Eternity Josh Sawyer reflects on his failures with Pillars of Eternity

[Atchodas]

who played PoE for hours, perhaps even finished it, and will turn around and say the game is shit

You cant know game is shit without putting at least 1337 hours into it

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

suspiciously low amount of people reached even Maerwald.

There are progression chokepoints in Cad Nua because of stupid design. One buddy of mine reached Maerwald and proceeded to do Endless Paths for 3 days, thinking that's where rest of the game is. Another guy I know 1111'nd during dialogue with the statue and had no idea eastern exit out of the castle is now open. So he was wondering around for hours and couldn't figure out how to get to rest of the map. Both of those things provide better explanation why most people never reach Defiance Bay than blaming weakness of the plot hook.

 

[Riddler]

Externalising the guilt by blaming the writing team.

I think the writing team is at the heart of this problem. They aren't only responsible for the narrative (which was awful in both games), but also for the pacing, the environment design and the overall structure of the game. Instead of winding up in a stupid cave after the natives attack the caravans, we could've been abducted by them and then met Eder in their encampment, trying to escape together. This could've been a Raedric's style map where you have a variety of ways to go about escaping. When you escape, it's a no-brainer to travel with Eder because he's a local and knows what's up, he tells you that Raedric is looking for recruits and, having no other choice, you go to Gilded Vale to meet him. He tells you about the problems in the land (he still hasn't killed his wife) and letting you in his employ maybe on the condition you take what's-her-face's, his animancer in the basement, "apprentice" (Aloth) with you. Much better opener and one which isn't full of contrivances at each corner.

I was only half joking. I truly believe that their primary issue (but by no means the only one) was the lack of a compelling and well structured narrative and then they inexplicably doubled down on that by forcing a direct sequel for no reason at all.

 

[Atchodas]

There are progression chokepoints in Cad Nua because of stupid design. One buddy of mine reached Maerwald and proceeded to do Endless Paths for 3 days, thinking that's where rest of the game is. Another guy I know 1111'nd during dialogue with the statue and had no idea eastern exit out of the castle is now open. So he was wondering around for hours and couldn't figure out how to get to rest of the map. Both of those things provide better explanation why most people never reach Defiance Bay than blaming it all on weak plot hook.

nah ur just a retard who has retarded friends

 

[Zero Credibility]

As I'm sure someone before me has already said, first game rode the Kickstarter trend for all it was worth. It was marketed as a spiritual sequel to great old games, both to old timers that actually played those games, but also to newbies that did not but were curios what it was all about. An updated IE experience for the new age. Problem is, that can only get you so far if the final product is not actually great, something that can stand on its own merits. And PoE was... let's face it, it was not great. So they lost a part of the core fanbase of IE games, but they also lost a big share of new players who stopped by to see what all the noise was about, only to find a boring game that did not appeal to them. And none of those people were around for the sequel, no matter how good or bad it was. I know I wasn't. Hence the miscalculation that PoE2 can do the same.

And Sawyer certainly did not help with making the first game something great. A lot of his decisions baffled me at the time, and I still don't understand what the hell was he trying to accomplish. I swear, PoE to me felt a like an IE game made by and for people that did not actually like IE games.

 

[The Great ThunThun*]

My suggestion is to abandon the PoE brand. It's worthless. Start fro Scratch, get a pre-implemented ruleset like OGL and write good stories. But yeah, who am I kidding.

 

[santino27]

Spoiler

 

[Zero Credibility]

Right, that's another thing. Making up your own D&D clone on the fly while you are making a game? Why, don't you already have enough on your plate? Now you think you can also do better than plain old boring D&D, while you are also in charge of production of the game? Ruskies did the smart thing, they went for an established and tested system, got a more or less finished story as a bonus, and worked with that to produce a game whose sheer scale and ambition blows PoE out of the water. Bugs notwithstanding.

 

[Riddler]

I haven't played D:OS 2, so I don't know if it was good or not, but if it was, I'm sure the sequel will do anywhere from a little less successful, to even more successful, depending on how people liked it.

For me the reception of D:OS2 was more than a bit confusing. Personally i found the game compelling for the first 4-6 hours or so but then i rapidly lost interest when i discovered that the writing wasn't getting better, the systems were shit and the itemization one of the worst to grace any computer game. Every single one of my friends that played the game more or less shared my sentiments and no-one made it far off the starting island. I honestly don't know a single person that actually liked the game but somehow it's universally praised.

 

[ItsChon]

I haven't played D:OS 2, so I don't know if it was good or not, but if it was, I'm sure the sequel will do anywhere from a little less successful, to even more successful, depending on how people liked it.

For me the reception of D:OS2 was more than a bit confusing. Personally i found the game compelling for the first 4-6 hours or so but then i rapidly lost interest when i discovered that the writing wasn't getting better, the systems were shit and the itemization one of the worst to grace any computer game. Every single one of my friends that played the game more or less shared my sentiments and no-one made it far off the starting island. I honestly don't know a single person that actually liked the game but somehow it's universally praised.

This ties back into my main point.

while a "regular gamer" will have barely stomached the game for an hour or two, and turn around say "yeah PoE is a good game". They do this because people are sheep, and will believe whatever the general consensus is all the while, they buy and play games that might be completely contrary to what they say they like/say is good

If what you're saying is true, expect what happened to Deadfire to happen to D:OS 3. Everyone's guilty of it, I did the same thing before I got RPG black pill from the Codex.

 

[Atchodas]

This ties back into my main point.

If what you're saying is true, expect what happened to Deadfire to happen to D:OS 3. Everyone's guilty of it, I did the same thing before I got RPG black pill from the Codex.

Thats why they are not making D:OS 3 but XCOM-like spin off in D:OS setting and BG 3

 

[santino27]

This ties back into my main point.

If what you're saying is true, expect what happened to Deadfire to happen to D:OS 3. Everyone's guilty of it, I did the same thing before I got RPG black pill from the Codex.

Thats why they are not making D:OS 3 but XCOM-like spin off in D:OS setting and BG 3

Didn't they table the X-com-like spinoff the Expedition devs were working on?

 

[Alpan]

I get the feeling that Sawyer just isn't being honest with himself. The terrible sales of the White March expansions should have been strong indicators of a sequel's potential performance, and I would posit Obsidian realized this themselves; but because Deadfire production had already started by then, they simply engaged in self-denial and kept pushing on with it.

I don't think they did poorly, I enjoy Deadfire quite a bit more than the first game. But if they were legitimately thinking that they would somehow exceed the first game in sales, then they were delusional.

 

[Jezal_k23]

I agree. They blamed low White March sales on the fact it was an expansion and it was too long after the game released. What they didn't realize at the time was that another factor was low interest in the base game, very high drop off rate, just general disinterest from gamers in what Pillars 1 offered as a game. In hindsight, this obviously didn't bode well for the sequel.

 

[Roguey]

Tales from the Sword Coast also had pretty lousy sales in comparison to the base game.

 

[Alpan]

Tales from the Sword Coast also had pretty lousy sales in comparison to the base game.

So? What makes this a good comparison?

 

[santino27]

Tales from the Sword Coast also had pretty lousy sales in comparison to the base game.

So? What makes this a good comparison?

DLC/expansions for games generally sell worse than the base game, so it's not necessarily a reflection of reaction to/against that game.

 

[Roguey]

Lacrymas Track the two of 'em https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baldur's_Gate:_Tales_of_the_Sword_Coast#Sales https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baldur's_Gate#Sales

 

[Alpan]

DLC/expansions for games generally sell worse than the base game, so it's not necessarily a reflection of reaction to/against that game.

Agreed, but there's no comparing the market saturation of the two periods, and Baldur's Gate wasn't banking on a wave of nostalgia.

 

[Prime Junta]

Fine, since everyone’s giving their 20-20 hindsight advice

By WM2 Pillars was solid both mechanically and as a setting. They should’ve made Tyranny with the same mechanics leveraging the (then) good brand of Pillars: “The Dark Sun of Pillars.” Then they should have left mechanics the fuck alone, just scaling it up a few levels, told Feargus to stuff it with the epic god MQ and Watcher protag, gone all in with the factions, and finally stamped down hard on the romances, coaching the writers to create proper well grounded characters instead of Mary Sues.

I have no idea if it would have sold any better, but at least it wouldn’t transparently pander, and there is honour in that.

 

[Xeon]

Fergus who insisted on the gods? man that was so dumb, they were the cringist thing in the game, would have been a lot better cut off.

 

[Prime Junta]

Fergus who insisted on the gods? man that was so dumb, they were the cringist thing in the game, would have been a lot better cut off.

Ferg insisted on EPIC!!!!!!11one

BTW don’t forget that the Figstarter went very well. It wasn’t at all obvious at that point that it was going to flop, quite the contrary.

 

[AwesomeButton]

My suggestion is to abandon the PoE brand. It's worthless. Start fro Scratch, get a pre-implemented ruleset like OGL and write good stories. But yeah, who am I kidding.

No need to start from scratch, but certainly continue with a new writing team.

 

[Lacrymas]

Lacrymas Track the two of 'em https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baldur's_Gate:_Tales_of_the_Sword_Coast#Sales https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baldur's_Gate#Sales

TоtSC was the best selling game when it released and it only fell behind *Star Wars*, then it stayed at top 10 for 2 months. White March has nowhere near that pedigree, and if Steamspy is to be trusted even a little bit, only up to 20k people own White March, compared to TotSC's 600k back when digital distribution wasn't a thing. TotSC was a huge success all things considered.

 

[AwesomeButton]

20-20 hindsight advice

Speak for yourself please. I've been repeating the same criticism of PoE since 2014.