anameforobsidian

Someone is probably going to come after me for oversharing but I am FAIRLY certain you could replace the watercolor portrait with a (appropriately scaled & cropped) painted portrait as easily as you would override any portrait in POE1. Time to leave before I say anything else! Thanks for all the info!

When asked about being a stretchgoal Avellone tweeted "Hell no."

As time goes on they've become more negative about expansions, because standalones flat out make more money. However, I think expansions, especially included expansions are good because they give the game time to develop. Pillars is a much, much, much better game because of WM1 & 2. They added a lot in the main campaign and system that isn't specifically related to the White March sections.

Feargus said the requirements would be about the same. It has better graphics but is more optimized.

I looked through all 19 pages of the suggestion thread in the other forum. I recorded each time a post supported a suggestion, and there are over 150 of them. These were the most common: Top requests: Deeper Companions - Basically more dialogue, more reactivity, etc. 15 mentions. Legible Game Mechanics - This is actually a couple put together. People had a hard time reading different parts of combat including too much visuals, item-stacking, attack speed mechanics, and the combat log. 10 mentions. Six Party Members - At least 9 in favor of. Oops. Companions Attack - Companions get pissed off and attack you / other party members 8. Better AI - Better for enemies, the party, and customizable. Mod Support - Indeed. 8. More Scripted Encounters - As it says. 8. Improved Stronghold - Generally more content. 7. Loading Times - Faster loading. 7. Bigger Big City - More content, increased focus, one not two. 7. More Unique Weapons - I saw the damn talking sword from BG2 mentions so many times. 7. Promancers - A horrible class of enemies that must be attacked with fire and sword. Or you know, want slightly different gameplay that I don't value. 7. More Class / Background Specific Content. 7. Requests that I found interesting: Necklace slot different from cloak. 4. Findable Crafting recipes 4. Sell trash button. 3. Get XP for using Keys. 2. More monster factions. Wolves eating xaurips, etc. Vithrack or other monstrous companion. 2. Whips & Brass knuckles! Different color selection circles for neutrals. Font change for Crit. If you kill someone with no one watching, don't take a reputation hit. 2.

Sawyer - Yes. Dave Williams has designed a new trinket slot for class-specific goodies like this. Grimoires are wizard trinkets, but other classes have different trinkets of their own. We gave trinkets their own slot so a fighter wouldn’t have to sacrifice their gloves slot (for example) to use a fighter-specific item. Interesting. Losing a fighter trinket to get a wizard's grimoire might be the wrong decision then.

I still think Might and Intelligence should change places. A mighty wizard would make fireballs that were huge. An intelligent wizard could make a small fireball that targets someone directly in their kidneys. Replace fireball with giant weapon vs. delicate sword and it works for fighters.

Amen to all of these.

The problem with the list then is that it isn't a wish list for features. Over half is a way to backdoor complain about the first game. 1 & 6 don't offer suggestions. They're just complaints about the writing. 5, 7, & 8 have the same problem: you laud the BG games for being creative where they weren't. BG was able to take stuff that had been around in D&D for years. Most of the setting was not creative, but it was well-executed. Talking items had been around for years when Lilarcore was implemented, yes, even humorous ones. Both games had tough enemy party fights. In BG2 most of the optional bosses were dragons or undead. Pillars had two (or three) undead fights and three dragons; less than BG2 but they're not trying for the scope of BG2. Mindflayers and Beholders are iconic D&D monsters, BG2 using them is hardly a sign of creativity. The Eyeless are fairly unique as are the Skuldr. However, when it comes to monsters, there's only so much you can create without referencing old myths, DnD, or other media. Lagufaeth are cool, but someone else may call them murlocs or merpeople.

Why shouldn't you be able to do just that if the next group of enemies is right there 10 meters away. I liked it, because it pushed me into doing more risky but quicker continuous combat runs.

It seems like a good fit for the kit system. Paladins already do extra damage to the undead with some of their moves.

There's a good reason for no romance. It leads to waifu characters like Leliana and Merril. I'm fine without.

1. No! Bad Bioware fan! No VN romances! 2. Sure, but the game doesn't have a jillion dollars to develop. They've explicitly said multiple times that they lowered the total number of characters to provide more ind-depth characterization. 1 and 2 are at odds with each other. That said, I agree. I would honestly rather keep Eder-level characterization and have more characters, because what happens if I don't care about 4 characters out of 7? 3. Considering that they're obviously well into development, I would say keep it five now. I like six party members for gameplay, but the decision was made. Also, keeping six for interactions is a bad argument. Why not use all of the characters in your party, then you would have all the story options? 4. They already addressed this multiple times in the figstarter. There will be levels without combat. However, the series is combat focused. It's neither an isometric adventure nor fallout. Pacifist runs work better in classless single-character games. 5. Soulbound weapons solved this pretty handily, WM shows a great deal of progress in this direction. 6. Already had this in the base game. In some cases they were too long (Devil of Caroc). 7. They already had this in the base game and added more in the expansions. Three dragon fights and a superhard mage fight. All were optional. 8. They already had an analog to mindflayers in the base game with the Vithrack (honestly they were better written than flayers). I too would like a significantly expanded bestiary. I think you might need to play the first game with the expansions.

No I'm not worried at all. Look how all the other large scale video game crowdfunding campaigns have played out and you can guess that this will be very similar. There's an initial huge spike in pledges, raking in about a quarter of the end result within the first 24 hours or so, then a rapid drop off over the next 2 or 3 days. Then there's a slow drip over the majority of the campaign with very occasional (small) spikes when there's some media attention. Towards the end there's another rallying and donations increase again during the last week or so with another spike on the last day. That's more or less how all the big, very successful campaigns (Double Fine Adventure, Wasteland 2, Project Eternity, Torment, and I guess also the recent Wasteland 3 and Psychonauts 2 campaigns... even though I haven't followed them very closely, so I'm not sure) have played out and I bet this one will play out like this as well. So my prediction is we will end up with something between 4 and 5 million and will obliterate quite a few more stretch goals on the way. 5 million is a bit of a stretch. The first 3 days are normally something like 35 to 45 percent of the total, we'll probably see more pledges on Monday because it's a non-weekend.

I wish there were findable druid spells / spiritshifts.

In the thread, Feargus said something was "coming soon" for Spanish.

Straight from Fig: Feargus DEVELOPER @Dimitrios S. - We are thinking about how to make Eternity II play well on as low machien specs as possible. While we have added a lot in the way of cool new graphics, we have also been optimizing as well. We've also optimized the non-graphics part of the engine (loading is WAY better now). We are pretty confident that Eternity II will run as well as Eternity I even with all the new stuff. Maybe better - but were not sure on that yet.

Azurro also has one for what good it does, and there's woedwys in the expansions, which are mid-game.

I cannot even concieve of how an RPG like PoE (or Torment or BG2) could be "too verbose." Codex nonsense. Roxor made a great argument for the codex, not for everywhere. It's a pretty crap article. Spends way too long on ad-hominems, and neither Fallout 2 (off-topic conversations frequently, certainly not like Betrayal at Krondor) nor Baldur's Gate would fit under his idea of great RPG writing (lore dumps, especially in books). Also there's this: "The same can be said about all the NPCs who keep telling you that they come from whatever place with whatever weird environments. Lake of drowned tombs! Volcanic archipelago! Tundra! Wow, that’s nice! What a shame that I’m stuck going through generic fantasyland and will never get to visit all the things you are talking about, and not even a single piece of information included in your lore dumps is ever going to be put into practice again in the whole game." It's like yapping at BG1 because it contains references to Amn. The article hides a few bits of valid criticism beneath masses of codexian pointless hate that will be focused at a new target in five years.

I'm surprised they're not doing one of each class again. Out of the classes, we're missing: Barbarian Chanter Cipher Druid And we probably have these and one more: Monk - Xoti Priest - Xoti Paladin - Pallegina Ranger - The woman with the parrot in the concept art Fighter - Eder possible build Rogue - Eder possible build / (Blueface the Orlan? He might be a cipher) Wizard - Aloth I'll bet they have two more characters planned for stretchgoals. A barbarian druid, and a chanter or cipher; Blueface is probably a cipher if I had to guess.

Why didn't they call it dual-classing then?

Distance from the equator has a huge effect on environment, but it's not everything. For instance, the first picture is actually 500 miles closer to the equator than the second picture. Pudacuo National Park China Wollemi National Park Australia. The deserts aren't a problem since they're more geography than distance to the equator. So, the difference is plausible if not the likeliest occurrence. The problem I have is this more geohistorical. How were a hunter-gatherer culture able to keep their ways of life so long when they were in direct contact with farming societies with advanced tools over millennia? The glanfathans should at least be herders. I think Obsidian would keep the whole thing more plausible if they had a world or region map; at least to keep it from getting mixed up in their own heads.

Nope. Although, you could argue that the stronghold and "big city 2" didn't turn out exactly as explained. Really, I thought Big City 1 was as much of a problem as big city 2. And they did get the stronghold to where it should be (after two expansions). And it seems like the teaser slides indicated that there will be at least 3 factions, perhaps more. Rauatai, Valian Republics, and the locals are probably in there.

They have said that they've greatly improved performance, particularly loading times by implementing a new system that streams areas. http://jesawyer.tumblr.com/post/156411333161/how-does-the-content-streaming-work-how-does-one

I ran a multi-classed druid / shaman in 4e and liked it quite a bit. Given how Josh seemed to like 4e as much as 3.5, I wouldn't be surprised to see it again. On an off-topic note, made respect for Feargus answering questions at 2 in the morning.