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

[Quillon]

Nostalgia leads to diminishing returns.

Saying this(Deadfire vs PoE1 sales) is diminishing returns is an understatement. If PoE1 had got the praise Kingmaker got with the backing of many hardcore players, then maybe we could have seen diminishing returns with Deadfire instead of a shocking flop. Obs wouldn't have been acquired by MS at the least

 

[Lacrymas]

Nostalgia leads to diminishing returns.

That implies the love of isometric games/RPGs is only due to nostalgia and nothing else. Which is not true, it's just that PoE wasn't a good nostalgia scratcher. There are other recent games which banked on nostalgia but did very well on their own, like Shovel Knight. There's also the fact there are other isometric RPGs coming out and people are still buying/kickstarting them. PF:K, the Divinities, Wasteland 3 was kickstarted, there's interest in Black Geyser, etc. etc.

 

[pomenitul]

None of those are in quite the same ballpark as Obsidian. And PF:K is obscenely overrated on this here board.

 

[volklore]

Overrated or not PF:K is a great nostalgia scratcher and it's as close to the feeling of playing a modern BG1 as you can get. It has great Character creation, really decent PnP ruleset implementation and a focus on adventuring and exploration over convoluted writing and world building, which is exactly what BG1 was all about.
The only thing PoE has in common with BG1 is isometric view and RtwP.

 

[pomenitul]

Suit yourself. I worship the IE series, played and replayed them all when they came out, and got way more mileage out of the PoEs than during my PF:K playthrough.

 

[Elephantman]

While Soywer congratulates himself in some PR faggotjerk, a LONE autistic russian made a game twice as good as Pillars of Shit in 2-3 years. For 80%+ of the time completely alone!

Fallout Nevada obliterates Obshitians PoS!

 

[Roguey]

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

With The Outer Worlds one may end up concluding they shouldn't do science fiction either.

 

[Quillon]

The problem isn't narrative genres at this point, if Deadfire was a 3rd action RPG with the same narrative, it would be regarded as a masterpiece by the mainstream or PoE1 for that matter...and like TOW's gonna be if they won't mess it up technically.

 

[Beggar]

Haven't yet tried this one. PoE1 was generic crap for me. Is it worth to try this one or just stick with Kingmaker Pathfinder?

 

[Infinitron]

I think the first bullet point is about his realization that turn-based is now more popular - and more well-understood by gamers - than RTwP. Will be fun to hear that part of that talk.

 

[Xeon]

Wasn't turn base always more popular than RtwP? I think only Bioware did RTwP RPGs.

 

[Delterius]

Been doing my final playthrough for a while now when I just noticed something. Isn't it funny how Maia's idle animation is about hawking her bird, but then it kinda look like the soldier of fascist colonizers is doing a roman salute.

Sawyer strikes once again and we need expert opinion, FreeKaner

 

[thesheeep]

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.

The people who didn't buy the game, and didn't play the game, due to how complicated or ill-suited to their taste they perceived it to be, couldn't care less if there were a thousand different difficulty modes.
Difficulty modes don't really sell games, which is why putting a lot of effort into them is pretty much always a guaranteed waste of resources.
Stuff like story, difficulty modes, etc. (as long as neither are terribly bad) play only a marginal role in such a title's success. By the time word gets around of the quality of these things, the sales already are good or bad. And heavily story-driven games don't usually have the longevity of something like RimWorld, etc. so that big changes (such as turn-based mode) could significantly impact sales.

As to why PoE 2 did so much worse than PoE 1... well, that's a different topic, and there are many reasons that contributed here. Fig not being as good of a word-spreading platform as KS, sequel fatigue, the "novelty" of IE-style games fading, lack of marketing, ... I sure don't know all reasons, but it is safe to say there is not the "one reason" it can be pinned on.

 

[Sailor Woedica]

None of those are in quite the same ballpark as Obsidian. And PF:K is obscenely overrated on this here board.

Go on tumblr and Kingmaker is kind of dead for fanart and content but Pillars of Eternity is still thriving

 

[eric__s]

I think the first bullet point is about his realization that turn-based is now more popular - and understood by gamers - than RTwP. Will be fun to hear that part of that talk.

What companies don't get is that turn-based was always more popular; RtwP is an entryway for non-RPG fans, who aren't recurrent customers, and PoE, which was a game built on nostalgia for older games, would never appeal to those non-RPG fans.

 

[Infinitron]

I think the first bullet point is about his realization that turn-based is now more popular - and understood by gamers - than RTwP. Will be fun to hear that part of that talk.

What companies don't get is that turn-based was always more popular; RtwP is an entryway for non-RPG fans, who aren't recurrent customers, and PoE, which was a game built on nostalgia for older games, would never appeal to those non-RPG fans.

Josh Sawyer has said that believes that the success of the old RTwP RPGs was contingent on the popularity of real time strategy games during the same era. Because of those games, real-time point & click unit management skills were more widespread in the general gaming populace than they are today. I'd bet he said that in the talk, but I wonder what else he said.

 

[Sailor Woedica]

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.

Megan Starks is writing what lewks like a fierce urban fantasy romance book, she would be so great as the narrative lead on an urban fantasy game!

 

[RaptorRex888]

Must be hard to type with all the Russian cock in everyone's mouth around here.

 

[Prime Junta]

Must be hard to type with all the Russian cock in everyone's mouth around here.

How would that make typing more difficult?

 

[RickOmbo]

A game with no redeeming qualities, what an achievement.

 

[DalekFlay]

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".

I think this is spot-on. If you want more mainstream attention you need that VO (sadly), but PoE2 didn't really get much mainstream attention so I'd argue it was still a waste of resources.

 

[Riddler]

I think the first bullet point is about his realization that turn-based is now more popular - and understood by gamers - than RTwP. Will be fun to hear that part of that talk.

What companies don't get is that turn-based was always more popular; RtwP is an entryway for non-RPG fans, who aren't recurrent customers, and PoE, which was a game built on nostalgia for older games, would never appeal to those non-RPG fans.

Josh Sawyer has said that believes that the success of the old RTwP RPGs was contingent on the popularity of real time strategy games during the same era. Because of those games, real-time point & click unit management skills were more widespread in the general gaming populace than they are today. I'd bet he said that in the talk, but I wonder what else he said.

And this would somehow be less of the case with the massive popularity of MOBAs?

 

[RaptorRex888]

Been doing my final playthrough for a while now when I just noticed something. Isn't it funny how Maia's idle animation is about hawking her bird, but then it kinda look like the soldier of fascist colonizers is doing a roman salute.

Sawyer strikes once again and we need expert opinion, FreeKaner

I think you're reading too much in to it, all of the companions are given idle animations that suit their character and demeanour. Also none of the factions are presented as objectively bad by the game itself, so I don't know where you got that impression from.

 

[Lacrymas]

Since Maia has the highest damage potential of any of the companions, I think it's clear who Sawyer thinks is superior. The signs are too many to ignore.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Maia is a qt