Blackstream

You'll note my statement didn't make any statements for or against either romances. The ironic part is I even agree with your statement that romances should fit the story and not be shoehorned in. But even more than that, I'm intrigued by what Chris said about mature relationships and the much broader spectrum that it covers, which also includes many shades of romances. But that's not the point. The point is, we're deep into the second main thread of people effectively yelling the same points at each other over and over again refusing to budge on any issues. People are clearly heated about this matter, and talking this out is clearly not doing anyone any good. I didn't even say I'm in favor of blocking romance talk (after all, I'm doing it myself), but I did say I can see why it was done originally. Agree or not, this issue is wildfire and would probably take over this board completely if the mods let it.

I can tell it's gonna be a long year and a half

I'm starting to see why romance conversation was originally banned in this forums, and also why Obisidan was so careful to not say yes or no when asked a million times.

I have no idea. It depends on the various classes and what they can do, as well as the companions and what classes they cover. There's several possibilities Magic Class (Wizard, Cipher) Combine with NPC mages for spammed overlapping aoe mezzes of death and sick nasty combos. It's a big assumption, but without further information, most of the utility and broken combinations tend to be in the mage classes. Essential Class (Priest, Rogue) I might pick a class that fills a mandatory role if there's no npcs that I want that fill that role. Rogue I suspect will be especially big, because things like stealth and pickpocketing probably won't be available on other classes. Priests especially would likely be sick because of party buffs, secondary fighter roles, and possibly even off magic class roles, but based on their description of being 'more like paladins', I doubt the latter. Rogues are likely dps along with essential party utility that lets me get around (lockpicking, trap finding, stealth, etc). I find it hard to imagine there won't be a companion rogue, however, so I'm probably good. Unknown broken combination Maybe there's some combination like say fighters that have some kind of ally guard that if you have more than one fighter doing it, you can get sick nasty synergy bonuses. Maybe there's no bezerker companion, but I can have my cipher mind control my bezerker during a rage and be able to control him when I normally wouldn't be able to. Who knows. I'm personally leaning towards wizard right now, but it's still a tossup between Wizard, Priest, and Rogue for me (although I almost certainally wouldn't pick a rogue if I had a teammate already that was one).

http://www.gamesindu...-on-kickstarter You tell em, Chris. Leave the romances in the teen novels and the japanese dating sims. Even though I'm pro-romances, I agree with Chris's statement, but I think I'm reading it differently than you. I read that as, he wants to encompass all sorts of relationships with his writing, just not romances. Whatever makes sense for the character they are writing. Which I'm totally for. Basically I read that as, they want to write real, complex characters with incredible depth, and if that leads to companions having a rivalry with the MC, or some kind of possessive jealous relationship, or some kind of little sister like thing, or teacher/mentor, or yes, a romance, then he'll write that. But he doesn't want to shoehorn it in. Which I don't want either. I do hope there's some kind of romance that I can get into, however, but if it doesn't suit the character designs, then I'll deal with it. Personally, since they're trying to hit themes they wouldn't touch normally, I'd like to see a real triangle of some kind. Similar to Aerie/Haer'Dalis, but better and with more depth. Or possibly, the romantic interest cheats on you, and you gotta deal with the changed party dynamic afterwards. I dunno. There's a lot of interesting possbilities.

Since the dungeon is as big as it is, chances are it's not gonna be designed to be run all at once anyways. They'll probably have exits at the points you highly want to consider progressing with the game a bit and leveling before coming back. So like every 2-3 levels or so is my guess.

Going back to full parties, that most lickly what 90% of the player bace will use. we are not considering others factors, just because we can do a cobination of (5/8) giving 53 combinations is not the same the same as the feel of having viable options for your party. Don't forget that thanks to the adventurer's hall, you can actually have a full 'less than full' party. For example, AHing a couple of the missing classes, then filling out the rest of the slots with the 3-4 companions you want for that run. I'm not sure if -not- having a companion with another companion will ever really change my experience, just potentially subtract from it, but you never know I guess. But likely after people have gone around the block a few times, I suspect that people will start supplementing 1-2 spots with AH companions just to change things up a bit. I don't know if I will, but I might.

As far as 8 companions go, I would like to have 1 companion for every class (so 11), but the more I hear about just how much work they're planning on putting into each companion, the more okay I am with 'only' 8. In BG2, as I recall, companions were mostly just cosmetic unless you were doing a character specific quest with them, or they were doing one of their few banters. Dragon Age Origins actually was pretty good, because your companions chipped in quite a bit and there was quite a bit of story behind each one to explore, and that was only 9 companions. And the big thing is, Obsidian knows what it takes for them to make a game, and how long it'll take. They've given us more on everything but companions past 8. Why? They don't feel comfortable doing that. 15-16 floor megadungeon? Fine. Second Big City? Sure. More than 8 companions? We'll see. Now, we did get a ton of funding, and they did say multiple times that over the course of development they would be evaluating the game and seeing how they felt about companions, but they also pointed out that with the same amount of writing that goes into one companion they could basically fill out a small town or more.... it makes me wonder. So my official stance is, Obsidian, make the game you want to make, and I'll play it. And to that 'one guy', I'm not being dangerous to obsidian when I support their decisions. I pledged money almost 2 years ahead of time because I believe in their vision. You know what's actually dangerous? When people who don't know what they're talking about make unreasonable demands on companies, and they end up trying to meet everyone's demands to make them happy rather than stick to their guns and make what they wanted to make in the first place. The whole point of this kickstarter is that Obsidian wants to make their game, not a game they try to make but the publishers overrule decisions, or try and rush things, or change things about the game to make it 'better' for their audience. So I want to see it.

Baldur's Gate had incredibly memorable characters. Companions who I never picked up for more than a few minutes have been stuck in my head for over 10 years. Ok, Yeslick, Dynaheir and Mazzy were pretty dull.. And I have yet to hear of anybody actually USING Tiax, Quayle, Alora, Skie or Eldoth. But they definitely had alot of character, considering how little they actually talked back then. I used Alora. She was cute and a pure thief, since I dual classed Imoen.

I think if you just go with the (from what I can tell because I've only watched a few lets plays) planescape torment route and have a ton of dialogue responses, it solves all issues anyways. You have to click on the flirty options to even go down that route, and even if the girl/guy initiates on you, you can choose to be disinterested from the start. It's a much more natural way to go about things, and I think it'd make everyone happy. To make my suggestion more clear, if when a companion says something, you have like 5-10 dialogue options, and only a few are flirty or whatever, you could just not pick those options, and after you've explored all the lore and such, pick the "Let's keep walking now" option and whatever. Which is what I expected they'll be doing from the start. Everything the devs have said so far has pointed to a more natural, more rich, much fuller experience than we're used to. I doubt the Aerie of this game is just gonna every 2 game hours pop up the next stage of the relationship dialogue where your only options are to tell her off and possibly make her leave the party, or to be a decent human being and eventually have her baby.

Honestly, in my opinion, until they close paypal, we should keep allowing memberships, I don't really see a reason not to, and the original reason was to support obsidian anyways, so continuing to 'allow' people to donate an extra $8 to support obsidian until they close pledges completely seems wholesome to me.

In your case I believe I saw you posting in the comment section while the KS was going saying you had paid but were trying to register a forum account anyways. Not that it matters cause this group is cool and would take your word for it anyways.

The one thing we gotta remember is that these guys are industry pros who have been making games for a long time, making a game that of a type they've made many times before, with way more resources and tools and less memory/hardware restrictions than they had before. If they were new indie developers, I'd worry, but these guys I feel pretty it's pretty reasonable that they can more or less hit their timeframe. But if it pushes forward 3 or 4 months or whatever, that's always fine too.

Believe it or not, watcher's keep levels are actually quite a bit smaller than what they got planned per level. Per Feargus, they're planning on dragon's eye sized levels IIRC, which as I recall the numbers given, is something like between 8x8 and 10x0 screens with each screen being 640x480. This game will be huge.

I was one of those people that upped their pledge in the final moments too. I sat on a $20 early backers for most of the month-long campaign (plus $25 for early access and $8 for OO)... then finally gave in and upped to $50 for literally all the rewards I cared about (concept art, lots of lore, all the ingame extras). Plus the same addons of course. Gonna be a long wait to 2014, but I can tide myself over with the hopefully frequent developer chats and updates

There's almost 50 high level epic top end items from players alone, and that doesn't include paypal backers. And then there's all the items the devs are gonna be putting in. Then factor in that the megadungeon is so big that they can't make the whole time end game content. Very likely it'll be something we do some of and come back for more after we level some more. That means the top end gear won't even be until the last few levels anyways. There'll be plenty of loot to be had in the megadungeon, yes, but there will be plenty of high end loot to be found elsewhere as well. I'm more worried about them having enough time and money to fit in all the gear and npcs and quests they have planned.

That's a good point. With Trial of Iron, you can let the game restart things for you You play through, learn about the game, have an epic story, then when you die, you should know how you actually wanna go about playing and building characters. What skills fit your playstyle, what classes and companions to go for, how to approach encounters, etc.

I'd honestly feel a little gipped if you couldn't guide a 'romance' down the best friends path instead. Just thinking about all the possiblities really hits home why they were sticking so stubbornly to only having 8 companions, saying how much resources would be going to them.

I suspect they'll be using some form a point buy system, but since random health is an element of IE games, there's the danger of them keeping it in. Here's to hoping that RNG can't just absolutely ruin a character at least.

It's been stated in an interview that there will be a variety mature relationships in this game that we can choose to pursue as much as we want, in response to a question asking about romance. "Would we be able to have our character fall in love with other characters in the game? Do we get to choose this or what if the game chose for us? Would it be possible to start a family, such as in the Fable games or Europa 1400 The Guild? There’ll be a variety of mature relationships in the game, and you can choose to interact with them as little or as much as you want." Feargus also commented on it, that if Chris said this was the case, then it's true. http://obsoletegamer...ainment-part-2/ Note that 'mature relationships' covers a huge array of relationships that may not be what people typically expect from BG style romances. Theoretically, one relationship could go to marriage and beyond, one relationship could go hard and fast and be a lustful relationship that doesn't go anywhere, and ultimately causes a self destruction as one party wants more than the other can give, one could be a love triange that isn't resolved with a silly 4 answer question where the results are picking #1 and #2 leaves the party, picking #1 and #2 stays in the party, and the reverse of those two, there could be bromances, super friendships... who knows. But this is what I want anyways, so hopefully they stick to this. EDIT: Another possbility, and one I want even more, are relationships that haven't 'concluded' by the end of the game, including future expansions. They want to continue this game with companions in future PE games, which means the potential for continuing relationships (not my thing as much, but think of how mass effect did it, for example). So a relationship could start off as a friendship, and slowly builds towards something more, but you might not see things really heat up until the second game.

An idea I've been toying with for awhile. The idea is, on any difficulty, but preferably at least normal, do your first playthrough before you know much about the game with Trial of Iron mode on. Every fight will be that much scarier, every success will be that much more meaningful and thrilling, pushing the limits of your health bar (not to be confused with the stamina bar) will be that much more dangerous. If a companion dies, you have to shoulder the loss and move on and fight in their memory (here's to hoping that Obsidian programs in teammate reactions to death of party members). On the flipside, you're almost certainally gonna die before you finish the game due to lack of knowledge about the game mechanics and encounters. So who here is brave enough?

There's easy solutions to this, that could be implemented if needed. 1) Each spell level could have an internal cooldown that starts when you cast the first spell. This could lead to some weird issues where you finish a spell level set and all the spells are immediately ready to cast again, but at least wouldn't encourage spell level spamming 2) Forget the cooldowns, refresh all spells at the end of combat. Implement a second wind mechanic that if fights go on long enough allow you to refresh all your characters abilities at once, if it's needed to have cooldowns come back in such fights. Second Wind could be timed and just start when the combat starts, it could be a meter that increases while your character is not using spell like abilities (you're effectively catching your breath, refilling your soul, whatever). You could even have the second wind mechanic just be used for refreshing spells in general at the end of combat. It's a lot like a global cooldown of sorts, but I think it's subtly different in how it works and how its implemented. I'm sure there's more if there's issues with cooldowns.

http://www.kickstarter.com/profile/383396289 Finally joining. Please make me the "Wanderer of the Obsidian Order". I checked your list on the site and didn't see it so it 'should' be unique.

My second time through, I had a pretty good freakin party and when I approached Firkraag, he gave me the speech about how he'd let his disciple deal with me, and that time I was like, "No. I'm dealing with you now. Not later, not on your terms, you're dieing -now-". Then I killed them both on my first try and it was freaking AWESOME. I felt so freakin heroic and not putting up with his crap any longer after the whole deal with that quest felt so good. Easily my best experience in that game.

I think we did the same thing, i remember particularly the tower guard..and the fight with the demon at the last level..Plus let's be fair BG2 didn't have a good rogue at all in it.. Yoshimo. Bounty hunter. THE rogue. End of line. People don't count him cause he dies. If you could have kept him in your party all the way through, yeah, he'd be the rogue pick no doubt. EDIT: Also of note, in response to a few other posts, they said awhile back in an interview or something they didn't want to make romances a stretch goal, I would assume cause romances if they included them would be built into the character's writing from the get go and wouldn't really be an extra. But I dunno. I just hope it doesn't pop as a 3 mil stretch goal and we fall short or something.