Project Eternity Kickstarter Update #15: Classes and Full Party Creation + New Josh Sawyer Interview
Project Eternity Kickstarter Update #15: Classes and Full Party Creation + New Josh Sawyer Interview
Game News - posted by Crooked Bee on Thu 4 October 2012, 02:11:52
Tags: Josh Sawyer; Obsidian Entertainment; Pillars of EternityIn the latest Project Eternity Kickstarter update, Josh Sawyer talks about new stretch goals, which are an "Adventurer's Hall" with full character creation and new Barbarian and Cipher classes, as well as discusses the game's four core classes. I will only quote the bit about the new stretch goals here:
To read all about Fighters, Priests, Rogues and Wizards in Project Eternity, go here.
On top of that, there's also a new interview with Sawyer at XP4T:
Click here to read it in full.
Since the days are counting down, we'd like to introduce two new stretch goals. As you'll read in a few more paragraphs, Project Eternity is currently slated to support seven classes. Our current roster includes fighters, priests, rogues, wizards, rangers, monks, and druids. We believe this represents the common core and several popular secondary classes that many players enjoyed using in the Infinity Engine games. We would like to use our $2.5M stretch goal to include two additional classes: the barbarian and the cipher.
Barbarians come from many of the more remote cultures found across the world. In the Dyrwood, they are commonly found among Glanfathan elf communities. They are distinguished from fighters by their recklessness, ferocity, and their predilection to substitute raw aggression for discipline. Barbarians are a challenge to deal with on a battlefield, though they are vulnerable to exhaustion if they don't pace themselves.
Ciphers are uncommon and often misunderstood individuals with extraordinary mental abilities. Like wizards and priests, they have many talents that draw directly from their souls, but ciphers have the unique ability to peer through the spiritual energy of the world to manipulate other souls. While wizards use complex formulae in large tomes and priests tap into the passion of their faith, ciphers are able to operate directly through the power of their minds... and yours.
But wait, we're not done yet! We've been reading a lot of feedback online about classes, companions, and party composition options. We want to give people the ability to build their parties as they like and we also want to allow people to experience the full spectrum of class mechanics. Companions go a long way toward achieving that goal while also providing a ton of reactivity in the world. Even so, we'd like to do more.
At $2.6M, we will add an Adventurer's Hall to the world. In the Free Palatinate of Dyrwood, adventurers and mercenaries from across the world are often employed as personal bodyguards, elite security, or salvage (plunder) teams that venture into the forgotten corners of Eír Glanfath. A lot of the folks who hang out as such places are robbers and miscreants, but reliable agents can be found and employed with a bit of patience.
What does this mean for you? It means that if you don't like a companion, or if you don't like any of our companions, you won't be cut off from having characters of their classes. Over time, you can build your own custom parties to play through the game. If you want a party of monks or all casters, this gives you the ability to do it within the game while still maintaining the pacing of the standard PC + companions play style.
Barbarians come from many of the more remote cultures found across the world. In the Dyrwood, they are commonly found among Glanfathan elf communities. They are distinguished from fighters by their recklessness, ferocity, and their predilection to substitute raw aggression for discipline. Barbarians are a challenge to deal with on a battlefield, though they are vulnerable to exhaustion if they don't pace themselves.
Ciphers are uncommon and often misunderstood individuals with extraordinary mental abilities. Like wizards and priests, they have many talents that draw directly from their souls, but ciphers have the unique ability to peer through the spiritual energy of the world to manipulate other souls. While wizards use complex formulae in large tomes and priests tap into the passion of their faith, ciphers are able to operate directly through the power of their minds... and yours.
But wait, we're not done yet! We've been reading a lot of feedback online about classes, companions, and party composition options. We want to give people the ability to build their parties as they like and we also want to allow people to experience the full spectrum of class mechanics. Companions go a long way toward achieving that goal while also providing a ton of reactivity in the world. Even so, we'd like to do more.
At $2.6M, we will add an Adventurer's Hall to the world. In the Free Palatinate of Dyrwood, adventurers and mercenaries from across the world are often employed as personal bodyguards, elite security, or salvage (plunder) teams that venture into the forgotten corners of Eír Glanfath. A lot of the folks who hang out as such places are robbers and miscreants, but reliable agents can be found and employed with a bit of patience.
What does this mean for you? It means that if you don't like a companion, or if you don't like any of our companions, you won't be cut off from having characters of their classes. Over time, you can build your own custom parties to play through the game. If you want a party of monks or all casters, this gives you the ability to do it within the game while still maintaining the pacing of the standard PC + companions play style.
To read all about Fighters, Priests, Rogues and Wizards in Project Eternity, go here.
On top of that, there's also a new interview with Sawyer at XP4T:
XP4T: 1.5 million is certainly no small amount of money, how does it feel to get THAT much backing?
Josh Sawyer: It’s fantastic. We’re really excited to see where the funding winds up, but we’re confident we can make something awesome with the backing we’ve received so far. The response from the community has been amazing.
Kickstarter makes things very personal with future players, how do you deal with the requests and feedback and demands? Do you feel obliged to follow them?
We try to read as much feedback in as many different places as possible, on the Obsidian forums as well as places like RPG Codex, NeoGAF, Something Awful, Penny Arcade, and others. There’s a broad spectrum of responses, but I think we’ve been doing this long enough to know how to sort a signal out of the noise. There will always be outliers, people who want really specific things that fall outside of the scope and focus of the project. In those cases, the best thing we can do is politely let them know that we’re going in a different direction.
For the people who are talking about things that can go one way or another and do fall within the scope of what we’re doing, we try to think about the pros and cons of what they’re talking about. Often, we’re already doing something in line with what they’re thinking. In other cases, we can give the person the feeling that’s behind what they’re saying without actually doing what they’re saying.
As developers, we need to put effort into interpreting a variety of desires and opinions and synthesizing the best solution for the game. That best solution is only rarely a “somewhere in the middle” answer to the debate, but we do try to take in the full spectrum of feedback.
Josh Sawyer: It’s fantastic. We’re really excited to see where the funding winds up, but we’re confident we can make something awesome with the backing we’ve received so far. The response from the community has been amazing.
Kickstarter makes things very personal with future players, how do you deal with the requests and feedback and demands? Do you feel obliged to follow them?
We try to read as much feedback in as many different places as possible, on the Obsidian forums as well as places like RPG Codex, NeoGAF, Something Awful, Penny Arcade, and others. There’s a broad spectrum of responses, but I think we’ve been doing this long enough to know how to sort a signal out of the noise. There will always be outliers, people who want really specific things that fall outside of the scope and focus of the project. In those cases, the best thing we can do is politely let them know that we’re going in a different direction.
For the people who are talking about things that can go one way or another and do fall within the scope of what we’re doing, we try to think about the pros and cons of what they’re talking about. Often, we’re already doing something in line with what they’re thinking. In other cases, we can give the person the feeling that’s behind what they’re saying without actually doing what they’re saying.
As developers, we need to put effort into interpreting a variety of desires and opinions and synthesizing the best solution for the game. That best solution is only rarely a “somewhere in the middle” answer to the debate, but we do try to take in the full spectrum of feedback.
Click here to read it in full.
