John Forseti
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John Forseti replied to LadyCrimson's topic in Pillars of Eternity: General Discussion (NO SPOILERS)I pledged my order membership many moons ago, and then took many more to fill out the little survey thing and then kind of forgot until the recent kickstarter update. Given that I should like to receive my title, Eternal Procrastinator of the Obsidian Order, thanks -
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Earlier you said Paradox were presumably smart and now you think they've risked the whole company on this deal? Paradox likely wouldn't have even considered it if they didn't think they could absorb the potential of a commercial flop. You don't see a difference in the risks between completely funding a game from the start and coming in to do marketing at the end for a title that made 4.5 million before even starting production?
You're putting me in some positions i haven't taken there, and putting a lot of words in my mouth. I agree I might be wrong, but based on what I 'know' and what i've seen I think the more likely case is I'm not wrong, it could be such and such of course, heck it could be that every single decision Obsidian makes is determined by a random lottery and one week it picked out "do some outsourcing". And if a developper pops up and says "Yeah we didn't do it because of that, we did it for these reasons" then fine, I don't think I'm important enough for them to bother making up a lie for, of course I could be wrong. Also I havent made any 'further decisions', the very first thing i said on this topic was that I didn't vote in the poll and wanted more information.
I find it very unlikely that theres enough demand for large scale high resolution infinity engine maps that someone managed to set up a shop for it and take in enough orders to be able to manage it more cost-effectively than Obsidian themselves. After all atleast part of the point of using kick starter and crowd-funding is because publishers consider such a game too niche and risky to invest in. Also if there was such an outfit, why wasn't it used from the start? Why did they give us so many interesting updates guiding us through how they created the lovely maps and why do the majority themselves if it would be cheaper and just as good to have had someone else do it?
I don't see what you're getting so defensive about, I've not actually criticised the decision nor have I suggested they should have hired temps or something, I just see it as a indication that a rather very understandable problem occured*, that they've bitten off a bit more than they can chew and worry that they might compound that problem by taking yet more bites. *And as I said in the bit you decided not to quote, things just don't always go to plan and it's not a slight on the company when that sometimes happens.
Whether Obsidian does task A or Outsource Inc. does it, then assuming they're both competant, it's still going to take a similar amount of time to do. However Outsource Inc. doesn't get to sell the end product so they're going to want compensation for it and make a profit on their time, so it's more expensive to get Outsource Inc to do it than to do it in-house since you're paying them not just for the time and resources task A required but for their profit on top of it. Why on earth would they go for a more expensive option unless there was a compelling reason to do so such as trying to keep within a certain time-frame? Now I'm not saying they're a shoddy developper, if I believed that I would never have bothered backing them in the first place, just that even the best laid plans don't survive first contact with the enemy so to speak.
I don't use hot-keys, except perhaps WASD, ESC and SPACE. So I want a pretty interface with legible text that has room for plenty of actions, functions etc and ways to get to the various screens quickly and conveniently. AND I would like for it to be as small and unintrusive as possible while delivering that. Shouldn't be too hard right?
John Forseti replied to Gripshift22's topic in Pillars of Eternity: General Discussion (NO SPOILERS)There's absolutely nothing inherantly wrong or bad about an isometric perspective and it makes better sense for parties or squads as others have said. The only problem with the older isometric games is that they were never designed with modern systems and their resolutions in mind. I'd love to go back and play quite a few of them, but at their time resolutions like 1024 x 720 were top of the range, and stretching that to 1920 x 1200 makes a confusing illegible mess. That not going to be a problem for Project Eternity, atleast not for another 10 or 15 years.
Some people put killing children on the other side of the boundary, as separate from killing adults. I could say that's valid, sure. I can see where they are coming from. Ah but here is the catch 22. You already have to randomly slaughter adults all the time in most RPG's, thought rarely because you "choose" to. Example... Baldur's Gate. You are traveling between zones and gosh darn-it, bandit's waylay you. You have no choice, you have to kill them or they will kill you. You did not "choose" to go looking for them etc etc, they found you. But end result you kill them. Odds are good these bandits were adult humanoids. I don't think anyone is going to argue against you being able to kill an adult male human bandit, right? That said, what is not going to be found in that group of bandit's waylaying you? A five year old kid. This is pretty disingenuous, killing hostiles such as a bandit party that waylaid you is not exactly you being able to initiate a "random retarded slaughter" simply because you felt like it. I'd be perfectly content if the game simply did not allow you to target non-hostile NPCs like in many other games, but if it does simply allow you to open up on anyone, it really should be anyone, whether they can effectively fight back or not.
