Rosveen

what an amusing misrepresentation. josh noted that there were implementation issues with the stronghold and when folks offered resource intensive "fixes," then josh observed that stronghold are, regardless o' quality, a feature that many folks active dislike. game development is a zero-sum endeavour; if you wanna add X or fix Y, then you must necessarily take resources from Z. so, for a polarizing feature such as strongholds that faced implementation issues during development, what other poe features or content would you sacrifice to improve the stronghold? as a paid-for stretch goal, not offering a stronghold were likely considered impractical. no doubt the perfect reasonable fanbase and game reviewers woulda' listened to obsidian's cost v. benefit analysis regarding the sacrifice o' the stronghold and given such arguments due consideration. *snort* heck, spend 20 minutes reading posts on this board should makes clear that folks is not gonna be reasonable. listen to continued complaints 'bout romances or per kill xp or how addition o' an optional feature that bob will never use (respec) nevertheless ruins his game. *shrug* would be interesting to hear what obsidian had wanted the stronghold to be, but am doubting that would improve the disposition o' the fans. the uninspired implementation o' the poe stronghold is the fault o' none save obsidian. nevertheless, the mischaracterization o' josh comments on the matter is unfortunate and unhelpful. HA! Good Fun! I wouldn't sacrifice any feature of PoE, I said I wanted the stronghold removed entirely if it can't be done right (by this I don't mean "exactly like game X", simply thoughtfully designed and fun) with the resources available. I stand by this statement. It's only my opinion, of course. I understand they were worried backers would protest. Well, this backer wouldn't, I think they should be aware of that too. Larian broke down their promised megadungeon, so evidently it can be done without the sky falling. In any case, consider what happened. Folks who don't like strongholds ignore it anyway. Folks who do like strongholds are disappointed. Who benefitted from this feature being in the game at all? How many people liked it? It actually detracted from my experience. I'm serious when I say I'd enjoy the game more if it didn't have this stronghold. It was tied into the main story so strongly I felt compelled to restore it, but the restoration process was nothing but an annoyance and failed expectations. I wouldn't mind so much if it was completely optional, but I was railroaded into it. I was indifferent to the stretch goal when it was announced and I'm not nearly as upset about the result as I may sound, but at the same time I also didn't back PoE to play poor Facebook minigames. I imagine the implementation issues were discovered so late in development that it was impossible to move the stronghold out of sight. Unfortunate, but understandable. Let's hope they don't repeat the same mistake next time.

The stronghold isn't anywhere near to getting it right, it's awful. If Josh's attitude is "some people aren't interested in this feature, so let's half ass it and call it a day", then I'd rather they didn't include it at all. Even at the cost of breaking a stretch goal promise.

I probably will be, just a little. Not because I'm against MP in general,but because I'll be afraid they won't have enough resources to polish both single and multiplayer modes. We all know many aspects of PoE could use additional work, I don't want this to happen again. But if they can pull it off... Fine, sure. It's not my cup of tea (I wasn't interested in MP in the IE games either), but if it draws more people in without endangering core features of the game, why not. Just as long as it's a separate mode I'm not forced to play.

A line of code here, new interface there... I'm sure it's something Josh could put together during his lunch break.

This is the best mod ever. Video games are a great way to learn languages, so I play in French sometimes, but only when I know the game well enough to remember the dialogues without reaching for a dictionary every half minute. This will make it 10 times easier. Thank you! I'm going to try it as soon as I'm back from holidays.

How so?

I have to admit I'm a little surprised the team has so many misgivings about mod support. People have modded games for decades, even the IE games had a very active modding community. With all this experience, there should be no question about the value of modding and its positive influence on the game's longevity. In fact, mods are the only reason I played BG at all, the first game made my eyes bleed (that was before Enhanced Editions). Of course, PoE is unlikely to have anywhere near this vibrant modding scene (which will save you a lot of moderation trouble), but if there are people willing to try and brainstorm, why not give them space to do so? As for the problems you listed, you can look to other communities for reasons and solutions. The way you talk about it, it looks like an unpredictable, uncharted territory. It isn't. Nexus hosts mods for hundreds of games - including 58 files for Pillars of Eternity, so plagiarism, copyright infringement and donations already are very real possibilities. Somehow Obsidian hasn't been buried under a mountain of lawsuits yet.

I've seen more vitriol in discussions about arachnophobia than player housing... When can we expect spiders with so poor models that we can barely tell they're spiders at all, saving us from frustration of interacting with something we dislike?

It wasn't only that. TES modding is very collaborative, there was the problem of monetizing mods relying on SKSE or assets from other mods. There was a question of the ethics of monetizing mods at all (especially the likes of SkyUI or the unofficial patches). But yes, lack of quality control was one of the biggest issues. Valve didn't understand the nature of TES modding, the frequency of conflicts and the importance of tools like mod managers, Wrye Bash etc. They weren't prepared for what they tried to do. Hopefully their inevitable next attempt will be better thought out. So... PoE modding, what can be done about it?

Valve does paid mods, you can look into it if you're interested. The Sims 2 case is also worth researching. Bethesda recently tried exploring it for Skyrim in cooperation with Steam Workshop and it exploded in their faces because the modding community was different and TES modding itself is more complex, from technical and legal point of view, than anything done for Valve games. Basically, their proposed system had more holes than Swiss cheese. What we have now is, as Nakia said, Nexus donations through PayPal. They are completely voluntary (which is why very few people use them) and aren't even payments for specific mods, just a general transfer to the modder.

Can you please not. We're stuck right in the middle... again.

Maybe not make THIS game online, but have a game within the PoE universe online, with similar style and graphics and everything. Would LOOVE this to happen I really hope not. I'm enjoying PoE, and the last thing I want is for there to be story-centric stuff spread all over the place in eighteen different places and products I'll never enjoy, let alone get into. The whole franchising thing has gone too far. It is a mercy that Dragon Age decided to spin off into mediocrity so soon, because nowhere has it been worse in this regard than there, as far as I've noticed. Even the Elder Scrolls universe, which has a more mainstream and generally less demanding audience than PoE, didn't translate into a very popular online game with that audience. The PoE audience would be even more easily disappointed if an online followup were anything short of a miracle, and even a followup would take resources away from future single player content that we know Obsidian does well.To be fair, the format chosen for ESO was very unfortunate. It should have been a small scale co-op experience or if an MMO, then a sandbox - not a PvP-centered themepark that it is. The management wasn't the best either; I never felt like the dev team had a clear, strong vision of what they wanted the game to be and how to incorporate its Elder Scrolls heritage into their plan.

Almost everything about the stronghold is pointless, so do whatever. Don't send your active companions on adventures, though. Turns depend on done quests so you will have to play with an incomplete team, which is counterproductive. Your active companions gain XP as you play, no need to get rid of them for minor XP bonuses.

I strongly dislike both NWN games.

I never said DLC are bad, but I prefer one uninterrupted game experience. I also play Telltale games when all episodes are out, binge watch TV shows and read shorter novels in one sitting.

If another developer wants to make a game in the spirit of NWN, I wish them all the best and I might even back the project despite having no interest in it myself. But Obsidian promised a solid single player experience and that's what I want to see - not a toolset thinly disguised as a game like NWN. Please devs, keep this game offline.

How do you define a gimmick, Gromnir?

It is not, you only need to tell in box that product is supplement product that needs some other products to work. Yeap. A certain company I won't name seems to think releasing a fished product is a bad idea and always releases their games in parts over the course of months or even a whole year. No one seems to care when they do it so why not Eternity try it's hand too? There's nothing wrong with episodic content in itself. TV shows are structured like this and I don't see anyone up in arms about it. While I prefer binge watching/playing, the only real fault of that company are untimely releases of new episodes.

I think we should wait with declaring the new companions cliché until we've met them and talked to them. And yes, Zahua clearly isn't bald.

The Devs said that as the expansion was promised before the game was released that it was decided it would be best to release part of the expansion early so as not to keep the Kickstarter backers waiting too long for something. Hence why we get Part 1 now as opposed to getting the whole thing 3 months from now. So it's really more of a quirk than anything representing how future expansions will play out. Still, I don't mind getting something early if it means we can play with it while we wait for it to be completed. This reasoning doesn't make sense to me because by splitting it in two, they essentially give us smaller DLC when the original idea was to avoid small DLC. Yes, I know, the second part is a continuation of the story... But it doesn't change the fact that what I install and play the day it comes out won't be a full-fledged expansion. So I'm going to wait.

I'd be fine with TotSC. It added new locales and an excellent dungeon (well, tower) to explore; if White March has all that, but tied together with one story, it should be fun. Although personally I'd prefer to skip the dungeon because the base game already has one. I'm firmly in the "interesting quests, less hack'n'slash" camp.

I thought they said 6 months is a long time to wait and that's why they divided it in two parts.

They openly said that Devil of Caroc and Zahua are new companions. Ystala doesn't seem to be, but they still have the unrevealed fourth hero who's probably in White March too (maybe part 2?)

nvm

I prefer it this way. It enhances the base game, not continues it - because it's not a sequel. Actually, a lot of RPGs do expansions that way, some just let you play them after finishing the main quest, but that's because unlike PoE, they're open-ended games. Mass Effect 3 was in a similar situation as PoE, you had to go back to a save.