Monkcrab

It would be an honor to die stupidly at the pen of MCA, tbh. ...........maybe some of us could stab ourselves in the eyes with pens.

28. Ps:t. Arcanum. Fallout. Motb. Shin megami tensei series. Ultima. And does QFG count? The scale barely encompasses the range of average gamers nowadays, you know.

If they can't do at the full FIGS, then at least G would be wise. German-speaking countries being the biggest, most stable in the long-term market for oldschool RPGs on the planet and all that.

I choose.....A)! I like mounts in games like Skyrim, but I just don't see the point in stuff like PE. Mounts and beasts of burden ARE a crucial aspect of any culture, though, so there should be some mentions of it in the lore and perhaps some use as mules. Maybe even something like Ultima VII, where you can buy a carriage/wagon for your party to ride and strategically place chests on. But only if implementation costs less than an average in-game building.

I would be very happy with a romance, although not in the form it has became in cRPGS. A love story is a love story is a love story, and I think there honestly is a place for love in any medium that tries to discuss human psychology at any length. Love is one of the few forces on this planet that can make someone decide to die for something else, and one of the few things that could make people kill in the name of things they love without thinking twice. Why would we not want to discuss that, and the darker sides of that, especially in a world where memories can transcend lives and thus turning love into a potential tool for mental manipulation of all sorts? Would Ravel be as compelling a villain if it doesn't turn out that all she did, she did for love? Unfortunately, love stories in cRPGs have came to mean 'read through dialogues and pick the most supportive options to earn a 'relationship' and usually sex scenes', with sex scenes being the conclusion or, at least, the most important aspect of the romance that gives players the feeling of having participated in it. Far be it from me to discuss where the influence is, but the end result is that there is a backlash against love stories in games as 'sex minigames'. Honestly, not happy with that trend either. Can you have a romance system where, instead of 'playing psychiatrist to get character info and completion rewards', love is used depict complex ranges of human behavior and lead us into making difficult moral questions? I think we can. I think that in this entire industry, if there's anyone who can pull it off, it's the guys at Obsidian. If they don't want to make it part of the story they want to tell, great! It's not a huge priority for me, either, even though it would make me happy. If they want to include romance, let's give them a chance.

I won't mind knowing how it starts, as in 'the first ten minutes'. Otherwise DEAR GOD DO NOT TELL ME.

2, because if 1, I feel like I'm traveling with a circus gallery of the World Cultures Textbook instead of with friends I just meet along the way. However, having SOME of them be unique and non-creatable will increase the sense of size and mystery in the world.

Yes, because slamming someone upside the head with a hundred pound weight feels like getting hit with a pencil. Blunt force trauma will kill something just as dead as cutting them will. That depends on how many tons the thing you're trying to kill is. To put into perspective, an average African elephant weighs 8.25 tons. A hundred pound is roughly 45 kilograms. Now, 8.25 tons is distributed between the entire body, and we can assume that the skull of the elephant will not be able to withstand too many hits from 45 kilograms blunt force, although precise penetrating force of more than 0.5 tons in the right places will do it much faster. That's also why older hunts with large animals tend to favor spears. The force of projectiles at speed can be much higher than slashing weapons. However, how big is that thing, how many tons is it? I'd say it's about 6-8 times the size of an average African elephant. How much force do you need to bash in the skull of something that weighs 40+ tons, and with enough armor so that harpoon-whaling techniques won't necessarily work? Can something that size even be wielded, even accounting for Fantasy Muscle Physics? Large weapons are feasible to an extent, IMO, and I don't hate them. But blunt-force trauma-ing the thing show in the picture (specifically That Thing; smaller things can probably be killed) is going to be difficult. Not impossible, but not very plausible given the ratio of damage-per-blow and possible damage-taken-per-blow by the attacker. We can take much, much less damage than that thing, and it's probably not going to sit still. NOW, if the materials are magical in the way that it defies gravity when lifted, then multiplies to mass when swung down, this will be very feasible for big weapons. Maybe this is how +3 Morningstars of Bashing work, who knows? (Blunt force trauma + projectiles, ala catapults and cannons, actually will work very well.) p.s. I am actually okay with unrealistically large weapons, to an extent, being Asian and all. I just am a pedant.

As a fellow member of the Order, I'd like to order a side order of pickled liver from the Pickled Liver of the Order, please!

If we're being practical, you'd never want to melee something that large. One swipe of its claws and it'll kill you, regardless of godly armor. A man's innards is not made to withstand that sort of impact. Since this a fantasy world, the best way to kill it would be some sort of magic and/or weapons plus enhancement. Weapons coated in quick-acting poison that attacks the nervous system? Also, well-aimed lightning bolts and poison gas. Cannons in strategic places, like the spinal cord or the skull, should also help bring it down. Even regular guns, with the type of bullet that explodes once it penetrates the target, will do a lot of damage. You don't need bigger weapons, you need better tactics.

I'd be happy with a Quest for Glory-styled character carryover, too. ME and DA's carryovers ended up being lackluster, and it seems that the flags are hell to do well. They STILL haven't fixed the bugged dialogue flags in DA:O! ....although some choices carrying over will not be bad. No. Implying that every single one of your choice of import will affect the world just seems to be setting yourself up for the impossible later on.

A person whose soul's 'memories' are quite different from how he/she actually is, and you don't quite know which one is the real them. How much are memories of things that no longer are supposed to mean to a person and shape them, anyway? Who you are and who you were? They'll have things important to them, mentally, that means zero practically. How do you know they're acting in their 'current' interests and not something tied to the past, how trustworthy are they? .............oh wait, this sounds like TNO. But with actual memories of living his current life (childhood, etc), and possibly wanting to go back to becoming the Practical Incarnation...

If they can't even navigate this forum, how are they supposed to use Kickstarter? How are they supposed to know about it? The point is, they're not supposed to know about it. They're supposed to be get interested and possibly buy the game later on, when it's actually been translated and marketed (perhaps fan-marketed/word of mouth trickling down from English-enabled communities in their countries) in their languages, which will help Obsidian to actually profit from the game. It is not something that our Kickstarter pledges are supposed to do, making profit, I mean.

Seeing as how the biggest market for these things nowadays is Europe, I think localization will definitely help Obsidian's chances of establishing a proper IP. Remember that Kickstarter backers are only a fraction of what the market actually is----and people who don't know English might not even know about Kickstarter, or even care. Some of them might not even be Obsidian fans. But there may be many who wants an old-school RPG with some proper depth. I think it's important, even if I will not use the feature. If it's not practical to add multilanguages *right now*, they could try to make it possible to patch it in later on. The feature I'm personally interested in is modding for obvious reasons, but I'm in this to support Obsidian's interests as much as because I want the game to get made, so....

Asia. Thailand, specifically. My country is a cesspool of piracy where it was (and still is) much harder to get something legally than otherwise, so I didn't pay the guys for PS:T back in the day. So very glad that pay time finally came.

I typically read faster than people speak, so voiced dialogues just usually means skipped/wasted voice acting to me, with the rare and/or Japanese exceptions where the voice is just that good. That said, important characters getting voiced tends to add some gravitas to the scene (with the downside that you might not want to know they're important from the get-go), so I'd like that if it is within budget. Which it won't be. As for EVERYONE getting voiced---there's a lot to say against it. Have you noticed how repetitive and/or bad quality 'generic' dialogue tends to sound? Yeah. Wouldn't want that.

Might I join? >_> Upped my pledge, and Kickstarter name just changed to RP - Obsidian Order Sword Sharpener. (Though for listing here, I'd rather use Monkcrab for less confusion. I like monkcrabs.) OBSIDIAN CAN HAVE ALL MY SWORDS. AND AXES. AND BAZOOKAS.

No to rolling and yes to point buy. I agree that character creation should be something fun in itself, though. I literally spent hours in Darklands and Arcanum, and I've lost count of the times I've restarted the early areas in Fallout just to try out the quirks. The thing is, the fun part of those things are hardly the stats. It's the pasts you come up with as you choose your characters. Darklands had you choosing backgrounds and literally all the details of how the chars spent their lives before the adventure. Arcanum had you choosing specific pasts and quirks/flaws. And Fallout was yeah. You're not JUST choosing what the characters can do. You're choosing who they ARE. What we know about PE is that it'll allow you to choose culture. Considering what they said about cultures and ethnicities, it should be interesting. I'm hoping for a lot of options, as well. Some of it might be cosmetic, but as long as it lets you customise the character and how they got there!

This. I would love nothing more than to have a full orchestra, but it's probably wishful thinking considering budget constraints. It would be REALLY nice, though, to have a few real instrument solos every now and then, money be willing. If it is STILL expensive, well, I guess it's one more sad sacrifice we must make for the sake of making the game great...digital samples certainly have improved recently, and they're not shabby at all. I really like what Justin has said about game music so far, especially the one about music being bombastic all the time. Too many games do it and it's very tiring, and after a while all the music just blurs together, no matter how good the composition is. This is one of the things I feel Japanese game composers still get better than most western ones, IMO.

I had to google that because I have no recollection of these bioware races -- the pictures I got look like blue women with tentacles on their heads. Imagine looking at that from high above, from the isometric perspective. Would it look like a blue woman with tentacles on her head or a non-gender being? What does a non-gender being look like anyway? Modrons are asexual/non-gendered, I believe! And Nordom was cuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuute. You'd need a design which specifically avoids things that invokes the Bipedal Sentient Species With Sexual Dimorphism image, but it can be done. There's a lot of non-sexually dimorphic animals IRL to look for inspiration, too, if necessary. The downside of this is that it'd make said species a little, er, exotic.

The topic question really does depend on the world and the story, doesn't it? In games that allow you to walk around the world after the ending and see what's changed after all is said and done, I typically love that part to tiny little bits. It's rare, however. And it depends on the type of the story, how the story ends and how Obsidian plans to handle possible sequels/expansions. In games where you pick up where you left off when going on your end game quest and keep exploring the world, I typically like it well enough, mostly because it allows me to follow the urgency of the game plot as urgently as I feel while not worrying about missing that tiny quest in the middle of nowhere. Again, however, it depends on how the story ends. And it also depends on the nature of the world. In Planescape I wouldn't want to go back to Sigil even if it didn't end the way it did. It's not the sort of world that is fun to explore after the story ends, your experience in the world is so tied to your experience in the story and vice versa. So really, it depends. If it's a story/world where such a thing makes sense, I would love to play after the end. If it doesn't, then I don't.

As an asexual person, I'd happily play a race of golems, mollusks or squid people. I'm just saying. The world throws too much sexuality in my face every day as it is. That said, I'm pretty sure Obsidian has a specific vision for the game-world, and they have a limited budget. It's really their call whether non-binary gender options are a suitable for both of those, I think. They're pretty much the best bet you get for intelligent treatment of it, yes, but even so there's a lot of things to consider.

Voted hard. 'Pay attention to the plot' should mean REALLY paying attention to the plot, though, so actually my 'hard' might as well be 'Very hard'.... Why are we assuming game over plot choices will be there, anyway?

Oh god no. Side activities are fine, but for that I'd rather have them spend resources on creating more interactive 'flavor' content instead of balancing minigames.

I'd say that 20 hours is what I'd expect to get the sense of place right for a large, detailed world suitable for a new IP hoping to go on forward. 30-40 hours would be ideal, of course, but that's a luxury I doubt we can afford right now. 10-15 hours MIGHT just do it, but I don't know, it feels a little odd to me. They still need to sell to interested non-backers, too. That said, I'm also a slow exploration-type player, so an average 15 hours RPG might just take me 20. It's just how these things typically translates into amount of content when people say 'hours'.