Eternity Josh Sawyer at Digital Dragons: Deadfire post-mortem

[Filthy Sauce]

Josh's pants trigger me for some reason.

 

[Beastro]

He called you guys "psychotic". Lol, grognards. :D

Actually makes me wonder what autists think of how normal people react to shit.

Please, we know Josh Sawyer by his works. Deadfire’s systems were designed by someone with an obsessive compulsive obsession with symmetry. It’s not even about balance at this point, he clearly just hates it when similar things are uneven. I know how it feels to have compulsions, but this is not a good way to design a game for other people.

In retrospect, Josh is the kind of guy who needs to line up the spines of all the books every time he sees a bookshelf. Obsidian foolishly assumed this would make him a good librarian.

*It's unbalanced out there....*

You are basically responding to a Sawyer of your own creation.

A photo from Sawya's prison years; if it weren't cropped, you'd catch a glimpse of swastika tattooed on his chest. True story.

Well, now I know what Sawyer would look like as Freddie Mercury for Halloween.

 

[Mr. Hiver]

I always found all the accusation about "balance" complete nonsense. Just a simpleton absurd meme that infected a lot of codex, as usual.
AoD is one of the most balanced RPGs ever made - so what?

As many, many quotes attest, he mainly tried to make all attributes valuable to all classes in some way, which is a good idea. Exact execution is another matter but that wasnt so bad either. Not great but not like the most horrible implementation ever. The great itemization of deadfire shows there was no real attempt to "streamline weapons" so they are all the same. And classes do play differently.

The issues with the game came from other things and in Deadfire the plot and writing are the biggest fault. PoE had plenty of other bad decisions besides even worse plot and NPC characters, excluding the companions written by CA.

 

[Joni Odin von Hassenstein]

I'm one of those people who actually liked PoE.
But what he says pretty much in the beginning about every faction having one companion as a mouthpiece was one of the few off-putting things in the PoE-series for me. It's so formulaic. That's not how you do art, bro!
Interesting that it was Chris Avellone who came up with this crap.

 

[Alpan]

This video in particular, speaking as if somehow the "hardcore fans" and their "psychosis" is at fault is what my response is specifically about.

All I have been saying for two posts now is that there is no such accusation. The video -- which is more or less the definitive post-mortem of the game -- does not blame hardcore fans for the way the game ended up. It is a mischaracterization of the post-mortem which is really quite informative.

That's really all. I already like the game well enough, and if I really did want an edifying conversation on the merits of the game, there's the main thread for that.

Actually makes me wonder what autists think of how normal people react to shit.

What would you like to know?

Josh Sawyer being autistic is a bit of a meme here, but he isn't. Similarly with the so-called symmetry obsession; he exhibits no such sign. What you do have is a designer who really believes in the merits of symmetry and is vocal about it, but that is an indication of his design preferences.

 

[RickOmbo]

Don't you understand that every class has to have his own power source?

 

[luj1]

Then again, the Codex wasn't much help in identifying PoE's problems either.

But the Codex was a great help in releasing retrospectives! You know, the kind of article you write for a 15 year old classic 2 year old game to help the sequel sell better.

 

[Elephantman]

Is the new Soywer shape a final admission that he only pretended to ride a bike?
(a sports one at that! xD)

 

[FreeKaner]

Sawyer just likes open-world FPS games. He plays them alll the time and the only good game he had big part in directing that is good in the end is New Vegas.

 

[Elephantman]

There is no functional difference between F3 and NV. And the narrative in NV is about as good as POE2. Its shit.

 

[Murk]

I'm one of those people who actually liked PoE.
But what he says pretty much in the beginning about every faction having one companion as a mouthpiece was one of the few off-putting things in the PoE-series for me. It's so formulaic. That's not how you do art, bro!
Interesting that it was Chris Avellone who came up with this crap.

I think the execution is what matters. Thinking back to PS:T, I think it's fair to say each companion was a "Mouth piece" for their faction/ideology and it worked fine. It makes sense that people unique and strong enough to be your in-game companions are also strong-willed people with their own ideas. Similar concepts were in Mask of the Betrayer where each character has their own agenda and often they conflict.

I imagine Avellone's envisioned version was something more like "an embodiment of the best and worst traits, a strong paragon of that faction, one that makes you understand just what that sub-culture is about".

But now I'm defending Avellone, the man who could not slay the wolves. =((

 

[Diggfinger]

The Codex review also said Deadfire is a huge improvement over PoE, right?
And now it's even better with turn-based mode so what's all the bitching about?

 

[Infinitron]

How do you think guise, does he legitimately believe that Deadfire was better than Pillars 1 in every regard and it just magically flopped because of some incomprehensible higher power, or he just doesn't want to admit that it was his and his SJW brigade's abysmal writing that did Deadfire in? Notice how he talks about Metacritic scores and not sales, despite latter being a much better metric of how the game turned out.

Actually, the RPG Codex Consensus™ is that Sawyer is basically correct here. Many users here say that Pillars of Eternity 1 not only reviewed better but also sold better than it should have. They say the second game did poorly primarily because people realized they didn't like the first game all that much, not because of its own faults.

 

[Perkel]

*ignores advice from the hardcore fans*

*makes a game that bombs*

"Guys, you shouldn't pay much attention your your hardcore fans. The difficulty and writing of Deadfire are fine."

Yeah i just watched it, stuff he talks about is literally what we were talking about all the time.
It is hilarious watching his mea culpa. Also he didn't say "psychotic" about folks here or anywhere else. He said that about reception of companions due to their retarded companion reputation system.

Also he thinks that VO is standard now for this types of games. Which shows he isn't learning animal.
Pathfinder which released after them and had partial VO has exact same sales as Deadfire despite lesser metascore.

Such features help you when your game is already doing well. If they would cut that shit and invest that into turn based mode from start they would be selling now a lot more than that.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

How do you think guise, does he legitimately believe that Deadfire was better than Pillars 1 in every regard and it just magically flopped because of some incomprehensible higher power, or he just doesn't want to admit that it was his and his SJW brigade's abysmal writing that did Deadfire in? Notice how he talks about Metacritic scores and not sales, despite latter being a much better metric of how the game turned out.

it sold like shit because it's a bad setting

 

[Infinitron]

Another thing: I would be careful of exaggerating the degree to which Sawyer "admits the grognards were right all along!"

One thing he notably doesn't do in this talk is say the game's commercial failure had anything to do with ~balance~. In fact, he praises himself for removing overpowered builds quickly after launch.

He blames the unengaging story, he blames the ship combat, he blames the game being real-time instead of turn-based. He doesn't blame balance, or any of his changes to the D&D formula.

 

[Delterius]

2019 and Roguey is still Sawyer's lawyer because he said something to her, once.

I think he should be criticized for things he says and does, not for something he explicitly denied he was doing back in 2013 https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.p...to-the-new-thread.75947/page-544#post-2488797

In 2015 I even put together a post of all the times he ever said anything along the lines of "I'm not trying to achieve perfect balance" https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/josh-sawyer-and-fun-discuss.96540/page-8#post-3767259

Please, we know Josh Sawyer by his works. Deadfire’s systems were designed by someone with an obsessive compulsive obsession with symmetry. It’s not even about balance at this point, he clearly just hates it when similar things are uneven. I know how it feels to have compulsions, but this is not a good way to design a game for other people.

In retrospect, Josh is the kind of guy who needs to line up the spines of all the books every time he sees a bookshelf. Obsidian foolishly assumed this would make him a good librarian.

This is only for those who truly know Josh through his works.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

Yet when they get it they skip them just like anyone else, and read the lines to get through them faster. And nobody listened to all of voiced dialogue in DoS2 either.

I think people care more about their game seeming to have hight production value than about particular things that are associated with high production value. They want to feel that they use a high quality product, they want to boost their self esteem by using high quality products. They want to be seen as serious people. Playing games with VO is a status symbol for them. They don' really care about VO.

 

[Infinitron]

Yet when they get it they skip them just like anyone else, and read the lines to get through them faster. And nobody listened to all of voiced dialogue in DoS2 either.

I think people care more about their game seeming to have hight production value than about particular things that are associated with high production value. They want to feel that they use a high quality product, they want to boost their self esteem by using high quality products. They want to be seen as serious people. Playing games with VO is a status symbol for them. They don' really care about VO.

Well, it's an interesting question. When I watch a movie or television episode on my computer, I always use subtitles, and I read the subtitles as I watch. But I don't think you could say the experience of watching a movie with just the subtitles would be the same. Voice acting in video games might work in a similar way.

 

[KK1001]

The game was fucked from jump street and you retards still trying to squeeze and ounce of enjoyment out of it are truly pathetic. If you didn't lose all hope for the series a third of the way through the first game you are lost. The second reviewed poorly because it's a bad game and the nostalgia factor wore off and people realized that POE1 was actually quite bad too.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

VOs are too fucking slow. There needs to be an option to speed them up by 25-35% which makes them faster without distorting it.

 

[111111111]

Yet when they get it they skip them just like anyone else, and read the lines to get through them faster. And nobody listened to all of voiced dialogue in DoS2 either.

I think people care more about their game seeming to have hight production value than about particular things that are associated with high production value. They want to feel that they use a high quality product, they want to boost their self esteem by using high quality products. They want to be seen as serious people. Playing games with VO is a status symbol for them. They don' really care about VO.

Well, it's an interesting question. When I watch a movie or television episode on my computer, I always use subtitles, and I read the subtitles as I watch. But I don't think you could say the experience of watching a movie with just the subtitles would be the same. Voice acting in video games might work in a similar way.

Yea same, sometimes I enable it for things like accents. Its is sometimes very hard to discern through some people's voice tones and accents

 

[The Great ThunThun*]

How do you think guise, does he legitimately believe that Deadfire was better than Pillars 1 in every regard and it just magically flopped because of some incomprehensible higher power, or he just doesn't want to admit that it was his and his SJW brigade's abysmal writing that did Deadfire in? Notice how he talks about Metacritic scores and not sales, despite latter being a much better metric of how the game turned out.

Actually, the RPG Codex Consensus™ is that Sawyer is basically correct here. Many users here say that Pillars of Eternity 1 not only reviewed better but also sold better than it should have. They say the second game did poorly primarily because people realized they didn't like the first game all that much, not because of its own faults.

Let me just get the record straight for posterity.

PoE2 fixes many mechanics problems of PoE. But still, the core is screwed no matter what. Secondly, the setting is *bad*. It's terrible. Nothing in PoE2 can fix that. So PoE2 is a fail on that front directly. Finally, the writing in PoE2 irrespective of PoE1 is independently bad. It "fixes" the lore dump i.e. does not have them. But its chars, its storytelling and actual writing are at its best mediocre. It's greatest folly is trying to emulate Bioware by being Herosexual. Seriously, that is fan faction tier bad. Let no one think that PoE2 is a *good* game.

 

[Infinitron]

Does "pretty alright" == good?

 

[luj1]

It's mediocre at best Infintron. Get over it