I'm happy to support development of games like this, and my pledge includes the collector's edition for Divinity: Original Sin 2. However, this will be the last CE I purchase from Larian if it ends up being as disappointing as the CE from Divinity: Original Sin.
D:OS CE's was riddled with problems: A map of extremely poor quality (and, honestly, entirely useless as far as helpful maps go), a set of crafting cards which covered only a tiny fraction of the more basic crafting recipes, a page of stickers that are still sitting in the box unused, and a small poster with an annoying amount of folding creases. The manual and deck of cards were decent enough. Really, its only saving graces (to me) were the inclusion of a soundtrack, some fairly weak DLC items, and the additional copy of the game.
D:OS 2's CE is $125. It comes with two digital-only copies of the game, which you are selling for $25 per. That's $50 of software and $75 of everything else, which includes a cloth map, a printed game manual, a "high-quality, hardcover artbook", a "high-quality, hardcover lorebook", a mug, a sticker pack, and some unknown item to replace the Ouija board (thank goodness), and behind the scenes footage (digital only? Which is odd when there's already a plethora of footage available on Youtube). Items like the forum badge are included, but ultimately meaningless to me.
Compare this to a CEs from Blizzard, which range in cost from $75 - $90. They include a $50 game, meaning for $25 - $40 you get items like a 150+ page high quality artbook, CD soundtrack, mousepad (usually with a map printed on it), often wildly coveted DLC items, multi-disc behind-the-scenes blu-ray disc set, free-trial keys for friends, etc.
My point is the price on your D:OS 2 CE is so high that I sincerely hope the lore and artbooks are something more impressive than 20 pages with large font. I don't think anyone is expecting the 1000 page phonebook-style mockups you're using to represent them on the Kickstarter page, but the $75 worth of stuff beyond the $50 of game in the CE box needs to feel worth it (for a change). Especially because you have chosen to focus on physical items and not offer any in-game digital goodies.
I'm not sure what's replacing the Ouija board (I'm just glad something is), but it would really be nice if it were something that could be helpful and both immediately and frequently used with your games, instead of something people will just handle long enough to set down and collect dust somewhere (usually back in the CE box).
I'm not trying to be a cruel, but after the last CE I swore "never again", and yet here I am again purchasing another because I love the kind of games you make. Your last game was awesome, but your last CE was far, far from it. Please.. just knock the presentation in that box out of the park this time.
