Eternity Josh Sawyer reflects on his failures with Pillars of Eternity

[Butter]

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?

It probably had no impact on the sales, however if it had been enjoyable, it might have been the thing that got people talking about Deadfire. "Yeah there's a story, but I spent 20 hours just sailing around blasting other ships because it's that much fun."

 

[Verylittlefishes]

The first one, by Darth Roxor

The second one, by Infinitron

both Roxor reviews btw

Ok, I'm retadred then.
But the picture of jewish fantasy pirates was too powerful.

 

[Darth Roxor]

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?

FIRE
Jibe
FIRE
Jibe
FIRE
Jibe
FIRE
Jibe
FIRE

The quintessential deadfire naval combat experience. The game would be better off without this nonsense. And another thing that's pretty bad about it is that the stuff done during the minigame has no influence on boarding - you can't first murder half the crew to have an easier time in melee, because even if you reduce the crew to 1 the fight will be exactly the same. This makes all the whatever options the minigame presents you completely redundant, because the two optimal ones are either - full speed ahead, prepare to board; or jibe 'n fire till they're gone.

 

[Vladimuar]

I liked Pillars 1. It was a decent (even if flawed) Baldur's Gate clone with some nice battles and good visuals.

So I preordered the Deadfire.

...And that's how my story ends. I'd never find out what happened in the restaurant on that cold January night. I'll never recover.

Faina short fur sounds like my size of a trimmed beaver.

 

[Vladimuar]

I liked Pillars 1. It was a decent (even if flawed) Baldur's Gate clone with some nice battles and good visuals.

So I preordered the Deadfire.

...And that's how my story ends. I'd never find out what happened in the restaurant on that cold January night. I'll never recover.

And FAINA sounds soooo freakin' cooool https://youtu.be/7rO0sfHXJUg

 

[xuerebx]

I don't think incompetent is what I'd call PoE and I'm saying that as someone who couldn't even manage to get to 50% of the first game. It's just that it's the type of game that at best you're going to forget about it month after finishing and at worst you're gonna drop it early

Possibly the most accurate statement ever. A few months ago I heard about PoE and knew it ringed a bell, and I thought I should check it out....

...apparently I had pledged on Kickstarter ('Project Eternity', knew it sounded familiar) in 2012, and played the game on Steam for 80 hours.

I had no recollection that I played the game for 80 hours. I remembered that I had once loaded it up and played it a little, but 80 hours? Truly forgettable game, unfortunately.

EDIT: I still plan on completing it, someday. I'll need to start a new game though.

 

[Riddler]

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.

What do you consider to be decline in DoS/DAO that made them mainstream successes?

A coherent, hero narrative?
Fun gameplay that no-one hit with a balance stick until it died?
Coop?

I guess coop could be considered decline but that wasn't in DAO. I don't necessarily think the things that make things mainstream successes are necessarily decline, they are just a bit restrictive and that restrictiveness is probably a good thing if you are dealing with a team with limited talent.

 

[Sweeper]

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.

It's the Jewishness, it forces him to be a subversive element.

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

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.

I'm gonna post this, but this is retarded even for me.[/QUOTE]

its not that its 'overpowered' or just fucking stupid after awhile. I like building my characters, but having every character with 22 str and con and Dex with +68 to hit is fucking dumb, what is the point? Why not go play a fucking super hero RPG and fly around and shoot lasers out of your eyeballs?.. Every character wearing gauntlets of mountain giant strength is meaningless, it makes magic mundane when there are so many magic items and shit that we all literally have god level ability scores, and we are loaded down with magical glowing junk.

You are one of those people who think Golden Coral Buffet is the most awesome restaurant ever because for 9.99 you can get as much nasty food in countless and varied combinations as you want and shove down your fucking throat. Its fucking gross, and slimy, and been coughed on by diseased fat bodies under a heat lamp for 6 hours, but hey! I can make my plate in endless ways! I can put this pink dried out rubbery slab of prime rib next to this disgusting scoop of mashed creamed corn shit! The combinations of plate options are fucking endless! If you don't see the potential for plate combinations you must have a small penis!

You ruin shit with your retarded lowbrow mindset, because you have no patience or ability to control yourself. Go OD on your ADD meds-- Look how post you little bitch... take your fucking adderoll, go watch your cartoons, play with your hulk figures and practice your naruto running.

 

[Sweeper]

:D

 

[Tigranes]

The quintessential deadfire naval combat experience. The game would be better off without this nonsense. And another thing that's pretty bad about it is that the stuff done during the minigame has no influence on boarding - you can't first murder half the crew to have an easier time in melee, because even if you reduce the crew to 1 the fight will be exactly the same. This makes all the whatever options the minigame presents you completely redundant, because the two optimal ones are either - full speed ahead, prepare to board; or jibe 'n fire till they're gone.

Everybody agrees that the ship combat was shit, but I'm skeptical that it had a big impact on sales / critical reception. Like, if they spent even more time and resources on it and actually made it passable, I think that would have been an even bigger waste of $. They should have learnt from their lesson in POE1, where they spent a lot of time on the stronghold and ended up with a dogshit browser game. Kingmaker would also have been a better game without the kingdom management, which was better than POE1's, but ultimately was still a timesink browser game with 500 loading screens for kicks. I'm going to pay full price for the sequel, but not at all because of the strategy layer or whatever.

One of the really intriguing questions is, if someone played POE1 and then didn't buy Deadfire, how much of it is driven by their experience of POE1, and how much of it is driven by their impression of Deadfire previews/etc? Like, is it that 80% is people going "eh I remember POE1 it was OK but kind of dull"? Or is it a lot of people going "Oh yeah POE1 it was OK I guess I could buy this next one.... oh pirates and ships and... yeah I'm not feeling it"?

 

[Verylittlefishes]

The quintessential deadfire naval combat experience. The game would be better off without this nonsense. And another thing that's pretty bad about it is that the stuff done during the minigame has no influence on boarding - you can't first murder half the crew to have an easier time in melee, because even if you reduce the crew to 1 the fight will be exactly the same. This makes all the whatever options the minigame presents you completely redundant, because the two optimal ones are either - full speed ahead, prepare to board; or jibe 'n fire till they're gone.

Everybody agrees that the ship combat was shit, but I'm skeptical that it had a big impact on sales / critical reception. Like, if they spent even more time and resources on it and actually made it passable, I think that would have been an even bigger waste of $. They should have learnt from their lesson in POE1, where they spent a lot of time on the stronghold and ended up with a dogshit browser game. Kingmaker would also have been a better game without the kingdom management, which was better than POE1's, but ultimately was still a timesink browser game with 500 loading screens for kicks. I'm going to pay full price for the sequel, but not at all because of the strategy layer or whatever.

One of the really intriguing questions is, if someone played POE1 and then didn't buy Deadfire, how much of it is driven by their experience of POE1, and how much of it is driven by their impression of Deadfire previews/etc? Like, is it that 80% is people going "eh I remember POE1 it was OK but kind of dull"? Or is it a lot of people going "Oh yeah POE1 it was OK I guess I could buy this next one.... oh pirates and ships and... yeah I'm not feeling it"?

I've played both games on a laptop with 6 GB RAM and loading screens could hang out for a couple of minutes. Maybe 5-10 hours from my 60h play were just loading screens.

 

[SausageInYourFace]

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?

I call it 'The Fast Travel Method': Pick some minor flaw of a game, blow it out of proportion and declare that therefore the whole game is shit.

Reverse - aka 'The Flawed Gem Method' aka 'Argumentum Arcanum': Pick some minor strength of a game, blow it out of proportion and declare that therefore the whole game is excellent, despite having otherwise fundamentally flawed core gameplay elements.

 

[Quillon]

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.

What do you consider to be decline in DoS/DAO that made them mainstream successes?

A coherent, hero narrative?
Fun gameplay that no-one hit with a balance stick until it died?
Coop?

I guess coop could be considered decline but that wasn't in DAO. I don't necessarily think the things that make things mainstream successes are necessarily decline, they are just a bit restrictive and that restrictiveness is probably a good thing if you are dealing with a team with limited talent.

I don't, codex does. For starters being 3D game; being able to rotate cam, party's following the controlled character instead of you have to select anyone or everyone first, PoE1 even lacked a follow cam(and party AI), cinematic convos, obv DOS has co-op etc. Most of these are downright decline in holy codex consensus but put together they appeal to mainstream or at least remove some obstacles for them to be able to enjoy a top-down cam cRPG.

 

[Sweeper]

Argumentum Arcanum

Shut the fuck up faggot, go put some dicks in your mouth. Arcanum is excellent.

 

[NJClaw]

Even accepting the fact that the ship combat is shit (it probably is: I enjoyed the soundtrack and sound effects, but the minigame in itself was pointless), saying that it's one of the reasons why Deadfire wasn't commercially successful still doesn't make sense to me.

I can't imagine someone thinking about buying the game and then going "nah, I heard the ship combat is bad, let's go back to Skyrim". On the other hand, even if I generally liked PoE 1 despite its flaws, I don't have any problem picturing someone who decides not to buy Deadfire because he found the first game boring.

 

[Verylittlefishes]

Even accepting the fact that the ship combat is shit (it probably is: I enjoyed the soundtrack and sound effects, but the minigame in itself was pointless), saying that it's one of the reasons why Deadfire wasn't commercially successful still doesn't make sense to me.

I can't imagine someone thinking about buying the game and then going "nah, I heard the ship combat is bad, let's go back to Skyrim". On the other hand, even if I generally liked PoE 1 despite its flaws, I don't have any problem picturing someone who decides not to buy Deadfire because he found the first game boring.

Pirates. The problem is fucking pirates. The whole aesthetics and setting is very niche. But it is a sequel to the generic fantasy gameworld which is by default attracts more broad audience. So audience drops. Not every fantasy fan love pirates. Some of them even hate pirates. I'm not big fantasy fan, but I fucking hate pirates. Especially that ridiculuous Jack-Sparrow-homo-Cipher realisation of the pirates in this fucking abomination of a game.

I'm 100% sure that if Obsidian kept the same story and same gameplay fixes, but the setting was similar to the previous part, the game would sell well. Pirate setting was a failed experiment, and you know what is ridiculous? Nobody asked Sawyer to do PoE but with pirates. Was there some poll? Focus groups? I don't think so.

It just looks like Sawyer took the joke from "Dorkness Rising" for the real instruction...

 

[Darth Roxor]

Everybody agrees that the ship combat was shit, but I'm skeptical that it had a big impact on sales / critical reception.

Oh, obviously saying that it had any effect on sales is nonsense.

 

[Efe]

I think the word of mouth was the biggest factor... I dont see anyone recommending deadfire

 

[NJClaw]

Pirates. The problem is fucking pirates. The whole aesthetics and setting is very niche. But it is a sequel to the generic fantasy gameworld which is by default attracts more broad audience. So audience drops. Not every fantasy fan love pirates. Some of them even hate pirates. I'm not big fantasy fan, but I fucking hate pirates. Especially that ridiculuous Jack-Sparrow-homo-Cipher realisation of the pirates in this fucking abomination of a game.

They should have listened to Sawyer (38:28):

Spoiler

 

[Verylittlefishes]

Pirates. The problem is fucking pirates. The whole aesthetics and setting is very niche. But it is a sequel to the generic fantasy gameworld which is by default attracts more broad audience. So audience drops. Not every fantasy fan love pirates. Some of them even hate pirates. I'm not big fantasy fan, but I fucking hate pirates. Especially that ridiculuous Jack-Sparrow-homo-Cipher realisation of the pirates in this fucking abomination of a game.

They should have listened to Sawyer (38:28):

Spoiler

RPG Evolution and Paradigm Shifts

in Deadfire

someone's ego is reaching the sky

 

[felipepepe]

I agree that the biggest damage to PoE2's sales was probably PoE1 itself. It's a very long game, that doesn't really leaves you excited for more, and making PoE2 a direct sequel kinda implied that you need to FINISH PoE1 to play PoE2.

Which is something that hurts the game A LOT even in the long run. I believe that PoE2 is vastly superior to PoE1, in part thanks to the turn-based mode. But it ties to PoE1 so much that jumping directly to PoE2 means you'll miss a lot. To fully enjoy it you need to play the first, in a much stronger sense than Fallout 2, Baldur's Gate 2 or any other RPG besides Mass Effect 1-3.

Then there's the rest that was mentioned already... many more RPG options, Pathfinder and Divinity:OS to compete against, no more "oh look, a new Baldur's Gate kickstarter" free press to ride on, etc...

 

[Quillon]

Pirates. The problem is fucking pirates. The whole aesthetics and setting is very niche. But it is a sequel to the generic fantasy gameworld which is by default attracts more broad audience. So audience drops. Not every fantasy fan love pirates. Some of them even hate pirates. I'm not big fantasy fan, but I fucking hate pirates. Especially that ridiculuous Jack-Sparrow-homo-Cipher realisation of the pirates in this fucking abomination of a game.

They should have listened to Sawyer (38:28):

Spoiler

They should have just embraced it, after choosing that setting saying "let's not make a pirate game" is like saying "let's piss into the wind", when life gives you pirates make piratate... yes.

 

[Verylittlefishes]

in part thanks to the turn-based mode.

...which was added A YEAR AFTER RELEASE when everybody interested have already finished the game and decided to never return.

 

[Butter]

Imagine if that ship combat money had been spent implementing turn-based mode properly before the game released.