Eternity Josh Sawyer reflects on his failures with Pillars of Eternity

[fantadomat]

I'm not sure I follow. Casting a spell once at the start of a dungeon level is more "tedious busywork" than casting the same spell at the start of every combat?

Or are you thinking that those abilities should all be removed and all fear/fire/whatever resistance is fixed to gear or permanent features of class or species?

If you are casting the same buff every encounter, or have it constantly up anyway, there's something wrong. Either the encounters are trashy, copy-pasted time-wasters, or pre-buffing exists but should be baked into the classes and not be an extra button to push after every rest. What I mean is that it's better to weigh the pros and cons of buffing, debuffing, damaging, healing etc. than the buffing layer being exclusively out of combat. It just makes more sense gameplay-wise.

I don't get all that prebuffing is bad mentality. In the whole BG2 i must have prebuffed/buffed like 5 times when i was fighting some really hard boss or in the mind flayer dungeons. 99% of battles don't need any buffs,you could just win with good character composition and not being a retard. Also why having an option to do something is a bad thing?

 

[Ismaul]

I'm not exaclty the core fanbase for such a game, since I heavily dislike Bladder's Gape and RTwP.

But it wasn't the mechanics that turned me off the franchise. In fact, I was pleasantly surprised by them in PoE. For RTwP, it wasn't so bad; totally tolerable, better than PST. I even liked the low power feel of the itemization, and didn't care that the keep was pointless. I also quite liked the dialogue tags/attitudes. And the setting with the souls showed promise; I was actually hyped for it.

Where PoE1 failed IMO is the story and writing. It totally failed to capitalize on its setting. Slowly it turned my enthousiasm into apathy. I would have put up with RTwP if the plot was good, but the game was so bland, except for some MCA dialogue. I was just going through the motions, I had to stop.

Whatever the fuck they did with PoE2, I didn't care anymore unless I heard there was a radically different approach to story. Everyone here on the Codex was praising the White March but it was just more tedium to me, so that didn't help any. The franchise was dead to me as soon as I had mastered the character system, seen what it had to offer, as a design curiosity.

IMO what Sawyer did, the system design, kept me playing longer then I would've. He might've failed as project director, but they should've never chosen Eric. Totally failed to capture my imagination. I would've loved a historical setting like Sawyer would've wanted.

 

[Roguey]

all he had to do was take a good look at the % of steam achievs for completing the Acts to realize something went really fucking wrong

D:OS has worse completion rates. Dropping something midway doesn't mean you didn't enjoy it.

 

[user]

Please someone who is registered on these forums, should them that they are being unrespectful towards people with slight color deficiency with their stupid CAPTCHA color question! Insensitive bastards.

 

[TT1]

i don't think i have the critical insight to understand how to move forward with the series. the quality of the game is my responsibility, so if it's really that bad, it's my fault. still, by the numbers we had, general awareness was low outside of our core leading up to the launch.

I wonder why, Sawyer. Who could imagine...

Sorry to keep posting these but I think this one post is worth it

 

[Xeon]

Gotta be honest I am kinda happy fighting Eothas wasn't a thing, how do you even fight him? he wiped out cities and whatever by just passing there.

I would have preferred it that gods were just heard of and have some interaction with like Clerics prayers or something but not interacted with directly even if they are retarded mortals turned gods.

 

[Roguey]

Gotta be honest I am kinda happy fighting Eothas wasn't a thing, how do you even fight him? he wiped out cities and whatever by just passing there.

Another godhammer bomb.

 

[user]

I would have preferred it that gods were just heard of and have some interaction with like Clerics prayers or something but not interacted with directly even if they are retarded mortals turned gods.

Agree. Combined with the writing... it's almost like they were trying to hard, especially the narrator. Too much "glitter". I enjoyed the more-plain-but-succinct and "to the point" writing in Kingmaker. But as mentioned earlier, it was the system that turned me off mostly.

Edit: That forum also doesn't hash your passwords apparently...............

 

[fantadomat]

Gotta be honest I am kinda happy fighting Eothas wasn't a thing, how do you even fight him? he wiped out cities and whatever by just passing there.

I would have preferred it that gods were just heard of and have some interaction with like Clerics prayers or something but not interacted with directly even if they are retarded mortals turned gods.

There are ways you could fight him,like fighting his spirit or something similar. Tho the biggest problem was how stupid his whole existence was and how badly written it was. Fuck,he could have just possessed an adra sparrow and flayed the way there while sucking the minimal life energy. The whole premise was just stupid.

 

[Dodo1610]

The whole issue with the gods not being real is that no one in Eora cares. The gods don't usually directly interact with the world and worse when they interact they are as powerful as real gods. The people crushed by a moon do not care if the moon was launched by an ethereal being or a very powerful Sorcerer. It gets worse since Eora is a setting in which science can pretty much create immortal beings. This fake gods premise doen't really work in any setting that contains magic and I have no idea why people keep using it.

Anyway personally I enjoyed POE 2 and thought it was overall a better game than the first game, so I am still sad that it didn't get the success it deserved. In the end, success always needs luck and Obsidian simply didn't have any with Deadfire but had it with Project Eternity.

 

[AW8]

This is why I think talking about hooks is silly, because either the game is engaging and atmospheric or it isn't. I'd love for someone to give me an example of a game with a great story, setting, and characters, that has a weak hook.

KotOR 2. It has a great setting, great story, and fantastic characters. But the hook is weak and gives a misleading first impression.

The player having been attacked by the Sith and left drifting through space is OK. But everything that happens on Peragus before you board the Harbinger is, amazing atmosphere aside, boring and has nothing to do with the main plot. The facility is empty of life and the mystery of how it happened is not relevant, it just gets in the way of what should have been the sole focus: Escaping the Sith.
It's only much later after you've seen the Jedi Council recording that you're given motivation to find answers/allies/revenge.

KotOR has a much stronger hook. You wake up to your ship being attacked by the Sith and is tasked to find and protect Bastila. You take an escape pod to Taris right before the ship blows up, and now you have to find Bastila and arrange transport off-planet to escape the Sith. Yes, it's copied shamelessly from the first Star Wars movie but it works.

 

[Dodo1610]

This is why I think talking about hooks is silly, because either the game is engaging and atmospheric or it isn't. I'd love for someone to give me an example of a game with a great story, setting, and characters, that has a weak hook.

KotOR 2. It has a great setting, great story, and fantastic characters. But the hook is weak and gives a misleading first impression.

The player having been attacked by the Sith and left drifting through space is OK. But everything that happens on Peragus before you board the Harbinger is, amazing atmosphere aside, boring and has nothing to do with the main plot. The facility is empty of life and the mystery of how it happened is not relevant, it just gets in the way of what should have been the sole focus: Escaping the Sith.
It's only much later after you've seen the Jedi Council recording that you're given motivation to find answers/allies/revenge.

KotOR has a much stronger hook. You wake up to your ship being attacked by the Sith and is tasked to find and protect Bastila. You take an escape pod to Taris right before the ship blows up, and now you have to find Bastila and arrange transport off-planet to escape the Sith. Yes, it's copied shamelessly from the first Star Wars movie but it works.

Yes that's the most common complaint about KOTOR2 it takes too long until you get to Atris, because before meeting her(one of my favourite dialogues of all time) you have no idea who you are or what is going on.

 

[Lilura]

For RTwP, it wasn't so bad; totally tolerable, better than PST.

PS:T combat was more fun, though.

 

[Felix]

The white march is what PoE 1 release should have been, it would have a lot more fans.

 

[S.torch]

Two of the best companions in Pillars of Eternity 1 are not in the sequel, that is, Durance and Grieving mother. You can add that to the equation.

 

[fantadomat]

But the hook is weak

How is wanting to bang the handmaiden a weak hook?

 

[fantadomat]

Two of the best companions in Pillars of Eternity 1 are not in the sequel, that is, Durance and Grieving mother. You can add that to the equation.

All of poe companions are a level above the shit we got in deadfire.

 

[Jezal_k23]

Durance is good but Grieving Mother isn't. Avellone's original idea for her was awesome, but as it stands she's just the official walls of text companion, more so than any of the others I think.

 

[Quillon]

No need to dissect the games for the 34567th time. How much muh'successful PFKM sold? As much as PoE1? Half as much? There is not enough people interested in this specific type of game anymore(no, DOS is not the same type), media don't wanna cover it. Its dead jim. I don't believe there'll be a 2D-ISO PoE3 unless MS is letting Obs waste their moneh in unpromising projects. Prospect of making another game and hoping it to be as successful as The Great Kingmaker must be making them jump in excitement over at Obs HQ with 200+ devs in a very expensive part of 'murica.

 

[Crichton]

I don't think I'll ever understand why some games sell and others don't (keep in mind I've played through Arcanum ~8 times and never played any Diablo games, so my tastes probably aren't typical). I like Deadfire; it's not my favorite game of all time but I like any game where I can create a custom party and even before the turn-based mode came out, I had lots of fun playing with all class combinations. Why D:OS2 (which I also liked) would sell gangbusters while Deadfire flopped or even why Pillars would outsell Deadfire 2:1, I can't fathom; of those three, I'd easily give Deadfire the nod.

If I had to pick something to explain the poor sales; I think the lack of an identifiable brand is the simplest explanation. It's the pirate-themed sequel to a game that (at first glance) is a BG clone. It's a D&D-like game without a D&D (or Pathfinder) license. It doesn't have Co-op. Writing and replay-ability aren't easily observable on Twitch. Nothing about the game lends itself to a snappy description.

Now it's probably also worth pointing out that if you compare the current state of the game to what it was like in that two-week window that Sawyer describes, at release:

- No turn-based combat
- You're forced to play the stupid ship-combat minigame
- No difficulty (kind of funny how Deadfire and Kingmaker went in totally different directions in post-release difficulty adjustments)
- Basically no high-level content (not sure how much this matters)

Not a good look; Avellone's comments about screwed-up development cycles at Obsidian may have some merit...

 

[S.torch]

All of poe companions are a level above the shit we got in deadfire.

The problem is that these two companions were some of the best one in the first game. Anyways, I doubt they would be the same without their original writer, Avellone.

Durance is good but Grieving Mother isn't.

They're both good. Grieving Mother stands out because of her tragic past, strong convictions and a very good objective which is resolving the hollowborn problem.
And thats it without that delicious cut content we didn't get...

 

[DalekFlay]

I don't think I'll ever understand why some games sell and others don't (keep in mind I've played through Arcanum ~8 times and never played any Diablo games, so my tastes probably aren't typical). I like Deadfire; it's not my favorite game of all time but I like any game where I can create a custom party and even before the turn-based mode came out, I had lots of fun playing with all class combinations. Why D:OS2 (which I also liked) would sell gangbusters while Deadfire flopped or even why Pillars would outsell Deadfire 2:1, I can't fathom; of those three, I'd easily give Deadfire the nod.

The whims of the free market can be hard to decipher, for sure. Divinity OS2 though has a more colorful and whimsical look with more humorous writing (more popular at the moment across media) and turn-based combat (which also seems more popular at the moment). PoE was pretty serious, kind of boring and was very RTwP old-school PC in function and look. It makes perfect sense to me that one game would rope in a lot of "casuals" and the other would not. Again, Sawyer himself is saying it was the more casual players Deadfire did not attract.

 

[fantadomat]

The problem is that these two companions were some of the best one in the first game. Anyways, I doubt they would be the same without their original writer, Avellone.

I liked Sagani and the first chick that died in the magical blizzard at the beginning. It was really stupid idea to kill her off.

 

[Lilura]

I don't think I'll ever understand why some games sell and others don't

Marketing.

 

[fantadomat]

I don't think I'll ever understand why some games sell and others don't

Marketing.

And luck.