Agreed. Small production run over time will be more expensive than a large one (costs reduce due to scale of production). It will be expensive for them the more physical goodies they offer and ship out at this point.I like physical goodies like maps and other bits and pieces (think of them like keepsakes) but would prefer as someone else suggested a nice meaty manual - haven't seen one decent on in a recent game for a longtime.

Also the idea about pet being a 'live journal' sounds really cool.Hope they take that onboard. 5% from RPS? Wonder what % from Goggers? ;)

With regards to the physical goodies, why not just make a very successful game and sell merch on the side?

I really do like physical fun blocks, however frivolous they are, but I do understand that this isn't exactly big budget.

A big reason why I pledged enough for a boxed copy is because I am hoping for a nice manual. I still have all my Black Isle boxed copies of games and manuals so I'm a bit of a collector also...but the manual is the biggy for me!

Latest Q&A with Feargus:


Hoping to have a better visible way of tracking the PayPal stuff by Monday. And, we are at $27.5K over there, but I still don't know the number of backers there - sorry, we will figure that out.

Question: we will have a digital-only tier with the future expansion too?
Feargus: Working on coming up with that one.

Question: Any chance there will be random encounters much to the likeness of Fallout 2?
Those were awesome!
Feargus: You know we haven't talked about that, but we probably will because of the random encounters that were in BG/BG2/NWN2 - it's a fun system. Although I don't think you'll see a crashed Star Trek lander in PE. :)

Question: calvin wanted to know if alchemy is included in the crafting stretch goal?
Feargus: Crafting potions is included with Crafting.

Question: Any further info on in game itemization? In particular to loot drops especially if we do have random encounters? Items off loot table, or random generator like in Borderlands
Feargus: I don't think we are going to go with a purely random system. So, I am pretty sure that most items are going to be more designer created than algorithmic.

Question: are whips being considered as being an available weapon/tool type? I'm at the EPIC tier and have been thinking designing a whip would be good :)
In general terms, will there be (or has there been) general guidance on the weapons system yet?
Feargus: I talked with Josh about the suggestion, so it's on his list. We will have to figure out in the end if they make the list or not.

Question: The unique pet at the $50 tier. How is that going to be delivered? It seems like extra work to restrict something like that to only a specific subset of players. I figured there isn't a final answer yet, I just wondered if thought was put into that yet. I figure it could be a different copy of the game, or online authentication, or maybe even a serial number that is used. Any ideas yet?
Feargus: We will talk about the suggestion and figure out how it is all going to work. We have to create different packages of things already with the different tiers, so it will get included that way (I'm guessing)

Question: Ever thought of tiers thst only contain 1, one, license copy of the game but cones with the extras including planned expansion?
Feargus: We will work on that idea. Not sure how to word it just yet without having it included at every tier above whatever we would introduce it at. Could cause a lot of confusion.

Question: isnt there anyone you dont know in the bizz?
Feargus: Well after 21 years, you end up knowing a lot of people. It helped that when I got started the industry was probably 5% or 10% of the size it is now. I also got lucky in that in Orange County, CA a lot of companies started up and then exploded - so that helped me knowing people all over the world in games. So, it was a lot of luck - as an example my first job as a tester was to test a game by Silicon and Synapse when they were a very small company of maybe 10 or 15 people. Now they have between 4,000 and 5,000 employees.

Question: we will have some "subverted" monsters in PE like the cranium rats in Planescape Toment?
Feargus: I don't know on that one. The guys are going by the goal of having each element have the familiar with a slight twist, some things that are very new but fit well into the world and then a small amount of the "wacky". So, we shall see.

Question: Which 5 classes were the original 5 in PE, and which 2 were added by the 1.4m and 1.8m stretch goals?
Feargus: Not Paladins. :) I need to go look and then we'll call them out in an update.

Question: What do you think about having some live recorded music for the score of Project Eternity? Not an expensive orchestra, but maybe just some things by soloists or small ensembles? Judging from his comments on the forum, Justin Bell thinks that could be a good idea.
Feargus: I have been talking with Josh about that - particularly since Project Annihilation had that as a stretch goal - he is wondering if our soundtrack will be about big bombastic stuff, so that's why we haven't done that. As for using a smaller set of players, Justin has been looking at that.

Question: I believe Feargus said a few pages back (sometime yesterday) that a new level will be added to the mega dungeon for every 20k and not just for the first 20k. I will ask him when he is online.
Feargus: Haven't decided what to do on the 20K per level of the dungeon yet. Might want to make each dungeon of Facebook likes a bit more of a stretch.

Question: So when are we going to get the full sized concept art of Aloth?
Feargus: With my update tomorrow. Which I guess I am now spoiling. :)

Question: I know you can't give too much away but are we going to see the extreme stretch goals in this next update? All stretch goals that we've seen to date have been relatively shoo-ins for the final build especially if kicktraqer is to be believed. I want to see the goals that will cause people to buckle down and raise more support because we're unsure we'll be able to reach it.
Feargus: Very soon....

Question: How does it feel to be the saviors of WRPG gaming?
Feargus: I don't know about saviors. It's just good to be able to go back and make one of these great games. They were really fun to make back at Black Isle.

Question: Do you have any more information regarding the "Design a X" pledge level rewards? There was a mention of a forum set up for it at some point, but how prominent will these creations be compared to Obsidian's own? I.e. from BG2, I'd be unable to remember more than 5-10 awesome items, while 50 are available for backers in this project. Basically, how epic and high level can/will these things be?
Feargus: I'm sorry I still don't. We really focused this weekend on getting a lot of stuff setup for next week. Adam and I know it's going to be a ton of fun, but it's going to be a marathon.

Question: Are meetings specifically regarding the Kickstarter and those more focusing on the game seperate from one another usually? Odd question I suppose.
Feargus: Yep, we separate them quite a bit. The design meetings that occur right now are mostly between Tim, Chris and Josh. Adam and I jump in, but we are handling most of the KS stuff, so that those guys can focus more on the game. As for agendas - he KS ones have agendas to a point. The design meetings have a topic, but not a list of things to discuss about the topic necessarily. After KS and when there is another designer or two, the meetings will get a bit more agenda driven. However, early on we try to be careful about being too structured meeting heavy.

Ugh. Too long for one post. I'll post the rest when the forum allows me to.

Question: I watched the Youtube about the creation of Fallout, what was your role at that point?
Feargus: I took over the RPG division in 1996 and Fallout was absorbed into it, so that I could help Tim to make sure that he was able to focus purely on the game. The team needed to ramp up at that time, so I worked to get people moved over from other projects. On the game itself, I helped to design SPECIAL - I needed to completely re-design the Hub (so a lot of the Hub stuff is design that I fixed and made work). I then needed to do that with the Boneyard and Adytum as well. One cool quest I did was the one where you get the Blade Runner gun. One quest I did wrong, was to give players the Turbo Plasma rife, which was sort of game breaking. On Fallout 2, I was the Lead Designer, so I did a lot of different things on that game - but an area I did a lot of work on was Vault City.

Question: Is there any chance you might do an RPG in a more contemporary setting in the future?
Feargus: That's a hard one. We would like to explore other settings, but we have to be careful. There are ones that people seem to gravitate towards and ones that they don't. Back at Black Isle, us and Bioware really wanted to make a Kung-Fu RPG called "Five Fingers of Death" but there just wasn't a lot of support for doing it - and I don't think Brian and others were necessarily wrong about being concerned about the reach of it.

Question: A kung-fu RPG ... like Jade Empire? :P
Feargus: Kind of. The pitch that they had put together used the Infinity Engine but zoomed in more and then the cutscenes were re-dubbed old Kung-Fu movies. We thought it was hilarious and fun.

Question: I've been playing RPGs since i'm 7 and seeing the fall of bioware is a really sad moment for me and all RPG players.. That's why i'm looking forward this game A LOT. PS:T is still my favorite WRPG for a very good reason. How much leeway does Chris have for the storyline?
Feargus: Chris is going to have as much leeway as he wants. That's how he and I work together.

Question: Similar to Theo's question, I was curious how far on the story side of things are. I'd imagine it's still very early with it mainly revolving around the concepts and themes that you guys want to tackle.
Feargus: Exactly, first we are building up the world and then the story will get crafted within that.

Question: Are any of the updates next week themed around factions in the game?
Feargus: I don't believe they are - however I don't know what Josh's update or updates are going to be about yet. He was thinking over the weekend about what stuff he would like to talk about next.

Question: If the custom party creation idea is on the cards, you might really REALLY think about adding it early if the stretch goal isn't met. Extreme replayability (and therefore desirability to purchase) right there. Not to mention the hordes of internetizens who are DETERMINED to ONLY do things THEIR WAY.
Feargus: I think the Adventurer's Guild does that - doesn't it?

Question: well yes, but I thought that was a stretch goal?
Feargus: Gotcha, but I think we have a pretty good chance to get to $2.6M. Since with PayPal, we are $157K away from it. I don't want to count the chickens yet though.

Question: Will there be any cannons in the PE world? Not carryable or course.
Feargus: I don't think so, but it's something Josh might add based upon it fitting into the story / scenario of an are.

One more short Q&A with Feargus today:

Question: Are you planning to give the ability to craft spells with the crafting system?
Feargus: We talked about that, but decided that we were not going to include spell crafting. We want the spells in the game to be more unique and make sure the balance worked.

Question: Feargus, you mentioned yesterday or the day before about possibly adding the (possible) expansion as a reward bonus for the $250 and higher pledge tiers. Is that definite or still being bandied about?
Feargus: We'll have an update soon on changes and additions to the tiers.

Question: Is Obsidian planning to run a similar live stream event during then last hours of the Kickstarter as Brian Fargo did with Wasteland 2?
Feargus: That's the plan. Quick announcement of that in our next update tomorrow morning.

Question: Any hint as to how far the stretch goals will go? We're getting awfully close to the end, and the last three days are the most exciting in a kickstarter campaign, fretting about the last stretch goal. I for one am saving upping my pledge for those last days to add to the excitement.
Feargus: We have talked about at least four or five more, maybe six. Plus a couple of ideas for farther stretches.

Question: would it not be cathartic to encounter a despicably evil publishing house in game, and be tasked with... taking care of it. =P
Feargus: I can't confirm nor deny that - the press goes through these comments. :)

Question: One aspect the old IE games were famous for, was the almost epic length of gameplay (80h+) in comparison to more recent games (20-40h). Where is Project Eternity aiming at?
Feargus: Our goal is to hang in there with the old games.

Question: As to the basic spells that a wizard can cast without limit, does the current vision for that system have a fixed, predefined selection of spells that any wizard can cast without limit, or will that selection expand with the level progression of the character to the point where an extremely powerful wizard might have "mastered" the equivalent of 5th or 6th level D&D spells and can cast them without limit?
Feargus: I am pretty sure, and I can check with Josh and Tim, that mages will get strong spells as the progress.

I think that can be said for every Kickstarter game so far.

All I want is decent real-time combat. It sucked bigtime in NVN 2. I don't know why they haven't posted any concept art beyond character classes sketches.

What would you have said? i'm curious. Oh, I was being nice about Microsoft, believe it or not. Back on topic.

Can't really recall, but let's say that I do find both the "Windoze" and the "Micro$*" words equivalent to a racial slur, since you do use a derogatory term to describe a wide variety of things/entities. Add to that the bad day I had then, and feel free to come up with a post I would regret making.

Have you seen today's xkcd?

54,317
backers
$2,432,860
pledged of $1,100,000 goal
8
days to go

Holy crap, Update #17 is up. Some key points:

With only seven days left on the Project Eternity Kickstarter, we want to start the last week off with some pretty incredible things to announce. You might not know that Brian Fargo is the guy who gave many of us our start in the games industry at Interplay – myself (Feargus), Josh Sawyer, Chris Avellone, Scott Everts, Brian Menze, Chris Jones, Chris Parker, Darren Monahan – and the list keeps on going from there. He also gave the guys who started a little company called Silicon & Synapse their first few projects – pretty crazy to think that little company is now Blizzard Entertainment.

Personally, we are incredibly thankful to him and for the second wave of Kickstarter attention he brought with Wasteland 2. But, Brian hasn’t stopped being the great guy that he is, and so, he’s helping us out by letting us add Wasteland 2 as a reward at our higher tiers. So, what tiers will that be? A lot of you have asked for a digital tier after $110, so we are adding a $165 Digital Only Tier. That means Wasteland 2 will get added to this new $165 tier and all the tiers above.

What we are also doing is adding the first expansion pack for the game to the $165 Tier (and above). The expansion will come out approximately six months after Project Eternity is released. That’s right, it’s not DLC, but a real honest to God RPG expansion pack. We don’t have the details on the Expansion yet, but you can bet it will be what you’d expect from an Infinity Engine game expansion.

Wasteland 2 and the planned PE expansion at the $165 pledge tier and up? Nice!

O_0

Shame the Expansion's at such a high tier though, that seems like an odd choice.