Regenshire

Has anyone received their physical Pillars of Eternity Game Discs yet? What all is included on the disks? Do they have a separate install key to the digital copies that we have already received? For collection reason's I would rather not open my copy, but I would like to know what is included in it. Thanks

I just received an email notification that my physical rewards is being shipped and to expect it on the 30th or 31st. The issue is, they are shipping to my old address, not the address that I currently have registered in the backer portal. Who is the best contact to get this resolved? I assume my shipment is still at the warehouse, but I don’t know how to get this corrected. I submitted a ticket with Paradox but their system says they are backed up and are trying to reply within 72 hours. To have this go to the wrong address even though I had updated the address information when I moved is very frustrating. Thanks

I have had private discussions with some developers that worked on a project that Paradox was the publisher on. On that project at least, Paradox began real bug testing at the release candidate stage. That project sadly was cancelled around that time apparently due to the poor state of the candidates (bugs, design, ect), as well I believe due to issues between management of the two companies. The important part to this discussion is that most likely Paradox isn't very involved in testing at this stage.

Also, I like the suggestion of a slider or some sort for combat speed, something like Paradox uses for their EU style games where you have 5 speed settings controlled by + or - (please remove them from the current hotkeys, very easy to accidently change speed when you are trying to scroll your screen with WASD). Speed suggestions: Slower (25%) - Slow (50%) - Normal (75%) - Fast (100%) - Faster (125%), with the percent being the current speed in the beta.

I haven't played through a ton of content yet, but I wanted to weigh in on the combat system. Initial Observations · Damage o There is a lot of fractional damage being done, with 0.1 to 0.9 being very common amounts of damage displayed in the log for this encounter. o Damage amounts vary greatly between combat pairings (Attacker vs Defender) § BB Fighter attacking Medreth was doing 25ish damage on each hit § BB Rogue attacking Boar Companion was doing between 0.5 to 0.9 per hit o The damage values displayed in the log do not always add up. § Example: Acc: 37 - Def: 40 = -3. Roll: 66 - 3 = 63 (Hit).19.7 - 10.0 = 4.9 Pierce Damage · How does this equal 4.9? Based on the values shown, it would be 9.7. Obviously, something is missing in the displayed equation, or something is buggy. · Hitting/Missing/Grazing o If the attacker has a higher Accuracy then the defender has a defensive stat, then it looks like you will never miss, the worse you will get is a Graze, even if the roll is a 1. · Duel Wielding o Duel Wielding appears to give a bonus to Deflection and does not do any damage. If the “Auto-Paused: Weapon Ineffective” option is selected, this results in pausing everytime the character attacks, as the secondary weapon is “Ineffective” but it lists that they get a +5 Deflection bonus. · Healing Abilities such as Unbending o Don’t appear to be in-sync in the log with the actions that trigger them. After activating Unbending, I started seeing “Heal Gord for 1 stamina” or “Heal Gord for 0 Stamina” messages. These we seldom in sync with when the character was being hit in the log and would often appear after other effects such as Constant Recovery, causing confusion to what is triggering them. Initial Suggestions · Damage o Round to whole numbers and get rid of all of the decimal points. o Reduce the damage disparity between different attackers/weapons/ect. Right now it feels like a character is either doing good damage, or they are basically doing below 1 damage per swing. The low damage amounts are not very fun. Consistently doing 2 or less damage while other characters are doing 25+ damage is a very large difference. · Hitting/Missing/Grazing o Increase the Miss Chance. Right now, if you character has even a slightly better accuracy then their defense, you never miss, regardless of what you roll. I can understand maybe having no miss chance if you stat far above the defense, but right now if it is 1 point above their defensive stat it appears you can't miss, you will always get a graze or better. Maybe something like make it so a Roll + (Acc-Def) of <25 is a miss >=25 Graze, >=50 Hit, ect.

Here is how to recreate the issue, as well as a way out of the screen if you are impacted by this issue: 1) Open Inventory Screen (NOT IN A REST AREA) 2) Open Stash 3) Select an item stored in the Stash such as a weapon. You will be unable to equip the item or move it to your slots (expected behavior) 4) With the item still selected (ie, the mouse pointer looks like the item), hit ESC on your keyboard. This will close the Stash window. The item however will still be selected, causing issues. 5) You are now unable to close the inventory window by pressing ESC or by clicking in the X icon. You also are also unable to click on most items on the inventory window. You are unable to re-open the Stash window while the item is selected, meaning you cannot un-select it. 6) You can clear the Stash item selection by clicking on the 3d Character Model displayed, which will normally change your selection to their armor or other item. This is how I eventually got out of the screen without restarting. Suggested Behaviour ESC should clear a selected item out before closing out a window. This would resolve this issue, and in my opinion, be intuitive. ESC Order of Priority on Inventory Screen: - ESC - Clear Selected Item -- ESC - Close STASH window --- ESC - Close Inventory Window

Not being able to remove it makes the curse actually matter, and in a big way. If you can simply trade it in and out with other equipment without any other affect then it really has no impact on your game other then that you can make it benefit you in small ways where it makes sense. That being said, their are probably other mechanics you could use to make cursed items actually matter. For example, you equips a cursed dagger (its not obvious it is cursed) for X minutes on a character. Every once in a while your character talks about how dark and shiny his dagger is, which is odd because he has never talked about a specific item before. He must like it. Later on you swap it out for a new shiny dagger, not knowing the previous one is cursed. It lets you swap it out. You get in an encounter later on, your character swing his new knife and a dialogue appears on the screen informing you that your hand has convulsed and you drop the dagger, and the character immediately draws his old favorite and begins swinging with it. The big thing I would like to see is if there are multiple cursed objects (and there should only be at most a few in the game) have each one have completely different curse affects, just make sure they actually matter and reduce the choice or cause some sort of headache for the character. Also, have interesting quests associated with the items and a way to resolve the curse on the player.

I would like to see an animalistic/giant like race, physically similar to a bear in stature and silhouette. A large and physically powerful race with limited natural predators and a particular preference for seafood, Aumaua tend to prefer living in peaceful fishing settlements along the coasts and rivers. While nonaggressive, and outwardly calm and peaceful, they are also a very stubborn and willful race who when pressed will aggressively defend their homes. They predominantly a simple people who focus on family and community, with limited ambition. They are known for their common sense. Basically an animistic take on gentle giants.

Which raises the concern of what happens if that period comes to a close and the game needs to be delayed. The Kickstarter crowd almost certainly wants a finished game rather than an early release, but where do they get the funds to finance extra work, if its needed? Assuming that Obsidian is a healthy company financially, they probably have cash reserves and lines of credit they can draw on to pay salaries and operational expenses for at least several months if not a year or more. I doubt the company is surviving hand to mouth.

You would have to account for payroll taxes, benefits, tools, licensing fees, and other operational expenses to get a rough idea. An extreamly rough estimate would be at least $35k per person. With these very rough assumptions, you are looking at being able to support a 20 person team for a year and a half to two years without tapping into other funds. True. Really comes down to the breakdown of the team and the different roles as well. I mean a graphic artist or QA could be down near 50k. That's even if the full team is salaried or wholly dedicated to the one project. Most of the QA group probably overlaps with the South Park development. 35k a person seems a bit high of an estimate as well. I'd argue benefits average 15k. Unity is what, like 1500 a license? Either way, 4m is enough for an 18 month production period. 35k is probably high (always estimate high on expenses), but I think its defiantly above 20k per person. Health Insurance is probably going to between 10-15k per person if you assume many of them have family on their plans, and assuming they company is offering good health care benefits. 401k matching costs are going to depend on average salary level, but you are probably looking at 3k per person right there assuming a max 5% match, then payroll taxes, general office expenses, and misc project expenses. Regardless, they should have enough for an 18 month project with 20 people.

You would have to account for payroll taxes, benefits, tools, licensing fees, and other operational expenses to get a rough idea. An extreamly rough estimate would be at least $35k per person. With these very rough assumptions, you are looking at being able to support a 20 person team for a year and a half to two years without tapping into other funds.

You're a long way off. Fallout released in 1997 had a budget of 3m. BG2 would be at the very least 5m. Not sure how 1-4 million average budget size is way off of 3 mil or 5 mil for specific titles (3 mil in that range, 5 million reasonably close, and I would like to see where you got that value for BG2 as I can't find it anywhere and I am very curious how much it actually cost to make). Those are just statistics for the average cost of making a video game in the listed year, not specific to genre or platform. What I was primarily showing was how much budgets have skyrocketed in a 12 year period. Budgets have gone up for specific reasons, and it not due to inflation. I summarized some of the reasons why. PE doesn't have many of those items, and thus should be a lot cheaper then the current 'avg' game.

That $20M+ number is oversimplified and really is not a realistic budget for this category of game. It doesn’t take into account anything other than the overall average on current AAA video games designed for the current tier of Consoles. AAA is the top tier of games from a sales perspective, think Call of Duty, Gears of War, Halo 3, and other huge releases. Almost all titles with this sort of budget are 1st person shooters or 3rd person over the shoulder perspective video games with a lot of cinematic and voice work, and are also released on at least 3 different platforms (xbox 360, PS3, and PC). Video game budgets have increased at an incredible rate over the past decade: · 1-4 mil 2000 · 5 mil in 2006 · 20m in 2010 This is primarily due to the increased expectation in the level of detail complexity in 3d graphics and in-game physics, using full voice overs instead of text, and simultaneous multi-platform release across consoles and PCs. Project Eternity has almost none of the attributes that require a 20 million dollar budget. It doesn’t require complex 3d environments with advanced in game physics, full voice overs, and release on consoles. I think the 4 million dollar budget will be more then enough to release this type of game with the specs that have been promised, especially when you consider the tools available today are a lot better then they were 10 years ago.

My hope is that after this game is released they will realize enough profit to fund their next game internally and be able to self publish, leaving the large publishers completely out of the equation.

I don't want to turn this into what has Shaker done wrong thread, but I think they made a lot of other mistakes other then starting this midstream on P:E, though I think that one is a really big one. Am I the only one who felt like they saw the P:E kickstarter and then decided to their own "Old School" RPG one, but older school? Thats probably not fair, it likely was just councidence, but when they initially released it they didn't give any details on the game itself other then it would be old old old school. And I am not sure that RPGs older then around the Infinity Engine are going to get a huge following. I remember kind of enjoying real old school RPGs like Bard's Tale, but that is in context to what games existed at that time. I don't think that really old school design has any real advantages over existing RPG design, and especially not over isometric designs. Also the name on the kickstarter was originally 'Old School RPG', which, I personally think was a really bad name for a kickstarter. And can someone explain the character portrait of the guy in the Shaker shirt? I thought it was supposed to be a Fantasy RPG? *Sorry to derail the thread*

I would like to see a single dragon in the game in some distant corner of the world, tied with some optional quests. They are a favorite classic for a reason. But it needs to be done right, make it a massively powerful, intelligent, and complex creature with its own goals. And attacking it should be only a valid option if you are on the high end of the power-curve in the game. And it should use flight effectively in combat, this is almost never done well, and really would be the dragons most devastating advantage in combat. Oh, and no player dragons for goodness sake, that is campaign ruining nonsense! That would only work if the entire premise of the game is designed around it (Temeraire based isometric RPG? Yes please!).

Each companion is exponential on the amount of dialogue/banter they have to write, so I am pretty sure that is why they stopped at 8. If they want detailed characters near the level of Planescape then limiting the number of companions is probably a requirement. While I agree with you in regards to the player hall adventurers not being real companions, they do give you the freedom to swap in a slot of two to get the tactical balance you want while retaining core NPCs in some of the slots, so you really get a lot of options for what your party makeup will look like, as well as having deep characters you can explore and work with.

I like aspects of this, though I don't think it should be on a per level basis, but instead should maybe have 4 or so levels in each phase, with the first phase becoming accessible sometime in the middle of the game. Each phase should be hard for the targetted party level (ie, if mid game your characters are level 8-12, it should be designed to challange a level 12 party. The last phase should be one of the most challanging (if not the most) areas in the game, with an expectation that the player has eeked out every last experience point and piece of epic gear that is available outside of that phase. Every phase should be hard, and also very rewarding to complete. It should feel like an accomplishment to get through a few levels of the dungeon, from a gear standpoint, an XP standpoint, and from a player experience standpoint. For example, lets say you are level 10, and your party battles its way through the first 4 levels and completes the first phase of the dungeon, having beaten the last boss and his minions, moving further into the dungeon you come across a cast cavern that opens up below you, with a great and epic looking chasm, but there is no way across because the ancient bridge has collapsed. You will need to find someone and or something to help you across. On the far side, peering from the shadows, a new and fearsome enemy pears at you, making you shiver in fear... and anticipation. Your party goes back to the surface to see if you can't locate a solution to the new impediment to your spelunking.

This game needs diversity, it shouldn't be all about pure roleplay and meeting NPCs, this should be a dungeon to make hard-core dungeon crawlers want to keep coming back for more. It should contain some of the most challenging combat encounters in the game and some of the best loot. The only communities I would support being in there would be communities of monster type creatures, ala like hook horrors or grell or something like that. You might have some small chance of them not killing you on site if you can prove your worth and aid them in their war against other denizens of the dark halls, but I don't want to see a bunch of surface dwellers living merry lives in the dungeon just because.

I am curious how Kickstarter campaigns will be registered for sales figures purposes for this and other games. Its not a pre-sale after all, its funding with a reward if the project is a success. That might seem like semantics, and maybe it is, since the end result is very similar, but they are very different vehicles since you aren't actually purchasing something but are instead of funding a project that happens to have a reward scheme once it is completed.

This please, thank you

http://en.wikipedia...._PC_video_games It looks like the most successful RPGs on the computer (not including MMOs and Diablo), are: The Witcher, 2.1 Million Baldur's Gate, 2 Million Baldur's Gate 2, 2 Million Neverwinter Nights, 2 Million The Witcher 2, 1.1 Million Those figures should give us an idea of what the upper cap is on the success of the game. I believe Planescape Torment sold around 400,000 copies so it wasn't considered to be hugely successful based off of sales figures, though it was critically acclaimed.

Yeah, most D&D sessions don't even reach epic level. I am sure the power level of the items will be consistent with the power level of the main campaign. Its not like with D&D where Epic Level / Super Powerful items are already defined outside of the video game. By Epic, I think they mean powerful (in this specific game) and unique items with lore.

The price is a pretty large barrier against this, plus Obsidian will have creative control. I am guessing the #1 source for inspiration for most NPCs will be based on player characters from PnP games that backers remember fondly. These will probably have fleshed out back stories that they can provide to Obsidian, ect. There will probably be a few humor ones I am sure, but as long as their aren't a ton of them and are tasteful I think it will work out well.

A lot like movie commentary, really. See games like Portal 2 for an example. I have never heard of it for an RPG, and that could be kind of awesome actually.