Eternity Josh Sawyer reflects on his failures with Pillars of Eternity

[DalekFlay]

His point is wrong then.
If you create a simplified version of something, and something that stays pretty true to the PnP system, the hardcore crowd's gonna gravitate towards the hardcore thing.
PoE and Deadfire to a larger extent was trying to bridge the gap between the mouthbreathers who like D:OS and 3.5 D&D Chads, such as myself.

Hardcore crowd buys and plays all these games even when they pretend they don't. Josh repeatedly has said the hardcore Kingmaker type crowd bought the game, and that they were not the problem. I know you want to feel like your divine hardcore judgment doomed the game to failure, but the small niche of Kingmakersexuals aren't that important. PoE2 failed because it didn't get the Divinity OS crowd back for the second go, as he has repeatedly said. The postmortem question is "why did they lose that crowd?" It's literally the opposite of your assertion that the game wasn't pleasing the hardcore enough.

As others have suggested, I think the main problem was probably that PoE1's story and game world were kinda boring.

 

[Sweeper]

I'm talking about PoE1 here. The one thing that seems to be in consensus is that Deadfire sold poorly because of the first game, not on its own (lack of) merit.

But one of the reasons that Deadfire's failure was a bit surprising is that throughout its development, the hardcore Pillars of Eternity powergamer crowd on the Obsidian forums (yes, this was a thing) never went away. Like DalekFlay said Obsidian did have a hardcore player base and that's why it seemed like it they might be able to beat the odds and release a commercially successful sequel, which almost every traditional RPG series other than Divinity: Original Sin has failed to do. But, they didn't.

Blaming the story and boring setting of 1, while ignoring the bland mechanics and the fact that whatever character building choices you made were esentially invalidated due to near perfect balance, doesn't ring particularly true to me. The latter is a far bigger sin than the former.
Durance and Eder were some of the best written companions in all of vidya.
Mayhaps you're projecting your own reasons for disliking PoE?
Or maybe I am?

 

[Tigranes]

The point is that what hardcore RPG players consider "good" and "bad", it is pretty clear, only infrequently overlaps with what seems to be "good" or "bad' for sales success.

If we want to gnash about why POE wasn't good from the hardcore RPG player perspective, well, that's easy, we've done that a billion times here and the key themes are well known. But if you want to explain why POE franchise sales tanked, you have to give some plausible explanation of not why the game is bad from an incline perspective, you have to explain why people who enjoy FO3, people who buy 500 games on Steam and never play most of them, people who think DOS1 is a fun game but it is way too hard, etc. - why those people did not come back for Deadfire. You don't assemble a rational, persuasive case for that explanation by just going "let me tell you again why I hated POE lol cuck Sawyer cant figure it out lololol".

If I was forced to bet on an explanation, I'd lean towards, sort of like DalekFlay, how both POE and Deadfire failed to present a cohesive, striking theme. It's not just "more words v less words" or something. DOS1/2 have an incoherent story/world written at the level of an 8-year old, but it works because it supports a traditional, upbeat, comfort food, 'you know how the story goes' sing-along bash. KOTOR2 is navelgazing and wordy and convoluted, but it is pretty clear & consistent about the one 'subversive' theme that it pushes, and the Star Wars audience is also far more willing to engage with that. With both POEs, it's really easy to play and start thinking all of this lore/story just isn't going anywhere, nothing is happening, it doesn't add up to any striking thematic apex. i.e. it doesn't leave a strong impression. Personally, I found this a weakness, but I also enjoyed some of the more sombre, understated stuff, e.g. Sagani (who I think a lot of people found absolutely "nothing fucking happens" boring). But I would guess that such stuff made POE very forgettable for a lot of people.

 

[Readher]

I'm talking about PoE1 here. The one thing that seems to be in consensus is that Deadfire sold poorly because of the first game, not on its own (lack of) merit.

But one of the reasons that Deadfire's failure was a bit surprising is that throughout its development, the hardcore Pillars of Eternity powergamer crowd on the Obsidian forums (yes, this was a thing) never went away. Like DalekFlay said Obsidian did have a hardcore player base and that's why it seemed like it they might be able to beat the odds and release a commercially successful sequel, which almost every traditional RPG series other than Divinity: Original Sin has failed to do. But, they didn't.

Blaming the story and boring setting of 1, while ignoring the bland mechanics and the fact that whatever character building choices you made were esentially invalidated due to near perfect balance, doesn't ring particularly true to me. The latter is a far bigger sin than the former.
Durance and Eder were some of the best written companions in all of vidya.
Mayhaps you're projecting your own reasons for disliking PoE?
Or maybe I am?

I don't think average RPG player cares about mechanics as much as you think. Bioware games have trash mechanics and Bethesda isn't any better either yet their games sell like hotcakes. People buy Bioware RPGs for story and characters and Bethesda games for sandbox and ability to "create" your own stories. Mechanics are only required to be servicable. What are KOTOR and Alpha Protocol remembered for, their amazing characters, story and c&c or their mechanics?

 

[Sweeper]

Yeah I guess that's true.
Especially when you consider the negative reviews on Underrail and PF:KM.
So storyfags are harbingers of decline, is what you're saying?
I agree.

 

[Thac0]

So the people who don't give a fuck about the story and are only interested in character building and combat didn't like PoE/Deadfire cause the story was convoluted, boring and pretentious?

As someone that i stopped playing POE1 mid Winter March part 1 , was mostly how everything was wordy with stupidly long text with no VA to explain everything. I still try to understand Grievece Mother's dialogue. I can't honestly remember what happen in the first game other than Devil of Caroc , Eder , Pallegina and Aloth character's arcs, those character were cool and simple yet interesting stories.. The rest of the game i can't remember..

The mainstory of POE was incredibly boring while simultanously being pompous and diffuse enough to be hard to finish and remember.
POE 2 connected directly to the end of the story of POE 1, especially to the high concept "humans as gods" shit. When you start POE 2 you get bombarded with names and concepts that mean nothing to you when you havn't finished Pillars 1, or it was a long time ago.

 

[santino27]

I'm not sure why it's such a stretch to imagine they lost the casuals because the story was dull (and poorly told) and lost a fair chunk of the hardcore because the combat mechanics were mediocre (and only in a halfway decent state by 1.3). There doesn't have to be one all-inclusive reason people disliked it and didn't move on to the sequel.

Also, I think Fig hid that fact by having the investment layer (before people realized what a dumb idea that was) which made it seem like there was a lot more passionate backing of Deadfire than there was.

 

[Silly Germans]

His point is wrong then.
If you create a simplified version of something, and something that stays pretty true to the PnP system, the hardcore crowd's gonna gravitate towards the hardcore thing.
PoE and Deadfire to a larger extent was trying to bridge the gap between the mouthbreathers who like D:OS and 3.5 D&D Chads, such as myself.

Hardcore crowd buys and plays all these games even when they pretend they don't. Josh repeatedly has said the hardcore Kingmaker type crowd bought the game, and that they were not the problem. I know you want to feel like your divine hardcore judgment doomed the game to failure, but the small niche of Kingmakersexuals aren't that important. PoE2 failed because it didn't get the Divinity OS crowd back for the second go, as he has repeatedly said. The postmortem question is "why did they lose that crowd?" It's literally the opposite of your assertion that the game wasn't pleasing the hardcore enough.

As others have suggested, I think the main problem was probably that PoE1's story and game world were kinda boring.

Hm, i played and enjoyed all of them. PoE II was an improvement over the first but still not great. It lacks a redeeming feature or quality that stands out and shines. It feels somewhat over designed and not in a good way. The writing is overblown and inflated for no good reason but not a total loss. There are some good stories and interesting things hidden under that flood of text. All parts of the game do their job in a semi-competent but uninspired way. Its simply a mediocre rpg with no outstanding features. If you aren't someone with a focus on the rpg genre, why would you buy it ? Divinity:OS I/II have very clear features that stand out, CO-OP and its own brand environmental turn based combat. That is very easy to make out by looking at the game. Pathfinder Kingmaker is the first Rtwp game with DND 3.5 rules(more or less) and a 6-man party in a long time, but looking at PoE, what does stand out ?

I don't think it is one specialized point like mechanics or writing that explains the poor sales, its the overall package that isn't particularly interesting/exciting.

 

[HanoverF]

cont.

 

[Roguey]

Not on consoles and not in retail.

Gamepass is an xbox thing.

 

[Sweeper]

If PoE sucks so much dick, why is Deadfire #45 on the list?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

The one thing that seems to be in consensus is that Deadfire sold poorly because of the first game, not on its own (lack of) merit.

deadfire sold poorly because of its setting
and don't give me that "it's pirates!" bullshit because we both know it's not true. There's far more emphasis on dumb native gay fish people. There's like two pirate areas in total.

oh, and chasing down a giant statue is a dumb hook for your game

 

[Lilliput McHammersmith]

The one thing that seems to be in consensus is that Deadfire sold poorly because of the first game, not on its own (lack of) merit.

deadfire sold poorly because of its setting
and don't give me that "it's pirates!" bullshit because we both know it's not true. There's far more emphasis on dumb native gay fish people. There's like two pirate areas in total.

oh, and chasing down a giant statue is a dumb hook for your game

Yes that and the fact that ship combat literally sucked butt. It looked a lot more promising than it actually was. Deadfire for me, is what Pillars 1 is for most people here. It seemed so great but was ultimately a mediocre letdown. (I actually enjoyed Pillars 1 quite a bit). I never finished Deadfire.

 

[Tigranes]

Would ship combat actually have turned people off a purchase? Like, it's a minigame that you barely ever have to engage in if you don't want to. I thought it was a dumb overreach the moment it was announced and so it proved, but in the first week of release are people looking at screens/videos and thinking oh, the RPG looks fine, but that ship combat, I don't know man?

 

[Readher]

Not on consoles and not in retail.

Gamepass is an xbox thing.

I know, but the game also came out on PS4 and later on Switch and was $60 on both.

 

[Krivol]

Afrer boring and uninspired PoE1 I just never intended to buy PoE2. I just wasn't interested. I think thats a problem - critics were too polite for PoE and Fergus tought most of PoE1 buyers wold buy PoE2.

Fuck the balance! Most popular games on codex ae usually those with more or less abusive systems.

 

[Quillon]

The point is that what hardcore RPG players consider "good" and "bad", it is pretty clear, only infrequently overlaps with what seems to be "good" or "bad' for sales success.

If we want to gnash about why POE wasn't good from the hardcore RPG player perspective, well, that's easy, we've done that a billion times here and the key themes are well known. But if you want to explain why POE franchise sales tanked, you have to give some plausible explanation of not why the game is bad from an incline perspective, you have to explain why people who enjoy FO3, people who buy 500 games on Steam and never play most of them, people who think DOS1 is a fun game but it is way too hard, etc. - why those people did not come back for Deadfire. You don't assemble a rational, persuasive case for that explanation by just going "let me tell you again why I hated POE lol cuck Sawyer cant figure it out lololol".

Yeah but very few here is interested in discussing "what could have made PoE series a mainstream success?" because it involves pointing out things from what games like DOS 2 & DAO(mainstream successes which are considered shit here) did that PoE didn't, the stuff that most certainly qualify as decline here that get dismissed outright from the get go.

If I was forced to bet on an explanation, I'd lean towards, sort of like DalekFlay, how both POE and Deadfire failed to present a cohesive, striking theme. It's not just "more words v less words" or something. DOS1/2 have an incoherent story/world written at the level of an 8-year old, but it works because it supports a traditional, upbeat, comfort food, 'you know how the story goes' sing-along bash. KOTOR2 is navelgazing and wordy and convoluted, but it is pretty clear & consistent about the one 'subversive' theme that it pushes, and the Star Wars audience is also far more willing to engage with that. With both POEs, it's really easy to play and start thinking all of this lore/story just isn't going anywhere, nothing is happening, it doesn't add up to any striking thematic apex. i.e. it doesn't leave a strong impression. Personally, I found this a weakness, but I also enjoyed some of the more sombre, understated stuff, e.g. Sagani (who I think a lot of people found absolutely "nothing fucking happens" boring). But I would guess that such stuff made POE very forgettable for a lot of people.

I think the problem is more fundamental than that. f.i. PFKM had that cohesive theme, plus according to codex it had lots of things better than PoE like ruleset/combat system etc but even with these PFKM still isn't a "mainstream success"; if Deadfire sold as much as PFKM, it would still have been considered a failure.

 

[Immortal]

If I could reach Josh this is what I’d tell him:

I'm a retard who jerked this game off in a long winded review and I was wrong.

PoE1 was sold on Hype.
PoE2 failed after people saw what Josh considered a "IE" inspired game.



POE1 Obsidishills BTFO.

Spoiler

I think Deadfire was more polished.
If they made a PoE 3, I'd probably buy it.

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

Josh is correct that 13% completion achievement for POE1 is not the smoking gun. The fact remains that Deadfire tanked, so the answer to that lies somewhere - it just doesn't lie in that particular explanation. Here at Codex every once in a while somebody brings this number as some proof of a master theory that that's why Deadfire failed, but there's no sound reasoning, just "I found some number, so that must be why."

DOS1/2 has a number of other possible factors that complicate the equation. Co-op, for instance, makes it easier for, say, a high disposable income casual player to say "eh sure" and buy it even if they never finished DOS1.

It will be very interesting to see how Kingmaker sequel fares. Breakout success like DOS2 is unlikely for any game, but I hope it sells well and I hope it gives Owlcat a wider player base & recognition that they strongly deserve.

I could not finish kingmaker because of the ridiculous superhero itemization and stats you eventually end up with and basically need in order to endure the mid and late level game. Its just absolutely ridiculous. All my characters have belts and gauntlets that give them +4 to all their stats, and that is just the beginning of it all.. 18 is not a high stat score.

Characters routinely have and NEED +68 to hit vs AC 75 or something...its just so fucking dumb. I wish someone would make a mod that goes through and removes like 90% of this shit, and I would love to finish the game. As it is I believe this is part of Pathfinder culture however and don't think it will be fixed or changed. I hate Munchkinism, and it seems like Pathfinder is built around this concept almost-- and with super heroes being so popular I just think people don't even see a problem with it and think its actually an integral part of the game, instead of it being broken. But its annoying as fuck to me.

edit: Right, an NPC position...... because pathfinder with its enormous fucking swords and Jap art bullshit is designed with anything but mouth breathing rejects in mind who love 'japanese cartoons', super heroes, and practice naruto running as they trip over their fat little feet on their way to shove mochi balls in down their disgusting neck beards. Go jack off to your weird little fury gay human/fox asian fetish bullshit and choke on your mochi cum-balls

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

It's fairly easy to imagine a world where POE ended up being a more successful despite being just as shit. Or where Pathfinder sold very poorly despite being an excellent game, and where DOS1 was Larian's final game. It's very difficult to go back and figure out what exactly made a game succeed/fail in the market, e.g. what made DOS so successful, without resorting to unprovable "X game succeeded, and I liked Y feature, so that must be it".

Nah, it's rather easy to figure it out after the fact, the benefit of hindsight. Its baffling to witness Josh struggling to see the obvious tbh, maybe he doesn't wanna accept it because when you add up everything the result is they/he designed a game(then made a sequel over it) that neither appeals to old school players in its details nor to new players with its old school style. He failed as a designer and got rewarded for it by getting promoted to studio design director.

if he would have made it based on D20 instead of his made up "fuck you suck my dick, the RPG" it would have done much better and we would be about to play PoE3 right now. 100% sure of it. suck my balls.

 

[Sweeper]

I hate Munchkinism

NOOOOOOOOOOOOO MAKE THE PROGRESSION SMALL NUMBERED AND BORING CAUSE I HAVE A SMALL DICK AND BIG NUMBERS THREATEN MY MASCULINITY
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO YOU CAN'T HAVE OVERPOWERED BUILDS, I HATE MUNCHKINISM, YOU SHOULD BALANCE YOUR GAMES LIKE SAWYER BALANCED PoE
WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

I'm gonna post this, but this is retarded even for me.

 

[Verylittlefishes]

OK, yesterday I've read Codex' reviews on PoEs for the first time.

The first one, by Darth Roxor was very cool and pretty much summarizes all the faults of this game which I tried to ignore (it is possible if you play it as ARPG).

The second one, by Infinitron also Darth Roxor is twice as long and seems to be critical...but actually not, Infinitron likes the game overall and is not saying a bad word about THIS! FUCKING! COMBAT! SHIP! THING! He concludes that Deadfire is more or less better game than PoE1.

wtf
Deadfire gave me PTSD, it is obviously worse than the first part in every possible aspect.
Maybe you just like pirates, Infinitron Darth Roxor? Everything is better with pirates they say? Haha no.

 

[Quillon]

The first one, by Darth Roxor

The second one, by Infinitron

both Roxor reviews btw

 

[Darth Roxor]

OK, yesterday I've read Codex' reviews on PoEs for the first time.

The first one, by Darth Roxor was very cool and pretty much summarizes all the faults of this game which I tried to ignore (it is possible if you play it as ARPG).

The second one, by Infinitron is twice as long and seems to be critical...but actually not, Infinitron likes the game overall and is not saying a bad word about THIS! FUCKING! COMBAT! SHIP! THING! He concludes that Deadfire is more or less better game than PoE1.

wtf
Deadfire gave me PTSD, it is obviously worse than the first part in every possible aspect.
Maybe you just like pirates, Infinitron? Everything is better with pirates they say? Haha no.

i will find you and i will drive an ice pick through your forehead

 

[NJClaw]

I don't understand the constant hate towards the ship combat. It's a very short minigame that you play a dozen of times in a 60-100 hours game. When I finished Deadfire, I barely remembered anything about the entire mechanic... it's less than 1% of the entire game, how can it have this much impact on its enjoyment and sales?