Eternity Josh Sawyer reflects on his failures with Pillars of Eternity

[Van-d-all]

I find it funny he refers to some fucked up rocket science why PoE1 did better than PoE2, while it's virtually blatant and obvious - PoE1 was the first modern BG successor, heavily teased on several occasions, virtually set up to be the next big RPG. It played all the nostalgia notes and screenshots did look great, so people bit the hook... just to be presented with a short, lackluster game, filled with shitty kickstarter wannabe characters instead of meaningful NPCs and topped off with hêrpa dêrp loredumps. After that, most people I know completely lost faith in the setting and just ignored PoE2 altogether. Some tried Tyranny, with varied reception.

 

[Frusciante]

A bit of a random comment, but seeing how Diablo IV looks I wish Obsidian would also go the way of full 3D for a top down RTWP game. Combat readability sucked in PoE and PoE2, when you compare it to PFK especially. I feel that is partly due to how everything blends together on these prerendered backgrounds. Diablo IV shows how good 3D can look.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

I find it funny he refers to some fucked up rocket science why PoE1 did better than PoE2, while it's virtually blatant and obvious - PoE1 was the first modern BG successor, heavily teased on several occasions, virtually set up to be the next big RPG. It played all the nostalgia notes and screenshots did look great, so people bit the hook... just to be presented with a short, lackluster game, filled with shitty kickstarter wannabe characters instead of meaningful NPCs and topped off with hêrpa dêrp loredumps. After that, most people I know completely lost faith in the setting and just ignored PoE2 altogether. Some tried Tyranny, with varied reception.

There are two separate issues:

1. POE becoming a meme, trending on social media as an old school rocket propelled grenade that you need to play and like, because you are a true hardcore gamer and not some filthy casual. Hey, I played POE, it was a visceral experience just like the old times (when I was about 5, if you count pregnancy) amirite. So on, so forth. This played a big part in POE becoming a commercial success and made it seem relatively popular, but vast majority of those people would not like it even if it was an actually good IE successor and would not come back for the sequel no matter what (well, ok, if POE2 was an fpp/tpp action rpg with trash collecting, crafting, scaling and rapcore music then maybe...).
2. The actual target audience that knew IE games and wanted more, but instead got, well, POE. In its full "we are making a new IE game so giving a free reign to a guy who's open about disliking a lot what made IE games fun and thinks he knows better when it's immediately obvious he doesn't seems like a logical decision" glory.

I'm not sure where did they gather their feedback and how they analyzed it, but looking at market performance for POE dlc and games like Tyranny for point 1 and some tier two sites discussing POE for point 2 should make it pretty easy to realize their approach to making Deadfire was prone to go tits up upon release.

 

[pomenitul]

Selective pitilessness strikes again. There isn't a single Codex-approved game that could withstand the deranged scrutiny you've been compulsively applying to the PoE series… to this very day, even now that a new decade is upon us. Hell hath no fury like a Codexer scorned. Holding up the aesthetically-challenged, ESL-for-kiddies PF:K as an instance of IE Revival done right is proof positive that the proliferation of so-called Prestigious Critical Discourse on this hadopelagic nook of the Internet has always been its own agenda-pushing beast, ultimately unconcerned with the games it purports to discuss. In other words, none of you – including those who have fallen to the abyss's mirror-like gaze – are playing games qua games. Their existence is but a pretext for your unending, squabbling commentary, which is now endowed with an eldritch life of its own, having sucked the blood out of your ability to enjoy something other than the aspersions and the vituperations and the spewing. You continue to praise certain games because a foil is needed, especially if it suits your political needs (which in some cases you naïvely believe to be apolitical) but the fact of the matter is that almost every single one of you is a satyr drunk on the hydromel of loathing, a loathing which may only be expressed through perpetual shitposting, regardless of how meticulously documented your screeds may be. Blind to your petitio principii, your posts bespeak a solipsistic view of existence whereby you merely seek yourself in the other, imposing your would-be will upon the world. Yet in the gloaming of your shuttered room, you are not-so-secretly dissatisfied with this state of affairs. Would that you could derive sustenance from a less fragile ideological construct – a yearning you have gruellingly taught yourself to keep at bay, because that would imply facing up to the brittleness of your beliefs. And so you persist, for you did it all for the brofist.

 

[the mole]

Books aren't games, and Pillars of Eternity is almost as good as Oblivion

 

[SymbolicFrank]

There are two things wrong with no prebuffing:

1. The buff has to be exceptional useful and fast cast to compete with just outright killing the baddies, and combat has to last a while.

2. It removes non-combat magic, and thereby the usefulness of the now unbuffable skills.


EDIT, like this:

Per-encounter magic -> no magic outside combat -> useless skills.

This even makes stuff like stealth problematic, as while it is used for combat, it happens outside of it.

 

[Ismaul]

Selective pitilessness strikes again. There isn't a single Codex-approved game that could withstand the deranged scrutiny you've been compulsively applying to the PoE series… to this very day, even now that a new decade is upon us. Hell hath no fury like a Codexer scorned. Holding up the aesthetically-challenged, ESL-for-kiddies PF:K as an instance of IE Revival done right is proof positive that the proliferation of so-called Prestigious Critical Discourse on this hadopelagic nook of the Internet has always been its own agenda-pushing beast, ultimately unconcerned with the games it purports to discuss. In other words, none of you – including those who have fallen to the abyss's mirror-like gaze – are playing games qua games. Their existence is but a pretext for your unending, squabbling commentary, which is now endowed with an eldritch life of its own, having sucked the blood out of your ability to enjoy something other than the aspersions and the vituperations and the spewing. You continue to praise certain games because a foil is needed, especially if it suits your political needs (which in some cases you naïvely believe to be apolitical) but the fact of the matter is that almost every single one of you is a satyr drunk on the hydromel of loathing, a loathing which may only be expressed through perpetual shitposting, regardless of how meticulously documented your screeds may be. Blind to your petitio principii, your posts bespeak a solipsistic view of existence whereby you merely seek yourself in the other, imposing your would-be will upon the world. Yet in the gloaming of your shuttered room, you are not-so-secretly dissatisfied with this state of affairs. Would that you could derive sustenance from a less fragile ideological construct – a yearning you have gruellingly taught yourself to keep at bay, because that would imply facing up to the brittleness of your beliefs. And so you persist, for you did it all for the brofist.

Aren't you guilty of the same, oh mighty judge? You're not reading and posting posts qua posts, but as a pretext to elevate yourself above what you see as deranged rabble. Loathing is you, just as much as us if your judgment is true. We are the same, only the object of obsession and loathing differs. Yours being one step removed doesn't confer you a superior moral status. So wisen up and embrace the brofist, for our dissatisfaction is shared and forever. Yet it is not a sign of decline, but of men reaching for an ideal always removed.

So it is about all things in life. No one lives life qua life, we all live in the world we represent ourselves, a world of symbols and meanings trying to elevate ourselves above the mundane. Yet, as we judge ourselves by an ideal we project, we always and forever find ourselves wanting. And so everything else we do is a cope. Laughing at how people cope is a cope in itself, but maybe it has the benefit of obfuscating its nature as a cope to you.

Also learn to use paragraphs.

 

[JarlFrank]

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.

Yeah when I played Original Sin 2 I really wished it would have proper marquee selection instead of awkwardly having to split off characters from following you, if you wanted to position them in an advantageous position before combat, and then chaining them together again after combat.

 

[Ismaul]

There are two things wrong with no prebuffing:

1. The buff has to be exceptional useful and fast cast to compete with just outright killing the baddies, and combat has to last a while.

2. It removes non-combat magic, and thereby the usefulness of the now unbuffable skills.

I see no wrong there.

For 1), it's a good thing that combat has to last a while and allows a place for tactical decisions such as buffing or not. That means the design should include no trash mobs and encounters, since every encounter would be longer and more significant. Hey good design just leads to more good design, innit? But the real issue is that RTwP is made for trash mobs and quick combat resolution rather than tactics. The buffing issue only highlights RTwP inadequacies.

As for 2) you can still have a second category of non-combat "spells". D&D introduced this: rituals. Basically spells that would take too long to cast in a combat, and are more about the other aspects of play, exploration, socialization, investigation, etc. There were also some classic "combat" spells/buffs you could cast as rituals. You could also have a buffing system like The Witcher 1's potions, which you had to prepare beforehand, lasted a long while not a couple rounds or even one encounter, and were limited in amount because of toxicity and couldn't just be changed on the fly. That's the kind of pre-buffing I'd get behind. Not the "buff quickly and enter combat before the first buffs end" type of shit.

 

[pomenitul]

it is not a sign of decline, but of men reaching for an ideal always removed.

So you say, but the Codex's collective ideal is in fact insufficiently idealistic. The same discussions are rehashed ad nauseam, and have left the ground fallow (rather odd given the surfeit of manure). If anything, I am urging you to up the ante: involve yourself in the game-making process – and I salute those who have already done so – or at the very least put yourself in the shoes of those that toil. Failing that, spin a compelling yarn. And if you believe your current critiques to be imaginative works in their own right, you are making an even greater mockery of that purported ideal. The greatest literary critics pontificated from within the crucible – they also wrote novels or poetry.

Also learn to use paragraphs.

Alas, poetic licence is lost on you.

 

[Lilura]

But the real issue is that RTwP is made for trash mobs and quick combat resolution rather than tactics. The buffing issue only highlights RTwP inadequacies.

This assertion is based on extant commercial game design examples, not RTwP itself. See Swordflight.

You could also have a buffing system like The Witcher 1's potions, which you had to prepare beforehand, lasted a long while not a couple rounds or even one encounter, and were limited in amount because of toxicity and couldn't just be changed on the fly.

Actually, you could overcome toxicity easily. Just rest one hour and you're detoxed. Since, as you say, most buffs last 8 hours, you can stack buffs just like any RPG. Also, there is a dispel potion and a detox potion.

The Witcher's alchemy system is a great idea, and it's executed well, but it's not as robust as you seem to think it is.

 

[Kz3r0]

I am late to the party, not gonna read seven pages of drivel, here how it is:
Sawyer should quite game development altogether, he is just a middle tier manager, he makes everything boring story wise and gameplay wise, besides all the comparisons he made have a thing in common, Avellone.
In short, we were right and the sour, dour kraut was wrong.

 

[user]

Selective pitilessness strikes again. There isn't a single Codex-approved game that could withstand the deranged scrutiny you've been compulsively applying to the PoE series… to this very day, even now that a new decade is upon us. Hell hath no fury like a Codexer scorned. Holding up the aesthetically-challenged, ESL-for-kiddies PF:K as an instance of IE Revival done right is proof positive that the proliferation of so-called Prestigious Critical Discourse on this hadopelagic nook of the Internet has always been its own agenda-pushing beast, ultimately unconcerned with the games it purports to discuss. In other words, none of you – including those who have fallen to the abyss's mirror-like gaze – are playing games qua games. Their existence is but a pretext for your unending, squabbling commentary, which is now endowed with an eldritch life of its own, having sucked the blood out of your ability to enjoy something other than the aspersions and the vituperations and the spewing. You continue to praise certain games because a foil is needed, especially if it suits your political needs (which in some cases you naïvely believe to be apolitical) but the fact of the matter is that almost every single one of you is a satyr drunk on the hydromel of loathing, a loathing which may only be expressed through perpetual shitposting, regardless of how meticulously documented your screeds may be. Blind to your petitio principii, your posts bespeak a solipsistic view of existence whereby you merely seek yourself in the other, imposing your would-be will upon the world. Yet in the gloaming of your shuttered room, you are not-so-secretly dissatisfied with this state of affairs. Would that you could derive sustenance from a less fragile ideological construct – a yearning you have gruellingly taught yourself to keep at bay, because that would imply facing up to the brittleness of your beliefs. And so you persist, for you did it all for the brofist.

Right? And all I got till now was some lousy "agrees", not even a single brofist...

So you say, but the Codex's collective ideal is in fact insufficiently idealistic. The same discussions are rehashed ad nauseam, and have left the ground fallow (rather odd given the surfeit of manure). If anything, I am urging you to up the ante: involve yourself in the game-making process – and I salute those who have already done so – or at the very least put yourself in the shoes of those that toil. Failing that, spin a compelling yarn. And if you believe your current critiques to be imaginative works in their own right, you are making an even greater mockery of that purported ideal. The greatest literary critics pontificated from within the crucible – they also wrote novels or poetry.

And when you take up game development you realize that everyone else still does that to you. And so the vicious cycle of pompous critique continues forever. It's a force of nature. You can't stop it or slow it down, none can.

 

[fantadomat]

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.

Well it depends on the type of a game really. Grimrock is very simple game with no story that get old in due time,making an identical game is a bad idea. BG2 keeps only its mechanics but it changes the setting and the story,improving on a lot of things.

 

[vortex]

Externalising the guilt by blaming the writing team.

That's no good for team building nor for effective and productive working relationships.

 

[Lilura]

Yeah when I played Original Sin 2 I really wished it would have proper marquee selection instead of awkwardly having to split off characters from following you, if you wanted to position them in an advantageous position before combat, and then chaining them together again after combat.

Wouldn't know. The last Larian game I played was Divine Divinity. The next one will be BG3.

 

[fantadomat]

no bugs and Deadfire's production values.

Don't know what games have you played mate,but it wasn't kingmaker and deadfire. Both of them were filled with bugs at release,the difference is that kingmaker fixed their bugs and by the end you had gem of a game,while three major dlc down the line and deadfire still have some obvious bugs in it.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Not 100% sure what are you talking about, but Kingmaker's initial state definitely had an impact on it reception and Deadfire was nowhere near as bugged.

 

[Ismaul]

But the real issue is that RTwP is made for trash mobs and quick combat resolution rather than tactics. The buffing issue only highlights RTwP inadequacies.

This assertion is based on extant commercial game design examples, not RTwP itself. See Swordflight.

I disagree. I'm not saying that in existing RTwP cRPGs there's a lot of trash mobs, I'm saying that trash mobs are the very reason RTwP is used. RTwP exists for systems that are too complex to be controlled in pure RT, yet where designers judge it a waste of time to choose and manage every single action your character(s) make. It might work for some games, usually those without a party and where the pause isn't as necessary, but we're not talking about those but the classic party-based D&D derivative type.

Ask yourself, why are those games not TB like the system they're based on? It's because, by design, most enemies in the cRPG were intended to die with little effort, and so it's pointless to spend time micro-managing your party and making tactical decisions at every turn. It would be tedious, kill pacing, etc., as they say. So RTwP is chosen over TB because trash mobs are planned to be frequent and serve as a pacing mechanism between loredumps and boss fights, like entrées before the meal. The game is planned in such a way that most encounters are not meant as a tactical challenge but as busywork on the way there. And it wouldn't do if you had to play every character's turn despite the encounter having a foregone conclusion.

You could also have a buffing system like The Witcher 1's potions, which you had to prepare beforehand, lasted a long while not a couple rounds or even one encounter, and were limited in amount because of toxicity and couldn't just be changed on the fly.

Actually, you could overcome toxicity easily. Just rest one hour and you're detoxed. Since, as you say, most buffs last 8 hours, you can stack buffs just like any RPG. Also, there is a dispel potion and a detox potion.

The Witcher's alchemy system is a great idea, and it's executed well, but it's not as robust as you seem to think it is.

Resting and drinking potions in the Witcher 1 required you to find a fireplace, leaving whatever dungeon/area you were in. Detox potion were limited. In any case, sure, there were ways to clear your buffs and add new ones. But I wouldn't call that on-the-fly or anything. You commited to a limited number of buffs or your went out of your way to start over for a set of new ones.

 

[SymbolicFrank]

There are two things wrong with no prebuffing:

1. The buff has to be exceptional useful and fast cast to compete with just outright killing the baddies, and combat has to last a while.

2. It removes non-combat magic, and thereby the usefulness of the now unbuffable skills.

I see no wrong there.

For 1), it's a good thing that combat has to last a while and allows a place for tactical decisions such as buffing or not. That means the design should include no trash mobs and encounters, since every encounter would be longer and more significant. Hey good design just leads to more good design, innit? But the real issue is that RTwP is made for trash mobs and quick combat resolution rather than tactics. The buffing issue only highlights RTwP inadequacies.

True. But it also removes strategy from the equation: you might, for example, want to buff a mage/thief to send out as a potential assassin.

As for 2) you can still have a second category of non-combat "spells". D&D introduced this: rituals. Basically spells that would take too long to cast in a combat, and are more about the other aspects of play, exploration, socialization, investigation, etc. There were also some classic "combat" spells/buffs you could cast as rituals. You could also have a buffing system like The Witcher 1's potions, which you had to prepare beforehand, lasted a long while not a couple rounds or even one encounter, and were limited in amount because of toxicity and couldn't just be changed on the fly. That's the kind of pre-buffing I'd get behind. Not the "buff quickly and enter combat before the first buffs end" type of shit.

Yes, but that's exactly what pre-buffing is. Or at least, things like stone skin and other long-lasting buffs. And you could say, that the "knock" spell buffs lock picking to give you a critical success on your next try, like the "friends" spell does for communication. You could limit knock spells to single use and use disposable lock picks instead of scrolls, or perfume for the friends spell. But that's all rather cumbersome, because you have to come up with an unique solution for each one, and you have to stock up on them.

 

[SymbolicFrank]

Resting and drinking potions in the Witcher 1 required you to find a fireplace, leaving whatever dungeon/area you were in. Detox potion were limited. In any case, sure, there were ways to clear your buffs and add new ones. But I wouldn't call that on-the-fly or anything. You commited to a limited number of buffs or your went out of your way to start over for a set of new ones.

The reason why many spells cost valuables, and rituals gold is simply because that is far easier than carrying an endless amount of different items and reagents around. You would need to make a long shopping list to make sure you were prepared. "You spend that gold on the components."

 

[Ismaul]

Yes, but that's exactly what pre-buffing is.

The only difference being, it uses a different system than in-combat buffing and actions. Long term vs short term. And in the case of D&D and clones, non-Vancian and Vancian.

 

[fantadomat]

Not 100% sure what are you talking about, but Kingmaker's initial state definitely had an impact on it reception and Deadfire was nowhere near as bugged.

Really? So loosing all your money in a paying wages bug or quick lodaing only to see that your actions were still acknowledge from before and the whole place becoming hostile.....those were all imaginary things? Deadfire was filled with game breaking bugs,stop pretending that one game had less of them.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Not 100% sure what are you talking about, but Kingmaker's initial state definitely had an impact on it reception and Deadfire was nowhere near as bugged.

Really? So loosing all your money in a paying wages bug or quick lodaing only to see that your actions were still acknowledge from before and the whole place becoming hostile.....those were all imaginary things? Deadfire was filled with game breaking bugs,stop pretending that one game had less of them.

I cancelled my first Deadfire playthrough precisely because of the permanent hostility thing in one of the quests so I'm perfectly aware that the game was bugged. Actually, I also dropped my tb attempt once I realized tb mode causes all the guards in Tikitaka to become hostile whenever you initiate a quest-related combat encounter

Still, no point denying the fact that Kingmaker was a technical trainwreck on release that took much more time and effort to bring up to speed. It still has stuff like feats flat out not working, inconsistent/broken stacking etc., which is a pretty big deal for char building porn game that it is.

And you misunderstood my initial post anyway, I was writing about a hypothetical game that had Kingmaker's content and gameplay with Deadfire's production values (graphics, animations) and bug free, there was no comparison there with the last part.

 

[Desiderius]

it is not a sign of decline, but of men reaching for an ideal always removed.

So you say, but the Codex's collective ideal is in fact insufficiently idealistic. The same discussions are rehashed ad nauseam, and have left the ground fallow (rather odd given the surfeit of manure). If anything, I am urging you to up the ante: involve yourself in the game-making process – and I salute those who have already done so – or at the very least put yourself in the shoes of those that toil. Failing that, spin a compelling yarn. And if you believe your current critiques to be imaginative works in their own right, you are making an even greater mockery of that purported ideal. The greatest literary critics pontificated from within the crucible – they also wrote novels or poetry.

Also learn to use paragraphs.

Alas, poetic licence is lost on you.

But where's the man, who counsel can bestow,
Still pleas'd to teach, and yet not proud to know?
Unbias'd, or by favour or by spite;
Not dully prepossess'd, nor blindly right;
Though learn'd, well-bred; and though well-bred, sincere;
Modestly bold, and humanly severe?
Who to a friend his faults can freely show,
And gladly praise the merit of a foe?
Blest with a taste exact, yet unconfin'd;
A knowledge both of books and human kind;
Gen'rous converse; a soul exempt from pride;
And love to praise, with reason on his side?

Such once were critics; such the happy few,
Athens and Rome in better ages knew.

- Pope, Essay on Criticism