Obsidian's Pillars of Eternity [BETA RELEASED, GO TO THE NEW THREAD]

[Lumpy]

It's been more than half a day since they hit the initial goal and they received only, roughly, $150k in pledges... after over $1M the previous 24h. That's a big fucking drop.

A big fucking drop which has happened after the beginning rush of EVERY KICKSTARTER EVER.

And every time, people still say it's because the developers fucked up.

So you don't agree with the statement that that drop is because of the shit stretch-goals and the lack of an official statement saying that there is going to be a DRM-free version?

If he doesn't believe that there's a higher than usual drop at all, clearly he doesn't think that there's any cause for it.

 

[evdk]

I think we can all agree the stretch goals are shit though.

 

[Infinitron]

Funny how the Biodrones think that pledging on kickstarter gives them some sort of right to dictate what the game has to be like.

Unlike the Codex, you mean?

The Codex thinks it has the right to dictate based on superior intelligence and breeding, not because of mere money.

 

[Oesophagus]

Funny how the Biodrones think that pledging on kickstarter gives them some sort of right to dictate what the game has to be like.

Unlike the Codex, you mean?

Fair point, but the codex seems to be more concerned with the game not being influenced by all the next-gen consolefaggotry.

Obsidian should just have a big disclaimer saying "we've made old school crpgs before, if you want one, either trust us to do our job, or fuck off"

 

[evdk]

Yeah, it's always funny to me when people say "This game would have succeeded if the publisher had successfully tricked a bunch of people into buying their bad product sight unseen!" Market forces, bitches.

I remember New Vegas marketing. They went to lengths to hide the fact the game wasn't a derped piece of shit.

First time I've been happy to be fooled by marketing.

Wait you bought it because marketing fooled you into believing it was a dumbed down piece of shit and then happily discovered it was not the case?

 

[IDtenT]

I think we can all agree the stretch goals are shit though.

More classes, races and companions, based on those classes and races, might not seem like great stretch goals, but 8 races/classes/companions sound a shit load better than 5.

 

[Freelance Henchman]

MCA FEELIN DA BURRRRNNNNNNN

 

[Curious_Tongue]

Wait you bought it because marketing fooled you into believing it was a dumbed down piece of shit and then happily discovered it was not the case?

I was going to buy the game regardless. Marketing was making me feel like I was being sold the same thing as FO3, except with a big dinosaur, a casino and some reflecting mirror building.

 

[ghostdog]

On other news , we must have officially borked their forums. They seem to be down these last few hours, at least for me.

 

[evdk]

More classes, races and companions, based on those classes and races, might not seem like great stretch goals, but 8 races/classes/companions sound a shit load better than 5.

Maybe, but the way the stretch goals are written (+1, +1, nice house with a flowery curtains, +1, we'll try to think up some more later) is shit.

 

[Infinitron]

On other news , we must have officially borked their forums. They seem to be down these last few hours, at least for me.

The Obsidian forums have been going on and off periodically since the Kickstarter began.

 

[evdk]

On other news , we must have officially borked their forums. They seem to be down these last few hours, at least for me.

You will know we have displeased the divine MCA when it starts redirecting to RPGWatch.

 

[IDtenT]

I think they were surprised by how quickly they met the pledge goal, so they put shitty stretch goals out there, before they promise something truly majestic - thinking that $2.2mil is a forgone conclusion.

 

[Duraframe300]

More classes, races and companions, based on those classes and races, might not seem like great stretch goals, but 8 races/classes/companions sound a shit load better than 5.

Maybe, but the way the stretch goals are written (+1, +1, nice house with a flowery curtains, +1, we'll try to think up some more later) is shit.

Goin' on a saturday into work. But, seriously. We don't know who wrote those and they may have been a bit entusiastic and silly while writing it.

 

[Cosmo]

Yes, stretchgoals are indeed underwhelming...

 

[Roguey]

BG1 had 25 companions
BG2 had 17 companions
Can anyone tell me the budget for these games?

Budget wouldn't really tell you anything considering those were made with shitty tools a decade ago.

But something to consider: Lukas Kristjanson, who wrote every companion in BG, would tell you and has said that Jaheira alone had more dialogue than all of the BG1 companions combined and that was only because she was a romance option. Non-romance options in BG2 really didn't have that much to say outside their personal quests and minor banters here and there. I'm expecting all the companions in Dullsville to have a word count comparable to the companions in Torment/kotor/NWN2//DA and so on.

 

[kaizoku]

Uh, because if you have a pool of extra attribute points you can assign anyway, it makes no difference what the initial values were.

It would've made sense in a system like NWN2's, I guess, where the farther you increased an attribute from the base value the more points it cost. But then, it would have simply meant that a male fighter would be stronger than a female one, and a female sorcerer better than a male one. Which would've been rather pointless ultimately.

Given that attribute points are limited for the sake of game balance only, I don't really see anything wrong with a player character female being as strong as a male, so long as this isn't typically the case in the game world. Like AoD does it, that is.

Well, it does indeed depend on the system, but in principle you should be able to apply it to all, even if just by setting the maximum amount of points for a given attribute.
But the purpose is to give advantages and disadvantages to each gender. In the same way that happens with races.
This can be applied to attributes and skills.

 

[Kane]

MCA FEELIN DA BURRRRNNNNNNN

 

[Dexter]

Again a few things xD

If you wanna complain about the lack of details, complain to Fargo. He gave them "Tips" on how to get most efficient backing e.g. promise something vague at first like "in the spirit of Baldur's Gate/Planescape" etc.
Then release Updates and more concrete shit as the time goes on to keep people thinking about it and journos writing about the game for an entire month. Always the businessman xD
(I can't really find the source for this right now, but I definitely read it somewhere)

If you want to complain about the retarded "stretch goals" complain to Obsidian, apparently none of them expected to reach their goal so fast and they made that shit up on the spot or something (by Feargus and that Adam Brennecke guy at work on a weekend).
They should've taken a look at how Planetary Annihilation did it instead and planned it properly, they had pictures and "hidden goals" and all that ready and did it fully professional.

Sawyer said this on the somethingsomething forumz:

Realtalk: we are, in fact, stalling a bit because literally none of us believed that this would get funded at this speed. I simply don't have a coherent blog update to give you right now and I apologize. I will be spending a great deal of tomorrow writing a blog post that explains fundamentals of the world, but that's not a "jot down a few words" sort of thing to be taken lightly. Again, sorry.

Also don't expect a "classic" fantasy world, there will likely be things like guns/muskets as seen in the video and possibly bombs involved if Sawyer wasn't kidding.

Also, the party will be 6 guys, as evidenced from this video: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/obsidian/project-eternity/posts/309364 there's a T-formation and some other stuff drawn on the whiteboard.

I'd expect to hear more about this stuff on Monday

 

[skuphundaku]

If he doesn't believe that there's a higher than usual drop at all, clearly he doesn't think that there's any cause for it.

Let's look at the existing Kickstarter video game projects that went over the $1M threshold:
http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/obsidian/project-eternity/#chart-daily
http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/obsidian/project-eternity/#chart-daily
http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/inxile/wasteland-2/#chart-daily
http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/659943965/planetary-annihilation-a-next-generation-rts/#chart-daily
http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/1613260297/shadowrun-returns/#chart-daily

We'll have to ignore the fact that Kicktraq uses a cut-off time to separate days, not the actual time elapsed from the start of the project. The analysis would hold even more true if the elapsed time would have been used.
day 1, day 2, day 3, d1->d2[%], d2->d3[%],
DFA: 167,826 988,755 349,980 489 -65
W2: 460,575 394,730 255,470 -16 -35
PA: 72,808 207,211 119,650 185 -42
SR: 296,988 215,127 99,651 -28 -54
PE: 705,095 482,314 57,539 -32 -88
PE (real time elapsed): 1,009,937 246,460 -76

No matter how you look at it, currently, PE has the biggest drop of all the heavy hitters. It's unlikely that the project with the shittiest stretch-goals and the shittiest conditions (no DRM-free yet) has the biggest drop in pledges just by coincidence. I haven't followed DFA and SR very closely so I can't say for sure, but the way W2 and PA handled stretch-goals was very good. Compare that to the way PE handles them and then come back to me and say that that has no importance.

 

[Roguey]

Massive correlation implies causation itt.

 

[Infinitron]

skuphundaku Biggest drop, but also the most meteoric first day. They cancel each other out.

 

[Kane]

Meanwhile, on Something Awful...
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3506352&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=48

Scorchy posted:

Wow the rpgcodex thread for this is a seething cauldron of hate, racism and homophobia. It's like the comment section for a Fox News article in there.​

I went other there to check it out and ummm, yeah. Wow.

Not only are they declaring the game dead in the water for trying to have inclusive elements, they have lovely stuff like this all over their site:

Keeping it classy over at rpgcodex.

I'm looking forward to what the design vision for itemization and difficulty curve is in the future, hopefully this game doesn't make the mistake I hate most and inundate the player with inventory garbage as the game goes on.

Of course those enlightened goons are focusing their attention on more important concerns, such as

Just because a game has decent writers doesn't make it okay for every female character to be wearing nothing but a few straps and strings. Seriously look at the art in the in-game journal, it's crazy how shitty the female designs are. The succubus is the only one even moderately dressed and that's kind of the point with her, but I'm guessing the writers behind her had to plead with Mense and the other creepers on the art team to let her wear a dress.

Codex > SA. SA is spreading the same hubris like Neogaf, etc.. these days. They probably started closing their eyes when they speak and smell their own farts.
Here, we have Skyway to prevent that from happening.

 

[skuphundaku]

Again a few things xD

If you wanna complain about the lack of details, complain to Fargo. He gave them "Tips" on how to get most efficient backing e.g. promise something vague at first like "in the spirit of Baldur's Gate/Planescape" etc.
Then release Updates and more concrete shit as the time goes on to keep people thinking about it and journos writing about the game for an entire month. Always the businessman xD
(I can't really find the source for this right now, but I definitely read it somewhere)

Bro, look at how W2 handled their stretch goals (Fargo was a fucking master) and how they did it (a list of +1 this, +2 that and a note at the bottom saying that they're looking into DRM-free). Don't blame Frago for Obsidian's inadequacies.

If you want to complain about the retarded "stretch goals" complain to Obsidian, apparently none of them expected to reach their goal so fast and they made that shit up on the spot or something (by Feargus and that Adam Brennecke guy).

If they were taken by surprise by the fact that they got over $1M in 24h, then they have major planning problems. It's not like this is the first big project on KS. Not only there were 4 precedents of projects that received over $1M, one of them got it in one day and another got it in 3. Given that they already hyped the fact that they're coming out with something big for a week and the slew of interviews where they were saying that they're considering KS, they should have had a motherfucking serious stretch-goal plan drawn up from the word go.

Sawyer said this on the somethingsomething forumz:

Realtalk: we are, in fact, stalling a bit because literally none of us believed that this would get funded at this speed. I simply don't have a coherent blog update to give you right now and I apologize. I will be spending a great deal of tomorrow writing a blog post that explains fundamentals of the world, but that's not a "jot down a few words" sort of thing to be taken lightly. Again, sorry.

Let him come here and give us that weak-ass shit and see how it goes. What? Does he want us to feel sorry for their asses after they screw up the launch of their project so badly?

 

[kaizoku]

You're missing a potential important detail.
It's sunday.
Not everyone is a basement dweller. While most gamers and KS supporters may be one, not everyone is.