Malekith

I shall never fund another game by Obsidian while Josh Sawyer is employed there. This is overkill. I'm not going to fund another game from Obsidian if Sawyer is the lead designer, since i disagree with half his opinions in what is good gameplay, but i still hope PoE will be a great game (even if it's gameplay won't be my cup of tea) and i will be open to buy future Obsidian games from him, just not fund them since apparently i'm not in his chosen target audience. But i don't want him to be fired since i consider him a good designer who just happens to has bad taste. As long as he is kept away from the lead position, i don't have a problem since many of his contributions are great. Just don't have him decide the overral direction of the game.

But Firefly didn't have much combat. Mal and his crew were actively trying to avoid combat as much as possible. Another bonus. The game will be storyfocused, with tactical combat used only where it must.

All of the kickstarters benefited hugely from backer feedback. Wasteland 2 was terrible at the start of the beta, and came out as it did thanks to backer feedback. Divinity Original Sin the same. While not so bad by itself, backers proposed many cool ideas and features that Larian delayed the game just to include them. The result? Better game for all. And now Obsidian is doing the same. Backer feedback is one of the better things about kickstarter

That. I even run the beta intentionaly in lower resolution than my PC is able to just to have full screen UI. I expect for this to be a toggle, or else i'll kill a puppy.

That. Idealy there should be ten diferent spell effects in the same area and the units behind still be visible. Even in the most spell heavy battly in IE i have no trouble understanding what was happening. Same with Warcraft 3/ Starcraft 2 if you want a more modern take. Instead in PoE it's NWN2 all over again. The spells obscure anything behind them, with the result of a spell battle being an mass of colors without anyone being able to see ****.

Then he should go play Starcraft II Heart of the Swarm, to learn what attractive, modern and clear VFX look like. IE games had good gameplay/ UI/ presentation because they had RTS gameplay/ UI/ presentation. Same thing with MOBAs. These are the games they should look for inspiration instead of modern action games

Propably that's your problem right here. I saw somewhere (in this forums) that changing to Windows 64-bit, without changing any hardware, improves the game immensely.

Honestly? I would prefer if New Vegas was ported in Fallout 2 engine instead of the other way around...

That is exactly what I think you should not be able to do with impunity and without use of special abilities, IE games be damned. You should be in trouble if you get engaged in melee by something that's better in melee than you are. Inherently squishy units should have ways of dealing with these situations—like, y'know, magic for spellcasters and Escape for rogues. But what you want creates the problem several people have mentioned, that the best tactic in all situations (and the best party) is the one with one melee tank to engage-slow down the opposition while the other five naked glass canons oblitarate them from a distance. Let's drop this topic for now; I'm in full agreement with your priority list. If it still feels bad after those are taken care of, I'm willing to reconsider my position. Ok, i also agree with Sensuki's list and that the engagement mechanic isn't the most glaring issue. But even if all these things are fixed, and combat feels good, i still think emgagement will be a problem, just not a critical one. Ranged has an inherently advantage to melee anyway, that it can damage melee units without them being able to hit back, with the balancing factor that if and when a melee unit manages to come close enough to hit, it's superior to the ranged unit. Adding a whole mechanic designed to oppose melee units coming close to the ranged ones, in addition to CC and immobilizing spells, makes melee a dump choice. It's no coincedence that most people i have seen in PoE play with 4-5 ranged units and 1-2 at most melee. Meanwhile in the "unbalanced" IE games, people used way less spells and bows than here. Even in BG1 with it's bows of deathly destruction, most people used 2 ranged characters at most. At least there having one tank(fighter) and 5 snipers was recogniced as a cheese tactic- easy mode tactic. In PoE seems the norm, with having the snipers naked being optimal adding insult to injury

No. I want a spiritual successor to BG2. Not the same thing. PoE is a spiritual successor to the IE games, it just follows the IWD2 lead designer's sensibilities (which i disagree with). The IE games i like their design direction is PST and BG2, and i would love Obsidian to make spiritual successors to those games.

I'm 25, but i played my first games only 8-9 years ago. I think they were Warcraft 3 and Baldur's Gate 2

1.500.000 starting goal. Not only multi million kickstarters aren't over, the final budget is going higher and higher with each big name game. Care to elaborate? Only kickstarter for game that got more then one milion this year was Kingdom Come. And it was such sucess because they had sh*tload of things to show. SR<W2<PoE<TTON<Obsidian's next kickstarter. This year there wasn't a "big name dev" kickstarter, plus most people are waiting to see the games they have already backed come out. I believe Obsidian's next kickstarter will be an even greated success than PE was.

1.500.000 starting goal. Not only multi million kickstarters aren't over, the final budget is going higher and higher with each big name game.

Nope. Do not want. But if they managed a Skyrim killer i would be happy for Obsidian even if i wouldn't play the game.

Why not 1/3 of a class instead of 6? Clearly, more is worse, and fewer is better. That or you, alone, get to decide what's an appropriate number and what isn't. Because. Dungeon Siege 3 had 4 for a reason, disregarding the stupid decison of gender locking. If the kickstarter pitch was for Dungeon Siege 4, your complains would have merit. As it stands, they have not. And if the kickstarter was for Dungeon Siege 4, i doubt they would have gather a single million.

You make no sense. Dungeon Siege 3 had an enthralling atmosphere and story,(sorry, no, it was mediocre at best) supremely addictive and physical combat(bwahahaha, no), relying on your skill as much as how you built your character. It had excellent voice acting (true), variety of enemies (sorry, no,), branching plot Lines(as cosmetic as Bioware's), and best boss fights you could wish for.(bwahahaha, no) So, why not go that route instead of returning to this decrepitude of reminiscence? Because even if your delusions were true, still Dungeon Shiege 3 wasn't a commercial success, and there will be no DS4. And you know what played a big part in that? The game wasn't what the nostalgia people wanted. The game played differently than its archaic predecessors, but it had better animations and rag-doll physics man! And no one gave a ****. Even if i believe it was miles better than the first two games (but no thanks to rag-doll physics), it was not what the original fanbase wanted, nor did it have that extra "something" most other Obsidian games have, so not even all Obsidian fans liked it much. And the mythical "2014 animations-ragdoll physics-graphicz crowd" never bothered, they just continued playing CoD and GTA V

I can (maybe) accept that reasoning for DOS, but Wasteland 2 looks like ****. I still liked it better than DOS, but visuals aren't it's strong points.

You can quess how...

More passive talents for non magical classes. I'm still waiting for the ability to tone down the micromanagmnt.

Make a Fighter with high CON / INT / and maybe Resolve (optional)

Are you sure he sucks? Because if you compair him with BG1 fighters, he will suck by design. Remember when Sawyer said that the wizard power curve (sucks at low levels, reigns at hig levels) is a no go? The other side of that coin is that the fighters power curve (beast at low levels compaired to other characters, sucks in high level) is a no go as well.

I do agree that it's a bit jarring at first, especially to a player expecting an IE game experience. We've internally talked about possibly making it a combat only feature, which I think is reasonable. So far from my experience the highlights help a lot when trying to pick out a character in chaotic combat situations, and works wonders with AOE placement. It's very jarring, not "a bit". If you realy think it helps the game, make it a toggle. If someone turns it off, have it highlight only as Sensuki said.

Says who? You? Pleace... The game has problems? Yes. Am i optimistic for a winter 2014 release? No, and i don't want one. I want them to delay it for 3 more months to polish it properly. Is the problem with the game the lack of ragdoll physics? No by a long shot, and i wouldn't want them incuded in the game even if they were free. The game right now needs better animations,(just more clear and with more weight to them, something like Warcraft 3), clearer spell effects(again Warcraft 3 or the IE games come to mind), better combat feedback, more 2D art, some design-changes and fine tuning, and then it's just polishing and bug squashing. Ragdoll physics, full voice acting and more kinetic feel of combat are nowhere near the list.

PST ending was superb. Fallout 1 as well, but i don't know if Tim Cain had anything to do with it. From Obsidian's games, MotB and AP had great endings, and KotoR 2 would had as well if Obsidian had the time to implement it right. DS3 and NV (and Fallout 2) had Ok endings, nothing special but very reactive. Only NWN2 OC and KOTOR 2 had outright bad endings. So Obsidan games and games made by Obsidian devs had good endings more often than not. And without a rushed release i'm confident that PoE will have a great ending as well.

I was under the impresion that design lead/ project lead didn't necessarily mean the one resposnible for the gameplay/systems. If i'm wrong then yes, Avellone has some clear flaws.