xzar_monty

Ha, mods, what a topic. BG2 is the only game where I've even tried mods, and boy the hassle they can create. Never even thought of using any for PoE, Deadfire or P:K. One funny thing with mods is the writing, i.e. content mods (as opposed to system tweaks) are a nice idea and something I favor, at least in theory, but the writing can be poor. Having experienced some of the mods for BG2, it's easy to say that while the game itself is not on the level of literature or any kind of excellent writing, it's still pretty darn decent. (And yes: there was some decent writing in the mods, too.)

What I think is important is that it might be difficult to even understand Deadfire without the background given in PoE.

I agree that those specific examples are almost certainly a case of the few speaking for the many. However, it doesn't follow that this is often the case (and again, it might be).

I wonder how many players actually care about achievements. Has this been studied? Does anyone know? I am always annoyed when an achievement icon pops up on my screen. It breaks immersion in the game and I have no interest in achievements. But yes, I also haven't checked whether they can be totally disabled somehow.

There are two claims here, and while the second is definitely valid, I don't think we can actually say whether the first one is. It might be, but I'd wager we just don't know. As an example: like we have discussed (and like Josh Sawyer has pointed out in his refreshingly straightforward musings about the failure of Deadfire), prior to the release of Deadfire it would have been impossible to predict, from the opinions voiced, that interest in the sequel to PoE was actually very low. In retrospect, we can come up with a plausible explanation, but then we almost always can, this is what humans do.

I am not justifying anything. I have no interest in justifying Obsidian. And there's no need to get upset, please. My point concerned solely the difference between freeware and regular commercial ware and the differences inherent in these. Like, compare your chances of getting in touch with Linux programmers versus your chances of getting similar contact with either Apple of Windows software developers. It is in the culture of freeware to be accessible. This is my point.

Of course I know. Grinding Gear Games is a gnat-sized entity providing freeware content; hence it is in its best interests to be available to the customer. Obsidian is a rather more sizable venture (currently owned by a true giant), which makes it more corporate and therefore almost infinitely less accessible.

In the same way that you can go chat up a busker but not Bruce Springsteen.

Path of Exile is freeware, though, so that's a huge difference right there. It also explains why the devs can afford (sic) to be around.

Yeah, that's probably how it's often done, in fact. And with the middleman in there, I wouldn't call that "being in touch" with the fans anymore (in the sense that I meant in my first post on this page -- in there I was referring to direct back-and-forth). It's more like that you get to hear the best of what the fans (may) have to offer.

Do you mean in the computer game industry or in general? In general, you are absolutely wrong, and even in the game industry, I doubt what you say, although there might be an element of truth in it.

My experience is from different fields of popular (and high) culture, two of them, so I cannot make any direct comparisons, but from my experience I would say that being in touch with the fans is generally not a good idea, as unfortunate as that is. First, there are too many people whose comments betray an unjustified sense of entitlement, and second, forums like these do have a very unfortunate tendency to veer towards the unreasonably ugly, as you say. Third, there is always the persistently obnoxious client whose arguments show that he doesn't understand what he is talking about, and he also doesn't understand that he doesn't understand (for an example of this, look at Blunderboss's recent outburst at me in this very thread). The combination of all this is likely to wear you down, especially if you also have a job to do -- people's wishes, desires and requests tend to be quite contradictory, which creates confusion and uncertainty if you get too deeply enmeshed in them. I can't compare these forums to what they were, but I would agree that at the moment they are, for the most part, quite friendly and quite possibly wouldn't drive Obsidianites (nice one!) away, at least not immediately.

Could you name a few of these forums, please?

Impossible question.

Yeah, Imoen is the one strange NPC during that opening sequence. Like, try to get her killed...

But boy that Chateau Irenicus was scary the first time. The intro gave me such a sense of urgency and looming threat that I had to seriously consider (this is 100% true) whether I dared to rest in there. It was only later that I learned that Irenicus, long-living fella that he was until I killed him, was prepared to wait a hundred thousand years -- or longer -- by the Promenade entrance to begin his fireworks and end those cowled wizards.

You'll get a more than decent armor. (That you can buy. For rather serious money. But it's worth it.) Why did you murder the lumberjacks? They're lumberjacks and they're ok, they sleep all night and they work all day.

This is actually a very good point. The beginning of Deadfire is indeed extraordinarily unfortunate in two different ways. It's way too long, and the narration is bad. I can easily understand someone -- or indeed something like 16,728 someones -- saying, Bugger this for a game of soldiers, I'm switching to Solitaire.

For the record, neither of these appear in the game. Both are referred to. One just once, and the other by a sibling a few times. This is generally the kind of meaning your previous choices will have -- except for the slightly more significant one that thelee outlined above.

But going through walkthroughs is so much against my ethos of playing these games in the first place. You do have a point, however, which in turn shows that there's something wrong with the way the game was made: much of the wilderness really feels meaningless if you don't know what to do. Also, the story in the game is all over the place, in my view. But boy was BG2 good! Probably still is, as a matter of fact.

Same here. And, in fact, I only beat BG (just the once) simply to see what it was like to have a character go through the whole saga. I must say it was an unnecessary chore: BG is pretty much rubbish, as a game, if you ask me. It's just aimless walking on mostly empty maps with very little to recommend it.

Looking at those achievements, btw, I'm very surprised by the one called "The Storied Adventurer". I never even knew there were grand and legendary stronghold adventures. The best I got was major, most were either minor or average.

Wow. That's a terrifyingly low number. And it would definitely indicate that the amount of players wanting to continue with the franchise was rather low. I wonder at what point this became obvious. I mean, clearly it took a while for the amount of players finishing the game to start to increase, but when did it (for all practical purposes) stop, I wonder if this is known.

Avernum looks a bit too rudimentary, so to speak. I have not played it. IWD suffers from ghastly AI and serious hack-n-sla****is -- I mean, the story is barebone and character interaction is fairly minimal. NWN had some promise, but the 3D view gets old in an instant, because the graphics start to repeat themselves; this made me realize that I really prefer individually drawn maps over any tilesets, no matter how fancy at first glance. I have tried a couple of others, like Temple of Elemental Evil, but none have come even close to those four I mentioned. I'd be happy to buy one such game a year, whereas in fact I have bought one every five years this millennium. But even that, of course, is a lot better than nothing.

I personally find Deadfire's lack of success rather disheartening. It is a fine representative of my favorite genre, which in itself is extremely small: there's BG2, PoE, Deadfire and P:K. Boy I wish there were more high-quality games of this sort, but apparently not.