Sordel

A lot of people on Kickstarter pledge low so that they can follow a project, get emails, post comments etc., then they opt for a higher tier in the last 24 hours. Things will flatten off now until that final big surge. I'd expect 3.5-4 million by the end. 5 million sounds too high. Like Elfwyn says, that may sound a lot, but it really isn't in terms of the game they're planning.

And you know this how? I believe it, based on the costs of game development. Take a look at: http://www.notenoughshaders.com/2012/07/02/the-rise-of-costs-the-fall-of-gaming/ P:E isn't Max Payne 3, but neither is it a little Indie game being coded by one guy ... it's very serious money. The Kickstarter money is really what they thought they could get to kick-start development; by the time you factor in marketing, this is going to be an expensive game to develop, so don't think that the guys are Obsidian are thinking that it's game over and they've already won.

It has to be a combination of ways. My ideal is that there would Legendary items similar to the Daedric artifacts in TES: you'd find mention of them, quest them through significant side-quests and then find them. Not every Legendary item need be super-powerful: half the time they would be more like trophies. Unique items would be crafted or won from Boss fights: there would be a set for each class, so that people who wanted the entire set would have to perform a range of specific tasks, and there'd be a set bonus. Rare items should be of a lower quality and discoverable in chests or occasionally as quest rewards. I like 'riot of swag' games such as Torchlight but I think that you can have too much of a good thing, and I don't like re-equipping my characters after every trash mob.

I voted Maybe No. The Kick It Forward is a great idea if a project is completely funded by Kickstarter, with a significant surplus after all costs. While it's great that P: E is doing well, the Kickstarter will not fund the game complete ... Obsidian will have to find significant further investment, so there is no way that they are rolling in cash from this. Kick It Forward is best for windfall projects where a project receives very much more than it needs. Moreover, I think that in the games world there are enough people starting highly speculative Kickstarter projects without giving them yet more incentive to do so by being able to draw on the success of preceding, viable projects.

I've got other stuff to worry about, to be honest, but I suppose, theoretically, we could be walking into the Mountain Dew tavern if some marketing exec has any sense .... that would be a shame.

So you're saying people would pirate this game because they can't get ONE in game item? In this case, I call bull**** and say those people weren't going to buy the game anyways. Yes, that is what I'm saying. As soon as the game is out, people are going to torrent the "Backer version" they can't otherwise get. Who cares about one item you say? A lot of people do, even if it's only cosmetic. It's simply greed on obsidians side, they may get a little bump in the kickstarter phase, but it will hurt them in the long run. Wow, this really takes the biscuit! Obsidian is the greedy one, but the guy who goes and pirates the entire game for a pair of green shoes or something is a crusader for consumer rights? !! Obsidian can't do anything to stop people mooching off the game, so I say, yeah, damn straight, look after your paying customers by showering them with non-combat pets, exclusive framed portraits in their houses, anything like that. There is zero harm to the so-called 'community' that can't get their hands on it without torrenting ... most gamers don't really care about that stuff, and the ones who do should be looking to support the game.

For me, classes & factions=replayability, since I am generally prepared to do the same quests over and over again just trying out different builds, and roleplay means that I won't always side with, or even contact, every faction on one character. I actually think, though, that setting these things as stretch goals is slightly arbitrary: this game won't ship for long time, and the ability of the developers to add MORE will depend on how much they already have. I don't necessarily want my 200 hour game to be a 300 hour game just because Obsidian hit a stretch goal. I'd like them to be able to say 'let's give each class another cool ability' instead of 'save that ability for the twelfth class that we promised'. Similarly, having a new continent or race can be less interesting in the end than putting more work into an existing continent or race. It shouldn't be about feature creep and ticking boxes. Right now if Obsidian wants to shake the tree a bit more I'd like to see more physical rewards in the mid tiers. I'm a bit of a sucker for collectable loot.

I think that one of the many aspects of "old skool" gaming that is slowly coming back is the idea that players don't need to see every part of the game. Developers lost confidence, feeling that everything coded had to be attainable by every player or it was a waste of their. But that just worked against games that were thirty, forty, two hundred hours ... until we end up with console FPS games that have a 4-6 hour single-player campaign. In most RPGs, you're still only hitting level 2 or 3 in that time. One thing that the Elder Scrolls games have proved pretty conclusively is that there is a market for games where it is pretty much impossible to do everything. (And I speak as someone who sunk hundreds of hours into Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim.) Now, obviously PE can't do everything those games did, but fortunately the top-down system means that they don't face anywhere near the same production expectations in terms of graphics & speech. The trade-off is that people are going to be able to expect depth of game mechanics and story. So: I do think that there is an argument for diverting development resources on something that an FPS-style RPG can never deliver (just because of the expense of its graphical assets).

I think that this is a great idea. Some thoughts: a) This should be a place where people who want a high mandatory difficult can prove themselves: hardest area of the game, maybe only accessible on the highest difficulty setting, so that people who want that elitist experience can push themselves. b) It has to be long enough for a real sense of oppressive anxiety to set in, where stockpiled potions and scrolls are always under threat of running out, where you can't just change your mind and teleport or quit. c) It needs to be loooong, but I'd suggest that it be playable in, at most, twelve hours: that means that people can plan it for a weekend or maybe one epic play session. d) It should be completely optional, and available fairly early in the game for people who want to run the risk. e) It should contain three or four items that are the best in the game: better than the MQ rewards. f) Yes, divert resources to make it. This is just the sort of thing that drags in players who wouldn't normally play the game, so it's all part of the marketing really. For the record, I don't see any way that I would run this dungeon myself (I'm just not a hardcore gamer) but this should be the thing in the game for the type of people who run cutting-edge raids in WoW: loads of bragging rights, where the rest of us can kid ourselves "hey, that's something I'd really like to try some day". It's something that I would see only about 5% of players ever seeing the end of (except, of course, on YouTube!) By the way, I'm not sure that you're talked about DLC and this shouldn't be that, but if the game is successful a second mega-dungeon could make for very good piece of DLC ... if the first has been as welcome as most people in this thread seem to think.

43,000 backers of the project so far, twenty votes on this poll. I would think that Obsidian would not be basing any major decisions on our polls, no.

Orchestral soundtracks are great (I even bought the Skyrim 4-disc set) but this is a good example of the sort of extra that might really add to the production costs. There are a lot of people who want to dress P:E up as a top tier title, but Wikipedia says that the average game development costs for a game in 2010 were $20 million. Great though it would be to see AAA features in this game (and of course the Kickstarter is not the only investment going to the budget of this game) we are a long way from covering the cost of what has already been promised. Stretch goals are mainly to stretch us, the backers, not the devs!

I voted for all four, but there are some problems with alchemy/crafting, the chief amongst which is bag space. The last thing I want to do is carry around forty iron filings for twenty levels until I can get a piece of tanned leather and two ash branches so I can make an Ash dagger .... especially if those items are in slots that could be used for usable items. I also hate fail states for crafting where you sit down with a stack of fleeces from grinding sheep all day and then have a 75% fail rate on crafting Woolen Undershirts (+1 Cold Resistance). On the other hand I don't mind if 80% are ordinary and 20% are Fine (+2 Cold Resistence, w00t!). Crafting systems are great in themselves, but this isn't an MMORPG so they don't need to be a hideous timesink. They should just be another area of complexity for players who prefer to have a passive bonus. All of this 'developer time permitting' as well of course.

Mac users typically spend more on their gaming than PC users (you only need to look at the average price on Humble Bundle to see that this is the case) so I would think that you are right. Personally, I'm not a backer yet but once I see how Mac users are expected to pledge I anticipate putting that right. Can't believe I'm the only one who has been waiting for this stretch goal.

It was a mix for me: PS: T is a game I could never get into, but I saw enough to want to see more from those developers. I had more fun with Neverwinter Nights. KotOR 2 was a very decent game as well. Obsidian just has a very consistent track record.

I'd hope for Bard because I really like a buffs/debuff mechanic, and I'd also like to see hybridisation of classes above a particular level: no need to worry about game balance in a single-player game. I'd also like to see at least one pet class: a Ranger/Hunter or Warlock. I only play Warrior in WoW: there's nothing more dull to me than hitting things with swords, but I guess we'll see the Holy Trinity of Warrior, Rogue and Mage in some form. Priest/White Mage seems obvious too.

It's easy to give people hardcore difficulty: Brutal mode with dead-is-dead amd upscaled enemies. I don't see why everyone needs to play the game with a FAQ in one hand, though. Personally I'd be happy to play on a Medium difficulty setting. What would be nice is to have aspects of the game behind a veil that can only be penetrated at higher difficulties: special items and 'Emerald Weapon'-style bosses are the sorts of things I'm thinking of.

It's true that Bastion is visually gorgeous, and I could see P:E getting closer to that than to Skyrim or something, but I'm sure that the devs have in mind something something more realistic than Bastion. This is the sort of game aspect where I really trust the devs to find their own way without too much community input.

I had enough dwarves in WoW, with their beards, beer and throaty Scottish laughter. They were just one reason why it was always more fun to play Horde in that game. Obviously it's still possible to reinvent the classic Tolkienesque races as something more interesting, but the easiest approach would be start again with a world of men and divide them along cultural lines. Nords, Redguards and Imperials all feel completely different to me in Elder Scrolls games, yet they are all essentially humans.

It depends on how close you want to get to a Tactical RPG. The mechanics for the sort of game you're describing certainly exist, and I loved Tactics Ogre on the GBA, but it might make for a slower-paced game than people are really looking to play. Also it tends to demand a rigid playboard (e.g. with hexagons, or a chequerboard) and that might impact on immersion.

I like cloaks as well, but I think that they should be an accessory-type item, only equippable for some classes. Seeing a warrior in a cloak always seems wrong because it would interfere with weapon drawing. Also, I don't like to see all classes end up with the same silhouette. The sort of thing I'd like to see is for each class to have a decent number of equippable slots, such as jewellery, special clothing (for warriors it could be a visor, for example) and weapon 'gems' or 'runes' or whatever. Capes & coronets could be special clothing for clothies, with cloaks for rogues. That said, we don't want to put more weight on the item designers than the budget can stand!

I don't think that there are any problems with people asking for thhings such as complete VO, just as long as they don't start saying 'I funded your Kickstarter so do as I say'. It's only going to be helpful to the devs to hear what matters to people, but I hope people here are sensible enough to realise that bloated feature sets are what make a great many big-budget games turn out so badly. I can't see Obsidian just ticking a load of boxes when their principal business will be delivering the game they were already planning.

I think that there are ways to work with the stereotypical fantasy races, but I think that it would be problem if we ended up with hearty dwarves who love beer, etherial elves who live in trees and specialise in bows or humans living in a boring, medieval world who wear heavy armour. There needs to be enough variation on those templates for the player really to 'own' their character and get invested in a new IP. (I voted new races, fwiw.)