kanisatha

Ok. This is a fair-minded take and one I can accept, so long as we agree this works both ways, which is to say I also am not convinced by the personal opinions of certain others.

But where's the science? I don't see any science anywhere in this thread. You are being dismissive of my posts because they are my personal opinions even while yourself only offering personal opinions too but somehow spinning your personal opinions as "science" and "reason." This entire thread is nothing but personal opinions and unsubstantiated theories, and your personal opinions and theories are no better than mine.

"Exhaustive critical scrutiny"? Yeah right. Basically your entire post boils down to: We who know what's what were having a wonderful discussion involving patting each other on the back about how incredible our insights are, and you who don't belong here barged into our discussion with an alternative view that we disagree with and reject. So we don't like you and you need to go away. Whatever. I'm not interested in this any further. The best thing Obsidian can do to make their next game popular is to completely disregard any and all "discussions" in this forum. It's no wonder Sawyer prefers to interact with every other forum except this one.

This is exactly it for me as well. Doesn't make me sick, but it is very uncomfortable, constricted, and extremely frustrating and exasperating.

Huh? Where did I do anything of the sort?

Ok, and my theory is the same. It is very reasonable, and it does not conflict with any known data. That's my point. Everything in this discussion is theory and conjecture. So why the piling on?

On the basis of my personal intuition which is based on my more general observations of society as a social/behavioral scientist.

And yet quite a number of other people out there somewhere apparently loved the game, right? That's exactly my point. You and I and others on this forum are not even in the tiniest bit a representative sample of gamers generally. So if we're not representative of the general gamer population, the things we liked/disliked about the game are also not going to be representative of that general population. That is why, instead of thinking about the things I personally liked/disliked about PoE, I am trying to think about factors that are more generic and thus likely to be factors affecting that general population. Yes I like everyone else here don't have any data of my own. But that's not preventing anyone else here from offering their opinions and speculations, which is the entirety of this discussion on all the multiple threads on this question in this forum. So why are my observations and speculations different and subject to a different standard? I am a scientist and I understand how inference works quite well.

What percentage of gamers write reviews? My guess would be an extremely small percentage. I've been playing video games since the late eighties and have never once written a review even though there many games I've played that I ended up disliking or even hating (D:OS1 for example). Furthermore, going by Steam reviews, a lot of reviews tend to be generic and superficial and nonspecific. I don't think player reviews can provide a good picture. Achievements also are not particularly useful because they won't capture the person who played the game a little bit, got exasperated, and walked away.

I flat out refused to play TOW because of the first-person thing. I just can't.

I do have several friends for whom things were this way, but I wasn't going to use that as my argument because that is clearly anecdotal. Btw, I also was/am fine with the PoE1/2 combat system, as are many on this forum obviously. But out there in the gaming real world, I am convinced views are quite different. And also again note, the D:OS combat system is so very simplistic and easy to figure out. This is indisputable in my view, and as such how can one ignore this when making comparisons of sales between the two games? For me it is glaringly obvious. My personal model of this issue is as follows: D20 combat system => Easy; PoE1/2 combat system => Hard TB combat => Easy; RTwP combat => Hard Classless system with limited character creation choices => Easy; Class-based system with many classes, subclasses, and multiclassing => Hard Etc. The more the game combines 'Easy' over 'Hard,' the more popular it will be.

Sorry, disagree. First, not at all the point but ... at least in the US the numbers are very clear that an ever smaller percentage of people are extremely math/science literate while an ever larger percentage on the other side are totally incompetent. An extreme bimodal distribution. Two, P:K did well because it uses the D20 system, which a good number of even casual RPG gamers are quite familiar with. Three, RTwP has nothing to do with this issue. There are plenty of RT/RTwP games out there that are very successful. But in the tiny niche genre of old-school classic RPGs yes we're currently going through a phase where TB is the fad for many within that niche. But again even that only reinforces my point, because TB by its very nature is a simplification of the combat system. Developers are going TB precisely because more casual gamers find it *easier* to handle than RTwP.

Yes. With PoE1 they bought it because of the nostalgia effect and the pitch that it was a successor to the IE games. They then hated the combat system, because whereas they could understand a D20 based system intuitively having played D&D for years, they just couldn't wrap their head around this new system that also happened to be rather complex. So they never bothered with PoE2.

Sorry but I think you all are continuing to over-think and over-analyze this question. The numerical complexity and sophistication of the PoE1/2 combat system is what throws off many casual gamers (meaning people who are NOT posting in this forum). We now have an entire generation of gamers who spent kindergarten to college avoiding anything to do with numbers. You can play through PoE2 entirely and still come away not having a solid understanding of how any of the combat mechanics of the game actually worked. As such even playing the game for just an hour can leave people very frustrated, frustrated enough to give up and refund their game. But it doesn't even have to get to that. Simply viewing a short combat gameplay video on YouTube or Twitch is sufficient for many to become frustrated. By contrast, just a few minutes playing D:OS is all it takes to gain a very good understanding of how the combat mechanics works and perhaps even to master those mechanics, because its mechanics are extremely simplistic, easy to figure out, and easy to use. That's all there is to it.

I check the Owlcat forum almost daily. P:K is my most favorite cRPG coming out of the recent RPG reawakening, even slightly edging out the PoE games. I didn't put a lot of money into the P:K KS because Owlcat didn't yet have a reputation. But for a WotR KS I look forward to investing quite a bit. In addition to the PoE games and P:K, I also invested in the KS campaigns of Black Geyser, T:ToN, Realms Beyond, and Solasta. I supported the TB games mainly because they are classic old-school RPGs borrowing heavily from D&D. But RB, for example, even though TB, has included some interesting mechanics to alleviate the usual complaints from RTwP fans like us. You can remove the action animations of enemies so that their actions happen instantaneously. You also can have the AI handle the entire battle, in the cases of any trash fights that you find boring, for example.

Btw @Jill7894, as a RTwP fan you should also keep your eyes on two games that will/may be releasing in 2020: The Dark Eye: Book of Heroes; and, Black Geyser: Couriers of Darkness.

Exactly! In a battle things are supposed to be chaotic and confusing, and outcomes should be sub-optimal. When TB fans say that TB allows them to plan out every move and every action get everything exactly right, to me that is both mind-numbingly boring and completely immersion-breaking, and I cannot at all understand why someone would want their battles to happen that way. I want things to be a mess and to go all wrong and for crazy things to happen in my battles. That's the only way battles in RPGs are even tolerable.

The criticism of the game was largely about the DM/coop side of the game and that it deviated significantly from D&D rules despite supposedly being D&D 5e. If you play the game single-player, and don't get too caught up in whether or not it is "truly D&D," it is actually a pretty good and fun game. You definitely should also check out Tower of Time. It has RTwP combat that it somewhat challenging.

I seem to recall in an interview the producer of the show saying that even though she personally would like to highlight the Yen and Ciri characters she understands that the show by its very title needs to have Geralt front and center, and so Geralt will be the main focus.

How about Tower of Time? And there's always also Dragon Age: Origins.

Well people can take a stand against this nonsense and just insist on calling it Xbox 2. On forums, social media, reviews, news stories, in stores, even on MS's own forum, if people insist on calling it Xbox 2, there's nothing MS can do about it. This is exactly like how Windows versions used to be named back in the '90s and I hated that so much.

But a person can say it is best for me, and there's nothing wrong with that. And, I think when people say "best" in these kinds of contexts, they almost always do mean "best for me" even if this isn't explicitly stated.

I would strongly recommend you also give Pathfinder: Kingmaker a try. Feel free to set the kingdom management side-game part of it on 'auto' if that's not your thing.

This was my take on this game too. And the terraforming stuff late game doesn't help because it takes so very long to get it going that it does not alleviate the boredom. It's a very fun game in the early stages but eventually I just quit and restart on a different map. So I never get all the way through to the end in any of my play-throughs. Thankfully there are a ton of different maps to play on.

For me what matters is if the game will have an option to turn on that removes the "extermination" X from 4X. I love playing Civ as a civ builder only, without the going to war with each other part. And even when this is not inherently built into the game, someone always creates a mod for it, as is the case with Civ 5 which is what I currently play.