catstomper

I didn't mean to give the impression I was waltzing in here with the golden answer. Just wanted to throw my 2 cents in after wading through 60+ pages of posts and not seeing the issue of a shaky launch discussed much. I agree that it was overall a perfect storm scenario of multiple factors that's been discussed and analyzed to death. I'm out of my element here, do sales include refunded purchases? Refund stats could show whether a bad Deadfire launch experience led to a bunch of returns for Deadfire itself. I'm merely suggesting that bad experiences from PoE's launch could of had a bigger negative impact on Deadfire's initial sales then what's been previously discussed. How many original PoE backers returned to support Deadfire? Was there a significant number too disillusioned from their prior experience? I suppose these are rhetorical questions. I wouldn't give online reviews too much credence, particularly in the video game industry. I don't want to waste anyone's time with a thorough mansplaination of glaring faults in online user reviews, and instead segway immediately into this: most players who were turned off to the franchise with a bad first installment experience are not going to mention it in their Deadfire review, because they never bought it in the first place. I'd also argue most dissatisfied customers (with no interest in spending more money) in any market don't bother writing reviews, they just disconnect entirely from the brand. 4 is a good point. I don't know the numbers myself but I trust you know what you're talking about. I guess the crowd of consumers who wait for the 'complete package' is likely a niche demographic, and combine that with those who were willing to give the franchise a second shot after being burned... niche gets even smaller. Thanks for taking the time to respond man, I've ghosted and gleaned a lot from your posts on this forum when I was looking for mechanics answers in both PoEs. Appreciate it immensely.

I bought, played, and completed PoE2 for the first time this year and want to contribute my experience to the pile. I'm going to try and keep this as short as possible. I grew up on IE games. I still distinctly remember just how much new content and quality of life Tales of the Sword Coast added to the original BG. I remember playing and completing BG2 on launch, followed by the expansion when it launched, and couldn't help but feel like I might of missed an even better experience by not waiting until the full package was complete. Fast forward a decade or so-- I was nostalgia baited by PoE1 and downloaded Steam for the first time just to experience the glorious return to a golden age of Western RPGs... and was initially met with disappointment. Worldbuilding: great. Story: suitable. Characters: mostly great. Mechanics: new yet familiar, great. BUT, difficulty/gameplay: despite playing on the second hardest setting, auto attack left clicking was practically the most efficient way to body everything with few exceptions (ghost fiesta at Caed Nua, Vampyrs immediately come to mind). That is, until I hit the Adra Dragon, where my party couldn't even land a hit without stacked buffs and then still practically got 1-shot by almost every attack, because it turned out my characters were VERY sub-optimal yet it didn't really matter until that point. It also didn't help that the hunter blunderbuss bug got fixed right before I hit that content (thought it was intended, dumb in hindsight), and then I discovered that some of the talents on my Rogue MC were completely non-functional. MC was effectively bricked since respec didn't exist yet. I resigned to help the dragon even though it was OOC, only to get defiled by the last boss for all the same reasons. In retrospect, I could have salvaged the playthrough by lowering the difficulty and abusing even more consumables, but instead I stopped out of frustration when I saw there was already DLC announced with balance patches on the way. I felt like I just playtested a beta and decided I'd return at a later time with a clear head to a more polished game. Except I had pretty much forgotten about PoE until I saw a TV commercial for Deadfire years later. Oh sick, pirates? Looks so much better, cool setting, awesome giant statue now ambulatory, can't wait to try it in two or three years when all the kinks are ironed out. Fast forward to 2020. Got the White March DLC, replayed PoE1 on same difficulty and had an infinitely better time with the changed battle system, difficulty adjustments, and added quality of life features. 9/10, would highly recommend. I wish this was the experience I had on launch. Later, played Deadfire after grabbing the complete DLC package on sale. Not perfect, but great experience, and would also highly recommend. Completed first playthrough on PotD and I believe experienced just about everything the way it was intended. But imagine my lack of surprise upon reading the initial launch impressions of Deadfire: bugs, difficulty problems, more bugs, awkward ship battles, bugs, scuffed main story, where's the load screen kraken? No doubt I would of had an equally lackluster experience playing launch day Deadfire as I did with launch day PoE. I've read most of the two low sales threads on this forum and I hardly saw this issue brought up at all. I didn't care that PoE wasn't BG, or that the main story was lacking in places, or that pirates and beaches are a far cry from classic D&D... actually the whole LARPing in Nassau vibe of Deadfire is so fresh and unique that I have a hard time believing that actually contributed to a significant dent in sales. My lack of interest in buying Deadfire on launch was to avoid emotionally investing in an incomplete work-in-progress for 30+ hours. I realize that the 'incomplete-on-launch' game is an issue that generally plagues the modern AAA scene, but this isn't the same situation as some company tweaking their fad multiplayer game that'll be casually booted up for 6-12 months. PoE and Deadfire are games most players will only finish once, if at all, and both launched with glaring issues. Yeah, they were patched up, but how long did that even take? Certainly those first impression reactions gave potential buyers something to reconsider. I'm not even sure this is a studio issue. It might be a genre problem in an age where developer support can only improve games in the long run. Imagine reading a 500 page novel, just to flip the next page from 380 to... 250? And the book magically expanded to 650 pages with new chapters inexplicably added to the start, middle, and end. What a design nightmare. When Pillars of Skyrim drops on PC in the year 20XX, I'm waiting til 20XX +2 or 3 before I purchase and I highly doubt I'm alone in this demographic. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

The ability to level the story party members is amazing! Unfortunately, I'm half way through the game and already got everyone. Any chance you could make a way to respec the picked up party members? Maybe make it a feature for the Training Grounds. I only need to do it once!