Why has PoE2 been sold so badly?

[Boeroer]

Same here with D:OS and D:OS II. Own both of them but don't like them at all.

[kanisatha]

4 hours ago, xzar_monty said:

Heck, I think D:OS2 is not a good game at all. I gave up on it in something like three hours, because it's so poor, in my view. But in terms of facts, I am one of the people who contributed to it being a huge success, even if I think it's rubbish.

Indeed, this is my recurring dilemma as well. For me, this was D:OS1. Hated the game, but by having bought it I contributed to its sales success. So I chose not to even try D:OS2, specifically so that I would not be contributing to its sales (yes, I know, I am just one person, but my one "vote" matters to me even if it has no meaningful impact on the greater scheme of things). And this is now my same dilemma with BG3.

[thelee]

I've been playing P:K and while I am obviously colored by enjoying Deadfire a lot (top CRPG imo), I think it really just boils down to intellectual property mindshare. As objectively as I can be, P:K is a pretty janky game (a lot if it just pathfinder being based on a decades-old d20 system, but it also does some janky implementation of the tabletop mechanics, notably flanking and to a lesser degree combat maneuvers), even now it is still pretty buggy (buggier than Deadfire), and the characters and writing is nothing to get excited about. The stronghold system is pretty good (easily the best I've seen in an RPG) and the way it's interleaved with the story is pretty well done. But when all is said and done, given how mediocre much of the game is to me, it is a very acceptable adaptation of pathfinder and as such is worth playing just on that merit. The stronghold is fun, but I'm also playing forward just to get to see the high-level pathfinder-y content. Given how much of a mindshare 3e/3.5e and consequently pathfinder has, I don't think it's that surprising that P:K outsold Deadfire - however much I enjoy pillars's world, Pathfinder is huge and P:K is the main video game to play using Pathfinder rules.

That being said, Obsidian doesn't have to pay licensing fees to implement Pillars rules. I don't know how much licensing runs, but a smaller game than P:K is fine if you can still make money, so in this context comparing P:K to Deadfire doesn't make as much sense, and the question is more like "why was P:K more profitable [i'm assuming] than Deadfire" versus just in terms of sales.

(By the way... P:K doesn't have full VO... *cough cough*.)

 

edit: it would be an interesting exercise for OBS to test the waters with a pathfinder crpg themselves - i don't think owlcat has an exclusive license.

Edited August 24, 2020 by thelee

[Helz]

6 hours ago, xzar_monty said:

Hang on a minute now. Most of the classics? Really? I hereby challenge you to name five classics that only became successes years after release. I couldn't name any myself.

Fallout 1 & 2, Jagged Alliance, Planescape Torment, Arcanum, Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, Mount and Blade. Most of these flopped at release, none were big hits, and all of them became cult hits and have spawned sequels or franchises. Usually, too late to keep the developer from going under, but still...

[thelee]

4 minutes ago, Helz said:

Usually, too late to keep the developer from going under, but still...

egad, remember Fallout: Tactics and Brotherhood of Steel? thank god Interplay went under. I hope Avowed is not to Pilllars as Brotherhood of Steel was to Fallout...

[xzar_monty]

1 hour ago, thelee said:

even now it is still petty buggy (buggier than Deadfire), and the characters and writing is nothing to get excited about.

It doesn't look too buggy to me, but then of course this may vary from person to person, i.e. how they play and what they encounter. But what kind of bugs are you talking about, for instance?

And yes, the characters and writing is nothing to get excited about. Deadfire had ambition, even literary ambition, and I applaud that, even if some of it went a bit overboard. But in P:K, the writing is just cheesy and oftentimes poor.

My question to you is: what is your sense of the writing, is it intentionally poor and cheesy and tongue in cheek, or do you think somebody actually thought this was good adventure writing? Linzi is just too childish, Amiri is way too much of a cliche, and so on. But then, every now and then there's something that gives the impression that somebody actually tried to write good stuff but didn't succeed. So I'm a bit confused and can't really decide whether it's serious or tongue in cheek or whether it actually even mocks the player who's prepared to enjoy that kind of writing.

Edited August 24, 2020 by xzar_monty

[xzar_monty]

1 hour ago, Helz said:

Fallout 1 & 2, Jagged Alliance, Planescape Torment, Arcanum, Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, Mount and Blade. Most of these flopped at release, none were big hits, and all of them became cult hits and have spawned sequels or franchises. Usually, too late to keep the developer from going under, but still...

Most of these games don't sound like classics to me. Two, yes, but not the others. And yes, I may be ignorant party here.

[thelee]

26 minutes ago, xzar_monty said:

It doesn't look too buggy to me, but then of course this may vary from person to person, i.e. how they play and what they encounter. But what kind of bugs are you talking about, for instance?

And yes, the characters and writing is nothing to get excited about. Deadfire had ambition, even literary ambition, and I applaud that, even if some of it went a bit overboard. But in P:K, the writing is just cheesy and oftentimes poor.

My question to you is: what is your sense of the writing, is it intentionally poor and cheesy and tongue in cheek, or do you think somebody actually thought this was good adventure writing? Linzi is just too childish, Amiri is way too much of a cliche, and so on. But then, every now and then there's something that gives the impression that somebody actually tried to write good stuff but didn't succeed. So I'm a bit confused and can't really decide whether it's serious or tongue in cheek or whether it actually even mocks the player who's prepared to enjoy that kind of writing.

1. for actual bugs and not just gameplay shortcomings, just in my short playtime so far:

• i'm playing an archaeologist. sometimes my archaeologist's luck won't activate in combat when i press it, no matter what i do. sometimes eventually it'll activate as part of a separate action, sometimes i'll finish an entire fight without it activating ever.
• a couple times i've literally completely despawned when resting in oleg's tavern (had to reload)
• i've literally been unable to leave an area - the exit marker is not receiving my clicks (a save/reload fixed it)
• crossing the bridge (i forget the specific area name) starts off so zoomed in that i can't see what the hell i'm doing, but i can sure as hell count the number of bricks on the path
• respeccing one's character has portrait issues
• changing keyboard hotkeys only inconsistently updates tooltips throughout the game

i think it's worse that this game has been out for years and still receives patches and yet in my short playtime i've already hit these bugs. if it weren't for deadfire's consumables regression, i would put deadfire as unquestionably more stable, now it's just "generally" more stable. i truly don't get the people who complain about deadfire's bugginess but are fine with P:K.

2. i think it's unintentionally bad. some of it may be translation errors because i assume this was not an english-first setup. but, most of the npcs seem thinly one dimensional (e.g. amiri like you say), and the "romance" options that have opened up are comical - like with octavia i have 5/6 five-word dialogue options asking about her time as a slave and trauma in childhood, and 1/6 of them is a multi-sentence over-the-top flirty option. ok sure, bud. i feel like only an awkward male could have written "romance" dialogue this clunky. where is avellone's influence here? maybe whatever good stuff there is is his contribution.

Edited August 24, 2020 by thelee

[Helz]

2 hours ago, thelee said:

egad, remember Fallout: Tactics and Brotherhood of Steel? thank god Interplay went under. I hope Avowed is not to Pilllars as Brotherhood of Steel was to Fallout...

Oh man, I loved Interplay. Such SPECIAL games.

58 minutes ago, xzar_monty said:

Most of these games don't sound like classics to me. Two, yes, but not the others. And yes, I may be ignorant party here.

Eh, fair enough. I consider them all classics, but its probably in the Eye of the Beholder.

I'll see myself out.

[xzar_monty]

1 hour ago, thelee said:

where is avellone's influence here? maybe whatever good stuff there is is his contribution.

Avellone wrote Nok-Nok, the goblin character. It's written well from a technical point of view (i.e. the language works), but it's still cheesy and unsubtle.

And yes, the romance options can be... dubious.

Btw, I haven't experienced those bugs you mention. However, what does bug (sic) me an awful lot is that the "slow walking mode" tends to randomly activate in nearly all battles, and I have to press space + V (or whatever it was) to get everybody back to proper walking speed. I can't see how that's anything other than inexcusable from a game that's been out for so long. Also, if you remain in your stronghold for extended periods of time through narrative reasons alone (like, conquering a new area), you don't gain hit points back even in a period of two weeks. That's a massive oversight for me. Earlier on, I seem to recall that you didn't even get rid of fatigue... it was like you were awake the whole time or something.

Edited August 24, 2020 by xzar_monty

[kanisatha]

3 hours ago, thelee said:

edit: it would be an interesting exercise for OBS to test the waters with a pathfinder crpg themselves - i don't think owlcat has an exclusive license.

If they do this, they may as well try to pitch NwN3 to WotC. After all, we know they pitched their idea of BG3 to WotC.

[thelee]

2 hours ago, xzar_monty said:

That's a massive oversight for me. Earlier on, I seem to recall that you didn't even get rid of fatigue... it was like you were awake the whole time or something.

yes, this bugged (sic) me quite a bit. i ended up googling it and realizing that that was the result of an extremely trivial quest to resolve. it was not at all obvious to me that that was the trigger for that perma-fatigue. (edit - and a lot of search results suggested that a bunch of other people were confused by it as well)

Edited August 24, 2020 by thelee

[the_dog_days]

7 hours ago, xzar_monty said:

It doesn't look too buggy to me, but then of course this may vary from person to person, i.e. how they play and what they encounter. But what kind of bugs are you talking about, for instance?

New patch has the game crashing on launch for a lot of people (including me).

[xzar_monty]

23 hours ago, kanisatha said:

And this is now my same dilemma with BG3.

My understanding is that like D:OS2, BG3 is turn-based only, which is enough for me: I won't buy it. The turn-based approach in D:OS2 was a huge turn-off and I won't be playing games that only use it.

[Theonlygarby]

On 8/24/2020 at 10:05 AM, xzar_monty said:

my question to you is: what is your sense of the writing, is it intentionally poor and cheesy and tongue in cheek, or do you think somebody actually thought this was good adventure writing? Linzi is just too childish, Amiri is way too much of a cliche, and so on. But then, every now and then there's something that gives the impression that somebody actually tried to write good stuff but didn't succeed. So I'm a bit confused and can't really decide whether it's serious or tongue in cheek or whether it actually even mocks the player who's prepared to enjoy that kind of writing.

Pathfinder characters and writing drove me crazy.  Pretty much every character is a cliche.  I forget the dudes name but your rival at the start was just awful.  It felt like a JRPG minus the charm.  Was very cartoony but the setting was trying to be gloom and doom.  

 

I never thought it was done tongue in cheek.  Could have been... But it wasn't over the top cheesy... Just felt bad

[xzar_monty]

12 hours ago, Theonlygarby said:

Pathfinder characters and writing drove me crazy.  Pretty much every character is a cliche.  I forget the dudes name but your rival at the start was just awful.  It felt like a JRPG minus the charm.  Was very cartoony but the setting was trying to be gloom and doom.

Tartuccio is his name. I agree, he is awfully poor. You also describe the contradiction quite well: the setting is trying to be doom and gloom, but many of the characters are pure cartoon stuff. It doesn't really work.

However, lots of things in the game do work, and I did enjoy my playthrough. The writing, though, is often simply poor.

[Theonlygarby]

13 hours ago, xzar_monty said:

Tartuccio is his name. I agree, he is awfully poor. You also describe the contradiction quite well: the setting is trying to be doom and gloom, but many of the characters are pure cartoon stuff. It doesn't really work.

However, lots of things in the game do work, and I did enjoy my playthrough. The writing, though, is often simply poor.

The character building is top notch.. though too smart for me...  Really feel paralyzed by choice.  In general on normal diffcullty this game kicks my ass.  

 

I'll still probably buy the next game just to support the genre.  Still bummed about probably not getting a POE3 anytime soon.  Even though I am excited for avowed

 

I almost quit when they brought tartuccio back, thinking he was going to be around all game.

Edited August 26, 2020 by Theonlygarby

[thelee]

On 8/26/2020 at 12:15 PM, Theonlygarby said:

I'll still probably buy the next game just to support the genre. 

yeah, i finally gave up on P:K after about thirty hours - the encounter design is just too frustrating for me and the writing isn't saving it. But I really gave it a lot more effort than I should because I really enjoy rtwp crpg genre, and i wanted to support it because it really seems extremely niche these days: I noticed that P:K added a turn-based mode in a relatively recent patch.  At this point it seems like table-stakes that any PoE3 in the future will have to at least have an optional turn-based mode at launch.

(Actually, some aspects of the pathfinder rules now work better with turn-based mode [I mean I guess it's not surprising since pathfinder is turn-based], because now you can actually do a 5-foot step to avoid AoO... i think it could have been technically do-able in rtwp but for whatever reason they didn't want to [same thing with how broken flanked/sneak attack is in p:k rtwp but is totally a solved problem in deadfire]).

Edited August 28, 2020 by thelee

[Theonlygarby]

55 minutes ago, thelee said:

yeah, i finally gave up on P:K after about thirty hours - the encounter design is just too frustrating for me and the writing isn't saving it. But I really gave it a lot more effort than I should because I really enjoy rtwp crpg genre, and i wanted to support it because it really seems extremely niche these days: I noticed that P:K added a turn-based mode in a relatively recent patch.  At this point it seems like table-stakes that any PoE3 in the future will have to at least have an optional turn-based mode at launch.

(Actually, some aspects of the pathfinder rules now work better with turn-based mode [I mean I guess it's not surprising since pathfinder is turn-based], because now you can actually do a 5-foot step to avoid AoO... i think it could have been technically do-able in rtwp but for whatever reason they didn't want to [same thing with how broken flanked/sneak attack is in p:k rtwp but is totally a solved problem in deadfire]).

I have over 100 hours.. most of that is me restarting... Turn based makes me want to give it another try... I'm much better when I have time to think.... I know you can just pause but still the auto pause helps my small brain

[thelee]

1 hour ago, Theonlygarby said:

Turn based makes me want to give it another try... I'm much better when I have time to think.... I know you can just pause but still the auto pause helps my small brain

actually was contemplating flipping on turn-based mode before i gave up. p:k rtwp is kinda janky to me -- it made me really appreciate all the UI/UX "niceties" that deadfire and poe1 had. i could kill for just a simple "threat range" indicator (like the engagement indicators), since i've triggered AoO even when i thought i was safe.

Edited August 28, 2020 by thelee

[Wormerine]

2 hours ago, thelee said:

yeah, i finally gave up on P:K after about thirty hours - the encounter design is just too frustrating for me and the writing isn't saving it.

126h is, and yeah.... pretty much the same. Except I sunk so much into it, it almost feels like a waste not to push through it at this point. I am taking another break right now though.

[Theonlygarby]

1 hour ago, thelee said:

actually was contemplating flipping on turn-based mode before i gave up. p:k rtwp is kinda janky to me -- it made me really appreciate all the UI/UX "niceties" that deadfire and poe1 had. i could kill for just a simple "threat range" indicator (like the engagement indicators), since i've triggered AoO even when i thought i was safe.

Deadfire is a beautiful game.  No crpg I have played comes close to it.  UI included. 

 

Only thing I dont like about it is the disconnect between the main quest and side quests.  I find it's better in a second playthrough... Just roleplay as "there is no stopping eothas might as well do other things"

 

Actually my first play was as a eothas priest so it worked out for me... Wanting him to succeed 

Edited August 28, 2020 by Theonlygarby

[daven]

Even though I quite like the PoE games, the writing is incredibly turgid compared to the Baldur's Gate games.

[thelee]

the old IE games: 

8 minutes ago, daven said:

Even though I quite like the PoE games, the writing is incredibly turgid compared to the Baldur's Gate games.

the same sentence in PoE/Deadfire:

Quote

daven brushed aside their hair as they thought deeply, contemplating the mysteries of the universe. "Even though," they started, shifting uneasily in their feet, "I quite like the PoE games"... a sudden silence. [Insight check passed] They look deep in thought for a moment. [History check passed] They are probably recalling their many years playing CRPGs{tooltip: CRPGs are an acronym for Computer Role Playing Game, a genre of digital entertainment that emerged out of a legacy of tabletop versions of the game and the advent of the microprocessor}. "the writing" they continued, "is incredibly turgid compared to the Baldur's Gate{tooltip: a popular franchise that emerged in 1990 CE during an era in which people had thought the CRPG genre was dead} games". Having said that, daven steps away.

 

Prose and flowery language can be nice and I do like the indulgence at times (Grieving Mother in PoE), but sometimes less really is more.

Edited August 28, 2020 by thelee

[xzar_monty]

13 hours ago, thelee said:

yeah, i finally gave up on P:K after about thirty hours - the encounter design is just too frustrating for me and the writing isn't saving it.

Would you care to elaborate on your grievances with the encounter design? I'm really interested. And I can certainly agree on the writing: much of it is simply awful.

What also bothers me a lot is that the game so obviously cheats against the player. This is a huge no-no. In tabletop role-playing world, GMs like that would lose their players very quickly. I honestly can't understand what they were thinking.

Edited August 29, 2020 by xzar_monty