xzar_monty

My understanding is that it has something to do with how the game engine is constructed. However, I cannot be more specific because I don't know the details, and probably wouldn't understand them well enough anyway. I do agree that the loading times for both PoE and Deadfire are too long and tend to test your patience. As for future patches: I don't think there's any chance that there are ever going to be more patches for these games. They're done.

@Madscientist: Back in the day, there was a really good cRPG called Dungeon Master that had a system all of its own. One of the nice aspects of that system was that pretty much everything was under the hood: you didn't see your experience points, you were not told what kind of rewards you got for what you did, and so on. But at the same time, the system clearly worked, and it relied on the computer being able to calculate everything a lot better than us mortals in PnP. Boy, that was a lovely decision from the developers, and it absolutely worked (the game was a commercial success). Given the current cRPG culture with meta-gaming, min/maxing and all that, I don't think any game developer could have the guts to make that kind of decision.

But in order to experience the frustration you allude to, people would have had to play the game for a while, which in turn would have meant buying it first. So it doesn't sound like a good theory.

No. American games have terrible translation because the developers 1) don't understand the amount of work involved, 2) are not willing to pay for the effort required for a good translation, and 3) are not in any position to evaluate what they get, i.e. as the American developers themselves don't speak the foreign languages their games are translated into, they are unable to realize that the translations tend to be absolutely terrible, utterly worthless. I cannot stress this enough. For somebody who speaks Spanish, Italian, German, what have you, these translations can look so terrible that it actually feels like an insult. Like, dear @Madscientist, if you buy game of computer role-playing and very big adventuring and you see language in game looks like this language, then will that language turn you to a happy customer, or, contrariwise, could it possible even be you will feel the company of making computer gaming is laughing and thinking ha ha that fool boy we have he's money now yippee. It is rare that I claim expertise, but this is one of the few areas where I do. I have been working in this realm for over twenty years, and here I know what I'm talking about. Most (if not all) American cRPG devs simply do not understand what they're doing with their translations. It's a shame, it's an utterly rotting shame, and they should just stop. Forget about the translations: they are so bad that they are not worth it.

I think this is meaningless, although I obviously cannot prove it either way. In all my years of cRPG playing, I have never heard anyone even mention Chris Avellone except on the internet forums. The only person I would regard as a veritable "presence" on this front is Richard Garriott, and that was in the 1980s. Never, ever has anyone spoken about Avellone being a particularly good writer, much less an indispensable one. It was only the internet forums that woke me up to the fact that he has a rabid group of followers/supporters. My sense is that the group is small but very rabid indeed. I have read one post by Chris Avellone himself, and it didn't make me think that there was a good writer there. It only made me sad.

Possibly, yes. But would you agree that it looks kind of bad on the developers? "Here's our main product, it's decent, and then we have these add-ons that you can buy if you want, and by the way, they're written an awful lot better than the main product." I mean, obviously it's great that the DLCs are well written. But it makes the main game look bad, in that particular sense, doesn't it?

I agree that the chance to play it either as a stand-alone or a part of the main campaign would have been nice -- after all, I cannot see how giving that choice could possibly be bad for anyone. But it's interesting to see how different our preferences and approaches can be. I would have had absolutely no interest in playing it as a stand-alone: I'm in the game mainly for the story, and that's it. No interest in intricate tactical battles for the sake of intricate tactical battles. But giving players the option to try those tactical battles as a stand-alone? Absolutely, yes. As for the DLCs as a whole, in these two games: I'm beginning to be of the opinion that something is a little bit wrong somewhere when the storytelling (and writing in general) within the DLCs is so clearly so much better than in the main campaign (cf. the White March vs. PoE or, especially, Beast of Winter vs. Deadfire). Why does this happen?

Precisely. It would be extremely good if people were more careful with their wording and/or understood the terminology they use (preferably both!). The OP's first words in this thread were "We all know kickstater is fancy scam", which, as far as I'm concerned, is an excellent way to undermine one's credibility right at the start.

That's almost like saying that you're a huge pop music fan and enjoy Duran Duran, the Pet Shop Boys and ABBA but have never listened to The Beatles. Nothing wrong with it, per se, but it IS odd.

I finished it a couple of days ago. It's really good. The writing makes this game. Asterisks were used for emphasis *like this* way too much, but apart from that and one you-must-succeed-or-the-story-won't-continue skill check, I don't have much to criticize. The game deserves all the good that comes its way. I'm hoping that the quality of writing in Disco Elysium will make many game developers a lot more ambitious in their own writing. This would, in turn, benefit everyone.

Yep. Biggest flaw in an otherwise excellent game. Just finished and uninstalled it now, took me 23 hours. Recommended.

I haven't finished it yet, but there was a definite spot where I felt the game contained a fairly big problem/mistake. This involves a check in which you *have* to succeed, otherwise the story doesn't continue. But I had to resort to the internet to find out that succeeding in this check was, indeed, the only way forward. I felt the game didn't spell that out in near enough detail for me. I trust you know what I'm talking about. Do you have an opinion on this?

Seriously, you must be joking. I absolutely cannot believe that you can be serious with something as silly as this. But in case you are serious, give me one example of "us" (there is no us) denigrating or putting down a poster. Just one will be enough. I'm pretty sure there isn't even one, although you're saying it happens "constantly".

I never saw any marketing for PoE, and the only marketing for Deadfire I saw was within PoE (and of course through the forums, which I only looked at after PoE was already out). But that's just me. (So I heard about PoE through a friend of mine.)

You know, this would be a perfectly reasonable approach and one that I would applaud, if only you did not, at the same time, make very strongly-worded arguments based on what you call your "intuition" and which you yourself admit have no data whatsoever to back them up. So you're playing game of contradiction here, or trying to play with two sets of cards at the same time (however you want to put it), and you've been strangely unwilling to own up to it -- while at the same time reacting to others with blatant and unfounded arrogance. So you don't look good in this, if I may be so bold as to point it out to you. It is entirely possible that other people have a scientific background as well. Perhaps they even work at important scientific institutions and so forth. But they don't feel that waving that card does anybody any favors.

Speaking of isometric RPGs and their sales: Disco Elysium is winning awards, but do we and/or can we know how it's doing commercially? It's a lovely, lovely game. Very well written. Deserves to do well. It's a lot better written than Deadfire, and an awful lot better written than P:K.

"Meant?" That argument doesn't fly, and for a very simple reason. You have to metagame (i.e. read spoilers) before you can know that the southern entrance to Gorecci Street is a lot safer. To the extent that anything in a computer game is "meant", you are certainly not "meant" to metagame, you are "meant" to figure out stuff on your own. The digsite battle was very difficult for me. It was only after finishing the game that I learned that it's not mandatory: if you sneak into the caverns and find the guy whose research you're looking for, you can bypass the entire battle. I'm very happy that I didn't know about that when actually playing the game.

Fair enough. So there's no data whatsoever. You can be convinced about something on the basis of your intuition, and I'm not going to dismiss that, but surely you must realise that it's not going to look convincing to anybody else. It doesn't really do you any good to get upset in the way you do. As for the patting each other on the back: who's doing that, and to whom? I personally haven't experieced any of it. Recently, the most active participants in this discussion have been the four of us, if I remember correctly, so that's Boeroer, thelee, you and me. I know nothing about any of you and have no reason to either favor or disfavor you.

@kanisatha: They are not different, nor are they subject to a different standard. You have now said both "But out there in the gaming real world, I am convinced views are quite different", and "Yes I like everyone else here don't have any data of my own". Surely you note the seeming contradiction? I asked you, "Convinced on what basis?", and I would still like an answer.

Convinced on what basis? I'm not sure if anyone is ignoring what you pointed out, but the extent to which it matters is a different question altogether. It took me less than five minutes to note that D:OS did not interest me one bit. D:OS2 is a little bit better, but nowhere near PoE or Deadfire.

Can you give an example of someone who felt this way? This is a possible scenario, but I haven't noticed this to be a thread. And as noted, PoE received rather good reviews. For me, the new system was fine. And it's not complex.

Fair point. You are correct. So I hold my hands up. Like @thelee says above, "the picture is more complicated". As for what @thelee also says above: yes, the satiated-nostalgia theory is precisely that PoE *did* satisfy its users -- who were then not hungry anymore. (Also, PoE had less competition than Deadfire.) But yayy: Disco Elysium is really good!

I also happen to believe that this is the biggest single reason. Mind you, single reason. There are others, too, but this is the biggest single reason. My main proof for it would be the fact that Deadfire's sales were poor right from the start, which indicates that unhappiness with Deadfire was not a major concern, but unhappiness with PoE was. Obsidian made Deadfire for an audience they thought was still there, but in this they were wrong. The second biggest reason was probably the nostalgia thing. PoE satisfied a nostalgic hunger (which created excellent initial sales), and plenty of people thought that that was enough, they didn't want to continue the ride with Deadfire.

You must be able to understand that while what you wrote is a possibility, there is no proof for it. Also, like @thelee points out above, your theory fails to explain the success of P:K, for instance. To reiterate: I am not claiming you're wrong. But your argument has logical problems, and there is no proof for it.

Couldn't agree more. Also, the benefits of full VO are kind of hard to see; after all, you can give the gist of any given character with a relatively small number of voiced lines (see BG2 for example: I don't think any of the characters call for more voiced lines, everyone is perfectly satisfactory as is). Not only may full VO break the bank, but it also ties the developer's hands in a very significant sense: there is essentially no room for rewrites or even any kind of edits, even if you do get good ideas later on in the production. I would say that full VO is simply a bad idea, unless you have positively huge amounts of money to burn. I have not finished Disco Elysium yet, in fact I'm in day two at the moment. But boy it's good.