IcyDeadPeople

More than anything else, I'm hoping for the possibility of official mod tools. That will greatly increase the replay value.

How do you weight when someone uses soemthing passive, like stealth abilities, versus giving xp each time a combat action is taken. Furthermore, does this not still overly reward combat? Heck, it'd actually reward people being all super sneaky to get that xp, and then rewarding them moreso to go back and stab people. People are no longer encouraged to simply sneak (or simply attack) but to do weird metagame activities instead. Considering the scope and depth of this game, I certainly wouldn't be surprised if there turn out to be a few ways for people to exploit or game the system who want to level up quickly. However, these guys have a lot of experience with different game systems and I'm sure they can do a solid job of iterating on the game and balancing the character progression. XP rewards for completing quests would seem to require the game to be much more linear in nature compared to what we've heard so far. XP for killing enemies would seem to leave out the non-combat skills. The only other alternative I'm aware of would be XP rewarded for using skills, or possibly a sort of combination where XP is gained from using non-combat skills or killing enemies (combat skills). That said, I wouldn't be entirely surprised if Obsidian has come up with some entirely new kind of XP / progression mechanic based on souls or something similar.

No, I'm saying a lot of thought has to go into setting up the game levels. Instead of just selecting the "Tough bad guy and henchmen" encounter palette and clicking it around without giving it any thought, they have to decide if there's a good reason for it being there. And sometimes that good reason is simply to provide a tough "random" encounter. Perhaps Obsidian has decided to use XP rewards each time you use a skill. That would also result in equal gains for combat or non combat skills.

I was happy to see the update, and I think this one has been my favorite, simply because of the focus on making the non-combat skills fun. However, I understand and share your concern about using separate skill points or perks for combat vs. non-combat skills. That's a big part of the fun of leveling up for me, when there are number of different awesome options to choose from and I have to make a tough decision. If we had a single pool of perk points for both, it would seem to be much more fun, or at least the replay value would be higher, as I'd be able to play very different character builds multiple times, focusing on any of a number of different skills, perhaps my first character might focus on piercing weapons and my second character might focus more on brewing poisons, for example.

I've been playing D&D for many years and you can certainly purchase a house, a tavern, a castle, even rent an apartment in a slum, a tent, any kind of dwelling you can imagine. The same is true in every other pen and paper roleplaying game I've played. You might play a homeless character, a traveler who goes from inn to inn, or perhaps you decide to play a character who rises up from humble beginnings to buy property in some fancy part of town, like the "Cloud District." It simply adds more RP choices, more ways to make choices and take actions you think your character would take, and something to aim for as your character seeks to accumulate wealth and become an important person in the game world. I don't think these stretch goals really correlate to the budget costs to implement them. Rather, they serve as sort of milestones with nice bonuses, along the road to whatever the ultimate funding level will be. Glad to see it looks very likely we will meet this goal. The one I'm hoping for most is official mod tools to be supported by Obsidian. If we get that, I'm certain there will be all manner of player houses added by mod authors, not to mention new quests, dungeons, and probably some great gameplay tweaks. Do you mean the apartment in Santa Monica?

Today's update reveals that a new faction will be added to the the $2.2 million stretch goal:

I can only hope perhaps the publisher in question was proposing development of one of their own IPs, otherwise, it sounds like a deceitful tactic. However, as for the concept of a large publisher using Kickstarter directly as a sounding board for a risky project, why not? I'm sure there are lots of interesting projects larger publishers have considered over the years but rejected because they appealed to a small niche audience, or might have been perhaps too risky in some way. A Kickstarter could be a way for a publisher to appeal directly to fans to see if there is enough interest for such a project.

The latest update seems to suggest a myriad of different cultures and factions in the game - very exciting stuff!

In my view, the point of a house is simply to enhance your role playing options, which is what this game is all about. Perhaps you are playing an ascetic character with limited worldly possessions who resides in the dormitory of some religious faction. On your next playthrough, you might wish to play a character who seeks to lift himself up from humble beginnings in the poorer district of some town, accumulate some wealth and purchase property in the wealthy district, or even build a house for himself in the wilderness, etc. A huge castle or stronghold would be fun of course, but based on the comments posted above, it seems unlikely. Even a more simple player house would still be welcome IMO, but I'm hoping for a future stretch goal with the potential for official mod tools, in which case we might see something more ambitious.

Can you explain a bit more for those of us who aren't familiar with NWN2? What was great about the fortress and why do you feel it would be beyond the scope of PE?

There have been some pretty amazing player houses created by Skyrim mod authors. My favorite is Build Your Own Home I'm hoping for the option to build a home through a sort of crafting system, ideally in a way that is highly customizable according to your character concept and playing style. It would be great if there is a way to incorporate quests into the process of building and expanding your home, or quests related to NPCs that might reside in your home. Also always enjoyed the stronghold concept for higher level players in D&D, where multiple NPCs can serve various functions, be sent out on missions or protect your stronghold and perhaps accumulate gold, resources etc.

What if you wish to play a character who feels strongly about a particular side of a war, for example? Doesn't it enhance the RP if you can actually take a stand and choose to ally with one of the sides? Or if you wish to play a character who follows a particular in-game religion, or a criminal character who joins a gang of ruffians or assassins, etc.? It can be fun to play a loner character who does not associate with any factions, but I think it can also be fun to play a character who identifies with a particular group of NPCs.

I see, yes it presents some challenges to incorporate reactivity in a way that does not defy logic, but with limited resources would you not prefer at least some reactivity, even if there were some sort of psychic grapevine nature to their information gathering, or would you prefer no reactivity at all in such a case? Great concept, this sounds like a lot of fun. I'd like to see a kind of faction like this. I can understand why there should be some extreme challenges or roadblocks to joining or advancing within such a group, but wouldn't a good quest line for such a faction serve to introduce the group to the player, from the perspective of an outsider becoming involved with such a faction and perhaps becoming some sort of initiate in the cult?

Can you explain a bit more for those of us who haven't played the game? Something along the lines of various groups of clerics that follow different deities?

Oh wow, well thanks very much for clarifying! And it seems very kind of the mods to go through the trouble to do this for us.

It's some long-antiquated and poorly thought out mechanism from years past (KOTOR 2 era Obsidian I believe) to limit people trolling each other by saying something, getting a response, then changing their original post to make it look like the responder is a moron. Or something. Of course, because of their short-sightedness in permanently implementing the edit time limit to combat a short-lived trolls, we all have to now put up with an artificial and annoying limit to polishing our posts. Hooray! I see - this is a bit problematic for threads where we are attempting to organize and collect information. For example, I have posted a thread in the Project Eternity section with a goal of summarizing all the information revealed about the game's factions. If I understand correctly, there is no way for me to edit this post to add more info in the future? Or do moderators sometimes make posts edit-friendly again?

I didn't see any mention in the Forum Guidelines, and couldn't find any sort of forum FAQ with information about this. However, it seems that I can no longer edit posts that are more than a couple hours old. Is this standard, or are we only able to edit the most recent post we made? Or is there possibly some sort of problem with my browser (Google Chrome). Apologies if this belongs in a different forum section.

Wow, looks exactly like playing through the world of South Park.

Thanks for collecting all of these SnideCipher - there is a lot of great info here. Unbelievable! I wonder which publisher that was.

Thank you! I completely agree. The concept of generic Fighters', Thieves' and Mages' Guilds are a sort of pet peeve of mine. Many games use these tropes as shorthand for little more than employment offices with some uninspired quests vaguely related to the player's class. If I never see one of these generic "guilds" in a game again it will be too soon. Even if the team were to include essentially the same tired employment office type guilds (which seems highly unlikely considering Obsidian's brilliant and compelling factions in past games), surely it can't be that hard to at least come up with an original name for the organization and some half plausible reason why they have banded together. And any viable organization in a richly detailed world would likely have some friends and some enemies, no? If we can join some scholarly group of mages, for example, it would be great if we could choose to join an opposing mage faction - some necromancers or perhaps a coven of witches, etc. If there is a melee warrior oriented organization, let them stand for something other than simply "fighting" - perhaps they are a sect of holy warriors who fight to cleanse the land of creatures of the night, or perhaps they are a cruel gang of bandits and highwaymen, etc. Interesting background on the term. I mistakenly thought it had something to do with paladins.

There will be camping / survival features in the game?

I don't really see a distinction where any of the lore would not be story-related. It's all one big narrative we are playing through - lots of lore books and side quests only serve to enrich that story and make it deeper and more interesting IMO.

In that case, what are you personally hoping to see in terms of factions and how the player will interact with them? I'm interested to know your thoughts and apologies if you found the poll options to be distracting from the discussion. I understand the poll options are not mutually exclusive. In fact, personally, I would love to see all of these features implemented if possible - joinable factions integrated in to the main story, with deep questlines and in some sort of conflict with one another, follower and NPC reactions to player faction choices, etc. I suppose the idea of the poll was simply to ask which of these particular features do you find most important. Are there some faction mechanics or other features you'd like to see in the game I should add to this? As for the regions on the map, yes, it's premature of course, we have no idea what the various factions will look like. Judging by the font size however, there do appear to be about three or four very important regions, that might represent political boundaries or some sort of kingdoms. And we know that the dwarf ranger in the concept art pic hails from the Southern Boreal region, where there is a faction of dwarves that is quite different from their cousins in the North. I will also attempt to keep this post updated as details are revealed about the various factions.

I pledged primarily because Fallout: New Vegas and Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines are two of my all time favorite games, and various members of the team worked on these. Having read the description on the Kickstarter page, and based on my experience playing past Obsidian games, I'm confident it will be a fun and deep role playing experience with a detailed game world and interesting NPC and quests. I also enjoyed Alpha Protocol, KOTOR 2 and NWN 2, but not quite as much as FNV and VTMB. Never had a chance to try Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale and I've only played about 20 minutes of Planescape and Fallout 1.

Tim and Josh have briefly commented on the various races and cultures in the game world, and provided an intriguing map with lots of settlements, towns and regions. Sounds like it's shaping up to be a rich and fascinating gameworld with diverse cultural and ethnic groups. What are your thoughts on how the various factions might be handled? Are you hoping for factions the player can choose to join and rise through the ranks over the course of a deep questline? Do you want to see a range of factions that complement various playing styles such as stealth, magic, melee, etc.? How about factions that are at war with one another, perhaps to the extent that if you ally with a particular group, you might become the mortal enemy of another, permanently locked off from joining the second group and completing their quests? Perhaps based on your character background choices, it might be impossible to join certain factions, or maybe your follower becomes angry and leaves your service if you join a faction she hates? How do you think the geography revealed in the map might influence the various factions and ethnic groups? There appear to be at least three or four very large central regions, perhaps these represent kingdoms in conflict with one another or in some sort of uneasy truce? Regions depicted in the map: Free Palatinate of Dyrwood White March (name is cut off, looks like "White March") Ruins of Eir Glanfath The Pearl Coast Boreal Region (name is cut off from the map, it seems the first word ends with an "E" and second word starts with "V") Pearlwood Gulf Bay of Crowns Bael Marsh Thein Bog Lake of Drow Tombs Northern Coast Region (name ends with "DRA" - perhaps some sort of tundra region?) Towns, settlements and keeps (ruins?): New Heomar Echo Bay New Yarma Godhammer Citadel Mercy Vale Geiran's Grasp Coldmorn Dawning Durgan's Battery Stalwart ____el's Gate Citadel (first word is cut off) Gilded Vale Raedric's Hold Loghome Eina's Rest Kindle Vale Arrey of the Cloven Wheel The Court of Bowing Ashes Isrul's Well Maiden Falls Defiance Bay Sorceror's Tomb Dyrford Twin Elms Solace Vale Midwood Telaneir Brass Crown Tower Forked Vale Madsdam Steel Crown Tower Girrar Dunlan's Keep Hill's Edge Thein Airana's ____ (second word is cut off)