After playing Kingmaker..

[Slotharingia]

7 hours ago, KaineParker said:

As other have said completion of a game is relatively uncommon and not a good indication for long games like Deadfire, but the steam achievements reveal something more interesting where less than 2/3s of players made it off the starting island.  To compare this to PoE, less than half of players made it to the end of Act 1, which to be fair is significantly longer than getting off the island, and only 13% finished the game https://steamcommunity.com/stats/291650/achievements

 

I do recall the beginning of Deadfire - the intro, being horrendously tedious before they added the option to skip it, which I always indulge in. That may put new players off, and it might also be quite confusing without having played 1. I also use a mod that turns off the narrator which makes it a lot better. 

[xzar_monty]

2 hours ago, Slotharingia said:

I do recall the beginning of Deadfire - the intro, being horrendously tedious before they added the option to skip it, which I always indulge in. That may put new players off, and it might also be quite confusing without having played 1. I also use a mod that turns off the narrator which makes it a lot better. 

This is actually a very good point. The beginning of Deadfire is indeed extraordinarily unfortunate in two different ways. It's way too long, and the narration is bad. I can easily understand someone -- or indeed something like 16,728 someones -- saying, Bugger this for a game of soldiers, I'm switching to Solitaire.

Edited November 7, 2019 by xzar_monty

[algroth]

9 hours ago, KaineParker said:

And one last thing, Planescape Torment is the IE game that has aged the worst. It's a great interactive storybook but the gameplay is absolutely horrendous, and I can't justify replaying it like I could BG or IWD. Fite me irl.

I think that the one advantage of games with a more rapid character growth or with a greater high-level focus in the IE system tend to work better from a combat standpoint simply because of the inherent flaws in the system. Standing about missing eight consecutive hits over eight consecutive turns is a kind of tedium that not even Planescape: Torment has to deal with for long. Planescape: Torment certainly has some of the worst combat in the game but I think it's mostly because it's really flat and undercooked, with no interesting or diverse encounters despite the array of creatures you meet along the way - but I do genuinely find Baldur's Gate to offer a more frustrating experience at the end of the day. And more to the point, contrary to any of the other IE games, Torment's focus isn't in combat either and a lot of it is either focused to very specific areas or largely avoidable as well. In other forms of gameplay (see exploration, investigation, dialogue interactions, etc.) I do think Torment has Baldur's Gate beat - and on top of this it also relies far more heavily on narrative or aesthetic elements which may age but not as badly as the technical side to the IE games. Generally speaking I do think Baldur's Gate feels just as arcaic from a design/mechanical point and is nowhere as enjoyable today as Torment.

[thelee]

8 hours ago, Slotharingia said:

I do recall the beginning of Deadfire - the intro, being horrendously tedious before they added the option to skip it, which I always indulge in. That may put new players off, and it might also be quite confusing without having played 1. I also use a mod that turns off the narrator which makes it a lot better. 

I don't think this is a very good explanation - BG2 had a very long intro and and an intro dungeon that could become mindless filler the umpteenth time you do it. (Meanwhile I'm on like my umpteenth run of Deadfire and Gorecci Street is still a challenge.) Though I actually thought it worked in BG2's favor because it was a fairly "cinematic" opening with a dynamic cutscene given the time and how non-cinematic BG and IWD were. It was kind of fun being dropped in media res. Similarly I liked suddenly being tossed into a more cinematic/cut-scene-y Deadfire intro.

That being said, if another thread is any indication, Deadfire might be a bit too in media res in terms of new-player complexity, whereas BG2 requires less active lore knowledge.

Edited November 7, 2019 by thelee

[xzar_monty]

But boy that Chateau Irenicus was scary the first time. The intro gave me such a sense of urgency and looming threat that I had to seriously consider (this is 100% true) whether I dared to rest in there. It was only later that I learned that Irenicus, long-living fella that he was until I killed him, was prepared to wait a hundred thousand years -- or longer -- by the Promenade entrance to begin his fireworks and end those cowled wizards.

Edited November 7, 2019 by xzar_monty

[thelee]

2 minutes ago, xzar_monty said:

The intro gave me such a sense of urgency and looming threat that I had to seriously consider (this is 100% true) whether I dared to rest in there.

Imoen complains and will actually leave your party if you take too long, which is a nice way Bioware added extra urgency. Though Imoen will leave your party just to wait until the heat death of the universe in the Promenade by Irenicus (and how did she get past all those traps without setting them off?)

[xzar_monty]

Yeah, Imoen is the one strange NPC during that opening sequence. Like, try to get her killed...

[Gfted1]

Iirc, shes wearing a special (unremovable) belt that prevented her death under any circumstance.

EDIT: Imoen's Belt

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Regarding using steam achievements to track completion, I forgot to take into account mods and console commands (they disable achievements in all games), as such the % of achievements only reflects Steam players who did that without using mods or the console and Steam players who used mods or console with some kind of work around like the IE mod for PoE. This is more likely to affect Deadfire and DOS2, because they have Steam workshop which means more mod use, but with what data we have access to there is no way to tell what number of players used mods and the progress made by said players was.

12 hours ago, Slotharingia said:

I do recall the beginning of Deadfire - the intro, being horrendously tedious before they added the option to skip it, which I always indulge in. That may put new players off, and it might also be quite confusing without having played 1. I also use a mod that turns off the narrator which makes it a lot better. 

Yeah, I think the game shouldn't slam you with an intro that keeps you out of actually playing the game. My ideal would be to have the introduction woven in to gameplay, PoE actually did this pretty well because after getting a brief vignette of your current condition and character creation you were placed directly into the game. 

9 hours ago, algroth said:

I think that the one advantage of games with a more rapid character growth or with a greater high-level focus in the IE system tend to work better from a combat standpoint simply because of the inherent flaws in the system. Standing about missing eight consecutive hits over eight consecutive turns is a kind of tedium that not even Planescape: Torment has to deal with for long. Planescape: Torment certainly has some of the worst combat in the game but I think it's mostly because it's really flat and undercooked, with no interesting or diverse encounters despite the array of creatures you meet along the way - but I do genuinely find Baldur's Gate to offer a more frustrating experience at the end of the day. And more to the point, contrary to any of the other IE games, Torment's focus isn't in combat either and a lot of it is either focused to very specific areas or largely avoidable as well. In other forms of gameplay (see exploration, investigation, dialogue interactions, etc.) I do think Torment has Baldur's Gate beat - and on top of this it also relies far more heavily on narrative or aesthetic elements which may age but not as badly as the technical side to the IE games. Generally speaking I do think Baldur's Gate feels just as arcaic from a design/mechanical point and is nowhere as enjoyable today as Torment.

PST's gameplay outside of conversations (which you are forced to do in specific parts of the game) is offputting to the point I can't really justify spending several hours playing it again. It's just not very good as a game, what is good about it feels completely separate from the existing mechanics and is why I feel like it would work better as an interactive storybook than it does as a D&D game. BG, while bad, does have a niche as one of the few truly low-level games out there and can be imported to what folks around here still consider to be one of the greatest games of all time, as such I would have an easier time justifying playing BG, despite the bad 2e mechanics and either very bad or non-existent encounter design.

[asnjas]

The story has to start somewhere. The game needs to create a shoving off point where you have story context and simple game mechanics. 

Yeah sure youre all hotshot veterans, but most players are not. Most players dont know the story beg to end and mechanics inside and out. 

The intro familiarizes the player with both before shoving them off to an open ended game.

Plus how do you expect a story to begin without a set in stone intro "dungeon"? Even choose your own adventure books have the same page one. No matter what decisions you make, page one is identical for each read. 

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

1 hour ago, asnjas said:

The story has to start somewhere. The game needs to create a shoving off point where you have story context and simple game mechanics. 

Yeah sure youre all hotshot veterans, but most players are not. Most players dont know the story beg to end and mechanics inside and out. 

The intro familiarizes the player with both before shoving them off to an open ended game.

Plus how do you expect a story to begin without a set in stone intro "dungeon"? Even choose your own adventure books have the same page one. No matter what decisions you make, page one is identical for each read. 

When I say intro, I'm talking about cinematics and non-gameplay sequences, not the 1st area or whatever. When you start Deadfire there's a 10 minute segment before character creation that shoves lore down your throat (it teaches you nothing about mechanics), and you could not skip it at launch. If it's skipped, you miss nothing but some bare bones context about what happened in PoE that could have been effectively repeated by the first few people you talk to in the game with nothing lost.

To this I think that the intro should be a minute at most that sets up the immediate situation and leads directly to character creation. The starting area absolutely should inform of the (basic) lore and teach the gameplay basics (combat, stealth, crafting, etc.).

[asnjas]

Other people were talking about the 1st area and not the cinematic. 

[bugarup]

11 hours ago, thelee said:

 (and how did she get past all those traps without setting them off?)

These puny traps is but a road bump for someone who can trek back to the Copper Coronet from Spellhold all by herself. 

Edited November 8, 2019 by bugarup
i can haz grammer

[Slotharingia]

3 hours ago, asnjas said:

Other people were talking about the 1st area and not the cinematic. 

I was certainly referring to the intro sequence *before* the beginning island, as ought to be evident by my saying you can (now) skip it.

[asnjas]

Heh, i stand by what i said. Other people.

[kanisatha]

I wish Sawyer would at least occasionally come on this forum to discuss these kinds of issues. He's certainly willing to talk about it, but apparently only on every other forum or platform but this one.

[wih]

34 minutes ago, kanisatha said:

I wish Sawyer would at least occasionally come on this forum to discuss these kinds of issues. He's certainly willing to talk about it, but apparently only on every other forum or platform but this one.

Yup, he seems to prefer forums with names like "Something Awful" and "Badgame" , I wonder what's up with that. I am still awaiting admin approval for that Badgame forum, for three days already.

Edited November 8, 2019 by wih

[FleetFeet]

56 minutes ago, wih said:

Yup, he seems to prefer forums with names like "Something Awful" and "Badgame" , I wonder what's up with that. I am still awaiting admin approval for that Badgame forum, for three days already.

Hmm,  when you put it that way perhaps it does require a Freudian interpretation.  

[xzar_monty]

17 hours ago, kanisatha said:

I wish Sawyer would at least occasionally come on this forum to discuss these kinds of issues. He's certainly willing to talk about it, but apparently only on every other forum or platform but this one.

Could you name a few of these forums, please?

[Infinitron]

1 hour ago, xzar_monty said:

Could you name a few of these forums, please?

Something Awful, badgame.net

https://jesawyer.tumblr.com/post/188915786456/will-there-be-a-pillars-3-that-is-not-something

Quote

 

Quote

Will there be a Pillars 3?

That is not something that I get to decide, but I do think that the relatively low sales of Deadfire mean that if we consider making another Pillars game in this style, we’re going to have to re-examine the entire format of the game.

It is difficult to know exactly why a sequel sells worse than its predecessor if both games review relatively well.  Is it because the first game satisfied the existing need and the audience just wasn’t interested in the second?  Is it because awareness was lower for the sequel?  Is it because despite the strong reviews and the strong sales for the first game, people didn’t “really” like it?  Maybe it’s a combination of all of these things.

The problem is that without really understanding the reason(s), it’s hard to know how to move forward.  It would be easier in some ways if Deadfire were also a colossal critical failure and we could point to the massive screw-ups that we needed to address.  Players did criticize the low difficulty at launch and the main plot, which I think are fair and reasonable, but those problems alone don’t really explain the difference in sales.  And while player reviews were weaker for Deadfire than for Pillars 1, professional criticism tended to say that Deadfire was an improvement over the first game in most areas.

(Yes, Deadfire has an 88 Metacritic and Pillars 1 has an 89 Metacritic, but IMO Pillars 1′s review scores benefited from a nostalgia bump.)

Players who hate RTwP combat will say that it’s because Deadfire continued using RTwP combat, in contrast to the phenomenally better-selling (and better-reviewed) turn-based Divinity: OS2.  Even if that’s true, Pathfinder: Kingmaker, which generally had lower review scores than Deadfire, sold better than Deadfire and had RTwP combat.

I’m sure some of the people reading this think they know precisely why Deadfire sold worse than Pillars 1.  I don’t have that confidence, which is one of several reasons why I am leery about trying to direct a sequel.  I couldn’t give our (Obsidian’s) audience the game that they wanted and without understanding where I went wrong, I would be guessing at what the problems are and how to remedy them.

 

 

Edited November 9, 2019 by Infinitron

[Infinitron]

 

 

Btw:

 

[wih]

Making a good game and then not knowing why it failed. This sucks. I read somewhere Planescape Torment also had low sales though.

[Boeroer]

I read that Josh is not writing here anymore because there used to be times when things got unreasonably ugly.

Since then he seems to prefer forums/platforms that are not that easily accessed by badly brought up gamer mobs.

Besides Twitter...

Since then the forums did change (as far as I can tell) and is much more friendly, but it seems that horse is out the barn.

 

[Slotharingia]

16 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

I read that Josh is not writing here anymore because there used to be times when things got unreasonably ugly.

Since then he seems to prefer forums/platforms that are not that easily accessed by badly brought up gamer mobs.

Besides Twitter...

Since then the forums did change (as far as I can tell) and is much more friendly, but it seems that horse is out the barn.

 

LOL. It is their own forum. Not like they can't up the moderating if people can't behave

[Boeroer]

They did. LOL. But apparently it was too late. 

As you may have noticed not that many Obsidianites are posting here.

If they don't feel comfortable in their own company's forum it's the fault of the (former) forum members, not the fault of the moderators.

You'll have no problems communicating with them on Twitter (if you're being decent of course). 

 

Edited November 9, 2019 by Boeroer