decado

I'm not following your logic. If you, say, use Kickstarter to finance games that then sells like hot cakes and makes a profit, how is that a problem sustaining a business model? Magazines use subscriptions (and advertisements) to fund their publications and, as a business model, it worked fine for many decades. Sort of. Actually, subscription costs in many cases don't bring in much revenue. What generates money for magazines is selling advertising space. Magazines don't want you to subscribe because you are a guaranteed source of income (though you are). They want subscriptions so they can tell advertisers "This is how many eyeballs are on our magazine every month/week/quarter!" In the long run, subscriptions earn many magazines only a modest amount of revenue. One of the greatest magazines of the 20th century, Life Magazine, went broke not because they didn't have subscribers -- they were the most popular magazine in the world, at one point! -- but because the magazine was designed to appeal to so many different demographics. Advertisers eventually stopped buying ad space for fear that their ads were not going to the right targets. Marketing is all about targeting your ads towards a chosen demographic, and "everyone!" is not a demographic. Hence, Life magazine went down the drain as advertisers chose to buy space in more specific venues. Anyways, that's kind of a good segue into my larger point. The pay-up-front model doesn't necessarily always work. And when it comes to products like games, I'm pretty sure the shine will wear off eventually, and people will get tired of fronting projects. The other thing to consider is that if the studio wants to grow (and it should!) they will need to look to alternative sources of funding -- whether bringing in investors, or simply hitting it big time with a monstrosity like Blizzard did with WoW. That source of funding can't be Kickstarter money. It is not reliable enough, and further it doesn't seem to leave much cash in the bank. That is a dangerous way to operate.

Regarding the "Intellect" stat influencing damage . . . First, it is worth nothing that "intellect" is different from "intelligence." They are not the same thing. Intellect can include a variety of things like intuitiveness, quick-thinking, memory and recall, and problem-solving. Intellect is all about understanding, and all of these things would impact your effectiveness as a combatant. This doesn't meant it should be a direct stack. It might make more sense to include intellect as a damage modifier if certain conditions are met. I like the idea of using it to determine penetration past DT because the abstraction here is that a brainy combatant is wily enough to seek out and exploit armor weaknesses (for example). Or, it might make a good modifier if it is used AFTER the Strength modifier is resolved. So if a fighter is up against another fighter and their strength is equal, maybe give the fighter with a higher intellect a better chance to crit (instead of just tacking on raw damage). But this should only come into play after the strength difference is resolved. I can see two fighters, both with 15 STR, battling it out and the guy with the higher INT doing more damage because he is a smarter fighter. I can also see a fighter with, say, 12 STR battling it out with a guy with 15 STR, and the weaker fighter still getting a bonus from his INT. But what I cannot see is a fighter with 6 STR being able to stand up to a guy with 15 STR, regardless of the weaker guy's INT. Because there is a point where no amount of brains is going to save you if you if the difference in STR is so large.

This was/is a huge problem in 3.5, and I'm glad to see other people noticing it. If you wanted to play a Paladin that could be effective in a real fight, you basically had to ignore Charisma. Because all of the class goodies of the paladin were derived from Charisma, which meant you had less to dump into STR or CON. If you ditched CHA for STR, then you might as well have rolled a fighter. It was annoying, and poorly balanced. I understand that paladins are not fighters, and that being a paladin should be "harder" than being a fighter in some respects, precisely because they are more than fighters. But a lot of the added difficulty of being a paladin comes, at least in my view, from the role-playing aspects of the character -- not being able to accept cash for doing good deeds, taking a vow of poverty, being forced to take the "good" route in a quest even though it is harder, etc. In other words, paladins should be viable combatants and more, perhaps in a way that makes them better than fighters, but the trade-off is in how you play the character and not how easy combat is. If that makes any sense.

Feargus' comments don't really bother me much. Personally, I've never viewed Kickstarter as a viable, long-term solution for financing games. I think if you are Kickstarting all of your games, that means your company has a real weakness when it comes to sustaining a business model. In that light, I am perfectly happy with Obsidian making a game that will have more mass appeal, if that game is what keeps them afloat in enough cash to make other games that are more interesting to me personally. I understand that they are operating in a niche market, and I understand that if a game developer wants to stay in business nowadays they need long-term stability and clear milestones for "success" (here measured in dollars, because despite how much we might not like it, that's the only metric that matters to the industry). If anything, I am irritated with RPS for making it sound like some big announcement was coming. That was bush league.

Obsidian's hallmarks are complex morality, and the dark aspects of authority, and sin. How exactly does that dovetail with the Star Trek universe? Apply even 1% of Obsidian's cynicism and the Federation would fall apart like gin-soaked cake. You can do all of those things in Star Trek. Jesus Christ have you even watched the show? DS9? I don't understand why people get the impression that Star Trek is all goodness and light. And even if it were, that does not leave out things like "complex morality and the dark aspects of authority." TNG had some of the best commentaries on things like terrorism, secrecy, government oversight, intrusion, fascism, racism, and democracy ever done on TV up to that point. My God, why did I even bother responding to this post? What is wrong with me?

Also I am so unbelievably tired of Star Wars. On that note, if Obsidian were to make a Star Trek RPG, I think I would die from awesomness poisoning.

I want to see a weird Western. Mostly because I am working on several weird western short stories and I want to sell the rights and retire. But yeah, weird western.

lmao

I'm just adding my voice to the chorus of speculation, here, but I it seems strange to me that they would Kickstart a project that is reliant on the purchase of a license. If they had the money to purchase the license (which ever one we are talking about, doesn't really matter) they wouldn't be looking to Kickstarter to get money. I think the Torment:ToN situation was weird because Cook was this sort of indie PnP game developer with relationships and history in the video game industry, and I can't imagine there are that many other similar situations out there where licenses could be had so "easily" and with such a small amount of red tape. With a property like Star Wars, it does not seem realistic for Obsidian to get the license rights if they are relying on Kickstarter to fund the project. I mean, whoever is selling them the rights has a vested interest in seeing the game do well. If you were the holder of the Star Wars license, and some company came up to you and said "Well we want to buy your license, but we can't fund the game until we get the money through Kickstarter!" would you be amenable to a deal? I probably would not. Anyways this is all speculation on my part. I could be 100% wrong.

I'm down with more companions. I would like to see one NPC companion for each class. I can't really think of anything else I want to ask for, mostly because we really don't know much about content yet. I could ask for more outdoor levels, but I don't know how many there are now, so I how could I possibly know I want more of them? If they decided to keep the extra money and invest it into PoE II, I would be just as happy.

I've always envisioned the health/stamina mechanic to be a difference between strategy/tactics. From my understanding, health is the determining factor in how long you can go without resting, whereas stamina is a combat-based resource that needs managing. So, health is the thing that determines how far you want to stray from home, sort of like "injuries" in DA:O or, maybe, the way health and stamina were done in Betrayal at Krondor (both decent systems, in my view). I think calling it "health" is giving some people the vapors. It seems some people are equating health with hit points. Question for Josh: Do you guys refer to anything as "hit points"? Or is that term just not used?

Also, I had a perfectly good amount of fun role playing my six little dudes as I trudged through the Bard's Tale when I was a teenage nerd in my basement. Good game play and a good story are way more important to me than some predefined set of variables that will change a few dialog lines.

They had no meaningful impact on the story once you got past the origin story itself. You would occasionally get a throwaway line of dialog, and some NPCs would react to you differently. But that's it. There were no major plot points missed or gained depending on your origin story. No major plot points panned out any differently because of your origin, as the choices available to you were always the same. Kill Connor or not, your origin is irrelevant. Nullify the circle or not, your origin is irrelevant. Kill Loghain or not, your origin is irrelevant. Choose Harrowmont as the new king or not, your origin is irrelevant. I'm very critical of DA:O but that is because I enjoyed huge parts of it. I've played through every single origin at least once. I've yet to find any significant difference between how the origin stories effect the main quest proper. Which doesn't really bother me, because I understand that designing that level of variability into a game is extremely difficult. The reason I tend to get irritated about it is because BioWare oversold it in the first place, just like they did with your "decisions" in ME2 and ME3. They routinely promise way more than they can deliver in that department. I wish they would stop.

I don't really care about origin stories because I've never really seen them done well. They always end up becoming fairly meaningless in the final analysis. Other people have brought up DAO as a point of comparison, and I think that is fair. The origins were cool and all, but after you got to Ostagar they didn't really mean anything, and they had only a tangential effect on the game as a whole. I prefer the BGII/NWN2 way of doing things.

None of the base armor types have full coverage. Some of the PE-equivalents of +1, +2 etc. + unique armors do have full (or very close to it) coverage. Okay, cool. Thanks. Edit: This is purely my imagination, but I am picturing an IE style paper doll set up (with or without the doll). As in, main armor slot, boots, gloves, helm, rings, amulet, cloak, and belt. I'm not picturing the Morrowind armor-everything-including-your-genitals type setup.

Some other people interpreted this in way I found odd. It seemed to me that he was saying that armor coverage is going to account for a maximum of 3/4 of a body's "costume" so you can tell them apart. Not that you will only be able to armor 3/4 of the body (3/4ths of what?). Or another way of saying it is that in 100% armor, you will still have about 1/4 of unique space per character so you can tell them apart. what 3/4 plate leaves the lower leg unprotected, so a tad more than the armoured dude here Well I don't think we are talking about just plate. Anyway, there is a difference between 3/4 plate covering XYZ, and the physical limitation of, say, not having leg slots available as an armor choice.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but this does not mean "we don't have leg armor," right?

Some other people interpreted this in way I found odd. It seemed to me that he was saying that armor coverage is going to account for a maximum of 3/4 of a body's "costume" so you can tell them apart. Not that you will only be able to armor 3/4 of the body (3/4ths of what?). Or another way of saying it is that in 100% armor, you will still have about 1/4 of unique space per character so you can tell them apart.

Guys, FR has been their best-selling property, it has been used in the most games Urm... nope? Well that's your opinion. I think the universe is probably the best iteration of the western-themed fantasy RPG world since Tolkien. It is not wholly original, and certainly not groundbreaking. But lore and the pantheon are interesting, and some of the best RPGs ever made were done so using the Forgotten Realms.

The most important thing to remember about lore, imo, is that if it is well written and interesting, people will want to read it. If it sucks, and if it is nothing more than a conglomeration of every Western fantasy trope from the last 40 years, no amount of strategic placement is going to make it interesting or readable. One of the greatest strengths with all of the Forgotten Realms CRPG games that were released over the years is that they were all coming from a pretty good canon of well written -- and in some cases, terrific - lore. The Forgotten Realms is just an interesting universe, and the stories told within it have tended to be really good. The problem with a game like Project Eternity is that you are starting from scratch. It is that much harder to create a body of lore that is durable enough for computer game story telling. I think they can do it, by the way.

Dishonored's presentation of lore was better, IMO. There was less of it, and it was woven into the story better. DA:O was basically info dumps everywhere, and none of it was particularly interesting. I don't think I read even half of it, it was just generic, Western fantasy cliches piled on top of each other. I've said this before bu David Gaider is a terrible writer. *ducks* I think the best job I've ever seen when it comes to including lore in a game has to be Morrowind. Planescape:Torment was also really well done, though in this case they were building off of TSR's lore going back several years.

I personally don't care much about so-called "adult" themes because every time a developer tries to implement them it seems forced or half-assed. The Witcher comes to mind, with its mega sexy times. And while this could be an issue with translation or my unfamiliarity with the franchise, I feel so far that The Witcher's dialog is in many cases cheesy and try-hard. BioWare has also coughed it up on several occasion with both ME and DA, whether it was the failed renegade/paragon system or the complete lack of any real so-called "racism" after you left your origin story in DA:O. Whenever developers start saying "Oh yeah, this is going to be adult! And dark! And grim! And serious!" I just tune it out with a yawn. It is enough for me to know that a studio like Obsidian or InXile is making the game. Each studio has a body of work that speaks for itself. I don't need to hear some boring producer/marketer barfing out meaningless phrases on VISCERAL COMBAT and MATURE THEMES!!

It's an isometric, party based game - the characters are going to be a an inch or two tall on the screen. So how exactly is "sex" supposed to work in an infinity style game that doesn't use cutscenes? And please don't say Witcher 1 nudie cards I just started playing the Witcher this week, and I have to say that this is the most hilariously ridiculous part of the whole game, which is itself a forest of hilariously ridiculous things. The game is not bad but my god, why I do I feel like it was made by a bunch of 18 year old drunk Polish dudes?

Moderate pressure tends to increase rather than dampen creativity. This is true. I wish more people understood this.

I personally liked the BGII style of crafting. To be an expert blacksmith requires time, dedication, and lots and lots of practice. I find it a little . . . I dunno, silly? . . . for adventurers who spend all their time tromping through the woods and hacking at monsters to be somehow skilled at this task that requires a lot of resources (money, access to materials, a steady stream of projects, etc) in order to be successful. In other words, I am okay with bringing my found items to a blacksmith/artisan who will do the crafting part for me. It is more important for me that crafting is balanced and useful. In so many instances, crafting items in RPGs ends up being overpowered or pointless. The items you make are either ridiculously easy to make and too powerful, or worthless in the grand scheme. Skyrim is a great example of how ridiculously pointless crafting can get if not done right.