kanisatha

I agree with you here. It was a very good thing crowdfunding was available as an option when Obsidian badly needed it to save both themselves and this niche genre. But where crowdfunding is not needed or is no longer needed, best to stay away from it for all the reasons others have cited.

But that's the point. He'd take a backseat, not go away completely. He'd still be the overseer, the big-picture person, the visionary. But imo Sawyer tends to overthink the details and go overboard constantly tinkering with those details. He is excellent in setting down the vision and the path forward, but should let others handle the details. Personally, I just hope Feargus is grooming Sawyer to replace him as studio boss someday.

Yes, the DLCs in both games were excellent, so I can see whoever was the lead on those being a very good choice for project lead on a PoE3. And frankly, Josh taking a backseat on such a project may be a good thing for that IP going forward.

I just read a gamesindustry.biz article on Grounded in which Brennecke says his group is 14 people, though he also says those people are all senior people. Yeah, a super-impressive game building model to be sure. A similarly small team of (senior) people with a solid budget and, most importantly, a good concept for the game, could create a fantastic PoE3. Oh, and totally agree: no crowdfunding (the single biggest weakness of both PoE games).

Yeah as I said in another thread here, my guess is that the market for classic, iso cRPGs is a max of about 2 million. That's still enough potential buyers to make such a game financially viable (see D:OS2). But a studio, and especially a mid to large sized studio like Obsidian, needs more than that from a financial standpoint. So this is why I have said I am actually very happy about the MS buyout of Obsidian, because with MS's money, and with the specific needs of Game Pass, so long as Obsidian is able to make big audience games like TOW and Avowed, they will now also be able to (and have need to, for Game Pass) make those niche games that they otherwise may not have been able to continue to make. So even the odds of us seeing a PoE3 in the future have improved, imo, because of MS and Game Pass.

Same here. Street kid just doesn't fit my personality. Nomad is what feels most right, and corpo would be okay too. The beta seems to be proceeding well. And relatedly, Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous and Black Geyser are both also going through their respective beta testing right now. So all these games appear to be on track.

Found these recent articles about the intersection of MS, Game Pass, Xbox, and the studios MS has recently bought (including of course Obsidian). Very interesting reads, including in the context of recent comments by Sawyer re. the prospects for a PoE3: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2020-07-09-how-minecraft-and-mojang-taught-xbox-how-to-buy-studios https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2020-07-09-developing-for-xbox-game-pass-i-could-never-pitch-these-ideas-to-a-publisher https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2020-07-10-are-xbox-series-x-developers-being-held-back-by-xbox-one

Yeah same here. Playing only on a PC, I've made a few runs through the game and have had no bugs that are even memorable to me. I have successfully completed every single side quest or task. I've never had game-related crashes (only crashes due to certain things specific to my machine), and loading times are quite reasonable to me.

Exactly! And if not, I absolutely don't see the point of all that detailed customization and it's all a complete waste of development resources.

I have a very good feeling we will see TP included as a default option in this game. I think some of you guys are way overstating the prospects of this game being exclusively FP. When TOW was announced as only FP and a bunch of people griped about it on that forum, Obsidian devs themselves posted to say they were limited to only using FP because of their budget (pre-MS), implying that if not for budget restrictions they would've included the TP option. Now, Grounded has TP option built into the game as default, which says to me that even on a small project like Grounded Obsidian is willing to spend money on adding in a feature that will prove inclusive to a lot of fans. So if they are willing and able to include a TP mode in Grounded, I just don't see any valid reason or buy any argument for why they would not also do so in Avowed.

Well, for me, if you have to keep running forward and backward again and again as the way to handle melee combat, that is horrible game design.

Yes It's the lack of full peripheral vision and also lack of depth perception at close range that's a big part of the problem. Plus, like many of you have noted, using a weapon for which some form of targeting mechanism is provided (bows, crossbows, guns, energy weapons) also works okay, as does spellcasting. But trying to *target* an opponent with a sword up close and personal just ends up being very frustrating for me (and noting that I only play with mouse and keyboard). I just feel like I'm flailing about without any control, just mashing the "hit" button on my keyboard and hoping something hits.

I still don't get at all how melee combat can possibly work well in FP anyway. My experience with Skyrim was constantly missing my opponent while constantly getting hit myself, and yet also constantly hitting my own allies next to me including when I couldn't even see them.

This is the kind of game I would have normally completely missed, but which is so right up my alley. Thanks for posting!

If the game is going to have classes, I want them to be true classes (my very strong personal preference). Or else, no classes at all. What I absolutely don't want is superficial pseudo-classes that are classes in name only and have minimal to no differentiation between them, such as the "classes" in the D:OS games. A hard no to a D:OS-like system. Haven't played Tyranny, so can't speak to its system.

Yeah that's where I checked as well.

Yep I noted it only because a gaming journo mentioned it in an article, and then I went and looked out of curiosity and sure enough the Xbox 1 reference was gone.

Also this is a game that MS will want to use as incentive for people to go buy an Xbox X, right? So I don't see why they would want the game to be Xbox 1 compatible. Interestingly, the initial release of the trailer's promotional materials listed Xbox 1 at the bottom as one of the supported platforms. Then a day or so later, Xbox 1 was quietly removed from those promo materials.

Well, hopefully they will at least not exhibit uncontrolled reactions.

Yes, Game Pass is what its all about. Making Game Pass something very attractive to customers was exactly why MS went on that studio-buying spree. They need games to fill out Game Pass and make it worth the money for customers. But it's just not reasonable to expect they can fill out Game Pass quantitatively with huge AAA games. They need filler games. Many, many filler games, but where those (niche) filler games are still of good/high quality. Furthermore, from the pov of Obsidian, Obsidian is the kind of studio that was one weak-sales game away from bankruptcy. But now they are secure. And that means it's only now that they *can* afford to make niche games that don't sell a lot, as long as they're also making big AAA games that do sell a lot. So, if anything, I am willing to go out on a limb and say that MS buying Obsidian is what has actually increased the chances that we will someday see a PoE3, where pre-MS those chances were virtually zero. Now a low-sales niche game like a potential PoE3 is financially feasible for Obsidian so long as they also have games like Avowed (and maybe also a TOW2) that are bringing in plenty of profit for MS.

Why not? They've done it with Grounded. Just because MS wants big, open-world AAA games from their studios does not in any way translate into "no small, niche games." In fact, Matt Booty has publicly said on multiple occasions that he wants the newly acquired MS studios to keep making the same types of games they have been making and are good at making, because that's why MS bought those studios in the first place. Yes, now that they have MS's money, they will make those big-budget games that they simply couldn't before, but no reason at all to think they won't also make small-budget "passion project" games (like Grounded, and a future PoE3), because allowing your talented developers to flex their creativity and work on a range of different types of projects is what will keep them sane and entice them to stay with Obsidian.

Yeah it's in backer beta testing right now. And I agree the devs have been over-ambitious, but at the same time they also seem very dedicated and committed to the game, so eventually we should get a pretty decent game from them.

No, I'm specifically saying these are all subjective claims (including my own). This may be the case with me as well. And since I don't play shooters at all .... Fair enough, and this is true for me too. I have extremely narrow and specific tastes in my video games and as such keep going back to the same very small circle of studios whose games I like. And Obsidian is at the top of my list of studios whose games I love. Yet my list of design factors that appeal to me and your list don't necessarily match exactly (though they probably have quite a bit in common), and neither of our lists is an objective list.

I think the likes of Brandon Adler and Adam Brennecke and others who worked on the DLCs for both PoEs may be interested. I feel their visions for the game were better (my subjective view) than Sawyer's.

But again, isn't this subjective? I already mentioned Skyrim as a game (with both perspectives) where I found the TP perspective to be quite fine. And by that I mean that for me it did not at all come across as half-assed. I had many problems with that game, but TP gameplay was definitely not one of them.