Pillars of Eternity Beta Discussion [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Havoc]

I don't like my junk hand placed, I liked it hand manipulated, if you know what I mean.

 

[J_C]

I don't like my junk hand placed, I liked it hand manipulated, if you know what I mean.

 

[Infinitron]

I'm not upset loot can be save scummed, I'm upset it isn't hand placed. Why do developers hate hand placed loot? It is so much better than getting a random assortment of magic/useless items in each chest.

Unique items are handplaced, junk/less-important loot is randomized.

This is bordering on the tautological.

The real issue is that in the IE games, at low levels at least, low tier magical items were "unique", while in PoE there's apparently a class of "generic" magical items.

 

[Roguey]

Eh, well I've reached the point in BG where I'm selling +1 items cause I don't need 'em and I'm level 5ish. PoE goes up to 12.

 

[Jaedar]

I'm not upset loot can be save scummed, I'm upset it isn't hand placed. Why do developers hate hand placed loot? It is so much better than getting a random assortment of magic/useless items in each chest.

Unique items are handplaced, junk/less-important loot is randomized.

If the loot is not important, it should not be there in the first place.

Junk loot is meaningless busywork to establish a skinner box. I'd rather be rid of it.

 

[Roguey]

If the loot is not important, it should not be there in the first place.

Junk loot is meaningless busywork to establish a skinner box. I'd rather be rid of it.

Sometimes junk loot can be useful if it fills a niche you don't already have. Additionally, there would be an uproar over its absence. Looting pointless things has become a genre staple and PoE is very much a "checklist of expected features" RPG.

 

[Sensuki]

Loot lists are editable, although currently they're in a large file with other stuff.

 

[dukeofwhales]

Yeah, define successful. Do we have any idea how much Obsidian hopes it to sell? What is their best case scenario?

obsidian as a company probably eats about ~million a month. the game's priced at $45. steam and gog both take a 30% cut. so one months' operation is equivalent to ~30,000 sales

on the back of those figures, selling 70k like broken age would be a failure. selling 500k like DOS would be a great success. i'd guess obsidian's expectations are somewhere between the two

I would define success as it funding the amount a sequel would cost (including all overheads), plus a bonus for those heavily involved in the original. The whole of Obsidian isn't working on PoE so covering X months of operation isn't really a useful measure. So about $4 million in revenue = ~130,000 sales would be a great success because it would mean they need no external funding for a sequel.

So I guess "somewhere between the two" does cover it. Obviously add whatever extra in sales is required to cover Paradox's cut of revenue. Couldn't speculate as to how much that is, but we learned at the PAX East stream that it bought them a logo at startup, at least.

 

[Anthony Davis]

Some loot is hand placed for sure, like those Flovan (sp?) pieces you can find early in the game. The gloves, the amulet.

 

[Anthony Davis]

I think if we can hit 200k in sales, within a few months, it will be considered successful.

 

[Infinitron]

I think if we can hit 200k in sales, within a few months, it will be considered successful.

That makes sense. Those are the kinds of numbers Brother None has told me would be reasonably successful for Wasteland 2 (and when Divinity: Original Sin sold that much within days, he said that was way more than Wasteland 2 needed)

 

[Blackguard]

That seems pretty reasonable. The KS had 74k backers, with slacker backers the total is probably somewhere close to 100k. You would expect that there would be at least twice that number of people who are unwilling to throw their money at Obsidian years in advance, but are still interested enough in this type of game to buy it at release.
Baldur's Gate 2 actually sold over 2 million copies, maybe a hardcore crpg can actually reach numbers like one day again...

 

[Arkeus]

Baldur's Gate 2 actually sold over 2 million copies, maybe a hardcore crpg can actually reach numbers like one day again...

I really don't think it sold 2 millions within a couple of months. Honestly, it's very likely that D:OS sold better than BG2 did for their respective first year.

 

[prodigydancer]

I really don't think it sold 2 millions within a couple of months. Honestly, it's very likely that D:OS sold better than BG2 did for their respective first year.

The game [Baldur's Gate] had low sales expectations from Interplay, but was a financial success, selling over two million copies worldwide.

The game [Baldur's Gate 2] received critical acclaim upon its release; GameSpy, GameSpot, and IGN awarded Baldur's Gate II their "Role-Playing Game of the Year" awards for 2000, and the game has sold more than two million units.

As of 2006, total sales for all releases in the series was almost five million copies.

 

[coffeetable]

I really don't think it sold 2 millions within a couple of months.

went looking for a source to back you up, came away surprised

http://web.archive.org/web/20021207211601/http://www.bioware.com/bioware_info/about/

1.5 million at the date that page was recorded, which was 2 years after release

 

[coffeetable]

I would define success as it funding the amount a sequel would cost (including all overheads), plus a bonus for those heavily involved in the original. The whole of Obsidian isn't working on PoE so covering X months of operation isn't really a useful measure.

it's a question of opportunity-cost. it's not enough to simply earn out the costs of the project, it has to generate more cash in an absolute sense than investing those dev-years in another project would

 

[J_C]

I really don't think it sold 2 millions within a couple of months.

went looking for a source to back you up, came away surprised

http://web.archive.org/web/20021207211601/http://www.bioware.com/bioware_info/about/

1.5 million at the date that page was recorded, which was 2 years after release

Don't forget that 1,5 million at that time was a great success.

 

[J_C]

I think if we can hit 200k in sales, within a few months, it will be considered successful.

These kind of RPGs really became such a niche that 200K in the first months would be a success? Did it really come to this? I'm not expecting millions of sales, but for a great looking RPG with lots of contents deserves at least 500 K in the first month. Or am I just daydreaming?

 

[coffeetable]

I think if we can hit 200k in sales, within a few months, it will be considered successful.

These kind of RPGs really became such a niche that 200K in the first months would be a success? Did it really come to this? I'm not expecting millions of sales, but for a great looking RPG with lots of contents deserves at least 500 K in the first month. Or am I just daydreaming?

D:OS hit 500k after three months. beating that is possible, but you wouldn't want to go making business plans around it.

e: obviously not an RPG, but best "indie" performance recently was cities: skylines. 250k units in 24hrs. fair odds it's gonna rejuvenate the city-builder genre all on its own

 

[Shevek]

I am thinking this will sell pretty damn well. They've done a much better job at reaching out to the gaming community and press than D:OS did. As an RTwP game, it should attract a wider audience as well.

 

[tuluse]

I really don't think it sold 2 millions within a couple of months.

went looking for a source to back you up, came away surprised

http://web.archive.org/web/20021207211601/http://www.bioware.com/bioware_info/about/

1.5 million at the date that page was recorded, which was 2 years after release

Notice Throne of Bhaal is listed separately with 500k sold

 

[Infinitron]

lol: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/71076-lets-get-gossipy-friction-between-avellone-and-sawyer/

 

[agris]

FFS

area looting should be in the backer beta update btw ~* #pillarsofeternity

Look at the bright side - most of the BB community will be able to try it out and vocally denounce it as a shit mechanic. I hope we convince them to cut it out from the final game.

So, any guesses on what's the next step? I'm thinking about auto pickpocket radius. I mean why not, saves you the trouble of walking up to NPCs, right.

The majority will prefer area looting. We may be able to mod it out, as we keep all of the code from previous versions. Bester has the right to be the most angry though as he is the guy that will have to change it back.

This has probably been addressed since I'm only on page 381, but why not go the EE route and support toggle-able area loot, and allow for individual corpse loot. This lets us see what a corpse contains, as well as enjoy the ease of use of area loot.

 

[Shevek]

Ya, the EE implementation of area looting was actually fairly well done.

 

[Blackguard]

e: obviously not an RPG, but best "indie" performance recently was cities: skylines. 250k units in 24hrs. fair odds it's gonna rejuvenate the city-builder genre all on its own

The 250k figure was actually pre-order + first day sales which of course is still extremely impressive.

One thing PoE could learn from Cities is the impact youtubers can have these days. Cities jumped to #1 on Steam almost immediately after the embargo on streaming the game was lifted about week before the release date. Of course with story heavy game like PoE you can't really allow streaming of the whole game before release, but they could allow streaming first couple hours of the game or something similar.