Ganrich

I haven't cared for DA since 2, and I'm not a fan of ME3 for all the common reasons people bring up about the game. However, I'm always willing to check out a new IP depending on setting. I fear I'm finished with Bioware, but I'll check it out when they announce it.

Indeed! Stay a while and listen... Errrr, contribute. I am one of the crazies that thought (other than BG2) Bioware's best romance was Bastilla in Kotor. Not because I am a fan of her character, but because it tied into the story well, and it made a difference at the end of the game. It worked for me. Even if Bastilla didn't.

Yeah, I figured the Stronghold (ship) will be like the Ebon Hawk of the Kotor games if we don't meet its goals, and predominantly be used for traveling the Deadfire Archipelago. What those stretch goals will add is a mystery, and one that I want to know. Lol

I wont be able to watch the stream due to timing issues. I hope someone would be good enough to post it up on youtube. I believe you can watch the stream from twitch when ever you want to. Maybe i'm not good in using Twitch.. most of the time i clicked the links to Twitch.. it was something like "Offline" and i can't see stuff. There should be tab for Offline videos, and that's where you'll find it. Regardless of whether or not Obsidian is online.

I said something similar earlier in the thread. Say what you will about your preferences on Romance... but it's an incredibly popular request. If they can get the news out to Bioware's fan base it could cause a huge boost in new backers and upped pledges. If they have the time and desire to do them properly then I have no issue as long as it isn't to the detriment of other areas of the game. We will see. I expect the $2M stretch will be hit a little after this time tomorrow, but I could be overly optimistic there. If I were a decision maker at Obsidian, I would make Romances a late late late stretch goal. Get other systems first, and use Romances as a final push at the end of the campaign. That could be why they have avoided any discussion on it in Fig's comments, as well. It's a late campaign stretch goal, and they don't want to get people's hopes up this early in the campaign just in case they don't get near it. Or they aren't doing it at all. Both are possibilities. That's not good either. If it's the last stretch goal.. Most probably would be the ones that's most difficult to achieve. Most backers have already pledged. The only thing possible would be through post funding options like paypal and such. As I've said, I'm more interested in almost everything else vs romances, but I don't think it will be too late. If it is indeed a stretch at all. They are already poised to beat Fig's other top campaigns. Psyconauts and WL3 specifically. They have almost cleared total backers for WL3 already, for instance. They are going to be at $2m in the next day or two and those games ended in $3.1 (WL3) and $3.3m (Psyconauts). Don't underestimate how much people will add to their pledge for a wanted feature, and we will have more than 17k backers by the end of the campaign. Add that to what some Bioware fans will bring in if they are made aware. They also will want enough time to give Bioware fans time to react and pledge/invest. So, I expect we will know, one way or the other, when we have around a week left of the campaign. We will see.

I wont be able to watch the stream due to timing issues. I hope someone would be good enough to post it up on youtube. They are pretty good at saving these videos on Twitch, and they've uploaded all the PoE ones with Josh from the past few months on YouTube. Either way, I'm sure these forums will get an explosion to topics for when your time allows too.

Funny. I'm most eager to hear about systems changes with skills, classes, talents, attributes, and the like. I really want some more meaty details on those things. I am eager for tonight's Twitch stream in hopes of getting news on those topics.

I said something similar earlier in the thread. Say what you will about your preferences on Romance... but it's an incredibly popular request. If they can get the news out to Bioware's fan base it could cause a huge boost in new backers and upped pledges. If they have the time and desire to do them properly then I have no issue as long as it isn't to the detriment of other areas of the game. We will see. I expect the $2M stretch will be hit a little after this time tomorrow, but I could be overly optimistic there. If I were a decision maker at Obsidian, I would make Romances a late late late stretch goal. Get other systems first, and use Romances as a final push at the end of the campaign. That could be why they have avoided any discussion on it in Fig's comments, as well. It's a late campaign stretch goal, and they don't want to get people's hopes up this early in the campaign just in case they don't get near it. Or they aren't doing it at all. Both are possibilities.

The big guns will be saved for the end. Don't be surprised if another companion gets put up there, or a new take on the Mega Dungeon happens. I'm pretty sure they have mentioned a new spin on the Stronghold, and it will likely be a stretch too. I really expect meatier stretch goals after we clear the next one or two. We will still have new localizations on each goal, I believe. I just think we will see better things to accompany them.

Yup, and it bears repeating that Feargus said there could be 3 updates this week when I asked on Fig. One was the Returning Companions update yesterday, the next is today (it could be the Twitch Stream, but I think it's another update), and another was slated Thursday or Friday (I can't remember which and it's buried on Fig's Comments). My name on Fig is DomesticBlend and I use the same Avatar as here if you go looking. i expect a couple enticing reveals a week, but we will see. This campaign is really controlled in terms of info dumps and stretch goals. It's definitely more professional than the previous where they through everything at the wall during the campaign. They've learned. Lol

Also the Italian language. Indeed. I stopped reading before I got there. I was pretty livid.

I'll add $8 bucks... I'm in deep enough that the cost of a trip to a fast food joint isn't going to save my tail.

Wow, I feel like winning the lottery. Looks like josh decided to set z=1/3. Interesting news overall, and the system is set up to not go out of control too much. Looks like it will finally be feasible to explore all of the 121 combinations available and make them work into interesting builds without the need of some prestige classes to patch them up. I'm really impressed with PoE2 - I'm getting to the point where I can't think of anything that could be improved in the first game that they did not already adress. Stronghold replaced by a ship, and ship combat. That's all I would add. What's a pirate-sequel themed RPG without ships? Anyway, YMMV.

Do they even have the kind of financial ability they'd need to be a publisher? Isn't being a publisher a lot more demanding, in terms of up-front capital for projects? I don't know if they have the power to publish other developer's games, but they could become autonomous. PoE did well enough, and if they keep that trend with PoE2 then they could use some of the extra cash from both titles to mostly fund whatever Cain and Boyarsky are up to. If they can do that, and that other project is a more AAA experience, does well on PC, and gets ported to consoles... then yeah, I think they can. Right now they need to use PoE2 to get experience publishing it themselves, and maybe have another crowdfunding title down the road to get the ball rolling. Eventually they could get profitable enough to fund smaller indie RPGs and the like. Who knows? It's hard to guess without solid sales data on PoE1 and I'm not sure how Tyranny did either.

I completely missed this - what have they removed? The Oasis, and 2 companions as far as I know. I think the Pat Rothfuss companion was one of the cut ones, but we don't know for sure. Or that I've seen at least.

Ding, ding, ding! We have a winner! As a fairly heavy backer of TToN, I am one of the miffed backers of which you speak. I was hesitant to fund Bard's Tale and WL3 because they keep hitting crowdfunding, and have only one title released to show for it. It seemed fishy, and I was skeptical. Glad I made that choice. If they release those titles, and all looks well, I'll buy them. I won't be backing them again anytime soon. This is why I want the stretch goals to be more muted than the previous game. I don't want unnecessary content cuts or half finished areas.

You really can't have Aloth without Iselmyr. So, I'd say absolutely. I think Iselmyr is too integrated into him to have him be cured or anything like that.

Yeap.. that is kind of ridiculous if you asked me. You wouldn't even have a full party if Xoti goal was not hit. Perhaps that's also ONE of the reason to reduce the number of characters to 5 if all previous companions: Eder, Aloth, Pallegina were not present in Deadfire. Aloth is impossible to miss, but you can not accept him (I believe) into the party or kick him out. He might still show up even if you did one those things, though. Eder is really hard to miss. Pallegina is easy to miss. I highly doubt many, if any, people missed all three in their play through. Even still they might show up regardless unless you sacrificed them or they were killed. So, I think they will show up unless they are dead. They will likely have something to say if you didn't part on the best of terms, though.

I expect they have weighted the more interesting goals at the beginning and end of their campaign. So, we saw Multiclassing and Subclasses right off the bat, and we will probably see more interesting goals from $2.4m or $2.6m on. This needs to avoid the bloat of the first campaign with things like a second major city and Caed Nua of course. They are using the least interesting goals and localization to try and string the campaign along at a steady pace. A new localization with every goal isn't a bad idea from their perspective. I expect Chinese to be at $2.4m, but it may be later. They are probably doing it based on sales in these areas, and alternating between a smaller demographic to a larger one.

If not mistaken it mentioned about "water color" NPC portraits? I'm not sure how it fits to the general artistic feel. Is PoE2 this time around became too cartoony? It depends on the UI color palette imho. With this having a Pirate theme I'd expect lighter wood tones on the UI vs PoE1, and those portraits would look pretty good if that's the case. Maybe I'm just overthinking it, though. My artistic sensibility gets more and more rusty as I get older for lack of stretching those muscles.

There are 3 updates not related to stretch goals this week. Feargus told me on Fig that one was today (which may be the twitch stream at 4PM PST), one tomorrow, and one Thursday or Friday (I can't remember). We don't know a lot about this game. Skills have been overhauled, but we don't know to what extent. Classes have been changed because of multiclassing and subclasses, and we have no real details. I expect some classes may see fairly extensive overhauls. Chanters have issues on lower difficulties getting enough phrases stacks to use their invocations in the first game, for instance. I'd like this remedied. We know there is a Stronghold, but have zero details. We know we have changes to how spells interact, but only a few examples. As we get more details we will probably get some reluctant backers, people will up pledges, etc. I also expect they will have some more articles in the next few months to shore up attention.

I am with you, but this could give the game a more broad appeal and can easily be ignored by us. It is one of the better parts of DAO, imho, and having it here is a good addition whether or not I care about it. It shouldn't be a stretch goal to start with . Might as well leave room for "better" stretch goals such as *ahem* romance I'm a neutral party in the Romance landscape. I can give or take it either way. I'd prefer more C&C, better skill system (which we are getting), and I'm pretty psyched about subclasses and multiclassing. I also want something more in depth in the Stronghold department, and I expect we're getting a ship (what it does in the game other than facilitating travel we don't know). Although, romance has some implications to having deeper companion relationships, that can also be obtained without romance. To each their own, though. AI scripts are a pretty big undertaking, and I definitely understand why it's a stretch goal. It was frequently requested during the first game's development and beta periods. I am a micro guy, but I understand some people wanting a more laid back approach to playing.

I am with you, but this could give the game a more broad appeal and can easily be ignored by us. It is one of the better parts of DAO, imho, and having it here is a good addition whether or not I care about it.

And they just hit the Xoti stretch goal. So, the 3 returning companions + 4 new companions is the current number.

They've said Eothas saps your soul when he wakes up, and leaves you close to death. This will leave players starting from level 1, again. Those are the broad strokes, but we don't know more details for spoiler reasons according to Josh Sawyer. Edit: gear is an unknown. I don't want to start at level one and be twinked with a bunch of high level gear, but ymmv. Edit 2: I should have finished the post. I'm sorry for that. Companions are Eder, Aloth, and Pallegina + 3 more (4 when we hit Xoti's stretch goal), and there may be an eighth "if" they have another companion Stretch goal.