wih

I'll side with xzar_monty on the question of gods' pettiness. The gods of our mythology are imaginary gods, projected after human's pettiness. Pillars gods are real in the game's world. They have no reason to be as petty as Kith (or humans) are. This is a weakness in the writing of the game.

Biggest improvements for me: 1. AI scripting 2. Slow combat speed There are several things that I don't like in the game but they are mostly subjective. I don't think I like this open world thing, because it leads to numerous small stories instead of one big and well developed story. The world is nice though.

When I played Infinity games I thought in DND 16-18 was a normal strength for a trained fighter. In my thinking, to start being something extraordinary, your fighter needed to have strength above 18/50. Usually I tried to roll 18/00 (shorthand for 18/100), which gave really good bonuses. 19 was for orcs and half-orcs, 20 and above was giant's strength.

But there isn't any negativity between them. Xoti likes Eder, but Eder has his reasons for not wanting to become close to Xoti, which does not mean he has a bad opinion for her. Xoti respects that and still continues to have a good opinion of Eder.

Battles are an important part of CRPGs, and PoE attribute system is good for the battles part of the game. The attribute system just isn't very good for roleplaying, because attributes don't make much sense for roleplaying. People have complained they cannot make a frail wizard. Most barbarians should not be intelligent. When I create a healer build I tend to maximize its Dexterity, but not because I imagine it as someone who can jump over tall obstacles. I just want my char to be effective for its battle role. In conversations I imagine my char differently and I RP him differently.

Of course it is a CRPG. I was talking only about its attribute system. What makes a game a CRPG is its writing and the reactivity and some other things of which the attribute system is a small part.

Role playing games like Pillars of Eternity can restrict the attribute scores to more sensible numbers only if they have sensible attribute system from role playing point of view. They can either do it or not. If the game developers are willing to put in additional work (programming and writing), they can even allow 0-100 attribute scores, where 0 dexterity means the character cannot even move, 0 intellect means the character is not smart enough to breathe and, for example, 1 or 2 constitution means the character dies from illness in the prologue or needs to be on life support for the entire game. Obviously, this is not very practical for the developers. For example, if the character has 4-5 intellect, writers will be forced to write additional dialogue where the char mainly grunts and NPC's react appropriately to his/her inability to communicate. This additional dialogue will need to be written for each and every conversation in the game. Therefore the smart thing is to limit the attribute scores and declare that the game will only support these attribute ranges. For POE it is different. In PoE attribute ranges should not have such sensible limitations. PoE system is mainly created to ensure that every build will be more or less equally viable and that the builds will be balanced in the battles. These are not real world considerations and they do not lead to a realistic RPG system. PoE's attribute system is a battle system, not RPG system. Intelligent barbarians, mighty wizards, fighters with 3 constitution, extremely agile priests are the result of such a system. Might governs healing, Resolve governs deflection, Perception governs accuracy. You cannot have anything approaching RPG realism with such a system. Not that the system is bad, but it had different goals. So, if PoE developers try to limit the attribute ranges to some sensible values, this will be a huge problem, because the system is not sensible from role playing point of view. Players will be extremely angry, because many have stopped to select the attribute scores for RPG purposes and are mainly selecting them based on the battle mechanics.

To be fair, the fact that so small percentage of players finished PoE doesn't necessarily mean that the game was a big disappointment for them. Most of the players probably didn't give the game enough chance. We live in an attention based economy and there are so much distractions (Steam sales) it is a small wonder when someone actually finishes a game this long. So I propose another possible reason for the low sales of Deadfire: players are hoping to finish PoE before buying PoE 2, but of course they can't because they are perpetually distracted by other offerings.

You've got to understand, though, that the marketing and PR professionals are only going to try to explain things after the fact. In other words, they can and will come up with some kind of a story, but whether it's true or not is a completely different thing. I'm not saying they're not professionals, I'm only saying they're working in a field where true knowledge is essentially impossible. Marketing professionals and economists are both in the same positions: they are always good at coming up with stories after the fact, and that's it. Look at the history of their respective fields and see how many times and how often everybody has been completely stumped and surprised by how things went. That's how you know they're working with unknowables. It's not anybody's fault, it's just that the field is too complex. You seem to assume that the field is so complex it is practically impossible to predict what will happen (and I agree with that) and also that it is practically impossible to understand why something happened after the fact. But I don't think the latter is impossible, just difficult (of course, this also depends on the level of certainty you require - proving something will be absolutely and totally impossible). If you are a game studio you should be able to form a reasonable confidence about why something happened and then apply the lessons in the next game you intend to make.

I played PoE and Deadfire back to back, both for the first time, and didn't notice any significant change in dialogue style. Reading this thread makes me feel like I must be playing a different game to some of you. I mean - it didn't sell because there's too much philosophy? What? The only person I know confirmed to have tried Pillars and then shortly abandoned it was because it was too hard. If there is anything making this game (or at least the first one - I've never tried Deadfire's lower difficulties) inaccessible it's because it was made for and by powergamers. People who just want to pick a character to RP and click things to death are intimidated by how punishing it is. Not only because there was too much philosophy. My list contained three more reasons. Also have in mind that we, people on this forum, are a self selected bunch. We are here because we like the game. So our opinions are biased. There are roughly one million people (correct me on the numbers if I'm wrong) who played PoE 1 and are not in hurry to buy PoE 2. There is something that at least some of them didn't like about the first game and they are not there to say what it was.

I never said I am interested in generic rpg full of cliches. "Evil character" is a cliche, by the way. And one that's especially untrue to life. Nobody thinks of themselves as evil. This was one of the bad things with some older RPGs - Hey, I'm evil, so I will do evil things, like let's massacre this entire village, because that's what evil people do. Raedric was a character I liked. He did evil things but he had reasons to do them and he thought he is doing the right thing. Maybe he was even right about that? And there were many, many good things with PoE like that, so don't think I'm dismissing all the story and writing in the game. I think that the writing could have achieved it's goals more effectively with less text, however. Because lines of text are not the goal. They are means to an end. Better reactivity is something that I also want, but it is so much work for the studio it probably means the game will have to be shorter (Tyranny).

That's not a mistake. That's access control. Drives away players who can't read three lines without breaking out in a cold sweat and starting to drool. If you think Deadfire has too much text then try a book. That stuff is totally over the top with... letters. That's not fair. I have seen books and I have read some of them. And I am not complaining here. I liked the game and I backed PoE 2. I am fan of the game. The question I am talking about is why PoE 2 didn't sell well. The fact that some people face difficulties reading English prose doesn't mean that such books shouldn't be written and such games shouldn't be made. But I don't think Obsidian wanted PoE 2 to be a game that not many people will play. To repeat. I am not discussing whether the game is good. It is. A am discussing why the game didn't meet Obsidian's expectations.

Nobody will do extensive surveys. Obsidian knows best what are the reasons, because they have the most experience to judge. However they won't tell us so... 1) Maybe you are right and maybe I am right. Without extensive survey we only have opinions here. 2) Abstract in the sense it was not personal and down to earth. Too philosophical. I have read such things, but mostly in my own native language. If I was native English speaker maybe I would think differently. 3) We have different perspectives here. I was able to understand what is being written, but the problem is that the writer tries to create a picture in the reader's mind using words. However, for the non native Engish reader those words do not evoke the same images and associations that the writer is expecting. So such a reader remains cold and is bored. Since you are saying that the game was well written, I will not insist that Obsidian should have written PoE in a different way, just that this probably led to some PoE players not buying PoE 2. 4) I mean this in the sense that PoE 2 only draws from the pool of PoE 1 players. By making the game a direct sequel Obsidian limited the potential player base for POE 2.

The biggest mistakes with PoE and PoE 2: 1. Martial classes in IE games didn't have much to do and Obsidian decided to fix that. As a result the gameplay became too intense and chaotic and too much players were put off by it. And there were too much graphical effects and it was hard to see what is happening. And the fake attacks from IE games were removed so the pace became even quicker. Too much things happen too quickly and the combat log scrolls too fast. 2. The story was too abstract. It was hard to relate to it. 3. Too much text - difficult for non native English speakers to understand. Probably boring for many native English speakers too. 4. PoE 2 as a direct sequel means new players are reluctant to try it. Another but smaller problem was that DLCs weren't continuation of the story and you had to either replay the entire game for the DLCs or find your old save from before a certain moment in the game. The players who only play through games once were put off by this and they didn't want to buy PoE 2 early, preferring to wait until the game is fully complete. PoE sold well and it seemed that PoE 2 will also sell well. But most of the PoE I players were disappointed, so they weren' there for PoE 2. The game is great and it will be played for the years to come. It will be a classic. But it just didn't sell well enough. PoE III is now unlikely to happen.

Guys, how do you deal with the UI? I find adding a new condition that should be at the top of the list extremely cumbersome. When I first create it, it is at the bottom of the list so I start to move it one step up at a time. But when I move it three steps up the list starts to scroll down every time when I press the UP button. Am I the only one who experiences this? I basically need to scroll the list back every time when I move the condition one step up. It is like Obsidian never tested what happens when you have more than 3-5 conditions in the list.