Bleak
-
Posts
128 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Blogs
Posts posted by Bleak
-
-
Well, I did make an analysis, a long time ago, about what was wrong with the Deadfire, in terms of game design, narrative, disconnected gameplay loops etc. A couple of people replied on point, but the bias is strong here and in every game forum belonging to a particular game/game company. (Not that I blame anyone for that, it's perfectly natural, since people who hang around here are more likely to like the game than people on the RPG Codex).
Anyhow, I wonder what do you think about BG3? Long story short, my first impressions aren't good. And it's easy to attribute this dislike to "nostalgia" or other buzzwords that cancel out someone's opinion, but the 2D art for starters doesn't hold a candle to BG2 (or Deadfire). 3D in isometric games just isn't there yet. Face models look like medieval Zoolanders, screen/skill effects are rather cartoonish and so on. My point is that, when someone goes on BG forums and tells them "you know, I think that BG3 doesn't feel the same way as BG2", people will dismiss them as "nostalgic" without realizing they are talking about these things - just won't or can't articulate them in detail.
Feedback ought to be "feelings". It's the designers' job to translate these feelings into data. And I know it's easy and convenient to dismiss someone expressing themselves as nostalgic and whatnot (with extra characterizations on top) to prove your own point, instead of trying to see why they feel that way, but it's irrelevant to a meaningful discussion.
-
54 minutes ago, Boeroer said:
From a systemic point of view and also as a Pen&Paper ruleset D&D is just terrible - at least the ones I played (<4). D&D has a great atmosphere because of the huge lore and content it produced and because of all the nostalgia. What you like (e.g. different attack resolution for x and y) makes players stop playing and literally (P&P) and (figuratively - using Google) grabbing the rulebook all the time.
Deadfire, while complex, tries to minimize this by being more systemic (stat effects, inspirations, afflictions, basic attack roll vs. defenses etc). It didn't go all the way (see things like Miasma and non-systemic stacking) and didn't explain things well though.
People can't really argue that Deadfire's core rules are harder to understand and to memorize than D&D. Details and exceptions: yes (because obscured), but D&D has plenty of exceptions and band-aid rules as well. But the general ruleset: no way. Put somebody who doesn't know D&D in front of both and then decide.
Doesn't mean you can't like it better nevertheless of course. I like PoE over Deadfire despite it being more messy and a lot less systemic. I would never say that PoE has the superior ruleset though.
In that particular example of attack/spell resolution, it's what I, at least, consider as a type of good complexity, because each way of attacking is mechanically unique. Yes, one will also need to learn how saves work and read the description of each specific spell carefully, but I don't think it's that big of a hurdle so that it makes players look up the rules after they familiarize themselves with it. I don't think systemic is always a good thing - sometimes it comes at the price of variety.
That's not to say that DnD isn't more complicated than it needs to be or that it isn't filled with band-aid rules. DF's system is a good attempt at improvement, it's just that it misses some of the marks that made DnD more enjoyable for me. This is obviously subjective, as especially things like its degree of randomness may be very unappealing to some.
-
If you want to make a good system in general, find one that fits with your game first and foremost. Even the most complex systems can be made intuitive. Owlcat (P:K developer) claims that they will make their next pathfinder game (WOtR) far more accessible by interpreting the rules in more intuitive ways. How exactly, remains to be seen. Perhaps they may "translate" the dice results and ranges into numbers and % percentages.
On 1/25/2020 at 6:36 PM, omgFIREBALLS said:It may not, as you suggest, have appealed to the broader audience, but I hope in the long run gamers will grow to appreciate a system that creates better combat over one that we can still use if we are nuked back to the stone age, even if the exact mechanics are very tricky to grasp. Perhaps in ten years, PoE will be considered an investment in better RPG systems, one that embraced the power of computers instead of making them automate very simple calculations.
It's not that I don't like PoE's system, but in my opinion it's inferior to DnD. I just like how spells in DnD don't have the same attack resolution (speaking in PoE terms) as normal attacks, its degree of randomness, effects of weapon specialization and scaling of stats better, among other things. I am all for a new system in general, just not like this one.
-
7 hours ago, algroth said:
I would say so because even with whatever criticisms you may levy at Deadfire in these areas, I can't think of many games that treat these aspects better, least of all the IE games, other D&D properties or the first game for that matter. Strongholds in the IE games are either not present to begin with or an absolute nonfactor that are completely divorced or outright antithetical to the main story (i.e. the story to Baldur's Gate II practically demands the player to be on the move and adventuring, their objectives lie somewhere completely opposite to settling or beginning an enterprise or joining some organization); in contrast Deadfire's stronghold system is pretty in-depth, deeply integrated into the game and rather seamlessly introduced and woven into the story and setting, out of sheer necessity of needing a ship to travel and so on. Contrary to you I *did* find skill checks largely impactful and I also appreciate the sheer variety of possible skill options and choices the game offered, which I do think far outnumber that of most games in the genre I've played thus far, possibly all. I'm curious which games you're thinking do a better job here, because far as I'm concerned this absolutely wipes the floor with some of the big WRPG titles I've played from around this period like Witcher 3 or Kingmaker, let alone the IE games which, again, were far more rudimentary in this respect. In terms of an ideal of what I'd like to see in these areas, Deadfire does a far better job than most, and the fact that most games that perform well utterly fail or forego these altogether makes me think they're not particularly important aspects in the minds of many.
Similarly there's the fact that I've been following discussions on the game since before its release, and haven't heard much in the way of these complaints being voiced or shared all that often, even amidst people who disliked the game. To go back to a previous point we were discussing, I've seen the issue of setting come up far more frequently than any of these points you raise here - and even then it's a mixed bag, with plenty voicing their enthusiasm for it. The only two aspects that I see mostly negative remarks about are ship combat (which is a minor aspect of the game at the end of the day and which I like a lot myself), and the length/linearity of the main story (which I have some agreements with and could see as a factor yet, again, not big enough to account for the drop it experienced).
I will add a pretty big caveat to all of the above which is that I've yet to play either of the Divinity: Original Sin games, and that's a pretty big blindspot for this discussion since the franchise is far and away the most successful of the isometric CRPG revival we've seen this decade. Regardless, I do think I've played enough RPGs to have a solid set of expectations going into these and have spent enough time discussing these games with other people to have an idea of what others look for or are attracted by in these, and in this regard I do think Deadfire measures up very well all around.
Well, say you compare it to P:K, (Witcher is a different kind of animal in most aspects), while I do believe that DF wipes the floor with it in many areas (e.g. world design/graphics), after replaying both games several times I found it to be vastly richer as far as RP & skill checks, skill check consequences and skill check variety go, with skill checks present in pretty much every sub-area and with all skills equally sharing the spotlight. And I have seen that being mentioned before in discussions about the game, even it being the sole reason some people prefer that game as a crpg (not in this particular forum). I also recall people mentioning that skill checks are not very prevalent in DF in this forum as well. Don't take my word for it when it comes to other people, as I don't have time to search YT and forums to link them, but that's my personal impressions as well.
Keep in mind that if I were to compare DF with most of the IE games released in the recent IE "renaissance period", indie or not, I consider DF to be vastly superior to most of them. For example, I consider D:OS 2 to have far better pacing and story, or, say, Underrail to have better C&C, but DF pretty much wins for me in every other aspect. But I think it's mostly natural to compare it to what I think was best, sold better and is very similar (that's why I don't mention DOS much), since there would be hardly any point otherwise, unless PoE were to change more radically.
I've also raised the points you mention about the story being linear and mini-game (both its gameplay and stronghold aspects) more than once. Again I never claimed to pin everything on its intrinsic gameplay flaws, but I do believe they made a difference (DF obviously measures up well, but it does have stronger competition this time) and, as fans, players and customers, we should be examining and posting feedback about these intrinsic gameplay flaws first and foremost, so that we get the best PoE III possible, if that time comes.
6 hours ago, Boeroer said:Stopping me.
Stop roleplaying Eothas
-
1
-
-
On 1/19/2020 at 6:57 PM, algroth said:
I would keep in mind that this thread is titled "Armchair theories on why PoE2 didn't sell super well". The thread is openly inviting us to speculate and no one is assuming otherwise.
Fair enough, habit got the better of me and I was rather pedantic about how one would go about examining these reasons.
On 1/19/2020 at 6:57 PM, algroth said:assessing the quality of the game and the effects it has on word of mouth and its public perception by extension is a fair point to make, but what we've spoken about earlier is that the word of mouth that is available or most immediately accessible through user reviews, aggregate scores, YouTube reviews and comments and whatnot, all tend pretty positively, so the evidence we have available doesn't align with the hypothesis. And whilst there are criticisms that could be levied at the game, they are *way* too specific for most random comments on social media to pick up on. It's one thing to say "ship stronghold is bad" (which I haven't read anywhere or not in any fashion so prevalent so as to stick in my mind as a common complaint), it's another to say, for example, "ship upgrades could have been better handled by being woven into a stronghold-specific narrative and made more significant that way, instead of being items free to purchase the moment you arrive to Neketaka": social media and word of mouth tends to move according to very essentialist broad takes on a certain piece opposite to the specifics, the talk about the specifics is something that usually only interests people who're already familiar with the game at hand.
While, as you said, social media tend to be crude and reductive, when conveying a message or a criticism, it's mostly the absence of coverage and the lack of proliferation, that I was talking about. As for reviews, I definitely would never expect a negative reception, since the game is pretty solid overall. However, I do have to disagree that things such as unimpactful skill checks or disconnected stronghold (which are just some examples), can be considered as nitpicks or too esoteric. Especially not for someone who is looking for a crpg and is familiar with the genre. This is the game's main target audience after all, so, while I wouldn't pin everything on them, I would definitely pay more attention to core crpg characteristics in general, if I wanted to examine what and how it went wrong.
On 1/19/2020 at 7:51 PM, Boeroer said:Yeah... that won't work.
My main point when answering to your initial post was that bemusing other people's "armchair theories" (here: setting) while presenting your own theory with utter conviction - that comes with no proof either though but has even more arguments that speak against it - didn't seem to be a particularly accomodating nor sensible move.
Since several forum members now answered your utteraces better than I could and because I don't want to repeat myself endlessly - and also because I think I made my rather simple points clear enough - I will not address the rest anymore.Not sure what you are referring to exactly, that won't work.
They actually have replied to most of my points instead of repeating themselves. As for "utter conviction", aren't you being a tad hyperbolic? I don't think anything I said warrants that expression. Since you keep mentioning it in every reply you make, if you were piqued by how I phrased my initial post (by using "amused"), again, I didn't mean to provoke or insult, so apologies if I did. However at any case, paying attention to the message, instead of just the way the message was phrased is more important.
-
1
-
-
On 1/13/2020 at 8:51 PM, Boeroer said:
Of course the game has its problems. It's just not easy to determine if what you identify as a problem is a problem for (so many) other players which then results in a massive sales drop of more than 500k copies.
10k reviews of 1,000k sold copies is a good sample size. If the problems you identified annoyed as many players as you said then you would see that. I think it is very unlikely that a game that has problems which annoy and put off like 500k players would have a user score about 8.3 on Metacritic.
Just because you made some observations, analyzed your problems with the game meticulously and phrased it nicely doesn't mean that a big bunch of other players felt the same. Of course you will find players who feel the same. But enough to explain such a sales disaster? I still don't think so. And where is the evidence that you mentioned?
You found it amusing that posters said that it might be the setting which put potential players off. There's nothing amusing about it. It makes sense. One can't prove it without a big survey but it is not a far-fetched assumption.
It is more likely that a) many players see a setting/theme and decide that they will not buy the game than b) an equal amount of players watch streams, read critics on Kotaku etc. and then decide to not buy.
I mean both can happen and most likely did happen and it would add up. It's not either/or. I just think that a) plays a bigger role since it takes nearly no time and no other investment than a glance to make that decision - while for b) you'd have to invest quite some time and motivation to do so.
That's why I think there was no cause for amusement.
If you would have said something along the lines of "What I also think played a role was..." I would most likely have agreed.
But your "Setting? Lulz! It is my theory alone which really explains it all" approach prevented that.
Again, I never claimed to have made a survey about "how many people care about these problems", nor did I claim to know that this was the only reason the game didn't sell well. I just pointed out some practical gameplay problems, which we are able to identify by playing the game and without making any surveys - unlike the "setting theory", which is based on pure speculation, for which you *do* actually need a survey, if you want to make these claims.
And that's why I found it amusing - because some people seem to prefer making pure speculations, instead of first examining what is right in front of them. And I obviously disagree with that speculation, so I wouldn't say "what I so think played a role was...", unless I was dishonest.
Let me stop you there before you say "oh so you are able to identify the problems by playing the game after all", ergo, "so these shouldn't really have affected sales", like you have said earlier. Proliferation is what creates traction and people don't just watch reviews or peruse stores to buy games anymore. Marketing is only starting and then stoking the fire. It obviously is very important, but social media (steam, twitter, twitch, fb, etc) are even more so, in this day and age. Put simply, proliferation happens by "word of mouth" - which translates to tweets, posts, wishlists, recommendations, streamers etc etc. Streamers themselves work with traction in their majority (it's like any market would be) - because it is their job and make money off of it. A poorly proliferated game (for whatever reason) will have less viewers, streamers, recommendations and traction. So don't underestimate the value of intrinsic characteristics when it comes to sales.
-
1
-
-
On 1/8/2020 at 10:26 AM, Boeroer said:
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 what you are saying is that you have concluded that the game is flawless enough so that its sales weren't affected, is that right? Can you blame me for being amused?
On 1/8/2020 at 10:26 AM, Boeroer said: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):
......
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.
It's because mine is not a completely speculative theory, that wants to justify something mostly based on wishful assumptions which I don't have clear evidence on. That's why I find them amusing - not because I try to be edgy or critical. I just observe the problems the game has, which is the most practical/direct thing one can do - it's still a great game, but it is clear to me that it suffers as a CRPG both at quality and implementation. Already made detailed examples in the previous post and in the posts I linked in it. Reading the less-than-stellar reviews of the game, the "neutral" ones from RPS or Kotaku, or actually not avoiding reading criticism about the game, will give you some hints about how much people care about these intrinsic details. But then again, no point on leaning on reviews or the opinion of some greenhorn game journalist to indicate things that are more than obvious. Refuting my points is the easiest thing - you can just dismiss the importance of these problems - however I still think they are integral to a game of this genre.
-
1
-
-
24 minutes ago, thelee said:
I actually thought the mobile fortress was a great idea, and I still like it... snip
I believe a mobile fortress is a great idea too. It is the execution I don't agree with. I've made a relevant post about it in the past explaining why in detail.
Is it not natural to compare it with the best fortresses rather than the worst and to compare anything with the brightest examples of its kind of that matter, if one wants to strive for something better? There are definitely both better and worse examples to compare it with and I never said anything along the lines of "this fortress is the worst", so that you have to point out that there worse examples. Of course there are (thankfully).
As for, say, the examples I brought up specifically, I disagree that they were better, especially, than the POE I fortress. Here is an old post explaining why in more detail.
44 minutes ago, thelee said:It'd be one thing if you were talking about intrinsic qualities, but it seems more rather that you're nitpicking on your own critiques of the game. I find it extremely baffling that you're discounting everyone talking about the setting, which is the biggest most obvious change about Deadfire--and contrary to what JE Sawyer said--really played up in the lead up to Deadfire (notably with the console release they are downplaying pirate imagery and the cover art just focuses on the core NPCs), and instead focusing on extremely minor, objectively disputable aspects of the game. I would venture to say literally 0 people have said "well, i'd buy this game, but I heard it doesn't have a compelling stronghold like the De'Arnisse Hold, so maybe not." Many RPGs (IE-style even) sell well without any stronghold.
edit: original deadfire marketing imagery, versus console. notice the different emphasis?The thread is called "Armchair theories on why POE2 didn't..." - of course I would be posting my own theory/criticism here. And I certainly don't expect everyone to give the same answers I would give, to the questions I made. Now whether what I am mentioning is "nitpicking", something extremely minor or not, and what exactly can be considered as an "intrinsic qualities" of a crpg, that's up to debate
I strongly believe that the things I mentioned, in their core, are pretty important for the genre, when it comes to a new user's engagement with a crpg and especially when it comes to what a crpg fan is looking in a crpg, so we can agree to disagree here.
The marketing imagery may show a clue of Obsidian's verdict in all of this, but keep in mind that their marketing imagery strategy is something in post-development that they can change or experiment with, while the things I mentioned aren't. If we really want to know what they came up with (as the "culprits"), we have to see their next sequel in the IP. Then we can agree or disagree with them.
The stronghold is hardly the point here - put bluntly and generalizing the problem, the point is "content that lacks sufficient meaning, to engage the player", explained also in the examples I make in the posts I linked. If I wanted to make a proper attempt at narrowing that down, I would have to spend a lot of time here, therefore I try to convey it with the examples I make.
1 hour ago, Boeroer said: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.Trust me, I never overestimate people, but I think you do underestimate them. You could justify it with "because people", but I justify it with the assumption that an rpg/crpg/isometric fan would actually look into these things, because some of them are core elements of the genre. Besides the pirate theme being rather superficial and the game being a properly traditional crpg in its core and most of its aspects (which was obvious even without buying it), if you think the choice in theming can be that dramatic look no further than Fallout, Arcanum or SM Pirates. (What can bring a dramatic change is the consistency of the theme itself, which the game doesn't suffer from imo).
1 hour ago, thelee said:It all depends on your definition of "meaningful." I think Obsidian is a little lazy in relying on end-game slides too much instead of in-game reactivity (this criticism is leveled more significantly at The Outer Worlds), but there's a lot that can change a long the way, even if the ultimate result is the same.
BTW (there may be more since I tend to do very similar things near the end-game), the biggest thing that I surprised myself into recently is:
If you resolved Forgotten Sanctum properly, Wael literally destroys Eothas.
With the 5.0 patch, you also get very different and more extensive reactivity at the end, including an extended sequence with Woedica.
By the way, the latter part of that is another instance of me hating on full VO. It was very obvious that they voice actor(s) they re-obtained were recorded under different circumstances because those sequences sound very different than the rest of the interactions.
Well in that context, meaningful would mostly mean, put bluntly, a variation that changes the player's gameplay/actions through the game. Getting a different skill for example depending on how you interacted with the souls was a neat, albeit small variation. I admit that greater variations, like, say, Eothas changing route, alternative textures/scenarios involved in locations and so on, might be too costly.
Oh nice this may actually make me replay the game. Full VO are something I hate as well, too many cons, superficial pros.
-
On 1/6/2020 at 7:11 PM, thelee said:
I just finished Disco Elysium and it is frankly amazing what you can do with dialogue when you don't have to pay for full VO. Yes, I am going to harp on this a lot, I think a lot of compromises we see in Deadfire is a result of full VO breaking the bank and tightening the development schedule.
Full/extended VOs definitely earn a place in the "10 best ways to murder an RPG" list.
-
1
-
-
51 minutes ago, Boeroer said:
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.
Forgive me if I misinterpret your reply, so in case you aren't joking - could it be that you are missing the fact that we are living in an information-driven society, where social media (gaming platforms included) are the deciding factor for market traction and news proliferation?
In more simple terms: A potential buyer will never know all of the information I just posted or the answers to these questions, but the game will simply fall under their radar, because of the various reasons that this thread is attempting to examine.
Example: Say you have two products, both have invested the same in marketing and all selling factors (except the products themselves) are identical and none knows details about them. A is the jaw-dropping product and B the lackluster product. More people will pay attention to A, e.g. will bother to review it or even praise it -> A will be proliferated like the Australian bushfires (prayers to them, and to all of us for this horrible humanitarian and environmental disaster), B will obviously get less traction and coverage, so fewer people will even notice it exists, much less buy it because of it being praised.
TLDR: A game's success can actually be influenced by the game's intrinsic qualities! So why wouldn't anyone examine the game's intrinsic qualities to find out why the game wasn't as successful as expected?
-
On the programming part I think he likely means gameplay. As for the writing I found it a bit too corny for my tastes - it's almost as if the writers are under the impression that the more adjectives you add to a sentence, the better it will turn out. Personally I enjoyed P:K's russian-translated writing much more. Deadfire's worldbuilding (in the strict, aesthetics sense) on the other hand, imo, is superb.
As for Disco Elysium - it's a masterpiece in its category so no surprise there.
-
One thing they could have done to not make it feel overwhelming, as many hubs do, is to gate some districts behind some cleverly crafted requirements. In general aesthetics-wise it is one the few best cities I've seen in a game. Its geometry is superb, as is the use of the 3rd dimension, its design and the order of the places where the player is guided is great, the content of the districts themselves makes sense, are beautiful and interesting, imho.
-
1
-
-
Can't help but find it amusing that people actually blame the setting itself. It was pretty traditional actually, with the exception of geography (which was masterfully made) and a mobile player "fortress". What they did with the setting is what really matters.
Ask yourselves the following questions:
1) How engaging was that mobile fortress, its upgrades, events or maintenance? Was it connected to the gameplay loop or character development? How much of a source of RP was it? Tried comparing it to the Mage Sphere or D'Arnisse hold in BG2?
2) What about the islands? Did they have enough content or felt empty? How many skill checks did their enviroments have? Were most of them just a plain area in which you had to kill something for a generic quest? What about the pseudo-locations (resource/item buildings). Did they have any compelling stories? How much of a difference was there in regards to gameplay when you got e.g. fruits from a clearing?
3) How compelling was it to chase after Eothas? Did your actions cause any game-changing consequences during that sequence? Were there any meaningful variations during this chase? Did the rest of the world resonate with what was happening?
-
7 hours ago, wih said:
I guess not everybody can shield themselves emotionally while communicating with fans. Probably Sawyer has just found a way that works for him and that's it. Further, it is unclear how valuable is to communicate with your fans, because you are not actually communicating with a representative sample of your fans. A developer like Obsidian is interested in selling games to hundreds of thousands, even millions of people and the huge majority of those people are silent.
True and if they can't, that can cause more harm than good. And it's also true that these forums may not be a perfectly representative sample (they still are a sample). You always need some kind of feedback though - but you can choose to get it only from the post-mortem methods, like statistics or sales.
3 hours ago, xzar_monty said: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.
Ok ok, not getting upset but this is me below,
Not applied in this situation man and frankly don't know where the thing you are talking about applies. Maybe you are talking about community driven projects. First of all, if anything, commercial products are more inclined to support their customers. As for Linux, it is open source and community driven, which is a different thing so let's not get into in. By all means and accounts Path is a commercial product and not open source, doesn't matter if it's free. Anyhow, we shouldn't expect less support/communication from paid products, but quite the opposite and we should appreciate, as consumers, the few companies with these consumer-friendly practices.
-
55 minutes ago, xzar_monty said:
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.
Yeah, of course you know. Gnat-sized? They started as a garage 4-man company in 2006 and look at them now:
https://www.owler.com/company/grindinggear
https://www.owler.com/company/obsidian
Tencent, also a true giant, has bought a large part of GGG for over 63m.
Let's look at their active fans on reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/
Now go to every reddit of all of Obsidian's products and add up the registered users. If you want to search more yourself, check GGG's forums as well.
But forget about all that - GGG spent as much time communicating with the fans when they were a garage company, as they do now that they are a multi-million company. And the way you justify that Obsidian doesn't communicate is a perplexed and vague "more corporate and infinitely less accessible" statement - seriously?
-
2 minutes ago, xzar_monty said:
In the same way that you can go chat up a busker but not Bruce Springsteen.
Yeah, a busker who is more successful than Bruce Springsteen.
How does their payment model (which is great for that particular genre) makes them "buskers"? You know that Pillars was also crowdfunded, right?
-
Being freeware makes it different how exactly?
-
33 minutes ago, xzar_monty said:
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.
I meant in the game industry. Can't comment on other sectors. None of the extremes is good - neither ignoring the community's feedback, nor following the community's feedback. As a developer, you just have to evaluate what you listen by the actual practical effects that it will have - nothing more, nothing less.
26 minutes ago, Slotharingia said:If there are too many annoying fans one doesn't wish to ban, the middle point is to have a customer service style person read posts, report back and then make statements covering the most often brought up or interesting points without engaging further in ensuing discussions. That way you still communicate with the fans but don't get sucked into pointless arguments and time wasting bickering.
Well yes, you do have a job to do after all. You can always keep in touch with your fans via one or more community managers for example, as long as you care about what these managers have to say. Path of Exile's devs have achieved that balance and a phenomenally healthy community-dev relationship. Some of their developers communicate directly and they get feedback from reddit (which promotes popular opinions) and their community manager. They can't read *everything*, but participate enough, so that people know that someone is listening to them.
Sometimes, they listen to the community's feedback, rethink the matter at hand, and may even take back the latest changes. However they are clever enough to know when to actually not listen to the community's feedback, because after all, a dev's perspective is different than that of a player.
-
1
-
-
I think it's a must to stay in touch with your fans as long as you have a "filter". You will rarely get confused if you are able to interpret feedback for what it is.
-
41 minutes ago, thelee said:
I think JE Sawyer literally had a screenshot of that in his post mortem talk.
Regardless of what form it took, the fundamental problem was that any ship mini game required a lot of work and custom assets to be done for a part of that game that couldn't be used anywhere else. It was basically wasted time and money. Sounded like it would've been preferred if they just had ship boarding fights and not bothered with the mini-game. But apparently it was a top-down decision to force the ship mini game, and to make it a backer stretch goal, which tied their hands. JE Sawyer called it the most expensive and least value part of Deadfire. To get it right, they needed way more resources, and even if they got it right only a small fraction of players would ever have interacted with it. There was basically no cost-benefit analysis that made the ship mini game in any form worth it.
edit - I mean, to be charitable, I thought the ship mini game wasn't bad, it was "serviceable." But I'm pretty sure it's small comfort to the many dev-hours spent on that and bug fixing that even one of their biggest fans thought that it was merely "serviceable."
Heh, kind of expected that, Sid Meier's pirates is a classic.
It's certain that they are the ones who know better, I am just rambling here. Most of the ship models in the world map seem high poly enough to be reusable in a less detailed and more top-down version of that battle I linked. And a dozen of effects and model variations to represent upgrades would take no time to scoop up. Maybe they were examining that possibility but it fell under the desired quality bar compared to the rest of the game.
But I agree that only doing that wouldn't suffice for players to want to interact with it. Sid Meier's for example had a great gameplay loop, making you want to upgrade your ship, engage in battles etc. They would have to add some gameplay value interconnected with the rest of the game - with that connection going both ways. Atm only some captain bounties create that connection (mini-game loop helping main game loop) and the only area for which you actually need a good ship is the final one (and naturally its scripted that you get one). The main game -> mini-game connection involves getting special crew and upgrades, but it's not progressive enough and economy makes it too easy anyway. And since the mini->main connection is weak, they make all these upgrades feel rather pointless.
TLDR: There's a general lack of incentives for the player to care about the mini-game.
-
Next to asking a certified expert on a specific field, Wikipedia is easily the most reliable source of information one can access, due to the way it works and its citations. As for the spiritual successor thing you don't need wiki to realize that the more something reminisces its predecessor, by using common elements etc, the more of a spiritual successor it is. But I don't know why you are arguing about that, is doesn't seem of any importance.
Anyway, about what went wrong with Deadfire, one can only discuss about an individual thing at a time. E.g. Ship battles. Frankly, I don't know why they didn't just make a battle mini-game similar to this with even lower poly models and less detail, with crew members influencing the controls/stats in an more obvious way. It would take like very little time and resources. I am sure someone has asked this already - have the developers commented on it?
-
1 hour ago, thelee said:
I mean, yes, technically this is true, but we had a lot of people griping about the setting for non-rational reasons, like they just liked their medieval sword-and-board fantasy.
As for game systems, "conservative" can also mean "status quo bias." I have been able to get people on board with how Deadfire might be a better designed system, but they still won't like it because it's not what they're used to or expecting. Even for myself the initial Deadfire backer beta took quite a bit of expectations adjustment.
Unfortunately these cases also exist. Some are slaves of habit, others have an irrational fear for change, many can't exactly pinpoint their gripe with the system. Some express sentiments without backing them up, which have underlying rational reasons they can't or won't bother to describe. Perhaps a few just want to complain for no reason. Happens everywhere. Personally, I get excited when experiencing new systems because they have the potential of being better - according to my specific tastes - than their predecessors. For example I know the amount of (meaningful) complexity or RNG that I want in my games and pick the one that I like most. In this case, I find DnD 3.5 more agreeable to my tastes. A couple of generalized reasons is how it handles RNG in general, or spells - won't get into it now, it's a huge discussion and a man has to work.
Discussion is good. But it's only good and productive when people describe their problem in a rational manner and try to back up their gripes without dismissing others as fanboys, nostalgia sufferers etc etc. Even if the discussion doesn't end in agreement probably because of different tastes, it doesn't really matter.
-
16 minutes ago, thelee said:
to clarify, you do realize that conservative has a non-political meaning other than "conservativism"?
not to put words in people's mouths, but when I or other say "RPGers are a conservative bunch" we mean "it looks like RPGamers like to stick to common tropes and settings"
Yes lol, don't worry I did not mistake it for a political statement or anything. Being conservative is a trait which usually has to do with stubborn persistence to tradition. I am just saying that there are many logical/practical explanations about why someone could prefer one over the other, other than irrational sentimental reasons like fanboyism, nostalgia, conservatism etc.
-
Don't make this about conservatism. If someone changes an older system, it doesn't mean these changes are always for the better for all people. Doesn't matter if its newer, older, ancient or futuristic - it's about the system itself. You do understand that right guys?
Armchair theories on why POE2 didn't sell super well
in Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire General Discussion (NO SPOILERS)
Posted
If all post history is kept, you should find something if you are curious. I agree about the dialog... at least from what we've seen so far. But I will definitely give it a go since, even though I would have preferred an authentic BG sequel, I liked DOS2.