anameforobsidian

Then it's pretty true to BG2. Rimshot.

It's both. The endless dungeon lies beneath your stronghold. Notice how you can see one of the hands sticking up around the building.

I think its a bit more expansive than that, even though you won't see everything. I'm pretty sure one of the updates said that you go to Durgan's Battery. And since the story has to do with Eothas, I'd be very surprised if you didn't go to Godhammer but that's just a guess. One of the expansions or sequels will probably take place in the Valian republic. I'm pretty sure there were mentions of that originally being the second city. P.S. I just copied the image URL from another site, no uploading.

The video is excellently done. There's only one thing that bothers me. It's weird that two civilizations (Aedyr, Old Valia) would have roughly similar technology and converge on a place between the two of them that is far behind and relatively isolated technologically. You think the forces of cultural diffusion would have either passed through the area along the hemispheres or the two would hardly communicate, especially since deep sea travel is so difficult in this setting. Also, a map for reference:

I don't follow a ton of gaming news anymore, but I did always like the Jimquisition. Posted for those who want to watch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGo63oAEN20

1. I would point out that there is no mention of contingency plan in Project Eternity's KS pitch did Obsidian lie to you? I would point out that Obsidian also took publisher partner during development of PoE should you be mad for them for doing so? I would also point out that they did have contingency plan which didn't involved KS backers moneys, but for some reason that plan is seen as bad thing as it involved deal with publisher which for some reason is seen as betrayal towards their backers, but because of that contingency plan they are still working to finalize Godus even though they run out KS money long time ago. Would it had been better if they had asked more money from KS backers instead? 2. Look point one. 3. I don't think that his math such he was answering question that you got £100k more than you asked and he was saying that is not true as even though KS fundraising did go £100k over the target they didn't actually get £100k additional funds to do the game and he explains why. 4. Unseen cost are unpredictable but they are so common in software projects that it is often wise to prepare for them and he admits that he was too naive and optimistic and too fearful towards possibility that their fundraiser would fail to ask money towards such occurrence and he also says that he don't know how people that fund KS projects would react towards people that ask more money than they have calculated that they need because they think that they may screw up somewhere and need more money. 5. If you look their KS video then you know that they addressed that point very much, as whole video is build around that point. 6. He also says that they asked as much money as they predicted that they need to complete the game in time frame that they predicted that it will took which was based on their first prototype which they showed in their KS pitch. 7. He is correct that lot of people do it and it is normal practice in KS, for example Obsidian, inXile, and Double Fine are also guilty in same things as he. Molyneux is not innocent actor (like for example his failure with that Curiosity winner), but he gets much harsher treatment than others whose kickstaters don't match perfectly their pitch. Like for example Divinity: Original Sin from Larian Studios (which backer I am also and I don't personally have any problems with how they handled their project) was late and it don't have all features that were promised in their KS pitch (one stretch goal was too difficult to them to do) and Rock Paper Shotgun named that product as best from Kickstater in 2014, and in any of their interviews of Sven they didn't ask is he liar or anything like that. PS. If one don't ask money for contingency when they ask you to fund something then you should always assume that there is no plan in case that something goes awry and do you decision to fund project from that basis or ask if there is one, and make your decision basing on answer (or non-answer) that you get. I was quite mad at Obsidian for taking a publisher, and had more than one post about it. But that's neither here nor there. By his own omission, he had a backup plan he just didn't tell backers about because they wouldn't have liked it. That's pretty scummy. It would have been better if he had asked for the amount of money he really needed. He's still misstating his case. I'm pointing out that his own math shows that his request was dishonest. Dishonest by at least about 20%! So he was afraid to tell the truth, because he didn't like a possible consequence. That's a common reason for lying and still doesn't make it right. Also, plenty of kickstarter projects have put extra money they've gotten to improving the game or "enhancing the game." Obsidian did it before his campaign. SRR is doing it right now. Fair enough. But his description is incredibly suspect. They have a good prototype and everyone agrees that it will take 9 months? No arguments, or anything like that? That's not the way group planning works; people argue, especially over timelines. So he's probably telling an incomplete story or switching nouns to absolve himself of blame. The last part wasn't about whether other groups acted like he has. His language is similar to the way people talk when they're lying. Plain and simple. That said, not everyone acts the same way: Doublefine was far more open about risk, "what's the worst that could happen?"; PE was far more restrained in budgeting (They tried Linux in Unity before making decisions about its place as a stretchgoal, final stretchgoal was improving the game); Wasteland 2 mentioned both other funding possibilities, was more open with risk, and they built in a contingency "$1,000,000 sounds like a lot of money, but in normal AAA video game development it is less than 7% of what a big publisher spends to make a game. The last game you bought probably had a game development budget of something closer to $15,000,000. Wasteland 2 will have a team... working for 12-18 months." Even if they did, it's still no excuse. You can choose to be part of the problem or solution. P.S. Caveat Emptor is a really ****ty way to run a business, especially one based on reputation.

Don't get me wrong. John was a ****, especially the opening and the lines about Black and White 2 (which I liked). But Molyneux is clearly evasive in several crucial parts of the interview. I don't think that Molyneux had some master plan to take people's money and run. I do think he told some fibs he thought wouldn't matter and then quickly got over his head, especially when he realized he was beholden to the mob rather than publishers. Again, John was a ****. However, that part of the interview is filled with a ton of misleading language. So: He knowingly told a lie of omission about the risks. He knew that he had no contingency and did not mention that in a section called Risks and Challenges. He represented it as a binary choice, full contingency or no contingency. In actuality its a continuum he could have chosen 25% or 75% contingency. His math sucks. ( £30k * 22 people) * (9 / 12 months) = £495k. VAT and kickstarter fees are incredibly predictable, kickstarter even tells you how much it will be. If Godus was funded at the base level, it's right around £40k. And that's before fixed costs like rent, power, and middleware. So either he was misleading in the interview or on kickstarter, possibly both. He makes it sound like cost overruns and unforeseen costs are both inevitable and unpredictable. It can't be both. He was aware of the possible need for contingency, but did not tell the backers or allow them to make an informed decision. He's aware of his past history of overruns, and never thought to address that on the kickstarter. He repeatedly mentions his fear of not getting any money / failure as a driver of unrealistic promises on kickstarter. But the purpose of kickstarter is not to get as much money as you can, it's to fund the creation of project. If you don't realistically think you can get that money, then don't go on kickstarter. If you want people to give you as much as you can get, go on indiegogo or patreon. Those fund the creator, not the project. Finally, whenever he reaches a part where he makes a questionable decision, he starts saying "a lot of people do this" and "I think most people," etc. He frequently switches to generalities and changes tenses. He also removes himself from his recollection of the problems that hit; he switches from "I" to "we." In short, he's using lying language. If you are happy with the product, then that's all that matters. I've been in a similar situation (I loved Broken Age). But, Molyneux is not and has not behaved like an innocent actor.

On the one hand, the interview is really dickish. Nathan Grayson did the same crap with Obsidian at RPS and I didn't like that either. On the other hand, his response shows that he is a pathological liar that straight up lied to take people's money: So, he didn't want to ask for the full budget because people might not give him the money if they were making an informed decision. Cool. And it repeats like that several times. John Walker is more than a little harsh and somewhat petty in the rest of the interview, but the fundamental problem that sparked the whole interview is there. Molyneux knowingly misled people about the cost of developing a game because he wanted to take their money. That's beyond unethical, and bordering on fraudulent. I'm glad he's being called to task even if I am a bit squeamish about the form. Also, Project Eternity looks great. Yay Obsidian! And its worth pointing out that Obsidian has a pretty small crew on PE too with no multiplayer or middleware, and their initial request was two and a fifth times what Godus asked for.

I played the BG series and I have to say the PE shots blow it out of the water. It would be inexcusable if it did not. Technology has progressed considerably since then and it shows. It would be inexcusable if PE was in an 800x600 window. If you don't like the art-style choice then that's fine. However, our imagination filled in the relatively rough details in the IE games, and so the more detail it has, the more dissonance you will notice. Also, D:OS went for the cartoonishly lush and crowded which I personally don't think is superior to PE's more restrained setting. It's obvious from looking at PE that the art team really knew where to crank up the detail to make things more impressive.

I thought they said Kana Rua could find some of the lore in the megadungeon at the PAX presentation, implying that he got new abilities. As for druid wildforms, I always wanted an IE character that mimics FF2's beastmaster, or the more common FF blue mages.

Gothic and Risen have excellent day night cycles. Each NPC has a schedule, and many monsters go to sleep at night. It makes the world feel more alive, and it's much easier to complete some quests and rob special areas at night.

Teleportation is definitely not happening. They've confirmed it doesn't exist in the setting (which solves a whole bunch of ridiculous plot stuff).

I've yet to play it, but more classes and feats are always a plus. I would also love ability combos like slicken plus fireball. That was one thing dragonage did right (even if combat eventually relied on it).

I want an underwater setting so very bad. The shark city in D&D just *ahem* wet my appetite. Also, after Hong Kong, I want the next Shadowrun to be in Dubai.

Keep in mind that adra is pretty much coral. Replace ardramancer or adra mechanic with coral. I can see some druid (or maybe mage) powers that give them an adra covering. Otherwise it sounds way too slow growing to be much of a power source for anything.

Sawyer was incredibly clear why this was cut in some of his forum posts on another site. (Wish I had a link, people were talking about it on the codex). He alludes to it during the video recently posted I think. Doing a text adventure game inside poe would be a feature that was used only once in the game, and stretch the somewhat unfamiliar engine in ways that it wasn't designed for. Given true AAA resources it sounds like a great little addition to gameplay and writing. Given PE's incredibly limited resources it sounds like bug city, like a feature that they would dump a massive amount of resources into for a relatively small gain. To me it sounds like Josh made the right decision, this is something that could be served by an expansion pack or New Vegas style dlc. Focus on making sure all the basics work right first, then expand.

I like the idea of skill bonuses based on order, and the kind wayfarers getting a boost to lay on hands. Like the two posters above me, I think that passive bonuses are perfectly good choices on level up. Sometimes you don't want to pay attention to a character.

I'm not a fan of BG2 mages either. I think that they take up too much of other class roles, and such an emphasis was put on mages that it limited the capability of other classes. Playing the BG series with scs showed me how many kludges they used to make mages fun enemies, and how the layers of protection absolutely wrecks the fun in the game at higher levels. Scs mages are a lot smarter, but they're also not very fun to fight. That said, Kangaxx was significantly different from any other fight in the game. Both his ability to use an insane number of imprisons and his many magix resistances (always on resist magic weapon! etc.)

If your complexity leads to drudgery then the complexity isn't valuable. Sometimes concision, intelligibility, and simplicity are virtues. If you ever want to autoresolve part of the game, then that part of the game is not working. There were a few generic buffs, like protection from evil, that it never made sense to not have up. If any reasonable player will always have a spell up, why even make it optional? Also, macros reduce the drudgery of multiple clicks, but they don't reduce the drudgery of sitting through five spell animations in a row.

So instead of trying to make other classes more versatile, let's nerf the hell out of Wizard to make it as bland as everything else. Perfect solution, thanks. Wizards went beyond versatile in several of the IE games. They actively took over functions of another class. Tenser's Transformation allowed wizards to "become a beserk fighter," and that's a sixth level spell. Knock and invisibility took over more than half of a rogue's class function (scouting & lockpicking), and they're level two spells. It's pretty telling when scs improved rogues use potions that mimic a wizards powers rather than stealth, because wizard powers are better than a major class feature. Plus, the protection combos means that the only way to stop a wizard at high levels devolves into one of three strategies. Get a wizard to untangle the series of spell protections, send in a high-hp / high-mr fighter, or use an item which emulates a wizards spells. So basically your options are: have a wizard, be bored for ten years, or pay extra to pretend to be a wizard (usually using an otherwise substandard class). So yes, they nerfed wizards to bring them in-line with the expectations of a class based system. A class based system means that you have a limited set of powers and a role to play within the party. It does not mean that you have all the powers, and your role is not carrying the party. BG2 only got around the clear deficiencies in the system by overleveling enemy mages and under-utilizing their spell selection. If you want characters with all the powers, play classless systems like Skyrim or Wasteland 2. Anything else will seem like a nerf.

The downside of having themed parties of npcs is that the npcs have much less dialogue and interact with each other much less, especially if you don't pick the right combinations. How many conversations does Viconia have in BG1 vs. BG2? How about Adjantis vs. Keldorn? A lot of times in BG I'll pick up a character, play with them for a few hours, and then throw them away forever because they're not saying anything interesting. You may not like the type of characters they chose for BG2 (and I could take or leave about half of them) but the ones they did include are significantly more unique and fleshed out. That makes for a less thematic party selection in replay, but it makes the party you do have more vibrant when you're originally experiencing it.

So: 1. PE does have the adventurer's hall. It provides you with as many mechanically useful party members as possible. 2. BG1 threw everything it had and the kitchen sink into its npcs. Remember the memorable characters like Branwen or Dynaheir? You seem to like strong, stoic, and boorish characters. It had those in spades. For the life of me, I couldn't tell why you would want Xan or Adjantis in a party other than completionist and mechanical reasons. 3. Also, you complain about characters being late to BG2, but keep in mind BG1 introduced several characters in late chapters of the game like Cloakwood forest or actually in Baldur's Gate. It takes a lot longer to get Alora in your party than it takes to find Viconia. 4. Finally, Planescape Torment had 8 CNPCs for a 6-person party. Every single one had a superior quantity and quality of writing than any BG1 character.

The wizard's utility came at the cost of other classes in the IE games. That's not to say other classes were useless, because they clearly weren't. However, the other classes were rigidly chained to a specific role in a way that wizards were not. There was more variation inside the wizard class then there was between rangers and fighters. This is even worse in pnp. The amount of new spells wizards get far exceeds the number of new abilities people come up with for fighters. Fighters get trip and grapple, wizards get flight and teleport.

At that point, why not just have four different buffs? At a certain point in bg2 buffs become inevitable, so why have a character do 14 animations and was time when they could just do one buff.

For me, solid guis help preserve the feel of a pnp adventure brought to life. I was not a fan of NWNs utilitarian interface. Show a little art, make it look like a window into a different world.