thelee

what are the specs for each of those computers? it is a complete cut-out? or does the sound come back? Is it triggered by any kind of recurring event (e.g. how do you reproduce it?)

by the by, some of the constraints we raise, were raised by sawyer himself in a now-ancient tumblr post. Basically, accounting for a) positive critical and user reception b) unprecedentedly huge drop-off in sales c) higher sales for similar projects Sawyer also has more access to internal marketing and sales data than we do along with receiving more direct feedback than us just navel-gazing in forums, e.g. (with emphasis added) https://jesawyer.tumblr.com/post/189033278221/why-blame-the-relative-failure-of-poe2-on-already "However disappointed people were with the story of Deadfire, I don’t think they were so disappointed, collectively, that it contributed to an enormous loss in sales[1]. Also, I think most of the disappointment was with how the story developed, not with the basic premise (at least, this is what feedback generally indicates)." [1] is a recurring theme that any hypothesis has to address. non-self-proclaimed scientists have made the case better way before you that a bunch of small things could collectively lead to a massive drop-off in sales, but it's a pretty brittle hypothesis. of course, the catalyst for a lot of this: https://jesawyer.tumblr.com/post/188915786456/will-there-be-a-pillars-3-that-is-not-something

"I'm unable to make a coherent argument that addresses objectively-verifiable constraints on any theory/hypothesis, and am doing worse at this even compared to a forum poster who is literally perpetually in-character as an ogre mage, but it's clear it's everyone else's fault, not mine. I am a scientist, by the way." bye_felicia.gif

I'm going to go out on a limb and say when you sea-lion in and say "Sorry but I think you all are continuing to over-think and over-analyze this question." and keep making appeals to authority (repeatedly saying that you're a scientist) you're going to come off badly. I too also went to grad school in social science and live and breath data science as part of my day job in tech, but I'm not making underlining that fact in every other post except where it's actually relevant (e.g. using industry experience to explain why tool-tip-writing/internationalization can be extremely expensive). It does conflict with known data, in several ways: - it fails to account for the success of other numerically complex systems (not just P:K, but even Tyranny apparently did better than Deadfire) - it fails to make any convincing argument about a massive drop-off in sales from PoE1 to Deadfire; we have plenty of theories that can explain smaller drop-offs, but not something that is closer to an order of magnitude - despite your best efforts, it fails to account for Deadfire being a critical success in terms of both journalistic reviews as well as user reviews despite significant drop-off in sales As a social/behavioral scientist, surely you understand the idea of a lit review, to make sure that your research and findings are part of an ongoing dialogue and not just a non-sequitur or spurious finding. Well, we've been at this for months, and we've exhaustively discussed even points like yours throughout. When people raise issues like setting, marketing, or nostalgia as topics, it's because those are the only ones that have continued to survive exhaustive critical scrutiny. What you're doing is basically barging in without having done the lit review, pointing out something that may be true but with at best a minute effect size, and being surprised that we're not all just automatically deferring to your expertise.

wow i hardly ever use mods, but i might break my rule just for this.

i think this is pretty good insight. i mean, i thought the warning signs were there from the very beginning - because fig had fewer overall backers and half of them were fig shares backers. but i chalked it up to it being fig vs kickstarter. but i guess i was wrong there as well. sorry to keep talking about disco elysium, but it's the recency effect. a game like that definitely shows that there is a market for extremely niche cRPG(though it is much more planescape than it is BG/IWD), and one that breaks a lot of traditions and molds in a more radical way than Deadfire sought to. And I am pretty sure that everyone is getting a nice payday out of it. But you have to be smart and purposeful about it. I'm pretty sure JE Sawyer rues the price paid for full VO and the ship to ship combat alot, and if we were to believe Avellone a lot of blame has to go to Feargus (who pushed for the fig, who also pushed for the ship-to-ship-combat, and also I believe also pushed for full VO). So when are we gonna get Pillars of Eternity Tactics??

well, it's an indier indie game than deadfire. Also they didn't spend money on full VO

From JE Sawyer, the pre-order and day of sales were better than PoE1, but post-launch lagged significantly. They also had trouble getting marketing pieces out, and their market research leading up to launch indicated general awareness of Deadfire was much lower than PoE1. So the picture is more complicated. I don't doubt that PoE1 might have dissatisfied users, but it's hard to extract information out of that based on positive user reviews and how it sold well throughout a long dev support cycle (iirc longer than Deadfire, actually). I think the better explanation is not that it dissatisfied users, but that it satisfied users for a need that isn't very big and it didn't face as much competition for that not-very-big-need versus Deadfire. Coupled with a bunch of other factors (e.g. I still think their marketer sucking was a contributing factor, irrespective of any resistance they might have faced from press. I was a backer for Deadfire and hardly heard any press about it).

that's true, but in general I find Sigilmaster Auranic to be waaaay easier than Hauane O Whe and less needing of explicit equipment gearing. Rest in Konstanten's room, bring along some potions of (improved, if possible) arcane reflection and those potions that give you resolve resistance or svef.

I honestly found it an incredibly underwhelming payoff for such a late game quest so I hardly ever used it, but when I do use it I leave myself to Nonconductive and Suppression. Punishment/Condemnation is quite uncommon in the late game, and rarely ever a big deal and anecdotally I feel like acid damage is rather rare compared to electricity. (Note: answer changes a bit if you're gearing up for a megaboss fight because in that case I think Bronze Core is better against Huane O Whe)

First off, in general, in most developed or developing countries, successive generations are more numerically literate than previous generations. Second off, the kids are alright. Third, doesn't explain why games like P:K do well. If anything, like I brought up in another thread, Deadfire is better than PoE1 here because so much more of the system is rationalized, there's less murk, there's a slower pace to combat, and encounters are less trashy and you have less party members to worry about. So this can't explain a massive sales drop. I think if we want to go down this route, it's not the numeracy, but the fact that (as has been mentioned by some developer--possibly JE Sawyer) that RTSes aren't nearly as prevalent these days as back in the late 90s/early 2000s, so people just aren't used to the style of gameplay that RTwP is, and the context that it lives in makes less sense. But even here it doesn't explain a drop-off from a million+ sales, I think it only serves to explain why it's hard to grow your audience or find a new, less nostalgia-focused audience and therefore makes the case that RTwP is a niche genre now.

This happened to one of my friends. I actually tried to warn them away from PoE1 because I thought it was less accessible for them than Deadfire in terms of gameplay (I strongly believe Deadfire is a less murky and more rational system and that is probably a controversial point to some people who prefer Vancian/PoE1 system), but same thing happened - they basically hit a wall getting into PoE1. At least from Obsidian's perspective, they still get money from the PoE1 sales though, even if there's no follow-through.

I'm an Obsidian fan since back when they were Black Isle and put Deadfire as my top cRPG ever and one of my top games ever, but Disco Elysium completely earns its awards. I started playing it off a sale on dec 31st, 2019, and even after just 40 minutes of playing in 2019 it I was already ready to put in my top 5 games of the 2010s. Having played it all now, the gameplay has its problems (downgrading it to merely being top ten of the decade), but the writing is really a masterclass. Outer Worlds just doesn't come close, sorry.

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: 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.

I actually thought the mobile fortress was a great idea, and I still like it. People talk about the strongholds in BG2, but only some of the strongholds are decent or give you any real reason to invest time into them; people are just remembering the good ones. De'Arnisse Hold, Mage Sphere, and Thieve's Guild are probably the best, but it's rarified company. Bard's gives you a huge money sink that maybe after many months of in-game time you can get some profit out of. Druid is lame. Priest is lame (a few dialogue checks essentially). Ranger is lame. Paladin is lame (basically just extra quest scaffolding around killing Firkraag). PoE1 with its lame stronghold had more interactivity than all those. Plus, as a place to hold your gear and spare party members, it was annoying because for a huge chunk of the game you couldn't even access your stronghold because you were stuck in the Underdark or in Spellhold or whatnot. ToB (an expansion that I hated anyway) obliterated any meaningful differences and gave you the same (along with music that annoyingly sounded a lot like Indiana Jones's mystical music). By contrast, Deadfire's follows you around and you can connect it to the gameplay loop via encounter checks and ship-to-ship encounters (not to mention it is one of five ways to Ukaizo). 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?

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.

yeah, unfortunately the most important encounter checks are also the ones that are the poorest documented ones on the internet. i would go through game files, get familiar with how dialogue/encounter scripting works, and use the in-game console (in a separate game, so you don't disqualify yourself) to verify that your understanding of how to pass the checks is correct (essentially what I had to do since not being a wizard I was essentially flying blind for some of my stuff in the Ultimate). or you should do something that someone has already done and is well-known and video-documented. the bridge in SSS, to return to that example, can be easily beaten either with Binding Web on a wizard or "8 athletics, 14 dexterity, and high stealth or mechanics" (I ended up looking this up in my own video notes).

The main thing I did with Maia as geomancer is combine various wizard DoTs and Debuffs with Predator's Sense and Merciless Companion for the +50% and +30% pet damage bonus. You could also probably find some synergies with Takedown Combo (pure DoTs don't remove the damage buff, of which the wizard has a few).

one suggestion: get one rogue, and then a bunch of scrolls of withdrawal. start the fight, use gouging strike, then run back and withdraw everyone. fight will deaggro. wait until ner is dead. you'll have to clean up the mobs afterward, but they shouldn't be a problem for a level 10-12 party. (doesn't work for berath's challenge. for TB mode you'd have to make sure you have sufficient duration that everyone can stay withdrawn until everyone is withdrawn and combat can end) maybe you could do the same thing with a paladin and branding strike (no attack roll even)

best of luck! the one thing i would point out here is that if you aren't using a wizard, you should do research on the SSS dlc encounter checks. There are some pretty specific stat requirements so you don't accumulate too many injuries and/or die or do unnecessary fights. I think one of them is mentioned in this thread by me. (wizard can use binding web to make crossing the bridge in SSS really easy so they have less of a concern)

good to know. even with that i think for pure damage potential alone arterial strike is better opener. but now i feel less bad about an unupgraded wounding shot.

Wounding Shot is frankly a trap ability, it doesn't work the way you think (it only does 20% over the entire base duration, instead of 20% each tick). Upgrade crippling strike to arterial strike, and open with that from range, and just kite the enemy until they are severely wounded or dead (you need gear or auras/chants that upgrades your stride speed for this to work well though).

Yes, aoe weapons are great with Gambit, but I would argue Gambit is still too expensive unless you're dual-wielding hand mortars or blunderbusses. A little bit of extra damage for 2-4 guile doesn't sound great, versus for 0-2. If hand mortars are any indication, I don't think the chillfog will count for Gambit - the bounce from Fire in the Hole doesn't count for Gambit for crits even though it's still the same attack. A tad annoying that we'd have to test to be sure

I keep wondering how many people have actually beat megabosses on TB mode for precisely the length reason. I mean I know someone beat the Ultimate but I don't think they shared their videos anywhere. Dorudugan sounds like an absolute chore in TB mode. The original IE games did have multiplayer RTwP. I think it works reasonably well for casual players on a lower difficulty setting (I tried it a few times with a few friends), but anything more than that and everyone is constantly stepping on each other's toes trying to pause/unpause the game. Definitely not feasible for like BG2 dragon/lich battles. Though it was like a real authentic, low-level AD&D experience in BG because we'd keep getting each other killed by wandering off and getting crit by gibberlings and there's no real way to reload so we'd have to keep importing new characters in the multiplayer arbitration menu.

late to the party, but 1: like boeroer said, 1h style is not great. it's niche. it was better balanced in poe1, but in deadfire, i think they plain messed up dual-wielding (way too good) because they didn't understand how their own inversion system worked, and then they buffed 2h weapon style but never really touched 1h weapon style, so it's by far the most underpowered of the lot, unless you have a very specific reason to do want more crits/hits in a way that simply dual-wielding won't. I ran the numbers a long time ago, and even in PotD dual-wielding can give you more crits/second simply because you attack *way* more often with 2w style, and 1h only helps if your accuracy is really bad against the enemy (and even then, rapier has weapon modal that gives you a whopping +20 accuracy and the downside is not so bad when dual-wielding). 2: in terms of active abilities, dual wielding and 2h style are actually very competitive. it's not just because the bonuses are additive, like boeroer says, but because 2h weapons are balanced essentially to be on-par with dual-wielding full attacks (in fact, they had to add a -35% damage penalty to dual-wielded full attacks because they were just basically strictly better than 2h style full attacks for a while). even with dual-wielding nerf/2h buffs, ignoring backstab, i would actually prefer 2w style, because you have a faster recovery when using dual-wielding, and you get two separate chances to connect, which can be extremely relevant for abilities with powerful on-hit debuffs. In fact, Gambit is a high-level rogue ability that frankly only makes sense as a dual-wielded full attack, as otherwise it's frankly way too expensive.