RTWAP

I can confirm that the problem went away if I killed the constructs on the path out, then talked to killed Azo, and then went up to the main floor and talked to the statue (not encountering any new Constructs, obviously). And then I could go back down and kill more constructs and it was all fine.

God/Pantheon Idea: Imagine a world where Gods form and are sustained by the power of their believers, especially their souls upon dying. And then imagine a world where Gods don't form at first, and instead people commit themselves to rules that have the force of a million souls behind them. A famous hero in ages past is renowned for honesty, so people always swear oaths in his name, until it literally becomes impossible to do so and not be punished for it. Another famous hero believes people's true names (keys to their souls) should not be forcibly taken from them. Over time that too becomes very hard to do. To a lesser extent, a guild's secrets may be protected by another avatar. And then it all changes when an actual Evil God shows up, and the empowered rules aren't flexible enough to stop him. So new heroes arise to fight him, and in the end they combine all their souls, and the power of all those rules into one tricky individual who can stop the Evil God. Let's call him the first Good God. He's the God of Death, representing the sacrifices of many, and from whom life and hope springs.

Another tweak ... I like quality adjectives for armour like Crude, Flawed, Standard, Fine, Improved, Superior, Exceptional, Heroic, Exquisite, and Legendary. Have each armour have a base value for all attributes (and then vary some of the attributes to get the final values). For example, maybe the system generated a random set of plate that is 50% improved. For all the attributes pick the midpoint for the allowable values for plate. Then vary some of the attributes randomly. This gives you an easy way to set the quality adjective for the armour. Maybe 50% improved is Superior. So it's Superior Plate. And it lets the player know at a glance how good the armour is on most of the attributes. Then the player can delve into the details to see where the armour is better than expected, and where it is worse. In terms of auto-naming of random armours, you could use the highest attribute to generate the name. Armours with high stealth are from Dantos. Armour with high movement modifiers are Telcerian. So from the example above, it might have a stealth value that's 65% of the way to the max stealth value for plate. So it's Superior Dantosian Plate.

I ran a campaign once where items become more magical as the character progressed. In a soul-based system like PE maybe the bad guys souls accumulate a portion of each soul they dispatch kind of like spiritual sludge. And when your valiant hero kills them, the "freed" bits of souls attach in a more useful way to the hero and his equipment. Of course, a bit of the soul of the bad guy attaches too, but in a non-useful way.

Cultural or material descriptors: I think that adds to the immersiveness. Names should be what the armour is called in the world. Amour attributes: All armours should have attribute values that define how they work in the game system. Some examples could be: Damage reduction Hit reduction Reduction in movement speed Reduction in nimbleness Weight Impact on spellcasting (perhaps for each type of spellcasting) Armour system: I would suggest a limited number of fundamental armour types (e.g. cloth, leather, chain, banded, plate). And then take the armour attributes and define allowable upper and lower limits for each armour type. To balance the armour types you look at the best possible armour of each type and determine if it is balanced against the other types across the set of character classes, roles, and play styles. The best plate will never leave you as nimble as the best leather, but it could leave you more nimble than an average suit of leather. Comparing armours: A very easy way to compare armours is to have the system determine a price. At a glance a player can get a sense of how good the armour is, and then delve into the details as desired. The algorithm used by the system should inflate the price as an attribute value nears the top of the range for that type, and if multiple attributes have high values then it should be very expensive.

This. The first Witcher game journal was not just useful, but interesting to read too. And made easy to get back into the game, even after a 2 months pause. That's a great point. Life happens and we can't always play a game straight through. A well designed journal system can really help you pick up the threads of the story.

Just think about it, if EA was publishing, we could get a 9th companion character in day one dlc, and a 10th a few months later! No. If EA was publishing we could get a 7th companion character in day one DLC, and an 8th companion if we pre-ordered through their preferred retail partner.

To bad you can't post-date a commitment. Or buy on an installment plan. The thing is, Obsidian may determine they have a business reason for not keeping contributions open indefinitely. They need to set a budget and project plan. Money that comes in later can't be counted on and therefore is unplanned. They might prefer to have it up front. So enforcing a deadline acts as encouragement to commit. But we've seen people in this thread who are committed, they're just temporarily lacking funds. So if they could commit now, with payment due in 3 months then everyone would get what they want.

Great feedback. In response, I would tweak my suggestion in the following ways. 1) Quest maps or other written lore would just be added to the book, but written in a different hand so you know it's not yours. Heck, you could use the Table of Contents to list other books/topics at your disposal so it can be used as an index into your entire knowledge base. Other books discovered whole aren't going to come with the "write to read" mechanism. 2) Instead of having a player 'memory' show up on screen, do it all in the journal. At the first non-combat opportunity you hear the sound of charcoal on paper for a few seconds and then a book closing. If you check your journal it would have an entry in the ToC and a page that says "Mushroom Mines of Midlothia - write more later". 3) If you want to read a new entry you don't need to rest, click on the "write more later" and watch as your character smudges out the "write ..." and starts filling the page with what he's learned. If you're interrupted you might stop mid sentence but could go back later and click on the last word to continue. More opportunities for immersion.

That's a good point, the untapped market for the game is much greater than the kickstarter support. To me this model is great because allows successful game publishers to gain a hefty pool of capital. If P:E sells 300K at $40ea then that's $12million to Obsidian. My hope is that some of that would be retained and reinvested. This isn't game design without a publisher, this is game design and self-publishing. And the more successful the small game studios are with it, the more capital they accrue, and the larger projects they can fund. It may be that only 25% of some future $20M game is covered by a kickstarter campaign, but that means they only have to have $15M to cover the rest, and only have to have $15M in sales to cover that investment. Selling 400K at $40ea means a profit, where without kickstarter that would be a $4M loss. And then you factor in the community-building and free marketing from passionate and involved backers and it's a huge benefit for small developers who could develop more advanced and more commercially successful games if given the chance. EDIT: The first project to harness this model for a large immersive MMO will be awesome. Imagine early backers creating world detail during the beta, before the game even releases. Having 50,000 crowdsourced world-builders would create a level of detail unmatched in other games. Allow beta-testers to play up to max level and then retire their beta characters into NPC-dom to locations all around the game universe, with scripted interactions based on the character as first played by the beta-tester. Who wouldn't love that?

It honestly doesn't bother me as a backer during the KS phase. I know there will be some people that want to feel special because they backed it during the KS phase, but personally I say you guys keep it open for the next year or more. I want you guys to get as much money as possible to make the game awesomer. Seconded. If you really want to provide a differentiation then just provide a different in-game item to people who become backers after the KS ended. Personally, I don't care. I just want the game as awesome as possible.

I voted 'For', but I am hoping that there will be ad-hoc or dynamic accomplishments for certain classes of creatures (specifically bad guys or beasts). There are a lot of ways those less 'storyline' accomplishments could be supported within and 'objectives' system. I hope they find one they like. And we like.

One of the previous stretch goals lets you make your own companions from each class. But they're not making 'character' companions for each class. They're only doing the ones they have a good character idea for. Heck, maybe we'll end up with more than two companions with the same class, with very different attitudes or playstyles.

It's not exactly modding tools, but I'd love to see user-created map areas integrated into the game universe, especially if they are planning on doing more games in this universe they control. To start with, they should define the map areas in which they have restricted user additions to the official game universe, Restricted doesn't mean disallowed, it just means you need to ask, probably starting with a thread on the forums to gather user support. Obviously you don't want huge changes in areas already designed by the game designers, but I ca picture adding a poster in a shop that says "Traveling to Daggerfen? Visit my cousin Rothlar's Shop on River Lane". Game designers could set high-level limitations on the remaining undesigned areas. They might say "No large cities here" or "mostly forest". Then once there is a vibrant user community (a week after launch?) they could open up a few of the map squares and start accepting proposals from groups of players for designs those squares. Groups of modders will compete against each other to provide the best design, with borrowing and cross-fertilization encouraged. The goal is richly detailed and interesting map areas. The one area where modders might need help is in the backgrounds. A generic set of backgrounds and some customization tools would be helpful.

What if you could also get XP just for hanging around in town, interacting with NPCs? It would be another form of grinding I guess. So someone who didn't grind in combat could conceivably advance as fast or faster than your guy on a wilderness rampage. Would you accept the argument that your grinding isn't affected by the existence of an easier path to XP because it's a single player game?