FrostPaw

I voted no, while I respect your ability to make great games I'm also aware we haven't actually played anything at all. Currently it is impossible to measure how much will already feature, so it makes it impossible to quantify if these additions would truly matter. If other people want to give you guys more money then I'm fine with that, if you need to delay the game I'm fine with that, but to be brutally honest, I'd need to experience some gameplay for myself, before I could decide if I wanted to give any more money in the future. Now if the issue is you feel that your current funding is running short of your estimation for whatever reason, I'd prefer that was what was said. I would be concerned but I'm also aware plans don't always work out and sometimes **** happens you simply cannot plan for. Right now I literally have zero funds for further investment, Christmas has sucked it all up, perhaps after Christmas that will change. For these reasons, I voted no, if the game can be made to the standard expected, just do that. I'm actually not bothered if we don't have an npc class for every class available, it's more important to me that the characters are characters, not mechanics.

Thank you for the update, however I don't appreciate you using my backer email as a vehicle for advertising other peoples projects. You don't have my contact details to shove other peoples projects in my inbox.

I think the Monk sounds like a class that requires intensive micro to use properly. In a single class game that would be fantastic, in a party class game, I worry I would spend too much time managing his wounds mechanic, instead of managing all the classes in my party. Thanks for the update though.

Thanks for the update, I gotta be honest, when I read you were making a 5-15 minute "slice" of the game for demo purposes, my first thought was can we play it warts 'n all? Then I started thinking about how people would start judging it and criticizing it and then people would start typing out huge feedback/design forum posts on how they would do it better and then I realized, actually no..... never mind. Now I'm depressed at people in general.

Thanks for the update, was a great read! I'm curious though, is the game intended to be viewed at a fixed perspective as with infinity engine games or will the camera orbit? I'm looking at that tower model and noticing all the doors are accessible from "this side" of the model. I was just wondering if that's because this is the only side that will be visible or if this was the more interesting side to show.

That sir....is the most epic cheesy photo I have seen today, /tiphat

There is a simple fix for this.....a Magical Effects slider. Incremental stages x1,2,3,4,5 etc slide it up or down in the game options to decide how many spell effects you want to see on screen at once, priority given to persistent area effect spells or offensive spells directed at the party. For those that want it, you crank that sucker up to 11, for those that don't you drop it down to 1 or 2.

I think you misunderstood what I was saying completely, the issue was I had to lead from the front, not that I wanted to.

Here's the only concern I have with having all your companions chip in for all conversations. You can have a companion that is persuasive, intimidating, diplomatic, seductive etc. The fact you have 6 party members means you could probably have one of every conversation option be it stat or skill related. When you can have all the conversation or skill options, isn't that a little too easy? I mean you now have so many ways to make a conversation work in your favor that you may never be at a disadvantage by lacking diplomacy or charisma or whatever....you'll always be able to do everything providing you choose your party members to compliment each other. I'm not sure that's a positive thing.

One of my pet hates in all the IE games was the need for you/main character to be at the front if you wanted to do the talking. I remember trying to create a mage with a charismatic personality intending to lead, I had npc followers but being a mage meant I was safer not in the front ranks. However whenever I shifted my mage to the middle or back of the group formation, one of my follower companions who was closer to the npc would initiate dialogue, which totally wasted all the effort I put into making my main character charismatic. I could have manually switched between group and character to initiate every conversation but then I still had to deal with "auto conversations" which would initiate when one of my party went near to the npc and again, this was usually not my mage. So instead I would lead with my mage, of course this also meant I often ended up "tanking" since many conversations could end in a fight and whoever I was talking to would pick on whoever was nearest. Since buffing was an ugly mess of casting 10+ buffs just before every conversation, to give my mage a chance of surviving in the tanking aspect, it became very much a "game" within a game, Which was pure frustration since my mage often ended up not needing all those buffs or getting gibbed anyway. I know this game will have formations, all I ask is that there is an option to choose a spokesperson for the group, who defaults to all conversations with outsiders, regardless of who initiates them. This would allow my chosen speaker to take advantage of their communication or personality while maintaining the groups strategic formation. I would assume my party members at the front would step in front of me as soon as it appeared combat was due to take place and take up the formation I have chosen, thus maintaining the formation value. I'm not advocating a lack spontaneous dialogue here, if the story calls for a specific follower to do the talking that's fine, I just don't want "nearest well armored dumbo" to be my parties orator when the charming handsome dude at the back is just trying to keep formation.

Personally, I gave Obsidian money because I believe they know how to make great games, while I admit some of their games have been buggy, I also believe the following. Great buggy games will eventually be just great games. Average bug free games will always be average. This is because if you spend more on QA than design and production, you get better quality but less content. I can put up with the bugs in a game that is truly great, because it is a great game, far longer than I can put up with an average game, because it has no bugs. If you enjoy beta testing unfinished games, I believe you will share this philosophy, because you can see when a game is good even before it is good enough. Now I'm not suggesting massive ugly bugs that lose save games, crash the client at specific intervals or mess up game play are acceptable, I'm just saying minor bugs, even if they are many can be fixed given time. Minor bugs don't stop great games being great, they just stop them being perfect. We gave money to Obsidian because we believed in them, let's not become "meddling" investors that try to change their design or development process ....because we all hear the stories of how publishers come in and make a mess of a developers vision and there is no end of gamers that cite those reasons as why the games were never as good as they could have been. We are now those "publishers" in this scenario.....scary thought huh?

Has anybody played WAR? Warhammer Online the mmo. Please don't tell me all it's flaws, my point is they had "quest area" zones of red tint on the map. It essentially said, go over to this general area and you'll find what you are looking for, but not necessarily in the whole of that red tinted area. So you still had to search around and figure it out. You just knew it was in that area and nowhere else in the world. I actually think that was a triumph of compromise, showing you where to go but leaving you to find out exactly where. The size of the quest area tint was random so sometimes it was quite small but sometimes it was massive and would take you a few minutes to search within it.

I just don't understand this thinking, do you not have free will? Once there is a quest marker are you obligated to go directly to do it? Couldn't you just not? You don't need hand holding but you do need hand shoving to do what you enjoy? If exploration is what you enjoy, quest markers or no, you will explore. If you need an excuse to explore, you don't enjoy it as much as you say. I'm not singling you out here, I've seen this argument many times over many games and every time I ask this question. I'm happy to have a toggle on or off by the way.

Awesome, thanks guys!

That's not how I understood it, do you have a source please?