Dream

Steam was designed as a digital delivery service, and its DRM is ancillary to it's true purpose of providing a platform through which gamers can easily purchase games. The only thing I don't like about steam is that if Valve suddenly goes kaput I'd lose my whole library (but the chances of that are pretty much non-existent). I honestly wouldn't care because I'm not the type of person that discounts an opinion simply because of its source. It doesn't matter to me if the person is a pirate or one of the 10k backers; if they have a valid point then let them have their say. As for whether it's fair or not, who cares; **** happens and there is literally nothing anyone can do about it. One thing I do know, however, is that we are far more likely to help Obsidian out by talking the game up and trying to sell it to both friends and strangers (including pirates) than by going around and saying "**** you, pirate!" That does nothing except antagonize people and exacerbate the issue (it would be rather unfortunate if the pirating community decides that "hey, those P:E fans are a bunch of ****, lets DDoS the **** out of Obsidians websites the day of launch").

Why the **** not? The biggest companies in the business can't stop piracy and I guarantee the money they are sinking into trying to prevent it far eclipses the ENTIRE budget P:E raised on kickstarter. DRM not only fails to prevent piracy but it costs actual sales as well by turning people off.

There is no answer because effective DRMs are by definition obtrusive. If Activision, EA, and Ubisoft can't keep their games from being pirated do you HONESTLY believe that Obsidian can? The best way to avoid piracy is to make a great game that's easily accessible while at the same time fostering as much good will with the community as possible. Pirates are gamers just like the rest of us (hell, they're probably bigger gamers than most of us), and will be far more likely to buy **** if they like a company than if said company instead decided to implement the most stringent and draconian DRM possible (in which case they'll probably just move on and pirate something else instead). I think this is just a convenient excuse to justify piracy. It's easy to make an unfalsifiable claim. If these people exist, then you are stating that these people not only wouldn't buy the game, but actually have no interest in acquiring the game at all (that is, their demand for the product would be 0). If the demand is non-zero, then there must be a value placed on the product. This is evidenced in that people do spend their time acquiring and installing said product (since time in and of itself is a resource). There ARE people that pirate simply because it maximizes the amount of content they get for the investment they put in. Saying that they simply wouldn't buy any games if piracy stopped existing is as naive as hoping that piracy disappears. Actually what I'm saying is anyone who would rather go through the massive headache of pirating a game rather than spending 20 seconds and 20 bucks to get it on Steam would more than likely not buy that game if it was available.Is it possible there are people like that? Sure, maybe. But at the same time it's also possible (and far more likely) that there are people who pirate a game they might be interested in and then proceed to buy said game if they like it (or tell their friends about it who then themselves buy it). At the end of the day there's a reason Valve is making money hand over fist. They realized that piracy was only partly about money. When presented with a service like steam a very large portion of pirates choose instead to buy the game from there rather than pirate it because of how much easier and quicker it is. Time is, after all, money.

Actually I asked for an example of a game, not a DRM system that was not only bad for your comp (not as bad as some people say, but still not exactly good), but has been cracked. But here, give us an example of your mythical DRM that is both effective and unobtrusive, because it doesn't exist (since if it did everyone would be using it). The claims have been exaggerated, but they're still true. Also, the reason Starforce is still somewhat (I stress that) effective in Russia/Eastern Europe is the same reason Macs were "virus-free" for so long, when 99% of a market is somewhere else there's no reason for the big time hackers to focus on the niche (Witcher, Metro, and Crysis sure as **** didn't use Starforce). On top of that Starforce isn't hated nearly as much over there as it is here (although it is still rather hated) Finally, I can tell you right now that using any DRM like SecuROM or Starforce would not in any way be worth the loss of good will. There are for more people who would refuse to buy a game that has those DRMs just on principle than there are people who would purchase it if no avenue for pirating it was available. All DRM does is hamper pirating (if that); it doesn't generate sales.

Those two things are about as far apart as you can get. There are no effective and unobtrusive DRMs, and the reason Starforce worked so well was because it was anything but unobtrusive. On top of that the amount of absolute hatred (as well valid concerns about computer security) that Starforce generates would cost P:E FAR more sales than would be gained from pirates purchasing the game.

There are DRMs that stay uncracked for years. They exist. These DRMs, perhaps with the caveats I stated, can be effective barriers to a significant amount of piracy. Other than DRMs, there are other copyright protections that could be taken (someone else posted about this in this thread) to reduce piracy. Name one game. If there existed a DRM that couldn't be cracked you can be damn sure Assassin's Creed would have it.

Oh I see what you're saying now. Well, yeah you can't really completely stop pirating: you could probably have world peace before that happens. But you can try to dissuade as many as possible. My point is to make it difficult to pirate a game. Effective, unobtrusive copyright protections can do that. But these need support from gamers. I think we're on the same page. Ubisoft has some of the most draconian DRM ever and even their games are up on crack sites and torrents BEFORE they're released. The only truly effective DRM is an always online approach where a portion of the game's data is handled on the outside servers (D3, WoW, etc.). Seeing as pretty much nobody wants that, putting any amount of time or effort into DRM is simply a waste of resources. As for making pirating difficulty; it already is. It is far easier to buy **** on steam, origin, gog.com, etc. than it is to torrent cracks and scan them with anti virus software (not to mention having to repeat this process every time there's a patch or dlc). Anyone who is willing to go through all that bull**** to save a few bucks would not have bought the game in the first place. Those people don't exist anymore.

I'm not sure I quite understand what you're trying to say. If they download any game without discretion (like let's say they're a collector), they aren't planning on playing it anyway. So this doesn't really help increase word of mouth. If they are planning on playing the game and intentionally downloaded the game from the torrent site, then they should buy it or pay the devs to help support them. Buying from Steam is buying, not piracy. If they willy-nilly torrent everything, then when they do play it, they should pay for it. What? Pirating is about saving time and money. Arguments about pirating taking away sales made sense when the only way to get games was to trudge out to a brick and mortar and throw down half a c-note. Nowadays if a pirate is so broke or cheap that they'd rather go through all the rigmarole of pirating rather than going on steam, paying 20 bucks (which is basically nothing now), and being done in 10 seconds then there is no way they would have bought the game in the first place. Once they pirate the game they're obviously going to play it (who the hell pirates everything under the sun just to collect it?), and at that point they may (or may not) tell their friends about the game (or even buy the game themselves). Regardless of what happens there is no downside to them pirating that game.

A good game sells regardless of pirates' word of mouth. Are you saying there's an upper ceiling on publicity and marketing because I can guarantee you that P:E wont sell as much as CoD, Starcraft, Halo, Diablo, etc. Look, if pirates want to support the developers (the actual people being paid to work to make the game), they should back the project or buy the game by paying. Don't try to play them off as being some "bastion of goodwill" here to act as a marketing department for Obsidian's Project:Eternity. That's just false. I don't care about pirates of other games. I'm dealing with P:E specifically. That's why the thread is in the P:E forums. It's not about pirates being a bastion of good will. It's about the fact that when a game is as cheap and easy to get as P:E is then anyone who pirates it would have most certainly never bought it in the first place (it's about a thousand times easier to click buy on steam than it is to sift through torrents and cracks and what not to pirate a game). The fact that they own the game can in no way hurt the product. As for why I brought up other games; it was because you stated that a good game sells regardless of pirates' word of mouth (which is true), but P:E will have nowhere near the market penetration of those games I listed, and as such any extra publicity will only serve to help it sell more.

Do all Chinese and Russian players plan on pirating this game? I don't think so. I'm pretty sure some of them have backed it and others plan on buying it. Backers shouldn't enable pirates though by posting their own copies up on piratebay. China and Russia are in the top 3 countries for rates of software piracy is what I'm getting at. We Russians would steal our own lunch if we hadn't already eaten it.

A good game sells regardless of pirates' word of mouth. Are you saying there's an upper ceiling on publicity and marketing because I can guarantee you that P:E wont sell as much as CoD, Starcraft, Halo, Diablo, Skyrim, etc.

I'm gonna take a guess here and say that there are far more players who would be bothered by not being able to reload a skill check than those who would prefer to not reload after a skill check but don't have the will power to resist doing so and end up hating themselves for it. So if you truly want to cater to the majority then the optimal solution would be... the one that's been in place for the past two decades.

To all the people that think optional things are "bad design" and the game should be played only one way (the "intended" way): What happens when the devs decide that you're in the minority (because you are) and design the game to be played pretty much the opposite to how you like. Would you be perfectly fine with the game since that's the way it was "intended" to be played? That sort of thing can really screw up the game balance though. Area-effect things would become massively more powerful, which would make character builds that are good at them massively overpowered compared to other character builds. In my opinion, that is not a Good Thing. Who gives a **** if another person's SINGLE PLAYER experience isn't balanced? Should they disable all mods as well because someone somewhere might make a mod that "imbalances" the game (god forbid)? There were plenty of things you could do in the IE games that broke the **** out of them (Kensai/mage anyone?), but I never did (most of) them and the fact that others did had absolutely zero effect on my own personal enjoyment of the games. Design a game to be played a certain way but let people play it how they want. IWD2 was never intended to be played on HoF at level 1, but people still did it and had fun. How a complete stranger chooses to experience a game should have absolutely zero effect on you.

When the game is 20 bucks and available on steam any pirates that steal it wouldn't have bought it anyways. In addition to that if they really do like it then there is a more than zero chance that they'd either buy it themselves or, through word of mouth, inspire someone else to.

There's no need to get angry. I don't believe that players always know best, and I guess that's where we disagree. While in this example I may or may not be wrong, the point I was trying to make is that it is OK for the devs to decide some things for the player. We might disagree about what specifically. What works as an ideal might not as a reality. Yea, it's may be okay for devs, but you most certainly are not a dev. Additionally, devs have, by and large, supported the practice of "save scumming" on the PC platform. The only reason checkpoints/limited saves even exist on the PC nowadays is because a great deal of games are either straight up console ports, were made to be multiplatform from the start, or are indie "throwbacks" to the arcade/NES days (which basically makes them console ports as well). Look at a predominantly PC genre like strategy games; you'd be hard pressed to find any games with checkpoints or limited save systems. The only real examples are games like Heroes of Might and Magic and Master of Orion where you can't save during combat, but in those games battles are largely decided before they even begin through careful preparation (in fact combat in those games could easily be compared to a hacking minigame in an RPG, right down to the fact that the outcome can be auto decided for you). As for strategy games where combat is a very large focus (Starcraft, C&C, Total Annihilation, etc.), they have, you guessed it, (quick)save anywhere.

Really? I thought that was common knowledge. If you have a tendency to eat too much candy, it's way easier not to buy a bag than to stop halfway through. Us humans work that way. Maybe it's different in Poland. Except turning off a toggle isn't the same as not buying a bag; it's the equivalent of leaving the bag on the other side of the room (unless it's a hard toggle that can only be turned on and off at the start of the game, then I agree with you). I think sometimes the devs do know better, yes. Study after study shows that people are really bad at determining what will make them happy. If a player intends to save whenever the game gets a little challenging, then yes, I think I know better, I think the devs know better and they would be well within their rights to protect the integrity of their game and save people from themselves. The problem lies in that there is no clear solution which only works against the exploiting of features, but doesn't punish players who are using features the way they're intended. Devs (which you are not, by the way) might know what the majority finds more fun, but they sure as **** don't know what any given person finds more fun than that person themselves does. On top of that who are you to even say people aren't using features the way they were intended? Pretty much all manuals with games that allow you to save anywhere have something about saving as often as humanly possible (which, by the way, was the whole ****ing point of developing the QUICK save and load features). You're taking a play style you disagree with, stating it's not the "correct" or "intended" way to play (despite having no evidence of this), and then demanding that features be implemented to "fix" this aberrant play style. All this despite the fact that said play style has been around forever and has even had features developed specifically to support it. Do you understand how ****ing retarded you sound or are you actually this dense?

Because we want this game to be fun, not just for us, but for everyone. And while we can't prevent people from ruining their own game (as they are allowed to do), If it's within the power of the game designers to encourage players to play the game in a way that will be more enjoyable for them, why shouldn't they? Wait, so you're telling us that you know better than we do about what is best for us when it comes to having fun? "NO! You're having fun the WRONG WAY! Do this instead you quick saving philistine!" Are you out of your ****ing mind? I've heard far more people say things like "I'd really enjoy this game if it wasn't for the checkpoints/stupid save system/whatever." Hell, I've said that about a ****load of games myself (Crysis was more fun than Crysis 2 for instance). I think more people are interested in a "no spiders" option than limiting saving outside ironman mode, considering how often various CRPGs (like Skyrim, DA:O and others) get mods that remove the spiders. Depending on how realistic the spiders are animated, I'd might want an option like that myself Heh, touche.

I honestly can't say randomization would have made me replay BG or PS:T more. You can't randomize story.

Nope, I don't enjoy it. It becomes a compulsive activity, something I have no control over. Similar to someone with obsessive-compulsive disorder who runs home fifteen times to check that he locked the front door before finally being able to leave, and then spends the entire vacation worrying that he really locked it. Games that reward backtracking through frequent save/reload trigger this type of behavior in me, and I don't enjoy it. I agree, it's not healthy to do this. That's why I try to avoid games that do trigger this, and since I've already paid for P:E, I am hoping it's not one of them. And since Hormalakh started a topic about it, I'm weighing in. You, of course, are just as free to state your preferences, and the devs are free to ignore both of us. Grand, isn't it? Not to be that guy, but you are about as far from the average gamer as one can get. Expecting developers with a rather limited budget to cater to every super niche (should they make an option to toggle away spiders for all the arachnophobes that play the game?) is more than a bit unrealistic. Your best bet is to hope someone makes a mod that addresses your specific hangups.

Oh, I can and do abuse it. I told you, willpower is my dump stat. If I get nervous, I start saving every five seconds. I also easily flip into "optimization mode" where I abuse savegames until I get the result I want, whether it's about fights, locks, or conversations. This jolts me out of the game and ruins my enjoyment. For example, I just replayed Fallout. The manual actually tells you to save before attempting anything interesting. That makes skill checks almost meaningless. I found myself just saving every time I attempted to repair/science/lockpick something, and reloading until it worked. I never, ever just continued if I perma-failed on somehting. And yes, it did significantly detract from my enjoyment. If I had more willpower, I wouldn't do this. Hell, if I had more willpower I would stop playing games past the point I stopped enjoying them, but I don't, and I do. I do a lot of stuff I know is bad for me simply because I don't have the willpower not to. That's why I like crutches like permadeath without the possibility of savegame abuse, like NetHack on somebody else's server, and which is why a combination of ironman and a difficulty level low enough to make dying rare sounds good to me. And which is why I suggested an optional, adjustable savegame timeout for P:E, combined with mechanics that don't result in frequent dying {which already appears to be in anyway}. Once more, I really don't care how you (ab)use your savegames - I just have preferences of my own regarding game design. Specifically, for the reasons cited above, I have a strong preference for games that do not reward constant saving and reloading. Sadly, I don't much care for most genres where this is not a problem; I find linear shooters and adventure games boring, for example. That's not abusing it though. That's simply playing the game a certain way. Hell, as you said, the manual specifically states to play this way. Besides, no one has said they'd be against an optional toggle that implements a save cooldown (or whatever), we just don't want it hardcoded into the game (which is what the OP was demanding).

Saving and loading. Simple as that, you cannot "abuse" it. It's single player game. It has nothing to do with difficulty of the game or the experience of the game. If I want to check every dialog option before making my final decision, that's my business. That pretty much sums it up right there. Why do people care so much about how someone else plays a singleplayer game. This isn't WoW; nobody is racing for "World First Project Eternity Clear."

...in batman...a movie. Real life is a different story. Oh, well in that case you're absolutely right since project eternity is real li... oh wait. yeah wtf is realism? Batman sure as **** was about 100 times more realistic than the IE games.

Riddles and thought puzzles, but that's about it (no connecting blue tubes every time you want to hack something).

You can't just leave us like that. What was it?! What topic?! It's probably about how it's too easy to save & load in BG.

I don't even understand what you're trying to argue here. I replied to you stating that this thread is not about you wanting to force your play style on others and how that was bull****, or are you implying that there is no one who's play style includes reloading constantly until you get a successful skill check? I'll tell you right now: there are people who play like that; hell, I play like that.