A bit soon for preordering the expansion pack?

[Grand_Commander13]

No, Bryy's point is that multiplayer doesn't detract from the singleplayer experience. He keeps hammering at it with every post, insisting that if you budget X dollars for singleplayer and Y dollars for multiplayer, it's because you only ever wanted to spend X dollars on the singleplayer experience and not because you needed multiplayer, multiplayer costs Y dollars, and you only had X+Y dollars in your budget.

 

He also keeps acting like I'm some kind of singleplayer chauvinist, as though I don't have a great amount of hours invested in all sorts of multiplayer games. I think what sets him off about that, though, is the fact that very few people will ever use the multiplayer functionality in the game, and those that do use it won't get enough benefit out of it to justify the necessary reduction of the singleplayer game's budget.

[Bryy]

I think that's what Bryy's getting at. At some point, you've got plenty of game in your game, and it's acceptable to add something that isn't strictly necessary, without that choice being penalized for somehow detracting from what you could've done with the game.

Exactly. Let's not play Inception where we add subjective hypotheticals on to our objective hypothetical. 

 

And going further, who is to say what is and is not strictly necessary for their game? Under our hypothetical, the team has deemed multiplayer an acceptable feature. 

 

But I feel the topic has been derailed enough. We have an entire thread for MP discussion.

 

No, Bryy's point is that multiplayer doesn't detract from the singleplayer experience. He keeps hammering at it with every post, insisting that if you budget X dollars for singleplayer and Y dollars for multiplayer, it's because you only ever wanted to spend X dollars on the singleplayer experience and not because you needed multiplayer, multiplayer costs Y dollars, and you only had X+Y dollars in your budget.

 

He also keeps acting like I'm some kind of singleplayer chauvinist, as though I don't have a great amount of hours invested in all sorts of multiplayer games. I think what sets him off about that, though, is the fact that very few people will ever use the multiplayer functionality in the game, and those that do use it won't get enough benefit out of it to justify the necessary reduction of the singleplayer game's budget.

1) No. My point was that it doesn't have to.

 

2) Okay. We're done here. If you're going to for whatever reason make this personal, there's no more discussion to be had.

Edited August 15, 2014 by Bryy

[Bryy]

double post 

 

Edited August 15, 2014 by Bryy

[dorkboy]

Well, it is actually a pre-order at this point. It's just that the fundraiser ends on the 22nd.

Sorry, missed out on the KS so this is all unknown to me - the "fundraiser" for an expansion (which may or may not include MP) would be pre-orders/addons to existing pledges, and pre-ordering the expansion is no longer possible after the 22nd .. August?

[Bryy]

 

Well, it is actually a pre-order at this point. It's just that the fundraiser ends on the 22nd.

Sorry, missed out on the KS so this is all unknown to me - the "fundraiser" for an expansion (which may or may not include MP) would be pre-orders/addons to existing pledges, and pre-ordering the expansion is no longer possible after the 22nd .. August?

 

One of the reward tiers for the Kickstarter was first dibs on the ExPack.

Once the KS campaign was over, Obsidian had the rewards up on the Backer Page for a while. But it now ends at the $500 tier, whih gets you a signed boxed copy.

All funds after the budget for PoE was locked go towards the expansion.

The fundraiser officially ends on the 22nd. 

[Marceror]

To make a good multi-player RPG, design concessions must be made on the single player side of the game. This is especially true for titles with a lot of interactive dialogue and/or narrative delivered via text. George Ziets and I have had this conversation many times over the last few years, and it always boils down to one simple truth. Reading is not a team sport.

 

If you don't make those concessions, you end up with sub-par multiplayer. As much as I love the Baldur's Gate series, the multi-player aspect took a lot of patience (putting it mildly), as the design focus of those titles was the single player experience.

 

I do believe you can create an awesome multi-player experience with dialogue and choice and consequence, in my mind it would require a very large budget. I'll let you guys decide what that may or may not mean.

 

The perspective of one of the developers: because their opinion on the matter will have a lot more weight than my own.

 

PoE was designed to be a single player game. Could it be morphed into a MP experience? Of course it could. But the single player game would suffer (according to develop Bobby Null and apparently also developer George Ziets) in order to make the game excel in this regard. The alternative is to tack it on, but the quality will not be what it should if OE does that.

 

Then all the reviewers will come in and want to review multiplayer, and trash the game for having crappy multiplayer.

 

I would *MUCH* rather that PoE remain one game in thousands of MP capable games that is strictly focused on providing the best single player experience humanly possible. And if you're dying for multiplayer, holy hell, go play D:OS!

 

Pillars of Eternity is a single player game. Single player. Period. End of story.

[Bryy]

And if you're dying for multiplayer, holy hell, go play D:OS!

A game that proves multiplayer can be implemented well.

[PIP-Clownboy]

 

And if you're dying for multiplayer, holy hell, go play D:OS!

A game that proves multiplayer can be implemented well.

 

 

In game that suffers from extremely porous dialogue/story/character writing among other things. 

[Marceror]

 

And if you're dying for multiplayer, holy hell, go play D:OS!

A game that proves multiplayer can be implemented well.

 

Of course multiplayer can be implemented well. Was that ever a question? Certainly not from me. That's why nearly every other game is doing it.

 

But as stated by the devs "design concessions" must be made to the single player game in order to create a strong multi-player experience. I'm here for the single player experience, and just for freakin' once, I don't want to have to suffer said design concessions. I want to play a game the is conceived, optimized and perfected as a single player only game.

 

This is what I'm getting, and incidentally, what you'll be getting also. I can respect that you'd like to see multiplayer. I can also respect that someone else might want to see this game totally streamlined and more mass-market friendly.

 

But I'm extremely thankful that OE isn't doing either of those things with PoE. I likely wouldn't have backed the game otherwise.

[Bryy]

 

 

And if you're dying for multiplayer, holy hell, go play D:OS!

A game that proves multiplayer can be implemented well.

 

 

In game that suffers from extremely porous dialogue/story/character writing among other things. 

 

Besides that being a gigantic blanket statement:

 

Just because the game did not have an super mega epic story that took itself uber seriously doesn't mean MP cut it. That just means they wanted to write it in a different way than say, The Witcher.

Edited August 17, 2014 by Bryy