Eternity Josh Sawyer reflects on his failures with Pillars of Eternity

[Xeon]

Don't people also generally like Coop mode or something? maybe that also helped with DOS games.

 

[fantadomat]

Don't people also generally like Coop mode or something? maybe that also helped with DOS games.

In theory yes,but in really not many people have close friends that have the time to play 30 hour coop rpg game with them.

 

[santino27]

Agreed. Yet it seems like a good hook for getting people excited about the game, and was definitely mentioned in a lot of reviews (and post-review gameplay discussions) of D:OS2. Seems like one of those things of outsized value compared to its actual utilization.

 

[fantadomat]

Agreed. Yet it seems like a good hook for getting people excited about the game, and was definitely mentioned in a lot of reviews (and post-review gameplay discussions) of D:OS2. Seems like one of those things of outsized value compared to its actual utilization.

Sure,it did add a decent amount of sales,but i doubt that it was the thing that pushed them to two millions. Maybe a lot of people just liked the game. Also a lot of youtubers slurped that asshole a lot. Tho this days a lot of those people have become quite irrelevant and youtube itself is moving away from the a lot of smaller youtubers.

 

[Quillon]

Before anything else PoE is fundamentally unintuitive on the most basic of levels compared to DOS: marquee selecting characters; you'll have to do it and manage your party all the time, its no concern for a usual crpg player but its a hassle for a normie. Its easier to control just one character and others to follow you. Same thing with RTwP, you'll have to "manage" it instead of waiting a turn and taking action.

Bioware managed to make the IE style appeal to mainstream with DAO by removing these basic obstacles for starters.

 

[felipepepe]

I don't think I'll ever understand why some games sell and others don't

Marketing.

And luck.

A LOT of luck.

Just look at Outer Worlds, they basically got to be the only AAA(ish) release in the entire year. The only game that came close was GreedFall. Now imagine if the game got delayed into 2020, going against Bloodlines 2, CyberPunk, Wasteland 3, Elder Ring, FFVII Remake, etc... I'm sure Obsidian still dreams of a world where Alpha Brotocol was released before Mass Effect 2.

That said, Pillars 2 with turn-based mode is a good game. I enjoyed it far more than Pillars 1. Still think it's a case like Grimrock 2, where people played the first game due to Kickstarter hype & "OMG, an old genre is back!" articles, but for the sequel only the core audience came back. And those were never gonna be more than 200-250K.

 

[Lilura]

Before anything else PoE is fundamentally unintuitive on the most basic of levels compared to DOS: marquee selecting characters; you'll have to do it and manage your party all the time, its no concern for a usual crpg player but its a hassle for a normie.

The hell? Marquee selection IS how parties/squads are managed. Or you can use hotkeys for group-select. These are basic OS control functions that have been with human beings since 1984.

Its easier to control just one character and others to follow you.

You mean like in Fallout and NWN?

Bioware managed to make the IE style appeal to mainstream with DAO by removing these basic obstacles for starters.

DA:O did not remove marquee selection. If it did, I wouldn't have played it. Also, your average "normie" wouldn't have the foggiest clue how to set up its tactical framework.

 

[fantadomat]

never gonna be more than 200-250K

But kingmaker managed to sell more than that and didn't have that kickstarter hype. I do believe that the core audience is bigger,but also more mature and with clear knowledge of what they want/expect from a game. And kingmaker offered what they wanted.

 

[Quillon]

The hell? Marquee selection IS how parties/squads are managed. Or you can use hotkeys for group-select. These are basic OS control functions that have been with human beings since 1984.

Its easier to control just one character and others to follow you.

You mean like in Fallout and NWN?

Yeah.

DA:O did not remove marquee selection. If it did, I wouldn't have played it. Also, your average "normie" wouldn't have the foggiest clue how to set up its tactical framework.

They didn't remove neither of those things, they removed the obstacle by making it playable like Fallout and NWN, arguably the default way of playing it. Plus they added tactics for managing RTwP easier. You can bet your ass overwhelming majority of players who bought DAO controlled only one character with tactics ON.

 

[user]

And don't forget that P:K was released in a terribly buggy state and got crappy reviews for a good long while. Their forums were rather stagnant long after release. The press didn't help it either - most mainstream site reviews called it medriocre and not only because of its bugs. Not to mention a good number of them quit at the spider cave. Anyway, I think P:K is clearly the better game. Better system, realistic and impactful choice and consequence, better writing, a decent story, MUCH better RP interaction and skill checks - a better experience overall. Perhaps it's a matter of taste, but I think luck has little to do with it.

 

[Desiderius]

Meanwhile the top Kingmaker DLC achivement is 4.2%.

Even the DLC is too long in Kingmaker. Nobody finishes anything.

Best game since Gold Box.

 

[Machocruz]

Still think it's a case like Grimrock 2, where people played the first game due to Kickstarter hype & "OMG, an old genre is back!" articles, but for the sequel only the core audience came back. And those were never gonna be more than 200-250K.

Not uncommon for any product. Outsiders and the unfamiliar want to see what the fuss is about. They were either unimpressed or liked it but not enough to want to spend time on a whole 'nother game of similar content. The list of sequels that I didn't play even though I loved the previous game is long, because I'm not into repeat experiences.

 

[JDR13]

You can bet your ass overwhelming majority of players who bought DAO controlled only one character with tactics ON.

Er...based on what?

 

[Desiderius]

Still think it's a case like Grimrock 2, where people played the first game due to Kickstarter hype & "OMG, an old genre is back!" articles, but for the sequel only the core audience came back. And those were never gonna be more than 200-250K.

Not uncommon for any product. Outsiders and the unfamiliar want to see what the fuss is about. They were either unimpressed or liked it but not enough to want to spend time on a whole 'nother game of similar content. The list of sequels that I didn't play even though I loved the previous game is long, because I'm not into repeat experiences.

Contrast Diablo 2 and BG2. Why were they great sellers? Because they were great games that understood what people liked about the original and gave them more of it than they could imagine.

I was a big fan of PoE. PoE2 didn't do that. Not close.

 

[Ismaul]

Just look at Outer Worlds, they basically got to be the only AAA(ish) release in the entire year.

TOW might've leaked on piratebay but it's only out next year. And then it might just be buried among the pile.

 

[Norfleet]

I’m still butthurt about everything per-encounter. He really doesn’t grok the importance of per-rest casting in this type of game.

Per encounter vs. per rest is splitting hairs over the bigger issue: Whether the game involves any interesting tactical or strategic decisions at all, of which limiting things arbitrarily by some non-unit like "encounter" and "rest" is probably among the least sensible ways to do it, but works in the context of PnP because of low book-keeping requirements. In vidya, there is no need for such things because the computer can keep track of data dynamically and display it to the player far more conveniently.

I mean, WHY should things be arbitrarily limited to "an encounter" or "a rest"? What exactly is an encounter? If I'm engaged in a standoff with some bad guys for several hours, is this one encounter, or several encounters? Why can I do a thing once per "encounter", but not twice, while being able to do other very similar things in the same encounter? What resource am I expending that causes this peculiar quirk?

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Deadfire may have had improved on things, but it takes a fucking turn-based mode to make it readable. I don't know if that's a failing of the visuals or the rtwp system itself.

 

[Prime Junta]

Er...based on what?

The UI encourages you to play it like a cinematic single-person aRPG. You have to actively dig to find the tactical aspect. This identity crisis is behind many of the problems with it.

 

[Machocruz]

Contrast Diablo 2 and BG2. Why were they great sellers? Because they were great games that understood what people liked about the original and gave them more of it than they could imagine.

I was a big fan of PoE. PoE2 didn't do that. Not close.

That and they and just looked like compelling games from the jump, at least to me. You know how you can just see a simple preview of a game and it captivates your interest without knowing anything deeper about it? They made good first impressions. I didn't even play D1 or BG1 until after I played their sequels.

 

[Felix]

I don't think I'll ever understand why some games sell and others don't (keep in mind I've played through Arcanum ~8 times and never played any Diablo games, so my tastes probably aren't typical). I like Deadfire; it's not my favorite game of all time but I like any game where I can create a custom party and even before the turn-based mode came out, I had lots of fun playing with all class combinations. Why D:OS2 (which I also liked) would sell gangbusters while Deadfire flopped or even why Pillars would outsell Deadfire 2:1, I can't fathom; of those three, I'd easily give Deadfire the nod.

The whims of the free market can be hard to decipher, for sure. Divinity OS2 though has a more colorful and whimsical look with more humorous writing (more popular at the moment across media) and turn-based combat (which also seems more popular at the moment). PoE was pretty serious, kind of boring and was very RTwP old-school PC in function and look. It makes perfect sense to me that one game would rope in a lot of "casuals" and the other would not. Again, Sawyer himself is saying it was the more casual players Deadfire did not attract.

And DOS2 has full controller support.

 

[Flou]

No need to dissect the games for the 34567th time. How much muh'successful PFKM sold? As much as PoE1? Half as much? There is not enough people interested in this specific type of game anymore(no, DOS is not the same type), media don't wanna cover it. Its dead jim. I don't believe there'll be a 2D-ISO PoE3 unless MS is letting Obs waste their moneh in unpromising projects. Prospect of making another game and hoping it to be as successful as The Great Kingmaker must be making them jump in excitement over at Obs HQ with 200+ devs in a very expensive part of 'murica.

There will be a 3rd game but with a smaller budget than Deadfire. It will feature the turn based mode at launch and it will be less open world than Deadfire.
You can still make a profit with a game like Pillars and with GamePass I'm sure Microsoft wants something like that for their service. But the budget will have to be smaller. 15+ millions isn't economically viable option at this point. It's peanuts for Microsoft in money, but at the same time it's a risk. Does Feargus want to use some of the goodwill from the overlords to throw money at a sequel to a game that failed commercially? Even with proper marketing this time around, it's still a risk if your aim is to make profit.
Something like 10 millions with a limited development time is what they should do. They won't try to reinvent the wheel again with the game mechanics which should save them a lot of time and resources.

I wouldn't really be surprised if Feargus would try an episodic format for the 3rd one. He talked about this earlier and with GamePass he has the perfect platform for it.

I think with Pillars of Eternity 3 they will also want to show that Microsoft is really letting them make the games they want to make. What better way to do it than finish the saga they started prior to the purchase. If the 3rd game fails, then they can stop making those games, but at least they tried.

 

[Haba]

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.

Son, they used to call Baldur's Gate "The Revival of Gold Box Games". Guess what that meant back then?

 

[Jarpie]

One of the mistakes they did was to make PoE 2 a direct sequel, most of the people who played first one didn't finish it, so they probably wouldn't be interested in the sequel, and the potential new players would be put off by direct sequel because they would think that they need to know the first game to get the sequel. Didn't Vault Dweller say that based on his own market studies, direct sequels have almost always sold less copies than the first game?

Starting with a new protagonist would also remove the problem with "We need to get rid of the player's levels and abilities", which they had to do because first game went too high powered. I hope Owlcat gets this, and makes Pathfinder: Kingmaker 2 completely new/own thing.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

I like how this discussion keeps coming back, but more and more people seem to be aware of what actually happened. Maybe TOW worked like smelling salts.

Also why having an option to do something is a bad thing?

One of the keys to understanding PoE's school of design.

Regarding market for "such games" - it sure as hell ain't looking good now. But I wonder what would happen if the first nu-iso crpg was, let's say, Kingmaker, but with more focus, no bugs and Deadfire's production values. It would't be some super hit for sure, because it doesn't respect retards (so mediocre reviews, etc), but things would probably look a fair bit different. It's just hindsight theorycrafting though, the classic iso crpg revival buried the classic iso crpgs under 100 tons of solid rock.

 

[HoboForEternity]

Pathfinder: Kingmaker 2 completely new/own thing.

i am sure it is. you can't escalate the PF:K anymore unless you go to absurd epic level and ended up with JRPG tier over the top story like throne of baal.

there are tons of campaign they can choose from.

or just make it the rasputin PF campaign lol