Eternity PoE II: Deadfire Sales Analysis Thread

[AwesomeButton]

PoE1 sold what it did mostly because it was the first attempt to revive the IE style of RPGs, which was marketed as such an attempt. In other words, nostalgia and name-dropping.

Of course the second time you come to the well, you won't get the same response from people, especially when you're doing it 5 years later. The climate has changed. The proportion of clueless people on this so hardcore forum never ceases to amaze me.

 

[fantadomat]

Well PoE sold well because people wanted a new IE game,they didn't get what they wanted with the first. When the second one was announced people saw that it is by the same devs,thus being more of the same,and decided not to bother with it. The end result was a game that had less of the same and some shit that nobody wanted,like VA and pointless ship combat.

The biggest problems are how boring the writing and the world are,in the second game the writing is downright terrible. The world is cliche and without any mysteries left in it. They really fuck themself over with that main story from the first game.

 

[The Avatar]

The thing is- the game got good reviews, so you'd think it would sell more. Maybe people are just burnt out on RPG's after several years of incline.

Has Obsidian said what their budget was for Pillars 2? Or how many people were on the team? I wonder if they are going to end up losing money on the game.

 

[AMG]

ELEX 254,457
PoE2 203,867
Germany wins again, sawyerists.

 

[unfairlight]

Obshittian has been so CUCKED by the CHAD Piranha Bytes that Sawyer has started to LARP as a Kraut himself! SAD!

 

[Dodo1610]

How is the fact that Elex is more successful that Pillars of Eternity 2 suprising? Elex is an Action RPG while Deadfire wants to be a classic CRPG. ARPG allways sold better then the those. Aside from that Elex was released in October. Though i doubt Obsidian is happy with 200k sold games

 

[fantadomat]

How is the fact that Elex is more successful that Pillars of Eternity 2 suprising? Elex is an Action RPG while Deadfire wants to be a classic CRPG. ARPG allways sold better then the those. Aside from that Elex was released in October. Though i doubt Obsidian is happy with 200k sold games

Divinity2 outsold them both combined.

 

[J_C]

The world is cliche and without any mysteries left in it.

Dude, this is a fantasy world, they can have any kind of mystery in it if they bother to come up with them. The only thing they finished is the mystery of the gods, and most RPGs are not about gods anyway.

 

[Lacrymas]

No fantasy RPG has been about gods the way PoE is. MotB is about the curse and the people dealing with it, it being a god's punishment is just an extraordinary explanation for an extraordinary situation. The focus was the characters and how they relate to the curse and each other. It wasn't about gods, it was about love, justice and how we bash our heads against the immovable laws of the universe with righteous anger, only to find out that maybe they aren't so immovable. The human condition is what is always mysterious, worth exploring and elusive, not whether the gods are AI or not. There is nothing human about either PoE1 or 2's 'plots'.

 

[Roguey]

No fantasy RPG has been about gods the way PoE is.

PoE isn't about gods either.

 

[DalekFlay]

The thing is- the game got good reviews, so you'd think it would sell more. Maybe people are just burnt out on RPG's after several years of incline.

Doesn't matter how good the reviews are if you played the first (which also got great reviews) and thought it was meh. Humans are sheep but they're not THAT bad.

 

[Lacrymas]

PoE isn't about gods either.

It is, though, in the most hamfisted way possible. There is hardly any plot in either 1 or 2 and 2 is literally about a walking god who wants to stop the other gods, who in turn want to stop him. Even WM couldn't escape this, it being literally about Ondra's wetness (ha, a pun and a double entendre) over Abyddon. Maybe WM1 is about the economic situation and feasibility of remote villages, but it doesn't go anywhere, so it isn't about that either. It's not enough just to talk about a thing for a narrative to be about that thing, what is implicit is frequently more important than what is explicit. And PoE is implicitly and explicitly about gods.

 

[fantadomat]

The world is cliche and without any mysteries left in it.

Dude, this is a fantasy world, they can have any kind of mystery in it if they bother to come up with them. The only thing they finished is the mystery of the gods, and most RPGs are not about gods anyway.

Once you solve the biggest mystery everything else looks meh in comparison. I am a storyfag and can't see anything interesting in this world,it feels like an empty shell to me and appearance to a quite a few other people. I did buy the first PoE with the dlcs,but i didn't this one. I spend my dosh on a good rpgs like ELEX and Kingdom come.

They didn't manage to craft the world well,it have a lot of contradictions and half thoughts in it. Taking away the gods from a fantasy game is a big thing,it feels like "everything is science but undiscovered". I personally don't play fantasy for that shit,i want magic and mystique,not logic and rationality. Also it kills a lot of roleplaying elements,you can't seriously play a religious person,let alone a zealot. Who the fuck would be zealot to a buggy retarded software. Also it effect the communication with other people of that world.

 

[Roguey]

It is, though, in the most hamfisted way possible. There is hardly any plot in either 1 or 2 and 2 is literally about a walking god who wants to stop the other gods, who in turn want to stop him. Even WM couldn't escape this, it being literally about Ondra's wetness (ha, a pun and a double entendre) over Abyddon. Maybe WM1 is about the economic situation and feasibility of remote villages, but it doesn't go anywhere, so it isn't about that either. It's not enough just to talk about a thing for a narrative to be about that thing, what is implicit is frequently more important than what is explicit. And PoE is implicitly and explicitly about gods.

Most of PoE's plot revolves around fixing your visions, the animancy question, and soulless babies than the goings-on of gods, whom you don't even speak to until the third act, and even then you only do so because Thaos was there first and you need their help to get to him.

 

[Lacrymas]

It doesn't revolve around that at all, it's just a string of events that you happen to be around, all circling around the gods in some way. Animancy is opposed because gods, babies are linked to Thaos, who is a chosen of a god and is doing this for that god. But really, it's not about animancy, babies or visions at all, none of these things are explored in any meaningful way apart from being mentioned as a problem, but are quickly and unceremoniously swept under the rug to focus on the most uninteresting villain in the history of fiction. Maybe Eothas has that title now if we count him as a villain.

 

[DalekFlay]

PoE lacks plot consistency and proper structure, so it makes sense people argue over what it was really about. They should have focused on the soul wheel and soulless baby thing, but they got muddled as the game went on.

 

[Lycra Suit]

They should have just made it more personal. That's what made Baldur's Gate flow so well despite the writing quality.

 

[Roguey]

PoE lacks plot consistency and proper structure, so it makes sense people argue over what it was really about. They should have focused on the soul wheel and soulless baby thing, but they got muddled as the game went on.

"Let's combine three different pitches because they're all too good to reject xD" - Absurdian

 

[fantadomat]

PoE lacks plot consistency and proper structure, so it makes sense people argue over what it was really about. They should have focused on the soul wheel and soulless baby thing, but they got muddled as the game went on.

Yeah,it really have terrible structure. Too many shits thrown at the wall. Deadfire on the other hand have no structure,everything is a side quests,and the main quest is to listen to a bunch of retarded bugs bickering about what they won't do.

 

[aweigh]

Yeah soulless baby thing was a good hook, and the hanging tree was a good visual. I don't remember anything whatsoever about what happens after you finish up Gilded Vale except for lots of very balanced combat.

 

[Lycra Suit]

How would soulless babies work on its own? You know next to nothing about their world and its the first time playing with your character. You're even supposed to be a complete foreigner in that particular land. It's just not strong enough to entangle you emotionally from the start.

Baldur's Gate did it right because 1. A lot of people were already familiar with the forgotten realms. 2. It's personal drama that you can immediately relate to. Your adoptive dies and the safe environment you grew up in is threatened by an evil psychopath who wants to hunt you down.
Then in the second after you've played through an entire game with your character some asshole steals your soul and your sister on top of gruesomely killing some of your former companions. And finally in the third one after all you've gone through with the same party, a shadow council is trying to corner you to claim your godhood while ravaging the world with their armies of monsters.

In both cases the villain receives enough characterization at the start to give you the urge to track him down and beat the shit out of him.

The only decent part in POE was the city council where he makes a dramatic entrance to fuck with your entire progress. Should have carried that level intensity right from the start.

 

[AwesomeButton]

If anyone has related to his character being orphaned and his ward killed and himself being chased off from his home, I doubt he was representative of the majority of players.

For me BG's plot just served as a good enough excuse to roam the Sword Coast, and nothing more. I couldn't ever care less about the PC's personal story.

 

[Roguey]

How would soulless babies work on its own? You know next to nothing about their world and its the first time playing with your character. You're even supposed to be a complete foreigner in that particular land. It's just not strong enough to entangle you emotionally from the start.

Likely why it was rejected.

They could make one of the soulless babies your kid, though that would rub quite a few people the wrong way, being forced to roleplay a father/mother.

 

[Lycra Suit]

If anyone has related to his character being orphaned and his ward killed and himself being chased off from his home

It doesn't need to happen to you for you to relate to something tragic and painful. Seeing your character's father murdered will get you deep down. Being told through a bunch of dialogues that babies are born weird this year doesn't carry the same weight.

 

[fantadomat]

How would soulless babies work on its own? You know next to nothing about their world and its the first time playing with your character. You're even supposed to be a complete foreigner in that particular land. It's just not strong enough to entangle you emotionally from the start.

Likely why it was rejected.

They could make one of the soulless babies your kid, though that would rub quite a few people the wrong way, being forced to roleplay a father/mother.

Brother/sister would have done the job. You could have been the lord appointed to the region and tasked with cleaning it from all the cults,monsters and invaders. Keeping your loyalty to your country or sliding toward the other side/sides. It would have been a lot better game than we have got.
Or you could be just an agent of something tasked with finding the cause and fixing it.