Marceror

Finding myself agreeing with virtually everything said.

Well said PrimeJunta. I look forward with great anticipation, and hope, for the next release.

Nice. Any chance you can share the final number with the backers? Would be nice to know how much was raised in total.

One more comment about the classical guitar playing. I'm hopeful that you'll find time to include another tune like that. Maybe for a slightly larger town/inn, you could have a classical guitar duet. A classical guitar and violin, even if sampled, could be awesome too. As if you don't already have enough on your plate, I'm sure!

Thanks for the update Roby. That's exactly how I hoped it would work.

Thanks Marceror,I'm glad you like it! That was me playing. I played classical guitar for many years, and own a concert guitar which I used for the inn music. Justin, my hat is off to you. I was an active musician for many years, getting very serious about guitar playing during my freshman year of high school, where I started practicing 4+ hours daily (mostly hard rock, lead guitar at the time). I was also very active as a vocalist and composer. Before I all but set it aside -- a decision I still lament in many ways -- switching from a music major to computer science I studied classical guitar for a few years. Of all of the instruments and styles that I was interested in, classical guitar in many respects was the most rewarding... and the most challenging. I could play some fairly technical pieces very well. My fingers went to all of the right places, and I was theoretically playing the pieces exactly as I should. But the thing that I was never fully satisfied with was the tone I created from my guitar. Playing classical guitar, much more so than a lot of other instruments, isn't just about playing technically correctly. It's also about how you touch the strings. Having just the right amount of finger vs. fingernail on your picking hand. In a way, classical guitar playing really becomes an extension of the person, where even the slightest variations in how you approach the instrument can have sweeping changes to the sound that is produced. Forget to file your nails properly, and your tone will be different. Even just figuring out "how" to file your nails is an art form, and can take years to perfect. To put it in DnD terms, I never quite felt that I was sufficiently "elflike" with my classical guitar playing. I felt more like gnome. I had learned what I was supposed to learn, but there was always something "mechanical" about it. Perhaps that's part of the reason I switched to computer science. I was rarely truly satisfied with my work. But your piece that is playing in the Dracogen Inn, in my humble view, it truly elflike. The tone is natural and beautiful. Obsidian is fortunate to have you.

The classical guitar piece in the Dracogen in is great. And totally different than anything I've heard in the IE games. Simple, but very well played. Playing high quality classical guitar is not easy. Whoever played that is creating a beautiful tone from their instrument, and is a total pro.

Same problem here around 30 minutes ago.

How about you point me to where I made that implication? I don't recall making it, and it's 180 degrees opposite to what I believe.

It looks really good at 640x480. Have you tried that resolution yet? My top of the line 14" monitor has never looked better!

Seriously? Eyeroll? You are the one who stated that "any effort spent servicing us [paraphrased: is not helping to keep the project on schedule]." Okay, so point taken. The backer beta, with its separate install package is exactly what you describe. I'm just taking the next logical step with your argument. So is the eyeroll directed at me, or at you? Maybe you just didn't realize how profound your point was.

Well, in this case it was a bad idea for Obsidian to offer a separate backer beta. They should have just given the backers the same build they are testing internally. Those who wouldn't want to be spoiled need not play. Those who are willing to be spoiled for the sake of making the game better could. And Obsidian would avoid a bunch of extra work to maintain a separate, reduced scope build that may result in bugs that aren't in the full game build. This is essentially what I said as soon as I learned the backer beta would consist of only 1 town, 2 wilderness areas and 3 - 5 hours of gameplay.

Sounds like a pretty sweeping change 4 months before full release. I'm not opposed to the idea of traditional rounds, as they are as familiar to me as my own hands. But would be very concerned about such a major change being made, unless there were plans to delay the release and perfect it, along with everything else that needs to be perfected.

I have stated a few times that I feel the game's combat system would work better as turn based. I still feel that way. But yesterday I finally got to play for a couple of hours without any game breaking bugs, and got a much better feel for combat. It's still wonky, yes, but I found that it actually works. As I've also said before, I think we need to stop thinking of PoE as Real Time with Pause, as it's more apt to describe it as Pause with Real Time. What I mean is, to control combat properly, you need to spend A LOT of time in that paused state. Unpause and let some things unfold, and pause again. The per encounter abilities lend themselves to heavy pausing. Poor pathing lends itself to heavy pausing -- you can't just send your melee guys to attack the enemy as a group, you generally need to give each of them different individual paths to get to the enemy. Keep things slow and methodical, and it works out relatively well.

Holy s$%^! That sounds bloody fantastic. I will have to try that out next time!

I don't disagree that the final product of the project overall is more important than the beta. A wildly successful launch with a crappy beta is far better than the reverse. But I would place the reputation and credibility of the company before both of those.

It is not unplayable, I have played several hours of it, even without any major crashes. There are some serious bugs, mainly regarding inventory and exp, and some serious balancing issues. The game is playable for sure, but needs polish. But to me, polish does not mean "break down and rebuild from scratch". There was plenty of warning before hand of known issues. The beta has only been going for 5 days, let's see how it looks in 2 months. Steam tells me that I have clocked in 8 hours with the beta, and I haven't had a single game crash myself. I'm aware that others are experiencing crashes, but game crashing hasn't been one of my specific points of discussion. I've stated those points multiple times, so I won't repeat them here. I've also never said the beta was unplayable. I have said things like "largely unplayable" and this comment is based on my personal experiences and an overwhelming number of forum posts I've been seeing. For me, I have started 10 separate PoE BB games to date. The first 9 encountered a game breaking bug before I could complete a single quest. Attempt number 10 was glorious in comparison, as I managed to complete 2 quests and get my party to level 7 before I experienced a game breaking bug. It seems some are having better luck than others. So if you're not getting hit by the game breakers, than god bless you.

PJ, I appreciate your post, and I get the impression you're an intelligent individual with some prior experience on related topics, but I dare say you aren't seeing the bigger picture in some respects. I know for a fact that at least one of the critical bugs that I mentioned in my previous post was known to OE prior to releasing the BB, and if they had done really any testing prior to releasing they knew about the others. That said, in Kickstarter update 84 and in a locked post from Brandon Adler in the Backer Beta Bug reporting forum (quoted below) is a list of "known bugs". Well, interestingly, all of the critical, game breaking bugs are conspicuously missing from that list. As if OE wants to convey to the world that the backer beta is in a more stable, playable condition than it actually is. In order to maintain their integrity as a company they need to either a) become a lot more transparent about the true state of the backer beta or b) release a high priority patch to address the critical game-breakers, so that the reality they wish to portray aligns with... well, reality. There's a little more riding on this than "this is a beta, and betas are supposed to be buggy". This isn't some internal company beta being handled by professional beta testers. This is a public beta being offered to tens of thousands of fans. It happens to be fundamentally broken yet up until this point OE seems to be largely obfuscating this fact. It's bad form, and it reflects poorly on them and the game. Remember, the world is watching. And on a personal note, I find it befuddling that OE thought it in their best interest to release a fundamentally broken copy of their game to fans in the first place -- even if they were properly communicating the flaws. Shouldn't they have started their internal beta first, identified the killer bugs using professional, paid resources, and addressed those bugs prior to releasing to a public audience? How is it that others aren't seeing the sense in this? As the old adage goes, you only get one chance to make a first impression....

Good question, to it's sort of like going off to college, but being able to bring your high school buddies with you. But I don't think people actually expect any of this stuff to come over verbatim from BG to PoE. Mostly I think people are waxing nostalgic and having a bit of fun. That has been where I've been coming from, at least.

The game really needs an emergency patch to hit the critical, game breaking bugs. A few weeks is way too long for that, IMHO. Hopefully Obsidian has been busting ass all last week and through the weekend to a patch out early next week, at a minimum to resolve: The disappearing items bug The disappearing quests bug The characters getting stuck bug Allowing players to save/load with a reasonable chance of things not going haywire after the loading process.

As for the beta comments, I wasn't given the impression that the backers were intended to be the true beta testers of this game. We weren't given the full game to test, but just a sliver. The majority of the bugs that we're encountering were discovered prior to us being given access to the backer beta, and it's a pretty limited amount of stuff that we even can test for. Mostly, I get the impression that we're supposed to test drive the classes a bit, along with some experimentation with crafting/enchanting, resting, and inns/hiring adventurers. But that can be pretty hard to do when the game is breaking left and right. Plus, with perhaps a few exceptions, the backers aren't professional beta testers, so it is not appropriate in my view for Obsidian to expect us to conduct ourselves as if we are. If Obsidian truly expected the majority of the backers to understand that they were receiving a something that was known to be largely unplayable, without offering a single word of warning beforehand, than I say that was poor judgment on their part. They did offer a list of known bugs in update 84, but there was no mention of the game breaking bugs in that list. It's almost as if they want to sweep those under the rug. Again, comparing to the Wasteland 2 Beta, the backers were only brought in once the game had a solid foundation, was generally stable, and game breaking bugs were very rare. For a larger scale beta that includes fans rather than professional beta testers, this seems like a much more reasonable way to handle it.

Well, it was a pretty good run... while it lasted. I managed to complete 2 quests (Ogre and Noble's "Daughter") and reach level 7 before heading back to town. When trying to take something out of my group stash I wound up with that item stuck in my pointer, but I was unable to place it into any inventory slot. I was unable to put it back in the stash or close out of the character window... so ultimately just had to quit the game. I do have a few save games that I put on my desktop, so maybe I'll try to give the most recent one a chance. Also, less critical bug was my rogue's per encounter abilities getting stuck in "active" mode, meaning I couldn't use them anymore. When she got incapacitated while using these in a couple of combats, they became stuck in the on state. On the other hand, I never had a single item disappear or a character get stuck in place. It took me 10 attempts at the game to be able to say that! The Cipher isn't a bad class. Not one I would likely use a lot, but basically he can fire arrows to build focus and he has mostly a lot of debuff spells he can cast with that focus. So where I see the priest as a great buffer, the cipher does well with debuffs and crowd control.

I don't really want to jinx myself, but I'm happy to report that I'm currently involved in my best run yet. I've actually managed to complete the Ogre quest, and I'm currently working on the quest to find the nobles daughter. I've managed to get through tons of fights. I've managed make a good amount of money and find some nice loot. For once, I'm actually making some real progress. The only negative is that this is happening with a Cipher, which isn't the class I most wanted to play... but it's a good chance to learn the class just the same. Not a bad archer/mage-y combo, actually. I've probably ruined my chances of getting much farther by making this post, LOL. Also, I've been "cheating" a little bit and making a save game here and there, but promptly copying it to a temporary folder on my desktop. No repercussions yet for doing that. Wow, feels good to actually get a feel for the game.

Well I think it's high time that those guys reign of terror over our fingers is brought into check!

I'll tell you Leferd, someone's gotta do it. It may not be the ice bucket challenge, but it's a start!