Fluffle

Yes many people already have their unique Obsidian Order title. And many people actually like the default titles of the forum. That's why we went for the badge instead.

Nope this time we decided for the unique badge instead

Thank you a lot for your contributions! You have made one mistake though You didn't take into account the PayPal transaction fee. So no, we are not at $3333 We are at $3331.71

And one important thing is, you don't "buy" the individual ingame recognition. You have donated at least $10 and as a token of appreciation you are eligible for individual ingame recognition. But you don't buy any kind of "right" to be recognized in the game. It's a voluntary token of appreciation to you for donating. It's not a product you buy. Let's not lose our focus here. As much as you may like the thought of being immortalized into the game, the higher priority should always be the Black Isle Bastards.

So here is my suggestion for ingame recognition: Requirements: You have donated at least $10 to our cause. Then you are eligible for individual ingame recognition. There will be no guarantees. You can pick two of the following four categories: - description of robbed individual - specific lore friendly name of robbed individual - robbed individual's fate - taken possessions Make sure that your overall message does not exceed 80 characters. The list has only 50 free slots. So we will only be able to give individual recognition to 50 donators. If more than 50 donators submit entries then Obsidian can choose the ones they like best INDEPENDENTLY of how much any donator pledged to our cause. Obsidian is also free to alter/change/adjust your entry to be lore-friendly if they think that's appropriate/necessary. I have a given this a lot of thought and this is the suggestion I feel most comfortable with. You don't buy privileges this way. This way it's really just for fun like it ought to be. And it limits my time and efforts for management. And I would still have a lot of work to do managing all these entries. Also once we reach $5000 this offer will NOT be eligible anymore for new donators!

This would also mean a lot of effort and time on my part. I would have to track how much each of the donators donated. And put them in categories of who is allowed to do what, and keep track of that. And if someone pledges more I would have to change their tier so to say. Or I would have to assign lottery tickets to everyone with a different probability and each time they increase their pledge they'd have a higher probability in relation to everyone else. So if someone changes their pledge ALL probabilities of everyone change, because the overall probability is always 1 (respectively 100%). I am sorry to say, independently from whether the ideas are "good" or "bad" they mean A LOT of effort and time for me. So I would say let us keep this as simple as possible. Let's stay one group. Don't let's do this dividing. There should be a minimal pledge required for participating in ALL the options. Like I said possibly $10 or $20. You should not increase your pledge to get privileged rights. You should pledge because you'd like the Black Isle Bastards to come true. Privileging individuals to design an NPC and excluding everyone else is very much against the nature of the idea of this project. That's exactly what we didn't want. I am sorry but I'd rather not support this. I feel this is somehow going in the wrong direction.

So to anyone who's interested in forum badges: Specifically the Deadfire Backer Badge. There appear to be three different levels of this badge, bronze, silver and gold. I am not sure what amount of money is required for each level. The gold level wasn't even mentioned in the Fig campaign. Anyway I asked Aarik if the contribution to the Black Isle Bastards could count towards those badge levels. And yes, if we get funded, and I then hand in proof of your contribution, this contribution would count towards the amount necessary for the Deadfire Backer Badge. So if we get funded and you'd like your contribution to count for the Deadfire Backer Badge, send me a message

Omg the badges are coming the badges are coming!!!! Why haven't I gotten my badges yet?

Well the actual underlying problem here is, should we let our group be divided by the amount of donation. Should people who donate more be privileged? Should people who donate less be excluded from something? Do we want that or not, in general? Because if we don't want that then I see no point in moving this issue away from backer recognition to "influencing" the appearance of the BIB in the game. So this is my personal opinion now, it's not a rule or law or whatever. I would prefer if we stayed one united group. Let us not divide into who donated more and who donated less. We have only 50 entries, but why not let everyone submit for them and then let Obsidian choose the ones they like most? There would still be a minimal amount of donation required, yes despite of what I just said. Because I wouldn't want people to donate just $1 do be able to submit their ideas. But this minimal amount would be much lower like $10 or $20 dollars. That said you can always submit your ideas anyway on the Black Isle Bastards and their appearance and so on. I always said that you as a donator are free to submit your ideas.

Yeah that is one of the disadvantages of the ingame recognition. Not everyone will be recognized individually. So the ingame recognition is something exclusive to some people only, while we are actually one group of people who want to make this happen. So by doing this we kind of exclude people from our own group from participating in something. And I really dislike that thought. Still we do need more money. There is no way around that. And we are limited to 50 entries anyway. So not everyone can be included in individual recognition. There are donators for who $5 or $10 are a lot of money actually. And they still donated it. And they won't be eligible for this ingame recognition. But that is also how the crowdfunding tiers work on Kickstarter or Fig. That is how life works actually. But I understand the concern that the individual ingame recognition can divide our group. I am not sure how to handle this to be honest.

Well I have thought about it some more and from my experience more rules actually tend to confuse people. So I'm now in favor of letting everyone who is eligible for ingame recognition choose the two categories themselves. But yeah let's see what other people think

Yes that would make more sense with one exception, you will hardly need 40 characters for the name of your character. But now if you make your name only 10 characters long and each other category 70 characters you would prevent us from choosing to not pick your name. That way you could force us to pick your name. So the rule would be that there must not be any combination of two of your four submitted categories that exceeds 80 characters. I fear this rule could actually confuse people. Maybe we should just let people pick the 2 categories themselve they'd like to submit and hope people will pick different ones.

So I had a talk with Aarik last week and I took some time to think about this. One concern of the team is, that our examples were "overly descriptive", i.e. too long. So we would need a character limit. Based on the idea of Fledan I propose that everyone who has donated at least $50 is eligible for this ingame recognition as long as there are free entries available. The maximum entries will be 50. And once we reach the goal of $5000 this option of ingame recognition will not be available anymore. For this ingame recognition you can fill out 4 categories, two of which will be randomly chosen by me or Obsidian. This serves to limit character length but also to make diverse entries. Obsidian is then free to alter the entries to make them lore-friendly if they think that'd be beneficial for their game. The overall character length of your entry must not exceed 80 characters. A space character also counts as a character. With overall length, I mean the overall character length of the 2 categories that we pick from your 4 submitted categories. These 4 categories that you can submit are: - description of robbed individual - specific lore friendly name of robbed individual - robbed individual's fate - taken possessions This is just a suggestion so far. I would like to hear your opinions first.

First let me say that I am also in HUGE support of the health/endurance system of PoE 1 and I wouldn't want it replaced in PoE 2 with something else. Secondly I would also really appreciate if someone would set up a poll where we can vote on the health/endurance system of PoE1.

I am not sure where this argument is heading. Obsidian has offered some kind of individual donator recognition for our group backed content just as they did for other groups in the past for PoE1. So it is their offer and we are discussing the options. I really do not like that by accepting this offer from Obsidian we now must justify or apologize for feeling entitled. Which we don't. I see it this way very simply and easy: If you do not like this project, then do not donate here. As simple as that. If you feel that this group of people who try to make this project come true is privileged in some way then please address your concern to Obsidian directly. I will not feel bad for the offer that Obsidian has made to us. And I will not feel bad for considering and eventually accepting it. And before this matter gets out of hand, please, everyone who discusses this argument think about how your next post can contribute to NOT let this argument get out of hand.

The problem is mainly that at this point the game is still in production phase as far as I have understood Aarik. So ideas may change. The team still may change their minds what they want to have in the game or not etc. The problem is not that it's too hard or impossible. And it's not too much to ask either. They simply cannot make promises at this time. And I don't know how things worked in PoE1. I don't know WHEN that list of the backer names was given in the production phase of PoE 1. Also I guess that not everything that applied on PoE1 will apply on PoE2. From what I gathered, at this point, it's too early for the team to make promises, that's all. It may still happen. It may not. And yes that would be disappointing I admit. The important message is however that they haven't refused the idea. The main problem is that at this point of time they can't make any promises on that matter.

So I have had some nice and long chat with Aarik again. So first of all there cannot be any promises about such a list that we were talking of at this point. MAYBE later. At the moment they simply cannot make any promises on this matter. Another matter is donator recognition in the credits of the game. As far as I have understood Aarik, there will be a recognition for us, the "forum Black Isle Bastards" as a whole. We would just need to decide how we would like to get addressed as a group in the game's credits. And if anyone would like to get a special, individual mention in the game's credits that would require a donation of $100 to this cause. Why $100? Because that was the amount of the respective tier in the FIG campaign that offered individual credits.

Is the backer portal already working for some of you? I still get the message: "Attention Fig Backers! If you are a Fig backer, please continue to manage your pledge through Fig's portal. Your pledges from Fig will be imported soon and we'll notify you via e-mail when we're ready. Stay tuned!" Is that normal?

Hi Torm51, welcome to our lovely bastardly crew I saw that you made two donations. First of all thank you for that, but I urge you to read through the opening post thoroughly first. I also noted that your second donation was exactly $8. So you obviously thought you could get the BIB badge here. If you look at the title of this thread and if you read the opening post, you will see that the badge has nothing to do with this. So I offer you to refund the $8 if you'd like that. You can then actually spend them on the badge.

Presumably it would be voluntary. Each person who backed this by $X should have to let Fluffle know if they want their name included, with the default option being no so that no one gets included by accident. EDIT: also I would suggest an option for people to use a nickname (for example their forum name) in place of their real name if they want to. Actually I fear that forum names and real names can have quite a high potential to risk breaking immersion. So I would rather suggest that people pick a fantasy name that fits the game. And this fantasy name can be based upon their real name or forum name. Real names or forum names would belong in the game credits to my opinion, but not in the actual game itself.

Yes, we would have to treat this with utmost care as to not break immersion. I don't think anyone wants the experience from the tombstones in PoE1 again.

Heh please let's not start name calling. I am very curious why so many vote on the poll but do not even donate $1, but that's not a reason to insult them. I'm rather genuinely intrigued by their behavior and would like to know the reason. But resorting to insults will most likely ensure that people who feel offended by it will not donate. And independent from that, we shouldn't insult anyone for not donating, because it's their decision how to spend their money. I think we can make the BIB possible even without ingame recognition. However, we should still pursue Boeroer's idea because it's fun.

AFAIK PayPal tells the donors e-mail, so if you use the same one multiple times, you're probably OK. Yes I see the email. So if you donate multiple times you should always use the same PayPal Account with the same email address. So of course if that applies all your donations would be taken into account! Just as I combined the 3 donations of $333 by the same donator to determine the biggest donation of $999.

And that is okay. And that is why I'm in favor of his idea and why I support it. Because it's fun. And we should do it because it's fun. But not because we try to appeal to people who would not donate on this otherwise anyway. So now let's start an even more trickier discussion: What should be the minimum amount of donation for being mentioned in the game? $10? $20? $30?

I do like the idea too. But remember we would want to motivate people who haven't spend $1 on this so far. And I have so many doubts that for an entry like "Lord illathid: 20 Silver Fenning and an oddly shaped skull" someone would donate $20 (or $10) when until now they would donate nothing at all. So let us distinguish two things here: 1.) Yes, ingame recognition is nice and fun. And I especially like Boeroer's idea. 2.) I think it's an illusion that offering an ingame recognition will motivate people to donate in masses. Especially people who would not spent $1 on this without that kind of ingame recognition. And if people did suddenly actually start to donate in masses because we offer ingame recognition well then I would wonder what they would actually be pledging for. As in: "Before ingame recognition the BIB are not worth $1 of mine." And then: "Oh they offer ingame recognition. That's worthy of my $20 (or $10)." I would have a hard time to interpret that as support for the BIB. That does NOT mean that there should be no ingame recognition. And I can propose Boeroer's idea to Aarik if you'd like me to. But please let us not pretend that that will make people donate who have seen this project and decided to not donate for it. Worst case would be that people start complaining that they have to "pay" so much to get mentioned ingame...