Eternity Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire + DLC Thread - now with turn-based combat!

[Sentinel]

"Easier difficulties are important, but hardcore RPG players need a challenge."

Wow, really? He needed 20 years of game development to learn this lesson? Jesus christ. Also what a vacuous list. If that's all he learned from PoE2 then he learned nothing at all.

 

[Roguey]

"Expectation of full VO in these RPGs is real"

 

[aweigh]

if having VO means they need to make each sentence count, then that ends up being in the plus column.

 

[Sentinel]

Except not really, as seen in PoE2.

 

[Quillon]

What Deadfire proved is that expectation for this type of game ain't real, if you wanna sell 1M+ units. So in hindsight we can safely say VO budget was a waste since whoever bought the game would also have bought it if it had partial VO.

The lesson to take: Move away from IE style. In addition to everything, they have a tarnished rep with it atm. They couldn't capture the magic in two games when Pathfinder did it right out of the gate while cutting corners in the "IE style".

 

[RaptorRex888]

IRPG's are never huge mainstream financial successes (D:OS 2 is an anomaly in this case, despite 90% of the casuals that bought not even progressing an hour into it, let alone finishing it) so to hope for anything like this to to progress past being a niche title is hopeful at best, stupid at worst.

I honestly don't think there will be a PoE 3, it doesn't fit into Microsoft's vision for the future of Obsidian. Outer Worlds is obviously trying to hone in on the disgruntled Fallout fans left in the cold after 4. I don't know about any of the other projects.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I'd appreciate VO in RPGs more if there was an option to speed them up 20-30%.

 

[Quillon]

IRPG's are never huge mainstream financial successes (D:OS 2 is an anomaly in this case, despite 90% of the casuals that bought not even progressing an hour into it, let alone finishing it) so to hope for anything like this to to progress past being a niche title is hopeful at best, stupid at worst.

DoS is way more towards mainstream than IE to the bone 'cept ruleset PoE. And DoS2 rose on the shoulders of beloved DoS1 whilst PoE1 left a boring taste for many who bought it. If Obs are thinking they are the same style games and somehow Deadfire failed cos of this & that feature(f.i. "plot struggles" line in the tweet) being worse than DOS2, they are fools.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

PoE failing and D:OS succeeding is the best thing that could have happened to CRPGs.

 

[Yosharian]

If only there was some way to have some quality voice acting in order to introduce a character aurally to the player, but without having the massive time, budget and writing constraints that complete voice acting has?

If only, say, a character would say the first line of their dialogue voiced, but then the rest wasn't voiced, that would be the best of both worlds.

Oh well, I'm sure no game has ever used such a strategy successfully, and effectively laid the groundwork, set a template if you will, for other games to follow. No, that's definitely not happened, because then Obsidian would have followed in such a game's footsteps, surely? Obsidian's game would have been a sort of, spiritual successor, if you like, to that original, highly successful game. But since no such game exists, how could Obsidian possibly have known that full VO was a bad idea, and that there were other options that would work just as well, saving them time, money, and many headaches!

Indeed, let us congratulate Obsidian for having learned many important lessons from this project, lessons that they definitely couldn't have learned elsewhere, by paying attention to the historically successful games of the genre.

 

[vortex]

I should direct a different type of game next.

 

[Lacrymas]

As ever, Obs don't know who their audience is. They also learned the wrong lessons, except the challenge one. The thing is, though, that PoE2 was doomed the moment they released PoE1. Base game was such a boring, incoherent slog that had nothing to do with BG1 and I'm not surprised people dropped it faster than a hot potato.

 

[pomenitul]

The hate boner that never abates. Y’all should get that checked, priapism is a disease.

 

[FreeKaner]

The lesson learned is that obsidian shouldn't do fantasy.

 

[volklore]

I would also rather have the VO money directed towards other things. But the reality is the bulk of the audience that, in the end, makes or break the success of a game, wants full voiceovers. Blaming full VO for failure of PoE2 is a meme really. Streamers and 'influencers' constantly rave about full VO - all the most upvoted youtube comments are those of people wanting full VO . Without full VO, PoE2 would probably have tanked even more. The main issue as is being mentioned, is that the setting was just a plain boring incoherent mess that required so much exposition in the first game than even the penultimate act of the game in loredump city(Twin Elms) was still 99% exposition. Nobody was left with any love for the setting after the first game and didn't want to spend 60+ extra hours in it.

 

[FreeKaner]

Obsidian should try urban fantasy. Somehow it seems it would play to their strengths, because they are at their best when they doing of writing and narrative design for that type of interaction.

 

[RickOmbo]

The lesson learned is that obsidian shouldn't do fantasy.

No one should do generic fantasy.

Obsidian should try urban fantasy. Somehow it seems it would play to their strengths, because they are at their best when they doing of writing and narrative design for that type of interaction.

Incidentally, Microsoft has rights to Shadowrun.

 

[Lacrymas]

The bigger problem with the writing is the lack of a compelling story, or at least compellingly told story. PoE1 tried to cram too much stuff and everything ended up half-finished or irrelevant. The writing team should return to the basics, write short stories in which the plot is moved only by characters and their motivations, so they can understand how logical causal relationships work. I suspect PoE1's "mainstream" failure is mostly due to the writing since most people don't care about systems or gameplay all that much.

 

[Oreshnik Missile]

Another baffling thing is that they made this very fleshed-out setting, only for most of it to be generic. Why make all that effort just to go from vampire to fampyr?

 

[Safav Hamon]

Deadfire's polynesian setting is more unique than your typical medieval european fantasy RPG.

 

[vortex]

Why make all that effort just to go from vampire to fampyr?

So they can make Fampyr the Masquerade as pillars spin-off.

 

[Quillon]

I suspect PoE1's "mainstream" failure is mostly due to the writing since most people don't care about systems or gameplay all that much.

Everybody cares about gameplay & most people don't like isometric gameplay/games, some went so far to say "Obs' finally making a real game!" when they heard about TOW. Tho not everybody cares about in depth mechanics or if its D&D or PoE ruleset, yeah.

That said PoE1 while being successful, could have been so much more so if it wasn't for the sleep inducing narrative, hype was way too strong then...Obs just couldn't capitalize on it, or they thought they did whilst in truth they squeezed the last bit out of it & killed it

 

[thesheeep]

I suspect PoE1's "mainstream" failure is mostly due to the writing since most people don't care about systems or gameplay all that much.

Nah. PoE is simply a too complex game for most gamers. Or, let's say, it seems complex at first glance (you know, before you notice that you could as well randomize your stats and it would still work good enough).
Something like BG or BG2 also wouldn't be a mainstream success nowadays, either.

Of course, the writing did not help that much, either, but most people don't finish games anyway, so story is almost never the reason of the success or failure of a game.

 

[Lacrymas]

Why did they sell 1 million copies of PoE1 if there wasn't some interest in isometric games? Yeah, I can believe that some of those copies were impulse purchases due to hype, but ~90% of them not buying/playing WM and ~75% not buying PoE2 is iffy and suspect.

Nah. PoE is simply a too complex game for most gamers. Or, let's say, it seems complex at first glance (you know, before you notice that you could as well randomize your stats and it would still work good enough).
Something like BG or BG2 also wouldn't be a mainstream success nowadays, either.

It has 5 difficulty modes though and 4 of those are ridiculously easy. I doubt most people put it on PotD immediately and then refused to restart on a lower difficulty due to pride.

 

[pomenitul]

Nostalgia leads to diminishing returns.