anameforobsidian

Something I like about PE is that the Engwithan's are not more advanced in general than modern society. They may have a known a few things that the current society doesn't (just like Damascus steel) but they weren't more advanced in general.

- I think the problems with hard counters are somewhat inevitable. Hard counters seem pretty difficult to scale as you increase in levels. Either you constantly add new mechanics, which is difficult to conceive and implement, or you just layer on needless obfuscating complexity. You don't need minor / improved / greater / even more powerful with a new name version of spells, and the dispelling system is really just a pain in the ass. - Size. PE won't be BG2. That's okay. - Replayability. You may be right, but I think you're underestimating the appeal of numbercrunching different types of parties. BG2 seems like it has more options for individual characters, but less for entire parties. On the BB forums there's already a huge amount of theorycrafting different characters that do X.

Sales are lower in the second one, it was simplified to show that at the end of a project, money from kickstarter has an equal numeric effect as money from release day sales. Also, its not uncommon for major games to sell swag, and the cut kickstarter takes is lower than the cut most of the major distributors take.

Development costs were (mostly) paid for. This means they can sell the game for (almost) pure profit. I don't see how simple addition and substitution is so hard to understand. Profit = Total Money In - Total Money Out. Total Money In = Kickstarter + Other Prerelease Sales + Release Sales. Therefore: Profit = (Kickstarter + Other Sales) - Total Money Out. Let's say they spent all their kickstarter money on game development (which they did), and then they made $6m in released sales. Profit = ($4m +$6m) - $4m Profit = $6m Then, lets imagine a world without kickstarter, where Obsidian fronts its own cash and makes it up in release sales. They still make $6m in release sales. Profit = $6m - $4m Profit = $2m What? Profit changed? It's almost like money from Kickstarter is just a different source of income that still affects profits. Yes, it's spent making the game, but that just means that the creator doesn't incur a loss in the creation of the game. Come on, this is simple addition.

Because it counts as part of total income for the project, and total profit is total income - total expenses. Here's a really simple equation. kickstarter sales* = k, release sales = r, development costs = d, and profit = p (k+r) - d = p. *Yes they are sales since they have the promise of rewards, they're just very long risk adjusted preorders. If they were donations, they would not carry the promise of reward. And if you're so convinced that they are selfless donations, then you should probably refuse any of the rewards from the campaign to save Obsidian money in fulfillment costs.

My coding skills are rusty and dull at best, but I'd like to try doing a stealth mod in the summer. I think it'd be neat if different mobs had different shaped perception radii. As it stands, my 12-15 hour workdays are killing me. Anyone have an idea of how hard this would be?

Several governments and kickstarter disagree. Profit is money in - expenses, it doesn't matter where it comes from.

I would like to point out that Obsidian has spent a good deal of its own money and resources in developing PoE. I can understand that some people may feel the game is not worth what we are charging, but trust me when I say that this game has a lot of content in it. Lots more than many AAA titles I have worked on. I would also like to point out that the price of a game is not always tied to development cost. As an example, Star Wars: The Old Republic cost $200 million dollars to develop, but when I purchased it, it was the same price as any other AAA PC game at the time. I am not sure how much the latest Dragon Age cost to develop, but it was probably significantly less. They are selling the game for $60... even more than I paid for SW:TOR. I realize that SW:TOR was likely relying on monthly payments to recoup cost, but it also has massive ongoing costs of a live team and many servers to upkeep. The case I just mentioned shows that sometimes it doesn't matter how much it cost to develop something, companies will only charge what they think people will pay for their game. I think it would help if Obsidian were a bit more open about development costs. The team has been incredibly open about the process, and has been willing to show broken features, etc. in the making. But, as soon as it comes to costs Obsidian is incredibly closed-lipped. That can create the appearance of impropriety even where there is none.

Let's also not forget that at least around 80k people who wind up with the game didn't buy it at retail to begin with. I know someone quoted wasteland 2 in over 3 mil steam libraries but so what? I accounted for 3 of those and I only backed wasteland 2 at the minimum level to get a copy of the game, which was something like 20 dollars. I just kept getting keys for it from other things. It has also been on steam sale for very low price multiple times. I would bet you the average Wasteland 2 copy price is 20 dollars at best, probably lower. At the same time, Wasteland 2 tripled the amount of money available for the game through early access. And discussions I've had with other game creators are pretty clear, normally kickstarter is a tiny portion of your overall profits.

What about Forton? Is he not a companion anymore?

It's worth pointing out that the IE games also had a lot of quest XP (where each person got the same amount), so it wasn't a full 600% boost.

I'm willing to bet my testicles they'll easily clear that much in the first week At $40 per copy, PoE would only need to sell about 100,000 copies to generate $4 million. Personally, I'm betting PoE will sell about one million copies (which is less than what D:OS did, and Larian is a name hardly anyone has ever heard of.) And at 1 million in sales, that's.... $40 Million...which would mean that they don't need to kickstart PoE2. The math is way off, but the conclusion is probably right. Paradox will take its cut. Let's pretend like it will be 10% of sales instead of the much larger amount it probably taking. Steam and Gog will take their cuts, that one is pretty established at 30%. Also, a couple hundred thousand at least will probably go to post game support. If they sold one million copies, that'd be slightly under $25m for a very high estimate, before taxes. Personally, I think Paradox is going to take over half revenue. But even if paradox takes half they'd still get a little over the Kickstarter.

Considering in the IE games your experience is divided between each party member this new xp system is pretty tame. Yeah, it's definitely lower than IE games. Although, I only heard the 10% thing halfway through development, so it could have changed. Anyeays interview from that time confirms that sliding experienced based on party size was still in and intentional. Also, I doubt the 10% figure was fueled by a need for control, it was probably just an arbitrary this feels fair number.

Open source would have meant building a game engine from scratch, which probably would have nixed out of the box linux capability as well as leading to a significantly smaller game. Smaller game means smaller fanbase, which generally means less modding. So while I support the sentiment, I don't think insisting on open source would really be all that good of an idea.

This post is bizarrely negative and inaccurate: 1. Low level cap? It's higher than BG1 after the expansion, and this is having an expansion that raises the cap! 2. Smaller parties get an extra 10% xp per character, that's not inconsiderable. 3. There's de facto kill xp from the bestiary. There's definitely trap xp because people keep complaining about it being in the game on the forums. A game progression where you can end 50% higher in level and most of the content is sidequests is hardly a tightly controlled experience. And level caps, though not my favorite, make sense given development realities. It would suck to be playing a level 25 mage who stopped getting new spells at level 12.

Well, I guess the game is showing its Darklands roots. This is as good a tactic as pick a really old alchemist and then let them die.

I'm not a fan of the banners, that's a little too much detail.

I NWN any halfway decent character could wreck everything else at higher levels. It was not terribly balanced. Maximized missile swarm made everything including dracoliches point-click-die.

I'm pretty sure Josh has mentioned that you go to Durgan's Battery, which is an old dwarven fortress for making animats (golems). ((I think it's that, it could be where that special dwarf steel is made)).

I didn't do any of that. I was talking about the enemy AI. The player has a ton of ways to defeat magic enemies, but they all come down to start = interrupt + dispel protections + murder. BG2 rogues using potions of invisibility were a more interesting threat, if less dangerous.

BG2 mage battles were either simple or tedious, or sometimes both. Even scs could only throw three or four strategies out of the mages, and some of the higher fights felt like wars of spell slot attrition. BG2 mages were normally overleveled for when you encountered them, just because the AI was not that reactive. There's a ton of duplication of protection spells with very slight differences, (spell trap / ruby ray / secret word) that make the system more arcane than interesting. Don't get me wrong, the breadth of the spells allowed some interesting fights, but generally the tactic was turtle summon, turtle horrid wilting / meteor swarm, turtle minute meteors. I thought BG1 was actually more interesting because the spells were more unique and less rock, paper, scissors.

It's worth pointing out that evocation refers to fireballs and explodey spells in D&D. Conjuration is summoning. Cipher means a secret form of information, a code, or having to do with encrypting and decrypting. They're psychics that use mind powers to read souls and thoughts. They're a cross between magic users and skirmishers.

Accuracy was completely taken out of character creation in the latest build afaik. The team said it was too powerful. Pretty sure there's one universal accuracy stat and its still there under the hood.

"The once crown jewel of the southern seas, is the crumbling island nations of Old Vailia sit thousands of miles to the southwest of their offshoot, the Vailian Republics(a colonization effort that took place few centuries before)." - JE Sawyer. Old Valia is southwest from Valian Republics. The Valian Republics are North East of Old Valia. The language is a bit confusing. On a separate note, that still means there's an issue with Ixamitl being known for its wisdom when its even further away from the rest of the world than the Eastern Reach.

[Edit: I (and white phoenix) misread Old Valia as south east of the Eastern reach when its actually southwest.] I would really like to see a rough continent map, even though that might tie their hands a little with sequels. It seems like the Eastern Reach is far away from where most of the culture in the world is happening.