Eternity Did the PoE series fail commercially because it didn't use the D&D ruleset or was it something else?

[Jedi Master Radek]

Unless you think Feargus is committing securities fraud

I like how null hypothesis is that Feargus isn't committing any frauds. Humans aren't learning animals.

Feargus is committing plenty of frauds, just not against the SEC. He is defrauding publishers, investors and business partners.

He is? Is there any thread about this?

What? You don't know the best Codex thread? Here :

https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.p...game-development-hierarchies-and-more.121588/

Enjoy the best ride of your life.

 

[M. AQVILA]

1. The rule set sucked. Lots of numbers, not much happening.
2. Too many classes. Created tons of gimmicky crap to distinguish them while leaving most of it dissatisfying.
3. Balance.
4. Lame setting that tried not to be Forgotten Realms, while being an entirely inferior version of it.
5. Boooooring plot. Boring quests.
6. Too itself far too seriously.
7. Lore dumps, of all kinds.

This. The spell system sucked too, absolutely generic and uninteresting. In fact almost everything was generic and uninteresting.

Anyway, it all boils down to the game being boring and only fit for autists.

 

[smaug]

I still need to play the game, however, are spells really that boring?

Give an example please?

 

[M. AQVILA]

I still need to play the game, however, are spells really that boring?

Give an example please?

You know how you have different kinds of spells from summoning, divination, necromancy, etc in the old IE games? The cool different high level spells that gives you a sense of fulfillment at how powerful your character has become since you were level 1? And how you can customize your wizard or sorcerer in cool different ways? Well, in PoE that isn't the case.

In PoE you have cookie-cutter spells that almost seem to have been designed for an MMO. You don't have summoning, you have to play the gimmicky version of the bard class for something similar to that even if you don't want to be a bard. You get less in quantity, and less in quality.

See for yourself: https://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Wizard_spell

 

[smaug]

I didn’t like the BG’s but I can’t imagine making a game so much worse.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Here are some of the (shorter) negative reviews on Steam for PoE1 marked 'most helpful' with high playtime(after I filtered out a bunch mentioning Paradox due to review bombing for price increase)

I just couldnt get the touch of the game, the soul is somehow missing. The story, the characters the immersion and lore...everything feels too artificial, i cant really describe it. I am a huge fan of iso rpgs and played all the games over the years and was hyped for a new modern POE. Unfortunately it couldnt amaze me, it is a good game dont get me wrong, but still iam dissapointed and the main idea of iso rpgs is to delve into the story and characters, the character development and the lore, thats all not good enough, imo, in this game compared to other iso rpgs. If you are a hc fan of these kind of games buy it and test it yourself, like i did but dont expect another BG etc.

It was good to be a backer of this game, and at first I liked the Baldur's Gate vibes. It was less enjoyable to play through the whole thing.

I found that the story is... "bad" is not a helpful definition, so "not to my standard." That's not very clear either, so I'll try to explain.
From great RPG I expect a setting and a story that player becomes emotionally attached to. PC has a meaningful choice of actions, and this actions has an impact on a world and a story. (If I don't want to affect the story, I will choose non-interactive art).
In Pillars of Eternity, the main story and all the companion's quests are like tabletop railroad where GM doesn't allow you any actions that you'd like.
Every quest that I remember either stopped in the middle (examples: ) or was here just to tell: "This isn't your story. Don't get attached."

I finished the game with a very bad taste, but it doesn't mean you should end this reading the same way. After all, other people enjoyed the game – because we are all different.

Decent game even though the writing is pathetically weak.

While mechanically serviceable enough, the world of PoE introduces a very introspective lore, meaning constant cross-references to gods and nations are being made from the get-go. The story, obviously being linked to the world itself, assumes that you are interested in the world, but for me, it just misses the mark. The problem with the world-building is that it's neither incredibly unique - nor instantly familiar; it's somewhere in-between where it never really pulls you in as a new intellectual property. Another issue with the constant cross-referencing is that the characters in the world rarely feel interesting individually or believable (other than the old watcher who has lost their mind), the characters rather, end up serving as walls of information. It feels like every character you meet will just be morally aligned with their deity, if only to highlight what defines the deity itself. What I mean is, no personality is interesting enough within PoE that makes you want to look more into their traditions and customs out of curiousity. In PoE, this natural discovery works in reverse; in your face. Now think DA: Origins when you first met Sven the qunari caged in a village. The character itself made me want to know more about the qunari. In PoE there is this ranger-companion with a wolf you meet along your travels. She is from some far-away land searching for her elder. The only problem is that the character herself is so damn boring. PoE2: Deadfire only uplifts this issue further for me. The structure of the plot is also so very.. formulaic. Of course, there has to be a huge city somewhere in there - serving mechanically as a "hub" - with all the rest of the locations feeling like checkpoints. All and all the game ends up feeling too much like a CRPG nostalgia-trip, as opposed to something unique and grand in it's genre.

I ended up pretty much speed-running about 50% of the game, and could not finish Deadfire.

One of the first characters you meet in Pillars of Eternity carries a name which refers to the Dragonlance fantasy books, which prompts a comparison between the two in my mind.

Where Dragonlance (particularly early on) featured rather simplistic and even crude prose, it told an engaging tale and established an interesting world. Pillars, on the other hand, is floridly written, but utterly unengaging. In an attempt to create yet another fantasy world where 'our elves are different', it dumps lore on the player by the truckload, and my eyes glazed over within the first act. It's all just so forgettable.
...
The other major problem is the combat. It's replete with options but is hampered by woeful pathfinding and AI. Anything more than the simplest battle requires micromanagement to ensure that half your party aren't stuck walking into each other's backs, or have simply stopped fighting and are standing there blankly as a fight rages around them.

I hate to give this game a thumbs down, but I just felt so incredibly bored while playing it. Maybe I burned out on the genre from playing Divinity: Original Sin II, but I found Pillars of Eternity to be a tedious slog. After about 20 hours, I didn't understand why I was forcing myself to continue playing it, so I stopped. I do see the appeal for players really committed to investing into the lore of this universe, but I felt like the game expected me to learn far too much far too quickly. It hits you over the head with so much exposition, but does very little to make you care about any of the characters or places. I also find real time with pause to be one of the worst battle engine types in the history of role playing games, so... yeah. I'm going to stop writing now because it just sounds like complaining. Hope you enjoy it more than I did!

Negatives:

- Writing: This game is not for people who don't like reading. There is alot of reading here and even simple dialogue scenes will involve paragraphs after paragraphs of descriptions and narration. It was nice in the beginning but 10 hours in, I started to skim read or skip them altogether. I understand wanting to write a nice story but there's a difference between that and drowning me in a sea of words and purple prose.

- Loading Screens: I hope you like loading screens because there's an obscene amount of them. Everything you do will involve a loading screen. Enter a building, leave a building, go up some stairs, exit a map. They can also last a while too.

- Characters Models and Animations: They look awful. Especially in comparison to the great artwork for them.

I love to buy books to read them.
I love to buy games to play them.

What I am not fond of: having to read games.

The game is extremely outdated, the reviews in the store were obviously bought and paid. I am a hardcore RPG player and this game is just flat out BAD, outdated, onramping of difficulty is mismanaged and lacks vision, the item inventory is confusing and lacks creativity. I feel like this was designed by a team of engineers, without a single user creator, a month of QOL QA, or a single artist with any ounce of creativity.

Do not play this game if you crave any type of originality, and if you want to feel as though your game has any semblence of open world mechanics. This has as many dimensions as a rail shooter from a chuckie cheese's.

Damn... maybe I'm too old now to enjoy this one. Hard to read all those massive amount of un-plain-English texts. No immersion for me. [Tyranny] suits better for me.

I've played this game for about 50 hours and almost finished it. I kept on expecting it to get better, but it never did. I couldn't force myself to finish it. From reading the forums this is a common complaint. Save your money and more importantly your time.

Positives:

- The graphics are good, although they are mostly for show, you can't interact with most of it.
- The interface is well designed
- There is lots to do in the game

Negatives

- There is lots to do, but little of it is interesting, tons of boring quests. A great example of quantity over quality.
- The writting is terrible, I couldn't force myself to read any more of it after wading through endless screens of it for hours.
- The combat is a chaotic mess. Lots of mindless details but few interesting decisions.

Sorry bad english, I am using google translate to help

I love Baldurs Gate. Played it so much, I guess I finished it 8 times, from the start until the end. All characters in Baldur's Gate are fascinating, so lively, and the plot so interesting.

Then I buy Pillars of Eternity and played it some hours ... but, not fell like to keep playing.

I did not like any NPCs. They all seem so empty, their motives seem so artificial and meaningless, the reason they join the main character party seems so superficial and unmotivated ... I do not feel like knowing more of these characters, their story is not interesting. Not have any interesting NPC.

Everybody says that this game is awesome, a masterpiece, but, this game cannot be compared to Baldurs Gate.

Pillars of Eternity does not motivate me to keep playing, I do not feel like to want to know more about the story. It's all so boring and monotonous.

I played through the game but didn't find myself enjoying it. Cannot recommend.

Here are some reasons why:

• Exposition is overwhelming.
  
• Very combat oriented conflict solving. I expect more from CRPGs nowadays.
  
• Endurance/Health: Overly complex HP system. I understand the purpose but didn't like the implementation.
  
• World lore is kinda cool but often forced fed to the player and presented in places where it doesn't really seem to fit naturally.
  
• Main plot line doesn't direct the player to do sidequests, gain xp or improve gear; even though high level and decent gear is required for the final battle. Following main plot only results you being in the final battle with inadequate means to solve it.
  
• "Upgrade your castle"-minigame felt unnecessary and tacked on. I felt like I should care but main plot seemed to forget it right after introduction.

It's exactly like Baldurs Gate but fails to capture the atmosphere of Baldurs Gate.

It's a good game in it's own right but, after 50 or so hours it just gets bland and boring. There is a lot of story, it just fails to interest me. I find myself skipping most dialogue and even skipping a lot of the voice acted dialogue.

Thieving could have been done better, like adding the options to pickpocket and shoplift

Exploration comes down to your stronghold, a few world maps, a couple of towns, and a 13 level long dungeon with some less than impressive loot for completing.

 

[Latro]

if you want world-building in your rpg, put it in the library in-town. there's a reason why the books in morrowind are often a oft-sighted positive by many of its (pathetic) fans, put all da lore and da backstory in appropriate places. finding some rare book in-game should be a treat for anyone actually invested into the game, even the Souls series has rewarded people who look for lore hints in the descriptions.

 

[Black Angel]

(In certain anime there is a scene where certain person casted fireball against villain, villain dodged and then started to strangle caster girl with words: Who the fuck is villain? The fireball destroyed tower of nearby castle. A prince who owned the caste ran out and was screaming: You overdid it, you'd fucking get it. They stopped with strangling, and both girls ran away before they would get it.)

Sauce?

 

[Carrion]

if you want world-building in your rpg, put it in the library in-town. there's a reason why the books in morrowind are often a oft-sighted positive by many of its (pathetic) fans, put all da lore and da backstory in appropriate places. finding some rare book in-game should be a treat for anyone actually invested into the game, even the Souls series has rewarded people who look for lore hints in the descriptions.

You can make good use of in-game books, but an infodump is still an infodump. Morrowind's books were great because they did a lot more than just regurgitating lore on the player, like offering differing accounts of historical events, fictional stories, outright propaganda, and so on. It was world-building within world-building.

Instead of just dumping the lore somewhere, the writers should simply try to show more and tell less. PoE didn't do a very good job with that.

 

[Jimmious]

Btw , as far as the topic title goes, I am under the impression that the first PoE did not fail at all commercially - on the contrary it generated a considerable amount of money for Obsidian.
PoE2 failed in comparison, only because they them selves set the bar too high

 

[PsychoFox]

Btw , as far as the topic title goes, I am under the impression that the first PoE did not fail at all commercially - on the contrary it generated a considerable amount of money for Obsidian.
PoE2 failed in comparison, only because they them selves set the bar too high

There is also the quote by JESawyer that "It ended up working well in the end anyways." (<concerning the sales of PoE II). So i'm suspect of the claims regarding the flop. There's just not much actual info on it, and a lot of opinion and guesswork.

 

[Lacrymas]

Except we have actual info and stats due to the Figstarter investors, much more info than for any other game that official profit numbers haven't been published. Like Kyl Von Kull said, it either flopped or Feargus is committing fraud.

 

[PsychoFox]

Except we have actual info and stats due to the Figstarter investors, much more info than for any other game that official profit numbers haven't been published. Like Kyl Von Kull said, it either flopped or Feargus is committing fraud.

Do you have a link to an updated Fig report? The one i saw is from a few months after release. Is there a newer one?

 

[santino27]

Btw , as far as the topic title goes, I am under the impression that the first PoE did not fail at all commercially - on the contrary it generated a considerable amount of money for Obsidian.
PoE2 failed in comparison, only because they them selves set the bar too high

POE1 was, from all accounts, a commercial success, yes. The lower sales numbers for POE2 suggest, however, that the problem was not that the bar was set too high but a lot of the people who bought POE1 didn't enjoy it enough to sign up for the sequel.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

Except we have actual info and stats due to the Figstarter investors, much more info than for any other game that official profit numbers haven't been published. Like Kyl Von Kull said, it either flopped or Feargus is committing fraud.

Do you have a link to an updated Fig report? The one i saw is from a few months after release. Is there a newer one?

Here is the Fig annual report from two months ago: https://medium.com/playfig/fig-anno...rns-for-the-second-straight-year-81293466a9c1

For the first year, it's a 32% return for Fig investors. They'll make a new filing and a new dividend payment every six months.

Dividend Month Payment Cumulative Return
Nov 18 $192.67 -80.7%
May 19 $125.35 -68.2%

So $318 total so far for each $1000 fig share. Here is Obsidian's own chart for how unit sales translate into Fig dividends:

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Btw , as far as the topic title goes, I am under the impression that the first PoE did not fail at all commercially - on the contrary it generated a considerable amount of money for Obsidian.
PoE2 failed in comparison, only because they them selves set the bar too high

POE1 was, from all accounts, a commercial success, yes. The lower sales numbers for POE2 suggest, however, that the problem was not that the bar was set too high but a lot of the people who bought POE1 didn't enjoy it enough to sign up for the sequel.

or they just had no interest in playing a weird island tribal themed RPG

 

[PsychoFox]

Sweet. Finally some data.

 

[Jimmious]

Yeah I do think the pirate/island theme wasn't very intriguing for the RPG crowd.
I also believe that PoE1 was a really big and "draining" game and maybe they'd have benefited from some more years of "silence".
Especially with Tyranny in between.

 

[Lacrymas]

It was a very good theme, they just didn't know how to use it properly, but people were already scared away by PoE1 anyway.

 

[Jimmious]

It felt a bit "off" to me, following a typical fantasy setting

 

[zapotec]

It's simply a boring game, so boring that if Dante made a Divine Comedy about videogames he would forget POE because of its boringness.

 

[glass blackbird]

Don't forget that Tyranny came out in between and was blatantly unfinished, which probably didn't help

 

[Sergiu64]

Don't forget that Tyranny came out in between and was blatantly unfinished, which probably didn't help

Tyranny had level scaling of sorts, of broken sorts in fact. That made it trash in my book.

 

[BEvers]

Putting level scaling on the skill checks was not a good idea. Especially combined with the Oblivion-style character advancement.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

OP, are you gay? Does your mom know you're gay?