nipsen

Oh, there are plenty of good reasons to hide the internal details from fans. "So here's something we're proud of, and it's not quite finished yet, but you can see where we're goi...." -"IT'S COMPLETELY BROWN AND IT SUCKS ASS WHAT IS GOING ON I'M FEELING SO BETRAYED, OBSIDIAN IS DEAD TO ME!!!!" What I'm saying is that instead of leaving the marketing details to Paradox, or to put up a funny face and a booth underneath it at E3, Obsidian should be more direct. Make a target, such as a playable screen with an example of how the dialogue and the combat works, for example. Present it as a "press-demo", put it in a "press-kit" tab, include bullet-point lists with features to encourage conformity on the terminology, add some artwork, put up some quotes, do the usual thing - except just make it public, rather than propose and kneefall to the magazines. That's one option. Another would be to push out gameplay video footage on the kickstarter page or the forums, face, and so on - we have people here who would volunteer to spread it around if it's any good and actually shows some sort of scenario, or something happening. The more unedited the better, because then we can talk about what it actually is, rather than what we believe Obsidian wants us to see. And then show that same footage, or a slightly better edited one, in the marketing blurbs. 300k views on youtube, perhaps? /Then/, it'll compound, and people might be likely to go: "Oh, my goodness gracious, this is the thing I saw those youngsters voice their enthusiasm of on the Digital Internet, is it not, Lawrence? -Why, yes, Robert, I do believe it is, let me just put down my beer-glasses so I can have a better look!". Otherwise - f'n bs waste of time. In my humble opinon, obviously.

It was presented the first time at VGX. Same story then. Nice trailer. And no follow-up, because not a soul who gets paid to write for games knows the first thing about programming, design, etc. So the same question again - how is anyone actually served by showing a game at e3. That the public won't see anything from. That will generate previews no one reads, and at least not remember past a week. For a game no editor of any major games-media site will spend any space on their pages for. It's like you say indirectly - a closed showing probably achieves nothing. And unless the video they're showing off isn't stunning, why would anyone outside of the inner circle care? Either way, it's just not going to help sell the game.

You're not really reading what I'm writing, now are you. I'm asking how getting a "pity pitch" to dominate any note or article about PoE is going to help sell it. Odds are that it's not going to generate visibility at all. I'm also not accusing Obsidian of kneefalling to industry demands just because they went to e3 with the game. You just made that up. I have absolutely no grounds to make any sort of assement on that one way or the other - I haven't seen the game, I haven't talked to any devs, I've no idea what they're doing. But I'm asking what they were hoping to accomplish by presenting it there. And suggesting that simply not presenting it might have been a better option. That what they're saying is that "here is a game no publisher wanted to make, but here it is anyway!" - to people who are extremely sensitive to what "publishers" around the world actually want to see. So are they hoping that writer boys and girls are going to go back to their editor and gush about how they should abandon their bylines and go and cover hardcore rpgs instead? That they're going to convince them that writing to people who demonstrably want nothing to do with their magazine is a good idea? Is that something you would think is likely within even the nearby parallel realms of existence..? Aside from that, there are other places they could spend effort promoting the game. That is guaranteed to reach people who at least are marginally interested. So why wouldn't they go for that instead? Why not make that sandbox scenario for testing out the dialogue, fighting and character build systems, and distribute it? That would also give Obsidian feedback about where people actually would be interested, so they could target them better in the future. So I'm questioning their use of resources, if it took some effort to get a build out. Not in the grand mission of saving the world - but when it comes to selling the game to people who actually want to buy it. Like I said - we've already established that no publisher wants anything to do with the game. PoE is a game that represents all about gaming that has been phased out by the industry. So why is e3 a focus? Why show the gameplay to people you already know are going to have reservations about writing in any depth about it, even if they actually love it? Take No Man's Sky as a brilliant example of how this works. It looks great. It has been presented before and gotten some awards. But when you see coverage of it from e3, you really can't tell what in the world it's about. There's just a big question mark about how this is going to appeal to anyone. "It looks beautiful, but I've no idea what I'm supposed to be doing". You see someone throw out "procedural generation" as if it explains everything, while referring to how repetitive "rogue likes" are, and noting some misgivings about whether it's even possible to make (apparently not noticing that they have the system up and running, and haven't shown of a concept video like their peers tend to do, while describing it themselves as "captured on the console itself", etc). So, is that kind of coverage really going to help promote the game? There's no escaping the fact that places like IGN sets the tone for coverage elsewhere as well. So I'm asking what they were hoping to accomplish with it, other than sabotaging themselves.

Yes, that is basically how interesting it is to read for example Giantbomb texts. It's practically always more informative to just watch someone chew chips while playing the game.

Ah, here we go with the never doubt the Worm stick. Fantastic. No, I'm not asking for that. I'm saying that without the kickstarter backing, the project would probably not have been started at all. So to think that a project like that should be in any way sold or adjusted to "market demands", and benefit from it, just doesn't make sense. Whether it's the pitch to the media or the actual features - it's not going to help sell the game. The opposite is probably true. And because of that, there's a need to appeal to the e3 crowd at the floor with this game..? If they actually signed up, what does Obsidian need the e3 floor for? And why would you think these journalists are going to be able to write on the frontpage with "text-heavy rpg with complex class system makes HD comeback"? I know at least two writers who backed the game out of pity for Obsidian. I mean, that's my point, just as it is theirs - Obsidian can't rely on industry media for promoting the game. They rely on finding the people who actually like these types of games, not the ones who will skip the dialogue and think the fighting system is too slow. And I know, and e3 journalists know, and publishers all round know -- that that demography does not read popular games media. Not any more, at any rate.

? Make an fps with zombies and nazis, then. Look. When I beta-tested for Sony games, we became inundated with the expectations people in PR have. It's not even commanded most of the time. It's more like an ultimately more benign, but less logical system compared to the one in North Korea. Where people in the system start to adopt a way of thinking that goes like this: If we start to have opinions that veer off to much from everyone else, we lose momentum, and we might lose our shot at greatness when it arrives. And apparently everyone in the system are really afraid of jumping ship, just in case the next nazi zombie shooter in space is a hit. In the same way, the argument that the only way to make games go mainstream is to make a game a commercial hit, this is very common. So when a smash-hit comes along, and it sells enough games so that approximately 5% of all console-owners have the game -- then people make that out as being the only way to make games mainstream. And you see the ones echoing that thought being outside the actual marketing branches, because they genuinely believe that if we streamline all the games into what that one largest 5% niche is playing, then games will magically go mainstream and be respected forever. So they make COD: Ghosts, some sort of right-wing gunpornographical cadaver discipline fantasy, where original thought is punished with disapproval from your all-powerful father-figure. It's sick. And that game is supposed to make games go mainstream. It's gospel, it is Truth. Meanwhile, Gran Turismo sells more units over time without being advertised for. But somehow the same logic doesn't apply here, so that the entire world wants to just drive cars. And that good simulation games with relatively low intensity is where immersion is at. But that's not how the world of the games-industry works - no, it has to be Probst and Kotick fighting over capturing the noisy **** brat factor. And practically all of the industry media follows up on that, echoing the sentiments or at the very least orienting their coverage around it -- because the companies are so invested in promoting those solutions. So it becomes a feedback loop, and it affects media coverage, it affects publishing choices, and ultimately it affects what games people are even attempting to make. I've talked to developers several times that I thought were sick and tired of the first person shooter rides, for example. Or devs who I was sure were grinding their teeth when making "popular" changes to core mechanics of their games. That they would know how badly that would affect the game for everyone who played it, etc. But the truth is that a lot of devs simply see what works and they copy that. What makes money in our market? COD: Ghosts. Everyone says so. Even a brutal outsider success hit like Supergiantgames or Q-Games - they still don't actually make a lot of money, do they? So why even bother making creative stuff when huge companies are giving us money to make venomous, unimaginative power-trip fantasies for people who are going to be in jail by the time they turn 20? For a lot of the devs, it's even come to the point where they're content as long as they don't sell out completely. They work within the system, like a guy in North Korea planting rice seeds in a slightly offensive pattern inside a huge field, where no one is ever going to see it. So frankly -- some of us back projects like this in the hopes that the dev will if not become self-sufficient, that they will not have to rely exclusively on making AAA publisher title requests, or become dependent on having a PR department essentially earning the company's upkeep by constantly selling and changing the devs' pitches to conform with the "market needs". That's a very conscious choice. We back the project so that it will have the opportunity to avoid the industry rules. And we are specifically not backing the project so that Obsidian is going to have their own PR people scrambling to get to e3 in order to harvest "important" feedback from snarky "isn't this an outdated game" folks in the games-magazines. We did not pay for that, in the same way that we for example did not pay for Charles Cecil to make another disappointingly badly written and badly programmed iOS project. That's something they can do on their own time, as they already have. It's not something you're going to drag kickstarter projects towards if you ever want to see that kind of support again. Like I said - the feedback after e3, and the press that's going to follow it, is 100% predictable. And if you hedge your hopes for a good write up from people like Desslock, or anyone who has survived in the industry media for any length of time, I've got some huge plans for a ski resort in the Antarctica I'd like you to sponsor as well. tl;dr: 1. Kickstarter projects by design should not appeal to anyone at e3. If they then are adjusted slightly to get the appeal as requested, it's not going to work. The IGN narrative is going to stand, like in the writeup above. It's a relic of a foregone era, and no one wants to play it. Therefore: 2. Spending time or resources on selling such a game at e3 is at best a complete waste of time.

Because it had a known format, and they sold it on the colorful visual style and the unique narrative-driven approach. Next gen platformer in HD. It's something that looks like Braid. It's something that looks like something that has already been successful. It doesn't matter that the game itself was great in all kinds of ways that we would never know from the coverage. What matters is that the pitch they choose and the presentation they had at E3 will represent something thought to generate some appeal. It's also a point that until it started getting all those rewards and "outsider" notices several places, the utterly uninteresting Valve stuff, etc., there were actually very few features done on that game. Anyway, case in point with PoE: http://www.redbull.com/en/games/stories/1331658188490/pillars-of-eternity-interview I had not read that before making the other post.

Still think it's unwise for Obsidian to even spend resources on proposing to the industry partners this way, though. They have other titles they know will generate at least some buzz. But they didn't get a trailer pushed in with MS or Sony, and I haven't seen PoE even mentioned anywhere. So if it took development time to prepare a demo, it's not going to be worth it. Like I said - there's a very good reason why you see very specific types of game promoted at e3. Even things like No Man's Sky, which is spectacular in every possible way... given that you like games, or intelligent programming, or know anything about how difficult it is to realize a design like that... never gets mentioned. Because it belongs to something the people who attend e3 know doesn't generate common appeal. See that tendency over and over again, even with games that people with press-passes admit they are impossibly impressed with. Because the expectation that they will have larger appeal to their readers is thought to be nil. So just watch. If PoE gets any press post E3, it will be some sort of snarky, hardcore d&d grinder who describes it as the death-throes of the isometric rpg-game. Making a point of how real time combat is Obsidian's kneefalling attempt to woo "modern gamers". While then moving on to a first-person time-waster as if it's the second coming of Christ in the next feature.

PCGamer US back in the day, yes? ..hopefully he has changed his tastes a bit since then, or it's going to be bad :D I don't know. I said this in the DoubleFine kickstarter as well. That they should treat the reviewers with the courtesy they deserve, and nothing more. They do not represent anyone, they are not the designers, and they shouldn't be catered to. And if a typical, successful reviewer now hypes a game, odds are that no one who backed PoE is going to look at the game, not even sideways. If Moriarty and Greg over at IGN positively hates the game, that's of course not going to be good for sustaining the "buzz" -- but will Obsidian truly lose anything by being slammed for making an old-school game for PC only? Could be that's music to the ears of people who would never read IGN, and just become angry if they did. So my suggestion was to deliberately use other primary channels than the normal review-channels. To use critical reviewers, have a dialogue with them, to use youtube, to start promotion sites, to pick advertisement avenues where you would be likely to hit people who were into games 5+ years ago. And then to favor users with a timely release, so that you wouldn't get the "early review" focus. Instead having major review-sites release the reviews at the same time that other players would be able to. Youtube rants and early looks also will obviously compete with the early reviews. Specially with games that have a lot of playtime. You kind of know that the deadline is going to mean the reviewers will skip parts or avoid exploring anything in depth. And they won't say that in the reviews, to avoid sounding superficial.. and without anyone else able to play the game, that view is going to be just standing there. All kinds of spare time driven sites are also going to lose if the review-sites get early builds. And when you're releasing perhaps a month later than IGN, you kind of don't even want to bother spreading your review around anyway. You just post it and you're happy with 30 hits. I just think it's worthwhile to think about that the reason why this game can't be made together with a publisher, is that the way games are sold now just doesn't allow for a text-heavy game that rewards some thinking. Games like that just don't fit into the "new journalism" convention where you clinically remove any kind of actual analysis or description, in the name of making the writing more appealing. You know, like a travel column that could be written for any city in any country. To actually write a good review of a long-winded rpg then, that requires the reviewer to spend a lot of time with the game, think about what the game really wants to convey, what the journey actually is - and then write about it in an eloquent way. So not relying exclusively on that happening at IGN, at a deadline, might be a good idea.

..yeah. I'm guessing what Josh is referring to is the process of translating the map from semi-3d to a hi-res map. And the preparation stages before creating the compressed target with the occlusion and terrain effects. Most likely, if they released the tools for this they would basically be releasing their entire toolchain. In the same way, I sort of doubt that maps can be edited very successfully. You would lose the effects and the way the lighting works. Put in a tree, don't get the same angle as the rest, have tagged on lighting that only works at one time of the day, etc. Not necessarily going to be a fantastic idea. It's probably not entirely the same thing that happens with character models and weapons. So maybe that would work. What I'd like to see would be a scripting tool for dialogue trees - if the dialogue system is any good, I mean

Nah, that's not true either. Instead, I think perhaps some of the people who were introduced to arpg/diablo+dialogue spinoffs with DS - just didn't play the kind of games that DS1&2 was actually a streamlined version of themselves. This would be infinity engine games, fallout 1&2, diablo to some extent. Perhaps this type of gamer came from playing Majora's Mask and Ocarina of time, and thought DS was a massively complex thing, I don't know. I still hear people.. not that much younger than me either.. who play WoW and Guild Wars have this notion that these are basically old-school rpg-games with a twist. Rather than what they are, which is a streamlined action-oriented game that uses elements from the actual rpgs that really were story-driven, dialogue-heavy, and where the narrative was the part that carried the game, both in and outside of combat. I mean, DS did a lot of things right. They did the 3d level designs for entire levels (which triumphantly returned in DS3 - something that no reviewers anywhere.. except for me damnit.. noticed or ever commented on). They had groups and fighting in groups that were deeper than what NWN eventually would do. Dynamic class systems, if impenetrable at first, were great. Random loot and enemies. It was the first game that attempted to go all 3d in that genre, and succeeded much more than it by rights should have been allowed to. I admit the two first games received a lot of bad press for idiotic reasons having to do with nostalgia even then. The action-oriented interface, some of the clunkiness that wasn't really possible to solve, etc. But that being said - DS 1&2 were streamlined arpg spinoffs. Combat system was ok, not fantastic. Spells and powers didn't mesh as well as they perhaps should have with each other, in the context of the game, or against other powers in the game. Some of the writing was good, but most of it wasn't exactly thrilling. I mean, really, "you're a farmer and your world is turned upside down as creatures attack". Just.. no. It all was a bunch of stuff that were an excuse to show off the levels and dungeons. With the graphics effects giving off the same impression to a cynic: they're eye-candy and were put in there because they could do it, not because the setting and story called for it. And with the unpolished surface putting people off who were used to seeing some imagination-tickling 2d images and distant overhead views of characters that they would drape with images they'd think up in their heads -- this kind of thing seems cheap and not very appealing. DS3 simply improved on all of this. I agree that they should have worked on somehow managing to let you control the AI, instead of only really allowing the good dynamic fighting to happen in a co-op game. Perhaps by letting you pause and draw up events for the AI somehow. But from a design perspective, I know how difficult that would have been to pull off without making the controls extremely complex. So realistically speaking, by keeping the part dynamics and multiplayer in there, they did have one nod to the originals that I'm pretty sure Square Enix didn't care all that much about. Online mode as well is set up in such a way that you can filter parties on ping - there are things here that are old school, and that break utterly with the modus in the inhabited publisher dimensions that make DS3 a curious anomaly. Writing is the same thing. Implementing alternative paths and responses depending on the character with voice-acting -- not really done that much now. Alternative paths in dialogue, and different outcomes depending on your choices - they are more varied and have more impact in DS3 than Mass Effect, which for some reason goes for being the gold standard in rpgs. Having full 3d world levels, rather than the tile-set horrors bioware has used for every single one of their games - again, it's not done, it takes too much time, and it's difficult to plan when fracturing the development process down to atomic disjointed bits before implementation takes place. They did all of those things and had an easily playable action-rpg -- without going in the simplistic WoW direction, simple as that. So: two questions: 1. Why are people so enamored with DS1&2, when there are a lot - and I mean a lot - of action rpgs out there, older and newer, that do combat better? Why are either of the games liked for the style of writing, when.. etc. 2. How come people are fans of DS1&2, but don't see how many similar elements DS3 includes, and even perfects? As with practically all things involving loud people in gaming communities who consistently never explain the thinking behind their statements -- it makes no sense. Sure, criticize the game for not meeting your expectations. Criticize it for not including your favourite feature, whether it was or wasn't included in the original games. Not saying you shouldn't criticize the game for whatever reason. But you can't seriously come up with the idea that DS3 was so different from DS1&2 that it shouldn't even be called DS. And that any follow-up would be "streamlined" "even more", and therefore break apart from the DS "formula" even more completely. That's.. bonk. Idiotic. Sorry. Just.. had to say that. ---------- What I'd like to see happening for DS4 would be Square Enix to have some fantastically bright idea going on about an open world, free to play, region server sustained (Phantasy Star of old style) action-game. And pour millions of dollars over the Obsidian headquarters - and simply let them spend all the money on writing quests, creating mobs and playable characters, scripting scenarios and drawing 3d levels. In return for a prototype of a 3d engine capable of the same things DS3 did, just with better effects, more physics, and spell effect and ability interference (sword clashes, fire storm from wind gust on firewall, burning forests, styles of fighting adapting to the engagements, etc). So that you would have in-game, real-time action with strict network latency requirements, where a charge with a spear wouldn't be a kill-trade when met with a fireball the other way, etc. Not that half of that is possible on current hardware, or that anyone has actually done anything remotely similar before. But hey, if people asked anyway, there it is.

Coming from the perspective people tend to have when playing games such as Skyrim and Mass Effect - I think it's very easy to have the approach that level scaling is never perfect anyway (or the level system is extremely flawed, skills aren't really balanced in the first place, and never designed to be so, etc.). So you settle for either one of three options: 1. Scaling each individual encounter in such a way that it will be challenging regardless of level, where strategy and some critical event decides the battle rather than the actual combat system. Ensuring that the game is so linear that level progression and strength is always predictable makes this easier. And the game then becomes "enjoyable" and possible to complete with some challenge. 2. Letting the strength of the enemies follow a scale depending on player level, that doesn't follow the player's level system, with the escape switch that you can lower the difficulty whenever you'd like. 3. Making basic attacks powerful enough to always be effective, while adding powers and splash damage options along with bigger crowds. In either case you're skipping past the idea of having a level system that was intended to make it possible for a smart player to avoid critical hits, and complete all but the most difficult and complex boss-battles without taking much damage at all. Take Dungeon Siege 3, for example. It could be played on the hardest difficulty if your party played well together, using the options in battle that you were given. And there was scaling on the encounters depending on the amount of players in the group, which I thought was a really good idea. And the difficulty worked in the way that if you played well, it didn't matter all that much how laughably underleveled or underequipped you were. Basically because it wasn't based on a battle of attrition, where the enemies would be just as strong as you, but didn't have health potions. This is something you run into in d&d based games, because you're not meant to create scenarios in paper-book format where you constantly face enemy wave after enemy wave without resting or breaking up the pace. Time flows differently, and there's just not as many encounters. You skip past the things you import in certain games where the defense wears down before you actually take hit-point damage. To create that sense of fatigue that might be critical if you overextend yourself. So I think that if the way the combat system in PoE works allows well rounded parties to use "cool-down" abilities and the actual combat system to deal with encounters without taking much permanent damage (they've talked about crippling and falling in battle making people injured and their abilities less effective, so they're more vulnerable and do less damage, etc.), then level-scaling isn't such a huge deal. Which meshes perfectly with how they're saying they only considered making the boss-encounters scale up for high-level players. Instead the composition of the encounters and the AI is much more important.

http://wednesdaysheroes.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/03Ernie-chan-conan-1.jpg ^Less protection, less refined technique - better reach, more hits. (not that it's easy to read that out of the d&d rules for barbarians )

..other expressions that work perfectly fine in Norwegian: "A little bit of a disaster", "Slight storm", "Steal to a small degree", and so on. But pretty sure they're going for... if you watch a baby falling asleep, there's a moment where they look at something, and they're not actually awake. But they're still lucid in the sense that they are using their senses, and looking at something and trying to focus their eyes, and so on. Which somehow describes perfectly how I think of the Sony E3 conference as well, but .. well.

^seems incredibly likely, yes. The grammatically challenged "Among the Sleep" is out. Krillbite's Kickstarter success where you explore the realm of night and darkness, as seen through the innocent eyes of a toddler. Featuring a fully knitted bodysuit, intense psychic teddybear hugging action, and unmatched physics-based crawling mobility techniques. ...seriously, though. Game by Krillbite, tiny indie dev from home, i.e., Norway, Hamar. Give it a click for me. http://www.gog.com/news/release_among_the_sleep

..Always imagined "cleave" would happen with a particularly good heave that went through the first minion, and stopped in the second one. ..actually, I used that in an interpretation of the rules once. That we rolled when attempting a cleave. And if it succeeded (critical hits would pass through superior armor on the first target, etc) you would roll again up to the number of extra hits, given that there were enough minions nearby. So maybe it's really an aoe attack? I don't know, though. In general, I'd be skeptical about fighters having aoe attacks unless it's a magic or divinely assisted character class. They'd be able to compensate for weaker attacks with certain huge wisdom based blasts once in a while - and that would make sense. Would never be as specialized or skilled as a good fighter, but would still be able to do some unique front-line damage anyway in certain circumstances. So limits/specialisation on the fighters sort of makes sense narratively as well as mechanically, seems to me.

We still have a specular contribution in the alpha channel of the albedo map. It's very subtle and difficult to see in the video and screenshots, so I decided not to include it. ..it's still the kind of thing that make things look great, though. Always wondered about that. That when developers actually get to talk about tiny details down to how folding the paper plane paper backwards, then forwards, etc., has a big impact on whether the edges are thicker or thinner, and so on -- then they often choose not to. I mean, getting characters to blend in without edges either bleeding or having shears - that's really interesting to hear about, and it's a good example of the care you're taking to really make it all look like, and maybe better than, "2d" animation layers from the Infinity Engine games.. ...no? Maybe? Just saying.

it's dangerous to aim for that, but I get your point. The best non-essential dialogue in Torment, in my opinion, was the Sensates' Guild "quests" - because the sequences weren't forced to move along with the main events. Or they made the player try to pick up on the details, and it was made in a setting where listening would be natural. So the "sidequest" would switch the pacing, and let you explore related events - with very dense writing that probably wouldn't have worked in a more critical dialogue. Meanwhile, if you wouldn't have been able to share your best, and increasingly intimate stories at the guild with the sensates -- about the world and what you had been experiencing -- then it would just have been completely obsolete. That was the value of it, right? That they could create this guild which existence made complete sense in the world, and where you would be able to figure out what the stories actually mean, in a different and calmer setting than the main "first person" driven narrative. Always wondered about who wrote the Sensates' guild, btw

:D haha. Norbank, right? He is always misplaced. ...there is a trick to it, though. Or, if you pound the shield while the generators are up, or the Gorg formations supply the station with energy, the shield will never break, and they'll zap you with the siege laser. But if you take out the energy generator, you can eventually take down the shield with plasma guns if you want to. So the mission really is about whether you want to risk your entire fleet getting in close to punch the shield down for a few seconds, and then pound the station with torpedoes. Or if you will risk splitting up the fleet, using it as a diversion, and bet on surviving on the defensive until the shield can be powered down.

Nexus 2, or "Shallow Space" just got put up on Greenlight. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=262219793

"Hi! I'm random NPC #239 that will nag you over and over again, and offer to tell you how the game ends! For only $1 you can watch me being [roasted] by a [demon]!"

It's ok. But this is probably right before everyone in the room falls over with uncontrollable fits of laughter. ..Might as well have Sawyer doing his "extremely rational and pedagogic explanation" thing, in full zombie makeup. (I'd still pay good money to see that). Hahaha, aweseome :D "Explosions! Cars! Car explosion!"

..maybe someone can write to the guys at "Honest Trailers", and have them make an epic voice-over for PoE, just for E3: "Coming to you this year. A game no publisher would touch. From a developer whose work is known in the games-media as poison. A game no one on this convention floor will admit they like, or even play. A game that does not use the Unreal Engine, or is a shooter. A game so hated it will be reviewed to death long before the actual release-date. A game with words and sentences. That you have to read. And sometimes think about".

I suppose my impression was that they expected to receive a lot less backing than they did. And that anything above the target was essentially an opportunity to engage the core developers over a longer time than planned. Or that the more funding they received, the longer they could pay for development, beyond what the initial design required. In other words, one qualified guess would be that they're probably not struggling with getting the game done. More than that the relatively large amount of backing allows them to continue the development for a longer time than they strictly speaking needed to. So if that's the case, at least I am very relaxed about betas and release dates.

Mulling rouges? Pretty sure it's just difficult to design something that makes sense in a normal 3d level. You can't have people starting to sneak and disappear in plain sight. And the levels don't tend to be big enough, or the battles long enough for it to make sense for a thief to sneak off and flank someone. Breaking line of sight and somehow disappearing makes no sense unless it's in a maze of a dungeon, or a thick forest. And none of that ever happens in a game, and it doesn't work in pen and paper either. So the thing that could make a thief and sneak attacks useful in combat is: smoke, mirror images, invisibility, cloak, warp and physical or magical disables, along with knock-downs. *shrug* I don't know. I always liked the idea of solving this by having a combat stage - before the enemy would be completely aware of your team. So if you had a thief in your party, they could scout ahead, or create an actual ambush, and so on. Same with the wizards or priests casting small spells silently to light up the path ahead, or to bless a weapon, that sort of thing. Low-level, silent spells and abilities suddenly becomes useful, if you actually have a party with a thief, and people not running around in clanking plate. Not sure how that would be implemented in a game. But if you did that, you could imagine having a hit at the beginning of the battle, while the thief disappears out of the combat zone, puts down some traps again, the party retreats there, traps go off, thief backstabs weak wizard at the back of the party, and so on. Or else it's wizard-thiefs, and druid-rogues, I guess, that would work in combat. Which makes no sense to me.