1774 réponses à ce sujet

[bussinrounds]

I was always confident on Obsidian to deliver the goods when it comes to 'story' elements, setting, things of that nature. But gameplay/combat mechanics wise is another matter entirely. What I'm hoping is, now that they have Tim Cain on board, he can make the difference, because he's more of a rules guy and that is more in his wheelhouse, so to speak.

  edit: And I'm not saying that Cain was weak in other areas, btw,  because that's obviously not the case with some of the games he has done. I was more or less comparing him to the others in that area.

Modifié par bussinrounds, 03 octobre 2012 - 08:40 .

[Yrkoon]

Joy Divison wrote...

Yrkoon wrote...

But the whole point of Project eternity is to recapture the magic of those old school IE games. None of those games had cooldowns. And while they did INDEED try to emulate table-top, and failed to fully capture its mechanics and feel, they managed to create a new type of feel that kept RPG fans addicted for years.

MY question to Sawyer: What is your true vision for this game? Do you want to make a spiritual successor that reminds us of Planescape Torment and BG2 at the same time? Or do you really want to create a modern-type RPG that simply uses the old school ISO camera? If it's the latter then Jesus.... why Name-drop the IE games in every single damn video and interview about this game?

Well let me ask you this.  When the Cleric had no more healing spells and the magic user began attacking with her dagger, what did your adventuring party do?

  Let me guess, you're hoping I say:  "I'd rest to regain my spells".

I won't say that though,     For two reasons:

1) Because it'd give you the perfect counter of:   "well, that just makes the Vancian system exploitable and not a challenge at all.  Plus if the game lets you rest whenever you want, then the vancian  system  becomes essentially no different than a 10 second cooldown timer for all your  spells.


and:


2)  because often times  (especially in  BG1 and Icewind Dale)  Frequent resting  typically  caused you to get in even more trouble, because you'd get ambushed by huge groups of enemies who would spawn right in the middle of your unprepared  party, not even giving you a chance to shield your squishy, spell-less mage and archers.


No.  Here's what I'd do if my mage ran out of spells and my Cleric ran out of heals.  First, I'd send my Cleric up to the front lines with his Warhammer and Shield.  Clerics are decent in that role, they can make due in a pinch.  Second,  I'd order my mage to  go into his inventory and start making use of all those scrolls,  wands and darts that every single IE game loads you with from the tutorial to the credits.  Everyone else would potion-chug like its happy hour,  My thief would stealth and  perform reconniasance.  If she found an unusually difficult encounter waiting up ahead, then we'd attempt to avoid it by taking an alternate route, or  we'd try  the divide and conquer strategy   (this is done by moving slowly, utilizing the fog of war, and  then picking off the enemies one at a time with ranged attacks.)

If we actually exhausted all options,  Then we'd rest.  But really, it very rarely gets to this point, at least in the IE games.  The maps aren't  so big that you simply can't clear the one you're in  without resting.  You  almost always can.     And of course, often times you can simply go to the edge of a map and  fast travel back to town if you need to.  These are some of the options.  As you can see, it all boils down to one simple point:  The Vancian system is not the problem here.  The problem is either with   a) the resting mechanic, or Gamers that can't be bothered to use their heads.

Modifié par Yrkoon, 03 octobre 2012 - 10:18 .

[bussinrounds]

Exactly, I was thinking that to myself. There's usually alot of other options at your disposal.

[Yrkoon]

 @ Allen:  I read your whole post.  Honestly.  I'm not going to comment on  all your points, but I will touch on a couple, because I feel they're at the core of what this is all about:

Allan Schumacher wrote...

So what exactly *is* "the magic of the IE games?"  It's true that AD&D is consistent between them (well technically IWD2 was 3rd edition), but is that really what the consensus loved about it?  If it was a different ruleset would they not have been as good? 

[...]

I have often said that the only real way BioWare could make a game that satisfied the largest proponents of the "old school" gamer crowd that loved their earlier games would have been to pretty much rerelease BG1/2 with pretty much no changes, because I always felt that different types of people loved the games for different reasons.

Yes.  it's actually pretty darn impossible  for *anyone* to  fully nail down exactly what made the old IE games so special, since under the surface, they're all so deliberately  different from one another....almost from the ground up.  Even People like me who will rant endlessly about how  fun the combat was in some of those games, or how incredible the stories were in a few others,  can, if interrogated hard enough, manage to also list a few  other things.... like Exploration  (BG1, BG2),  And Moral choices  (PS:T),   Beauty & Atmosphere (IWD, IWD2).

But that said, There's  an underlying thread that ties all those games together, and it's not just  the fact that they use the D&D rules system.   NONE were action-rpgs, as we define action-RPGs today.  They were all 'plan-and-execute' type games.    And while you can simply  point to that and argue that  this falls into the category of "combat", and thus isn't so all encompassing (PS:T was  so NOT about its combat, after all), I will still argue that the  lack of  constant, clock-ticking, real-time  intensity  extends beyond the combat.  It influences the entire "feel" of the game in the mind of the player.  The mood.  The lore.  The pacing.

And that's where Cooldowns come in.  They're an action RPG mechanic.  They promote intensity;   They facilitate uninterruptable gameplay flow;  they remind the player of the game's ticking clock.  This is such a *wrong* mood.   

-Planescape torment probably would have survived fine with a cooldown system, since combat itself was far enough removed from the focus of the game that it wouldn't have had any  effect on the player's mind.   Although, I will point out that PS:T makes a rather Big deal, story wise, about the nature of magic, and how it's an ART to be used sparingly.  This flies in the face  of the entire philosophy behind cooldowns, but ultimately, the main story itself wouldn't have been affected, and that's the only thing that matters  in Planescape Torment. 

But the other games would have been a conflicted mess, and some of their 'magic' would have indeed disappeared.

-- Icewind dale  would have lost the most.    Its pacing would have been altered considerably, thus ruining the feel of   of its  massive dungeons.  Going through Dragon's Eye would have been a track-meet type of feel, rather than a multi-day undertaking and everything that goes along with it, such as: ok, lets take this slow, plan where we're going to make pit stops, keep an eye on the exits if we need to retreat  etc.  And remember, the entire game was like this.  It was the *theme* of the whole thing.

--BG1 probably wouldn't have lost a whole lot... well, except for the fact that it's a low level campaign and  a cooldown system would have rendered half the character classes moot.  I mean, why be An archer and suffer from missing your opponents with your   underpowered arrows, when you could just be a mage and use magic missile, every 6 seconds for at least double the damage, and without the possibility of ever missing.    Also,  the  story  would have needed to be  redesigned to accomodate    Cooldowns.  Remember:  Gorion was kicking Serevok's ass before he ran out of spells and had to use his dagger....against a master swordsman....  And so he died.

--A cool down system would have completely  killed BG2.  There's no conflicting opinions here:  BG2 is remembered for its Wildly numerous spells of unthinkably drastic variety.  The game was ABOUT magic.    The Antagonist was a mage who   hounded you constantly.  The main city had Magic laws.    The game   Itself  had hundreds and hundreds of spells, ranging from  worthless  "role-playing"  stuff  like  Infravision, and friends, to bizzare, uber  stuff like  Wail of the Banshee,   Meteor Swarm,  Sunray, Dragons breath. Comet, Imprisonment, Finger of Death, Abi Dahlzim  Horrid Wilting, Prismatic Spray,  Gate,  Spell immunity, Black Blade of disaster,  Absolute Immunity  etc.  To put all these spells on a cooldown timer is  Impossible, and to put some of them on a cooldown timer is  to  trivialize   both the combat and the vast majority of the game's loot system at the same time, and thus ruin 90% of the game itself.

Modifié par Yrkoon, 03 octobre 2012 - 12:35 .

[Giggles_Manically]

You know I never believed my friend when he talked about Vancian purists.
It seems he was right.

[Joy Divison]

Yrkoon wrote...


No.  Here's what I'd do if my mage ran out of spells and my Cleric ran out of heals.  First, I'd send my Cleric up to the front lines with his Warhammer and Shield.  Clerics are decent in that role, they can make due in a pinch.  Second,  I'd order my mage to  go into his inventory and start making use of all those scrolls,  wands and darts that every single IE game loads you with from the tutorial to the credits.  Everyone else would potion-chug like its happy hour,  My thief would stealth and  perform reconniasance.  If she found an unusually difficult encounter waiting up ahead, then we'd attempt to avoid it by taking an alternate route, or  we'd try  the divide and conquer strategy   (this is done by moving slowly, utilizing the fog of war, and  then picking off the enemies one at a time with ranged attacks.)

If we actually exhausted all options,  Then we'd rest.  But really, it very rarely gets to this point, at least in the IE games.  The maps aren't  so big that you simply can't clear the one you're in  without resting.  You  almost always can.     And of course, often times you can simply go to the edge of a map and  fast travel back to town if you need to.  These are some of the options.  As you can see, it all boils down to one simple point:  The Vancian system is not the problem here.  The problem is either with   a) the resting mechanic, or Gamers that can't be bothered to use their heads.

What if your second level?

You know when your mage's inventory is "staff, 20 darts, hat, scroll of prestidigitation," your thief's sole means of stealth is a shaky hide in shadows roll, your DM/the game hasn't provided you with a wand of cure light wounds and it is figuratively last-call, not happy hour, when it comes to potions?

I disagree with your premise that the problem is not the vancian system.  I like using my head and being forced into situations where options are inherently limited and I don't have access to my trusted "I win" spell.  That's fine.  But with the vancian system, that's every single adventuring day for low to even mid level casters.  Every day.  You never know if the first encounter is going to be the last one.  That's fine.  That's the way it should be.  What's not fine is my class that it literally called magic user has to throw darts if their DMs hate the premise of magic shops or if your still in the "slum" section of Phlan from the old Gold Series Box games.  Vancian only works if you give magic users the means to circumvent vancian restrictions and use more magic than they should.  You mentioned the piles of scrolls and wands in your mage's inventory.  OK, that's fine.  But now isn't the real limiting resource for your magic user her bank account, not the imposed vancian restriction?  What's the point of vancian...so the fighter has more gold than the mage?

I have yet to come across a game, CRPG or RPG, that has a good resting mechanic.  In both instances, the party can typically rest when they want to with a few built in exceptions to force PCs in situations where their resources are limited.

You might interpret this to mean that I like cooldowns.  I don't.  They're also dumb.  At least Vancian has a logic to why I can cast fireball only twice a day.

What made those old school RPGs fun to play was that they were not DA2 or 4E DnD, not the vancian system.  Those games worked in spite of it, not because of it. 

[Eurypterid]

Another quick Q&A session with Feargus on the KS comments page:


Question: I've been honestly considering redacting my pledge based on what I've seen in the past week or so... the stretch goals feel so vapid and uninspired and it just seems like pandering to continually make updates that give the impression 'more' will be put into the game.
Feargus I'm sorry to hear that, we are working to add things into the game that will be fun and give people who love RPG a lot of options. When we look at what we are adding, we first look at what we all like in the RPGs that we play.

Question: I for one am thankful that the stretch goals haven't been outlandish, it helps reinforce my belief that you guys know what you're actually doing and aren't just trying to build hype or do fan service.
Feargus: Thanks. However, we have heard that everyone would like a bit more detail - so the ones that we might be talking about today, if we were to talk about more today, will have bit more detail as to what they are.

Question: Would you consider a stretch goal of making a graphic novel based on the PE world?
Feargus: Would you think that people might see that as their money going toward something that is not the game instead of to the game?

Question: Would it also be possible to release the novella in epub format? I'd like to read it on my e-reader, and PDF doesn't always convert in the best way.
Feargus: I'll put that on the list. I'm guessing that should be pretty easy when we have the source of the novella.

Question: Any ETA on an update today?
Feargus: Might be a bit later than normal - maybe around 1PM PST. Had a long meeting last night about everything and then needed to do some refinement this morning as well. I think it will be a pretty cool one though!

Question: The old Infinity games had some nifty auto-pause options such as when an enemy was spotted or a trap detected. Will you implement those in Eternity too (please)?
Feargus: Yes, we are doing those. Josh might have already talked about that? Not totally sure.

Question: When will you choose the composer? Personally i wouldn't mind if Justin would get the job. Will we see further stretch goals for a full orchestral score
Feargus: We have been talking about the full orchestra score, not sure yet. Oh, and thanks for the thoughts on Justin - he does great stuff.

Question: Have there been any ideas about including an Obsidian Order in the game? Perhaps a cult of deranged dragon worshipers or something?
Feargus: Absolutely! The Obsidian Order is in the game!

Question: Any chance for a stretchgoal covering improved/orchestral soundtrack, general sound and enhanced (as in more, Englsh anyway) voiceovers?
And promish not to do Dutch subs.
Feargus: We have talked about an orchestra, but I need to follow up with Josh about his thoughts on it.

Question: When the paypal will be active, the number of the PayPal's backers will be added to the "add-a-level-to-the-mega-dungeon" counter?
Feargus: We just talked about the PayPal stuff and we will update our numbers with what we get through PayPal.

Question: Are you looking to do any interviews with the bigger websites to bring PE back to the top of the news wave? I'm noticing a disturbing lack of mummer outside of the established support community.
Feargus: We are going to start a big, bug push starting early next week and have looked at getting some outside help for it as well.

Question: Will you directly or via stretch goal implement critical strike gory death animations?
Feargus: Sorry, no idea on that one.

Question: How open will you be about the combat mechanics and underlying system?
I have fond memories of all the PNP-adaptations me and my friends used to make years ago and it would be nice if we could relive those times
Feargus: We are pretty open guys, so I think we will be happy to go into the details once the combat system has been really put through it's paces.

[FedericoV]

What was great about IE games? I was 20-something, I got all my hair and I could still play D&D in a high fantasy setting without feeling a little bit of shame . There's clearly an element of nostalgia on my part: the IE games were the pinnacle of classic RPGs and I played them when I was young and free. We should not hide nostalgia: there's nothing wrong with it, especially when everyone can see that the hobby has devolved in the wrong direction and it's not what we hoped for in many ways. That's my point on a personal level.

On a more objective level, it's impossible to pin down the single feature that makes the IE games so great. But that's because games are holistic products where the whole is more than the sum of its parts. There is not a single element that makes BG2 or PS:T what they were. It's how the different elements (D&D, the beautiful and artsy background, the story, the world, the interaction, the dialogues, the npcs, the humor, the combat. etc) came together and the creative spirit you can feel behind the whole venture (those games sweat the passion of their devs).

In that sense, I'm not worried by the minute changes to gameplay: the point is how the game will play in general terms. I can trust or distrust Obsidian's ability to recreat the holistic feel of the IE games. Personally, I believe that they are able to make it and even to improve the formula (while I expect Wasteland 2 to be a lot more "conservative"). After having put 120 $ on the whole thing, I better trust them .

Modifié par FedericoV, 03 octobre 2012 - 07:44 .

[twincast]

There are several P&P games that handle magic well, most of them with mana pools. D&D is not the be all end all of P&P RPG's, let alone the only (old) one.

As much as I love the IE games and D&D3.5, I still despise Vancian casting as much as when I first heard of it in the days of yore.

I don't really care if there's one (fatigue), two (mana & stamina) or three (magical, mental & physical) bars, but give me that rather than Vancian any time of the day, any day of the year.

Again: D&D≠∃!P&P

Most importantly mages (in an RPG) should always be useful and never walking engines of mass destruction that would level whole cities in a matter of minutes if the environment would actually react realistically. Magical meteors might be made of awesome in JRPG's, in CRPG's they are most definitely made of groan.

I don't like cool-downs much more than Vancian either, though. Mostly because it makes barely more sense.

What I like are (varying) cast times. They essentially serve the same purpose as cool-downs, are a bit more tactical and IMO aren't immersion-breaking. Win-win as far as I am concerned.

Gatt9 wrote...
-Point-buy because some people complained that they didn't want to keep hitting the Roll button,  because they want nothing less than 18's.

I'll grant you the rest, but that's just blatantly idiotic grumpy old elitist reasoning. The draw doesn't lie in the assumption of having a game-breaking über-character (which is only possible with lucky stat-rolling anyway), but in being able to create the character you want as well as possible within a given system without any arbitrary, artificial, pseudo-realistic and often plain frustrating restrictions. And it's not like point-buy makes stat-rolling impossible if you are so inclined.

Allan Schumacher wrote...

#lo~ng post#

Couldn't agree more. (With everything but Jaheira. Ugh.)

Modifié par twincast, 03 octobre 2012 - 09:25 .

[Allan Schumacher]

And that's where Cooldowns come in. They're an action RPG mechanic. They promote intensity; They facilitate uninterruptable gameplay flow; they remind the player of the game's ticking clock. This is such a *wrong* mood.

A cooldown is simply a resource mechanic. It can be instituted with any sort of arbitrary randomness that the vancian magic system requires. I do not believe that a cooldown is inherently action RPG. Why must it be?

--BG1 probably wouldn't have lost a whole lot... well, except for the fact that it's a low level campaign and a cooldown system would have rendered half the character classes moot. I mean, why be An archer and suffer from missing your opponents with your underpowered arrows, when you could just be a mage and use magic missile, every 6 seconds for at least double the damage, and without the possibility of ever missing. Also, the story would have needed to be redesigned to accomodate Cooldowns. Remember: Gorion was kicking Serevok's ass before he ran out of spells and had to use his dagger....against a master swordsman.... And so he died.

I'd disagree Gorion was "kicking Sarevok's ass." Besides, Gorion still loses if all of his spells just happen to be on cooldown for the next minute (let alone if it was 2 or 3 minutes), given how fast that fight is.

There's an implicit assumption that everyone makes that because a resource is on cooldown, it must be a short cooldown that trivializes resource management. Frankly, a punitive cooldown system could be set up to make spell casting much more restrictive and punitive, as the resource could be just as arbitrarily more expensive and risky than the magic system BG2 had.

[Eurypterid]

Update #15.

A video, new stretch goals, and a more in-depth look at the 4 'core' classes. The update's just too big to copy/paste so I'll just leave the link.

[Morroian]

From the update: "Wizard - Widely respected in most societies, wizards of Project Eternity are men and women of high education and extreme mental discipline, if not always outright intelligence. Wizards are sometimes called navigators of the mortal soul, charting out and practicing the precise ways in which “ordinary” people can unlock the power inside of themselves. Using their knowledge to truly spectacular ends, wizards rely not only on ancient practices but also their own research to propel them forward. Far from being occult or protected knowledge, most wizards' spells are just so incredibly complex and physically demanding that even practiced wizards cannot invoke them without the use of expensive, specially-enchanted tomes."

This sounds suspiciously close to vancian, unfortunately

[Sister Goldring]

Update 15 is a good'n. I'm really keen to learn more about wizards and tomes - I'm thinking this may have something to do with limiting the spamming high powered spells. I want to know more!

Also, how cool is it to have priests again instead of just a healer mage build. I used to play clerics all the time fanatical ones, gentle caring ones, disillusioned losing their faith ones, it'll be so much fun to role another for PE.

I'm not sure about the Adventurers Hall though, I'm having trouble seeing how it would work and I'm really big on NPCs with in-game reactions and of course interesting personalities, so I'm not sure that I'll make any use of this feature. Still I'm not going to write it off without knowing more about it.

[Chromie]

 Full of win!

[Fast Jimmy]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

There's an implicit assumption that everyone makes that because a resource is on cooldown, it must be a short cooldown that trivializes resource management. Frankly, a punitive cooldown system could be set up to make spell casting much more restrictive and punitive, as the resource could be just as arbitrarily more expensive and risky than the magic system BG2 had.

For whatever its worth to the conversation...

http://forums.obsidi...ost__p__1221491

[Yrkoon]

Morroian wrote...

From the update: "Wizard - Widely respected in most societies, wizards of Project Eternity are men and women of high education and extreme mental discipline, if not always outright intelligence. Wizards are sometimes called navigators of the mortal soul, charting out and practicing the precise ways in which “ordinary” people can unlock the power inside of themselves. Using their knowledge to truly spectacular ends, wizards rely not only on ancient practices but also their own research to propel them forward. Far from being occult or protected knowledge, most wizards' spells are just so incredibly complex and physically demanding that even practiced wizards cannot invoke them without the use of expensive, specially-enchanted tomes."

This sounds suspiciously close to vancian, unfortunately

"physically demanding" gives me a  fatigue/mana-bar vibe actually.  Which, IMO, is not a whole lot better or different than cooldowns, especially since games with mana bars inevidably have mana potions that you can collect and hoard, thus trivializing the entire spell-casting mechanic to the point  where it's not much different  from  an Archer with his bow, and his ever-increasing stockpile of arrows.

Joy Division wrote...
I disagree with your premise that the problem is not the vancian system. I like using my head and being forced into situations where options are inherently limited and I don't have access to my trusted "I win" spell. That's fine. But with the vancian system, that's every single adventuring day for low to even mid level casters. Every day. You never know if the first encounter is going to be the last one. That's fine. That's the way it should be. What's not fine is my class that it literally called magic user has to throw darts if their DMs hate the premise of magic shops or if your still in the "slum" section of Phlan from the old Gold Series Box games. Vancian only works if you give magic users the means to circumvent vancian restrictions and use more magic than they should. You mentioned the piles of scrolls and wands in your mage's inventory. OK, that's fine. But now isn't the real limiting resource for your magic user her bank account, not the imposed vancian restriction? What's the point of vancian...so the fighter has more gold than the mage?

The point of vancian is 3 fold. 

1.  to reinforce the notion that magic isn't a physical activity, it's a mental and spiritual activity.  To equate  casting spells (in any way) with swinging a sword is simply erroneous, even beyond the mechanics differences.  And lets speak english:  Mages are not supposed to win endurance contests against warriors.  Instead, they're supposed to win the mental game.  This means picking and choosing when they expend themselves with the full realization that if they're not careful, and mindful they will find themselves out of  ammo (metaphorically speaking)  at the worst time.

2.  To reinforce the notion that  a mage does not 'own' his magical energy.  He is borrowing  it, from wherever its source is  (the ether/weave/planes/gods etc).  The clock does not dictate his power.  The source does.

3.  To limit mages.   No,  It is *not* fair that a class  that gives its practitioners   the ability to point a finger at an opponent and turn them to dust with the utterance of a single incantation, be given the ability to continue using this power as frequently as a fighter does his weapon.  It is *not* fair, that a class that gives its practitioners the ability to wave their hands and cause the sky to open up and rain fire and brimstone down  on the battlefield be given the ability to maintain such power as a fighter does his knockdown skills.  Thankfully, intelligently designed games allow a mage to function as a mage even if he happens to run out of spells.  In a standard party, the mage is the brains of the outfit, he  can still serve as linguist, loremaster, magic detector, alchemist etc.  And btw, ditto with clerics.  Heal is a *skill* in D&D, not just a series of spells.


But to address your examples, I'm not sure how your DM did it, but mine did indeed give our mages magical, 'at will' tools to fit the situation.  (Wands of magic missile  are level 1 treasure)  And lets put things in perspective,  at second level, no class can be impressive all day.  Thankfully, they don't need to be.  If your 2nd level party is placed in a life or death situation where the  difference between victory and death hinges on whether your mage still has a copy of  chomatic orb left, then your DM has mis-balanced his encounter design. 

Modifié par Yrkoon, 04 octobre 2012 - 01:15 .

[slimgrin]

Skelter192 wrote...

 Full of win!

Looks like that's our party. I'm liking Cadegund - sexy knight-chick with a friggin' musket.

Modifié par slimgrin, 04 octobre 2012 - 01:01 .

[Eurypterid]

Yeah, she looks great. That dwarf archer looks awesome too. Definitely going to be in my party.

[Eurypterid]

More Q&A with Feargus:


Question: I love the new stretch goals!
Feargus: Fhew.... We talked a ton about them and tried to take a lot of the feedback that people had about our previous ones into account.

Question: do you have plans how you will distribute non-steam (aka drm-free) version of game for linux/mac?
Feargus: Not sure yet. Our hope that is that GOG will be supporting all of that by then. I don't know that they will or anything - but we are hoping. If not, we will figure something else out. Maybe ourselves.

Question: are you going to be showing us how much money/many backers you're getting from paypal so we're aware of what goals have been reached, and what's left to get to them? would be kind of useful for people who aren't sure what level they're going to go for, or how much they want to push others to get in on it. if they see we're like 100 backers away from a new dungeon level when adding in the paypal numbers, i can see people going to try to get people to just pledge even a dollar to get there.

Feargus: Yes, we are going to do that. I am not sure how often we are going to do it, since it is a little more manual. We are talking about it more tomorrow and we will then have a better answer.

Question: You may want to look at the Humble Store for multi-platform distribution. They support multi-platform, DRM free, and can even work with you to offer Steam and/or Desura keys. Legend of Grimrock and Trine 2 use them, and it works great for me.
Feargus: We will absolutely check that out.

Question: Courtesans are mentioned in the back story of rogues. Does this imply that there will be any adult based thieving skills, sexual appeal checks, or something similar?
Feargus: I need to get Josh on to cover stuff like that. Which means, I'm not sure on that one. Sorry.

Question: I like the typical fantasy tropes as much as the next guy, but will there be any love for the bizarre in PE, maybe in some side quests? I'm talking David Lynch levels of weird here. I love me some mind-bending surreality.
Feargus: I don't know about Twin Peaks weird, but one of our goals/pillars with the project is to have that part of it be different. We can have the traditional with a twist, new that really ties into the world and then a bit that is weird/different

Question: Will character classes have specific base character models for them? Or will you be able to create a character that will look the same (physical appearance) no matter what class he is?
Feargus: We are still talking about that. I think there will be a certain amount of sharing though - the reason is that if we go with lots of unique models then we can make less things for each model. So, we want to make sure there are a ton of options for each model that we do create.

Question: So... kits?
Feargus: Josh question.

Question: Are there any ideas on how combat skills will be learned? Are you thinking of doing skill trees or something like that? I don't recall reading on that aspect of things yet, though there was that nice writeup on non-combat skills. How many white boards have you guys gone through?
Feargus: We are definitely due for some more of them - they are looking a little ragged. As for learning the skills, Josh has put a system together - but he'd like to wait to talk about the details on it.

Question: Are we going to see things like spells that teleport, read minds, create stuff, view far locations and other interesting things powerful people can do outside combat?
Feargus: We haven't really talked about spells of that magnitude yet. I would expect that we will work on a limited number of some really cool big spells though.

Question: on skills in general... have you thought about having some of them be taught by NPCs? like some special skills that aren't necessarily class specific, but are learned in a more natural way of master teaching apprentice? just something that occurred to me all of a sudden, and i think that would be really cool.
Feargus: I'll throw that over to Josh in e-mail right now and see if wants to cover that in an update.

Question: How long do you estimate pre-production might be for PE if you have any estimates at all in that department? Sorry if that seems a silly question. Just curious. I know this has been brought up several times, but are we likely to see any far reaching goals much farther off than the current ones? I love what we have so far though. Are there any chances of seeing a goals featuring more classes or is 9 going to be the cap on classes so it doesn't get too bloated? I do love the idea of a possible documentary on the making of the game. I love hearing from all of you on the work that goes into it all and how things are progressing.
Feargus: Pre-Production Time - We generally do 1/3, 1/3, 1/3. So with a project that is 18 months, that means 6 months in pre-production, 6 months in production and 6 months in post-production. We have a leg up with the Unity engine and already have basic movement and formations working, so it might be more like 5 , 7, 6 for PE. Longer Stretch Goals - There is one up on the whiteboard right now. We talked about it a lot last night, an bit tonight and agreed that we would decide tomorrow about it. Documentary - We actually met with a group about that. Trying to figure out if the cost is something that should go into it or the game.

Question: Will the people who pledge via PayPal be counted towards the 2,500 new backer per level goal?
Feargus: Yes they will be. We are trying to figure out when to do those updates.

Question: Hey I was thinking about the nature of the soul as it was represented in D+D, and came across something you guys might like (if you haven't considered it already). Elementals and creatures of the Outer Planes had souls that were inseperable from their bodies, meaning that if their body perished then so would their soul...
Would there be creatures like this in P:E? Perhaps mortals would be special in that their souls would "live on" whereas other creatures would not be so fortunate?
Feargus: Let me send over to Josh on the souls question. That is all him. You'll find that with class, some combat, some skills and soul questions - I like to defer to him. He's the man on that stuff.

[Cyberarmy]

slimgrin wrote...

Skelter192 wrote...

 Full of win!

Looks like that's our party. I'm liking Cadegund - sexy knight-chick with a friggin' musket.

Is she using some kind of talisman? glowing thing on her left hand? Maybe she is a priest with a musket. Oh gush


Edit: But my favorite is DAT MONK. Damn i have a soft spot for monks and this ye'olde one looks bad@ss with flaming fists!

Modifié par Cyberarmy, 04 octobre 2012 - 06:32 .

[Jozape]

Cadegun has a crystal or something in her breastplate if you've seen the earlier concept art, so that's what she would be holding. Not sure if that's just flair for the art, or if it has some significance? If so, we might end up with a PS:T style inventory where you can't change certain equipment.

Alternatively Cadegun might require 'cleric' specific armor.

[HiroVoid]

Looking forward to rolling at least a priest. Curious what roleplaying one in the setting would be like.

[Cyberarmy]

Cadegun seems like "turning evil" and the symbol on her pants (ehem ) tells me shes likely a priest with a musket. Even an inquisitor maybe.

BTW im really interested in Cipher class, soul manipulation here we come!
Also wizard is wearing pants, huge plus there and it seems like we can make some fencing fighters/rogues.

Sold my last kidney and one side of lung for more backing

[Allan Schumacher]

Remember to keep enough organs to live so you can play it!

[Cyberarmy]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

Remember to keep enough organs to live so you can play it!

Stomach, lung and heart is enough. Brain is overrated imo.