Poll - Size of Deadfire Compared to POE1

[Stephen Unsworth-Mitchell]

Deadfire is bigger than vanilla POE minus the WM expansions in general but there are dimensions that seem inexplicably smaller.

 

Dungeons:

I agree w/ complaints that there are no big dungeons. Extending the undercity further down a few levels would be welcome. Ukaizo should have had a big, challenging dungeon; endgame feels rushed without it.  I assume one of the paid DLC is going to be a big dungeon but a big dungeon should have been included in the base game. 

 

Items:

Deadfire has seemingly few items although most seem actually viable and interesting and I appreciate that uniques are truly unique.

 

--In vanilla POE there were vendors for each faction; in Deadfire, the Valians have no vendor at all unless i have massively overlooked sth. Fewer items -> less replay value.

--as everyone has noticed, there are tons of sabres/swords and few other uniques, although guns finally got much-needed love.

--there is a noticeable lack of soulbound items in Deadfire even if Modwyr and the Sacrificial dagger are great. There are currently basically as many soulbound items in the Deadfire DLC for POE1 (Club of the Mataru/Captain's Hat/Molina's Spikefinger/Belt of the RDC) as there are in all of vanilla Deadfire... I know more soulbounds and items are forthcoming but the devs should add in free-DLC sidequest involving a crate shipment of "discovered" items from Caed Nua in Act 3/4-- basically hit unique and/or soulbound items from WM 1 and 2 and vanilla or even the deadfire DLC. Build in sideplot involving the interception of the crate shipment and the scattering of the weapons around Deadfire, because why not? you already designed some terrific soulbounds in the original and there is no need to extensively consider enchants, even if some of the soulbounds would need a minor rebalance as attributes buff differently.

--there seem to be less variety in boots/rings/cloaks/ and gauntlets than in vanilla POE. that is dumb because presumably these could have been ported over.

I look forward to devs and or modders remedying at least the item issue.

 

Agree needs bigger dungeons at least few.

 

Soulbound weapons not much so hope they sort. Loved Modwyr sarcasm was great wish she had more lines. Some equipment changes to.

 

Think shorter dungeons does make game feel shorter

[Gregorovitch]

very mixed results on poll so far. 

 

Can everyone who has actually played the game please vote so we can get a good poll result.

 

I can't yet 'cos I haven't finished but I will when I have.

 

Mixed results. Yeah. There is something funny going on here, maybe about public reaction to this game in general.

 

I mean people can argue the Eothas story is too short or the dungeons are too small or the combat is too easy etc etc etc and all of that is subjective opinion (which people are perfectly entitled to express their opinion about of course) but this question is a matter of fact, not opinion, so how is it possible to get such a spread of contradictory answers to this question?

 

At least 65% of respondents (at time of writing) are simply wrong on an objective fact about the game. And given the the answer that leads to that minimum "wrongness" is the one Josh Sawyer himself announced, so I suspect that answer has an unfair built in advantage.

 

The thing is, if people can be so hopelessly mixed up about a simple question of fact about the game, to what extent are people also getting mixed up about more or less everything else about the game, including some of the big ticket complaints? And what is it that is causing this, what's at the bottom of it?

[M4xw0lf]

A first completionist run of Deadfire took me nearly as long as my last completionist run of Pillars+White March. So I'd say base Deadfire is quite a bit larger than base PoE.

[Katarack21]

Well whren josh sawyer commmented on it he said

 

"Deadfire will be about the same size as POE1"

 

I guess now we have confirmed he meant POE1 without the expansions witch is very disappointing and kind of misleading aswell

""As you have probably guessed, Deadfire is a huge game—significantly larger than the original Pillars of Eternity." Obsidian Studios in a backer email.

[hadiqa4444]

 

Well whren josh sawyer commmented on it he said

 

"Deadfire will be about the same size as POE1"

 

I guess now we have confirmed he meant POE1 without the expansions witch is very disappointing and kind of misleading aswell

""As you have probably guessed, Deadfire is a huge game—significantly larger than the original Pillars of Eternity." Obsidian Studios in a backer email.

 

The results of this poll says otherwise.

 

I definitely didnt get the feel it was significantly bigger when i played it. I reckon its about the same size.

 

There are also hundreds of user/ critic reviews all over the internet suggesting the same, in fact worse then this alot of people are saying its shorter.

 

Thats why i put this poll up to see what the players think. I looked at the poll results and you voted for bigger and IMO you have been out voted

[Katarack21]

 

 

Well whren josh sawyer commmented on it he said

 

"Deadfire will be about the same size as POE1"

 

I guess now we have confirmed he meant POE1 without the expansions witch is very disappointing and kind of misleading aswell

""As you have probably guessed, Deadfire is a huge game—significantly larger than the original Pillars of Eternity." Obsidian Studios in a backer email.

 

The results of this poll says otherwise.

 

I definitely didnt get the feel it was significantly bigger when i played it. I reckon its about the same size.

 

There are also hundreds of user/ critic reviews all over the internet suggesting the same, in fact worse then this alot of people are saying its shorter.

 

Thats why i put this poll up to see what the players think. I looked at the poll results and you voted for bigger and IMO you have been out voted

 

....the majority of people in this poll have voted that it is bigger than PoE 1 base, but not bigger than PoE1+WM.

 

Regardless, I didn't post that to make a statement about the size of the game, but rather to point out that Josh Sawyers statement about the size was an early statement which was not continued later. In one of the backer videos, Sawyer specifically says that the game grew larger than expected over the path of development.

 

That's my point; not a statement about the size of the game, but a correction to the inaccurate idea that "same size as PoE 1 base" was anything other than an early statement that was altered in later press releases.

[SonicMage117]

I think the game feels bigger because of all the features they added. As far as content and length, the game is a good bit smaller than PoE1's base game. I suspect this is ultimately due to Pillars 1 having less features and being more focused on building an actual story and the foundation of lore. It just takes alot more.

 

The argument of "Legnth varies for each individual player" is rendered useless as such us true for the original as well. Also, the fact that balance is so obtrusively faulty in Deadfire, there's really no reason it would/could take longer to complete against the original.

 

 

Lastly... Will Deadfire's dlc really add more gameplay than the White March expansions did for the first game? I doubt it very much, I think it will "add" or refine features to make players think it's adding content rather than adding more actual content. This isn't to say "Deadfire dlc won't add content at all" Don't misunderstand, just that the dlc won't be quite what people think, as the base game (Deadfire) was unlike what anyone thought it would be.

 

 

 

"But.. uhhh... Well, there it is" -Jeff Goldblum

Edited June 1, 2018 by SonicMage117

[the_dog_days]

The results of the recent polls on this sub-forum are kinda weird. I don't think rangers are the weakest class, I think there wasn't enough combat in Deadfire, and I had nearly twice as many hours in my first POE run as my first Deadfire run when 100% on both. :/

[hadiqa4444]

 

 

 

Well whren josh sawyer commmented on it he said

 

"Deadfire will be about the same size as POE1"

 

I guess now we have confirmed he meant POE1 without the expansions witch is very disappointing and kind of misleading aswell

""As you have probably guessed, Deadfire is a huge game—significantly larger than the original Pillars of Eternity." Obsidian Studios in a backer email.

 

The results of this poll says otherwise.

 

I definitely didnt get the feel it was significantly bigger when i played it. I reckon its about the same size.

 

There are also hundreds of user/ critic reviews all over the internet suggesting the same, in fact worse then this alot of people are saying its shorter.

 

Thats why i put this poll up to see what the players think. I looked at the poll results and you voted for bigger and IMO you have been out voted

 

....the majority of people in this poll have voted that it is bigger than PoE 1 base, but not bigger than PoE1+WM.

 

Regardless, I didn't post that to make a statement about the size of the game, but rather to point out that Josh Sawyers statement about the size was an early statement which was not continued later. In one of the backer videos, Sawyer specifically says that the game grew larger than expected over the path of development.

 

That's my point; not a statement about the size of the game, but a correction to the inaccurate idea that "same size as PoE 1 base" was anything other than an early statement that was altered in later press releases.

 

As you have probably guessed, Deadfire is a huge game—significantly larger than the original Pillars of Eternity." Obsidian Studios in a backer email.

 

 

This is the quote you reffered to above. when he said this he should of said not including the white march because it is very misleading.

 

There is that and the game is clearly not huge as he said there as well.

 

and the second most polling reults on this poll are suggesting the game is smaller then POE1 base. I view these poll results as Deadfire being about the same size as POE1 without the expanions. 

 

It is clear that it is not "signficantly bigger" as he aslo quoted there

[drael6464]

 

 

Well whren josh sawyer commmented on it he said

 

"Deadfire will be about the same size as POE1"

 

I guess now we have confirmed he meant POE1 without the expansions witch is very disappointing and kind of misleading aswell

""As you have probably guessed, Deadfire is a huge game—significantly larger than the original Pillars of Eternity." Obsidian Studios in a backer email.

 

The results of this poll says otherwise.

 

I definitely didnt get the feel it was significantly bigger when i played it. I reckon its about the same size.

 

There are also hundreds of user/ critic reviews all over the internet suggesting the same, in fact worse then this alot of people are saying its shorter.

 

Thats why i put this poll up to see what the players think. I looked at the poll results and you voted for bigger and IMO you have been out voted

 

 

This is what happens when people split poll results into lots of options, people reading the poll results get confused.

 

People who think it's bigger (WM included or not) = 53.8 percent. People same size = 15.38. People who think it's smaller (WM included or not) = 30.77.

 

So taken as a whole, the drift seems to be that it's bigger, but only by about the same amount, or less than white march. 

 

The constant motif in these comments - that the smaller, but more multiple area sizes make it FEEL smaller, probably accounts for the variability.

 

Because "how big something feels" does not equal "how big something actually is".  Some of that is very subjective. I mean there were large areas in the city in poe1, where there was basically nothing to do (unlike here, where there are always a few local quests), but conversely the larger dungeons in poe1. 

 

Unless there is something to quantitively measure the amount of hours spent on every quest with a fair controlled comparison, it's a matter of perception as much as it is truth. 

Edited June 1, 2018 by drael6464

[Wormerine]

How do we judge “bigness”? Amount of maps? I am pretty sure Deadfire wins. Combined map size? I am pretty sure Deadfire would still win. Amount of quests? Amount of fights (yeah, PoE would win here)?

 

Deadfire feels smaller because it has better pacing. You don’t slog through combat encounter after combat encounter. Dungeons like Eothasian temple, or Heritage Hill weren’t big, bit it took a while to cut through mobs. An hour of PoE left me tired, and hour of Deadfire made want to see more. Neketaka feels bigger than Defiance Bay and Eir Glanfath. But while exploring the latter two was a slog, Neketaka gives you reasons to go in and out throughout the whole game, making the experience much more enjoyable. Compare Gilded Vale to Port Maje, Roderick’s Hold to Fort Deadlight, Dyrford to Dunnage.

[Casper]

How do we judge “bigness”? Amount of maps? I am pretty sure Deadfire wins. Combined map size? I am pretty sure Deadfire would still win. Amount of quests? Amount of fights (yeah, PoE would win here)?

 

Deadfire feels smaller because it has better pacing. You don’t slog through combat encounter after combat encounter. Dungeons like Eothasian temple, or Heritage Hill weren’t big, bit it took a while to cut through mobs. An hour of PoE left me tired, and hour of Deadfire made want to see more. Neketaka feels bigger than Defiance Bay and Eir Glanfath. But while exploring the latter two was a slog, Neketaka gives you reasons to go in and out throughout the whole game, making the experience much more enjoyable. Compare Gilded Vale to Port Maje, Roderick’s Hold to Fort Deadlight, Dyrford to Dunnage.

i still can't see how people see deadfire as smaller, just what are they using to judge it? it has to be drastically different from the tape-measure i'm using. 

[gloomseeker]

It took me 70 hours to go through Deadfire which is roughly the time I spent on my last Pillars playthrough (base game and White March). 

 

With that being said at the moment there are more players who have unlocked the achievement for finishing the main quest in Deadfire than players who have reached the level cap.

 

For the record reaching the level cap isn't that difficult if you go out and explore. 

 

Draw your own conclusions. 

[Townsendvol]

Bigger then POE 1 but at times feels like less, due to it been spread out.

 

That's more about size of dungeons as lots little short dungeons.

My thoughts exactly. 

[Karkarov]

This isn't really a question right?  If you play Deadfire to anything resembling completion you will see it is much larger than the original Eternity base game.  Is it larger than Eternity + White March 1 and 2?  No.  It probably will be once it get's it's expansions though.

 

I think the game feels bigger because of all the features they added. As far as content and length, the game is a good bit smaller than PoE1's base game. I suspect this is ultimately due to Pillars 1 having less features and being more focused on building an actual story and the foundation of lore. It just takes alot more.

And now you know why polls and things on this forum don't work.  Because your resident Eternity haters like Sonicmage get to take them to.

Bear in mind guys, the dude posting this opinion has also not actually played Deadfire.  He is omitting that fact here though.

 

Are you sure you aren't from RPG Codex Sonic?

Edited June 1, 2018 by Karkarov

[the_dog_days]

My first Deadfire run was 58 hours. This was after I did every quest, grabbed all companions and sidekicks, beat every optional boss, did a romance (for science), and playing on PotD. My first POE run was 90 hours when I didn't finish the Endless Paths, had several quests I didn't wrap up, chose not to take two companions, and played on Normal. Part of this difference is in the number of fights, part of it is the difficulty isn't balanced yet, but mostly its because the Deadfire is a bit shorter than POE without the expansion.

[Karkarov]

My first Deadfire run was 58 hours. This was after I did every quest, grabbed all companions and sidekicks, beat every optional boss, did a romance (for science), and playing on PotD. My first POE run was 90 hours when I didn't finish the Endless Paths, had several quests I didn't wrap up, chose not to take two companions, and played on Normal. Part of this difference is in the number of fights, part of it is the difficulty isn't balanced yet, but mostly its because the Deadfire is a bit shorter than POE without the expansion.

No clue how you managed that man.  There is literally more content in Deadfire, it isn't a debate.  There is more dialog, more maps, more bounties, more factions with more quests per faction, more everything except meaningless trash fights and main quest.

 

My first pillars run was about 45 hours and I did everything except re visit undead Raedric, which takes maybe 30 minutes.  My first Deadfire run where I did everything?  80.  Are you like reading every book in the game and skipping the books that are repeats from Eternity or something?

[Mikeymoonshine]

Poe had more large areas and bigger dungeons for the most part but a lot of those were mostly just trash mobs. There were whole areas in POE that were just trash mobs.

 

Deadfire has a lot less of that and you can avoid many of the less important fights if you wish.

 

This is why people aren't agreeing. You spent more time fighting through every area in POE than you do in deadfire. The main quest in POE is also longer but then deadfire has much more side content.

 

So yeah deadfire is bigger than Poe but not bigger than Poe + expansions.

[Tigranes]

Deadfire's taking me longer to get through the first time than POE1 vanilla, for sure. Just goes to show that hours played is never a reliable metric - some people take 30 while another takes 120, and it's not even consistent within a single individual across games. Saying "x took me 200 hours it's definitely super long" just has no validity.

 

And I'm perfectly fine with that size range. I don't think RPGs always have to get bigger and bigger, different games have a different cutoff where the game content and systems start to overstay their welcome.

 

One also assumes that over time, Deadfire will get new content and get bigger like POE1 did.

Edited June 1, 2018 by Tigranes

[Masticator]

I voted smaller, but only by a small margin. Most of that smalless is in greatly reduced dialogue. The reduced dialogue is probably the biggest reason my game was shorter.

[the_dog_days]

 

My first Deadfire run was 58 hours. This was after I did every quest, grabbed all companions and sidekicks, beat every optional boss, did a romance (for science), and playing on PotD. My first POE run was 90 hours when I didn't finish the Endless Paths, had several quests I didn't wrap up, chose not to take two companions, and played on Normal. Part of this difference is in the number of fights, part of it is the difficulty isn't balanced yet, but mostly its because the Deadfire is a bit shorter than POE without the expansion.

No clue how you managed that man. There is literally more content in Deadfire, it isn't a debate. There is more dialog, more maps, more bounties, more factions with more quests per faction, more everything except meaningless trash fights and main quest.

 

My first pillars run was about 45 hours and I did everything except re visit undead Raedric, which takes maybe 30 minutes. My first Deadfire run where I did everything? 80. Are you like reading every book in the game and skipping the books that are repeats from Eternity or something?

Someone actually looked up the numbers and there are 30+ more quests in POE (vanilla) than Deadfire. There are more bounties, but I completed most of those before ever getting the quests. The main quest is way shorter. While there might be more written words, due to the way the game is structured you don't see as large a percentage of the total words written in Deadfire compared to POE. Add in that I let the AI do all the combat, and its kinda a wonder that Deadfire lasted me as long as it did (I did a lot of pointless sailing around the map to uncover all the fog of war).

 

Also, I didn't read every book in either game.

Edited June 1, 2018 by the_dog_days

[Karkarov]

 

 

My first Deadfire run was 58 hours. This was after I did every quest, grabbed all companions and sidekicks, beat every optional boss, did a romance (for science), and playing on PotD. My first POE run was 90 hours when I didn't finish the Endless Paths, had several quests I didn't wrap up, chose not to take two companions, and played on Normal. Part of this difference is in the number of fights, part of it is the difficulty isn't balanced yet, but mostly its because the Deadfire is a bit shorter than POE without the expansion.

No clue how you managed that man. There is literally more content in Deadfire, it isn't a debate. There is more dialog, more maps, more bounties, more factions with more quests per faction, more everything except meaningless trash fights and main quest.

 

My first pillars run was about 45 hours and I did everything except re visit undead Raedric, which takes maybe 30 minutes. My first Deadfire run where I did everything? 80. Are you like reading every book in the game and skipping the books that are repeats from Eternity or something?

Someone actually looked up the numbers and there are 30+ more quests in POE (vanilla) than Deadfire. There are more bounties, but I completed most of those before ever getting the quests. The main quest is way shorter. While there might be more written words, due to the way the game is structured you don't see as large a percentage of the total words written in Deadfire compared to POE. Add in that I let the AI do all the combat, and its kinda a wonder that Deadfire lasted me as long as it did (I did a lot of pointless sailing around the map to uncover all the fog of war).

 

Also, I didn't read every book in either game.

Most of the quests in Eternity 1 were also trash quests you could complete easily.  Like the merchant at Defiance Bay's broken bridge. That quest takes a whole 3-5 minutes and doesn't even require leaving the one map.

[rtokar]

I never hear anyone talk about this, but I really miss the wilderness areas of POE1. There is only one I can think of in Deadfire, and it's small. the swamp zone with the druid boss.

[Wormerine]

I never hear anyone talk about this, but I really miss the wilderness areas of POE1. There is only one I can think of in Deadfire, and it's small. the swamp zone with the druid boss.

There are couple, but I don’t miss those. Worldmap pretty much offers the same appeal to me. I don’t need to explore an empty field. Wilderness of PoE vanilla - meh

Wilderness of White March - good.

[the_dog_days]

 

 

 

My first Deadfire run was 58 hours. This was after I did every quest, grabbed all companions and sidekicks, beat every optional boss, did a romance (for science), and playing on PotD. My first POE run was 90 hours when I didn't finish the Endless Paths, had several quests I didn't wrap up, chose not to take two companions, and played on Normal. Part of this difference is in the number of fights, part of it is the difficulty isn't balanced yet, but mostly its because the Deadfire is a bit shorter than POE without the expansion.

No clue how you managed that man. There is literally more content in Deadfire, it isn't a debate. There is more dialog, more maps, more bounties, more factions with more quests per faction, more everything except meaningless trash fights and main quest.

 

My first pillars run was about 45 hours and I did everything except re visit undead Raedric, which takes maybe 30 minutes. My first Deadfire run where I did everything? 80. Are you like reading every book in the game and skipping the books that are repeats from Eternity or something?

Someone actually looked up the numbers and there are 30+ more quests in POE (vanilla) than Deadfire. There are more bounties, but I completed most of those before ever getting the quests. The main quest is way shorter. While there might be more written words, due to the way the game is structured you don't see as large a percentage of the total words written in Deadfire compared to POE. Add in that I let the AI do all the combat, and its kinda a wonder that Deadfire lasted me as long as it did (I did a lot of pointless sailing around the map to uncover all the fog of war).

 

Also, I didn't read every book in either game.

Most of the quests in Eternity 1 were also trash quests you could complete easily.  Like the merchant at Defiance Bay's broken bridge. That quest takes a whole 3-5 minutes and doesn't even require leaving the one map.

 

 

Oh boy. After this, I'm ducking out of this thread for good. If not requiring leaving the map is the distinction of a trash quest, Deadfire is filled with trash quests. Also, the bounties (which almost if not more than 50% of the Deadfire quests) lack even that much depth. I'm not saying Deadfire is bad (heck, I played it straight through twice in a couple of weeks), but (to address the topic of the thread) it is in no way larger than vanilla POE (which, depending on your perspective, can either be a good or bad thing).