Update #13: 50K Backers Brings New Mega Dungeon, Stretch Goals, and More! (PayPal too!)

[Archmage Silver]

I guess we have about sixteen or seventeen levels total to look forward to? That sounds copacetic. I do hope that there will be purchasable expansions and DLC that increase that number later on.

I guess that would depend on how the modding support goes, the DLC route kind of works better if usermade mods aren't viable (due to Unity as an engine).

[Sinistas]

So we get an unannounced bonus goal? Fantastic.

 

Hitting $2.2m (I assume) and 50,000 backers on the same day is pretty cool as well.

[KithKanan]

Another level per 2500, not to bad as each 2500 people is ~$110K. So just meeting the current goals leads to 5 levels which isn't bad. To reach much more than that at current funding rates seems a bit unlikely though. (~100k in the past 4 days) Even being generous and keeping that rate would lead to maybe being able to hit a goal at 2.6m. But yeah setting farther out goals may encourage people to raise the amount they are backing with as the average is currently $43.82.

 

That said... I am a fan of a good dungeon and being able to potentially craft the stuff my mage will use.

 

I'm expecting at least around 3.0M. Right now we're ahead of where Wasteland 2 was on this day of the campaign, and almost neck and neck with Double Fine Adventure (but this project ends a couple days earlier than either of those). Here's a chart I'm keeping updated (manually, when I have the time) comparing the funding progress of the three projects based on kicktraq's pledges by day.

[Archmage Silver]

PE hit 2.2 million just now! :D

[rjshae]

Sometimes I swear this game will never be made if the dev had to listen to each and everyone of us. We can never agree on anything.

 

The dev knows what they are doing. Me for one, trust Obsidian 100% on making a great game, and not a customized game to my own personal taste because we all have different taste. Let them do what they think will work for the game.

 

How true.

 

I also trust them to make common sense decisions on what suggestions to include and what to leave out. The limited budget will inevitably force some compromises. Hopefully the end product will sell like hotcakes and they can give us great sequels with more cool features.

Edited October 2, 2012 by rjshae

[Monte Carlo]

I am most... pleased. They really are listening to us, aren't they? I take my hat off to them.

 

The megadungeon sounds more old-skool than a bearded man eating pizza in a basement whilst rolling a set of polyhedral dice. Plus, they used the word oubliette for ten thousand bonus points.

 

I hope we reach at least ten levels.

[Archmage Silver]

I am most... pleased. They really are listening to us, aren't they? I take my hat off to them.

 

The megadungeon sounds more old-skool than a bearded man eating pizza in a basement whilst rolling a set of polyhedral dice. Plus, they used the word oubliette for ten thousand bonus points.

 

I hope we reach at least ten levels.

They are listening. And watchi... I mean reading the posts.

[Toll]

Excellent, I was thinking of pledging for this and with the mega dungeon based on new pledges, I better chip in now.

 

 

Also as for crafting, I very much hope that any 'legendary' item created would require monumental effort to achieve. An evil player so better be able to sacrifice a companion, of which she must spend considerable time 'grooming' her for the feat. By having to play with him in our party for a large portion of time and to be as close as possible relationship wise. The longer/closer the sacrificed companion, the better the item.

 

A good player, now the would need something just as powerful to create an item. Rescuing an imprisoned Angle, who's soul is willingly entwined with the hero and both souls imbued into the item. The cost to player is that a substantial portion of their lifeforce is bound to the item. The item must be on hand or the player's hero suffers some pretty heavy consequences such as massivly reduced hp's, stats and resistences particually magic.

 

Any weapon of 'legendary' status needs a beginning of at least that mentioned above...

[ceider]

As a personal anecdote, I didn't up my pledge until I saw the stretch goal of crafting/enchanting, even though I knew it would probably hit it without my extra monies. So, I don't think we necessarily need a HUGE way out goal to get the amount upped right now.

 

Strategy Guide question: Will it also have extra lore/background world history and stuff like that in it? If there's room, I love thts kind of stuff in a strategy guide.

[Godwin]

Sorry to say but I hate the idea of crafting, finding several parts of some legendary weapon is fine like in BG2, but to make your own super weapons out of regularr material is both boring and worthless. I hope this wont be a smilar method to that of Skyrim.

[ilhdr]

It should work more like New Vegas

[Jigawatts]

I do not want to see crafting and enchanting in the game. Let us adventure for our items of power, not slave away over a forge or workbench doing mini games.

 

I would probably be ok with it if it was limited to potions and scrolls only, but preferably not at all.

Edited October 2, 2012 by Jigawatts

[YTheon]

I can't beleive nobody has mentioned yet the crafting system in Baldur's Gate 2 SoA... that was AWESOME!

 

Does anyone remember the Crom Faeyr or the Vorpal Sword? The most powerful weapons in the whole game, scattered into multiple pieces in the whole gameworld, having to hunt down each unique component one by one and hiring a master blacksmith for extreme amounts of gold to put it back together in a couple of days (or weeks???, that part is a little foggy in my memory).

 

Something like that would be perfect, with each craftable item truly uniqe, perhaps supported by consumable crafting and minor enchantments for regular equipment.

 

Also, the pantaloons, anyone? Wicked.

[Archmage Silver]

Yeah, those were all great items. And don't forget Red Dragon Plate from Firkraag's scales!

[Jigawatts]

Does anyone remember the Crom Faeyr or the Vorpal Sword? The most powerful weapons in the whole game, scattered into multiple pieces in the whole gameworld, having to hunt down each unique component one by one and hiring a master blacksmith for extreme amounts of gold to put it back together in a couple of days (or weeks???, that part is a little foggy in my memory).

Personally I would be completely fine with something like this, but I tend to look at those as epic quest rewards rather than crafting in the the true sense.

[Vampero]

I hope we get the push to have crafting ! ASAP !

[crazyrabbits]

Carsomyr (BG2) was also crafted from the basic sword and the Eye of Tyr. And it was the best two-handed melee weapon in the game for a good paladin/warrior. I like the approach that there are craftable legendary item if very rare or better unique ingredients are needed to craft them.

 

To be fair, that example was starting out with a legendary weapon (+5) and making it a little better (+6).

 

Staring out with a mundane weapon and crafting it up to a legendary weapon makes me a little nervous. Seems a bit like MOTB where you wind up with some insane weapon with 3 different kinds of elemental damage attached.

 

In BG2, you could get the Flail of Ages as early as Chapter 2, and that had three different types of damage, and you could also obtain the Avenger and Dragonslayer swords very early on.

 

BG2's crafting system was always limited in design. In SoA, you'd find weapon and armor components scattered throughout the world, but you wouldn't be able to make much besides a couple suits of slightly-better armor until you picked up a bunch of other pieces (from Brynnlaw to the Underdark) and returned to Amn in Chapter 6. Jumping into Warden's Keep in SoA would often leave with a ton of components that you couldn't do anything with until you hit ToB (and you had to cart them all around, sacrificing storage space). ToB had a decent crafting system, but it was still fairly limited, and you could be screwed out of high-level gear if you forgot to bring weapons in from SoA (like the aforementioned Holy Avenger). Mods have sought to remedy this - there's one called Item Upgrade that introduces a whole host of new recipes to augment the system.

 

I'd hope they make it more like FO: NV's system, where you can craft recipes with common parts or "jury-rig" common weapons with other components to give them a little extra boost. Otherwise, if they're going to allow you to upgrade common weapons to "legendary" status, they'll need to make it extremely cost-prohibitive or use rare parts to avoid making it easy for players to break the game.

Edited October 2, 2012 by crazyrabbits

[Skie Nightfall]

Eeew crafting.

I hope it at least going to be skill related, rather than have everyone in the world a chemist all of a sudden.

[Macbeth]

Nice update, the mega dungeon especially sounds like a fantastic addition!

 

As far as crafting is concerned: it’s a slippery slope.

 

Any good RPG is the more or less perfect symbiosis between story and character, with both concepts covering a great load of different things.

 

The aspects of an interesting and beautiful game world, intricate quests, moral dilemmas, etc. all fall under the ‘story’ category. ‘Character’ relates to everything that makes the player character fun to play: like level progression, skills, items, alignment, etc.

 

Depending on how much stock you put in the latter, item fever is an important aspect of the character category. The ideal quest or dungeon is therefore the fusion between an atmospheric setting, a good background story, a worthy foe to fight (or overcome through other means) and ... a shiny big reward. It’s this last part that can be ruined by crafting. Why? Because if crafting leads to the manufacturing of the best items in the game, the item fever is, well, cured; and that’s not a good thing. Because what you’re left with is – hopefully – the satisfaction of having played through a great piece of RPG pur sang, but the rather bitter taste of it being pointless from the point of view of what is an integral part of character development. You know that whatever that chest contains, it won’t be as good as the item you’ll be crafting two minutes later.

 

All this to basically ask these few questions:

 

Why have crafting if it means it will potentially destroy item fever? (Skyrim...)

And if it doesn’t do this, i.e. the ‘best’ items cannot be made through crafting, then why implement the feature at all?

But does it really have to be one or the other?

 

Of course there’s ways of pleasing both those who enjoy crafting and those who don’t.

 

Schematics would go a long way for instance. This would make sure you’re able to craft a specific amount of unique items that are up there with the say, top 5% of the most fantastic items of its sort, but you can still find items that are on par with it in the game world.

 

Having to scour the world in search of parts so that you can later assemble them Cespenar-style is also a viable method. And I’m sure there’s more.

 

So in the end, crafting can ruin a lot of things, but if done right, it can be a neat enough feature.

So in the end, we’ll just have to trust Obsidian to implement it well.

So in the end, what was the point of this post?

[tamimh]

As I read each post, the anticipation gets harder and harder,

so why not precede the coming of the game when you reach your next backers goal?

 

T.

[Darkpriest]

Ok... so who goes on with me on some slave catching so we could get the dungeon bigger? You know that we will need a lot of hands (do not have to go as pairs) to dig deep into the ground

[BSoda]

Well, I have every faith in this project, but this update didn't do much for me. I also think that a new stretch goal at the 2.4 million mark is just way too conservative. I was really hoping we'd get 2-3 more stretch goals up to 3 million.

 

Lowering the beta access key to the 25$ tier was also a mistake, imo.

[Darkpriest]

It is not put down to the 25$ tier.. you can upgrade your pledge on any tier by 25$ to get the beta key

[Theobeau]

Mega dungeon sounds interesting and given their record in the BG series, potentially quite a challenging addition to PE.

 

I just hope that crafting is optional rather than a compulsory means of obtaining magical items.

 

To just one of their most recent games FNV and as example while schematics and complexity where there, the need to lug lots of small bits around, the lack of an automated sorter system in the vanilla game plus the off kilter UI (why did you have to return to the top menu to craft another item?) made it seem like a grind a lot of the time.

 

Plus too much complexity meant that for this player, I never made >80% of the craft options and just stuck with a few standard items such as FMJ /Hand Crafted /overloaded Ammo and a few health items.

[Rozkurwiciel]

I am a little worried about 3 floors of the dungeon +1 for every 2.5 of backers. What if the number of floors exceeds 5? Wouldn't that be quite an exaggeration? I'd love to see brand new Watcher's Tower but all spice about that was diversity and story, I think diversity might turn right to hack'n'slash once you run out of ideas. You should have put a limit to the number of floors but I know it might be hard now since you promised to add one for every 2.5k of backers. There is also an option that you will make the rest of the game/dungeons duller spending too time much, efforts and foremostly creativity on this one. Now just hoping you will not screw it up and will not be overwhelmed by 10000 of 25$ backers :D