bring her along. Her motivation is practically non existent, and her character development even on the best path ends with her only kinda sorta having a personality. She was a major let down, on all levels. I can't help but think that these two characters who have the least interest in your quest, who have the least reasons for being there, and are the most disconnected from the main plot are that way for a reason. They were written by the same person. So no, I don't mind that Avellone isn't back for round 2.

I think that has already been done. Fairly sure it is all on the backer portal now.

I suspect the 4.75 goal is all but a lock, there is absolutely no way we won't get 4.5 mil. We have a 50/50 shot at the last stretch goal, it is definitely going to come down to the wire.

It would be great if you retracted this thread, and never posted such an insanely bad idea ever again.

And lost it again by whatever that was with Chris Avalone. Yeah no. If there was ever an over rated video game writer it is him. I am not saying he is a hack, he is even one of the principle writers on what I feel was the best written Obsidian game ever... Alpha Protocol. That said, you don't "need" him to have a good game. He also handled the situation from Eternity 1 very poorly and made many public statements that were not super professional. In the end, the team does deserve the trust of it's fans, with or without him.

You don't like Wrex, or even.... Garrus??!?!!??!? You monster!!! No seriously, Garrus was one of the best things about Mass Effect I don't know how you got through that series without liking the guy.

In all fairness I am a mod on the biggest anime streaming site on the internet, and even I think this poll is dumb and people saying she is an anime character are kidding themselves. This is obsidian we are talking about, they are not going to take a handful of anime tropes and make that into a companion.