Osvir

Hi! So I got Wasteland 2 from Steam and absolutely loving it. It feels slick! Regardless, that's not what I wanted to talk about. Character creation. Some backstory to the idea: Wasteland 2 has a very nice chargen, there's lots of pieces you can put together to create the character. I do have one issue with Wasteland 2's character creation, and that's the biography/history section where you can write your characters history yourself. Wasteland 2 has a very open ended beginning so your character can truly be anyone... but who is anyone in the Wasteland 2 world? When did the fallout begin? What are the factions? What are their roles? What's the timeline? I had no clue at first (I have now both looked it up and got some ideas from some replies on the same issue on the WL2 forum). Regardless, these are important things for the Player to be able to insert their character into the world authentically. The idea for Pillars of Eternity & Wasteland 2: Make it a bit easier, accessible, for the Player to write their backstory. Give some pointers or hints about the world in some descriptive tooltip-box of some kind during Character Creation. Hover over a "?" (Questionmark) and some text pops up. Maybe have a bullet-point list of some important things~ I don't want to write "My character is an X coming from Y" and then when I play the game/progression I don't want to encounter something pointing out my own created loopholes or flaws in the story saying "There hasn't been anyone coming from Y being an X" if you catch my drift. In my opinion and experience, I find it way more fun to play as a character that makes some sort of "sense" that they are in the world. I get more invested and immersed writing a backstory. The thing is, I don't think the majority of gamers will alt+tab out of the game and research the story/lore to be able to write a "proper" character or even write anything at all. I have created many characters in Wasteland 2, but only written what I think is a proper story for 1 character. I know Pillars of Eternity will have some sort of banter early-game that creates your characters backstory so maybe this idea isn't entirely actual for Eternity, but I wanted to throw the ball here as well as I think it's a valuable addition... just in case it works. It's an "Easily Implementable Idea" as well. I think it is something to consider... what do you think?

This discussion makes me want a non-magical animancer scholar class T-T a Loremaster~ a 100% out of combat class

Good eye & catch! :D

Can some items "grow" with time? Legendary items? Weapons become "famous" and can add to minor NPC reactivity? Perhaps not as extensive as Fable 3 but... but in its most simplistic form, a concept, leaning in that general direction~

But a "puzzle" in this form? :D A door you might find, if you look close enough? For instance, instead of going straight into the open big entrance, one goes up to the broken bridge and the scripted interaction above pops up? Could work?

This is probably an area where Vithracks like to hang out did the GamersGlobal say "Steam Early Access" or only "Early Access"? Because on the pledge tiers here it says "Backer Beta before the general public" or something along those lines. Then again, I think Steam Early Access is something kind of new since the Kickstarter began.

I had forgotten about this guy, itmeJP. He does D&D. I also found this guy, ZiggyD Gaming~ Path of Exile & Diablo 3 it seems. He does have an abandoned Baldur's Gate LP which doesn't look too good. I don't know, you could throw Obsidian/Paradox (the one in charge of the marketing) a bone about these guys maybe TrueNeutral? AngryJoe+TotalBiscuit though, they do in-depth coverage, that's the best stuff in my opinion... Lets Plays are a bit... ugh... but I can't deny that they generate exposure. EDIT: And the Yogscast

I can't follow your post Darji. Are you saying previews are going to fade away? @TrueNeutral: I don't know anyone either.. well, AngryJoe got in on an interview and I think he's branching more and more onto the PC, or maybe that was the PS4? JesseCox and wowcrendor (I know Jesse does Lets Plays of rpgs) were at E3 but I don't know if they were at Obsidians backroom showing... dodger and Felicia Day was at E3 as well.. last time TotalBiscuit did an RPG was a Kingdoms of Amalur promotion and he said in that one that "I don't have time to do RPGs anymore, I want to, but I simply don't have the time"... there was probably more people there too that's outside my radar~ I don't think there's anyone who covers RPGs primarily as their YouTube trade. Northernlion got the roguelikes, AngryJoe got Xbox, TotalBiscuit does a lot of indies (but also some AAA titles), Jesse plays a lot of different games, mostly(only?) Lets Play stuff~ gets covered over time. Pillars of Eternity could be a great fit for JesseCox because he does the whole episodic thing... good long-term exposure but maybe not the best coverage with Lets Play+Commentary. RPGs are hard to cover in a first-impression video I think. The Polaris Network is like, the first big YouTube Gaming News Network... I guess? They try to do the press thing at least. They might have someone maybe.

You should read it again and you should read it a bit more closer and not fall for "headline" bait. I recommend everyone to read it ^^ and yes, YouTube is killing traditional gaming press. It's not killing written journalism, but the "traditional" way of doing it is going to go out the window eventually. *dramatic voice* "Life as we know it will never be the same!!!"~ jokes aside, traditional press/hype/marketing is and has been changing. I have more to say but it's going to become a giant "TL;DR" post so nevermind. The Gamasutra article is already "TL;DR" for many people, so I don't want to drain your reading energy on my post @Obsidian: You need to contact big YouTubers 2-4 weeks before your release date, give them the review code so that they get first-hand "Release Day" preview/review/first-impression videos. This will maximize exposure, and maximize interest for the YouTubers. EDIT: Relevant to both the article and YouTubers: https://twitter.com/Totalbiscuit/status/479283553403162624

Did you read this article Darji? EDIT: It's a great article don't get me wrong. I'm just wondering.

@fetfreak: I imagine the different parts of modding, in terms of difficulty, looks something like this: Easy: - NPC's (Clone an already existant NPC and mess around with all the values, name, stats, equipment etc. etc.) statwise only - Items (Weapons, trinkets, equipment etc. etc.) statwise only - Quests - Dialogue Medium: - Triggers (I could put this in "Easy" as it is something I know how to use and I know the function of them, I just always have trouble with it) - Scripts Hard: - Textures Harder: - Models Hardest: - Areas Of course, someone who is great at modeling might find it really easy to model stuff, and thinks scripting or even narrative stuff like coming up with a good quest is hard.

I've started writing a questline idea a bit, but if anyone's interested I'd like to bounce it a bit Currently I'm calling the quest "hungry children" and... it's kind of self-explanatory in a world with how the undead are handled in Pillars of Eternity it's a working title. The quest begins when you're walking in the city, daytime, in some area with lots of people. A child is running and screaming for help and his/her father is chasing after him with a cleaver. "What do you choose to do?" Now, I'm thinking of having this be either: A) A domestic fight, the father has treated his child poorly in some way (child abuse) and the child has resisted and bit the father B) The child has been treated by a mad animancer, used as a subject to perfect his own techniques of immortality, the child bit the father in hunger. Regardless of what's decided on, the child disappears in the commotion. The father is apprehended and then you can go to prison to interrogate him and/or talk to the city guard to uncover that something is going on the city... people are missing/disappearing. There is a bit of a moral dilemma here that I want to invoke in the Player. Because the Player might know about the cannibalistic nature of fampyrs/darguls, and might instantly think "This kid is a monster! Let's cut him down!" or "I must protect this child!" only to later be faced with "This child is a monster! Damn!". But then again.. what if this is simply a crazed tyrannic father? Decisions, decisions. You'll be able to talk to the child later down the quest and either find out that the child is in fact a monster by unfortunate circumstance, or that one of the child's friends (who happen to be...? ) had taught the child to "bite" the father if he was abusing. Moving on, you'll eventually uncover more and more, and find the culprit* through a series of investigations. One scene I can think of is, you're entering a dark "room" and you see a child facing a wall. When you reach the child and talk to him/her you'll start a dialogue that should invoke a creepy feeling in the Player. As the dialogue continues you'll see one child at a time appear along the edges of the fog of war (surrounding the player party more and more). The quest is completed when the monsters have been dealt with. * Unless the culprit has been eaten himself by his own creation's hunger. What do you think? Suggestions? Feedback?

http://www.mmorpg.com/showFeature.cfm/feature/8607/page/2

edit: bah! why do I spend energy on this? This will suffice:

Bungie really did kind of set a new standard there didn't they Chilloutman? @nipsen: These are all the google results from page 1 I got from writing "Best PC RPG of all time" in google.se (my region). It's kind of inconsistent. No "Search Tools" used, I don't know dates of this stuff (saw one saying "1 year ago" or something like that). I'll counter your question with: Why do we like old stuff? Links lead to the "top stuff". 1. IGN not PC specific 2. Metacritic (By Metascore) Metacritic (By User Score) 3. N4G which leads to Gameranx 4. Videogamer Does not look like they care much for the Infinity games whatsoever: this 5. whatculture It's "The last 10 years", WoW was in there as well as Final Fantasy XII. So not purely PC either. 6. PCGamesN list in no particular order 7. ComplexGaming "Best 50 PC Games of all time" not specifically RPGs. 8. Giantbomb discussion thread 9. Giantbomb user "best of list" a console RPG fan 10. PCGamer best of PC EDIT: It's a great question, "what is the appeal all about?". For myself it's about the culture, the history of it, big impacts in the video game industry and so on. It's also from reading and hearing how many companies started (Blizzard for instance) and how it was in the beginning. Some of the best games in history aren't graphical wonders, and they rely purely on narrative wonder. The Harry Potter books are great in my opinion, the movies are good. The games are horrible. Why? The games aren't genuine nor are they authentic. I checked the Spoony Experiment and his Ultima 9 review (which goes through all Ultima games). Why is Ultima 9 primarily "bad"? Because it's not authentic or genuine to the rest of the series. I find older games more genuine and authentic to themselves*, and you can feel and notice that they are works of passion. Whilst in a big studio with 1000's of employees I think that passion of the top designers dissipates into some sort of void. Or big studios become so dependant on stockholders that they become more like a news company I don't know... stockholders are demanding and want more winnings each year so you got to make more money than you did the last year or they're going to leave you. *Not all of them. And there are certainly new games that are well developed and genuine and authentic to themselves as well. I'm just painting a broad picture and trying to figure out my own answer to "what is the appeal all about?"

Bryy, AGX has a point regarding what it probably looks like but in all honesty, this whole project since the beginning has meant a lot to me on a personal level. So people can believe what they want, but I assure you the reasons are something else.

AGX-17, not one bit at all. I'm doing it because I want to see Pillars of Eternity to succeed as much as possible and yes, I'm a fool, but I don't care

I tossed it together rather quickly. http://slide.ly/view/1586e782ce23da5ee7dc24c1adc18cef It's 90 photos (I had to cut a few out, because 90 is the limit xD). Inspired from this post.

edit: nvm sorry, I made a new thread.

This kicked me into a bit of a project. Here's close to all concepts, pictures, W.I.P stuff from all of the updates. To get a sense of how it has progressed, and how much media we've been given. Let's go down memory lane in chronological order (except, without the text) going to look into doing a slideshow of all of this. Does this warrant its own thread? xD And here we are. I excluded Update #79 which has a lot of content in itself, and I think it'd be stupid to go all the way to Update #80 (Ya know, because this is Update #80 thread).

Wait wait wait WAIT! Why are we having this discussion now again...? Obsidian are controlling their media! And they are honest about it as well! You could even translate what they are saying directly to "We are controlling our media, and this is what we want to do with it". And then telling them "No, you're not honest enough!"... I.. don't know how to end this post Control you media does not mean release nothing but release it in your own terms. Be honest about it and make people understand that everything will change through the way. Because if you do not and people are actually interested in a game something can leak out. Just like the newest Bloodborne leak trailer. All the people got was a CG trailer. The press got a 30 minute demo and then someone released a 1+ year old trailer on the internet which not only looked way worse than the E3 demo but also showed a lot of monsters, weapons, moves and so on. @Sensuki No you do not. Just seek out a place with no spoilers and capture 5 minutes and do commentary over it about what is work in progress what is not done yet and done. This is a pretty lame reason to be honest. Again with the hypocrisy! Obsidian are: A) Controlling their media B) Releasing it on their terms C) Honest about it But you: A) Want control B) Released footage on your terms C) And you're kind of honest about it

Wait wait wait WAIT! Why are we having this discussion now again...? Obsidian are controlling their media! And they are honest about it as well! You could even translate what they are saying directly to "We are controlling our media, and this is what we want to do with it". And then telling them "No, you're not honest enough!"... I.. don't know how to end this post

I'm starting to believe you're one of those consumers who is the cause to why businessmen prosper on stressed half-finished products.

Reading Gorbag's post, I wanted to throw another bone at this as an addition: source And as I said in that post as well, this isn't representative of all of the press, but it gives us some minor insight on what goes on in their heads as well, apart from the obvious "Journalists are interested in first-hand coverage". When Thursday hits we're going to be like vultures on the internet finding information and news ourselves just for us to be "I found it!". Much like Sensuki has been posting tweets, Something Awful posts etc. etc. or how the RPGCodex is posting up all the updates on their news page as well as different Codexers posting the Update in the giant Pillars of Eternity thread (it hasn't always been Infinitron), or how some were chasing down Obsidian developer posts before "Devtracker" (don't know if Devtracker always existed, but in my perspective it suddenly appeared out of nowhere). People like to be "first", and the whole non-informative "I WAS FIRST DERP!!!" phenomena on popular YouTube videos, articles and whatever is also part of this. Being "first" is always better in this regard. And the first journalist that gets his/her article out there will forever in history have been the "first". It might not be the best article, but it will be first. The point: We're not going to be very different from the press when the news hit.

Of course, that is great as well, I have several friends who are the same way. But it doesn't hurt to bring it to attention regardless I'm going to make a "how-to-record games" tutorial thread as well (it's super easy)~ which programs to use, how to set up etc. etc., but that's further down the line when the beta is closing in.