[Feedback] Some praises and advice

[IanTheWizard]

Finally, I finished the game. Considering the ending indicates that the story is clearly unfinished, I would like to humbly present my two cents, which could probably help a potential POE3 receive and sell a little bit better.
 

Praises

New Elements in RPG

I think it's admirable that the devs have been letting players see new elements in their RPGs in order for the players to always have new things to try out. In POE1, we have the construction and upgrading about the Caed Nua stronghold; in POE2, we have the voyage, ship management, and ship combat.

It seems to have been a tradition in Obsidian Entertainment's RPGs since Neverwinter Nights 2. Although I'm not a fan of the "Spirit Energy" system in Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer, I admire the devs' effort in bringing a new element to the game all the same.

Also, in this game, when we are on our way from a region to another region in a city (e.g. Neketaka), we sometimes run into a random event. That's also an innovative and fun design in my opinion.

This innovative tradition really worth keeping up so that players can see that RPGs can be more than just plain story and quests doing.
 

Surprising Detailed Designs

In a previous thread, I talked about my experience of completing a quest which I thought I wouldn't have a chance. And later after I took a seemingly insignificant action, I was able to complete the quest.

In short, initiating a battle with a ship without firm evidence of their crimes is not my cup of tea, and I thought I probably had to give up that quest. But after I put up a different flag on my ship, the target ship came to attack me, exposing they were really criminal.

I was surprised that the design is so detailed that it offers players an alternative way to complete a quest. The design is very helpful, especially for players who value their moral choices. Whoever came up with the idea really deserves a kudos!
 

Advice

Let Controversial Ideologies Stay in Real Life

The ideology in this case is feminism. In the game, we keep seeing high-standing or role-reversing female NPCs. Female gang leader, female captain, matriarch, female monarch, female warrior leader, female admiral, female chieftain, female scientist, female weapon smith, female weapon vendor, formidable retired bounty huntress, brave little girl, Berath manifests as a goddess -- you name it. Even the story narrator is female. On the contrary, the counterpart male NPCs are noticeably less in number.

Through out the course of the game, we meet those female figures one after another. The marketing is so obvious that I felt it became a bit pushy and contrived.

There is a reason that POE2 sold less than POE1. Please understand that the majority target audience of classic RPGs are male, and the said ideology is not likely to be preferable to a large number of them. If you would still implement feminism in your future projects, I hope you could make it optional so that players can make their own choices.

Incidentally, we know that D&D has been promoting this kind of ideologies, and I really find it regrettable that POE did not seize the opportunity to differentiate itself from D&D in this respect.
 

Respect Players' Choice of Companions

In POE1, there were some recruitable companions who I didn't recruit and White March NPCs who I have never seen before. However, when they meet me in POE2, their dialogs blatantly said or implied that we traveled together or have met each other in the past.

It's disappointing that the game did not respect my choices in POE1. Precisely speaking, I felt like a non-existent story was imposed on me.

Of all such characters, only one's dialog allowed me to thoroughly deny any connection with him (He is from White March, according to the wiki). The rest's dialogs simply force me to choose options to say something like I recognize them ... blah blah blah.

Also, at the end when the narrator is concluding my journey, one of the scenes mentioned my companions and the screen showed all recruitable companions standing together on my ship. However, I only recruited Eder and Aloth, so it makes no sense that other recruitable companions showed up on my ship in that screen. In fact, one of them (the Rauatai ranger) had already been killed by me for joining force with her superior in trying to murder me because I refused their shocking proposal against the Huana queen.

Had my choices were respected, I would have felt less disconnected from the story. This is definitely something worth working around to make players enjoy the game more.
 

Avoid Reusing the Voice of a Voice Actor or Actress

Actually, this issue already existed and was more prominent in POE1. That is, the voice of Eder's voice actor was reused for many male NPCs. It sounds awkward and embarrassing. Yes, embarrassing. When that happened to me for the first time, I was like why on earth am I hearing Eder's voice from the NPC in front of me when Eder is in my group behind me. Although some of them have a bit different intonation, you can still make out it's the same voice actor of Eder's.

I still remembered a quite funny situation in POE1 that 3 or 4 of my party members all shared the same voice of Eder's voice actor, and when one of them in a combat said something like "the weapon's not working" I couldn't tell who said it.

In POE2, the male part is less prominent, but still persists. For example, you can still tell that Eothas' voice is Eder's voice. I also noticed that a voice actress' voice is reused frequently through out the game for many female NPCs.

Judging from the fundraising for POE, I guess it's not difficult to hire a few more voice actors and actresses, unless there is something I miss. So this issue is one that worth looking into as it can affect the quality of a game, in my opinion.
 

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And that's all for now. Thanks for your time.

Edited September 24 by IanTheWizard

[Boeroer]

7 hours ago, IanTheWizard said:

Incidentally, we know that D&D has been promoting this kind of ideologies, and I really find it regrettable that POE did not seize the opportunity to differentiate itself from D&D in this respect.

I do not.
I have three daughters and want them to play games like Deadfire and PoE, having fun and feeling seen by devs - without getting the impression that those games are catering to the hegemonic masculinity of some vocal gamors™.
I had no problem whatsoever with women depicted as leaders, pirate captains, thugs, even gods - in fact I didn't even notice. When there's a strong female, the strong male counterpart isn't far away and vice versa: Castrol & Alvari, Furrante/Aldeys, Hazanui/Atsura and so on. Which was fair and cool imo.
Is that different from our own history and current society? Sure.
Does that make me uncomfortable? Absolutely not.
Do I think that sales numbers had anything to do with this (in 2018)? Come on...

Btw:

[IanTheWizard]

18 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

Btw:

Thanks for the data, but it's factually incorrect. POE1 contains lesbian relationships (between female NPCs) and a certain kind of propaganda in the character creation screen. Fortunately, those content make up just a tiny bit percentage, so I didn't bring them up.

Edited September 24 by IanTheWizard

[Boeroer]

Well, it surely wasn't me who composed that ludicrous list.
 

[Chaospread]

14 hours ago, Boeroer said:

Well, it surely wasn't me who composed that ludicrous list.
 

Where does that list come from, if we can know?

[Chaospread]

23 hours ago, IanTheWizard said:

Judging from the fundraising for POE, I guess it's not difficult to hire a few more voice actors and actresses, unless there is something I miss. So this issue is one that worth looking into as it can affect the quality of a game, in my opinion.

I read (don't remember where and when) that it was be a financial choice. No funds for more voices.
It doesn't care to me, but your point is right. I is a compromise to have full voices.
I'd prefer no voice at all and put those saved money in other features, in case.

[Sympetrum]

On 9/24/2024 at 3:37 PM, IanTheWizard said:

The ideology in this case is feminism. In the game, we keep seeing high-standing or role-reversing female NPCs. Female gang leader, female captain, matriarch, female monarch, female warrior leader, female admiral, female chieftain, female scientist, female weapon smith, female weapon vendor, formidable retired bounty huntress, brave little girl, Berath manifests as a goddess -- you name it. Even the story narrator is female. On the contrary, the counterpart male NPCs are noticeably less in number.

Wow. Imagine being bothered by the very existence of women! In video games!

Weird.

[IanTheWizard]

9 minutes ago, Sympetrum said:

Wow. Imagine being bothered by the very existence of women! In video games!

Seriously? That's not what I mean at all.

[Chaospread]

I have ever wondered why nobody designed new sexes in RPG like different (from real) races exists in them but no other new sexes...

[yorname]

Well it's the very first time I saw someone say Deadfire is pro feminism.

Of the 4 major factions, one is a council so does not count, 2 are led by women, but don't forget RDC is just a tool of Ruauatai empire and I believe their ranga nui is a man.

If you look at the smaller factions' leadership, I simply don't get how you can reach the conclusion that

Quote

the counterpart male NPCs are noticeably less in number.

Port Maje: let's say 1:1

Tikawara: male

Ashen Maw: the one giving order is male

Junvik: female

Dawnstar: female

Temple of Gaun: female

Temple of Breath: male

Cult of Rymrgand: male

The list can go on and on. I never noticed the game is yelling "women powahhhh" in any way. You also need to remember fantasy games have a long history of making women "not weaker than man" so that the

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majority target audience

 can play as whatever character we like.

TBH saying PoE, not any other modern RPG, is pro-feminism, tells more about yourself rather than the game. Imagine in a objectively gender-balanced world you find yourself annoyed by the fact that women have jobs.

[yorname]

I mean, playing a game full of man is super gay, right? PoE is isometrical, but imagine in modern action games you'll have a man's ass stuck on the screen for dozens of hours... I'd rather play a "feminism propaganda", thank you.

[IanTheWizard]

40 minutes ago, yorname said:

I mean, playing a game full of man is super gay, right? PoE is isometrical, but imagine in modern action games you'll have a man's ass stuck on the screen for dozens of hours... I'd rather play a "feminism propaganda", thank you.

I didn't say or imply that POE or other RPGs should be full of men or having no women, so I'm not sure how you reached that conclusion. And if you are interested in discussing "modern action games" such as Avowed, feel free to start a thread in its forum and @ me.

[yorname]

51 minutes ago, IanTheWizard said:

I didn't say or imply that POE or other RPGs should be full of men or having no women, so I'm not sure how you reached that conclusion. And if you are interested in discussing "modern action games" such as Avowed, feel free to start a thread in its forum and @ me.

Well, PoE didn't push for feminism, that is a fact. It has balanced men vs women in power, which isn't historically accurate for our world, but Eora is not Earth.

This has been the norm for CRPG, even TRPG from the beginning, men like playing as female fighters/wizards/whatever not because we are feminists, but because we want. And maybe  to put on some bikini armor. I simply can't understand how you can feel

Quote

The marketing is so obvious that I felt it became a bit pushy and contrived.

about PoE when almost every similar game, past or present, does the same thing. It's a bit late at this point, don't you think?

If you somehow feel that developers were preaching and putting significantly more women in charge than men, "one after another", the only logical conclusion is that you want a game full of men. Or maybe a game where women strictly can only work as housewives or sex workers?

Edit: just to add that the things you hate, for a fact, did add numbers to BG3's player base. I don't like the fangirl-ing around certain characters, but that's the reality. Saying Deadfire's relative failure was because of being woke is just stupid. There are a million reasons why people didn't want to buy Deadfire and people were vocal, yet I literally just saw one person saying it's because of wokeness in all these years.

Edited September 26 by yorname

[Boeroer]

20 hours ago, Chaospread said:

Where does that list come from, if we can know?

The list is a Google spreadsheet. I don't have the link anymore but you can google it with "woke games pillars recommended" iirc. I just saw it because Josh lol'ed about it on Twitter. I believe it's from those people who did that silly "woke game detector" channel on steam. 

[IanTheWizard]

17 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

The list is a Google spreadsheet. I don't have the link anymore but you can google it with "woke games pillars recommended" iirc. I just saw it because Josh lol'ed about it on Twitter. I believe it's from those people who did that silly "woke game detector" channel on steam. 

Time to learn to avoid using offensive words like "ludicrous" and "silly" when talking about different opinions.

Edited September 26 by IanTheWizard

[Boeroer]

They are ludicrous and silly. That's my opinion. 

[thelee]

On 9/24/2024 at 1:37 AM, IanTheWizard said:

Avoid Reusing the Voice of a Voice Actor or Actress

almost every single media in the history of audio reuses voice actors, unless you're a big disney movie. voice actors are expensive. like others have said now and before, i'd rather they spend more of that budget on content. oblivion had like 6 voice actors total ("STOP RIGHT THERE CRIMINAL SCUM") and people still played it to death. (also they probably would've had more voice actors anyway if they hadn't paid to get patrick stewart and sean bean on the cast list, but that's another issues).

 

On 9/24/2024 at 1:37 AM, IanTheWizard said:

Let Controversial Ideologies Stay in Real Life

The ideology in this case is feminism.

it's only controversial if you make it controversial. this is a tell on you, not the game.

 

On 9/24/2024 at 1:37 AM, IanTheWizard said:

Please understand that the majority target audience of classic RPGs are male

I'm a male and am not such a beta that I feel threatened by a game having more women in its cast. This is a you problem.

[Boeroer]

2 hours ago, thelee said:

it's only controversial if you make it controversial.[...]
I'm a male and am not such a beta that I feel threatened by a game having more women in its cast.[...]