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You are, once again, engaging in personal attacks without ever once being able to make a coherent argument in support of your claims. The last time you did this (venting your anger at me), you were told off by a refreshingly large number of forum members -- why did you not take the hint? This forum is intended for respectul discussion and argumentation, and you are consistently trying to take it down to a mud-slinging level. Can you recognize, from this thread, that you are the only one who has any interest in it? Please just stop. If you ever feel like writing a personally nasty comment aimed at somebody on this forum, simply do not do it. Nobody is interested.

Replying to the OP's points here... I'll start off by adding a general caveat here to the way the game or its failure to sell is approached: much as Josh mentioned himself, had Deadfire's word of mouth been all in all negative, that could have certainly affected sales at the end of the day - but it wasn't. Most outlets deemed it a better game than its predecessor and by and large the audience reception was very good, if maybe a tad less enthusiastic than the first game. It currently stands at an 88 metacritic score whilst on platforms like Steam or GOG it averages an 84% overall approval or 4.3/5 aggregate rating, so certainly the word of mouth wasn't bad, or bad enough to have pushed players away from purchasing it on a large-enough degree. Whilst I don't pretend to have a definitive answer for Deadfire's dip in sales, I don't think any qualitative assessments are it by any stretch of imagination (though perhaps issues in *style* could have had an effect - more on that later). I somewhat agree with the former, disagree rather strongly with the latter. I generally don't consider "depth" a quantifiable value so I always try to shy away from saying things like "A is deeper than B". I certainly got more out of the first game on a thematic or ideological level, but I also think this is because a) the writing was more on-the-nose about its ideas and b) the themes and their treatment were generally more cohesive all around. I ended up writing a 6000+ word "review" on the game*, which is not something I feel I could do with Deadfire. As for the sequel I feel that it suffers a big problem in that it is never truly able to marry its metempsychosis and humanist themes with the colonial politics and backdrop, these two seem to me to exist in very different planes to one another - though granted, I have not played the latest patch which allegedly works on this very issue. More to the point, I also feel that with regards to the series' humanist and metaphysical themes the game is acting like a bridge between two more interesting and meatier chapters than being a particularly worthy standalone episode. If the series as a whole is about the passage of a theocentric society to a more anthropocentric one, then the first game acts as a revelation and as the moment the gods' authority, and their relationship with humanity, is put into question, yet remains unanswered at a more practical level - even when we find out the "truth", the divine/natural hierarchy as perceived by Eoran society remains unchanged. The second game, in this sense, feels pretty exclusively about the race to the conflict that will put this hierarchy and this relationship between the divine and human in crux, but again leaves the rethinking or reconfiguration of this relationship for an eventual third game. And so what you're left with essentially is a fantastic tease about topics and themes that would be looked into in the future, without tackling them fully in this episode itself, thus making it feel "emptier" on a thematic level as a result. For me anyhow. As for the second point, however, I just flat-out disagree with the first game being more stylish in its writing than the latter. Whilst I love Pillars (note: I'm using "Pillars" as a reference to the first game specifically because it's easier to abbreviate it that way relative to Deadfire) for the themes it touches on and the way it expands on them, a lot of the dialogue was also often very flat and expositional, telling ideas as they are straight at the player, often to less effect had they been insinuated instead. Lady Webb and Iovara are two egregious cases in point for this, merely existing for being massive info dumps and, in the latter's case especially, exposing the game's ideas so ponderously and hamfistedly that they actively undermined their enduring power. Deadfire isn't without its more expositional moments but even in the worst ones, i.e. our conversations with the gods, there's an effort made to involve several parties and mindsets and make them into more of a conversation and back-and-forth of ideas which at the very least made these scenes appear more dynamic in feel. More to the point, a stroke of brilliance in Deadfire's writing is that the game really manages to create and capture very different feels and cadences for each culture and the way they talk and interact with one another. A Huana never sounds like a Vailian or an Aedyran or a Rauataian, you can tell right away who you're talking to and not just because they say the occasional "ekera" or "Tangaloa" or "I say". Every character seems to have their own dialect or idiolect, thus making them feel like their own unique voice in this setting. The work put into capturing this aspect and highlighting it as strongly in a setting that is precisely about colonial-era cultural clashes is really a master stroke for the game, and really has the first game beat. Again though, we must return to the first point: whatever dip in writing quality you perceive between Pillars and Deadfire, they were neither big enough to affect the overall reception of one game relative to the other, nor something I reckon has any significant effect on why one game sold better than the other. Part of the reason is that even if you were to find the writing in Deadfire to be worse, you would only know after having played the game, which in most cases would imply you'd already bought the game anyways; and if it is worse, it certainly wasn't worse enough for players and reviewers to make note of it consistently across their reviews, at least enough for it to leave an impression on people who were on the fence about buying it. If anything, dialogue and writing were still often highlighted as strong points in favour of the game in user and professional reviews alike, regardless of what forums like this or the Codex would argue. The other point is that for every person that criticized Deadfire's writing, in my experience and as per the devs' own feedback there were as many or more who complained about the first game being too wordy, too drab and serious, that the dialogue wasn't voiced thus forcing players to read through several novels' worth of text, that the story felt distant and alienating, and so on. In their videos during Deadfire's production the devs talked about how they were trying to add more levity, to reduce the amount of exposition and descriptive dialogue, how they were committed to adding more V.O., how they wanted to have a clearer hook into the story, and so on, all in response to these same complaints. If anything I think an argument could be made that the writing in the *first* Pillars - and its lack of full V.O. - was a greater drawback for interest in Deadfire than any concerns in Deadfire's writing specifically. But the final point I'd make here regarding writing as a drawback is the following: even if we'd agree Deadfire's writing was worse than Pillars', is it so much worse so as to drive people away from it in a medium where BioWare, Bethesda and Ubisoft games receive praise for their writing? Even at its worse I don't see how Deadfire's writing is possibly worse than post-KOTOR BioWare, or Assassin's Creed Odyssey, or The Elder Scrolls, or Divinity: Original Sin or Pathfinder: Kingmaker or even the Witcher series for that matter. Regrettably I just don't think "good writing" is that strong a hook in this medium. This point is the one I have the strongest disagreement about. Much as I love the first Pillars and think its side-content was mighty fine throughout, it is night and day compared to Deadfire's own, almost but not quite the jump equivalent to Baldur's Gate onto Baldur's Gate II. In Pillars most of the quests are relatively small and straight-forward, dealing with tiny missions that start and end with themselves. Much like the kid looking for his lost dog in Baldur's Gate, the flavour given to these missions is often one of context, dressing, thematic input or a clever subversion to the same (think the looters at the bridge for example), but on their own they're pithy and to the point, hardly memorable as a "quest". Those which are longer, beefier and which act almost as the set-piece to a particular section or act of the game are few and far between, be they the assault on Raedric's Hold, the exploration of the Endless Depths of Od Nua, or the Skaenite cult at Dyrford. Raedric's Hold is particularly interesting amidst these inasmuch as it can often happen as a response to *other* quests and deeds you've been doing around Gilded Vale, and is itself succeeded by a small quest later in the game; yet this one aside, the only other quests that seem to connect to others to form something of a narrative of their own are really just the faction quests, which themselves are not that extensive as arcs the way they are in Deadfire. If we look at Deadfire however, whilst there's several quests in the game that are small and self-contained, this same sort of reactivity and interconnectivity is seen far more frequently, and the end result is that what initially seems like a simple quest can soon lead to a new quest and to another right after, thus creating an adventure or side-story all of its own. See the Arkemyr arc for example: you arrive at Periki's Overlook and find two people who want you to infiltrate Arkemyr's manor and retrieve a sacred text from within, offering you several options to enter the manor whilst you're at it. One of them involves getting Fassina to give you her key, should you want to enter through the front door. Chances are that at this point you haven't entered the Dark Cupboard yet, and with this piece of information you're then prompted to do so, upon which you witness Fassina's companion stealing a pair of gloves from the shop. This in turn prompts another small quest which takes you to a different district to attempt to get these gloves back. Being able to acquire the gloves, getting the key to the manor, and then stealing the sacred text and so on, you are then contacted at the moment of delivering the text by Arkemyr, who then opens up the quest Bekarna's Folly, which leads you to confronting Concelhaut again and finding out about the current of souls leading to Ondra's Mortar and so on. At the end of it all, what you have there is a riveting adventure spanning three individual quests that all seem to have naturally sprung from one another as a consequence of your actions and exploration. That's exactly the sort of thing Baldur's Gate II for example excelled at, and where many other RPGs including some of Obsidian's own don't often do: transforming quests into actual adventures and not mere objectives in a list of things to do. Deadfire does it here, but it also does it with the Storms of Poko Kohara, with Blowing the Man Down and our eventual interactions with Aeldys, with the maze of quests and areas that is the Gullet, with the conflict between the Valeras and the Bardattos, with any of the far deeper faction questlines and so on. Even what seem like a normal set of bounties can eventually give you a map that has you travelling to and discovering the Drowned Barrows, which in turn may have you searching across the Deadfire for a set of spellbooks for an overgrown imp which yet again leads to a ghost port and its own wacky adventure there. Deadfire's quests aren't just meatier, they're also better interconnected so as to create the impression of stories and adventures in a way no other game has since Baldur's Gate II in my opinion. This is all without touching on the flexibility offered by these quests either. The first Pillars offers plenty of flexibility in certain spots such as with the three-path design for Raedric's Hold, but this isn't nearly as consistent and integrated as a general design philosophy as it seems to have been for Deadfire. It really does feel like every quest and situation offers you several paths to not just resolve a certain conflict, but to *get* to that resolution as well. This isn't an attempt to knock Pillars down, but rather to state that to me Deadfire is a masterclass in quest design. I really don't buy this. I haven't seen anything that suggests Obsidian is somehow displeased with Deadfire as a game or as an artistic product. The disappointment I've seen stems from its commercial success or lack thereof, or with very specific elements like the ship-to-ship combat, and not because it's somehow a less "worthy" game. The existence of bugs and the discontinuation of support isn't a result of their lack of love for it but simply the fact that the game didn't perform well and that it's not in their best financial interests to keep a group patching and working on the game a year after release. Far as I'm concerned, they did what they could. They rebalanced the game completely a few patches in, they released three expansive DLCs (one of which is absolutely brilliant, if you don't mind my saying so), they added a whole new combat mode and even introduced new narrative content in response to feedback. Pillars in comparison was a much more successful game and its success easily justified its continued support - but with the way Deadfire performed, if anything it's a show of commitment that they supported the game for as long as they did and with as much post-launch content as they ended up making. As for the rest of your points, OP, I don't disagree with them as individual criticisms of the game... Yet I still hold that none of them explain Deadfire's disappointing performance. Again, I don't feel that any of these points were brought up with the kind of frequency or gravity so as to drive people away from purchasing it - and most that do share these thoughts will have already played and likely purchased it anyways, as they'd have no other way of making such specific qualitative assessments otherwise. I have my own thoughts about how maybe there's certain elements of the style of the first Pillars and the franchise altogether that could have contributed to a general disinterest in the franchise, but I'll get to it in a separate response. *I'm not sure why, but currently the only copy I'm finding of the review I wrote is hidden in a spoiler tag in this post, if you'd like to read it:

You seem to have problems with reading comprehension or you are making stuff up in your mind. Never did I say or even think that Deadfire is the greatest game ever created (that's obviously FTL). I also don't think that I (nor @thelee) am derailing any topic which sincerely wishes to discuss things in a decent manner. What @thelee and I (and others) are constantly trying to do is to separate strong subjective opinions from actual facts and reasonable arguments. You can see me agreeing on certain things that critical voices post here. I'm not a blind fanatic that defends every design decision that was made with Deadfire or PoE. What I don't agree on is ranting like a 5-year-old and presenting ones tastes and opinions as facts or the will of the majority (unless you have proof of that - then it's fine). If I see a totally exaggerated statement in this forums or some opinions presented as facts I feel the need to object. Because I think about new players coming in, reading all that hysterical whining, teeth gnashing and loathing crap and then getting the wrong impression. Why would people want to ruin the experience of others with their toxic views and child-rages-in-candy-shop-because-there's-no-popcorn communication? I even was one of the most harsh critics of Deadfire when its beta came out (I can necro some threads for you if you wish). I voted ship combat down so hard at release it sank all your sloops immediately. I said the pirate theme will not be for everybody and I state until today that the in-game explanations are bad. But at the same time I always try to deliver sound arguments and constructive criticism - not only mimimi and ranting. I'm trying to seperate the valid criticism from the nonsense. Not only for me, but for other readers as well. Does that always turn out perfectly well and resonable? Maybe not, I'm only orlan after all... For example the post from Zelse above contains some valid (yet exaggerated) points (like Neketaka quest running, armor system) and some nonsense (like fights not giving XP is a problem) - but since it's brought forth in such an immature manner it's hard to take it seriously - except by guys who also feel that hot burning rage inside them because Deadfire wasn't likeable for them (and we can't let Obsidian get away with this it seems). Like your post basically. You seem to get angry because we argue and discuss but I won't be convinced by your self-perceived "truth"- even if you use foul language? I mean how dare I? Boeroer's objecting me despite me saying f*ck and sh*t all the time, that evil devil! Or what's the point exactly? Present your arguments in a reasonable manner and seperate your taste and opinions from facts. It's not that hard. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't voice your taste and opinon, it only means you shouldn't present them as truth or fact. All of what you said above is silly and untrue. Everybody else's taste is obviously always sh!tty (rule of nature), I def. played Deadfie more than 55 times (you noob), I don't derail topics because I answer to posts in the most fitting manner (like - without exception, every time), I only get butthurt when I eat no fibres for a looong period of time... and I guess Obsidian doesn't even know that I exist. @thelee I'm not so sure about - since he send in his ultimate run for revision... he's on their radar now.

That was before they realized that he's a lefty.

There are some avellone die-hards out there. Definitely not 600k+ sales drop number of die-hards. Probably like hundreds, if that.

am largely repeating what we said elsewhere... marketing is the frequentest excuse for why a good game sold poor. is a pleasant illusion 'cause it means the game you liked were still good, and it also means the developers you approve o' did nothing wrong. cheap. easy excuse which shifts blame. deadfire were the wrong game if goal were to improve sales o' poe. poe2, from start o' development, were making clear that design philosophy were refinement o' poe-- those who liked poe would get a better game in poe2. that were the problem. poe were selling ie game nostalgia, and too many folks who played poe did not get the bg3 for which they hoped. hardcore crpgs is an admitted niche genre. hardcore fans tend to become more polarized over minutiae than ordinary fans. unfortunate, deadfire developers narrowed appeal o' their title by letting those who were disappointed with poe failure to be another bg2 know that deadfire would be even more unlikable. as somebody who enjoyed poe, deadfire design were targeting Gromnir. save for a few mechanics issues, we appreciated deadfire improvements. yes, we did have more than a couple narrative concerns, but such has been belabored ad nauseum and were not, we believe, contributing to underwhelming initial sales. deadfire were made for folks such as Gromnir. liked the first game and wanted the sequel to refine what were done well in poe. the problem is, there were too few Gromnirs... which is pretty much insane. should never be more o' us. but again, deadfire were appealing to an already niche genre and developers made clear the game were gonna be even more exclusive than first title. diminished sales, in retrospect, should not surprise. HA! Good Fun!

Interesting, for me that was the reason I didn’t care for D:OS2. Without objectives and characters to cared for I was wondering aimlessly doing things, and completing quests but never caring one bit, about what was happening. It was a game about walking around, doing chores and stuffing meat into my elf’s mouth. It was a game with so many options, that nothing felt worth doing. I mean first quest, is to get out of the prison, which should be exciting, but whenever you move you stumble into so many easy ways out of prison. nothing felt earned, and made me wonder how this prison hold its prisoners with so many holes in its security. It was the first RPG where I dreaded entering a new city, as every NPC would have something to say, but none of it was interesting. You could kill an NPC but it would have no impact as ghost thing was there to still talk to him. but maybe it just my taste. It’s a bit like Skyrim to me: “You can climb every mountain!”. Yeah, but why would I, if there is nothing interesting on top. Give me one memorable quest line with couple interesting ways of progressing, instead of bunch of boring stuff. however, this game had an amazing marketing. Trailers for this game beam with fun, humor and character. I did find PoE trailers unappealing even to someone actively interested in the game.

I just want to be able to get sick without losing everything and I think that's a far cry from some communist revolution. After spending some time in countries with universal healthcare and the like I've got to say that I never saw anything like death squads and dictatorships. Except in Canada.

"Cities: Skylines" is a funny way to spell "Planescape: Torment". Punctuation's right at least.

Thread has gone full socialism. Enemies of the people everywhere (in this thread), tremble!

He's an icon in the gaming industry for certain, what with being the main author behind two games often brought up as the best-written games of all time in Fallout 2 and Planescape: Torment (KOTOR 2 as well, I guess). Then again, so is Josh for that matter.

I highly doubt it. I think also most of the tell-all came after Deadfire was out (that's how I seem to remember the timing because he was blaming low... sales?... on Feargus's insistence on using Fig). I would venture to say if you sampled the PoE1 audience, the vast, vast, vast majority would have no idea who Avellone (or JE Sawyer) even are. Obviously I can't prove this or have the resources to run such a survey, so at this point it's all opinions and buttholes, to paraphrase someone else.

oh boy, there has been so much hashed about this already (in currently active threads even), so hopefully i will only say relatively new things. 2. This is opinion, also one I strongly disagree with. One of the biggest criticisms I have of PoE1 was how flat all the faction stuff was. It was literally like, do two quests for one faction and WHOOPS now you failed all the other factions. There was no feeling of impact or weight to those decisions. There was basically a thin central plot line (which admittedly I find more compelling than Deadfire) and everything else was pretty weak. 3. This is opinion, really, and can't explain a sales drop of like 600k+ 4. This is opinion, really, and can't explain a sales drop of like 600k+ 5. Difficulty was not amped up for PotD until well after the peak of sales for a game should have happened. While this is not opinion, it can't explain a sales drop of like 600k+, because it's not even relevant (the game was in fact criticized for being too easy on PotD). 6. Less of an opinion, but still can't explain a sales drop of like 600k+, because there's literally no perfectly balanced role playing system out there. I challenge anyone to argue otherwise. 7. This has nothing to do with Obsidian "not loving the game." Obsidian time is limited, and in any big RPG there are going to be tons of bugs to iron out. Dev time costs money, lots of it, easily 100k+ per person per year, probably 200k-ish considering benefits. It's a cost-benefit decision. If Deadfire sold like PoE1 i'm pretty sure we'd still be seeing ongoing support and even more mini-content. However, given the low sales, Obsidian can't sink the same kind of resources as they could in PoE1 (and frankly there are more game-breaking bugs in PoE1 at end of life than Deadfire anyway), it would be stealing money that could be spent for more successful projects (TOW) or new projects. While a lot of the original post was a lot of opinion, I think here you're just objectively wrong. Frankly, given how much new content they gave out (including fully-voiced mini-content, like the woedica book), I feel like all the support they gave helped them lose more money given the low initial sales. I think they persisted in spite of that because they love their game. If they didn't love their game, why did they make it? Obsidian is (was) a small indie dev studio with lower pay and worse job security than big corporate minders, love for their own style of RPG is (was) what drives (drove) them despite that.

And now we GOTO 40... Might be far better as well, no ? May be the thin edge of the wedge and all, but seems unlikely that having socialized health care or medicine is going to lead to the Killing Fields 2.0

I had to Google that, but Who wants some Wang? Ok, that slayed me.

You know, this is exactly why CA's recent grog icon status baffles me. I mean, his Opus Magnum Planescape Torment is famous for being "That game with fantastic story and crap combat". Grogs don't give a toss about stories, but combat is god (only if exactly like in BG2, but still). Why then? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Fallout 2. Great game. Also, stylized pulpy sci-fi with its own turn=based system that looks and feels exactly like BG2 not. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ KOTOR2. Great game, combat isn't very BG2, plus it was released on those filthy consoles for filthy casuals. All the other stuff is very much products of collaboration. Right now, the only plausible hypothesis I have is that Avellone's friction with Obsidian made public approximately around the same time codex types faced dawning realization that Obsidian, in fact, does not exactly strive to cater to their tastes up to tiniest details; ol' Chris just got picked up as a flag...in which case, dude gotta beware, because grogs are fickle mistresses -- like, weren't they praying at Sawyer's altar once too?

You compare them to D-list celebrities in Hollywood, but I would compare them to arthouse or cult filmmakers instead. Those who follow arthouse or cult films will immediately recognize who Michael Haneke, John Sayles or Alex Cox are, and will watch films by them just for the sake of their involvement. None of them are making nine figures with their films, they might not be making eight for that matter, but there still exists a niche that consumes their work and pays to see what they do. Pillars doesn't have to compete with Death Stranding, it was always a more niche product, a PC game to put it in your own terms, so being an icon of PC gaming sounds like a great way to start generating interest in a game for that niche.

Easy, just put his face on the dude from Shadow Warrior and tag it "Who wants some Yang"

What I took away from Josh's post mortem talk: Ship Combat and Full VO did hurt the most.

If Avellone would be such a legend that he draws in hundreds of thousands of customers by using his name alone then Kingmaker would have sold way better than it did, wouldn't it? Maybe it's indeed best to steer away from isometric RTwP for a while and instead try to establish the Pillars IP more with more popular game formats that don't need to feed on nostalgia - like a Skyrim on Eora or something like that. I would even be very happy with a more Battle Brothers of the Eastrn Reach, a Slay the Spire of Old Vailia or even a Faster than the Child of Light (all with more roleplaying tweaks). Just keep telling the story of the world with differnt games. Once your IP has drawn in more players that love and cherish the stories, the lore, the whole world you can shrug off nostalgic IE ballast and try again with an isometric party based RPG I guess. Or you simply use a smaller team with a smaller budget, use the actual Deadfire engine and focus on new story, quests, awesome vilains etc. and keep the mechanics as is. Lower sales numbers don't hurt if you don't put too much money into development, right?

With Mars methane mystery unsolved, Curiosity serves Scientists a new one: Oxygen

Not 50. But yes, I do really enjoy Deadfire. But tell me, what fact am i denying that is colored by me liking this game? Please, go through this thread and any other thread discussing Deadfire sales and highlight any factual inaccuracies or logical fallacies. (Hell, I'm the one correcting people about just how low Deadfire sold--lower than they speculate.) I don't claim to know the answer of why Deadfire sold poorly, all I can do is offer my own theories, backed by whatever data I have access to. But if we're trying to explain why Deadfire sold poorly, it's going to have to be a major explanation to explain 600k+ drop (and that is only compared to PoE1 sales, like I mentioned before OBS likely expected to do even better so the drop is even larger). And sorry, as JE Sawyer pointed out, if the game's metacritic score is about as good as PoE1 (and far better than P:K, which sold much better) and audience reviews are good, nit-picky arguments about side quests or other small things are not going to answer that question about the huge sales drop. All you've offered is conjecture that's trivial to verify as not being true. You're almost as bad as the dude chiming in "rage rage Chris Avellone rage rage"

Edit Nov. 15: Greetings fellow spacers, We want to inform you that Patch 1.1.1.0 will not be ready until Monday, November 18th. We apologize for this inconvenience as we tried to get this out to you this week, but due to some unfortunate circumstances the patch will not be ready until early next week. Again we are sorry to have to push this update back. We appreciate your patience and understanding regarding this delay. ________________________ Greetings fellow spacers, At this time, we would like to let you all know that we are looking at releasing a patch next week to implement some changes and bug fixes. This patch is currently in the testing phase and as long as no other issues occur during this time, we hope to release it to you all sometime next week. Please be aware that this can change, but we are working hard to make this timeline and things are looking good thus far. Resolved Issues: • The crashing issue in Tartarus • Increase Font Size - Conversations/Subtitles • Muffled sound effects occur at random times for players on the PS4 • Companions dying and failing companion quests on modes other than Supernova • Unable to finish "Radio Free Monarch" • Trophy "Not the Best Choice" fails to unlock properly If you do not see your particular issue or suggestion listed above, please understand that we are continually reviewing and working on items that you are sharing with us. We will continue to work on updates and patches to see how we can make your gaming experience the best it possibly can be. To continue to report issues and share suggestions, please visit our The Outer Worlds: Technical Support forums and search to see if a fellow player has already made a thread about it. If you find a thread with your issue or suggestion, feel free to comment in that thread with any details you would like to share. If you cannot find a thread with your issue or suggestion, please start a new thread detailing the issue/suggestion and then please contact our publishing partner, Private Division, at their website here. Doing so will help ensure that your specific issue or suggestion is in their queue, which allows us to prioritize requests to provide the fastest possible turnaround time. Thank you all for your patience and understanding, and we are so grateful to have you all here with us.

And Twitter. And Discord.

quick side note: am not believing obsidian were wrong to breakaway from bg2 mechanics, and in some respects, style. nostalgia were only gonna carry poe so far, particular as bg2 nostalgia were a deeply personal and fluid concept, at least it were 'mongst those providing feedback on the boards. those essential aspects o' bg2 which made bg2 liked were not uniform 'mongst consumers. worse, often times the things people liked 'bout bg2 were not necessarily part o' that title, but were nevertheless what folks remembered 'bout bg2. as such am suspecting if obsidian recreated the ie engine as best they could, with updated graphics, and created a 2018 near clone o' bg2, many o' the bg2 fans woulda' complained 'bout the game being derivative and antiquated. an idealized bg2 were what many poe fans wanted, but am not sure what such a game would be, or if it would be successful. likes and dislikes not need be reasonable or rational. such feels is real nevertheless. our point is not that obsidian were wrong in their development scheme. am honest not certain how deadfire coulda' been created to have more broad appeal and reconnect with those fans who were disappointed with poe. regardless, am believing obsidian misjudged who were the likely purchasers o' deadfire. during deadfire development, obsidian were focused on improving the gaming experience for those who purchased and enjoyed poe. the stuff obsidian worked to improve 'pon in deadfire were only gonna solidify the approval o' those who already liked poe and would further discourage those who were annoyed by poe's lack o' bg2 qualities. reviews were excellent for poe and sales were impressive, so am believing obsidian were reasonable in under estimatimating the number o' purchasers who were underwhelmed by poe. regardless, am believing there were a real misapprehension 'bout who wanted deadfire. HA! Good Fun!

Check Greenman gaming. Good chance you’ll get the best price there. You get a key you claim within the Epic Launcher.

to think the differences between hub and open is semantics is ridiculous no, i said i love that i cant save-scum. again, not semantics. as well, i am stating the auto-save prevalence for YOU. (lol, notwithstanding, i am only in the vale) using autosaves as a “dont want to lose a lot of progress and repeat” tactic or “save upon quit” is nothing like save-scumming for me, there is no “tedium” as it eliminates save-scumming, forces me to play intelligently, yet, allows for a quick save if i need to stop playing i need to tell you how save scumming makes a game unbelievably easier? i and im sure millions of others have mastered save-scumming, lol and the time spent deleting all those saves is especially fun as ive always said, in almost ALL games (console) i am “forced” to add self-imposed restrictions because there arent ANY games that actually add those harsh, difficult, complex, immersive, realistic, mod-like mechanics within the actual game. my survival style of play always has to do be done in my head because there are NO alternatives having said all that, i am NOT against “save anywhere” i simply stated a truth: I like not being able to save-scum AS AN ACTUAL gameplay mechanic (same with fast travel, for example) i am an advocate of gameplay and hud (and map) customization btw, MANY games dont have the save anywhere feature and so to say it is archaic is false as well, on all other difficulties can you save anywhere? thus, it was a purposeful design choice for one difficulty its refreshing to finally get a game that adds such in-game features (semi-perma-companion death also) on its most difficult, Optional level for me, id rather they just significantly up the difficulty for all the difficulties and let us customize * and dont forget—the game saves BEFORE fast-traveling to your ship

I loved PoE 1 and I thought PoE 2 was even better. Shorter, but better. It sucks that they may not make or may drastically change the nature of a potential sequel. I grew up playing the D&D goldbox games. And fell in love with the isometric D&D games from the late 90's and early 2000's. I have always preferred turn based strategies over real time strategies. I prefer the solid tactical gameplay that turn based offers. PoE 2 had all that in spades. The naval part of PoE 2 also brought back some nostalgia for the old Sid Meier's Pirates! game. I probably spent months of my life overall playing that game and the cheesy re-release from the early 2000's because they were a blast. It also significantly changed the typical gameplay style of these sorts of games. BG1/2, Icewindale, PoE1, etc where you were exploring individual 'zones'. This felt much more free almost. More natural. Anyways, probably not a chance a developer with Obsidian will see this. I think they built the right and quite frankly an AWESOME game! I would hate to see them throw the baby out with the bathwater... I'm guessing there were other factors that impacted sales. I purchased this for PC and have every intention of buying another copy for Switch so I can be a pirate on the go. Good work with PoE2 Obsidian. Regardless of what your analysis says...

'Socialism' is about slavery. It's about controlling what other people think, feel, and do. It's anti freedom. Anyone who is pro socialism is antif reedom. btw, This includes many on the 'right' who also want to control what people think, feel, and do. All are scum. 99..9% of people are anti freedom. PERIOD.

Nice argumentation, thelee. Especially on point #7. I agree with you there. The Woedica book and the added voiced lines for Eothas very much look like Obsidian caring, a lot. Many of the other points are, as you quite rightly say, opinions only, and dubious explanations for such a drastic drop in sales. (Am I detecting something along the lines of surprisingly many people being unable or unwilling to see the difference between opinions and more objective facts?)

this is the only real compelling theory or sub-theory that i've seen hashed out in the forums, that basically goes like: "rpgamers are a more conservative bunch than you would think and resist major changes to the things they like" which is especially true for a nostalgia-fueled product. i don't think people always know what they want; or if they know what they want, know how to express it; or if they do know what they want or how to express it they don't want to come off as the uncool curmudgeon who "just wants another BG2." I agree with @Gromnir that there was a lot of nit-picking debate over mechanics and it was probably less about the specific mechanics and more about the broader "this isn't BG2" that wasn't being expressed well. it's a smart business insight from OBS to realize that you can't just lean on nostalgia (those people die off or move on) and you have to expand your audience somehow and modernize the game. It might also just be that there's no easy transition point to bridge nostalgia RTwP to modern RTwP and that's why Deadfire flopped. This would imply that for a PoE3 they would have to go all-in one direction or another: completely break with the past and push a "modern RTwP" as hard as they can (which may not exist and may require TB-mode), or go back and pick up on as many BG cues as they can (hopefully without regressing the mechanics). But I'm not sure either will get the same sales as PoE1 - PoE1 had the advantage of being first out of the gates for the latter, and I am increasingly skeptical about the size of the market for the former. edit - a constant confounding factor is Tyranny. Tyranny sold better than Deadfire (though according the publisher it still disappointed). It might have benefited from not even having the pretense of being like PoE or BG, so there was no "alienation" factor and could be treated as a thing in and of itself. The sales might have been lower than PoE1 but I think OBS would be happy for Tyranny-level sales for Deadfire (not to mention Deadfire likely had a bigger budget - Tyranny might have done even better if it received the same focus).

That is an interesting point. it does indeed seem, like streaming is a way for people to engage with games. I can’t imagine PoEs being very engaging streaming games - in-depth combat mechanics, lengthy conversations, somber tone, all seem like a horrible fit for a stream. I couldn’t imagine playing it with a friend, not to mention thousands of passive viewers waiting to be entertained. “YOLO!” Nature of something like D:OS2 might make for a better viewer experience, and invite more younger audience in. I can’t talk about Cohh’s streaming habits. Does he often do multiple playthroughs of the same game? that still however, doesn’t address discrepancy between PoE1 and PoE2 sales, and none of them seem very streamable.

I just found out "PoE 3 wont happen cuz developer dont know reason for unsuccesfull" My very own opinion: 1. People still didnt finish PoE1. 2. People was expecting PoE1 be like dungeon and dragons, but PoE is not. Is about gods and anymancy. =I LOVE IT, however todays fans MAY not like it= 3. PoE2 is about pirates. And not about dragons. 4. Shortly after original sin 2. Poe1,Tyranny,Poe2. TO MUCH. Still PoE2 is better than all of this, however noone found out it. 5. I belive if PoE1 was like PoE2(but with no pirates), continuation would be MUST BUY. PoE1 for most of time was boring. And what i think could be solution: Make ETERNITY (not pillars of eternity, pillars of eterrnity 3, or whatever) If u would do poe3 noone buy it again. Do same what Hitman1/Europa universalis series: Sell game cheap with limited content, but with same character and saving progress. If u make Base game cool(i dunno for 10 hours content) people will like more. Game can be short(lets say lvl1-6), but it should be prety sandboxing(5-6 classes maybe), sell more classes(with some different story soultions maybe) as DLC, sell ACT 2(lvl7-8), ACT 3(lvl9-10), ACT 4(lvl11-12) as DLC. They have to be quite large dlcs(lets say6-8hours, but with very slow EXP gain) make DLC with no EXP gain(to not ruin balance) to get some more story + get some extra items/traits(like WM but no exp gain). Make this game this way, that after couple of months when DLC will come i will be happy to buy dlc and return to this world[maybe with autolevelup+random choices] if customer would be happy to start from new act(dlc). Make story EASY for casual player for (lets say first 2 acts), and then hopefully give us cookies. Make big price cuts on base game, but not on DLC. Todays fans dont have that much time. We want games shorter, but more interesting. Dont need to waste time for turn-based content. Give us more STORY content. Even if we have to pay. GOODLUCK!

didn't wanna start a new thread and couldn't think where such a post would be more appropriate. in any event, is 11:38 pacific time, so is still veterans day, which means we couldn't go to the bank today. more important we wish to express our gratitude for any and all who have served their country honorably as a member of the armed forces. thank you.

This is also a world where there is actually magic. In Deadire you go around telling people that a god has incarnated a gigantic statue and is trampling through the deadfire, and some people roll their eyes at you -- not necessarily that they don't believe you about seeing a gigantic animated statue, but rather that it's inhabited by a literal god. If there are people wandering around who can literally make fantastical things happen just by mumbling a few words and waving their hands, it seems like it would be even easier to be athiest. A miracle happened? No, wasn't divine intervention, was just Bob the level 1 Thaumaturge over there messing up a cantrip.

Bless thy hearts! I stopped the game right after the tutorial on PS4, 90% of the text was unreadable - subtitles being not the most problematic, item descriptions being unreadable. Please consider scaling the rest of the UI sooner rather than later, i know subtitles are probably the easiest thing to update due to there being more real estate for bigger text, but i can't start playing until UI is more visible. :( Thanks for all your hard work!

Sounds good. I'm sure the console players will be very pleased with the text size changes.

Please add an option to use the right trigger to ready the weapon instead of pressing X, so I can keep my weapon holstered while interacting and talking to NPCs.

Will the font size increase include the menu / user interface? The issue isn’t limited to just conversations/subtitles, as your note indicates. Almost anything involving words is difficult to read. If not, PLEASE consider revisiting all font sizes. Not just subtitles.

Yay! But I hope the font size increase is for more than just the subtitles. Some of the text in the menus is even smaller than the subtitles. Eventually, this game will be on Microsoft's xCloud service and people will play it on their phones, so the text will be even harder to read than this.

So many parts to this game simply scream attention to detail. From the intelligent dialogue branching & reactivity, to the meticulous crafting of so many art assets. Thank you for a quality RPG.

Don't know whether they've plans for DLCs with additional places and quests, but would sure love that ! Moreover, I'd totally pay for extensions in the spirit of those made for the witcher 3, adding 10+ hours of playtime to this brilliant and refreshing masterpiece.

That's just like ... your opinion man. But I'm sure everyone here is greatful for your critique. However, my opinion is that it's the best Fallout like game since Fallout New Vegas. My opinion is that the writing is brillant. My opinion is that Obsidian is not known for mediocrity but for some of my favourite games ever.

Please give us the in game ability to change our PC cosmetic look (ie hair, hair color, facial hair and makeup/scars) after the character creation menu Obsidian! Our PC can eat/drink/sleep and change their armor. But can't do something as simple as changing their cosmetic appearance? Being able to add scars, facial blemishes etc. besides makeup/facial hair as PC progresses in game would be so much more immersive. I thought the whole point of this game was about character choice? Please unlock the ability of this pre game feature for use in the game!