xzar_monty

I have nothing against D&D, and I still play 3.5 PnP, which I think is just great. As for NWN: does anyone else feel that the NWN approach is much more generic and infinitely less beautiful and romantic than that of either BG or PoE/Deadfire? No matter how pretty your 3D tilesets are, they get repetitive incredibly quickly, and so there isn't (perhaps even can't be) anything striking about any of the graphics in the long run. Whereas the individually created isometric graphics of both BG and PoE/Deadfire are idiosyncratic, imaginative and charming. NWN felt like so much slogging through generic areas, and NWN2 was impossible to get into, for me. There's just no charm, no beauty, no romance, no sense of adventure. Like (I think) Gromnir said somewhere above: there was precious little romanticism and nostalgia for NWN while people waited for PoE. It was BG everybody pined for, and I can understand why. There's such a difference between the two. (Sales-wise, I have no idea.)

But hey, there's a new title coming! I hadn't known about this. Boy, I am pleased that this game is coming out.

That's true, but it's a strategy used by relatively few players. We've already established that not that many players have completed the game even once. And there is the group of players (like me) who have completed the game and are not interested in meta-gaming in the way you describe, because they want the world to be new -- and once it isn't anymore, it stops being interesting. But note that this is not to deny the benefit you describe; it certainly is there. But it's a niche phenomenon, for a small subgroup of players.

@Boeroer: Ok, thanks. I was totally enthralled by both Ultima IV and V back in the mid to I guess late 1980s. But of course they were such open world games that it could be troublesome to even figure out what you were supposed to be doing, especially if English wasn't your first language and you were sort of slow to figure out some of the admittedly basic stuff. They remain some of my fondest CRPG memories; in fact they're right there at the top with BG2. I'd say nothing comes even close. (PoE, Deadfire and P:K are all good, though, and for sure were worth playing.)

@Boeroer: Did you play Ultima IV or V, back in the day? (Concerning open world games.)

I was also attracted by the tone, and the beginning of the game was, and is, superb, although it is admittedly very dark. But I also admit that there's some evidence for the game being something of a "semi-dud", as @IndiraLightfoot said above. I was never able to get into the faction idea, I felt it was superfluous; Caed Nua was a great idea but felt half-baked in the end, because I felt there were more filler levels than proper levels; some of the stronghold stuff was very poor (especially the prison, and the attacks you could auto-resolve or manually resolve); and because I reached level cap so early, I was never able to become interested in Twin Elms -- there was nothing to gain anymore, so why bother? Also, I thought the "gods are not real" stuff that you got to at Twin Elms was articulated fairly poorly. There was some dodgy writing there, which may have had something to do with being able to choose such dialogue options that things remained quite vague -- does anyone share this experience? But, it was a good game. No question.

You hit the nail right on the head. Below is a link to a thorough mathematical study conducted in the movie business. The bottom line is: just as William Goldman once said, no one knows anything. Success is entirely unpredictable, and box office revenues diverge over all scales. This almost certainly applies to games as well, as well as many other consumer products. A quote from the article: We conclude: (1) The studio model of risk management lacks a foundation in theory or evidence and revenue forecasts have zero precision. In other words, "Anything can happen." (2) Movies are complex products and the cascade of information among film-goers during the course of a film's run can evolve along so many paths that it is impossible to attribute the success of a movie to individual causal factors. In other words, "No one knows anything." http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.521.7885&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Touché. That was just about the best comeback I've ever seen on these forums, especially because it wasn't unkind. Superb. @Archaven gets grumpy because he doesn't know that historically there were two sexual demons of this sort, the succubus and the incubus. What can you say when someone gets grumpy simply because he doesn't know enough? Well, you educate them. Again, touché.

That could be true. It is, after all, a well-known fact that the highly discerning and stupefyingly intelligent male species can be instantly and utterly transfixed by the simple geometrical combination of two circles and a triangle.

You are actually not forced to play it even once. The Defiant can outrun anyone. You can avoid ship combat completely, even if you never upgrade your ship.

SSS wasn't for me, either, but I most wholeheartedly recommend Beast of Winter. Being from Finland, you will probably enjoy Obsidian's take on the arctic -- even if BoW is much more Norwegian or Icelandic than Finnish. It's also a very, very good story.

@algroth: Fair enough! But I don't know you. It appears to me that @Selky is cherry-picking facts to such an extent that proper discussion becomes difficult. For instance, as he writes to me, "You acknowledge that word of mouth is a thing so I'm just going to ignore this part". As if the fact that word of mouth is a thing (of course it is) would automatically prove that the argument goes precisely as Selky says it does -- even if his own behavior (the act of buying the game) is in fact proof against his argument. Word of mouth is there, it's an important thing, but from looking at how the game was received, I find it extraordinarily hard to believe that word of mouth concerning the main plot had a lot to do with the huge drop in sales. Sounds like a very dubious theory.

What on earth does your backer sticker have to do with anything? Seriously. Why bring that up? It was NOT trashed everywhere. I would have seen at least some trashing, because I was following the forums. Where did Sawyer acknowledge it, please?

Boeroer is exactly right. Selky, among others, may have problems with the plot, but as Selky's own example shows, it didn't affect sales. (I do agree that word of mouth does affect sales, but I'm not aware of any DO NOT BUY THIS GAME THE MAIN PLOT IS RUBBISH word of mouth after the release of Deadfire. Obviously I can be wrong here, so correct me if I am.)

Yep, this was probably a very big factor, in the sense that "nostalgia can only work once", as has been said. PoE was in the enviable position that gamers could project all their fantasies into it because none of them actually knew what was coming. With Deadfire, essentially all of that dreaming had been taken away.

That is your take on it. But to others who look at what you write, you use bonkers when others disagree with your opinion and resorting to strong language appears to be your only recourse. Please try to be a little less unpleasant. Even if you are completely right -- which has not been demonstrated at all -- it still makes no sense to treat other views as if they are senseless. I agree it would be bonkers to claim that the moon is made of cheese, but nobody has been anywhere near that category in this discussion. Now, what I would like you to do is demonstrate somehow that Avellone's involvement in the game made a difference. I know that's impossible, but can you point us to any net sources, for instance, that show people actually cared about Avellone's involvement? For my part, I can say that I do not know a single person who either knew or cared that Avellone was involved in PoE. When we talked about the game, we were interested in the fact that a new "Baldur's Gate" type game was coming. For the record, we neither knew nor cared about who made Baldur's Gate, either. We did know the company, but not the names of the developers. It appears to me that your perspective is wildly skewed, and you yourself are not aware of it.

That's a fair point, but to continue on the line thelee brought up above: which percentage of gamers even know or care who wrote those games? This is not meant to bring Avellone down in any way whatsoever, but my sense still is that the number of people who hold him in extremely high regard is small, which makes the "legend" status somewhat dubious.

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.

I'm pretty sure you're right. The gaming industry, by and large, is not a name industry, i.e. I don't think there's ever been anybody whose game would sell just because it's his game -- in the way a Stephen King novel will sell because it's a Stephen King novel (although if it's utter crap, the one after that may certainly suffer).

I am asking why, because there must be a reason why somebody is called a legend. For instance, Pele is a legend in football/soccer for his extraordinary goal haul, his otheworldly skills and his world championships. Etc. You haven't given any reason why Avellone should be regarded as a legend. Saying "He IS a legend" means nothing. Why is he a legend? In whose opinion? I don't think there's anything legendary about him. He writes quite well. But I haven't seen anything from him that would set him apart from other CRPG writers, and certainly not anything that I would ever consider to be of legendary quality.

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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?)

Right, ok, thanks for this. I suppose these die-hards regard him as a legend, but I can't see how the epithet could be justified. He's all right, of course. But not a legend.

Do you mean Chris Avellone? Why would he be a legend? And who is the complete inept (sic)?

Hmm, is single class rogue really significantly weaker than single class wizard or monk? I really don't know, but if that's true, it would clearly go against one of my main points about the game (that everything is in too-perfect balance).