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First, hello everyone, I'm big fan of PoE, I started playing this game since I called sick in school, that was almost a week ago, now I have 43h 34m 46s spent total in this game. Amazing, experience. Anyhow, the actual question, well it's more of a concern. My companion Eder, I've reached certain point with his quest "Fragments Of A Scattered Faith" where I am supposed to deliver a steel ornament, found near fields of Cliban Rilag, to Dynryd Row's ciphers. However, due to my inattention and brilliant main storlyine, I got carried away with Lady Webb and Defiance Bay's latest developments. As you know, city is in chaos, anarchy has taken rule, I am worried with happens with Eder's quest? After Lady Webb was found dead, I escaped the city, but now all city's regions are gray and unavailable to enter... So my concern is, how am I supposed to deliver that ornament to ciphers from Dynryd Row, when I can't enter the damn city!?

Welcome. In many previos games we seen how davs are developing thei games, and how thei are developing thair plots. This thred was made becouse i;ve enchounter opinions that games today are not "linear" and even some that skyrim is not linear becouse it has "sandbox" xD In general you coud progress a story in 3 difrend ways, Linear, halflinear or nonlinear. And i will exmplainf how that work. Linear You play thu pint A to point B next to point C, you have no influence on the story and no decisions, or you influence is reather cosmetical. The funny thing is that Skyrim in this poit of view is one of the most linear game ever made xD The only freedom that you have is "when" you take some quest, witch is reather cosmetical way of "adding nonlinear feeling". You take quest and you go to poin A then to pint B, next to point C, regardless if you are good, bad, mage or a warrior. The only 1 decision that affects skyrim storyline is "Will you join Stormcloaths, imerals or don't join any of them". Ony 1 decision xD and people think that game is non linear, the funny thing is that when you join stormcloath or imerials you mostly do the same thing but from "other perspeciv", you go to the same cript but you are on difrent side, you fight for the same city, but from other point of view, you conqer rival citys. Of course skyrim, is not good example of linear plot, good example was Neverwinter 1, Balfours Gate 1 or easterd Final Fantasy 7, 8 etc. Simplest definicion - 1 ending with at most some "cometical" difrences. Halflinear This type of games, are linear storylines but cut thos some stages in which you make a decision and change the possible "ending" of ech stage. We encounter this in dragon age orgins, Neverwinter nights 2 etc. This element is perfectly shonw on skyrims "Ulfric-Imperial" issu where you may join ulfrik, imperials or none of them, so this makes skyrim something between linear and halflinear xD. In general Halflinears have 2 big issues. 1. Decisions are in best cases, split to "Good", "Neutral" or "Evil" decisions. And regardles of how many possible endings we have they are Good, Neutral or Evil and only diffrence between 1 good ending and second good ending is cosmetical, co at the end we end up with 3 endings that have some cosmetical difrences inside them ... xD 2. Rewords for gridning (taking an decicion base on the "outcome" like xp, gold") reather then roleplaying, in whith some peaple may 1 time save the kitten, then kill whole city and still say "Im tru neutral damit" XD Nonlinear Hardest story line to input. I've never encouter it in any new highly advanced game, only in 2d games with low graphical level and some of game "novels". Nonlinear plot meant that 1 decision leads to andother, then means that if we for example make decision numer 1, all decision that coud be unlocked by taking decision number 2 or number 3 are closed. I will give an example of game of thrones ts series. Stark has a decicion, marry freys daughter or not, marrying her has a big risk becouse frays daughters are mostly ugly but will lead to make powerfull anti-lannister ally, not marring her may lead to freys betreyal and death of young stark xD This how tru nonlinear decision shoud look like, and ant the and we will have 14 compleatly diffrent endings, in many cases that we cound not put to any bag like "evil" "Good" or neutral becouse they whoud be to complexed. This also whoud protect agind "grinding" decision makeing becouse taking decision like "i will save this poor lad from those bandits" whoud look down any decision like "i will help those bandits kill that lad", becouse it whoud be logical, that a person whou whoud "act like a good person" in "rescueing lad from bandits" whoud do the same in other cas or at least be "neutral" and say "i will not put my boot in this goodbye". Not like in 1 decision char acts like total walking evil, but lawfull good and gantle in second xD and still say "Hey, im neutral damit xD" Im, wainting for your opinion xD

(Sorry for my English) When i was watching this silly topic http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/62182-unwinnable-main-questline/ I decided that i will make proper poll for this subject. and please with no trolling like (i let obsidian decide) we only talking about are expectations or ideas for game and not with kiddy Threatening like "I WILL withdraw my backing!" cheers

Can we please not reduce the plot of this amazing project into "Super Devil wants to dominate the world and creates an eternal dictatorship and we have to stop them"? I have great rejection to plots based on shallow "good vs. evil" line. Maybe it is my history major, summed up with the reading of my old dusty books from AD&D, stuff like Complete Book of Villains, Dungeon Master Guide, specially the part of story creation and motivation, or my many years of DM-ing... well, i just don't like to be caught into moral presumptions of a eternal battle of good vs. evil. It is very annoying to reduce the rich world of possibilities and motivations to "stop the Super Devil" storyline. These are for kids... I want my character dragged into political assassinations, dethrone of legitimate kings, favors in exchange of land, nobles unwilling to accept the new regent while the true king is too young, or priests fighting over the control of the richest church around; a rich businessman that lost his horses to a local arrogant noble and has no one to appeal since the local courts are all nobles in favor of that arrogant prick... The universe of possibilities is tremendous, so, please, do not reduce the plot into a "good vs. evil" shallow.

This topic is about most conserning me "Gulids and organizations". This topic is NO about IF you whant them in game becouse they will but they can be presented in many ways. My dream of project eternity is that the gulids/fractions will make a huge impact on world and player himself. For example i allway think that "one man army" idea in D&D games (when player and his companions almost conguer whole world, kill anywon and almost play role of demigods ) I mean that in whole world where lives not only player and his companions and where filled with influencial characters/ mages, warriors, nobles, merchants etc. They will propably make own gulids and fractions to have more power (group of people should be allways stronger then 1), It will all goes down to politics and silent war/conflict for influence. In my opinion joining those type of gulids whould not only be "join able" but this must be absolutely necessary not for pushing storyline-forward-only but for gaining your own political influence, greatly enhance our capabilities and the availability of resources. We alrady now that there will me stronghold, so why not gulid related-stronghold. Mage hold for mages, Knight Hold for fighters and paladins etc. For example we have wery powerfull enemy, he has his own political influences, and ONLY posibility to win this kinf of battle is to make your own political power. For interested i sugest to watch "Game of thrones" or read a : A Song of Ice and Fire George R. R. Martin Whould you like to advance from stable boy to noble powerfull mage ? You want every mage in world to know you and power of you spells and wisdom ? You want evry who can hold a sword be insired by your's strength, heroism, courage, and skills? If any want the same please suport this topic ... Thank for attention.

DISCLAIMER: THIS IS JUST A DISCUSSION POST, IT'S NOT MEANT TO DICTATE DEVELOPMENT GUIDELINES TO THE GUYS @ OBSIDIAN. This is an article that appeared on Kotaku abouth three months ago (july 25, 2012). I think it gives some insight about the development process behind Project Eternity. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Chris Avellone Teases Planescape: Torment Successor Like its nameless protagonist, Planescape: Torment might come back from the dead. Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz in an interview posted today, Obsidian co-founder and Planescape: Torment creator Chris Avellone said he's "very tempted" to start a Kickstarter to revive his beloved classic role-playing game. Although he'd ditch the D&D—and maybe even the setting, too. "I think the challenges we've spoken about would all have to be considered and to be honest I don't know if I'd want to do it as a Planescape game - I think a better approach would be to ignore the D&D mechanics and respect what Planescape was trying to do and what the game did and see if you can do what Fallout did when it became the spiritual successor to Wasteland," he said. "I think if you made a game using some of the concepts of Planescape, the metaphysical ideas and the plane travel, without using the D&D mechanics, you could actually come up with a much better game. With Torment, I'd argue that the D&D base actually, in places, got in the way of the experience. It was a lot harder to make a game with those ideas in it with D&D mechanics. So much that we had to break a lot of them. We had to ignore certain spells, change up the class mechanic so that you can switch at any time you like by remembering abilities. "That was stuff that D&D didn't allow for, it was [too] restraining in some respects. If we did do a spiritual successor, then I don't know if we'd use the Planescape licence or attach the mechanics, perhaps something that has a different feel to Torment." If we get characters as awesome as Morte the talking skull, I'm cool with whatever. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- What I want to ask you is: would you like to see the main story elements of Planescape Torment inported into Project Eternity? I mean: to me Planescape was one of the best RPG ever because of its features. I'm talking about the user interface, the possibility to "use objects", the factions system, the variable alignment system, the way stats were used (If you were very intelligent or very stupid you had different dialogue options) and so on. What I didn't like was the PT's narrative thematics and setting. It was a really sad story, set in a strange, violent and unforgiving world that I didn't particularly enjoy. It's just a personal opinion of course, but I think that setting up an entire saga upon those themes would end up being pretty harsh. Reading the article I noticed that what Chris Avellone wants to keep of Planescape Torment are some elements of the plot and the main themes of the setting. He talks about ditching the D&D mechanics and the Planescape setting to better deliver on those themes. What are your thoughts about that? Would you enjoy or hate if PE story was a sad and introspective experience and the classical fantasy themes were set to a bare minimum? I mean: I think that everyone here is pretty sick of playing the hero and of slaughtering hordes of monster just because they are bad. I want Project Eternity to be a more complex story with dark and even sad chapters. But do you think that centering the story around the main character's sorrows is the right think to do? (of coure if it's what the developers are planning to do... we don't know much about that).

I created this thread to flash my 2 ideas, but if i'll have more I'll just pin them to the top post here. 1) My first suggestion is simple and shorter one. It addresses ergonomics of gameplay. Because my experience with RPG mainly consists of MMORPG UltimaOnline, I largely appreciate all kinds of keyboard shortcuts. So here, in Project Eternity, I'll expect to do the same as well. Therefore I'd like to avoid keyboards' nasty behavior (like overwhelming it with simultaneously pressed keys or in case of system events) and nasty ergonomics of shortcuts (like some [Ctrl+Alt+F5]). So, I'd guess that addition of ability to map every action in game to gaming pad will help players (in case someone will buy something like Logitech G13). Furthermore, you may consider making your own gaming pad, or a set of key stickers with pictograms of actions. 2) My second suggestion is about your suggestion of "special stories anyone?" I suggest you to pay tribute to unique historical phenomenon and use in Project Eternity the Antikythera mechanism (AM). AM is a storyline in its own right; it combines virtually everything: history, mathematics, astronomy, geography, and special dates/events. In game AM may be associated with its own quest & story which will unwind throughout the game alongside with being a useful tool. (I wont suggest any variants of storyline and let it surprise me too. Though I believe that making the plot is not difficult even after reading Wikipedia.) Considering possible use of AM as sort of tool. It has a huge potential from giving a character sorts of predictions of how "the planets" (aka game mechanics) will affect a storyline, (whether conversations, aka – not in right mood to talk, or rate of progress with in-game events like special dates, holydays etc., or at least character's luck) to acting as simple "planetary" pocket slot-machine (to challenge your & NPC's luck for some coins you missed to buy "so needed" heal potion from local healer). Again, I wont suggest how it will work, but I'll suggest that, even though the purpose and principals of mechanism's work are mainly understood, they are not fully known and offer some degrees of freedom in known directions, and even some possibility for additional axis of freedom (like long lost power gem that meant to be inserted into some place of AM to give it additional abilities). Anyway I wish good luck to team of developers.