I don't think it's impossible at all. Some shortcomings are glaring even. I think that blaming the wrong time and place is placing one's head in the sand./
Like what shortcomings that would exactly have drastically affected sales? The game reviewed extremely well at 88% on metacritic. Even Josh can't figure out why, how would a few over ambitious Codexers know?
Ok, don't blame me for the wall of text and that won't be nearly enough.
This is a huge topic. It's not about what anyone says. Yes, tastes, trends etc also play a role but if you deconstruct anything enough, you can also make logical/factual observations. For example, when people talk about C&C. What is the number of skill checks or decisions in the game? How many of them affect something that actually changes gameplay to a meaningfully deterministic point, for the player's experience? Now check that again comparing it to P:K. How important is C&C even, in crpgs? Who knows, right. Or story - what makes good literature? Succint but elegantly descriptive storytelling or painfully descriptive storytelling using a ton of fancy thesaurus adjectives at every other sentence?
The above is hardly considered deconstruction ofc - it is a huge topic after all - and you can call it biased because it's more about general impressions, but let's take a simpler example that none may care about, but it does indicates some interesting things about the rest of the game - the ship "mini-game",
excluding any interface issues:
-How is the mini-game's "gameplay loop" affecting the main game? Meaning: How are ship upgrades or crew actually affecting the main game? Does the game make you care enough about aqcuiring them? Do you actually need to, given that the only area you can't traverse is the last and even there it's scripted that you get a ship? Are a couple of captain bounties enough of an incentive?
-How is the main game's loop affecting the mini-game? Is the game's economy such, that ship upgrades are something you don't "just click", but rather care about, or struggle to get? Is special crew recruiting something engaging, or again, something you "just click a few times"?
And it's not only about gameplay, because engaging gameplay also supports RP and immersion. Do the above have anything to do with tastes? Doesn't matter if anyone likes the mini-game or not or whether it should have been in the game. It's irrelevant.
The fact is they threw a bunch of assets in a place and don't use them properly. What does this have to do with the actual game? I think they do exactly the same in many occasions. Another simple isolated example of an occasion like that is "empty islands". Islands, e.g. with a single area and a bounty boss. Barely any RP, any skill checks, any C&C. Do you really think that's "nitpicking"? And then you see P:K sprinkling them almost everywhere.
Whatever one may be creating, creator's prejudice is a bitch. When you pour your soul into something having a specific mindset, it's hard to change that mindset when criticizing it. Plus the game wasn't a disaster or anything so that you can pinpoint something that "drastically" affected sales - it was a pretty decent game, so that makes it much harder to pinpoint what went wrong with it.
