Interview Josh Sawyer interviewed at Ragequit.gr and Darkstation

[oldmanpaco]

Fixed in a patch.

Did they lower the xp awards or increase the level cap? I finished the game but I know they patched a bunch since then.

7 friends of mine played it. 2 finished it, the other 5 never finished Act 1.

I call bullshit on this. No one here has 7 real-life friends.

 

[Ismaul]

7 friends of mine played it. 2 finished it, the other 5 never finished Act 1.

I call bullshit on this. No one here has 7 real-life friends.

When a guy has to play a game 7 times to keep up his street cred, a guy gets creative. Personality disorders go a long way.

 

[Infinitron]

A PoE with a hollowed out Defiance Bay (most likely place to cut quests, other areas don't have that many as it is) would have been pretty bad IMO. Some of the most memorable (yes, memorable) quests are there too.

 

[l3loodAngel]

Everyone wants it, except Feargus.

Well it would still be crap with current combat system. That shit needs to be reworked. However, they first need to admit the problem, that system built around "you are a special snow flake" concept is beyond redemption.

 

[Aenra]

First reaction was positive, a TB game is a TB game (assuming this happens)
Until that first second elapsed, and i realised how moronic it makes you look going on public record and stating that, in essence?, we spent all those years building our new IE RTwP engine, except what do you know, maybe now we're going turn based after all! With said same engine, the one we did for... oops.. well, that's ok! On top of that, unless someone else was in charge, TB can only take it so far when you impose limitations such as the ones on PoE. Skills, mechanics, strategical elements or lack of, "balance", stupid superficial near-death-but-not-quite mechanics, etc. A PoE 2.0 (albeit with TB) would be on my maybe-torrent-someday-if-i'm-bored list at best.
Which of course leads to.. don't know about you, but neither combat type nor camera perspective suffice for me, sorry. We got our pwetty gwaphics the first time, and that was O.K. I'd seriously fucking expect something deeper from them this time around.

 

[Xeon]

I think he meant to work on two games, one is the regular RTWP and another is TB. Not scrap the RTWB and change entirely into a TB. In the interview he mentions the Devs wanting to work on Unreal Engine so there is a small possibility that they will change the engine.

I kinda wish they cut the descriptive text and wrote more quests instead but you probably need more programmers to implement the quests, not just writers.

 

[Infinitron]

we're talking about ideas for a sequel

have also talked to Feargus about the possibility of making a separate game in the Pillars of Eternity setting focused on turn-based combat

What's not clear here

 

[ArchAngel]

Everyone wants it, except Feargus.

A TB PoE might actually have good combat as RTwP PoE is basically designed for TB and not RTwP.

 

[Sensuki]

Plus Josh and the designers would be way more keen on making it good.

 

[Roguey]

I'm pretty sure most players would've enjoyed the game a lot more if it were shorter, had more C&C and better quest design.

Feargus Urquhart disagrees.

Also perspective here, PoE has an 89% positive ranking on Steam and 1576 positive vs 164 mediocre vs 208 negative user ratings on metacritic. That's not a flop, it's not even polarizing as a whole.

Did they lower the xp awards or increase the level cap? I finished the game but I know they patched a bunch since then.

Former with a patch, latter with an expansion pack (though going through the xpack content turns the endgame even more into a joke, though they say they'll be fixing this with the next one).

 

[Haba]

Some of the most memorable (yes, memorable) quests are there too.

Yes, ah I can remember the ...

and ...

also ...

Great times!

 

[Irenaeus II]

I was surprised by the bad reception that PoE got from RPG Codex for months. Then I watched as 50%+ of our population are playing Fallout 4, some retards even praising it, including some supposed monocled members and it all turned clear.

Good interview and good answers by Sawyer. Looking forward for expansion Part 2 (damn Paradox for splitting the expansion).

 

[Zorba the Hutt]

I remember when Paradox first came into the picture a common view was "they'll just be doing the KS rewards and physical distribution but we've been told they won't have influence on anything else. You don't expect Josh to spend time boxing things up do you?"

Now many lay the blame on them for splitting the expansion

 

[Irenaeus II]

I thought it was a factual thing to blame the splitting of the expansion on Paradox. If I'm wrong, correct me.

 

[Zorba the Hutt]

I thought it was a factual thing to blame the splitting of the expansion on Paradox. If I'm wrong, correct me.

Perhaps it is, although all I recall seeing is speculation to that effect. I just like how the "publisher" debate has evolved when it comes to their involvement in PoE.

 

[Irenaeus II]

Sorry, I wasn't really following the debate and development. I funded it ($77) in late 2012, then squinted over a few Infinitron updates in the following two years, then played the game fresh in May 2015 and had a great time and cherish it as one of the best RPGs ever made. I particularly didn't care about the physical rewards since my pledge was digital only.

True story.

 

[Irenaeus II]

PS: In those 2 years, I was busy posting trollish shit on GD and Politics and posting daily selfies on shoutbox and talking about my okcupid dates. Oh, I also came up with some catchphrases to pass the time... Behead all muslims being a community favourite. I admit I eventually chimped out on the administration in a moment of cocaine caffeine-induced frenzy and exhaustion.

In the end, I like to think I learned how to deal with the Commie Gestapo Tyrant Policies of RPGCodex to avoid having my new account being Mossad'd. Now, I moved on to playing and waiting for other cRPGs, such as the incredibly unique AoD and hoping for Torment to not be a total disaster after Saunders departure. Curious about what Avellone wiill deliver on his 7 current projects.

I still love the codex, despite the aforementioned 50%+ population of Fallout4 playing retards. I must say I learned a lot here in the period and my personality changed (I think for the better). That was only possible for joining the Codex after reading about it on PoE's kickstarter comments, which I discovered via the Hero-U kickstarter comments in the first place.

Thank you, Josh Sawyer.

 

[Roguey]

Perhaps it is, although all I recall seeing is speculation to that effect. I just like how the "publisher" debate has evolved when it comes to their involvement in PoE.

It was ultimately an Urquhart decision who agreed with their assessment that an expansion pack released 10 months to a year after release wouldn't do as well as two DLCs marketed as an expansion pack.

 

[Infinitron]

There's no proof at all for the "Paradox split the expansion" thing. IIRC, the closest thing we've got to that is a reference to unspecified "marketing experts". I don't remember from what interview that is, maybe Roguey can find it.

I really don't see the big deal though, given that they never had an intention of making a big narrative-centric "sequel-pansion" anyway (which is the only kind of thing that could potentially suffer from being split in two).

 

[Irenaeus II]

Well, those unspecified "marketing experts" should be fired. I hope they and their superiors are reading this.

 

[Roguey]

Chris Avellone said that expansions were a great lower-risk opportunity to experiment, but given the timetables, all they can give us is Honest Hearts.

 

[ROARRR]

I think it will depend on what we're looking at for our overall scope. Crowdfunding was a huge success for Pillars of Eternity and I know a lot of people have expressed an eagerness to support crowdfunding for a future sequel, but I believe we have to be careful about how we approach it. There's always a danger of asking too much of people or giving a bad impression by how a crowdfunding campaign is structured.

Looks like he is afraid to see "the loss of interest" even if it is funded.

Bobby Null and I have also talked to Feargus about the possibility of making a separate game in the Pillars of Eternity setting focused on turn-based combat. Pillars of Eternity's area sizes and input systems don't translate well to non-PC formats, but I think a turn-based game could be very cool.

He smelled Blood(stones) and gunpowder(wasteland2) with the EEs. I don´t get part with "don't translate well to non-PC formats".

They're mostly history books

Yeah I like history but it felt too much of our real life history = borring

In the early game, it was very difficult to communicate all of the ideas that form the hook for your character's motivation.

*Facepalm*
"A recent study conducted by the Project Management Institute (PMI) revealed that ineffective communication has a negative impact on successful project execution. Surprising?"
source: http://www.coreworx.com/pmi-study-r...ads-to-project-failure-one-third-of-the-time/

 

[Mychkine]

In the early game, it was very difficult to communicate all of the ideas that form the hook for your character's motivation. I think trying to communicate more cleanly or focusing more on the difficult concepts (in particular, the negative aspects of being a Watcher) would have drawn people in more easily.

Reading the awful kickstarter bakers fanfictions was a good way to convey the negatives of being a Watcher.

For information, I didn't knew that all this shit was strictly optional at first, and I forced myself into reading quite a lot of it, fearing I would miss content otherwise. Poor me.

If they had forced their reading on the player (with a costly way to prevent it / corruption, weakening), maybe they could have build a good, if awkward, mechanic on this whole backer content mess.

 

[Irenaeus II]

Backer content was truly awful because it was not integrated in the lore of the world and read as random fantasy. Whoever vetted them should punch his own face as punishment.

 

[Fairfax]

Feargus Urquhart disagrees.

Also perspective here, PoE has an 89% positive ranking on Steam and 1576 positive vs 164 mediocre vs 208 negative user ratings on metacritic. That's not a flop, it's not even polarizing as a whole.



Former with a patch, latter with an expansion pack (though going through the xpack content turns the endgame even more into a joke, though they say they'll be fixing this with the next one).

Sure, it was well received and successful. I liked the game myself. People who stayed to see the end (or most of it, a lot of people write these reviews without completing games) liked it, the problem is that not many did. You just have to look at how the first DLC bombed to see it.