IndiraLightfoot

It isn't. Good points, everybody!

I have no idea. Swen & Co really liked interacting with the fans and getting their input, but they almost killed themselves during that KS - so a kickstarter is really tough going. Also, perhaps I'm all wrong on this, but isn't pc games faring much worse now on Kickstarter? I have this feeling that this model for financing a game is a bit saturated and people are somewhat sppoked after a number of kickstarters not being what they had hoped for (or not even near that).

Ready for some baffling user reviews on Steam? I just love this little collection: http://www.pcgamer.com/gallery/the-most-baffling-steam-reviews/Steam-Reviews/

A pizza-eating duck with a knack for beer cheese will improve the game considerably. Its burps are legendary, or should I say, GURPs?

Yeah, as for InXile, good on them, for doing so. Such dedication also makes me more confident in my high hopes for T:ToN. It will be very interesting to see what OE think of PoE at this stage. Will they say: "This will do for a X-mas release. We'll fix the rest for the expansion." Or perhaps they take the bold decision to push it forward quite a bit, to make it considerably better and more polished and "full-featured".

In fact, it does. Take a deeper look into how the greatest movies and games have been made, the behind the scenes stuff, and you'll be surprised. I mean it!

Degenerative gameplay or no, having balance as your flagship runs the risk of ruining the artistic side of the game, as well the fun inconsistencies and surprising contingencies in it. For instance, would MotB and PST have become such masterpieces (games of art) if they had been balanced into bland and washed out equilibrium? Would BG1 turned out so beautiful and exploration-varied, if those making it hadn't been in part amateurs, enthusiasts and new at being game devs? I love Sensuki's phrase so much, so I'll use it a third time on this forum: balance == banalce. EDIT: I'm not saying: No balance at all, but rather that some rough balance done in the stride is to be preferred, then hammer down the worst bulges as you go along. Spending a huge amount of time on balancing systems is great if you're a clockwork maker. However, in a game, I'd like to see most of that time get invested into areas, enemies, encounters, exploration, class variation, character development, and so on.

^This times a thousand! It will hurt replayablilty big time, if the classes are but one-trick ponies.

Josh recently spilled his beans on game design. read for yourselves. If anything, he's extremely ambitious, while, IMO, holding systemic balance in far too high a regard compared to easier and more fun gameplay. He even says, he runs the risk over over-designing and over-complicating stuff. Most of the ideas are very sound on paper, but do they work in-game? Judge for yourselves: http://kotaku.com/how-to-balance-an-rpg-1625516832

Ha! That's far too everyday. Try "Expelled into the supine position through the force of gravity".

Yeah, please let them be called "burrow and "paralyze". No need for hyperbole ability names, and the more to the point, the better. Josh seems like a down-to-earth RPG-guy who prefers things pretty straight on in his systems, cf. Fallout: New Vegas. So, the big question: Who has come up with these silly names? Tim Cain?

It seems I'd do well waiting a couple of weeks/months more playing D:OS! From PCGamer yesterday: Divinity: Original Sin is a really good game, thanks in no small part to the 19,541 people who threw nearly a million bucks at it on Kickstarter. Yet in spite of that success, and the resulting establishment of Larian as a reliable place for your crowdfunding cash, studio boss Swen Vincke says it probably won't go back to Kickstarter for its next game. "I hate to think what the game would've been if we didn't have Kickstarter," Vincke told Gamespot, which sounds to me very much like the lead-in to an announcement of a new Kickstarter. But then he changed direction. "I don't think it would be correct to go and fish in the pool of crowdfunding investment again," he continued. "I think that there's others that could use that investment." He did say that he hopes to take advantage of community input for future projects, much as it did throughout the development of Divinity: Original Sin, describing it as "a very great positive for the gameplay experience that results at the end of the day." But what those projects might be, he did not reveal. "There's nothing yet to announce," he said. "It will be very calm on the announcement front for a couple of months, as we're preparing our new things," he said. Larian is currently working on updates to Divinity: Original Sin that will add two new companions to the game, new skills, end-game rebalancing for the warrior and ranger classes, and a "much better, harder difficulty level."

Good thing you made a thread about this, because this is one bug that I forgot to report. Thx!

Hiro: Glad to hear that you've tried it and love it (and by playing the beta, even helped making it better)! It's really nice that someone you know from these boards, whose opinions on games I value, are looking forward to it, since then I can be even more certain that I am in for a treat. EDIT: More of my musings. I really dig the intensity of combat and the UIs. The sounds and animations (although simple), still convey a sense of power and urgency fit for the setting. Imagine if PoE had a little more of this oomph. I'm not saying, turn PoE's combat into D3's, but the displays of force, power, swiftness and trickery are so far pretty lacklustre and paperdoll-y.

OMG! I have deliberately stayed away from this game until gets finished, and now, having only seen this trailer: I'm chomping at my bit, just to get my hands on it. Thanks to Obsidian's KS, I got my hands of a copy, and I am really glad I have it. It almost looks like the return of Fallout 1 and 2. I actually own Wasteland 1, but I haven't ever played it. I have played the Fallouts, though, and this looks like a fantastic party-based, turn-based version, with a really diverse character creation on top. Also, the art direction is stellar, it seems. All good things come to those who wait. EDIT: Well, combat certainly is reminiscent of XCOM as well, but seemingly having a lot more options.

In essence, I agree with this, but the rewards need to be occurring pretty often, and they should be quite small. For instance, in BG1, I love that it takes hours upon hours in real-time just to advance one level, and I also adore how fast the party members get out of sync with each other xp-wise. It's great to see six party members having like 1,342, 1,065, 889, 798, 1144, and 976, for instance. To invoke what made the xp system of the IE games great, you should be rewarded in micro-increments, and this regardless of quest givers (well, quest xp can be kept of course, but I'd prefer to have that reduced rather heavily), and xp shouldn't follow quest lines regularly, but rather your experiences during the game. I don't need no "what you do, you will become"-xp like in Skyrim, but the xp system in PoE ought to, at the very least, reward exploration, rare non-combat small tasks, fighting a new type a monster for the first time (and your lore book gets updated), some difficult convo haggling (loved that in BG).

"Petrify" seems like yet another non-fitting ability name, along with that "Teleport through earth". I really hope you're making a list of those in some of your magical updates later. There are probably more of those lying around.

Matt516: Yeah, I picked up the same contradictions in my OP, and may I add: Saying that they want to "bring those games back" is even stronger than an IE spiritual successor. it could be taken as "make a similar game, but in the 2010s".

Heh, just what I wrote in my OP! Bizarre, isn't it? Most likely a product of some journalist that have proliferated from there.

Tanred: Nope. Like a day ago, Kaz confirmed that they are working on changes to this as we speak, including tone-downs of effects. Another dev, working with sound fx, told me he's tweaking said effects as well, so we should have high hopes for real improvement in this case.

*A disembodied voice from above* "You have passed the test. Please enter the inner sanctum of the select few with deeper insight and knowledge."

Heh, DS3 hardcore mode was one of the hardest difficulties I've ever seen in a CRPG, so with OE behind the wheel, we're going to get difficulty in spades, I'm sure of it!

That's probably good thing too, as it evens things out vis-à-vis using the various companions as they become available. I'm really looking forward to the adv hall option, since it widens the scope of the game replayability considerably.

I haven't touched the slomo yet. I've been fearing it will make my IE-spiritual successor look like Neo in Matrix dodging bullets in 2D isometric mini-format. I must try this mode!

Indeed. That was another milestone. Just so very surprising.