To Obsidian, if you still read this.

[Davoker]

It was very difficult to put an option in the game to disable any NPC and item related to backers... there are tens of thousands of people, many more than backers, who have bought the game, and this is something that bothers all of us, even many backers.

In the lore of the game the divine race is supposed to be "extremely rare" to find, but the NPC backers "completely break" that lore, because most of the NPC backers are divine.

To keep the backers happy, the vast majority of players have to eat these NPCs and decorations with names and stories that talk about marvel super heroes, famous singers, actors... we have to eat all that... it's not a matter of "ignoring them", you can't ignore a divine NPC, you can see it at a glance.

An option in the main menu to disable this content, and instead put generic NPCs would have been appreciated by many, because here we have all paid, not only the backers...

You have also ignored bugs that still exist practically since 2015 or that have arisen due to the various changes over the years, bugs that some people in the modding community have been able to fix, but that some escape because they must be at a level not editable for a user who does not have the developer's tools.

Trust not only has to be earned, it has to be maintained, all this has a solution, and you don't need a large group to make these changes, you can assign a single person who can fix the few bugs you have, and add an option to disable NPCs and backers elements.

But you have to want to do it.

PS: Bad english xD

[Kurosu]

I agree that adding the backers as in game NPC's was a bad idea, however you can easily avoid them thanks to their frames. They have a golden one . After I realised this I just kept ignoring them

But anyways you are barking at the wrong tree. Obsidian got bought by Microsoft . Now everything is in their hands , including Avowed . I wouldnt count on a single update on the previous Pillars games

[D'amarr from Darshiva]

Not being a spokesperson for Obsidian, but they have not participated in this forum except for the rare pinned topics.

A better place, better because of higher visibility and activity of Obsidian staff members, would be their own forum:
--> https://forums.obsidian.net/forum/87-pillars-of-eternity/


About the kickstarter backer NPCs:

An option to remove them would not suffice, since there are other kickstarter rewards within the game that are immersion breaking and/or questionable, too. Such as the kickstarter backer achievement and tomb stone messages (there would be better ideas what to do with tomb stones and tombs). Further, some backers have made higher financial contributions that gained them the rare rewards like a custom portrait, designing an item, helping with designing an area or inn, designing an opposed party of adventurers (likely also the nonsensical one from the Dozens that is encountered within their HQ, possibly some of the bounties) - effectively, removing only the backer NPCs would not be a fair move.

The combined forces of the kickstarter campaign backers have made this game possible, and they are to be thanked. Similarly with PoE 2 that has collected some more cash than PoE.

As I have not followed "Project Eternity" during the early stages and have not monitored any of the backer specific discussions either (while the campaign was still collecting cash and adding further stretchgoals, but also during the backer beta), I can only assume that the devs and contributors were happy with the implementation of the various rewards. And one of the loading screens even warns about them, so some problems have been foreseen. Yet they have not added any to the DLCs and PoE 2, giving fig backers other reward options - and retroactively removing some backer rewards from PoE base game would be ill-advised.


About remaining bugs:

The software development life cycle of this project has ended in 2017.
--> https://pillarsofeternity.fandom.com/wiki/Version

It is a normal move for the devs to move on to their next project after some time. Whether a bug may be known since 2015 and may have been reported to Obsidian, too, doesn't imply that it was reproducible, easily reproducible or easy to fix.

[Davoker]

Originally posted by D'amarr from Darshiva:

Not being a spokesperson for Obsidian, but they have not participated in this forum except for the rare pinned topics.

A better place, better because of higher visibility and activity of Obsidian staff members, would be their own forum:
--> https://forums.obsidian.net/forum/87-pillars-of-eternity/


About the kickstarter backer NPCs:

An option to remove them would not suffice, since there are other kickstarter rewards within the game that are immersion breaking and/or questionable, too. Such as the kickstarter backer achievement and tomb stone messages (there would be better ideas what to do with tomb stones and tombs). Further, some backers have made higher financial contributions that gained them the rare rewards like a custom portrait, designing an item, helping with designing an area or inn, designing an opposed party of adventurers (likely also the nonsensical one from the Dozens that is encountered within their HQ, possibly some of the bounties) - effectively, removing only the backer NPCs would not be a fair move.

The combined forces of the kickstarter campaign backers have made this game possible, and they are to be thanked. Similarly with PoE 2 that has collected some more cash than PoE.

As I have not followed "Project Eternity" during the early stages and have not monitored any of the backer specific discussions either (while the campaign was still collecting cash and adding further stretchgoals, but also during the backer beta), I can only assume that the devs and contributors were happy with the implementation of the various rewards. And one of the loading screens even warns about them, so some problems have been foreseen. Yet they have not added any to the DLCs and PoE 2, giving fig backers other reward options - and retroactively removing some backer rewards from PoE base game would be ill-advised.


About remaining bugs:

The software development life cycle of this project has ended in 2017.
--> https://pillarsofeternity.fandom.com/wiki/Version

It is a normal move for the devs to move on to their next project after some time. Whether a bug may be known since 2015 and may have been reported to Obsidian, too, doesn't imply that it was reproducible, easily reproducible or easy to fix.

Well, giving option to "hide" at least the NPCs and the text of the tombs for example, doesn't mean "remove the backer content", you are simply giving an option to hide something in the game, that option has to be feasible when we know that through a mod you can even change the names and the frequency in which the NPCs backers are of divine race or other races.

Nothing is eliminated, only the option to hide it is given, but well, I guess it has no solution anymore, I just ignore them, but there are things you can not ignore, like the NPCs that are divine, no need to see their golden sign, you see that they are divine race, and according to the lore, this race is very rare to see, however in the game we can see them everywhere, that is not good for the lore of the game either.

[D'amarr from Darshiva]

The primary issue here is that the request comes late - very late. IMO too late. The game is six years old, and expecting the developers to add a feature seems like a desperate move. The core of the player base has simply ignored those NPCs. Their slightly golden/yellowish name plates become rather obvious once you know about that.

Yeah, they still confuse some of the new players, but uh, come on, the game's lore isn't hurt much by the existence of godlike backer NPCs. You can play a godlike as your main character, and it won't lead to a vastly different experience compared with playing any of the other races. You can create six or more godlike companions, and even that won't lead to anything exceptional.

Some other game features have a much bigger impact on immersion and overall experience. Such as the infinite stash, no encumbrance, limited camping supplies, a half-baked stronghold, no inter-character reputation, party global disposition, resting for weeks and months without continueing to chase Thaos ...

If no external mod exists yet that adds an option to hide the backer NPCs, perhaps there is no strong interest in such a feature.

Btw, software release processes commonly involve a rather complex chain of steps that require more than a single developer, tester, QA person, release engineer. You absolutely don't want a single guy to touch such a large project and possibly mess it up with regression and new breakage. Typically, the exact developer environment cannot be reproduced anymore, since new/upgraded tools are used meanwhile, and allegedly small changes can cause side-effects and lead to unexpected results - like rebuilding/recompiling files with newer compilers and introducing problems and changed behavior.

[Du-Vu]

IEmod can disable backer NPC dialogue and rename them to be lore-friendly, among other things. Can't recall if it had an option to remove them completely or not. https://www.nexusmods.com/pillarsofeternity/mods/1

[D'amarr from Darshiva]

According to the few available topics about that mod related to thoughts about removing all backer NPCs, it cannot do that.

[Davoker]

You can't delete them no, I don't know if there is no interest or the mod is not able to do that in the way you can program options, rather I think the latter hehe.