Eternity Josh Sawyer reflects on his failures with Pillars of Eternity

[Lacrymas]

He should just post a link to this thread, lol. Does Sawyer still read the 'Dex? I know he doesn't post here anymore, but that doesn't exclude the possibility of him liking a bit of self-flagellation once in a while.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[vortex]

Ultimately, Deadfire didn't communicate well enough who is the main antagonist, what is the true evil in this world, what horrific fate does player get if he fails.
Rather it does abstract, very complex story which a lot of players could not get a grip on.

Exploration, dungeons, discovering the mysteries, all together have slow pacing at the times.

You can't just pinpoint some thing from Deadfire and say 'this is why didn't sell well.' You have to take in whole experience.

 

[Lacrymas]

What he is saying is absolutely vestigial. There are all types of aesthetics that have sold well, whether those are realistic, dark, silly, abstract, cubic (Minecraft). I don't like that he's blaming the audience when even a cursory glance at the evidence and the more serious discussions around this topic reveal fundamental problems with the way the game was made. While developers do have very little control over the preferences of the audience, a good game can and does sway those preferences into its favor. Not to mention that as a niche genre, he shouldn't look at "a lot of players" but at his target audience. They would be passionate enough after that to convince others to try it (like D:OS2).

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I wonder how much the story of Deadfire was changed during early development. The early quotes we got teasing the Figstarter had a very different tone than what we ended up with.

Eder still says that line, or something similar. Definitely the second line.
Actually, I think Bearn says the first sentence and Eder the second.

 

[Atchodas]

Its hilarious how neither Sawyer nor people on Obsidian forums will acknowledge that :

Deadfire had trashy main story where player has no impact to the ending at all

Deadfire had shitty factions that have no real C&C, you can be friends with all the factions until the very last quest of the game even if you keep backstabbing them on every opportunity they are like whatever we are cucks we can take it

Combat is laughable enemies cant even pass trough each other because of pathfinding so they stand idle waiting to be slaughtered

Neketaka turned whole game into one giant fetch quest : sail there kill that comeback and repeat this 200 times.

Writing in general is horrible to the point where even voice acting does not help

Companions are terrible, they are there to piss the player off with their bullshit instead of making whole experience better

 

[Lacrymas]

Except, you know, people who didn't buy the game wouldn't know that.

 

[Prime Junta]

I have no idea why Deadfire didn't sell. TOW doubles down on everything I disliked about it while throwing away everything I did like, and it's selling like hot cakes.

I can only draw one conclusion: full Communism. It's the only way.

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

It's so depressing when you read stuff like this. What sells a game > what makes a game good is such a destructive mind set.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I have no idea why Deadfire didn't sell. TOW doubles down on everything I disliked about it while throwing away everything I did like, and it's selling like hot cakes.

I can only draw one conclusion: full Communism. It's the only way.

deadfire has no popamole or rick and morty jokes

 

[Riddler]

I have no idea why Deadfire didn't sell. TOW doubles down on everything I disliked about it while throwing away everything I did like, and it's selling like hot cakes.

I can only draw one conclusion: full Communism. It's the only way.

People buy ToW because they liked New Vegas and hated Fallout 76, not on the merits of the game itself.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Going to go out on a limb and guess it sold poorly because of the choice of setting.
A large portion of people buying these games want a traditional fantasy setting. I don't like it, but it is what it is.

 

[Riddler]

I think the reason why Deadfire didn't sell is very simple, people didn't particularly like Pillars 1. Due to the nostalgia craze Obsidian didn't get useful feedback on the game and the second game therefore couldn't sell on word of mouth because people who bought that had a fairly mellow reaction to that game as well, and those were the people who liked the first one.

As I see it they have shit the bed with Eora and if they want to move forward with this type of game then their best bet is to use an external IP/game system to kick-start the property by leveraging an existing fanbase. License D&D or Pathfinder, set the game in a well liked setting and then if that does well, try to use your clout from that to create a new IP.

The issue remains however that I doubt they could create any really compelling game with their current writing team, they just seem incompetent.

 

[passerby]

It's simple and I've explained it already. PoE2 didn't sell because it's not fundamentally different from PoE1 and most people were bored with PoE1, just look at the achievements.

Direct "slam dunk" sequels to a very long games which were quickly abandoned by the majority of players and are not spaced a few years away, do poorly in general these days.

A very low interest in DLCs for PoE1 was a litmus test of what would happen to the sequel.

Going to go out on a limb and guess it sold poorly because of the choice of setting.

Greedfall has a very simillar setting and is doing reasonably well.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Greedfall has a very simillar setting and is doing reasonably well.

It's not the same kind of game.

 

[Daedalos]

As always, in these types of story/setting heavy RPGs, it always comes down to how the game grips, lures and keeps the player playing and engaged throughout the course of the game, the beginning being the strong point.
That's so fucking key, they should be doing courses on this shit and teaching it even to industry veteran studios.

You are making an adventurous fantastical RPG where people expect to be wow'ed and expect to be drawn into a larger narrative and a story.

Without a believeable engaging story, a interesting plot/story hook, interesting/cool world/setting, everything falls apart quickly in the end.
You can have the best combat system and whatever mechanics, but if you're trying to tell a half-assed story with half-assed writing and worldbuilding through whatever boring characters and main villains, you are gonna lose your audience.

If you can't get all that down, tight and locked and WOW, then you shouldn't be making an RPG - maybe a blobber or some dungeon crawler. People care so much about the gamey aspects of the game, that they forget the purpose.

But most importantly of all, don't confuse your audience with multiple non-coherent branches of story that doesn't seem to hold a thin red line throughout. It will come off as a jumbled mess, and people are put the fuck off by that.

 

[passerby]

It's all true except for the mechanics part, most people didn't like it either. But it's PoE1 which was dissapointing in the first place, PoE2 consensus among both users and press was it's good if you want more PoE and it was bought mostly by people who wanted more.

 

[tripedal]

Pathfinder: Kingmaker, which generally had lower review scores than Deadfire, sold better than Deadfire

Jesus.

Anyway the reason is obvious. The first game was actually bad. Most people who bought it never even came close to finishing it. Why would they buy the sequel?

 

[Daedalos]

Pillars 1 is a far superior game to 2, imo. It was marred by problems with mechanics, combat and other stuff, but they nailed the main story. Yes, it was also plaugued with long expositionary dialogue and shit from backer npcs, had they removed those, the game suddenly becomes quite enjoyable.

I certainly had a great time with pillars 1, and especially after all the patches, and the dlcs.

I would 100 % replay it in a heartbeat, if they released a good TB mod for pillars 1 (and perhaps rebalanced some trash mob encounters), and I think most others would too

 

[Lacrymas]

I think the reason why Deadfire didn't sell is very simple, people didn't particularly like Pillars 1. Due to the nostalgia craze Obsidian didn't get useful feedback on the game and the second game therefore couldn't sell on word of mouth because people who bought that had a fairly mellow reaction to that game as well, and those were the people who liked the first one.

The issue remains however that I doubt they could create any really compelling game with their current writing team, they just seem incompetent.

I think what this boils down to is that a new IP sells on the strength of the premise, a sequel sells on the strength of the franchise. I think we can all agree on that. So Josh is making a fundamental mistake of looking in the wrong place. He was right in his first musings that maybe people didn't like PoE1 as much as they said they did, or as much as the reviews were saying. Even though I was going to write that PoE2 had no other alternative but be stillborn, I kinda don't think that's true anymore. It had no chance to sell as much as PoE1, but it could rope in people who were unsure about its merits after having played the first game through word of mouth. I'd like to revise my previous statement and say that initial sales are influenced by the prequel.

Maybe people and Josh aren't so wrong in looking at PoE2's problems, but it should always be tinted by how 1 went wrong. PoE2's problems do include a very, very, very weak start (just like previously), a main plot almost incoherent in context and absolutely trivial, factions somehow still being bare-bones despite having more content, poor technical performance (incl. very frequent loading), abysmal writing (the writing team do simply seem incompetent), perplexing ship combat, small maps, a character system that has a myriad problems of its own, I'd say poor replayability due to a variety of issues, etc. etc.

What I DON'T believe are problems - the setting, being a direct sequel (it's a stupid decision nonetheless), DLC policy, the art direction, wokeness, moment-to-moment gameplay (in the sense if every encounter is taken in a vacuum with no relation to the other encounters).

 

[Dishonoredbr]

I got Deadfire because i thought PoE1 was decent game that feel so outdated (didn't got poe1 , never will) that i couldn't finished but it could done better. And Deadfire is certainly better but couldn't still hold my attention because it's direct sequel. Thats kinda dumb. I wanted to feel invest into the story but couldn't because i had to play PoE1 to understand and get why aloth , eder and palegina are different from 1 and PoE1 game was pretty unfun.. If they had made the same but with different protagonist it would be much better.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

What he is saying is absolutely vestigial. There are all types of aesthetics that have sold well, whether those are realistic, dark, silly, abstract, cubic (Minecraft). I don't like that he's blaming the audience when even a cursory glance at the evidence and the more serious discussions around this topic reveal fundamental problems with the way the game was made. While developers do have very little control over the preferences of the audience, a good game can and does sway those preferences into its favor. Not to mention that as a niche genre, he shouldn't look at "a lot of players" but at his target audience. They would be passionate enough after that to convince others to try it (like D:OS2).

Strong disagree. He’s not blaming the player base. His whole point is that he doesn’t understand some very crucial things about the player base, although he knows that his own tastes are idiosyncratic.

If anything I feel like he’s been reading this thread. It’s not the be-all end-all, but when a game’s tone bores the shit out of players how can that not hurt its sales? Aside from a few highly visible parts of the main quest, most of the content in POE and Deadfire feels like Sawyer was telling his writers, “make it more grounded and realistic,” which translates to mundane and boring.

Sawyer’s low-key aesthetic was definitely a problem. It might not be fatal to a dungeon crawl, but when you’re dealing with text heavy isometric CRPGs this stuff needs to be engaging and Sawyer is allergic to the shit that normally gets people engaged. He was the right guy to direct a 3D Fallout title, but the wrong guy to direct POE or Deadfire.

 

[Lacrymas]

You do high fantasy camp when you can't do anything else, though. Besides, in no way is PoE1 or 2's narratives grounded, they are as camp and ridiculous as they come (in a bad way). Maybe I don't know what you mean by this, though.

 

[Alpan]

Pathfinder: Kingmaker, which generally had lower review scores than Deadfire, sold better than Deadfire

Jesus.

Anyway the reason is obvious. The first game was actually bad. Most people who bought it never even came close to finishing it. Why would they buy the sequel?

It seems Sawyer is having difficulty understanding the common dictum "the map is not the territory". A bunch of reviews, many of them cross-contaminated with imitation, echo-chamber thinking and nostalgia hype, is not representative of critical reception among the wider playerbase.

A bit more bluntly,

Is it because despite the strong reviews and the strong sales for the first game, people didn’t “really” like it?

This sentence is entirely faulty reasoning. Reviews and sales happen before players actually decide they like or dislike a game. And when it comes to buying a sequel it's not going to be reviews but players' sentiment towards the original game that'll drive their decisions.

 

[Infinitron]

Reviews happen before players actually decide they like or dislike a game.

Including Steam reviews?