Boeroer

Yes. Just just have to swap them in and out of your party. Some companion quests can take a really long time and don't have special quest points but require you to spend time with the party member (see Durance and also Grieving Mother). For Edér and Aloth: you can simply follow the questline (mostly Defiance Bay), complete their quests and then swap them out for other companions once you are finished. Kana's quest is easy to solve as well. It's in the Endless Paths only. Hiravias, Maneha, Zahua, Devil, Sagani have quests that are spread out a bit more and reach into the late game. But it's no problem to put them into the stronghold while you do other party members' quests and pick them up later to finish their quests. The quests will not fail if you swap them out temporarily.

I also believe so. It's understandable that Feargus wanted to have Deadfire on his own crowdfunding platform (that only few people heard about before). I don't know how bad it hurt sales but I think it's reasonable to assume that it did hurt them.

The important thing about Iconic Projection is - as Silvaren said - that it only has to overcome 25% of DR. This makes it a viable spamming option. And of course it heals which we shouldn't forget. Shining Beacon (as nearly all DoT effects) profits additively from MIG (which adds +x% of the base dmg per tick) and then multiplicatively from INT (adds more ticks) and crits (+50% duration, also adds more ticks). DoTs don't profit from Scion of Flame and such and also don't get increased dmg per tick from crits. So stuff like Merciless Hand won't work either. This would simply be too good since we already have MIG * INT * crit bonus which can lead to absurdly big dmg numbers. Priests have the ability to not only raise their MIG into stellar regions (Aggrandizing Radiance, Champions Boon, Minor Avatar) but also their INT (Aggrandizing Rad., Minor Avatar) and Accuracy (for crits, Aggrandizing Rad., Champion's Boon, Minor Avatar, Inspiring Radiance, Devotions...). Those mostly stack (Champion's Boon doesn't stack with Minor Avatar). This makes Shining Beacon one of the most devastating spells - I mean if you build around it. Also because it can be used as spell mastery later on and thus becomes 1/encounter. If you had 6 Priests and they all had Inspiring + Aggrandizing Radiance, Minor Avatar and Shining Beacon you could cast 6 beacons with +70 accuracy (since Inspiring Radiance stacks with itself) and +30% additive dmg (if you had only 10 MIG before) and if you crit (easy with +70 ACC) with an unbelievable duration. Everything that isn't immune or extremely resistant to fire will most likely die. If you already start with 20 MIG and 20 INT it's even more ridiculous of course.

@thelee: what? You are not using my custom passive icons? What a disappointment!

Exactly. That's why I listed the most likely reasons that line up with (or don't contradict) the data we have. Like bad marketing, setting, change of crowdfunding platforms etc. I personally have 0 problems with the setting. It's just a theory that is a) reasonable and b) doesn't collide with the data we have (e.g. reviews). Because somebody who didn't buy Deadfire because they don't like pirate settings in RPGs would indeed not write a negative review. Same with bad marketing and so on: those are reasons not to buy a game and they wouldn't be reflected by reviews (since you didn't play the game in the first place).

But you are arguing with anecdotal references. Usually, if a game is sold 1,000,000 times and 10,000 players write a review (see PoE on Steam) or simply somehow voice their opinion and judge a game (when it lands on Metacritic) and the professional critics come to the same conclusion by the way - then first of all it's a relevant sample size and secondly it would be extremely surprising if all the players who didn't review the game hated it while the ones who did review it mostly think it's good. Very unlikely. This is no solid proof. Reviews are more like a survey - and surveys can be misleading. But it has a lot more substance than just picking stuff one didn't like and then bloating it up to be "the" reason for the sales drop (as if one's taste determines what most people like or dislike) - while at the same time ridiculing the arguments of others. I still saw no proper explanation for this (anecdotal reference is no proper explanation unless you reach a significant sample size - finding like 10 friends who support your claim is not statistically significant). I read a lot of Twitter messages that praise PoE and Deadfire. This is because I follow some Obs devs and WorldOfEternity. I never read bad things. Obviously nobody who hates PoE would go to Twitter and post it into the timeline of an Obsidian dev (I mean nobody but weird ones). So this is anecdotal reference ("So many people on Twitter loved it!") but at the same time it's meaningless unless those voices would reach significant numbers.

I don't want to repeat myself - but it seems that several people still don't consider the following (very basic) point that contradicts most of their arguments, including this one: If the sales numbers dropped so harshly because a lot of players didn't like PoE or Deadfire for whatever reasons (be it overly complex mechanics - you name it) then the user reviews would reflect that. Which. They. Do. Not. If anything then this is glaring obvious - and indisputable. I don't understand how such arguments can be repeated over and over again when this question hasn't been solved yet. Nobody who came up with such a theory was able to explain this baffling conflict. Even if some of those arguments sound reasonable: this simple point seems to invalidate most of them. But maybe there is an explanation for this. I just can't think of one. It would make some sense if players knew beforehand how the mechanics of Deadfire worked - like from playing PoE - and decided not to buy it then (hence no reviews from those players). But then why didn't they voice their dissapointment in the PoE reviews?

Ewww... MMO

It's not PoE Tactics - but given that Josh loves Battle Brothers (I do so as well) and TB combat and classless systems - and that his PoE Tabletop Rules are rel. easy to adapt for such a game I'd say it's not totally unreasonable to hope for such a game. Battle Brothers was a big financial success for the developer (from Hamburg, Germany). Maybe a somewhat big studio developing somewhat niche games should focus on putting out more games but less costly ones (no fancy cutscenes, less full-fledged companions and factions, no Full VO etc.). After all it's the return on investment in percentages that counts. Also seems the risk is lower if you spread your game portfolio instead of putting it all into on big fat gun that sinks your own ship if it misfires...?

Sounds right. I guess they just assumed this was all due to fig being new and relatively unknown compared to Kickstarter. And then - as Josh said (can't find the quote) : preorders and sales right at release were even a tad better than PoE's - and that might even have cemented that assumption.

Since it has a cooldown system and rel. straightforward mechanics I can picture a first/third person Tyranny on consoles very well.

I have the same problem. I'll even puke all over the playground from riding the children's merry-go-round. And don't give me a book for the road trip! I beg you!

It is good. Won some awards, too. But if I'm not mistaken its sales numbers aren't stellar as well.

Never use it since Cadhu Scalth is so much better (with the proper skillset). But I think in general I would stick to the Thermally Stable --> Nonconductive route... I guess...?

But then: why are the user ratings for PoE so good? One should think if so many players were disappointed this should lead to mediocre reviews. But it didn't. On Steam (very positive), on Metacritic (8.3 user score) - the user ratings are so good. That contradicts that theory (being the single biggest reason) a bit.

@kanisatha's like: ...then starts to over-think and over-analyze this question as if he's M.O.D.O.K.

Whether you like PoE over Deadfire (me) or the other way round - I think it's absolutely safe to say that Deadfire is more accessible and more rational when it comes to mechanics (even if the inner workings under the hood might be more complicated).

My image of humanity is generally positive. But this has nothing to do with underestimating people. It has to do with the time and money that the average player generally has at hand and the scope of sales numbers we are talking about. There surely are players who can't spare a lot of money but have time and will examine a game very closely before buying it. On the other hand there are players who don't have a lot of time but money so they just buy what they think looks good. And then there's a lot of players in between. Those specific behaviors cannot explain a massive sales drop like Deadfire's (compared to PoE) while - and I repeat myself - the reviews given by streamers, critics and users are nearly the same(!). So - if the problem was the execution of the things you asked above then the reviews should reflect that. Which they don't. So the overall quality and implementation of Deadfire doesn't seem to be the problem. But we discussed this in length already. So - is it more likely that a) all the players who passed on Deadfire did it because they consumed a lot of Let's Plays and asked themselves the same questions you did - or is it more likely that b) those players saw the new nautic setting and passed because they think "Hm... not my cup of tea"? If you ask me and lots of others b) seems to be more likely than a). So far we have collected some simple yet reasonable explanations why Deadfire dropped so hard (since reviews were on par which suggests implementation and quality was not the problem): Players didn't like PoE for whatever reason and thus didn't buy Deadfire - while new players wouldn't want to start with the second part (sequel problem) Players didn't hear/read about Deadfire (marketing failure) Players didn't like changes that were announced before release (e.g. party size reduction) Players didn't like the move from Kickstarter to Fig Players didn't like the setting (pirate vs. medieval) Other reasons like story, implementation, companions and whatnot can be an additional reason. But they can't explain such a massive drop while the reviews from critics and users didn't tank at all. If the reviews would have been bad then I'd say "sure". But they aren't bad. I didn't aswer your post because I object that there are players who asked themselves those questions before they decided to not buy Deadfire. That was not the reason. I'm just not thinking that this can explain a massive sales drop. I also answered because you made it sound as if the theory "the setting put people off" is somehow ridiculous while your theory "they all closely monitored influencers" is really what explains it all: Which sounds like a rather presumptuous approach that needed a refutation.

Yeah I know: it's neither very consistent nor well explained. You'd have to do a lot of testing and/or reading in order to find out about all those little details.

I also don't appreciate Full VO. For me it adds nothing to a game. I couldn't care less if it's all voiced or not. Honestly it's more likely that I get annoyed because the VO is messing with me reading the text. I like reading text. And books. Full VO in RPGs with lots of text is like reading a book while listening to the audiobook at the same time.

Because people. At least not in the way you suggested. Because "Ehh pirate game, no thanks" beats "So you know I had a little bit of time and watched the whole thing where StreamerDude played 123 hours of Deadfire and found out stuff about the mobile fortress, islands with skillchecks and meaningful variations during a chase for a god and now I think I'd rather buy Flappy Bird" as a reasonable part of an explanation to why Deadfire sold vastly less copies despite getting similarly good reviews from press, streamers and players.

@Shyla: Interesting. For me there's not much difference whether it's tabletop or computer RPG (in this regard). I never play myself but always try to combine a mechanically interesting character with a plausible backstory that explains his stats and numbers in a somewhat original way. And then roll with it. Never thought about it to be honest: that people might approach those two forms of "role-playing" differently.

Why should I ask myself those questions when discussing the reasons for Deadfire's mediocre success? Those are things you can answer once you bought and played the game for quite some time - not when looking at it in a store, deciding whether to buy it or not. Here the possible explanation "different setting put off potential players" makes more sense.

Obviously I can't answer for @Alendra - but that's totally the case for me. If I put some effort into a backstory etc. it immensely affects my choices in the game.

Wounding stacks. You will apply multiple instances that run parallel. It's hard to see in the combat log though. You will have to monitor the red numbers that pop up over the enemies' heads. Wounding is the most potent dps enchantment in PoE. That and the speed enchantment.