Deadfire isn't going to be a "dumbed down" pillars like tyranny is it?

[firkraag888]

I haven't really been able to follow all the twitch live feeds and a huge concern I have is that deadfire will end up like tyranny eg simplified combat, terrible casting system ect......

 

Man tyranny really sucked.

 

I hope obsidian realise that pillars of eternity was successful because people want to be able to play games like baldurs gate 2 again. Not games that have been dumbed down like tyranny as an attempt to appeal to the wider masses.

[Boeroer]

I can only judge based on the fig updates, twitch streams and some OBS posts here and there, but it seems that the game will be even deeper when it comes to builds, mechanics and tactics. Hopefully those things will be explained better than on PoE where it's somewhat difficult to find out how things really work under the hood. It's ok for veterans who also read in forums and so on, but hard for beginners and can lead to frustration.

 

But multiclassing alone should lead to a multitude of possible approaches how you can deal with enemies and quests.

 

Tyranny also lacked the possibility to have many different but also viable builds. Some where supergood and the rest just meh. Some build that seemed to make sense were really bad.

PoE does this way better and I think they want to focus on that, too because Josh always said he' proud of this special feature: that you can build every class very differently and still be effective.

 

Maybe the reason why Tyranny was more streamlined was that it was done with a publisher. This may be the main reason that some games (have to) appeal to wider masses most of the time. Since PoE and PoE2 will be the total IP of Obsidian I'm pretty confident that we will not see those problems with PoE2.

Edited March 19, 2017 by Boeroer

[firkraag888]

I can only judge based on the fig updates, twitch streams and some OBS posts here and there, but it seems that the game will be even deeper when it comes to builds, mechanics and tactics. Hopefully those things will be explained better than on PoE where it's somewhat difficult to find out how things really work under the hood. It's ok for veterans who also read in forums and so on, but hard for beginners and can lead to frustration.

 

But multiclassing alone should lead to a multitude of possible approaches how you can deal with enemies and quests.

 

Tyranny also lacked the possibility to have many different but also viable builds. Some where supergood and the rest just meh. Some build that seemed to make sense were really bad.

PoE does this way better and I think they want to focus on that, too because Josh always said he' proud of this special feature: that you can build every class very differently and still be effective.

 

Maybe the reason why Tyranny was more streamlined was that it was done with a Publisher. Those are the main reason that games appeal to wider masses most of the time. Since PoE and PoE2 will be the total IP of Obsidian I'm pretty confident that we will not see those problems with PoE2.

Is the loss of vanician casting viewed as being implemented to simplify combat ?

[Boeroer]

Not really (I guess). There's a system that lets you empower your per-encounter spells. For example you can empower your Magic Missile spell in a way that it has way more missiles. Think of original magic missile (spell, 3 missiles) compared to Missile Barrage (scroll, 9 missiles) like they were in PoE. Those empowerments can only be regained through resting. So you will have a kind of vancian casting - but only for the powerful spell variants. The plain (an maybe quite weak compared to empowered) variants can always be used per encounter. I think this deepens the system instead of flatten it, but this is only speculation at the moment of course. But if I take the measure of Josh correctly he won't do such things like streamlining just to appeal to a wider mass.

 

The reduction from 6 to 5 party members is sad - but since I don't know and can't foresee the drawbacks and benefits of it yet I will keep my feet still on that matter.

Edited March 19, 2017 by Boeroer

[firkraag888]

Ohh. I didn't read right through that thread about the loss of venecian casting but the way I interpreted it was that say for a example a wizards spells wouldn't be replenished by resting anymore and josh was implementing some kind of other system.

 

Good to see I was wrong and they aren't reinventing the wheel with this. Are they still keeping the Rest to replenish system or are they changing it?

 

Im happy to see the party reduced to 5. I agree with all the reasons they did it.

Edited March 19, 2017 by firkraag888

[Heijoushin]

Good to see I was wrong and they aren't reinventing the wheel with this. Are they still keeping the Rest to replenish system or are they changing it?

 

From the Q&A:

 

JS: What we're trying to do right now is, we are using a new system where abilities by default, whether they're per encounter based or resourced based, they're not inherently per rest based. But everybody has a resource which is called Empower, and an Empower is a per rest resource that can be used to make the application of an individual ability much stronger. It actually raises your effective damage, or the duration of the thing, or its accuracy by quite a bit.

The idea is that most of your abilities are per encounter based, and then if you're like, "I really need this fireball to hit hard and do a lot of damage", or like, "I really want this knockdown to just smack the crap out of this dude", the you use Empower which is a character-based, per rest resource. You apply it to it, that decrements the number of Empowers that you have to use, and then that's gone down. The only way that you get those Empowers back is by resting.

Between the injury system and Empowers, that's how we encourage you to rest more.

 

They're not reinventing the wheel, but they are experimenting a little. Sounds like there are encounter abilities, resource abilities (and if you're playing a multi-class, you'll have multiple resources) and empower per rest. If anything, it seems more complicated, so I don't think you need to worry about "dumbing down".

Edited March 19, 2017 by Heijoushin

[ManifestedISO]

Go ahead, tell me Tyranny sucked one more time, bub.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDRMt6tggsI

[Hertzila]

Good to see I was wrong and they aren't reinventing the wheel with this. Are they still keeping the Rest to replenish system or are they changing it?

 

As I understood it, they're switching to a sort-of mana-based system where the mana, in this case the Empower resource, is replenished by resting. Each class has an Empower resource associated with it that can be used to buff class abilities in a major way.

 

It's still per-rest, but it's no longer directly associated to a specific ability like, say, a Wizard would have 4 spells of a given level per-rest. Now it's just X Empower points that can be used however.

Edited March 19, 2017 by Hertzila

[Sedrefilos]

All these people who can't stand videogame mechanics such as cooldowns and mana... were do they get their joy from the medium? I mean the only games that use vancian systems are really old DnD games (IE games included) and Pillars. Tyranny sucked?... That's an exaggertion if I ever heared one.

 

Anyhow, OP you can check out the campaign videos, streaming or not, in Obsidian's youtube channel. Here https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4xyf_Z-pEQOTaRVyjXfA1g

Edited March 19, 2017 by Sedrefilos

[Katarack21]

PoE didn't really have Vancian casting. It had fake sort of simulated Vancian casting; it's all based around grimois and limited total cast amounts per spell level, not on rest and pre-battle memorization. The second rule of Vancian casting--spells must be prepared in advance of actual use, and each prepared spell can be used only once before needing to be prepared again--doesn't actually apply in the game or the setting. You can fire that fireball seven times in a row in Pillars, and you do *not* need to prepare seven fireballs beforehand. You just need to know Fireball, have a grimoi with fireball equipped, and have level 3 spells casts available. It's closer to a D&D 3.5 sorc than to a D&D mage ever, and even then it's still different because you can switch out spells at will, you don't have to set them per-rest.

Also, Tyranny ****ing rocked and it's spell system was unique, brilliant, and perfect for the setting.

[Boeroer]

I wouldn't say Tyranny sucked - I played it and was enough fun for sure. And it had some really nice features, too.

 

But for me and my taste it is in no way as good as PoE. I couldn't convince myself to do more than 2.5 playthroughs and then I really had enough of it. Only my personal perception. I don't want to say that this must be the case for everybody else.

 

So I would agree to OP that I don't want PoE2 to be like Tyranny.

[tinysalamander]

It’s going to be press X to win with the “pay $ to press X less often to win” option. Oh, and romances free-for-all, decadence and depravity. Backer NPCs will be invincible and intsa-gib you when you try to kill them. Traps will be nerfed again. But you’ll have a top hat.

 

 

 

[Katarack21]

I thought the top-hat was a $500-tier backer reward?!

[firkraag888]

does anyone no how many copies tyranny has sold?

[Katarack21]

I think there's 150K+ copies sold on Steam, but no idea about other platforms.

[firkraag888]

just checked

 

Tyranny 160,000

Torment Tides 112,000

Pillars Of Eternity nearly 1,000,000 (and that's not including the 2 expansions)

 

that's only on steam

Edited March 19, 2017 by firkraag888

[firkraag888]

looks like torment flopped hard. Only been 3 weeks since release but you would think more sales then this

 

And tyranny you would think wouldn't be very profitable sitting at 112,000 after this long they would be lucky to break even

 

Divinity OS did 1,300,000 on steam.....interesting

 

Skyrim did 12,000,000 !!!

Edited March 19, 2017 by firkraag888

[Katarack21]

Pillars Of Eternity nearly 1,000,000 (and that's not including the 2 expansions)

That's actually a pretty massive success. I mean, think of how much you've seen/heard about Witcher 3, right? They only sold, what 6 million? So Pillars did roughly 1/6th the sales figures but on, like, ****ing 1/20th of the budget.

 

Pillars did really well.

[Abel]

looks like torment flopped hard. Only been 3 weeks since release but you would think more sales then this

 

And tyranny you would think wouldn't be very profitable sitting at 112,000 after this long they would be lucky to break even

 

Divinity OS did 1,300,000 on steam.....interesting

 

Skyrim did 12,000,000 !!!

 

Remember, too, that while Skyrim and Tyranny are steam only, Pillars and Torment are sold on GOG too. And it's not just 10% of the sales. I would guess that Torment may have sold better than Tyranny already (unless the backers accounts count towards reaching 112 000, since Tyranny did not have backers). Which would be good news for me, since i can't wish for the success of Tyranny in the same way than for Pillars, Wasteland or Torment. By the way, is there a way i can give away my 50% coupon on Steam for Tyranny? Would be a shame not to use it at all.

 

Witcher 3 is sold on GOG, too. If these numbers are Steam numbers only, they can't be compared alone to sales of Skyrim or Tyranny.

 

Anyway, i'm a tad bit worry too about what they are about to do with Pillars 2. If they happen to feel like things like "the no friendly fire idea in Tyranny was cool" ii'm going to panick, i promise.

Edited March 19, 2017 by Abel

[Boeroer]

Yes it did.

 

By the way: do the people that got PoE via crowdfunding reward also count (on steam)?

 

Because a game that's funded by Kickstarter and such is a success per se once the funding was successful and the game was shipped. As far as I know Tyranny was completely paid by a publisher- So maybe the 160.000 copies are even worse than with a game that sold 160.000 as well but was funded on a crowd ourcing platform.

[Katarack21]

looks like torment flopped hard. Only been 3 weeks since release but you would think more sales then this

 

And tyranny you would think wouldn't be very profitable sitting at 112,000 after this long they would be lucky to break even

 

Divinity OS did 1,300,000 on steam.....interesting

 

Skyrim did 12,000,000 !!!

 

Tyranny isn't sitting at 112,000. It's at 160K. You got your numbers mixed up. Remember, Tyranny was 1) A short game with a small team 2) Made using the engine technology developed for Pillars. Both of these things make Tyranny a much cheaper game to produce than something like Pillars or Torment; I wouldn't be surprised to find Tyranny had a budget of, say, 1.5 million.

[firkraag888]

 

Pillars Of Eternity nearly 1,000,000 (and that's not including the 2 expansions)

That's actually a pretty massive success. I mean, think of how much you've seen/heard about Witcher 3, right? They only sold, what 6 million? So Pillars did roughly 1/6th the sales figures but on, like, ****ing 1/20th of the budget.

 

Pillars did really well.

 

yeah but witcher 3 was made in Poland so there costs of operating are a lot lower

[firkraag888]

 

looks like torment flopped hard. Only been 3 weeks since release but you would think more sales then this

 

And tyranny you would think wouldn't be very profitable sitting at 112,000 after this long they would be lucky to break even

 

Divinity OS did 1,300,000 on steam.....interesting

 

Skyrim did 12,000,000 !!!

 

Tyranny isn't sitting at 112,000. It's at 160K. You got your numbers mixed up. Remember, Tyranny was 1) A short game with a small team 2) Made using the engine technology developed for Pillars. Both of these things make Tyranny a much cheaper game to produce than something like Pillars or Torment; I wouldn't be surprised to find Tyranny had a budget of, say, 1.5 million.

 

I did say tyranny is at 160 torment is at 112

[Katarack21]

 

 

Pillars Of Eternity nearly 1,000,000 (and that's not including the 2 expansions)

That's actually a pretty massive success. I mean, think of how much you've seen/heard about Witcher 3, right? They only sold, what 6 million? So Pillars did roughly 1/6th the sales figures but on, like, ****ing 1/20th of the budget.

 

Pillars did really well.

 

yeah but witcher 3 was made in Poland so there costs of operating are a lot lower

 

Yeah but I read somewhere that Witcher 3 had a budget of, like, 81 million. Compared to Pillars budget of, like, 5 million? Witcher 3 is a really good game and they deserve their success, I'm just pointing out that Pillars did better sales than I realized when looked at in that perspective.

[Katarack21]

 

 

looks like torment flopped hard. Only been 3 weeks since release but you would think more sales then this

 

And tyranny you would think wouldn't be very profitable sitting at 112,000 after this long they would be lucky to break even

 

Divinity OS did 1,300,000 on steam.....interesting

 

Skyrim did 12,000,000 !!!

 

Tyranny isn't sitting at 112,000. It's at 160K. You got your numbers mixed up. Remember, Tyranny was 1) A short game with a small team 2) Made using the engine technology developed for Pillars. Both of these things make Tyranny a much cheaper game to produce than something like Pillars or Torment; I wouldn't be surprised to find Tyranny had a budget of, say, 1.5 million.

 

I did say tyranny is at 160 torment is at 112

 

Must be misreading. I am still a little drunk from last night, so I apologize.