Shards Online

[Kaybrie]

Pretty much what we've wanted from NWN2 for 7 years.

If it has a controllable camera (Which it doesn't look like at this stage), it actually would look pretty similar to.

If this little fella gets off the ground, it would basically be a future potential home for NWN, and NWN2 players.

[Grand Unified Theory]

Looks ok, but at less than 15% of their intended goal and less than 3 weeks to do so, I wouldn't hold my breath on it.

[Doubtful]

A whole lot of vagueness in that Kickstarter campaign, a whole lot of hope with zero reason to invest!

Bookmarked for interest, but honestly I don't see it getting anywhere.

[Elusa]

Also over a year and a half for the payoff. Even if they reach their goal, that's a lot of time to run into development problems.

[Kaybrie]

Eh, the Pathfinder Online thing was short of its goal by a good chunk up until the last week of the Kickstarter, I wouldn't exactly say that's abnormal.

I dunno, just looks neat and I'm definitely going to be following it, I even chipped in twenty bucks of my spare money for it... Cause I do hope games like this succeed.

[thaelis]

Heh, went to check this out and thought I'd check out some of the largest-grossing Kickstarter RPG's of all time.

This looks interesting!

http://eternity.obsidian.net/

Seriously, check out the the vids of the game so far. It's like a modern-day Baldur's Gate

[Grand Unified Theory]

Pillars of Eternity actually looks *really* badass. I'd buy it!

[Doubtful]

There's a good chunk short and there's 270k + short...

Maybe it'll succeed, maybe not, only time will tell!

My biggest issue with it is that it's showing a lot of wordy glitz with absolutely no substance behind it at all!

The 'Why Kickstarter' section is a poorly written joke 'Embodies the spirit of Crowdfunding'? What? How, why?

If 'Big companies are terrified to give players this level of freedom' at least take the time to explain how the fuck you're going to take on the mantle, I assume 'Crowdfunding and Kickstarter make it possible for games like this to get made' by summoning magical sky ponies from the heavens who beat out uber-code with their shiny mithril hoof-shoes. The people asking for your trust and money certainly aren't giving you any more reasonable explanation.

Speaking of the people, the vagueness of the buried team section is a little off putting. It's all so nebulous and nothingy, a shame seeing as they look a fairly solid bunch from some googling. The 'Inspired by Ultima Online' seems prudent given quite how many of them worked on that product before leaving to form their own studio! The video's all say 'Our amazing team' but don't shine any light on them at all.

Overall, sure, they're laying out the 'This is our idea' bit quite well, but there's none of the essential followup of 'And this is how we're going to use your money to achieve it'

That, and generic fricking Unity engine blandness. Is Unity really that hard to put together non completely generic shaders in or is looking like everyone elses product the new big thing?


/horrible cold and can't fly to see my missus rant.

[Kaybrie]

If you read their words in the comments section; they've already made it apparent that the game is being made with or without the kickstarter.

I don't know, it's not something I'm asking any member of the community to donate to, I just saw the game and was like "Hey, this looks neat." and saw that it's at its core an engine for PW's.

And lets face it, NWN2's multiplayer is absolute trash, and for what it is, doesn't seem like it's at all worth the 90 bucks I spent on it and the expansion years ago. And yet here I am, with more time invested in this shitty game then I have in AAA's like Skyrim, Mass Effect, Dragon Age and the Witcher combined ten fold.

[Doubtful]

Yeah, I was just feeling ranty yesterday. Bit ill and being driven insane by tinnitus (possibly perforated one or both eardrums. Don't fly with a cold!).

It might have a lot of potential, but they could do a lot better in putting it across to potential backers, the game play videos certainly bring back memories of playing UO back in the day, but that's not necessarily a good thing!

I stand by the Unity comments though. I've stopped backing anything that 'shows off' with the default Unity look, I've already got to many games that look like that.

[Atmosphere]

A whole lot of vagueness in that Kickstarter campaign, a whole lot of hope with zero reason to invest!

Hope is a reason in America, yo.

[thaelis]

Heh, here's another exciting fact I garnered from the Pillars of Eternity blog:

"Together with priests, wizards and druids are the "traditional" spellcasting classes that can cast a certain number of spells of each level per rest. As they gain levels in their classes, they can access more powerful spells. Over time, their weakest per-rest spells become per-encounter spells. At very high levels, the weakest spells eventually become at-will abilities, capable of being cast indefinitely."

So awesome! That is my only real beef with classic D&d ruleset, that Wizard's become useless baggage after X encounters (X being a rather low number).