Question to devs: content complete?

[juanval]

Perhaps a PoE3 would be tedious for people who hasn't played PoE1 and 2, but a new isometric game in another region of Eora not based in the Watcher would be interesting.

 

The same way Obsidian can create DLC, they could develop a new isometric game with a small team, something like Tiranny.

 

 

Thanks to Obsidian devs for participating in this thread . They are like Eora's gods.

[daven]

I feel like we keep having this same conversation. So I guess I'll say the same thing again.

 

I'm done with the Pillars universe, I've enjoyed my time with it and its time to move on. Maybe if they think of a really good idera then do it, but not just churn it out for the sake of completing a trilogy. Why does everything need to be a trilogy?!

 

Make a Hard sci fi isometric RPG. Go on, get on with it!

[Triple - A Foxy Lad]

Fk that, id rather not be left hanging on all those plot hooks.

[Triple - A Foxy Lad]

As a newcomer to the PoE series, here's what I observed from more mainstream gaming sites.

 

4) As a tangent to the above, bad word of mouth. Part of it is people really displeased with the pacing of the main game...

 

5) The other part of it is that Obsidian's reputation of releasing games that are broken at release has become very overblown as of late, though PoE2 did little to alleviate this image (depending on what people's definition of 'broken' is, could mean the DLC stuff above too).

 

6) The game's a direct sequel to the first, and the first game didn't exactly hit it into the mainstream either.

 

ye, but dos2 suffered from a nonsense crit path, a flurry of heavy and necessary patching, and being a sequel to something that sold a little more, but was comparable in success to poe1. think theres something else going on here.

 

(am also highly amused that apparently the obs of *today* are the dudes that release borked games. man if these folk were around for kotor2 and chums. lol.)

 

im v much of the mind that dos2's big saving grace was 'multiplayer and lots of fun gimmicky stuff u can enjoy with ur friends'. i was able to get my friends to buy dos2 bcs of that. peeps didnt buy dos2 hoping it would be good, they bought it hoping it would be a laugh. i was only able to get one of my friends to buy deadfire and he was like another version of me.

 

might also be worth noting that people dont expect good writing from larian. so people unlikely to express any disappointment re: that. wise move in a way. larian have lowered expectations enough that they could write any old junk and peeps not really care. is not something that will harm sales.

 

like *i* was disappointed. i legit thought they were due to up their game, but what do i matter.

 

4) As a tangent to that, quite a number of people are also displeased with the large amount of DLCs being announced pretty much at release, and assumed that the game's overall quality will operate under the assumption that you will get them all. Even streamers like CohhCarnage have explicitly avoided streaming any of the DLC until all three have been released, to do another full playthrough of all of them at once.

 

this true. im one of those cats who who holds off on a completionist playthrough until everythings dropped. it raises question of how to deliver this much content and polish - whether or not its possible thru other means. larian method is to drop normal, then free enhanced edition upgrade a year or so later to give game second wind. think obs method of dlcs, long-term support and active work on game eventually produces better final product, but larian can shift more copies sooner, which is be all and end all... until we get five years later into the long-tail, and that doesnt pay the bills now.

 

obs/black isle have now been in this long-tail trap so long it would be hilarious if peeps livelihoods werent at stake. fo1+fo2 earned their cult but got crushed in sales by baldurs gate. PS:T is one of the pinnacles of crpg narrative design, but no one gave a **** when that first dropped. new vegas now considered high point of series by many folk, but initial reception to it was underwhelming. historys a fking closed loop, lol.

[the_dog_days]

I feel like we keep having this same conversation. So I guess I'll say the same thing again.

 

I'm done with the Pillars universe, I've enjoyed my time with it and its time to move on. Maybe if they think of a really good idera then do it, but not just churn it out for the sake of completing a trilogy. Why does everything need to be a trilogy?!

 

Make a Hard sci fi isometric RPG. Go on, get on with it!

 

Given that Obsidian usually has three games in the works at the same time, a POE3 wouldn't preclude the existence of an isometric sci-fi.

[kanisatha]

 

I feel like we keep having this same conversation. So I guess I'll say the same thing again.

 

I'm done with the Pillars universe, I've enjoyed my time with it and its time to move on. Maybe if they think of a really good idera then do it, but not just churn it out for the sake of completing a trilogy. Why does everything need to be a trilogy?!

 

Make a Hard sci fi isometric RPG. Go on, get on with it!

 

Given that Obsidian usually has three games in the works at the same time, a POE3 wouldn't preclude the existence of an isometric sci-fi.

Nope. The Outer Worlds is the sci-fi game. Too bad it is first-person, but that is Obsidian's sci-fi setting from here on. Sawyer's historical RPG idea is much more likely, as well as more in the Pillars setting.

 

As for the whole bit about comparisons with D:OS2, there is really only one thing about D:OS2 that got so many people to buy the game: co-op play. That's the new "in" thing with many young (millennial) gamers these days. But since I consider co-op/multiplayer play to be utterly stupid, I'm not going to be swayed by an argument for making more games co-op.

Edited December 18, 2018 by kanisatha

[Cartoons Plural]

i hope someday we can have a thread where sales isnt brought up

[Wormerine]

i hope someday we can have a thread where sales isnt brought up

I hope someday we can live in a world where money doesn't matter.

[Katarack21]

 

i hope someday we can have a thread where sales isnt brought up

I hope someday we can live in a world where money doesn't matter.

 

I hope someday we can live in a world where people play games without giving a **** about how much money they make because it doesn't actually matter *TO YOU OR YOUR EXPERIENCE WITH THE GAME*.

[Manveru123]

It does matter in the long run. A bad selling game rarely produces sequels.

[SonicMage117]

A few more patches.

 

Don't expect any more expansions or sequels, unless it's in the form of books and/or mobile phone card games

 

Oddly enough, the game (Deadfire) is coming to consoles, as if they weren't smart enough to learm from their past mistake. That being that Pillars 1 remains one of the worst selling console games this gen lol

Edited December 20, 2018 by SonicMage117

[Tagaziel]

i hope someday we can have a thread where sales isnt brought up

Did we finally have some reliable numbers on that front or is everyone operating on assumptions?

[Manveru123]

A few more patches.

 

Don't expect any more expansions or sequels, unless it's in the form of books and/or mobile phone card games

 

Oddly enough, the game (Deadfire) is coming to consoles, as if they weren't smart enough to learm from their past mistake. That being that Pillars 1 remains one of the worst selling console games this gen lol

Eh, they just gave the game away to a different studio for porting IIRC. No big deal if it doesn't work, additional moniez is never a bad thing.

[SonicMage117]

 

i hope someday we can have a thread where sales isnt brought up

Did we finally have some reliable numbers on that front or is everyone operating on assumptions?

I just made a thread you may or may not find interesting on the subject.

 

https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/107394-investor-says-deadfire-sells-well-below-expectations/?p=2124808&do=findComment&comment=2124808

[house2fly]

It's no mistake if it's not them paying for it!

[house2fly]

 

 

i hope someday we can have a thread where sales isnt brought up

I hope someday we can live in a world where money doesn't matter.

I hope someday we can live in a world where people play games without giving a **** about how much money they make because it doesn't actually matter *TO YOU OR YOUR EXPERIENCE WITH THE GAME*.

it potentially could- more income from the game is potentially more money to keep people on for post-launch work like patching in additional features and DLC. I don't have any real complaints about the DLC and post-launch support, but could they have fixed a few more bugs or added that fifth megaboss if more people had bought the game? How much bigger could the DLCs have been if a few more people had worked on them? These theoretical questions are the only real way my experience is affected by sales

[Tagaziel]

https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/107394-investor-says-deadfire-sells-well-below-expectations/?p=2124871

 

So it's a librarian's napkin estimate at best.

[Cartoons Plural]

It does matter in the long run. A bad selling game rarely produces sequels.

 

well there's a couple things about this but most of the discussion about sales is in relation to catalouging every way the game failed to be good enough to sell a lot of copies which imo is extremely bad analysis and moot. its one of those things that feeds into whatever nerdcore hate boner people have for every little flaw the game has and how we have these guys with no avatar showing up to complain about stuff like "i hit max level too soon" which is still not an actual complaint its just stupid and annoying crap honestly. "would the game sell better if we didn't have ship to ship combat" i mean its not great but it that hard to hit buttons and ram the other ship then nuke the crew, guys, hey? i've seen bad game elements fail harder than this for sure. yeah i wish sid meiers pirates and a d&d game were merged together into a glorious whole but they didn't manage to do it this time.

 

i've been playing xcom 2 for the past month or so and it sold a ton of copies and has many, many, many flaws. i wonder if it didn't sell if people would be on the forums like "new brazil consists of most of the former gran colombia and a small sliver of northern amazon, the least populated part of brazil. do you think if these guys googled south america once the game would have sold better?" i'm still not sure that the story makes sense and its big "twist" is like "i thought i was already supposed to know this" and yet still its one of the most fun squad rpgs to play. and one of those flaws seems to be that midgame is more difficult than the end game save for the final assault of course

 

second i wish we could just enjoy the 2 epic role playing games we have right now instead of worrying about future sequels which may not be any good anyway

 

lastly as a 90s gamer sometimes your best selling fallout 2 doesn't get a sequel for ten years and then its made by todd howard

Edited January 6, 2019 by Cartoons Plural

[juanval]

On amazon, Deadfire for XBOX release is planned for 31 March, and there is an obsidian edition on gog https://www.gog.com/game/pillars_of_eternity_ii_deadfire_obsidian_edition_release

 

We can say Deadfire is content complete. Let's see what happens with turn based option for combats.

[Manveru123]

 

It does matter in the long run. A bad selling game rarely produces sequels.

 

well there's a couple things about this but most of the discussion about sales is in relation to catalouging every way the game failed to be good enough to sell a lot of copies which imo is extremely bad analysis and moot. its one of those things that feeds into whatever nerdcore hate boner people have for every little flaw the game has and how we have these guys with no avatar showing up to complain about stuff like "i hit max level too soon" which is still not an actual complaint its just stupid and annoying crap honestly. "would the game sell better if we didn't have ship to ship combat" i mean its not great but it that hard to hit buttons and ram the other ship then nuke the crew, guys, hey? i've seen bad game elements fail harder than this for sure. yeah i wish sid meiers pirates and a d&d game were merged together into a glorious whole but they didn't manage to do it this time.

 

i've been playing xcom 2 for the past month or so and it sold a ton of copies and has many, many, many flaws. i wonder if it didn't sell if people would be on the forums like "new brazil consists of most of the former gran colombia and a small sliver of northern amazon, the least populated part of brazil. do you think if these guys googled south america once the game would have sold better?" i'm still not sure that the story makes sense and its big "twist" is like "i thought i was already supposed to know this" and yet still its one of the most fun squad rpgs to play. and one of those flaws seems to be that midgame is more difficult than the end game save for the final assault of course

 

second i wish we could just enjoy the 2 epic role playing games we have right now instead of worrying about future sequels which may not be any good anyway

 

lastly as a 90s gamer sometimes your best selling fallout 2 doesn't get a sequel for ten years and then its made by todd howard

 

O hey, attacking the lack of a forum avatar. That's a new low. Maybe that's my face huh?

 

How many "flaws" the game has is secondary. What's important is how good are the good parts. In games like Xcom they are apparently so good that flaws become irrelevant. Daggerfall was one of the most bugged games in history but it still sold well (for that time at least). The opinion of majority is what decides if the game becomes a commercial success or not. What Obs tried to do in Deadfire is to instead appeal to the core fans by constantly remaking the game in their image to keep them happy. When you release a title that is not an early access version, you can be sure as hell that constantly making massive changes to it will result in negative feedback from the less hardcore players, who happen to be the majority. Even Blizzard decided that their fans are not that relevant and is releasing a new Diablo game on mobile instead - it caused negative feedback, but will have 0 reprecussions in the long run (other than the fact that they will make tons of money from chinese mobile market).

 

Also Fallout 2 never got a proper continuation because Interplay closed Black Isle Studios. They decided to ignore their hype train and go for console audience, in which they failed.

[Mikeymoonshine]

I feel like the hype just kind of died for this series before this game even came out. Yes it was successfully funded but it didn't have as many backers as the first and I feel like a lot of people just didn't like the first game much.

 

Poe1 benifited from nostalgia and the whole Kickstarter craze but there are several isometric crowd funded RPGs now and several of those projects have been disappointing for some people.

 

I think maybe the reason why something like divinity OS is so popular and deadfire isn't is that the former is a more light-hearted game. The POE setting is a bit dreary even when it tries hard not to be, that doesn't bother me but I think it might put a lot of people off.

 

POE3 could happen though, the series still does have its following.

[house2fly]

Hearing about how lighthearted Divinity OS is is probably the main reason I've yet to bother with it. I'm glad Pillars 1 was around to give me a nice dry grim setting, lol

[Mikeymoonshine]

Hearing about how lighthearted Divinity OS is is probably the main reason I've yet to bother with it. I'm glad Pillars 1 was around to give me a nice dry grim setting, lol

 

I'm not saying that's necessarily a good thing and OS has it's grimdark elements. I just mean it's kind of less serious with the way it's written. Kinda like BG2 or Dragon Age. Dark plotlines but the characters and the mood is more upbeat. POE and deadfire has it's jokes and it's lighthearted moments but they are few and far between. I just think that might be a big part of why it's not so popular. 

[xzar_monty]

Poe1 benifited from nostalgia and the whole Kickstarter craze but there are several isometric crowd funded RPGs now and several of those projects have been disappointing for some people.

 

PoE1, and Pathfinder: Kingmaker. What else? Being a fan of this particular genre (and essentially no other genre), I'd be happy to know. "Several" surely implies more than two.

[daven]

Numenera? I haven't played it but wasn't it billed as a sequel to Planescape? But that was a disappointment to many.

 

The Shadowrun games? Although Dragonfall was received very well.

SHRUG