PrimeJunta

It didn't completely fail, since they did end up delivering something. That something, however, falls far short of what they intended and promised. Not to put too fine a point on it, it's a barely playable mess. They've been commendably open about what went wrong in their last few updates. The short version is that they're total rookies in game development or software development in general and weren't capable of learning how to do it before their money ran out.

@Volourn – Thank you. At least you have the sense to state up front that you like you're game to be designed to play this way. What puzzles me about Stun is that he's twisting himself in all these knots to "prove" that the game is not, in fact, designed to be played that way.

These days it's much easier than you think. (1) Download Unity from here. (2) Learn to use it. (3) Create your dream game based on your brilliant idea. You'll probably want to start with something fairly small, but you can always build up from that. If your idea is good and you can demonstrate that you can make it happen, it shouldn't be hard to bring people on board who can do stuff you can't. In this day and age, the means to make a great game are available to anyone. Seriously.

Except that if you're facing a mage for the first time, you'll expect him to cast spells, because you'll know what a mage is, as you can actually play one and the mechanics are all in the manual. If you're facing a beholder for the first time, you have no idea what to expect. He'll have to kill you a few times first. Which, Stun, is the point I'm making. But since it's not sinking in, I think I'll just leave it at this.

Mages use spells from the spell list available to you, so you know -- if you read the manual -- how to counter them. Not the same thing.

I did ask about beholders. You know, the ones that have abilities like Flesh to Stone and Disintegrate that will kill you with a single hit if you don't have the proper counter prepared. So, how about those?

In other words, you fight them by trial and error. By dying, and reloading, repeatedly. And then using that knowledge to fight them again. Until eventually you know what they're going to throw at you, apply the necessary counters, and breeze through. Which is, as I keep pointing out, meta-game knowledge. It's not something your character could know at that point. So thank you for conceding the point so gracefully. From where I'm at, that's not difficult. It's just tedious. It doesn't reward intelligence, paying attention to detail, doing your homework, talking to sages about what manner of beasts there are out there, and so on and so forth. The only thing it rewards is persistence. Mechanically repeating the same thing over and over again, varying one thing at a time, until you get it right. You called me lazy earlier. You're right. I am. I don't like to do chores like that. I don't like to do chores like mechanically applying the same long-term buffs over and over again. I don't like repeatedly reloading the same battle until I get it right. I don't like trekking back and forth from store to dungeon and back. I don't like any of the things I characterized earlier as "not fun." If you do enjoy these things, then cool, more power to you. But I enjoyed BG2 and the other IE games -- and I did enjoy them, a great deal, -- despite this kind of nonsense, not because of it.

Okay, Stun. Pleas explain how you can find out how to fight beholders, using only the manual supplied with the game and knowledge you can glean from the game itself, without resorting to trial-and-error through save/reload. Before you actually meet any, naturally. Talking about BG2. (Next question: golems. Then, dragons. And so on.)

Yeah, gotta love that plate. Although... where's the codpiece? I was promised a CODPIECE, damnit!

Damn, Stun, you're the best entertainment in ages. "Well, OK, you're right, I was wrong, you do need metagame knowledge... but DAMN IT MAKES IT SHINE IN REPLAYS!" I believe it's possible to make games with great replayability without having to rely on metagame knowledge for that. Just provide lots of alternative and mutually exclusive (re)solutions to problems it throws at you. Fallout (the original) did this extremely well, for example. FO:NV also.

Lazy, guilty as charged. Hater, not guilty, your honor. We may also be talking about a slightly different thing. I'm also generalizing somewhat to the NWN series. Thing is, with long-term buffs like Bull's Strength, Emotion: Hope, Stoneskin etc., why would you ever not want to apply them? (Or in MOTB with Persistent Spell, Haste, Mass Death Ward etc). The way I play, I find myself applying those standard buffs every time after rest. Every bloody time. It's repetitive, tedious, and adds nothing meaningful to the experience. For me anyway. Again, nonsense. Lets take the Big Daddy of the IE games. BG2. BG2 had hundreds and hundreds of fights. Of them, there are only maybe 2 fights in the entire game where meta-gaming might be necessary. And those 2 fights are hidden easter eggs. You won't even encounter them in the first place without meta knowledge. (Kangaxx, Twisted Rune) "Metagame knowledge is TOTES NOT NECESSARY! And I know this because I've played BG2 50 times and memorized every fight!" Way to prove my point, Stun.

In that case I'm almost certain that your essays were never even close to as good as they could have been. I'm lazy too and rarely wrote more than one draft of anything at school, because that was enough to get an A, most of the time. Since having to do such stuff in circumstances where it's seriously vetted, I've learned just how good those first drafts really are.

I don't recall electing PrimeJunta as the Minister of Fun-Defining for the world. Therefore, It's not up to him to decide what anyone else sees as fun. That's why I phrased it as a question. Are they fun? I don't think they're fun, but if you do, I can hardly argue with that. Edit: I also find it a little amusing that the people who are most vehement about how metagame knowledge is TOTES NOT NECESSARY in the IE games are the ones who have played them so many times they don't even remember what it was like the first time around. Heh.

@Bryy I guess. I never got the angst about that kind of stuff either. From where I'm at the big problem with the publisher system is that (1) the publishers rather than the studios get the rights, and (2) the publishers get final say over the product, which pushes things towards playing it safe and going for the lowest common denominator. I would be pissed if inXile or Obsidian announced that they've sold the IPR's to WL2 or P:E to EA because they run out of moolah. Distribution deals and such don't bother me the least.

Not intended that way. I'm also not denying that Obs and BIS produced more than their share of bugfests too. No doubt. I've got my own list. It's still a brilliant game, and after PS:T my favorite among all the party-based D&D cRPG's. Unbalanced and disappointing compared to what? I encountered two bugs on my one-and-a-half playthroughs. Both were cosmetic; in one case some toons were lacking heads, and in another case the map marker showing where you are was shifted to the right a bit. My suspicion is that the "bugfest" thing is due to confirmation bias -- Obs has a reputation for buggy games, so even a small number of low-impact bugs will make people go "Oh, bug, Obsidian, right." Shouldn't be. I try to judge things by what they attempt. While I like the odd J-RPG and have watched a few South Park episodes, I'm not a huge fan of that style of gameplay nor the series. I.e., I'm not in the core target demographic for the game. Obsidian has a track record of doing brilliant things with the material they're given to work with, whether it's epic D&D in a horrid engine, Fallout in 3D with Oblivion faces, or South Park. What's more, I think it's fairer to compare their games to other games that are out there rather than some imaginary ideal. Even in their weak spots Obsidian's games compare pretty well to what else is out there -- and they've done a lot to improve their weak spots over the years.

To clarify, the godlike variants -- with the different head details -- are by Polina. Pallegina, the paladin with the birdlike features, is also by Kaz. And yes, I do like the portraits, although to my eye Edér and Pallegina are a good deal better executed than the backer portraits.

FO:NV is superb by any standard. MotB is the least flawed NWN series game. South Park: The Stick of Truth is brilliant at what it attempts. That's three they hit out of the park, which is better than you can say for most studios as far as I'm concerned.

As an aside, I still don't get this discussion. Games are supposed to be enjoyable, right? Games are based on incentive systems, right? Therefore, an enjoyable game should provide incentives for enjoyable activities, and not provide incentives for unenjoyable activities, right? Are things like constant saving and reloading, repetitive, rote application of pre-buffs, trekking back and forth between a dungeon and a shop, shuffling things around in and between inventories, or repetitively killing the same respawning monsters over and over again enjoyable activities? If not, then why should the game incentivize you to engage in them?

It clearly bears repeating... Kickstarter isn't a pre-order system; it's a patronage and sponsorship system. Sometimes stuff fails in any of a variety of ways. (I backed Forsaken Fortress, and that didn't go so well.) Nevertheless, the devs are morally obligated to their backers to do their best to deliver what they promised in the pitch. Thing is, from where I'm at a lot of the rage around P:E or T:ToN hasn't actually been about what they promised in the pitch. It's been about what people assumed was in the pitch. People have (legitimately) different ideas about what, say, "the IE experience" means. The overall picture is pretty clear and was in fact defined relatively precisely in the pitch -- top-down isometric with hand-painted backgrounds, party-based, fantasy cRPG, deep companion interactions, plenty of tactical combat. The further away you get from those nailed-down core features, the more subjective it gets. Maybe someone really likes gnomes and always played a gnome in all the IE games. That would make the ability to play a gnome a core part of the IE experience for that person, and he would be legitimately pissed off that P:E doesn't have gnomes. But ultimately there's no way to satisfy everybody. Some of us want to see things we didn't like in the IE games being changed -- improved upon, from our point of view -- if they're not part of that core vision. Others especially liked those things and consider them integral to the IE experience and feel betrayed when they're removed. The converse is true too; I bet most of us would be a little miffed if Obsidian produced something with a max rez of 800 x 600 and pathfinding that gets characters from Venice to Milan via Jakarta. Beyond what they promised in the pitch, I would prefer that they use their own judgment to do what they believe is best for the game. I'm pretty sure they want to make a great game, and they'll want to make more after this one. If I didn't trust them to do that, I wouldn't have backed.

@Sheikh, I hate to break this to you, but creative expression is work. It can be immensely rewarding work, but it's definitely work, subject to all the constraints this sorry excuse of a capitalist economy imposes on us. So until the Revolution, things will be a little constrained.

@teknoman2 All of the portraits are made by Obsidian. All except the godlike variants are by Kaz. The backer portraits are overpainted on photos. The godlike one is by Polina.

I have seen worse first posts. Welcome.

@Hiro Gibs are in. They even show it in the very short gameplay video.

The problem with this is that unless you -- the level designer -- want to make the encounter turn into a chaotic free-for-all, you're pretty much obligated to place these convenient choke points everywhere. That leads to linear, corridor-like levels and monotonous gameplay. Why are you still harping on this "impairing the AI of the opponents" thing, when it's nowhere indicated that the fighter ability will do anything at all to the enemy AI? Um. So, in your opinion, turning a fighter into a mobile wall that's not actually doing any fighting is somehow more exciting than allowing him to stickily engage multiple enemies at once? Again, this is entirely incomprehensible to me, but there's no accounting for tastes. Now this is an excellent idea. Quite simple to do too. Have a "Wall of Iron" type spell, but with a narrow doorway in it. As an active ability, I don't much care for it. As a passive one, yeah, this would work. Thing is, with both of your fighter-based solutions... didn't you just say that you're "very worried" about anything that interferes with gankers' ability to scoot past fighters? Yet you're proposing two alternative abilities that do exactly that. Why the apparently change of heart? Lucky for you the barbarian has exactly that ability. So there's your solution -- have barbs instead of fighters in your front line! I agree 100%. Aggro mechanics suck. Isn't it great that P:E will have nothing of the kind?

Oh yes. The converse is true too. Kiting is way too easy. Tedious, but easy. Sticky engagement with punishing disengagement attacks is exactly the right recipe to solve that problem, and giving fighters a tangible edge in that is a great way to differentiate them. (Also, popping up enemies from nowhere behind you every once in a while is fine, but over and over and over again...?)