Blutwurstritter
Learned
I don't mind how Sawyer changed stats and their meaning, that is one of the few interesting aspects. What I mind is the action speed calculation, the small percentages on everything and the interaction of these parts with the hit-miss-graze system. I cannot simply and quickly estimate average damage or attack speed in this system. I also don't think BG1/2 would be any better if they used this attack resolution and attack speed system. The same goes for spells. The outcomes can vary wildly and are hard to estimate. The lack of some sort natural unit of time, like the 6 second round, also doesn't help. A standard like that allows it to easily judge how fast/slow something is, and I don't mean that everything should follow fake rounds, but that the game should have some sort of easily recognizable patterns or norms. PoE lacks any such reference and makes it much harder to judge if abilities or spells with durations are worth it or not. The mechanics are in principal not necessarily bad, but the way that they are tuned and implemented in PoE is. They are next to no improvement over the much simpler and easier to work with system from the old games. Obsidian should have started from there and added a few changes to improve it gradually. What makes matters worse is that it takes a lot of time to engage with the system deeply. I never thought it was worth my time. That makes it convoluted.They made the RTwP part itself better as in they improved how it plays and made it easier to control your characters and understand what's going on (barring the exaggerated visuals)Then we agree mostly. I just found it strange that you mention RTwP so explicitly, when the choice to use RTwP it is not the main reason that PoE1/2 failed to meet expectations. However, I disagree that they made it better. The mechanics and combat are not designed well for RTwP. Sometimes less is more and PoE's convoluted systems are good example for that.I didn't say RTwP was the problem, only that it was flawed. If people enjoyed something flawed years ago, they can enjoy it now too. I also played and enjoyed Kingmaker as a RTwP game until that absolute genius came up with the TB mod.RTwP is not a problem, the success of the Pathfinder games by Owlcat is proof of that. You can clearly still make RTwP rpgs with decent sales numbers if the whole package is good.Obsidian took a fundamentally flawed system (RTwP) that's only revered due to nostalgia by a small percentage of gamers, and claimed that they could make it better. They did succeed at that too imo, but that didn't matter because the end product was still mediocre at best. Some of the old schoolers who liked the old games despite their flaws weren't there anymore, for one reason or the other. Casuals (i.e. the people who actually determine whether your game is commercially successful or not) would rather play something like Dragon Age: Origins. They failed to ride that initial kickstarter craze, and what they did for the second game didn't matter, as it rarely does.
Larian took a tested an proven system that's usually thought of as "boring" by casuals because of them never actually trying it. They focused on the "fun" aspects of the game during their marketing campaign, like the humour and being able to spend quality time with your partner. In the meantime they made it obvious where the inspiration was coming from and filled their game with little homages. Casuals didn't care about the flaws because they were in it for the fun, and the old schoolers were happy to shill the game with passion because it scratched their itch properly. Rest is history.
So it was essentially a matter of the smart guy at the head of Larian making good decisions, and the opportunist guy at the head of Obsidian making uneducated ones.
What made me like Kingmaker wasn't the game being RTwP. But the RTwP aspect of it didn't annoy me too much either, because it was familiar. Can't say the same for PoE.
PoE lacked soul (heh) in terms of writing and the story. But there are very successful games that are even shittier in those.
Sawyer also had the right idea in that adapting a turn based system to a real time where every 6 seconds is one turn had created a lot of problems for these old games. But the real issue was that he isn't good enough to come up with better mechanics than people who's been developing D&D for years, people who's actually jobs were to create game systems rather than video games (talking about D&D up to 3.5 as that's where I stopped paying attention). Hence me saying the game is mediocre at best. No reason to parrot what everyone has been writing here for years.
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