Karkarov

Stun has a lot of good points there. If I saw a kickstarter say "And if you give us X funding we will make the game even more perfect and polish everything to be the best it can be!!!" my first thought would be .... "Uh wait a minute, are you telling me you consider releasing the game in a state that is less than the best it could be acceptable?" Having a bug free, polished game, with gameplay that works and isn't broken should not be a stretch goal, it should be something you require before you release a product. Of course many of the corners of the internet would just laugh in this case and say "Well it is Obsidian!" As for Numenera.... yeah. I wouldn't touch it myself either. The "Torment" name was never more than a tag line on that Kickstarter and they are only related in the most tenuous and slight ways possible. Also the whole campaign relied again on nostalgia and loving planescape Torment. InExile has yet to prove they can make a game that isn't crap, and everything I am hearing about Wasteland 2 is fairly mediocre (outside of the fanboi opinions) and makes me regret backing it.

Going into a Kotaku article, you know the main points they will try to hammer home: The article's headline will be something sensational and the writer's personal opinion more than actual fact If it's about Kickstarter, it will be negative. Kickstarter is Kotaku's Obama. If it's about Double Fine, it will be positive. Double Fine is Kotaku's Sarah Palin. Are you sure you don't have Palin and Obama reversed? I am pretty sure I never see negative coverage of her (if she is mentioned at all) and at least one half of the news has good things to say about Obama.

Except is that actually true? Your player character is a Paladin! So.... where did he pick up a specialty in knowing things like how to identify the presence of poison gasses in a cave? Learn about methods to properly scale a large cave in or collapsed tunnel? How to tell the difference between a subterranean lichen it is safe to eat and one that gives you Montezuma's Revenge? I am sure your Wizard is really good at killing orcs in massive blasts of fire, but that doesn't mean he knows how to actually read the environment the orcs lived in or figure out that the reason the Orcs never went in that tunnel over there is because that strange smell is actually from giant lizard droppings. Your point about it being better as "one skill" holds some water but at the same time there is nothing wrong with creating general skills that cover multiple fields instead of having 70 different skills. You are a skills whore though

One thing that has always mystified me is there has never been a game with a "Dungeoneering" skill. Aka a guy whose specialty is exploring old ruins, caves, and the like. Can give you the ability to spot secret doors, read strange script in no longer used language, maybe knowledge bonuses for various checks or challenges related to traps or natural phenomenon.

That proves nothing. That just means someone has played it for 20 hours, not that the current content took 20 hours to clear. 20k concurrent players was also it's all time high, not it's average, not what it got last night, that is what it got that one time. It's average in the last 30 days (aka the release of dragonfall) is 1.4 thousand. Again I am sure it sold fine, but I seriously doubt hairbrain has gone Scrooge McDuck from their Shadowrun profits, or that they spent more than 4 million dollars on Dragonfall. As for recent RPG's if you like I could compare it to say Dark Souls 2. That won't be a very favorable comparison for Shadowrun though.

Dragonfall had all the budget of Shadowrun Returns' sales proceeds, which were probably considerable. Uh I doubt it. Shadowrun sold okay but it wasn't some run away success topping charts and was not very high price to begin with. Don't get me wrong though, when people ask me if Kickstarter can work for games Shadowrun is actually the game I point at. That out of the way... Dragonfall (while great) is still only about 20 hours long. I don't expect Eternity to be a 80 hour game, but I would like to see something around 40... which is about 5 hours more than it took me to very thoroughly beat both campaigns of Shadowrun. I wouldn't be surprised if Eternity also had some outside funding from private individuals, not to mention Obsidian putting in some of their own money.

But who was asking for that, Kark? Not me and I'm king of the Grogs. For some reason that interview annoyed me. Stun has pages and pages of comments about how he likes hard counters and save or die mechanics all over this forum. Forced party make up is just the oldest form of a hard counter. Also try beating Baldur's Gate 2 with no casters and let me know how how it goes Monte. I bet you it doesn't go very well. Why? Because Baldur's Gate 2 basically requires you to have at least one Mage or half the fights in the game are near unwinnable because you can't counter the other mages crap without your own. Not to mention all the instant death effects you need a priest type character to protect your from. I guess you could eventually brute force your way through it just off reloads and putting the game on minimum difficulty but I would love to see your final reload count. It would make peoples Dark Souls death count look like a joke I imagine. The interview probably annoyed you simply because Josh stated his opinions in a very blunt way. I suspect this interview was very informal because most of the time he seems to be very restrained and picks his words deliberately.

Actually Stun that really isn't right. "Tank" is not a class. It is a role a character has in a party. In WoW your "Tank" could be a Warrior, or a Paladin, or a Death Knight, a Druid, or even a Monk. There is plenty of diversity between those classes and some of them are better at some parts of being a "Tank" than others. They are not the same class, they don't play 100% the same way, and they don't "Tank" 100% the same way, or even have all the same abilities. What Josh is saying is he wants to avoid situations where you have to have say a Paladin or you lose because the enemy does a spell that can only be countered by a Paladin buff. If you don't have the Paladin buff the spell nails you and makes the fight basically unbeatable due to the penalty it inflicts. That is a forced party make up. It isn't that you needed a "Tank" it is that you needed a Paladin specifically. The Trinity (which is what you are talking about) is simply a method by which the devs can design encounters because by enforcing the Trinity they know what skills you have so they can build fights that test those skills and give every person in the party a real job. What you and the other Grog's want is not an encounter design system, you just want a free for all where fights are designed like old school D&D where the idea is "the party is this strong so I should use enemies this strong". That doesn't work in a PC game, it only works in D&D because every player and the DM are living breathing humans who can react in a human way. The DM can choose to lighten up if an encounter is tearing up the party more than intended, they can choose to beef up the enemies if it seems too easy. They can make the enemies use unorthodox strategies because they can think on the fly. PC AI can't "think on the fly" and can't choose to make itself easier or weaker based on player performance. The beholder can't "choose" to not use it's save or die death stare. Thus the Trinity is born because it allowed those Devs to make fun, varied, and challenging fights without ever having to worry if the party had a Death Ward spell pre cast or even had the ability to cast it at all. Also while PrimeJunta is right about his "all ranger party" comments.... Sawyer never said he would recommend people play that way or that it would be anything resembling easy.

I concur but in all fairness you also have to consider another reason I think we see a lot less dialogue in games lately. Well 2 reasons. 1: Why write an explanation of what that Altar looks like when in most modern graphically detailed games the player can simply look at it and get that info themselves? "Descriptive writing" just isn't necessary in most modern games due to modern graphical fidelity. 2: People love voice acting. It is pretty cheap to write 3-4 paragraphs of dialog for a character. Heck it isn't really that terrible to have a central character splurge out 100+ pages of dialog over the course of a game. Paying a voice actor to read it all.... not quite so cheap anymore. When dialog costs so much more than it used to sometimes you gotta save money somewhere and be a little less verbose.

Apparently they are exclusively in Stockholm. That said they have already released a ton of games in the US either way so it isn't like they are some small time party or unknown. As far as CD Projekt goes.... sure in the strictest sense of the word they are a Publisher. With the caveat that they only publish their own games.

I can. I would have liked to have seen Obsidian partner with CD Projekt RED as a publisher myself. That's the only game publisher/developer in the world I have faith in aside from Obsidian at this point. And they head up GoG.com which would have been perfect I would think given so many want a gog version of PE available and one is promised. I'm actually curious as to why they didn't go with CD Projekt RED, as I imagine they must have been considered and there is communication between the companies anyways due to Obsidian having products on GoG and planning to have more. CD Projekt RED isn't a publisher they are a games developer, as in the same thing as Obsidian. If Paradox uses DRM everyone is using DRM, including CD Projekt. It is called Steam. Also Obsidian has said since practically day one there will be a GoG version of the game, so no, there will be a DRM free version of Eternity for those who want it regardless of who publishes.

This thread is hilarious. Paradox are the people who make Mount and Blade for Christ sake, they are not "a big evil publisher". Someone has to publish the game and since Obsidian doesn't want to do it themselves I can't think of a better company fit than Paradox. They release a large number of niche games, they focus on pc only, they are anti DRM. One of the best groups Obsidian could have chosen if you ask me. Also Elerond your examples all ride on the IP holder suing you for violating DRM. In this case it was the IP holder themselves telling you how to violate the DRM so the odds of them suing you for doing it are minimal, and even if they did they would pretty much lose the case.

It's the best, especially with the ninja sticker that gives x1 attack. I actually prefer it with the thing that gives you 35% damage on perfect strikes. Yeah combo wise you will do better, but if you are fighting a high armor enemy or one you have to power attack to do full damage to the 35% bonus is stronger.

All the best gear is level 14. While the Lobster Set has the highest armor value I find there are plenty of reasons to use other sets as they give lots of unique buffs. I liked the Knight set and Valkyrie set quite a bit armor wise. The "Vibroblade" and the Sweet Katana from Ned's store are probably the two best melee weapons. The Katana is ridiculously strong to be honest, I have done 6-7k power hits with it and combos of up to 10-12 on non "armored" enemies.

You know the real question isn't how to get in the Taco Bell.... it is whether this is one of those "big" Taco Bell's or one of the crappy ones with the KFC stuck on the side?

What he said. You have to have started the quest with Ned and gotten the hunting manual first. Also the Crab People are further in the sewers once you go through the emergency exit. That said to get to the crab people you have to have unlocked Nagasaki first which you get near the end of the Canada questline.

???? Black indicators? Can you be a little more descriptive? It sounds like maybe you are trying to use an item you need a key or some other trigger for and you just don't have it yet.

I am sure Sawyer goes into it in one of these two threads which basically between them discuss attributes to death. http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/64712-attribute-theory/ http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/65099-josh-sawyers-video-on-the-strength-increases-magical-damage-debate/

Pretty sure we already had a thread about this at one point. Either way I will just keep calling it "Eternity".

I would think the "I want money" is the all business response actually.

While his message could have been conveyed better no that isn't it. He is saying you argue that we need more relationship types in game to be more "realistic and varied" but then argue that we should exclude one of the most common types of relationships that exist in real life. The idea that optional romance is detrimental to an RPG has always been and will always be pure nonsense. The problem, like I have said many times, is not the type of relationships but the fact that they are badly written and the characters are one dimensional. A badly written one dimensional "buddy" character like Jacob (for male character anyway) from ME2 is no better than one of the badly written one dimensional love interests from Jade Empire. PS: I am only targeting Bioware there because I know if I target anything else no one on this forum other than the people who already agree with me will "get it". Obsidian has plenty of terrible characters under their belt too.

I will be surprised if they charge more than 30-40. A full retail AAA whatever you want to call it game is 55-60 and I can't see them going that high.

If I pay a tradesperson, a plumber or electrician to do a job and with the money they receive from me decides to buy some tools, do I get to keep the tools too? Even though all I asked for was something that excluded those tools? No moron because they bought their tools with their own money not mine. Grow up you half baked troll.

..... I clearly said in my post "give us mod tools they made for themselves to help make the game". I also clearly said I wasn't asking for them to make tools they didn't already make for their own benefit or create resources for modders specifically. What I am asking for costs them not 1 cent, and the only time they need to invest is uploading the tool then making a link to it on a webpage. Meanwhile Obsidian's lack of a promise doesn't mean crap. If you want to win people over you have to do more than say "well I didn't promise that so...". Either they made some tools for their own use or they didn't. If they did put them out there for modders. If they didn't well gee golly willakers all they have to do is say that and it is a non issue isn't it? Meanwhile I sure hope you expect this game to be more than just what was "promised". For example they didn't "promise" it would be bug free or even playable. Only that it would be a game containing XYZ elements.

I can tell none of you ever played Dark Sun.... Let the mages run the show and everything goes to hell . Also (try to not go off the wall for me saying this) the Harry Potter books deal with this pretty well. Everyone is a wizard but if you noticed when it came to "ranks" most of the top tier were established "families" not just people who happened to be powerful Wizards. In fact many of the people in charge weren't even that strong. It gives a great look at what a "gifted" society might run like because don't forget there have always been have's and have not's. Money, politics, fame, all these things also go into determining who runs the show. Even if you are the most bad ass dude around if no one likes you and a weak guy gets 50 people to come with him to fight you... Well you are still probably going to lose.