Dreaming Dreams: An Invitation

[Fionavar]

Dear denizens, trolls, long-timers and new-timers,

To say that the history of the community has been filled with joys and challenges, losses and discoveries, perhaps goes without saying. We, nonetheless, never want to take you all for granted. Whether it has been games for which we have designed for other publishers or our own titles, such as contained within the World of Eternity, you - our community of supporters and fans, beta testers and creative companions – have, do and shall help us continue to make great gaming experiences: of this we have no doubt!

As we begin to anticipate the milestone launch of Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire in 2018, we are beginning to dream dreams. One of those is an integrated online hub that brings together the fragmented nature of our social media presence. W are dreaming of an interface that brings together the following OBS' presence into a coherent ecosystem:

• Website
• Forum community
• Reddit
• Fig
• Kickstarter
• Instagram
• YouTube
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Twitch
• Discord

As we embark on this new phase, we invite you to share with us your thoughts and insights of what you have experienced as prime examples of well-integrated online communities – especially those that reflect multiple entry and access points throughout social media. What could we add to this dreaming that would make such an experience not just okay or good, but great!

We are not sure we can include all of our dreams initially, need alone those which we know you will offer. We are certain, however, as we have learned with your - our community of supporters and advocates - that taking these steps together not only helps OBS continue to make great gaming experiences, but explicitly reflects that you help us be who we are! For that we have been, are and shall be ever so grateful!

So, please do post your thoughts and ideas below. Post links – share concept ideas! Contact us through Facebook, Twitter, or PM Fionavar. We hope to launch a new online ecosystem to coincide with the launch of Deadfire in 2018 and with your support and engagement, we know it will be awesome!

 

Want to see what others are thinking and saying? Checkout the conversation here in the community!

[kirottu]

You should create your own social media centre and call it Obsidian+. And force anyone and everyone who buys your games to make an account at Obsidian+. People would love it.

[Hawke64]

I guess, it is good to have the forums separated from games and platforms (such as Steam and Origin), so nothing interrupts gameplay, yet players are able to communicate with each other and the developers.

Also the requirement to own a game in order to post on the forums (not the other way - creating an account to launch a game) might limit amount of trolls.

[Labadal]

Also start your own storefront like uPlay and Origin. Make it as DRM heavy as possible.

 

(I like the forum, just do an update to the main site.)

[OgreTimeYay]

A way to connect the Obsidian fans and community? I have an idea that could achieve this, and make the whole experience a fun one. Would Obsidian be willing to consider making a site, or even a client of some sort (maybe similar to Steam, yet not sharing the same purpose) in where the Obsidian Community can get together with its core being tabletop role play? A strength for Obsidian is their reputation for making role playing games, and a tabletop client or site will leave opportunities to advertise the lore of some of your games. Want people to get more hyped for Pillars of Eternity 2? Display lore about the Deadfire Archipelago, information about familiar faces like Eder, and give the community tools to use it as a role play campaign to get them more connected to the universe of each game Obsidian constructs.

Embed tools on your site or client to allow users to setup multiple character sheets and add it to their profile and include into role plays, put in place a dice rolling system and reward Obsidian Points to users who manage to roll a natural 20 during a role play, points that they can redeem for prizes like Extra Character Sheet Slots, or an Exotic Race Ticket for those players who want to take a break from the normal Human/Elf/Dwarf like races and use their ERT(Exotic Race Ticket) to make a Half Dragon Character Sheet. Offer randomized RP loot to players during RP sessions if the DM chooses to use such a feature, making it possible for users to find items in a Campaign and add it to their account, from "Stale Bread" to "+5 Craven Edge" (A nod toward Critical Role, wink wink). Add a flavor of the season to encourage people to get into the mood of a new incoming release from Obsidian. For example, planning on releasing Fallout New Vegas 2 or Fallout New Orleans in the next few months(another wink wink)? Give bonus on how many Obsidian Points are rewarded for role players who participate in Campaigns taking place in the Mojave Wasteland (as an example)! 

DMs on the Obsidian Client will have the ability to put together in-depth campaigns of their choice, and each campaign will show up in a list similar to how games show up on Steam, ranging in genres like Fantasy, Steampunk, Cyberpunk, and more. Add unique prizes and rewards to the accounts of users who purchase an Obsidian game and add its purchase information to their profile. Following the idea that the community helps Obsidian become who they are, maybe there's opportunity to take it a step further by announcing special events in role play campaigns of Obdisian's choice, where the events and actions that take place in that role play campaign will appear and exist in the story and setting of Obsidian's games, allowing the players to help shape the worlds of the games they play even more!

This is a great opportunity to include Obsidian's community in everything they do, as well as proving that we're not just "all work", we're also "all play" at the same time!

[Fionavar]

Thanks everyone so far! So some ideas/input, so far:
 

• Affirmation of existing forum community;
• Explore a model similar to uPlay/Origin;
• Tie access to certain communities to game ownership;
• Explore designing an Obsidian client that incorporates RPG into character/account.
• Explore designing an Obsidian client that facilitates RPG between members, i.e. Discord/Steam connectivity

I will try to keep up with the ideas shared here and via PM. The more options the better - as well, if you do have online examples for your suggestions, that would be great too. Thanks again for the early engagement!

[Kennyrules]

You need to add a way for people to gather to roleplay together in the world of Eora.  

 

With Obsidian creating a ruleset for tabletop roleplaying, you have one more entry into a saturated market of tabletop roleplaying games in countless different settings.  What most of those lack, and what Obsidian can offer, is the official backing of a company that makes several types of products related to the setting.  People will come to Obsidian for Deadfire, and find the tabletop roleplay rules along the way.  If the two were unconnected, the tabletop would be far less likely to succeed as an independent product.

 

What you could do is create an official site, be it on the forum, or a separate client as OgreTimeYay mentioned, where everyone can gather to find others interested in this exact setting, who are invested in this exact roleplay.

 

There are a few examples of this type of thing in practice.

 

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/ - If you like reading webcomics at all, you've probably been here.  It's the Order of the Stick site, but it also has a little subsection of the forum dedicated to play by post games.  People have been posting there constantly for over a decade, playing in the D&D setting and any other setting they can think of.  And that's just a webcomic site.  But the subforum stays going, because the forum is tied to a popular, regularly updated main site, and people looking for active roleplays often come there.

 

http://www.theninja-forum.com/ - another example of a forum tied to something bigger, this time a naruto-based browser game.  While not at all on the same scale, this community driven forum roleplay sprung up in the naruto setting, and went for a solid 8 years before dying off.  8 years.  For what was essentially just one more rinky-dink browser game.  It's dead now, but I was there for it's heyday, and wanted to link it.

 

There is also Divinity Original Sin 2's Dungeon Master mode, which basically allows the game to double as a way to roleplay in that world, using those systems.  While not a direct parallel, it is doing wonders for Larian's publicity that the developers are putting the means to roleplay in the hands of their players, and doing so with officially backed material.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legend_of_the_Five_Rings - I'd also point to Legend of the Five Rings as a way to integrate your product and your community.  LoFR was a card game that had a book series to go along with it.  And a new book was released shortly after the tournament, with the outcome of the book determined by the tournament itself.  The author even went as far as to integrate as many details of the tournament into the book as well.  Thus, whichever "faction" won the tournament, that faction would emerge victorious in the novel, and the writers would write the novel around what happened in the tournament scene.  This led to people being much more invested in certain deck types winning simply because they loved certain book characters.

 

None of these examples were ever as big as Obsidian is now, and they certainly didn't have the online presence Obsidian has.  You could really do a lot with your roleplay setting if you wanted, but I think it might at least be worth considering creating a space for an Obsidian Roleplay, inside the Eora setting and others, if you want.  And if people start spreading the word of a very active roleplay run by Obsidian, roleplayers will come and then discover your other products as well.  It's a small investment of time once the community takes over and keeps it moving, and it serves as word of mouth advertising to a group that tends to fall by the wayside.

 

Just my 2 cents.  Thanks for reading!

Edited July 18, 2017 by Kennyrules

[Labadal]

To be clear, I was joking about your own storefront! 

 

I just think that the main site is in need of an update. It's like no one cares about it. Even the pools are super old.

 

I hope there aren't too many changes to the boards. All I wish for is that you can make threads with more than 500 replies.

[joelofdeath]

I think it always feels like more of a community when you publicly recognise and engage with key community members/fans.

[Fionavar]

Synopsis #2
 

• Affirmation of existing forum community;
• Affirmation/Challenge: Engagement between OBS/Community;
• Explore a model similar to uPlay/Origin;
• Tie access to certain communities to game ownership;
• Explore designing an Obsidian client that incorporates RPG into character/account;
• Explore designing an Obsidian client that facilitates RPG between members; and
• Explore designing Obsidian client that facilitates cRPG  i.e. Discord/Steam connectivity.

Examples/Resources

• RPG: http://www.theninja-forum.com/
• Community: http://www.theninja-forum.com/
• Product/Community Integration: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legend_of_the_Five_Rings

 

Contributors

• Hawkes64
• joelofdeath
• Kennyrules
• kirottu
• Labadal
• OgreTimeYay

[Tigranes]

I like some degree of separation. I have never been on a developer forum thinking "man, I wish this discussion was merged with Youtube comments on the latest video" or whatever. I like being able to choose if I want to be on reddit or here, if I prefer a forum or a social media platform, or voraciously gorge all of them. 

 

What would be cool is to look at what isn't possible under current umbrella, and figure out what platforms or whatever need to be added to support it. Given Obsidian has some kind of relationship to Pathfinder and they've been thinking about POE tabletop for a while, something like Kennyrules' suggestion sounds great. Providing a central platform for uploading and distributing mods to Obsidian games - and thus giving them some backing - would be great, though this is probably only worthwhile if any upcoming Obsidian release is actually going to be modfriendly. 

 

Centralising the drip of information when there's a new crowdfunded game is probably a useful goal, but you're not really going to get people to stop using FB or Twitter just by having an Obsidian info hub. People will just link to the latter in the former, because people are platform loyal for other reasons. But overhauling the largely pointless Obsidian website to provide a one stop shop for game related info - or doing it here in the forums - might be a cool thing for the fans.

Edited July 19, 2017 by Tigranes

[Ethics Gradient]

I also think improvements to the website would be a great start.  Obsidian.net isn't bad, but it does feel isolated from all the other social media outlets.  It may not need to be the one-stop aggregator for twitter/instagram/facebook/youtube, but nobody would miss the poll box (last updated in 2015!) if it were replaced by a social media feed.

 

As it is, Mikey and Aarik seem to be using Twitter pretty effectively to push info and promote interesting stories or fan content.  However, that info generally doesn't loop back to the website and forums very often (if at all).  (How many people around here know about OEW and other random Obsidian jokes and stuff?)

 

Rather than some grand unified social media portal (if that is the above intent), small things like better highlighting some of the existing social media presences might also do the trick.

 

^{Also, can we have a merch store (pretty please!).  I don't want my next chance to order an Obsidian Hoodie be during the Pillars of Eternity III crowdfunding campaign!}  

[Night Stalker]

I think the best solution would be to rework the Obsidian.net website so it has the usual social media feeds (and links to the ones that cannot be embedded in the website), as well as an up-to-date list of the newest Obsidian YouTube releases and upcomming streams (preferably in some calendar format e.g. May 12, 2018: Obsidian Plays Don't Starve! May 19, 2018: Obsidian Plays Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus).

[kirottu]

• Explore a model similar to uPlay/Origin;
• Tie access to certain communities to game ownership;
• Explore designing an Obsidian client that incorporates RPG into character/account;
• Explore designing an Obsidian client that facilitates RPG between members; and
• Explore designing Obsidian client that facilitates cRPG  i.e. Discord/Steam connectivity.

I'll be serious now. I wasn't serious before.

 

I hate all of these. Even dirty scrubs without specific games should still be allowed to talk about them. And I don't want anymore clients I have to start so I can play my games. Please, please don't do your own client.

 

I'd like to see the main Obsidian website to be used more. Like when some Obsidian developer tweets or blogs about something games related it would show up at www.obsidian.net.

 

Oh, and Finavar, don't think I didn't notice you liking everyone else's posts except mine. You do understand that this means passive-aggressive forum war.

Edited July 19, 2017 by kirottu

[FlintlockJazz]

I do like the idea of the website being used more to show tweets and blogs and the like.  Also an access point for all their youporntube videos would be good.  I also dislike the idea of a uplay or battlenet app client that you have to start before starting the game.  But a link on the website to and showing a discord channel would be good too as I do like discord.  Not being forced to post on reddit or youtube comments is also ideal, I don't even have a reddit account and whenever I wind up there the place gives me a headache (plus it is blocked by my work proxy, which means I can't access it during work hours). 

Oh, and Finavar, don't think I didn't notice you liking everyone else's posts except mine. You do understand that this means passive-aggressive forum war.

 

 Oo! Oo!  Let me get set up first!

Ready!

Edited July 19, 2017 by FlintlockJazz

[Gorgon]

Kinda sounds like wishful thinking to streamline all of that into one 'thing'. RPG gamers are more particular. 

 

I am just reminded of my local Pizza place that wants me to 'download an app' just to order pizza. It's presumptuous, and remember you are dealing with angry old men for the most part. 

 

Uplay and Origin aren't glowing examples of anything, I'm going to go so far as to say that they are largely reviled. Still, everything is in the execution. There might be interesting elements in this.

[213374U]

To no one's surprise, I agree with and fully endorse Gorgon's "angry old men" assessment.

 

I'd be happy if just the forum's software was updated to fix bugs we've been dealing with for years now and allowed for stuff like @callouts which are a common feature in other forums.

 

Whatever is done, make it optional. I get it that youngsters these days love social media, mobile-optimized content and obtrusive storefront-gaming platforms, and it makes sense to appeal to them, but please don't force it on us angry old men.

 

Best of luck.

[Infinitron]

 

• Website
• Forum community
• Reddit
• Fig
• Kickstarter
• Instagram
• YouTube
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Twitch
• Discord

 

You forgot the most important one of all, Josh Sawyer's Tumblr.

[IndiraLightfoot]

Yeah, Uplay and Origin aren't stellar examples of improvement. Rather, it's something that we usually shun with a vengeance.

What I really would like to see is all of the Obsid devs post on all those other sites getting easily readible/accessible here for those so inclined.

[kirottu]

 

Oh, and Finavar, don't think I didn't notice you liking everyone else's posts except mine. You do understand that this means passive-aggressive forum war.

 Oo! Oo!  Let me get set up first!

Ready!

 

Oh, it's already on. Didn't you notice how I passive-aggressively misspelled her name? I went to the jugular right from the start. That is how you win a forum war.

 

Also, green is the Uplay of colours.

[Fionavar]

Synopsis #3
 

• Affirmation of existing forum community;
• Affirmation/Challenge: Engagement between OBS/Community;
• App: If going this route, do not force/make it mandatory. Recognise website user context/demographic; & focus on optional aspect;
• Balance hub with centralised communication, but relaise people are platform loyal;
• Better highlight existing social media platforms without necessarily centralising a one stop communicaiton channel;
• Concern: Steam like platform;
• Devs: Further engagement and more accessible;
• Explore a model similar to uPlay/Origin;
• Explore designing an Obsidian client that incorporates RPG into character/account;
• Explore designing an Obsidian client that facilitates RPG between members;
• Explore designing Obsidian client that facilitates cRPG  i.e. Discord/Steam connectivity;
• Explore designing platform to share mods for future games
• Highlight upcoming streams/Youtube;
• Tie access to certain communities to game ownership; and,
• Website: Update & utilise more intentionally.

Examples/Resources

• RPG: http://www.theninja-forum.com/
• Community: http://www.theninja-forum.com/
• Product/Community Integration: https://en.wikipedia..._the_Five_Rings

 

Contributors

• 213374U
• Ethics Gradient
• Flintlockjazz
• Gorgon
• Hawkes64
• IndiraLightfoot
• Infinitron
• joelofdeath
• Kennyrules
• kirottu
• Labadal
• Night Stalker
• OgreTimeYay
• Tigranes

[kirottu]

You know, I wanted to be dragon once. Then I played Dragon Age 2.

[sorophx]

you could turn the forums themselves into a game. have a game, that plays itself (many websites out there with similar games, where you basically create a character and by doing certain stuff can influence his life but can't directly control him), where each forum member has an avatar. generate adventures for the avatar, and keep a journal on the user's profile page on the forums, where he can read how his character is doing (something similar to sending out vault dwellers in Fallout Shelter). 

 

maybe add the ability to give your character new equipment, which can be earned by doing something on the forums (be a member for a number of years, have a certain amount of likes etc.). add achievements to the forum, which are earned by the character reaching certain milestones (complete a number of objectives without dying, reach a certain level etc.). achievements will reward the user with new userpic borders, unique badges or something. 

 

maybe even add the ability to pit one user's avatar against another 

[Labadal]

For the main site, show the most active topics and maybe even show developer responses.

 

About having a twitter feed with Obsidian employee accounts, ask those who are okay with this. Maybe not every employee wants to be a part of this.

 

When you guys post an update on twitter, fig, kickstarter or whatever, do not only post it on the main page. Also post it here in the community, where we can discuss it. You have Obsidian General, but also have Obsidian News or something.

 

For instance: Pillars of Eternity II gets an update on FIG that you also post in Obsidian News. That thread is also tied to the PoE II sub forum, if possible.

 

I like the idea of developer blogs. Give the blogs more room and a little more attention. Either video blogs or in text format. Then, you share those on all your social media accounts.

 

Obsidian plays should be advertised here. I don't think enough people know about it. I certainly wouldn't if I didn't use twitter.

[Mygaffer]

My one request is to always keep user choice in mind while designing this. I don't want to feel coerced to use your social media platform. I don't want to read things like "free downloadable content if you log in daily." I don't want access to games or games content locked behind me signing into some Obsidian.net type service.

 

So please make sure you are respecting your end users