Any Chance of Pillars Of Eternity III?

[Wormerine]

11 hours ago, xzar_monty said:

But this is subjective, of course. I personally found PoE's opening to be superb. 

I meant Deadfire's opening, 

I remember it being a common complain, though one specific one which stuck in my mind was BunnyHop.
https://youtu.be/QqNaj04lCE4

I must say, I was puzzled somewhat by his review, as someone who loved PoE1, he should be at least somewhat invested in PoE2 story. And he complains about how difficult to understand writing can be, while showing an except from the conversation where that is used for comedic effect. Complains about being expected what a beiwac is, while showing and praising PoE1 intro, which explains what beiwac is. 

At some points I felt it might have been a high level sarcasm which is just beyond my comprehension. But no, it seems that the critique was genuine. 

There are also some false information in there, which is disappointing, considering how into research SBH tends to be. 

[Crucis]

On 8/18/2019 at 3:46 AM, Boeroer said:

I agree on ship combat and VO. With "the biggest problems" of Deadfire I meant story and companions, their relationship system etc - I wasn't very clear there.
I meant the things in Deadfire that might put players off after buying the game. Ship combat is not great and may have taken away a lot of resources - but I think it hadn't a lot of impact on the sales numbers (although it's difficult to determine what would have been in the game or what could have been done better if those resources would have been there). But... you can easily skip ship combat - so that might not be a reason for the game to not sale well. Crunch, early writing lock and other problems because of VO: maybe the same? Player's won't see/feel any problems that might have been attached to this -  I don't know what could have been improved with the writing/companions etc if they didn't have to lock it down due to VO though. I'd say not too much but I honestly have no experience.

The quality or "catchyness" of the story/plot/writing/companions/relationships etc: maybe that's the bigger problem. 

But those problems were addressed in his presentation as well. 

I also think the "Pirates of the Carribean" setting had an impact on sales numbers. But I have no proof whatsoever and nobody talked about it yet so maybe that's just me.

I just hope (if they do a PoE3 in the first place) that they don't go the route they took from PoE1 to PoE2: reinventing the whole mechanics, redoing the whole engine. This obviously takes away a lot of resources which could otherwise have spend on story, quests, item-/character-/ability design and so on. It introduced a whole new nest of bugs and other issues again. Other stuff like loading times got kind of fixed, but you need more (beta) testing and so on and so forth. Maybe they had to redo most of the mechanics. Maybe it was good to reinvent the wheel for Deadfire. But now I think they are in a good spot (in that "technical" area) and should focus more on the content. With the DLCs they could do exactly that and I think they turned out pretty well. 

About process or culture: I guess Josh dosen't want to/cannot address those things in public as an employee. We know Josh is all for employees' rights, a game developer's union and against crunch and so on. Better processes would help that as well. I bet he's fighting for better processes and culture at the back of the stage.

I'm a bit late to this party, seeing as I haven't replayed POE2 in months and haven't visited here much in that time.  

Regardless, I have some thoughts...

1. Ship combat.  While it didn't bother me all that much once I got the hang of it, I really preferred just charging straight in and doing boarding actions, as I was here to play my party, not a ship combat mini-game.  However, I think that given the nature of the way that the Deadfire was structured, as an only marginally explored region, I think that it would have been questionable to have a system where you chartered a ship or hopped a ride.  I suppose that they could have defaulted to boarding actions without any ship v ship combat, but IMO there would have always been some who would have clamored for ship combat.  In the end, I think that the only way to really avoid ship combat in a POE2 might have been to not set it in the Deadfire in the first place, and instead set the story in some land where travel was entirely (or almost entirely) by land, same as in POE1.

2. I think that I agree that it'd be better to avoid reinventing the wheel, if they did do POE3.  And it'd be nice if they'd develop a story that didn't require some new game mechanics.

3. Personally, I don't get all that excited about voiceovers.  It just seems like an expensive way to make things more difficult for the producers.

[daven]

Use the same engine to make another game not set here. Something set in... Forgotten Realms perhaps. Using AD&D 2E.

[Boeroer]

That makes good use of the own IP then. You'd only have to cramp the current pillars mechanics of miss/graze/hit/crit/inspirations/afflictions/stats/skills into a different setting which used to have its own rules - or quickly reimplement and fit the AD&D rules to the current game engine which is maybe intertwined with the rest.

It all makes perfect sense, doesn't it?

Wait...

Now that I thought about it for a fraction of a second: it totally doesn't!

[Crucis]

19 hours ago, daven said:

Use the same engine to make another game not set here. Something set in... Forgotten Realms perhaps. Using AD&D 2E.

I foresee issues with this.

1. I'd imagine that they'd have to purchase a license to produce a D&D game set in the Forgotten Realms.

2. I'm not even sure that the owners of D&D would allow them to produce a game using the AD&D 2E ruleset.  Remember back to IWD2.  While I'm sure that Josh Sawyer would know better, I get the feeling that the D&D owners required Black Isle (IIRC) to make IWD2 using the 3E ruleset rather than just keep using the 2E ruleset, which would have undoubtedly been easier, since BI wouldn't have had to reinvent the wheel, so to speak.  So, I'm rather doubting that they'd be allowed to use the  2E ruleset in any future game.  And heck, I'm not even sure that they'd be able to even get a license to do any D&D game at this point.

[Crucis]

19 hours ago, Boeroer said:

That makes good use of the own IP then. You'd only have to cramp the current pillars mechanics of miss/graze/hit/crit/inspirations/afflictions/stats/skills into a different setting which used to have its own rules - or quickly reimplement and fit the AD&D rules to the current game engine which is maybe intertwined with the rest.

It all makes perfect sense, doesn't it?

Wait...

Now that I thought about it for a fraction of a second: it totally doesn't!

Boeroer, not that I think that it'd ever happen, but it might be easier to produce a game in the Forgotten Realms setting but using the PoE ruleset.  This would allow them to avoid having to spend a lot of time recreating all different sorts of game mechanics, just to comply with whatever D&D ruleset they were allowed to use.    It would require some small changes, I think.  (I don't remember what the current D&D rules are like.)  For example, removing firearms and adding in slings.

But is such a FR/POE game likely to happen?  When hell freezes over would be my best guess.

[Boeroer]

See my second sentence. Which was ironic.

Implementing D&D rules into the Deadfire "Engine" would be at least as painful and drain resources even more than implementing a whole new set of mechanics (like they did). Not only do you have to implement everything anew but you'd also make sure that the implementation doesn't deviate too much from the original (else booohooo fanboy grognards) while being somewhat balanced and playable with a CRPG (else booohooo non-grognards), talking to WotC all the time to make sure you're not producing a sacrilege (else booohooo WotC) and cutting so much stuff (else booohooo producer and director). I mean all power to Larian for trying - but it's against overwhelming odds. 

[uuuhhii]

 

On 9/1/2019 at 6:49 PM, Boeroer said:

I also think that the opening and the early game of PoE is the best part. 

raedric hold might be the best part of the game before dlc

but first few hours of poe are also filled with so many unnecessary and overcomplicated things

such as main character become both awaken and watcher

deadfire get that part right

main character have a damaged soul is much easier to understand as motivation

[Boeroer]

Maybe. But after countless playthroughs of PoE and Deadfire I still find the early game of PoE cool while the early game of Deadfire is kind of a tedium. 

[xzar_monty]

3 hours ago, Boeroer said:

Maybe. But after countless playthroughs of PoE and Deadfire I still find the early game of PoE cool while the early game of Deadfire is kind of a tedium. 

I wholeheartedly agree that Deadfire does start rather poorly, especially when compared to the best bits in the game: Beast of Winter, the Arkemyr storyline, the Benweth storyline, much of the Gullet, and much of Eder's personal story. Interestingly, the main storyline in Deadfire didn't interest me very much, but in PoE I found it absolutely great up until the point where I got to the Council of Stars and basically went ho-hum.

As far as I'm concerned, there isn't a single unnecessary or overcomplicated thing in the early part of PoE. It's all very good.

[daven]

I was only joking.

[Killyox]

Would love to see POE 3 Just with different protagonist. Still, if it's another IP I am fine with that. Deadfire gave me my fix of RPG, storytelling, char building, interestingfights etc. Lots of replayability. If they make another isometric game like this (and with RTWP and TB too!) I am all game!

 

Does the game have its flaws? Hell yeah, but the strong points far outweigh the weak points

[Wormerine]

On 9/4/2019 at 8:06 AM, Boeroer said:

See my second sentence. Which was ironic.