Mr. Magniloquent

That was definately supposed to be collateral. How easily a typo can make one I feel like a fool!

I liked the way Arcanum handled merchants. It was possible for them to run out of gold, but you could return a few days later after "they've had more business" and sell some more to them. It made sense to sell items to their respective merchants, as you not only recieved better prices, but were less likely to exhaust the NPC merchant's inability to say no. Thievery was also made attractive and practical in many ways within Arcanum, which I greatly appreciated. Sleuthing around at night picking locks or using swiped keys while keeping mum was probably the best shoplift implementation in any RPG I can think of.

I don't mind if NPC peasants & bystanders can be inadvertently murdered or consumed by my battle in the streets; however, please make them flee. If a group of thugs acost a group of well armed bunch of mercenaries in a world where magic exists---people would run like the dickens at the sight of such confrontation. This is not to say I'd care for NPCS to run randomly about panicked. It would be simple enough, that any NPC non-combatant would run for the nearest door--usable by the PC or not, and be otherwise and be ought of sight. Please. Pretty please.

While I am not detracting from the reputation it has gathered (it's on my list), nor am I doubting P:E's ability to sell, Legend of Grimrock was less than $3.00 USD steam sale for like a week. I'm sure that was a contributing factor. I picked up Alpha Protocol at a similar price.

I enjoy trait/hinderence system, though I do often use them to min/max. In cRPG, their value is limited, as coding for responsiveness to these selections would be immense and prohibitive. That being said, I still loved them in Arcanum.

My only real constraint is time. I won't be able to invest the long single sessions I had as an adolescent with the IE games. My professional and personal lives are just too demanding--and I don't even have kids yet! This limitaiton is a minor one, and ultimately inconsequential. Time can be made eventually, and changing it in order to have a more casual appeal would be an insult to the game and deviate from what has brought us all together. We want a modernized evolution of a past golden age for cRPGs. That's what you should deliver--lifestyles be damned.

I'm not really concerned about having a racially exotic companion. I want to see how the mundane races are handled in P:E first, given that it will be factioned and prejudiced. That being said, since some of the races are unique to P:E, that will be exotic enough for me. No need to resort to the gimmicks of a monster race companion yet. That sort of thing comes after decades of familiarity when typical dynamics have been exhausted.

I voted for more stretch goals, but it was a close choice over voting against them. As it stands, I'm quite pleased with the the current goals and scope being met and am reluctant to support anything which may intrude on their total success. However, I do have faith in Obsidian. If the devs believe themselves capable of crafting even more with a bit more funding, then I will take them at that word and assist them to make it so. Especially if they want to spending it on making a more robust spellbook. Perhaps something that dwarfs even what the IE games offered (300+ spells).

In reading through the achievements thread, it occured to me that it might be interesting for all experience values to be hidden. While it is convienient to know how much experience an action yielded, or how much experience total is held; the hiding of these values could serve to make a player's choice less "synthetic". Players may find themselves more prone to act in manners that suit their style and character, rather than reloading missions with the motivation of yoking the most XP. That being said, a consequence of having experience values hidden might compel a player to become a completionist for fear of missing a significiant portion of experience. Ultimately though, I don't think this would be a terrible risk as (I hope) that the game and its respective quests are completable in multiple mutually exclusive ways (See: degenerative game-play, save scumming). To me, the idea of having experience values excluded from my decision making or knowledge base has a similar appeal to playing in Ironman (no-reload) modes. What do you guys think?

Rarely do achievements make me feel warm and fuzzy. About the only time I ever cared to strive for them was with StarCraft II. One possible exception might be Neverwinter Nights 2. The "History" feats made my inner completionist twitch, and I found myself attempting to get them. It may have also been my inner munchkin as well, as with Storm of Zehir they did confer bonuses. If achievements are to be included, I'd like them to be handled as they were in SoZ.

I did not recieve my kickstarter badge. Thanks.

So what's your point? Would you rather not have technology? For that matter, there is no established lore saying that technology & magic couldn't exit within P:E. I feel like you read a single line, and missed the entire post. My point was that by pushing P:E's setting up towards a more Renaissance level, more dynamics can be explored than the same worn-out Dark Ages fantasy. The gun itself is immaterial. It's the level of advancement that it represents which matters. It will be a golden age. You'll be raiding a laboratory in its prime and glory rather than spelunking through its forgotten ashes. This is what matters. I look forward to the change of pace and setting.

I feel like many people are missing the root here. Mechanically, guns provide a counter balance to magic. They allow non-magical characters to matter in the long term. This is not the most important impact. What is important, is that it pushes P:E out of the Dark Ages. It brings to P:E what made Arcanum so special among settings. Old vs. New, Technology vs. Magic, Superstition & Tradition vs. Rationality and Modernality. A merchant with a flint-lock versus a superbly trained swordsman of "the Gentry". It introduces, alternatives. It introduces conflict. As creators, it gives them license to try new things without having to worry a great deal about constructing a massive history to the world. Pillars of Eternity is going to happen at a golden age. You won't be slaying the risen spectre of an ancient necromancer; you'll be living next door to him--in his prime! That's what guns are in Pillars of Eternity. It's a paradigm shift. It allows them to innovate and break new ground while drawing people in the the proven and familiar. Embrace it!

I don't want this to be an "Epic" in the traditional gaming sense. I don't want the world saved from an evil horde. *Yawn*. Those kinds of plots are almost never intriguing, have a kind of child-like plot polarization that allows for almost no complexity, and really serve only to stroke the ego of the player. "Only you can save the WHOLE WORLD. Look how powerful you are!" Blah blah blah. Pillars of Eternity's scope should establish the setting, and the gameplay style. A plot that focuses on regional intrigue between factions should really be the kind of story to be told. It allows for every manner of motivation and diversion while (more importantly) introducing the major populations, cultures, and locations of their brand new world. D&D's long and painful death had as much to do with Wizard of the Coast nuking The Forgotten Realms setting as it did by switching the rules on players. To hell with epic scopes. Big Pictures only look good from afar, and generally make poor stories. It's the intrigues, the personalities, and the ability to connect with that makes a story memorable. The same applies to a setting. For better or worse, gameplay will be different across iterations of the game. Gamplay will not be static, nor should it be. To a cRPG, it is ultimately secondary. Story and setting are paramount beyond anything else for a legacy cRPG. If those are good, people will want more no matter what. People will forgive most anything. Therefore; the story should introduce people to the world. It should make people want more of the world. The story should weave the character into its tapestry and make the player feel that it has something to offer. Obsidian is in a very unique position right now. Several legacy IPs have imploded, and many fans are in the doldrums. Just as importantly, Obsidian as the gaming world's attention at this moment. If they can get their setting correct, if they can make people want to know more and explore more of their world--this could make them wildly successful.

It's a gameplay change that stylistically reflects the different "era" this game will take place in. I look forward to both their mechanics and the many other Renaissance Era qualities P:E will wisely introduce.

I want an updated Durlag's Tower. Lethal traps. Lots of lethal traps. Coherence and plausibility for both the contents of each floor and their connection to eachother. Riddles. Puzzles. I'm looking for equal parts awe and terror.

I like this, and had a very similar setup for another game. Fitness - Strength & Constitution combined. Governed martial (melee, tension, and thrown weapons) Coordination - Essentially Dexterity. Fine motor skills, agility, accuracy with ranged weapons. Reasoning - Merged Intelligence & Wisdom. Ability to learn spells, lore, etc. Perception - Trap detection, spell identification, foe assessment, influenced clerics for learning spells. Ego - Quasi-charisma stat. Interpersonal skills, sense of identity and self, spell damage/intensity, spell control. Martial (weapons), Partical (traps, mechanical, stealth, etc.), Academic (science, certain lore), Arcane (magic, certain lore), and Social (conversation skills, barter, certain lore) comprised everything else. Five attributes, five skills. All checks were a combination of two or more--but generally two. Very simple, very elegant.

I'm generally very sensetive about party AI. I know many people hated party AI for Neverwinter Nights 2, but I was overall receptive to it. I found it highly customizable and effective. Sure, I chose to go down the list and customize each character's settings, but so what? I liked having that much control over their settings. Between issuing voice commands and their settings, my NPCs did exactly what I wanted them to without having to micro-manage. Whenever I needed to cast a spell or use an item, I'd swing over that character and then back. Easy. I'm hoping that P:E follows suit.

I liked the ending to Arcanum. Not merely did you get a twist at the end, but seeing all of the ramifications of your actions to the whole world was great. Whole cities rose or fell depending on your actions. Even better, is that the world felt like it continued without you. The concluding vingettes showed you how you influenced the world, but that world still kept moving without you. It is possible to have things both ways in games, and I feel like that was one of the ways Arcanum succeeded.

I actually enjoyed TOEE's wheel. It wasn't lightning fast, but it didn't need to be due to the turn-based game. I found it efficient, unobtrusive, and elegant. What exactly didn't you like about it?

Pillars of Eternity is not turn based. There is a significant speed difference between Real-Time with Pause and Turn-Based gameplay. RTwP plays much more akin to a Real-Time Strategy game, which would be horrendous with a gamepad. I don't imagine it's out of the question that a port could be modded or performed sometime in the very distant future, but it's not happening for release or any time soon after. Rightly, and justly so.

I've felt for a long time that Strength and Constitution should be merged into a "Fitness" stat. Many checks could easily be used by either--climbing, swimming, stamina, etc. Likewise, it doesn't make sense for a burly muscular fighter to be wimpy. While arguments are more easily made for Constitution to be distinct from strength, I find them to be weak. Merging strength and consitution has a lot of logical consistencies both in use and character builds. It also makes room for the inclusion and necessity of other more interesting statistics, like percpetion, etc.

What I believe happened was that my e-mail address had changed. My kickstarter e-mail changed because hotmail rolled over to windows live mail. I imagine this caused me to fall through the cracks. Logging in to my kickstarter account, it shows that I backed--just under the defunct address.

I'm not sure what people are finding so ambiguous about this system. There are attributes, class abilities, and skills. All characters have the same attributes. These attributes influence abilities and skills in different manners. All characters have abilities, but these abilities are unique to their class. All characters have access to the same pool of skills, though some classes may be aligned more closely with certain skills than others. We don't know what all the class abilities are. Just because strength, axes, and chainmail can be useful to a Wizard, does not mean a Wizard played this way is merely a Fighter by another name. What is known, is that while classes will have distinct abilities, deliberate application of attributes and skills will give a spectrum of utility to a character which in other game systems (D&D) would have been regarded as multi-classing. That is the stated intention. Classes are defined by the abilities they have access to. Allocation of attributes and skills determine how those class abilities are expressed. The only thing we don't know, is the degree of latitute. This will likely not be known until the game is released.

Not having the green K badge means someone backed after the KS campaign ended and wasn't part of the group of people that made it all possible....the ones that made the Kickstarter campaign successful and without whom we wouldn't be having this conversation. I don't think that is necessarily true. I kickstarted very early in the campaign, yet when when the backer site came online it was going to make me pay to get the KS badge. No thank you. I put money down for a game, not a vanity sticker.