Kickstarter-inspired game components

[Althernai]

I wanted to see what people's opinions of the various game components created as Kickstarter rewards or stretch goals were. I don't mean things like the Almanac or documentary, but stuff that appears within the actual game. They're still listed on the original Kickstarter page. Here are mine:

 

Backer rewards:

 

$20+: Kickstarter achievement, item and pet. Pets are cosmetic in PoE, but I think this pet was well done (Eder and Sagani have amusing interactions with it). The item was OK: it's slightly useful without actually being powerful. The achievement is great for measuring the fraction of Steam players who bought the game after the Kickstarter, but there's a thread where some people are upset because they can't get it (weird).

 

$100+: Name in credits. A nice way to reward people without actually impacting anyone.

 

$500+: A memorial stone. It sounded harmless, but these would work better in a game like BG2 (which routinely broke the fourth wall) or if they carefully vetted to be appropriate to the setting. And of course there was the infamous poem controversy... maybe it's better not to offer such things in future Kickstarters.

 

$1000+: Design an NPC. This would have been fine if there were 5 of them and not 100+ and if they were not so obviously extraneous.

 

$1000+: Design a high level item. I can't tell which items were from backers and which were not so I think this worked out well.

 

$3000+: Design a portrait. Again, the backer stuff doesn't stand out so this is fine.

 

$5000+: Design an inn. I thought the inns in this game were pretty good as far as fantasy RPG inns go. This is the best-implemented of the backer rewards.

 

$5000+: Design a party-of-six encounter. I guess these were used for some of the bounties? Once again, I couldn't tell the developer-made ones from the custom ones so this was a good reward.

 

Stretch goals:

 

$1.4M and $1.8M: New race, class and companion. I think the number of these is pretty reasonable in the finished game so these were worthwhile. Not very controversial.

 

$1.6M: Mac and Linux support, more story. Again, relatively non-controversial.

 

$2.0M: Player house. Not bad, but not great. Once you repair it, the design and art for it is quite nice. However, it suffers from being rather far away from almost everything, the resting bonuses aren't worthwhile relative to the inns and it doesn't feel alive (a house that size would probably have some servants).

 

$2.2M: New region and faction plus French, German and Spanish translations. Also non-controversial.

 

$2.3M: Expert, Trial of Iron and PoTD modes plus Godlike race. I haven't tried the modes yet and I doubt that I will do it -- I did the solo + Insane + difficulty mods thing in BG2, but I don't have that much time these days and PoE does not inspire such dedication. However, they're nice for people who are still into that sort of thing. The Godlike are a good concept and Pallegina is an interesting NPC. Ironically, the main problem with them is that so many of the backer NPCs are of this race.

 

$2.4M: Crafting and Enchanting. These features are decent -- again, good, but not great.

 

$2.5M and 2.7M: Barbarian and Cipher, then Paladin and Chanter. The mechanics and balance of the game as whole are debatable, but the classes themselves are a welcome addition.

 

$2.6M: Adventurer's Hall with full party creation. I don't see the point of playing this kind of game without the companions that have personalities, but a lot of people like it and it probably didn't take much work given that the building was there for different reasons. On the other hand, it makes any attempt of balancing a non-solo run impossible since you can't simultaneously make it challenging for those who use the pre-made companions and for those who run six min-maxed characters from classes with synergies.

 

$3.0M: Stronghold. I think it was OK and doesn't quite deserve the level of criticism that it got in some threads, but yeah, it could've been a lot better. It has the same problems as the house, but scaled up: there's basically nobody there, with the exception of the initial stuff (i.e. Maerwald and the Master Below quest), the quests and events associated with it are not very interesting and not very well connected and in general the place feels like it didn't get the final level of polish and detail. Would it have been that difficult to add a few Builder NPCs and the like?

 

$3.5M: Big City 2 (presumably Twin Elms). It's not bad, but it's clearly not of the same order as Defiance Bay.

 

$4.0M: Enhance the whole game, live instrumentation and developer commentary. The music is good so that worked out well. I haven't heard the commentary yet, but I'm going to enable it on my next playthrough.

 

The Endless Paths. The idea here was 1 dungeon level for every 5k backers. With ~77k backers, this works out to 15 levels which they technically implemented, but honestly, this would have been much better off as a 7 or even 5 level dungeon. The puzzles and dialog are spread too thin, there are way too many plot-less encounters (doubly not fun because of the XP mechanics) and much of it does not feel anything like the great IE dungeons (e.g. Watcher's Keep).

Edited May 6, 2015 by Althernai

[Rosveen]

$1000+: Design a high level item. I can't tell which items were from backers and which were not so I think this worked out well.

 

Hiro's Mantle. :D

[Yonjuro]

I wanted to see what people's opinions of the various game components created as Kickstarter rewards or stretch goals were. I don't mean things like the Almanac or documentary, but stuff that appears within the actual game.

 

 Apologies for the boring reply (meaning: I agree with you on pretty much everything).

 

...

$500+: A memorial stone. It sounded harmless, but these would work better in a game like BG2 (which routinely broke the fourth wall) or if they carefully vetted to be appropriate to the setting. And of course there was the infamous poem controversy... maybe it's better not to offer such things in future Kickstarters.

 

 Yes, the memorials seem out of place. They're mostly harmless in that you don't need to read them, but maybe there's a better backer reward? I don't really know; it would need to be something with a similar level of effort for the developers. Something like making paintings to hang up in the inns, but that requires the ability to draw which would limit the number of takers. 

 

 

...

$1000+: Design an NPC. This would have been fine if there were 5 of them and not 100+ and if they were not so obviously extraneous.

 

 Yes, these guys are harder to ignore than the memorial stones. Then again, they are easy source of extra cash, so there's that. 

 

...

$3.0M: Stronghold. I think it was OK and doesn't quite deserve the level of criticism that it got in some threads, but yeah, it could've been a lot better. It has the same problems as the house, but scaled up: there's basically nobody there, with the exception of the initial stuff (i.e. Maerwald and the Master Below quest), the quests and events associated with it are not very interesting and not very well connected and in general the place feels like it didn't get the final level of polish and detail. Would it have been that difficult to add a few Builder NPCs and the like?

 

 There is a big list of things I would rather have than a stronghold. Another companion, an extra dungeon, more quests/encounters, more work on the spell system ...

 

 The idea of a stronghold isn't really appealing in a game where you play a wandering adventurer and, in practice, traveling there, including walking across the map and doing area transitions, means that going there is mostly pointless.

 

 The good thing about it is that it is optional, so it doesn't do me any harm if it's something that other people like (other than that we could have had something else for the same level of effort/funding). If it were more closely integrated with the game, the game would not be as good (according to me; YMMV).

Edited May 6, 2015 by Yonjuro

[Luckmann]

I've said it before and I can say it again; when it comes to the backer stuff, the only things that were done well were the Inns. Everything else, the memorials, the NPC:s, (most of?) the items, it's all condensed turd.

I didn't consider the enemy parties, so.. yeah, they were probably done pretty well too. The fact that I didn't notice them as standing out is a really good thing.

[Nakia]

I wanted to see what people's opinions of the various game components created as Kickstarter rewards or stretch goals were. I don't mean things like the Almanac or documentary, but stuff that appears within the actual game. They're still listed on the original Kickstarter page. Here are mine:

 

Backer rewards:

 

$20+: Kickstarter achievement, item and pet. Pets are cosmetic in PoE, but I think this pet was well done (Eder and Sagani have amusing interactions with it). The item was OK: it's slightly useful without actually being powerful. The achievement is great for measuring the fraction of Steam players who bought the game after the Kickstarter, but there's a thread where some people are upset because they can't get it (weird).

The pet is fine.  I would gladly forgo the Steam achievement because of all the unhappiness it has caused.  I do not think it should count towards the 100% completion of Steam achiements.

 

$100+: Name in credits. A nice way to reward people without actually impacting anyone.

Agree

$500+: A memorial stone. It sounded harmless, but these would work better in a game like BG2 (which routinely broke the fourth wall) or if they carefully vetted to be appropriate to the setting. And of course there was the infamous poem controversy... maybe it's better not to offer such things in future Kickstarters.

I like that people could be memorilized in this game.  A few I had  know Online and felt were friends have a memorial.  They were avid gamers and good people.

 

$1000+: Design an NPC. This would have been fine if there were 5 of them and not 100+ and if they were not so obviously extraneous.

They paid for it and earned it.   They do in my opinion add bodies to areas and therrefore make it more populated and are easily ignored.

 

$1000+: Design a high level item. I can't tell which items were from backers and which were not so I think this worked out well.

Agree

 

$3000+: Design a portrait. Again, the backer stuff doesn't stand out so this is fine.

Agree

 

$5000+: Design an inn. I thought the inns in this game were pretty good as far as fantasy RPG inns go. This is the best-implemented of the backer rewards.

Agree

 

$5000+: Design a party-of-six encounter. I guess these were used for some of the bounties? Once again, I couldn't tell the developer-made ones from the custom ones so this was a good reward.

Agree

 

Stretch goals:

 

$1.4M and $1.8M: New race, class and companion. I think the number of these is pretty reasonable in the finished game so these were worthwhile. Not very controversial.

Agree

 

$1.6M: Mac and Linux support, more story. Again, relatively non-controversial.

A definite plus in my opinion.

 

$2.0M: Player house. Not bad, but not great. Once you repair it, the design and art for it is quite nice. However, it suffers from being rather far away from almost everything, the resting bonuses aren't worthwhile relative to the inns and it doesn't feel alive (a house that size would probably have some servants).

 

$2.2M: New region and faction plus French, German and Spanish translations. Also non-controversial.

 

$2.3M: Expert, Trial of Iron and PoTD modes plus Godlike race. I haven't tried the modes yet and I doubt that I will do it -- I did the solo + Insane + difficulty mods thing in BG2, but I don't have that much time these days and PoE does not inspire such dedication. However, they're nice for people who are still into that sort of thing. The Godlike are a good concept and Pallegina is an interesting NPC. Ironically, the main problem with them is that so many of the backer NPCs are of this race.

I am glad they included the harder difficulties for those who like them.  I like the godlike race.  My favorite in fact.

 

$2.4M: Crafting and Enchanting. These features are decent -- again, good, but not great.

Agree

 

$2.5M and 2.7M: Barbarian and Cipher, then Paladin and Chanter. The mechanics and balance of the game as whole are debatable, but the classes themselves are a welcome addition.

Agree

 

$2.6M: Adventurer's Hall with full party creation. I don't see the point of playing this kind of game without the companions that have personalities, but a lot of people like it and it probably didn't take much work given that the building was there for different reasons. On the other hand, it makes any attempt of balancing a non-solo run impossible since you can't simultaneously make it challenging for those who use the pre-made companions and for those who run six min-maxed characters from classes with synergies.

 

$3.0M: Stronghold. I think it was OK and doesn't quite deserve the level of criticism that it got in some threads, but yeah, it could've been a lot better. It has the same problems as the house, but scaled up: there's basically nobody there, with the exception of the initial stuff (i.e. Maerwald and the Master Below quest), the quests and events associated with it are not very interesting and not very well connected and in general the place feels like it didn't get the final level of polish and detail. Would it have been that difficult to add a few Builder NPCs and the like?

I like the Stronghold although it could use some improvement.

 

$3.5M: Big City 2 (presumably Twin Elms). It's not bad, but it's clearly not of the same order as Defiance Bay.

Agree

 

$4.0M: Enhance the whole game, live instrumentation and developer commentary. The music is good so that worked out well. I haven't heard the commentary yet, but I'm going to enable it on my next playthrough.

I have tried the dev commentary and like it although I find it a bit rough at times.  The devs could use a little VO training.  But it is interesting.

 

The Endless Paths. The idea here was 1 dungeon level for every 5k backers. With ~77k backers, this works out to 15 levels which they technically implemented, but honestly, this would have been much better off as a 7 or even 5 level dungeon. The puzzles and dialog are spread too thin, there are way too many plot-less encounters (doubly not fun because of the XP mechanics) and much of it does not feel anything like the great IE dungeons (e.g. Watcher's Keep).

As for the Enless Paths I am happy with it.  

[anameforobsidian]

I wanted to see what people's opinions of the various game components created as Kickstarter rewards or stretch goals were. I don't mean things like the Almanac or documentary, but stuff that appears within the actual game. They're still listed on the original Kickstarter page. Here are mine:

 

Backer rewards:

 

$20+: Kickstarter achievement, item and pet. Pets are cosmetic in PoE, but I think this pet was well done (Eder and Sagani have amusing interactions with it). The item was OK: it's slightly useful without actually being powerful. The achievement is great for measuring the fraction of Steam players who bought the game after the Kickstarter, but there's a thread where some people are upset because they can't get it (weird).  I do occasionally 100% game on steam, and I do find this annoying, but there are many widely known programs that can fix this, so its a non-issue.

 

$100+: Name in credits. A nice way to reward people without actually impacting anyone.  It is nice.

 

$500+: A memorial stone. It sounded harmless, but these would work better in a game like BG2 (which routinely broke the fourth wall) or if they carefully vetted to be appropriate to the setting. And of course there was the infamous poem controversy... maybe it's better not to offer such things in future Kickstarters.  Memorial stones were way too common, and pretty annoying.  I get that they were trying to do a Fallout kinda thing, but the setting is very, very, very different from Fallout.

 

$1000+: Design an NPC. This would have been fine if there were 5 of them and not 100+ and if they were not so obviously extraneous.  I would have gone without the gold NPC tag, and just had the backer descriptions assigned to random past souls of existing NPCs.

 

$1000+: Design a high level item. I can't tell which items were from backers and which were not so I think this worked out well.  There are some very nice backer items out there, I think it probably improved the game a bit.

 

$3000+: Design a portrait. Again, the backer stuff doesn't stand out so this is fine.  Agree.

 

$5000+: Design an inn. I thought the inns in this game were pretty good as far as fantasy RPG inns go. This is the best-implemented of the backer rewards.  The inns were excellent.  Gamebanshee probably had the best one.

 

$5000+: Design a party-of-six encounter. I guess these were used for some of the bounties? Once again, I couldn't tell the developer-made ones from the custom ones so this was a good reward.  The bridge fight was one of the more memorable in the game, especially seeing their ghosts after you kill them.  Fun, fun.

 

Stretch goals:

 

$1.4M and $1.8M: New race, class and companion. I think the number of these is pretty reasonable in the finished game so these were worthwhile. Not very controversial.  Agree.

 

$1.6M: Mac and Linux support, more story. Again, relatively non-controversial.  I was very glad to see this.

 

$2.0M: Player house. Not bad, but not great. Once you repair it, the design and art for it is quite nice. However, it suffers from being rather far away from almost everything, the resting bonuses aren't worthwhile relative to the inns and it doesn't feel alive (a house that size would probably have some servants).  I wish the house wasn't two stories.  The whole stronghold has size vs. npc issues.

 

$2.2M: New region and faction plus French, German and Spanish translations. Also non-controversial.  Agree.

 

$2.3M: Expert, Trial of Iron and PoTD modes plus Godlike race. I haven't tried the modes yet and I doubt that I will do it -- I did the solo + Insane + difficulty mods thing in BG2, but I don't have that much time these days and PoE does not inspire such dedication. However, they're nice for people who are still into that sort of thing. The Godlike are a good concept and Pallegina is an interesting NPC. Ironically, the main problem with them is that so many of the backer NPCs are of this race.  PoTD makes the game.  Normal is a great starting difficulty, perfectly balanced for an introduction.  PoTD makes the game way more fun though once you start playing around.

 

$2.4M: Crafting and Enchanting. These features are decent -- again, good, but not great.  Crafting and Enchanting let you plan your build a bit more and somewhat increase item variety.

 

$2.5M and 2.7M: Barbarian and Cipher, then Paladin and Chanter. The mechanics and balance of the game as whole are debatable, but the classes themselves are a welcome addition.  The classes are great.  Pally's have a role to play, barbarians feel more fun/unique than they've been in other games, and chanters are just a cool class design.

 

$2.6M: Adventurer's Hall with full party creation. I don't see the point of playing this kind of game without the companions that have personalities, but a lot of people like it and it probably didn't take much work given that the building was there for different reasons. On the other hand, it makes any attempt of balancing a non-solo run impossible since you can't simultaneously make it challenging for those who use the pre-made companions and for those who run six min-maxed characters from classes with synergies.  The adventurers hall is key to replayability.  Party composition experimentation is more engrossing than build experimentation.  Realizing that you can try 6 barbarians who grind small mobs is a great feeling.

 

$3.0M: Stronghold. I think it was OK and doesn't quite deserve the level of criticism that it got in some threads, but yeah, it could've been a lot better. It has the same problems as the house, but scaled up: there's basically nobody there, with the exception of the initial stuff (i.e. Maerwald and the Master Below quest), the quests and events associated with it are not very interesting and not very well connected and in general the place feels like it didn't get the final level of polish and detail. Would it have been that difficult to add a few Builder NPCs and the like?

Agree.  The stronghold could use more NPCs.

 

$3.5M: Big City 2 (presumably Twin Elms). It's not bad, but it's clearly not of the same order as Defiance Bay.  I actually like Twin Elms more than Defiance bay.  Twin Elms feels like it's structured better, with a greater quest density.

 

$4.0M: Enhance the whole game, live instrumentation and developer commentary. The music is good so that worked out well. I haven't heard the commentary yet, but I'm going to enable it on my next playthrough.  Commentary is neat, but not a live or die feature.  Most of the time its junior designers doing it.

 

The Endless Paths. The idea here was 1 dungeon level for every 5k backers. With ~77k backers, this works out to 15 levels which they technically implemented, but honestly, this would have been much better off as a 7 or even 5 level dungeon. The puzzles and dialog are spread too thin, there are way too many plot-less encounters (doubly not fun because of the XP mechanics) and much of it does not feel anything like the great IE dungeons (e.g. Watcher's Keep).  I really, really like the Endless Paths.  It feels like it could be a fun dungeon runner without the rest of the game.

[Bryy]

I wanted to see what people's opinions of the various game components created as Kickstarter rewards or stretch goals were. I don't mean things like the Almanac or documentary, but stuff that appears within the actual game. They're still listed on the original Kickstarter page. Here are mine:

 

Backer rewards:

 

$20+: Kickstarter achievement, item and pet. Pets are cosmetic in PoE, but I think this pet was well done (Eder and Sagani have amusing interactions with it). The item was OK: it's slightly useful without actually being powerful. The achievement is great for measuring the fraction of Steam players who bought the game after the Kickstarter, but there's a thread where some people are upset because they can't get it (weird).

 

We all know my opinions on the acheev. It's simply not okay for people that didn't help fund the game to have one saying they did, and honestly, people should understand that. I "get" achievement completionists (to an extent), but it should be pretty clear that the Backer Acheev is for a special purpose. 

 

$100+: Name in credits. A nice way to reward people without actually impacting anyone.

 

Yeah. This is nice. My company name is wrong, though. I have no one to blame but myself.

 

$500+: A memorial stone. It sounded harmless, but these would work better in a game like BG2 (which routinely broke the fourth wall) or if they carefully vetted to be appropriate to the setting. And of course there was the infamous poem controversy... maybe it's better not to offer such things in future Kickstarters.

 

The memorial stone incident was more due to them not vetting each individual poem. Which was sloppy. 

 

Also, it could have just been avoided altogether had anyone chosen to actually ask Firedom if it was intended as transphobic/malicious in the first place. Then again, all we would have to go on is someone's word. Then again, Obsidian did make two statements, one simply saying "we screwed up" and the more absolute "hey, guys, we don't think it was appropriate, so there".

 

$1000+: Design an NPC. This would have been fine if there were 5 of them and not 100+ and if they were not so obviously extraneous.

 

Agreed in a sense. They either should have been more limited or made actual NPCs. You could really, really tell which Backer NPCs were not given any thought (way too many "I'm a badass lol" stories) and which ones were actually done well. Next time, maybe ask for more in the surveys.

 

$1000+: Design a high level item. I can't tell which items were from backers and which were not so I think this worked out well.

 

Yeah, this was done well.

 

$5000+: Design an inn. I thought the inns in this game were pretty good as far as fantasy RPG inns go. This is the best-implemented of the backer rewards.

 

Agreed, but I do not understand why the Backer NPCs were not as fleshed out as the Inns.

 

$5000+: Design a party-of-six encounter. I guess these were used for some of the bounties? Once again, I couldn't tell the developer-made ones from the custom ones so this was a good reward.

 

I loved these. Again, all Backer NPCs should have been sprinkled in the story like this.

 

Stretch goals:

 

$2.4M: Crafting and Enchanting. These features are decent -- again, good, but not great.

 

Agreed. The resources needed are far too limited for this mechanic to actually be of any use.

 

$2.6M: Adventurer's Hall with full party creation. I don't see the point of playing this kind of game without the companions that have personalities, but a lot of people like it and it probably didn't take much work given that the building was there for different reasons. On the other hand, it makes any attempt of balancing a non-solo run impossible since you can't simultaneously make it challenging for those who use the pre-made companions and for those who run six min-maxed characters from classes with synergies.

 

Party creation made this game.

 

$3.0M: Stronghold. I think it was OK and doesn't quite deserve the level of criticism that it got in some threads, but yeah, it could've been a lot better. It has the same problems as the house, but scaled up: there's basically nobody there, with the exception of the initial stuff (i.e. Maerwald and the Master Below quest), the quests and events associated with it are not very interesting and not very well connected and in general the place feels like it didn't get the final level of polish and detail. Would it have been that difficult to add a few Builder NPCs and the like?

 

It was a great addition with an awesome mini-game flavor, but ultimately, besudes Brighthollow and the Warden Lodge, had no real reason to be.

 

$3.5M: Big City 2 (presumably Twin Elms). It's not bad, but it's clearly not of the same order as Defiance Bay.

 

Defiance Bay was packed with stuff, yes. 12 quests versus Twin Elms' 7. But I still felt TE was big enough.

 

$4.0M: Enhance the whole game, live instrumentation and developer commentary. The music is good so that worked out well. I haven't heard the commentary yet, but I'm going to enable it on my next playthrough.

 

The commentary is incredibly buggy and they all sound like they are reading off a script. I don't like it. I really expected something along the lines of Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

 

The Endless Paths. The idea here was 1 dungeon level for every 5k backers. With ~77k backers, this works out to 15 levels which they technically implemented, but honestly, this would have been much better off as a 7 or even 5 level dungeon. The puzzles and dialog are spread too thin, there are way too many plot-less encounters (doubly not fun because of the XP mechanics) and much of it does not feel anything like the great IE dungeons (e.g. Watcher's Keep).

 

For a combat-heavy game with limited combat EXP, they made the Endless Paths worth it and fun.

Edited May 8, 2015 by Bryy

[Achilles]

Backer rewards:

 

$20+: Kickstarter achievement, item and pet. I'm ambivalent. Item is of minimal usefulness. Pet gets sold for copper right away. Re: the Achievement - I personally don't feel that excited about it, but philosophically, I like it. Too often "pre-order exclusive" means "everyone gets it 6 months from now". This feels like it means something. I think that's a good thing.

 

$100+: Name in credits. A nice touch.

 

$500+: A memorial stone. I hope this isn't repeated in future Kickstarters. Backer content left me with an uneasy feeling after Wasteland 2. PoE only made it worse. I hope it's something independent devs move away from in the future. I have a feeling that it won't age well at all.

 

$1000+: Design an NPC. This would have been fine if there were 5 of them and not 100+ and if they were not so obviously extraneous.What you said.

 

$1000+: Design a high level item. I can't tell which items were from backers and which were not so I think this worked out well.I think this *mostly* worked out well.

 

$3000+: Design a portrait.Of all the KS-specific stuff, this is probably the thing I'm most impressed with. Really well done.

 

$5000+: Design an inn.I'm mostly ok with this. I get the impression that Steve Dengler is a super nice guy. However I hope that the future of Kickstarter games isn't playing not-so-subtle-Where's-Waldo with his content. And I already get the feeling that RPGCodex won't be around for whatever Obsidian does next, so I'll leave that alone.

 

$5000+: Design a party-of-six encounter. I guess these were used for some of the bounties? Once again, I couldn't tell the developer-made ones from the custom ones so this was a good reward.Agreed.

 

Stretch goals:

 

$1.4M and $1.8M: New race, class and companion. So glad this stretch goal was made. Not sure which race was added first, but love the amount of detail in the lore and Orlans especially add a lot of grit to the history of Eora.

 

$1.6M: Mac and Linux support, more story. Glad they got some love.

 

$2.0M: Player house. Not sure what to compare it to. If the interior of Crossroad Keep is the standard, then Brighthollow is on par. I wish the resting bonuses were doubled upon completion of the restoration, but I definitely respect that trying to find the happy medium between "good" and "not making inn resting useless" is difficult.

 

$2.2M: New region and faction plus French, German and Spanish translations. Glad they got some love.

 

$2.3M: Expert, Trial of Iron and PoTD modes plus Godlike race. Godlike confuse me, but I'm hoping that more explanation is forthcoming. I probably won't take advantage of any of the other modes (Hard is good enough for me), but I'm glad IE veterans have these options.

 

$2.4M: Crafting and Enchanting. I have a few, very minor, complaints about enchanting, but mostly I think this is well-implemented

 

$2.5M and 2.7M: Barbarian and Cipher, then Paladin and Chanter. Haven't messed with the Barbarian, so no feedback. Still learning the ropes with the Cipher. Like the Paladin. Think the Chanter invocations need some balancing

 

$2.6M: Adventurer's Hall with full party creation. I *love* this. As someone who likes to spend hours messing around with different builds, I frequently find myself getting frustrated because I have a great idea for a character but can never make it fit the story. Case in point, I got about 30 minutes into my first playthrough and quickly realized that I wasn't going to be able to play my rogue the way I wanted. Have a sad, toss him aside, move on with the Tied-For-Plan A Fighter I had on standby. Then I realized, "Hey, the rogue won't work as the PC, but he'd be perfect as a hireling". I now have a hireling for each inn and never have to worry about trying to make them fit into the story any more than I already have. Obsidian, please do more of this

 

$3.0M: Stronghold. Not sure why it got the short shrift. It isn't perfect, but it isn't horrible either. My only complaint is that Od Nua attacks are supposed to be a big thing and I've seen 1 in 340 hours of playing. Oh and rare items merchant has come around 3 times. Rare events need to be slightly less rare

 

$3.5M: Big City 2 (presumably Twin Elms).Twin Elms has the unfortunate role of being the Act III city. I suspect that if one compares maps, quests, and NPCs, it's proabably the same size as Defiance Bay. However a lot of Twin Elms content is optional in a way that Defiance Bay content isn't. I feel that Obsidian kept their promise on this one, but I understand why some people might have the *perception* that they didn't

 

$4.0M: Enhance the whole game, live instrumentation and developer commentary. No feelings either way

 

The Endless Paths. I think the Endless Paths feels a bit more cohesive if you do it in two big runs rather than chip away at it a floor at a time. I also feel like it's one of those things that makes a little bit more sense the 2nd time though. As a father, I *get* Od Nua. Not sure if younger players are gonna get the same kick in the feels.

[Varana]

Is there a list somewhere detailing who designed which inn?

[Achilles]

Black Hound - Obsidian (backer unreachable)

Wailing Banshee - Gamebanshee.com

Salty Mast - RPGCodex

Dracogen Inn - Steve Dengler

 

Not sure on the other 3. I think Sorcerer's Place had one, but couldn't tell you which.

[Bryy]

Goose and Fox - NeoGAF.

[Achilles]

Which means Sorcerer's Place was probably Celestial Sapling. That's my guess, anyway.

[Nakia]

Which means Sorcerer's Place was probably Celestial Sapling. That's my guess, anyway.

Sorcerer's Place?  The forum site?  No, we have an item and one of the administrators did a limerick memorial for three of our members who have returned to the wheel.  That is all I have heard about.

[Bryy]

Which means Sorcerer's Place was probably Celestial Sapling. That's my guess, anyway.

Celestial Sapling was an individual.

[Achilles]

Ah. Someone had posted that one of the inns belonged to them in another thread.

 

This just in: You can't believe everything you read on the internet.