kanisatha

Interesting. But party-based and 3rd person are not mutually exclusive, are they? NwN2 sorta' did that. I really have no issue with 3rd person or some other non-isometric perspective (though my preference is iso), but not being party-based is the deal-breaker for me, hence my dislike of the Elder Scrolls games and lack of enthusiasm for The Witcher 3 (even though I am aware that game is very highly regarded).

As a related side question, are there sci-fi RPGs available that don't use energy weapons (i.e guns, lasers and the like)? I am very interested in the idea of an Obsidian sci-fi RPG, but I really hate the gameplay mechanics of energy weapons and that's why I end up only playing fantasy themed RPGs.

I just want one QoL improvement: please give me a UI on our ship where I can simultaneously access the inventories and paperdolls of all of my companions and not just those in my current party. PLEASE?!

I'll add a little fuel to the fire by saying I'm one of those people who doesn't consider BG2 to be that great, and have always much preferred BG1 to BG2. I agree with your point. Rose-tinted BG nostalgia is the biggest threat to this awesome CRPG renaissance.

I backed Kingmaker (as I did Deadfire). It's shaped up to be a very good game as best as I can tell. Don't at all understand why one would wish to pit one game against another. By that logic nobody should've made another fantasy RPG since Baldur's Gate and we all should be replaying BG for the two millionth time. Btw, I also do not understand the "it's a small studio I've not heard of so I don't have any expectations that their game will be good" mentality. Many big, well-established studios have deeply disappointed me with their games. Everyone has to start somewhere, and I for one am very glad that gamers back in the late '90s didn't write off the games made by nobody's-ever-heard-of studios by the names of Bioware and Black Isle.

Well, regardless, we are in for changes in scenery soon anyways since the Project Indiana game is very likely to be post-apocalyptic/sci-fi (Obsidian's own Fallout-inspired franchise?), followed by whatever game Sawyer works on next which will definitely not be fantasy per his own expressed preference.

I agree. I believe somewhere in that interview (or some other one) he specifically says he wants to take a year or so to focus on his job as design director for Obsidian while not working on any specific game. That doesn't sound like someone who wants to bail on the company.

Bear in mind that this board is a giant pile of sampling bias. ^Truth.

I agree. If I had not been a backer of the game, then upon hearing that there were going to be three expansions/DLCs hitting in a few months, I would definitely have chosen to wait for some sort of "complete" edition of the game to buy later on. I think a lot of casual gamers like myself would opt to do that because unlike the hardcore gamers we don't feel any pressure to want to play a game as soon as it is released. We don't have that much time to play games, and there are a ton of games available to play. So waiting several months, even a year, to play a game is par for the course for casual gamers.

Not going to get into that controversy but regardless of which side you fall on, SoD is overall actually a pretty solid expansion for BG and well worth the time and money playing. It is not "amazing" or anything like that but it is pretty good.

It can't outsell D:OS2 because it is a single player game and sadly these days multiplayer is the holy grail of digital gaming. I think it will do quite well. I backed the game, and it looks to be really well done. Really looking forward to it.

Right now it seems that WotC has every possible type of game in the works or already released except for a true RPG. It really sucks. Beamdog seemed to be making a new IP true D&D RPG, but even that project now looks to have fallen through.

If player agency is a big part of Larian's approach, then the D:OS games fail badly there as well. A good 80% of my player agency is having the freedom to develop both my PC and my companions in a range of different ways while still retaining their value and effectiveness within the game. These games don't provide for that, and I'd rather have that than lots of interactions with the world (especially when the world reactivity is often fourth-wall-breaking).

Also, many of these games have sold very well on other outlets besides Steam such as GOG, and in the cases of BG/2 EE their own in-house launcher system. Beamdog has mentioned that BG1EE has sold well over a million copies total.

I'm wading through D:OS EE right now myself. It is very difficult for me to find the motivation to finish the game, but I am a completionist who has a hard time quitting something I've started, so I guess I will eventually finish it. The story is trite and silly. Don't care for the "humor". The very limited number of companion options and having two protagonists means you are pretty much locked into one "best" party composition. Many of the spells and abilities are useless/underwhelming, which means they can easily be divided into black-and-white "must-have" versus "don't need" categories, resulting in fixed "best" character builds. Laughable that oil/water/poison barrels are always so very conveniently located including in places where they have no logical reason to be there. Crafting system is a pain. Food items are both far too many and usually useless because of their very short duration. Combat is a mind-numbing chore.

The D&D and Forgotten Realms digital licenses are now completely back under Wizards of the Coast's control. Atari has nothing to do with anything D&D anymore. And WotC has said they will never again repeat the mistake of what they did with Atari in terms of losing their control of the license. An article interviewing Chris Cox (new head of WotC) back in December 2017 (I believe) had him saying that between now and 2023 WotC has plans for over a dozen new digital games using the D&D license. I can't recall the exact details, but their focus appeared to be on mobile platforms and consoles and not the PC.

What makes you think that? There's precisely zero reason for either to abandon single-player games. Except for the "not making enough money from it" reason. If you do a quick Google search you'll come across quite a number of articles from the past year or so with direct quotes from game developer company executives saying there's not enough money to be made from single player games anymore. inXile itself has said (in a recent Brian Fargo interview) that their next new game (after Wasteland 3) will be multiplayer (and consoles) focused.

It's very unfortunate that games with multiplayer significantly outsell single player only games. I can understand a little bit of a sales advantage for multiplayer, but these numbers seem to indicate a gigantic difference. I imagine this will mean that even small-to-medium sized RPG developers (Obsidian, inXile, etc.) will now move to multiplayer games and abandon creating single player only games. I know that many multiplayer games can be played as single player, but at least for me it feels very much that those games make it very clear in-game that you are supposed to play them multiplayer and that they're optimized for multiplayer at the expense of the single player experience (ex. the D:OS games). This tends to seriously dampen my interest in those games. Sorry for the tangent.

I'm a casual gamer. I backed the game (and was one of the first backers of PoE way before most others jumped on that bandwagon). I'm just as much the "main audience" as you.

Party-based RPGs with strong single-player Strategy games (especialy those based on good boardgames) Resource management games Empire/city builder games I strictly stay away from multiplayer. The whole point of gaming for me is to get away from other people.

At least when on our ship, I'd like the ability to simultaneously access the paperdolls and inventories of all of my companions and not just the ones in my party.

Well, there's also a third group, like me, who are more or less indifferent. For me the story, the companions and the side quests are always more interesting than combat itself. And since the different easy settings caters to people like me, we have little interest in PotD difficulty. This exactly. I've played PoE many times (though finished it only once). And every time I replay it I only play at the easy or story mode. The story, the side quests, the companions, and my own character's development are all that I care about, and I generally hate the combat situations.

This game definitely needed some rebalancing coming out of the gate. But it ought to have happened before the game's release because I agree it can be frustrating for players to have to restart their game with each new patch. However, the OP's point about "minority opinions" is absolutely true. Posters on these forums do tend to see themselves as representing the majority of the people playing these games even though the active posters on these forums in reality represent only a tiny fraction of the overall player base. This is why, in spite of all the whining about this, I am happy that Sawyer gets his feedback from a range of other places besides these forums.

This PC Gamer article has some interesting insights into where Sawyer (and other RPG devs) may want to go in the future. https://www.pcgamer.com/the-future-of-crpgs/

I highly doubt they will move to PoE3 that soon. Sawyer has stated he wants to do something not related to Pillars-style games before he would be ready to return to that type of game. So unless PoE3 happens without Sawyer, PoE3 will only happen after Sawyer has had his chance to do his TB historical RPG. The way I see the sequence: Indiana, ???, Sawyer's historical RPG, PoE3. So what ??? ends up being is the question. I suppose one possibility is a new something using their Pathfinder license.