Haerski

I don't think anyone is asking for stretch goals about story. I just think they should reveal more information on existing content before it makes any sense to expect us to pledge for more. So basically more updates about world and how it works, not necessarily about story, but the scenery around it. He does Not. You're never making a 'valid point' when you jump to such all-encompassing conclusions on such little information. He doesn't jump to any conclusions. He expresses his opinion on stretch goals and updates. Nothing more, so his point is as valid as any of yours. I'm really getting tired of you Obsidian worshippers who can't stand any criticism against your Gods. Stretch goals have been so far very boring, uninteresting, disappointing, senseless and above all, they don't make me want to pledge more even if I could. Now you can try to prove why those points are invalid or stop posting s*** like that.

You sound very sure of yourself. Where did you get this information, because the picture I have gathered in my mind from all the bits and pieces is that they pretty much have the world, some characters and probably even early version of story thought out? Fact is few key people have been setting this project up since last spring and Wasteland 2's massive success in Kickstarter. Now there are already whole lot of people working on this so pre-pre-production is probably not right term anymore. Avellone has been diplomatically promising more information on world, characters and story in interviews for some time, but it has been pretty vague so far.

Maybe now a bigger detailed world map and a extra designer team joining will be the most effective stretch goal. Or bringing some big name along to the project. All-stars tactic has worked well on other projects, so that would definitively get peoples attention. They could also make more clear how many extra hands they are able to bring in this project after every achieved stretch goal. They have already said the size of development team depends on how much they get funded, so some estimated numbers could give some context of what we are buying by backing this project. You only read the title before commenting, didn't you? He is disappointed for just the reason you mentioned: Next to nothing is known about the game.

I kinda agree with OP. Leave the stupid accusations of trolling and other such childishness, because this guy really has a valid point here. Their updates about game have been little too technical for me since I really don't care much for actual mechanics as long as story and characters are good and interesting. Extra classes, races, factions, areas, etc. are of course good things and more is usually better at least to some extends, but I'm still left with a question: More of what? We know nearly nothing about the world, but we are promised more of it already. Doesn't make much sense to me and I can't help but feel indifferent. I have already pledged as much as I can and probably more than I should, but I still would like to hear deeper information on the world they are creating before Kickstarter ends cause I think there are more people, who still have money to pledge, wondering these same things.

Ordinary normal priced game: I don't care, but plastic definitively is more durable and as most games are using it anyway it fits much better on shelf among others. Collector's Edition: No question: Big cardboard box with lots of useless junk inside it. I don't think this would be good idea for stretch goal. After all most money is already coming from digital tiers and they probably don't care much for box materials. PE needs something a lot bigger for the final push.

No. Soon there would be more Collector's Editions on market than ordinary boxes. What kind of Collector's Edition is that? If you want it, you have to pay for it. T-shirt, postcard and special thanks in credits cost them nearly nothing so don't think they are going to give everything else on that tier for 80-110$. I would definitively lower my pledge if that happened. Actually I already considered doing so after they started selling Beta-keys to lower tiers since that was one of main reasons I upped my pledge in the first place. Seriously: No more alms Obsidian. Don't dig ground from beneath your feet.

I would have to say whole Planescape: Torment. Almost all dialog, every character, every place and every piece of story is pure brilliance. Maybe single best moment was the begining when I knew nothing about world yet and something completely bizarre and unexpected happened (I won't tell what in case someone has not played this yet) First expression: Sceptical: What the f*** just happened? Then widening grin as I slowly started to realise this was going to be something completely different from anything I had seen before. I'm envious to all you lucky people who already have the whole series to read. Finnish translations are currently coming along slowly. 1 book/year and last one released was Blood of Elves. Still four more years to wait! English versions seem to be progressing even slower so no help from there either.

IE magic is very broad term so don't try to hog it just for you Vancian purists. I love IE games and I'm very enthusiastic about this project, but I DON'T like Vancian system. Learn the difference.

Only game where I have seen this kind of info gathering before fight actually be satisfying and have much benefit in actual battle is The Witcher, which used Magic only briefly and with cooldowns. So are the cooldowns really the big evil behind why this kind of things have been mostly forgotten in games nowdays? I'd like to see this in more games too, but it definitively doesn't require adoption of Vancian magic system. Can kill if done wrong, can improve upon basic Vancian system if done right. You don't play new RPGs much do you? Even much hated The Elder Scrolls did this better than for example Bladur's Gate: When you have fought your way through snowtrolls and dragons at snowy plains for hours and finally see College of Winterhold looming at horizon that feeling you described is much stronger than ever in Infinity Engine game. And I'm not joking. Oh, and TES uses mana pool BTW, so no absolute need for Vancian here either. In Middle-Ages cities were dangerous places. You are blaming Dragon Age for having little realism in the game? Second I wouldn't say any of the cities in Dragon Age dungeons. If you encounter few muggers here and there that hardly qualifies. Cities in Dragon Age were places to meet people, hear rumors, find quests, replenish supplies and rest, though last one was not implemented so literally, but more as a feeling. Same as in most IE games I have played and definitively far from a "shop/loot-storage-area" you mentioned. Again I don't see any relevant point why this all could be achieved only by Vancian system. EDIT: and just a sidenote: I haven't played DA2, so I can't say anything how this worked in that. EDIT: For me every system (even those evil, eeevil cooldowns!) works as long as it has been implemented in fun and rewarding way and allows tactical versatility anywhere, anytime. It's after all pretty stupid to argue over any specific system since we don't know the big picture yet. Nowdays it almost always is something much more complicated than that.

Can you specify few games and explain why cooldowns were the exact reason they weren't tactical or unexpected enough? Then I might take your opinion seriously.

Purpose for mana points and cooldowns are same Barely, and in very different ways, especially where mana regen is involved. Cooldowns aren't strictly about limiting resources, but limiting the overuse of power moves/abilities in a short spawn of time. Memorization is all about limiting your resources for a fairly large amount of time (i.e. "I'm entering this dungeon now and I know that if I don't want to make a boring travel back to town I'll need to use these resources carefully"). Mana is a limited resource in the sense that gives you a limit of spells you can use in a row, but doesn't prevent you to use, for instance, the same useful but inexpensive spell very often as far as mana is available. So, if what you are trying to say is that every mechanic can find its place in a game, then I agree with you; if you are saying that they are essentially the same thing, then you are wrong. DA:O had mana points AND cooldowns in same system and that prevented quite effectively you from overusing most powerful spells. Friendly fire was another thing they used to stop spamming of area effect spells´and those worked great. It's not about actual system; it's about how they implement them. Same goals can be achieved with much smoother and rewarding systems than Vancian. That's just you playing poorly and/or exploiting the system. If anything the problem with IE games was that they didn't punished/discouraged that kind of behavior hardly enough. Resting in the middle of a dungeon should be far more dangerous and going back to town to rest should be far more problematic (i.e. you end wasting way too much time to end a timed quest or like in Dark Souls when you rest all minor enemies respawn with you). Of course, developers usually don't like these punishing mechanics, despise how they make things much more interesting, because there are many people, even on this forum, that don't like to play to master the mechanics but "just for the story", I don't know about you, but I play games for fun; not to get punished. I mean difficulty is always welcome, but punishment for playing poorly? Wow, you must be one of those hardcore fans then?

Basically yes. In vancian system you have to rest in tavern or other place where this is allowed to recharge your spells, while in usual cooldown system you'll have to wait certain time OR rest to recharge. Cooldown time usually depends on power of the spell. Only real difference is that in Vancian you have limited amount of spells to use before you rest again so prepare to run like crazy between tavern and dungeon. Same thing when you notice you forgot to memorize some spell you needed ----> Back to tavern. I honestly don't know why anyone prefers pure Vancian system in CRPGs. While the vancian system has its own flaws (and I even pointed one of them in my previous post) you are trivializing this way too much. Ideally the system is NOT about running back and forth from tavern to dungeon, it's about managing a limited resource. ...and when you fail to manage those resources, for example in situations where you don't know exactly what's ahead of you, it turns into running back and forth. At my first playthrough of every Infinity Engine games this happened at least couple of times and it was extremely frustrating every time. Then there are of course situations where you have no possibility to go back and you have to defeat all enemies before you are able to rest again. In those situations you can play yourself into corner where only way out is to die or reload. (if you still have older save file) I know you all have played Infinity Engine games million times through and know exactly what's behind every corner and at that point it might even be a little bit fun to plan with which spells I'm gonna kick that boss's ass this time around, but on the first and most important playthrough it's not fun at all. I like to have all options with me all the time, so if I wanna change tactics in middle of dungeon I don't have to go take an 8 hour nap in between. It doesn't make sense at all. I think anything from cooldowns and mana pools to different combinations of those are far better than this ancient remnant from tabletop-RPGs.

Basically yes. In vancian system you have to rest in tavern or other place where this is allowed to recharge your spells, while in usual cooldown system you'll have to wait certain time OR rest to recharge. Cooldown time usually depends on power of the spell. Only real difference is that in Vancian you have limited amount of spells to use before you rest again so prepare to run like crazy between tavern and dungeon. Same thing when you notice you forgot to memorize some spell you needed ----> Back to tavern. I honestly don't know why anyone prefers pure Vancian system in CRPGs.

So this poll is basically cooldowns against all the rest of the magic systems ever used in video game history. Well that's helpful. I wonder which sides going to win... I refuse to vote. EDIT: Threads got merged so what I said above doesn't mean this poll.

-celebrities as voice actors How about Will Smith as a main character... or Justin Bieber if you choose to be a woman? Make this a stretch goal Obsidian or I will drop my pledge to previous tier!!!

I actually like that idea a lot. You wouldn't have to leave anyone behind because of some unexplained law of universe which allows you to travel with maximum of 5 people, but there would actually be kind of natural cycle when two companion can't get along and you would have to choose who goes and who stays. Those decisions could be even harder than Baldur's Gate system, because there you could drop the most useless character, but in this you might actually have to choose beetween two of your best companions. But I still prefer system where all companions are always available for recruiting.

I don't know what are you implying by that since we Europeans seem to be already a majority on this forum: Poll: Where is everyone from I believe it was a joke about about this thread: http://forums.obsidi...asian-interest/ OK. Forget what I said then. Didn't notice that thread before.:D

Yeah, from top of my head, the Hitman games comes from Denmark, the STALKER games from Ukraine, the Gothic games from Germany, the Space Rangers games from Russia, the Divinity games from Belgium, the Witcher games from Poland and there are lots more. You don't need to live outside those parts of the world to be in the gaming industry (as a consumer or a producer). ...Max Payne and Alan Wake from Finland! Yay!:D (And Angry Birds of course, but I'm still considering if it should even be called a game) EDIT: Also dungeon crawler fans here might recognise name Legend of Grimrock, which was made by small Finnish studio Almost Human.

I don't know what are you implying by that since we Europeans seem to be already a majority on this forum: Poll: Where is everyone from

I want all the aspects of this game to be good. Don't cut anything to make something else "bigger". That would be just stupid. Also how could this be achieved? Should they re-assign their artists to do programming and graphic designers to write story? Are you even serious? That would probably end up half of key personnel leaving from Obsidian in middle of the project. Just another useless half-thought suggestion.

You are right, but that works only to certain point. They can't just put polls out of every aspect of the game and hope the game turns out ok. They need to have guts to make their own design choices if they know they are right even if community protests. I agree they need to have much deeper community interaction with this one, keep us updated and listen to ideas and criticism, but not let us turn over everything they are doing with this game. They are the divine designer geniuses who should make this game, not us.

Actually in few games and in most MMOs (which are not games) they DO have exclamation marks above their heads to indicate they have quest to give for you. I'm sorry you had to hear about it this way... Take your time.

Kickstarter is only little over halfway through. They surely have still more updates and and big announcements coming, which can speed up fundraising. Basically every big KS project seems to stagnate in the middle and speed up towards the end, because it would be impossible to keep massive hype going on during whole month with kickass announcements coming every day. It might even be planned tactic to time the final crunch when maximum amount of interested people have heard about the game and are following it actively.

That's an excellent point and speaking of puzzles and riddles.... I am curious to see how they are implemented into this game. We all know PST as well as BG 1 & 2 had puzzles and riddles in the game, and I actually really enjoyed them. I would certainly love to see some thought provoking puzzles in Project Eternity and some fun riddles to try and figure out. So far I am pretty excited for this game and can't wait to see it start getting further developed, the more details we begin to see, the more excited I'm going to get. I agree to every word. One other form of non-violent quests I would like to see are the detective mysteries, which have been used in many RPGs lately. It can be traditional crime story or maybe you need to find someone who doesn't want to be found etc. These are great especially when there are multiple ways to solve the case: Charismatic character could be effective interrogator, fighter could beat the truth out of people, sneaky character could be best at finding physical evidence or spying on other people. Possibilities are endless.

Usually when I play an RPG and NPC says something typical like "Hey! Could you help me with something?" my first reaction is "Oh no! Not again!" I'd like to see that change in Project Eternity. Quests should not feel like work or punishment. What I'm trying to say is that far too often "quest" means you have to run to the other side of the map to fetch some Helm of Pure Awesomeness from Ancient Ruins of Hurr-Durr filled with skeletons and zombies only to get few hundred coins and maybe some experience as your reward when you finally get back. I think every quest must have interesting story to tell or they are not worth adding in the game. If you can't think of decent story then just give me the money and exp and let's get on with the story.:D Also in almost every RPG the most memorable and fun quests have been those which don't involve any hostility: You don't need to kill anything and nothing is trying to kill you. Those moments where you can take a break from merciless grinding and just enjoy the story and use your brains. Best example is Planescape: Torment where charismatic character could solve most of the quests just by talking. (EDIT: I also second everything BasaltineBadger said in his post earlier. Riddles, puzzles and other creative quest designs are always welcome) My last request is that enemy encounters should be few and far between, but in counter have more "substance" in form of difficulty and variety. I hate nothing more in RPGs than huge dungeons where every inch has been filled with low and average level enemies. My dream quest would be 70-80% about story and exploring and only 20-30% about fighting. Especially exploring part is often overlooked. Finding cool stuff in dungeon can be fun even without having to fight 1000 orcs while doing so.