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

[coffeetable]

they don't have to share w/ paradox on steam or gog sales. which is the overwhleming majority of the market

 

[Deleted member 7219]

they don't have to share w/ paradox on steam or gog sales. which is the overwhleming majority of the market

Really? How are Paradox making their money? Purely on boxed sales? They'll get hardly any of those. I can only see sales coming from the European market (the Germans love their boxes), and the really hardcore. I see the bulk of sales coming from Steam and Paradox is listed as the publisher on there.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/291650/

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

they don't have to share w/ paradox on steam or gog sales.

You know for certain?

 

[Zed]

they don't have to share w/ paradox on steam or gog sales. which is the overwhleming majority of the market

Source?
Because that sounds fucking retarded beyond belief.

 

[Shevek]

Paradox's piece of the pie should be pretty small. I dont think Feargus would be silly enough to give them too much. OE came up with most of the capital themselves, afterall.

 

[Deleted member 7219]

Paradox's piece of the pie should be pretty small. I dont think Feargus would be silly enough to give them too much. OE came up with most of the capital themselves, afterall.

Everything that Chris Avellone, Josh Sawyer and Anthony Davis have said about Feargus is that he is a really good CEO so I think this is the case too. However, Obsidian getting screwed over by a publisher wouldn't be anything new. It would be wonderful if they could go completely publisher free for titles like these - for the next Kickstarters, cut out all physical rewards except for boxes and the odd book here and there, and don't have a physical release at all except for backers. I'm sure Obsidian can handle the PR themselves.

 

[tuluse]

they don't have to share w/ paradox on steam or gog sales. which is the overwhleming majority of the market

Source?
Because that sounds fucking retarded beyond belief.

coffetable might be thinking they have a similar deal that inxile made with Deep Silver, but I believe Paradox is more extensively involved in this case.

 

[Zed]

Everything that Chris Avellone, Josh Sawyer and Anthony Davis have said about Feargus is that he is a really good CEO

"My current boss is shit" - no-one ever

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

I'm sure Obsidian can handle the PR themselves.

No, they can't.

They don't have marketing people. If they hired some, those would be useless during a lot of the production time. But more importantly, marketing itself requires additional funds that Obs might not have, considering they almost went belly up as it is. And I'm not even talking about the fact that 99% marketing people are genuine retards and that finding the right staff might be difficult.

 

[Grotesque]

Everything that Chris Avellone, Josh Sawyer and Anthony Davis have said about Feargus is that he is a really good CEO s.

I still remember Mr. Urquhart at the PoE kickstarter closing party when he shouted at an employee on the hallway "NO! FUCK YOU!" and Avellone afterwards saying something like "I wish somebody erase my short time memory" to break the awkward silence.
So I guess a good CEO means having a tight grip on things all the time, whatever the occasion.

does anybody have a link to the closing party recording?
it would be funny to watch that thing once more

 

[Roguey]

I wish I could forget that party.

Feargus Urquhart is good enough at his job to make Obsidian last over a decade. He doesn't make the best decisions, but they're good enough.

No, the next eleven days we spend in the ritual nitpicking of the problems we expect the release game to have based on our purely theoretical understanding of the finished game.

The the game comes out and we we all spend the next week playing it without sleeping while simultaneously complaining about how horribly broken and unbalanced it is.

I see a ton of things we could improve about the game/systems, but it's a lot of fun as-is. I'm about 65 hours in on a Hard play through. I'm not doing a complete run but I've done a good amount of the side content. The crit path stuff eventually becomes relatively easy when you're over-leveled and over-geared, but that's pretty much what we expected.

it's a lot of fun

That crit path's going to be pretty funny after they release the two expansions since they'll raise the level cap to something like 14-16 and the endgame is tuned for level 8. Maybe they'll do what Heart of Winter did and change the composition of the big fights if you've completed the expansions.

 

[Zed]

I still remember Mr. Urquhart at the PoE kickstarter closing party when he shouted at an employee on the hallway "NO! FUCK YOU!" and Avellone afterwards saying something like "I wish somebody erase my short time memory" to break the awkward silence.

I need to see this.

 

[Grotesque]

I still remember Mr. Urquhart at the PoE kickstarter closing party when he shouted at an employee on the hallway "NO! FUCK YOU!" and Avellone afterwards saying something like "I wish somebody erase my short time memory" to break the awkward silence.

I need to see this.

I tried finding the recording of the closing party but to no avail

 

[Deleted member 7219]

Office parties are always awkward as fuck. Especially when they are recorded live on the internet - my god.

 

[Grotesque]

Office parties are always awkward as fuck. Especially when they are recorded live on the internet - my god.

The only awkward feeling persons at PoE closing party were Josh and Tim Cain that was dragged there when he was programming (but he loosened up pretty quickly).
The others genuinely felt good and alcohol played a big role. Maybe that's why the recording is nowhere to be seen

 

[Shevek]

Feargus was quite active during the KS in the comment section. Seemed like a genuinely cool guy.

 

[Sensuki]

 

[dukeofwhales]

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

Eh. They're a private company owned (at least mostly?) by people who love making RPGs, rather than being purely profit driven (as it would be if they were public or owned by an investment firm), and as the fairly melodramatic doco preview showed, they didn't have any other projects that they could be working on. Enough for the team to get a bonus, the owners to take a cut, a staff party and funding for the sequel would have to be considered a success. 200k full price sales seems fairly achievable to me, too.

 

[tuluse]

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

Eh. They're a private company owned (at least mostly?) by people who love making RPGs, rather than being purely profit driven (as it would be if they were public or owned by an investment firm), and as the fairly melodramatic doco preview showed, they didn't have any other projects that they could be working on. Enough for the team to get a bonus, the owners to take a cut, a staff party and funding for the sequel would have to be considered a success. 200k full price sales seems fairly achievable to me, too.

Also, that's an extremely short sighted way to run a business. There's also the question of goodwill. See HBS pulling a million on SR:HK kickstarter while half-assing it.

And this is the first time Obsidian has owned their own game. Which means they are generating an asset.

Probably a million other considerations besides "will this generate more cash flow".

 

[Sensuki]

Probably no Unity 5 for PE #1

To be honest, I can't imagine doing this for the expansion. It would be a very large amount of work to do this and we would need to pour a bunch of resources back into the base game to make everything play nicely. I guess anything is possible, but there are many other things we would rather spend programming time on for the expansion.

I could see this for a sequel (if we do one).

 

[Nihiliste]

To be honest, I can't imagine doing this for the expansion. It would be a very large amount of work to do this and we would need to pour a bunch of resources back into the base game to make everything play nicely. I guess anything is possible, but there are many other things we would rather spend programming time on for the expansion.

I could see this for a sequel (if we do one).

 

[Grotesque]

I really think reaching out to AngryJoe early was fairly brilliant since alot of his viewers will dive right in when they see the real time play and crisp visuals. .

That could be a double edge sword. He even gave Evolve 5/10 when everybody was praising it.
He never played an infinity engine game if I am not mistaken so I hope he'll not be that kind of reviewer that Sven Vincke loathes.


this interview with Paradox is too much fun

 

[Ellef]

Yes but Evolve is undoubtedly a pile of shit.

I don't really know anything about this guy but he gets a lot of views and apparently likes POE, which is worth a few sales.

 

[ZagorTeNej]

It's amazing how some of the people who criticize Josh for wanting more balance and less degenerate gameplay criticize him for not balancing or removing degenerate gameplay enough.

By the same token it's amazing how people who share Josh's moral outrage at degenerate gameplay present in IE games and champion his quest to fix them don't criticize him when he adds incentive for degenerate gameplay that wasn't present in IE games (well aside from IWD).

Besides, not everyone is tempted by the same things, I never had any desire to rest spam or grind XP in IE games but I sure like me some good loot in my RPG.

 

[Sensuki]

Besides, not everyone is tempted by the same things, I never had any desire to rest spam or grind XP in IE games but I sure like me some good loot in my RPG.

Or, criticize me or others trying to point out the kinks where things don't adhere to those principles.