Trying to figure what PoE2 sold less

[thelee]

"turn based is just clearly superior, they said. [...] i have always preferred turn based"

 

i'm begging people to use analysis that goes outside their own personal tastes. Pathfinder: Kingmaker/Wrath of the Righteous sold like hotcakes, and the vast majority of people who play that game (based on owlcat's surveys) play RTwP. PoE/Deadfire is janky? Yeah, you need to see P:K or P:WOTR in action.

while i agree that over-appealing to fans on kickstarter can be a curse, one's argument needs to be self-consistent with peers in the industry, and not just amount to "i like playing turn-based games like DOS2 and Gloomhaven"

Edited June 28, 2022 by thelee

[Boeroer]

[uuuhhii]

always liked pirate and fantasy combination ever since pirate of caribbean

a lot of people who like fantasy just have this automatic hatred of gun that seems to spread to pirate and western too

the story of main character in poe does seems pretty conclusive

always thought deadfire should have a new main character

though that shot in trailer that show 3 dawnstar on the head of the statue are just too great

[Telas]

My own armchair opinion. 

1) Unacceptable performance in both games  -20 points

2) Strange combat system in both games especially for newcomers  -20points

3) Strange graphics for many people especially newcomers  -20 points

4) Too much unnecessary reading in POE1. Introduction for Durance and Grieving Mother as an example is straight up cringe(quality writing but still cringe).  Like, brother you're edgy and cool, but i just want a cleric for my team, can we skip the 46 paragraphs pls? I don't care about your wrinkles or the number of your eyelashes. Minimalism > Maximalism

The picture below is another example. A full book page just to tell me that an Elven hunter died while fighting a lion. Information that you can easily compress to a small paragraph and still get an interesting story -25 points

5) Strange marketing. The game came out and i had no idea, even if 7/10 of my Steam games are cRPG's.. -50 points

6) Pirate Setting maybe? I personally love it but it's not for everyone.  -15 points

 

Long story short, i bought it years later because i thought that Deadfire will contain all the shortcomings of POE1. And i was mostly right. The book fetishism was gone but the performance is crippling even today(Loading times mainly).  

 

Edited August 19, 2022 by Telas

[Boeroer]

On 6/28/2022 at 10:48 PM, Boeroer said:

 

[Telas]

1 hour ago, Boeroer said:

 

''Josh Sawyer - Breaking the Mold RPG Evolution'' Amazing talk but Josh opened the doors to all Armchair Entrepreneurs like me.  

[xzar_monty]

On 8/19/2022 at 4:00 AM, Telas said:

4) Too much unnecessary reading in POE1. Introduction for Durance and Grieving Mother as an example is straight up cringe(quality writing but still cringe).  Like, brother you're edgy and cool, but i just want a cleric for my team, can we skip the 46 paragraphs pls? I don't care about your wrinkles or the number of your eyelashes. Minimalism > Maximalism

You do recognize, of course, that this kind of thing is precisely why other people enjoy the game? (How can quality writing be cringe? I'd like to know.)

There's an awful lot of writing in P:K and P:WotR. In my view, it's essentially all rubbish, and it doesn't seem to have hurt the game, in terms of commercial success.

[Telas]

8 hours ago, xzar_monty said:

 (How can quality writing be cringe? I'd like to know.)

Because reading a cool book in front of a fireplace is different from reading a book while video gaming. I'm in the middle of clearing a map while trying to understand what happened to the guy. I'm fully focused on finishing the quest. Reading two pages of unnecessary fluff is not what i want as a player especially when there is no real reason to stretch that story so much.

8 hours ago, xzar_monty said:

You do recognize, of course, that this kind of thing is precisely why other people enjoy the game?

I'm not so sure about that. cRPG's are mostly about well designed quest that you can complete in a variety of ways, interesting character/team building and progression, fun combat system, choice & consequence, etc. I personally don't know any cRPG player who's into book reading while video gaming in front of their computers. 

8 hours ago, xzar_monty said:

There's an awful lot of writing in P:K and P:WotR. In my view, it's essentially all rubbish, and it doesn't seem to have hurt the game, in terms of commercial success.

I played Kingmaker and the storytelling felt balanced to me. Lot's of stuff to read if you want but not as many walls of text like in Pillars 1. Chunky dialogue trees if i remember correctly. For WotR i can't comment yet. Baldur's Gate 1&2, Icewind Dale 1&2, Wasteland 2&3, POE:Deadfire, Fallout 1&2, Tyranny, Underrail. All of them are well made cRPG's and most importantly, with direct stories. Zero 30 pages long character descriptions like you have in POE or Planescape Torment.

[Boeroer]

1 hour ago, Telas said:

I'm in the middle of clearing a map while trying to understand what happened to the guy. I'm fully focused on finishing the quest. Reading two pages of unnecessary fluff is not what i want as a player especially when there is no real reason to stretch that story so much.

It sounds like you read the Backers' NPC stories in PoE. Because besides that I don't really remember "two pages of unnecessary fluff".

1 hour ago, Telas said:

I personally don't know any cRPG player who's into book reading while video gaming in front of their computers. 

 

Edited August 21, 2022 by Boeroer

[Telas]

4 hours ago, Boeroer said:

It sounds like you read the Backers' NPC stories in PoE. Because besides that I don't really remember "two pages of unnecessary fluff".

Last time i clicked a golden plate npc was back in 2015 so that's not the issue. Grey text and memory reading sequences are atrocious in POE. And then you have the crazy long introductions for Durance and Grieving Mother. Lady Webb and Duc Aevar combined have less character building than the above edgelord companions who aren't even mechanically special. 

'''The walls of text, amazing descriptions and writing that makes me feel like I am playing a character in a good book are what has been missing. I am so thankful to you all over at Obsidian for making this game, I feel a sense of wonder and fascination with PoE that I haven't experienced with a game for so long I feared it would never return. I can't wait for the next CRPG to come out of Obsidian, you have a loyal fan for life.''

Not gonna lie, i chuckled while reading that because it proves my point and it's exactly what i don't want in my RPG's. Between 2500 loading screens that slowly rot my enjoyment throughout the game, the unnecessarily long walls of text, and the combat system that demands plenty of my attention, the last thing i want is clicking a npc and reading 12 dialogue screens of gray description text. I enjoy reading but Pillars 1 is like a hidden visual novel inside a complex RPG. Players who are interesting for such experience are not many and probably won't be playing the game more than once. 

Again, Deadfire is a massive improvement on that even if i didn't knew it when the game first released. There is a reason why i still play Dragon Age Origins, Icewind Dale 1&2, BG1&2, POE2, Tyranny, etc instead of Planescape Torment or Tides of Numenera. They look the same but it's a different market for different players. I have a person as a Steam Friend who bought POE, by mid game got overwhelmed by the walls of text and just left it unfinished. And of course he never bought Deadfire.  

Example of well written and minimalistic gray description text(pic 1).

Example of well written and minimalistic memory reading text(pic 2).

Example of a balanced 'Choose your own adventure' event. Text heavy but still smaller than some NPC descriptions of POE(pic3).

[Boeroer]

Guess it's debatable what's unnecessary fluff and what's enjoyable writing. I did enjoy it immensely the first time I played the game

The link to the forum post was there to show you that there's people enjoying reading while playing cRPGs - not to refute the statement that there's a lot of text.

You produced a wall of text btw...

 

[xzar_monty]

12 hours ago, Telas said:

I'm in the middle of clearing a map while trying to understand what happened to the guy. I'm fully focused on finishing the quest. Reading two pages of unnecessary fluff is not what i want as a player especially when there is no real reason to stretch that story so much.

Fair enough, to each his own. I didn't regard it as either unnecessary or fluff, and I quite enjoyed it. As opinions, both are fine. As a reason for Deadfire's lack of success, I don't think this matters at all.

[Telas]

8 hours ago, Boeroer said:

You produced a wall of text btw...

Luckily for you, my wall of text is just a forum post that you can read while chilling at your desk. Durance introduction is 3 times longer and the guy is just a worse version of my own custom made Priest. 

[kanisatha]

1 hour ago, Telas said:

Luckily for you, my wall of text is just a forum post that you can read while chilling at your desk. Durance introduction is 3 times longer and the guy is just a worse version of my own custom made Priest. 

I have to agree with you here that *some* of the writing in PoE1 was needlessly excessive. But for me that was specific to Chris Avellone's writing. He is the one who tended to throw up walls of text everywhere, and for some strange reason people seem to be taken up by this as representing *awesome* writing. I find Avellone's writing pedantic, pompous, and boring. Remove Avellone's writing from PoE1 and the problem goes away (effectively what we had in PoE2).

[Boeroer]

I'm not a fan of Chris Avellone - but I like Durance. Grieving Mother... not so much. 

Funny thing is - and I will repeat myself the forth time at least (hence the neverending story):

if the amount of writing was such a strong repellent then this point would have found its way into reviews of users and critics and be prominent there. Yet the review scores are very good and don't speak about too much text a lot. This doesn't fit. It should at least raise the question whether this explanation makes sense when one applies it to a majority of potential players - or if it rather might be a projection of things one personally didn't like. 

Edited August 23, 2022 by Boeroer

[xzar_monty]

16 hours ago, kanisatha said:

But for me that was specific to Chris Avellone's writing. He is the one who tended to throw up walls of text everywhere, and for some strange reason people seem to be taken up by this as representing *awesome* writing. I find Avellone's writing pedantic, pompous, and boring. Remove Avellone's writing from PoE1 and the problem goes away (effectively what we had in PoE2).

I agree that Avellone is fairly poor, as a writer, and for pretty much the reasons you describe. There's an aesthetic used by some bad writers: they want to "make it literary" by being long-winded and using vocabulary that is fancier than necessary. It really hurts when it goes wrong, and in my view it often does with Avellone.

However, I also agree with Boeroer in that Durance is enjoyable. The Grieving Mother is overly complex, and doesn't reward the complexity. Boeroer's other point (about reviews) is also easy to agree with.

[xzar_monty]

@kanisatha: It just occurred to me that The Endless Caves of Od Nua are a structural equivalent to Avellone's tendency to "make it literary". I mean, the big dungeon is a nice idea. But it sucks: it's big simply for the sake of being big. That doesn't work. It should have proper content and planning, too.

I'm fairly certain that a large proportion of PoE players agree that if Od Nua was cut by half, it would be twice as good.

[Boeroer]

5 hours ago, xzar_monty said:

It just occurred to me that The Endless Caves of Od Nua are a structural equivalent to Avellone's tendency to "make it literary". I mean, the big dungeon is a nice idea. But it sucks: it's big simply for the sake of being big. That doesn't work. It should have proper content and planning, too.

I'm fairly certain that a large proportion of PoE players agree that if Od Nua was cut by half, it would be twice as good.

It was a stretch goal for the Kickstarter campaign and was cobbled together rather haphazardly I think. See Deadfire's ship fights.
I liked it nonetheless. 

Edited August 23, 2022 by Boeroer

[xzar_monty]

Just now, Boeroer said:

It was stretch goal for the Kickstarter campaign and was cobbled together rather haphazardly I think.

That's precisely what it looks like. There are some levels that have thought and planning in them, and taken together, some of them even present a narrative of sorts, but half of them could be cut and things would only improve.

For me, the biggest disappointment was the blade I was able to forge after completing the dungeon. It took some time to assemble the pieces, only to find that I had no use for it.

[Boeroer]

It's a great weapon in the right hands.

Imagine how disappointed I was when I slew Firkraag with my self-invented Wizard's Eye cheese at a rel. low level and got Carsomyr which I couldn't use because I had no Paladin...

Edited August 24, 2022 by Boeroer

[thelee]

neverending story indeed...

 

ppl are free to gripe or have their pet issues about the games, but the main line of questioning in this thread is why poe2 sold so poorly. if you really think lengthy text in poe1 was the killer for sales of poe2, uh ok you do you i guess, i don't think wall of text is even a controversial opinion (i thought durance and GM were interesting the first time around, but now they're just exhausting click-throughs so i can complete their companion quests) but i don't see how on earth that would translate to a massive dropoff in sales.

personally speaking, having played both deadfire and wotr in german while trying to learn german, I think WOTR has massively more walls of text in practice. it manifests in my general level of exhaustion while trying to play. deadfire i can generally keep going, where as WOTR I frequently start hitting a point where I want to give up on reading and just skip through all the dialogue and story book and just make choices solely based on the dialogue options or alignment annotation. (there's also just tons more fluff) this is to say i don't think wall of text is going to be the explainer since WOTR sold like hotcakes. (also see boeroer's comment on critical/user reviews).

same thing with performance. you think deadfire has bad performance? on my beefy gaming PC i literally had no idea what was going on in the final fight in WOTR and had to turn on turn-based mode because the game would drop frames like crazy during certain spell casts (and even then i still had no idea what was going on, just that suddenly half of my party is dead). hasn't hurt WOTR sales by comparison.

Edited August 23, 2022 by thelee

[kanisatha]

17 hours ago, Boeroer said:

It was a stretch goal for the Kickstarter campaign and was cobbled together rather haphazardly I think.

Didn't Sawyer confirm they struggled with getting that dungeon done right?

I remember during the kickstarter feeling very worried as the dungeon kept getting bigger and bigger.

[Telas]

On 8/24/2022 at 12:46 AM, thelee said:

ppl are free to gripe or have their pet issues about the games, but the main line of questioning in this thread is why poe2 sold so poorly.

I mentioned other potential problems too, like graphics, combat system, performance and marketing etc. 

 

Comparing sales of Pathfinder and POE is a little bit unfair imo. One is ''D&D 3.5'', POE is homebrew. One is fully 3D the other 2D with 3D models. The fact that PF is using D&D ruleset is a massive advantage by itself as it was one of the most popular systems for generations. Still is. 

Then you have Setting and Themes. The Pathfinder series for the most part is all about kill bad Lord, kill bad Demons while POE relies on philosophy and religion. I personally love it, but maybe some people just want to hunt the bad lord or kill some Demons? Anyways yeah, as Boeroer said, trying to find the whys or hows is a never ending story. 

I said my piece, now i'm out. 

 

Heavily edited

Edited August 28, 2022 by Telas

[thelee]

while it's true that pathfinder is a bigger IP, the other piece of the puzzle is that tyranny outsold poe2 over like a 1 year time frame (i don't know how well the long tail of sells for tyranny has been), almost like 2x. Tyranny is basically 0 IP, whereas Deadfire at least had PoE to lean on. Even name-recognition of franchise can't adequately explain it.

[Munky_]

This is anecdotal, but the setting of Deadfire did not appeal to my group of friends.  Magic on the high seas is a cool concept, but to base an entire game around the setting might have been a bit much.  Maybe people need to feel grounded to something more traditional if the IP is unfamiliar?  It's a shame because it's a beautiful game.