Cantousent

Strictly speaking, if they had a kickstarter for MP, then the people who *really* want to support MP will be the people pledging. If they can create a budget based on such a kickstarter, then it would supposedly not take away from anything because it's self funded. I doubt it would garner sufficient support to be worthwhile, but I'm always for eating my words as long as the other side can make it taste good enough to eat. EDIT: I added words. Apparently, I can eat my words better than I can type them. Especially after a certain point of the evening and consumption.

I don't want a new playable race, preferring as I said that I would rather have the current races get more references during the game. However, while I would prefer not to have a new race, I don't mind a new race nearly so much as any race being inherently 'evil.' Now, I don't mind some races being inherently more 'hostile' or 'friendly' to other races. The game uses terms like 'benevolent' or 'rational' or 'cruel.' Those terms might imply 'good' or 'evil,' but do not explicitly claim them. In fact, as far as I've seen, any of those terms might be used as a tactic for objectives that could be considered either good or evil. I don't want to have 'drow' that are in and of themselves 'evil,' confined by their very innate natures to act evilly. Even the most benevolent god in the pantheon went gonzo. While his aims may or may not have been good, his means were sometimes most certainly not always clearly benevolent. No angels or demons. Only beings that wade through the muck of life as best they can.

The devs intentionally left the fine moral distinctions about good and evil as an argument for the players rather than themselves. I think this was entirely wise. Personally, I believe in good and evil. I'm not a moral relativist, but I also understand that it's possible to make cogent arguments for every scenario. I also believe that, while evil exists, there are usually feasible explanations that lead to grey areas. That's why, even though I'm one o' them ign'rant Christshuns, I appreciate the game leaving out the didactic moral intrusions in order to let me draw my own conclusions, especially since, in the world of computer game software, my backward Christian ways are certainly more complex and nuanced than what virtually always amounts to the blunt force approach by the devs. I despise alignment systems and would gladly be without alignment in any form. However, I do appreciate characters who are able to express complex moral positions and make compelling arguments on behalf of such positions, regardless of whether or not I agree with them.

Yeah, but I didn't think Durance was entirely cryptic. Yeah, he had a mystery just like a lot of the characters, but I found his delivery brutally straightforward most of the time. Whatever his past, his present was the opposite of 'mystical.'

I moved a post from this thread to the one in CnC. I was tempted not to write anything here since this thread had moved to page two. On the other hand, this thread does get bumped, so: There's a thread in CnC. That thread is where the general discussion about Avellone belongs. In order to keep this thread open, I hope we can discuss how Avellone's departure relates to PoE or, at the very least, the prospects of further Avellone projects and how those might relate to Obsidz further projects. I'll simply remove posts that do nothing other than speculate about Avellone's departure and his relationship with Obsidian. For general gossip and speculation, there's already one in Computer and Console forum: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/80155-chris-avellone-leaves-obsidian/

The only option at the very beginning is male or female. Other than that, everything is handled through a dialogue system that makes stat distribution part of the story progression. It's much more interesting than, say, the Elder Scrolls. I was impressed with how they handled it. At the end, the alpha states that in the release version, there will be an opportunity to play with the values. The actual skin color and basic build of the PC seemed to be set at the beginning, but I'm not sure, based on how the beginning unfolds, whether that stays the same. However, while this is all cryptic, I was quite happy with the way it was done but I don't want to spoil the game for anyone. I ask that folks try to use spoiler tags for things that give away plot points for the beginning. I mean, it *is* an alpha for a highly anticipated game and as such it will get a lot of press, but I'd rather folks get their first taste of spoilerage from elsewhere rather than here. After the cat's out of the bag from other sources, there won't be as much to worry about.

I got my key and did the alpha, so I can also attest that it's ongoing. The area that they did is extremely small. No combat as Ganrich says, but it does let you play around. Mostly, it shows off dialogue and introduces what I have to believe are extremely important story elements. I was impressed.

No biggie. I noticed that you rearranged your poll, so all is good. I sometimes will edit things at the member's request after it's too late for them to do so, but I think you've got a discussion going at least, so even if the poll can't be all inclusive, folks are discussing things by posting here.

I merged the two polls. I thought the new poll was the one including the drow, but frankly the two polls weren't distinctive enough to require two threads, so I merged them. If folks need something not represented in the current poll, they have the opportunity to explain it by posting in this thread.

Topics merged with ChaosMaker90's new poll as the current poll, so some people may need to revote. I'd rather not have multiple poll threads asking the exact same question. For my part, I agree with... Rosveen? who says he would rather flesh out what we already have than put resources into a new race/subrace. More consequences beats more options that end up being meaningless in my book.

I've already staked out my position of being against the slow movement towards more technology, but if they do expand weaponry, I'd hope they consider other things as well. Some of these ideas might not be feasible or even fun, but I think of them every now and then. So, before I get a lot of blowback to the effect of "How are they supposed to do that?!" I'll just point out that these are meant to be outside the box observations rather than hardcore pestering for features ideas. 1. Even in societies with a lot of fighting, people still spend more time in non fighting pursuits. Most of these things aren't the type of material for a CRPG, I know. I don't want the bed pan vs outhouse mini game or the middle ages meets renascence waste management subplot (although some clever writer might be able to work with it so it didn't end up as complete crap). The point is, have some non weaponry/non armor tech improvements also. Not a big deal, I suppose, but one that sometimes strikes me. 2. If you're going to have technology advancing, you're going to have a lot of accidents, mistakes, and misfires. Probably not easy to reflect in a CRPG without making the game more tedious, but when folks start talking about grenades, it makes me wonder why the firearms work as well as they do. All of this is dangerous stuff in today's world, let alone schlepping around an ancient flamethrower with sufficient fuel to feed the damned thing. I guess since we have an invisible Uhaul, it's not big deal. Just hope it doesn't throw out *too* much shrapnel when the several explosive devices inside of it explode. ...And for my purposes, it doesn't matter if those devices are grenades or potions of ass burning. Which brings me to 3. I'd say, since it would be tedious to reflect some of these dangers very often in gameplay, simply put in some floating text, some flavor text, and some other small nods to the dangers of the new weaponry and then, this is the real point, flesh out the game world by making some of the technological advances part of important story lines. Don't just introduce grenades. Introduce the idea of some sort of thrown explosive device. They already have explosives. Someone's going to want to make them smaller and more powerful. The idea of making them throwable wouldn't be far behind. So have the PC hear about this new idea, not even as a quest but in some minor way. Then give him the opportunity to explore the idea more later. Finally, offer a quest-line that identifies the challenges, the dangers, and the rewards. It should be difficult, dangerous, but potentially quite useful. If the player takes some small part in at least some of the advances or even hears about them beforehand as rumors, then it won't feel so much like, "hey, look, these explosive devices just popped out of someone's arse clean and ready for use!" On the other hand, some technology will be a surprise to the player. The world should be a mysterious place where there are rumors of great things that are just wild and crazy, rumors of other things that have some basis in fact, and some things that jump out and slap the PC in the head. ...And maybe even piss off the player a little bit at the same time. <.<

I am not an Obsidian employee and I do not speak for it in any way. I am a volunteer moderator in this forum and I'm pushing through (approving) the posts here, including critical ones. It is valuable feedback for Obsidian to hear from customers. I not a blind apologist for Obsidian, but I think... Paradox? handled the distribution. So hopefully some of these issues can be resolved between them and, as LaSpeakeasi says, even shipping companies in different regions. I would also say that I would contact customer service if there's a problem. They might not be able to help, but they might be. As for my Sharp friend, I will say that Obsidian has faced some heat for various decisions before, some with which I entirely agree and some that irked me as well. They don't get a free pass. I'll make a deal: if no one goes psycho and or nerd rage crazy, the thread can stay open and you can vent some of the frustration you have with things. This forum has always been good about allowing folks to complain about... well... just about everything, Obsidian included. Don't go crazy, don't get nasty, and please, be gentle with one another. You can bash Obsidian or the devs/publishers within reason, but you can't bash each other at all! :Cant's cheerful smile icon:

Yes. But even if they had, it's too late in development for him to make a difference. I didn't realize it was that far along in development. It just seems like they announced it recently, but I guess it has been a while. Well, I still hold out some hope that he can get in on some Obsidz projects. Yeah, maybe not, but as long as everything ended amicably, there's always the chance that he could even come in on future PoE franchise offerings.

I have to admit that I'd rather not have grenades. We're on the slope where we're going to end up with lasers and plasma weapons pretty soon. I swear, the next NPC is going to be a mutant named Marcus! :Cant's only partially facetious smile icon:

Eder is a great character because you like the guy and he's a sympathetic figure with some funny lines. I especially love the interaction between Aloth and Eder. Durance is a great character because you love to hate him and he's got a lot of funny lines. Durance is probably the best written NPC in the game, but I enjoyed pretty much all of them except for the druid, but I haven't included him yet in any plays. I'm going to switch him in on the current run.

Doofus! lol For the record, I don't understand why the trivial amount (for most folks) that the xpac will cost is an issue. ...And if $30 at most is an issue for you, you have larger problems looming over you than the xpac for a computer game. :Cant's own huge grin icon:

To be honest, I thought of it as the Guildmaster from this forum. I think it's an admin account that more than one of the devs use, but I can't remember why. To me, it's kind of an Easter egg. I would like to see it get an upgrade or something in the future. Bishop always makes me think of the community here much more than the vast vast majority of golden named NPCs we see. ...But, like I said, I'm with you on making it useful. <.<

I agree with Nakia. Otherwise, we end up with three paragraph disclaimers about whether or not something is an opinion. Some things are clearly facts and others are opinions. As a point of fact, you don't need to do a lot with the stronghold to progress the main story line. To be clear, the mega dungeon is not strictly necessary either. At least as I recall the main plot progression. As a matter of opinion, I personally like the stronghold and think you're missing out on a lot if you don't do anything with it, but clearly there are some folks who didn't like it or outright hated it.

I think it's fine for folks to blow off steam, and nobody seems to have been gonzo crazy in this thread, but I don't understand the grounds for complaint. Even if I hadn't backed the game, I would still think the pricing is fair. If you backed, you get everything, even if you don't like the game, it's still yours. If you didn't back, but you loved the game, you can buy both for a standard price. If you liked the game, but not enough to take a chance on buying both parts of the xpac, you don't have to buy part 2 until you try part 1. The downside is that you pay just a bit more for part 2 if you do it that way. Every part of that seems perfectly on the level to me. I freely admit sometimes I'm reading through stuff quickly and miss something, but is there some other issue than the pricing? Is it that they're putting out the xpac in two tranches? ...But even then getting two parts means getting a little bit early and then followed up by the rest later. Otherwise we'd simply get everything later.

Great work, Scazzy. This seems like in might be a tech support issue, so I'm moving the thread there because the devs are pretty much on top of things in that forum. If it is an unreported issue, good catch. Nice work on the Triple Crown!

I think this answers your question, Dr. Faustus: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/81079-the-white-march-expansion-price-revealed-15-per-part-25-for-both/?p=1719416

Wanna bet? Sure. So... http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/81079-the-white-march-expansion-price-revealed-15-per-part-25-for-both/ Thank you for placing your bet, unfortunately the house wins I pushed this through, but as it seems to me, the KS (backers) will get both xpacs, but only when they're released to the public. So, I'll get the first one when it comes out this month. Later, when the next one hits, I'll get that one also. As a kickstarter backer who had the xpac included in the bundle, that seems fair. I'm still getting a slight discount compared to someone who buys them off the shelf, but the guy who buys them off the shelf isn't completely screwed for missing the kickstarter campaign. At least, that's how it seems to me. EDIT: Got a little confused and cleaned up the post.

Okay, as promised, I'm reopening. I have to leave the house, so I'm counting on you guys to be charitable with one another while I'm gone, especially since I won't be here to read anything for a while! <.< Go ahead and have a lively discussion, but no vendettas!

Alrighty, we're going to take a little breather. I'll reopen the thread in just a bit after we get a cold drink (water, soda, or beer as your age and inclination dictate). Promise, I'll reopen before I leave the house.

Thats....kinda horrible..why are you so spiteful? When you throw around words like 'spiteful,' it makes me wonder if you'll actually listen to other views calmly. However, since I'm reading all of the posts in this thread pretty much in real time, I'm going to try to engage you. Please read what I'm saying as patiently as I'm typing it. I'm going to level with you and I hope you give me the chance to explain my position. I'm not responding with angry fingers. Please don't read with angry eyes. Unless they do multi-player extremely poorly, they'll absolutely need to change the nature of the single player game. They'll have to assess all sorts of issues in order to accommodate an additional mode. Including a multi-player feature cannot happen in a vacuum, and folks, such as you, who suggest that it will have no other effect than to give folks a chance to play with friends are wrong. Not bad guys. Not evil. Not spiteful or malicious. You're just erroneous. ...Or at least that's my considered opinion. I get that you feel differently. That's fair enough, but I haven't read anything you've said that makes me feel any differently about this issue, and I've read everything you've posted in this thread, and especially carefully since the head in the ass comment. I'm not trying to be spiteful and, in fact, I don't believe I've been spiteful. I'm not a vampire. I often go out into the sunlight. In fact, I hike quite often. I have friends and have had regular DnD groups over the years that met often. However, I have never played a computer game that truly captured the feel of tabletop DnD, and that includes NWN, which I actually didn't like much. So, the long and short is, I don't want the devs to risk anything I like about the single player game by trying to figure out how to include a satisfactory multi-player mode. That's pretty much where I stand and I don't believe I have been hostile or untoward in how I've expressed that opinion. Once again, I'm following this thread closely but I do want you to get your say.