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

[algroth]

It seems the only constant between gamers is to discredit other gamers' gamer status. You don't even have to play games to be one!

Edited March 20, 2017 by algroth

[Gregorovitch]

 

 

I'm secure enough, thank you, and I've been called worst things directly from people in this forum but I don't care on personal matter. But this whole "dumbing down" talk implies generalization and superiority and I'm starting to dislike the term (not that I ever liked it to begin with). And no matter how sure I feel for myself, it's always irritating to hear derogatory generalizations. If you hear someone talking racist in the bus, won't you call them out even if you're not a target? It's not about me, it's about people thing they're better because they do A and think that others that doing the B they don't like, are dumb (or whatever).

 

The term "dumbed down" is not meant in a perjorative way, at least as far as I am concenred, as in "game is dumbed down for filthy casuals". Not everyone wants all their games, or any of their games for that matter, to be complex, challenging and hardcore, and there is no reason on earth why they should either and no reason to critisise them for it.

 

The point is that the most successful cRPGs by far from the new RPG Renaisance, Pillars and Divinity Original SIn, are uncompromisingly hardcore  whilst those that have been dumbed down (I told you already Greg, Stop it!!!), er sorry, "streamlined", have been much less successfull.

 

The brunt of the "dumbed down" slight is therefore aimed at developers who believe they have to do it to reach a wider audience when in fact it does precisely the opposite and seriously ticks off longterm fans to boot, leading to widespread critisism from this harcore fanbase across the interwebs which further depresses sales.

 

It is aimed at the devs, not some sort of notion of "filthy casuals" and , as far as I am concerned anyways, it is certainly not aimed at you for enjoying Tyranny.

 

Why do you find it dumbed down or streamlined, though? I will agree that it was not very challenging in terms of combat, but that can be chalked more to poor balancing than bad or "easier" mechanics. Also it's hard to claim a game like Tyranny is aiming for a "wide audience" when it is so overtly working towards disturbing and morally challenging the player, in a Milgram sort of way almost. This game is pretty much inherently working against mass appeal.

 

 

Yes, it's the combat bascically for the twin main reasons of lack of friendly fire and reduced party size. Otherwise Tyranny is a very good game, but combat is really crucial in an RPG for probably a significant majority of players IMO. The effect of the changes is to dramatically reduce the tactical depth of combat and no amount of balancing can put it back IMO: it becomes essentially a question of raw power in terms of defensive and offensive stats - can I nuke you before you nuke me?

[Sedrefilos]

Combat is important but only to the extent the game makes it. For example, Torment: ToN has hardly any combat encounters and when they occur, they can be avoided. But is it a simplified game? It has turn-based combat, a thing many in here will dub as hardcore by itself. I didn't find any problem with Tyranny combat but I can see why people find one. Again, it had to do with the opponent/encounter design and not with cooldowns and party size, imo. Same thing's gonna happen with Pillars 2. It is a combat-heavy game, so combat mechanics should be important. But how they play, wether they are cooldowns or vancian, it'll have to do with how the developers will design the encounters and the opponent behavior.

Edited March 20, 2017 by Sedrefilos

[Blades of Vanatar]

 

 

 

Pillars of eternity (like baldurs gate 2) is a complex game. With a target audience probably consisting of ex infinity engine players, ex D&D players and people in the age bracket of 16-40 year olds.

 

Im assuming that the bulk of video games sales goes to a target audience of 8-18 year olds.

 

Of course I'm concerned that obsidian would dumb the game down to target this bigger market. I was simply comparing sales of skyrim and witcher because in my opinion both skyrim and witcher are dumbed down RPGs

Gameplay complexity has nothing to do with the players' age.

 

Complexity has something to do with willingness to invest time and effort into understanding something. A lot of people here got into IE games when they were younger and had much more free time. Now they are older, have a job, kids maybe ; but they play PoE for the nostalgia factor, and since they beat Baldu'rs Gate a million times, playing something like PoE doesn't require the same amount of intellectual investment and "risk taking" (as in, putting money in a game you might not like) as the average player.

 

But the very same BG Veterans demographic probably wouldn't play other complex games they're less familiar with (say, Guilty Gear). Because they don't have anymore the amount of free time they had when they knew every single spell from the DnD rulebooks.

 

That's the niche game curse. You just don't suddenly become invested in a demanding genre at 40. It takes decades of investment and passion to build such a demographic.

I agree. Its very time related. I used to have be able to have an amazing time with large complex games when I was a teenager. Now I always have the feeling that i am negletiing some sort of responsibility when i play them, The only games I play right now are short and action oriented, specially if i can play with friends. Games that require minimal time investment and provide some simple escapism or the opportunity to share time with people i like. I still played this game and will play the sequel simply because baldurs gate 2 (and an obscure pretty bad game called "azure dreams") were basically my childhood. But even the way I play the game has changed. No more long playing sessions.

Am I the only one who plays PoE because it's a good game and I enjoy it, and not because it's similar to a game I played 20 years ago?

You are not alone. I thought PoE killed it. Great game. Will be replaying it years from now.

[Katarack21]

Tyranny actually had a decently complex spell system with a long list of various effects, durations, way to change those durations and effects, etc. It only seems really simple if you only acquired the simpler spell sigils. Hell, you can build your spells so that even your basic fire spells inflict three status effects and have wildly variable AoE's from standard.

[MountainTiger]

Tyranny actually had a decently complex spell system with a long list of various effects, durations, way to change those durations and effects, etc. It only seems really simple if you only acquired the simpler spell sigils. Hell, you can build your spells so that even your basic fire spells inflict three status effects and have wildly variable AoE's from standard.

 

Classless progression systems are also inherently more complex than class-based. Tyranny did simplify some areas, but I don't think its problems can be primarily attributed to simplification.

 

Anyhow, complexity is, all else equal, bad. Adding complexity to a game is justifiable if it adds interesting gameplay, but lots of complex features provide little or even negative value to games. I don't think Pillars had any obviously negative-value systems (it seems like the stronghold was this for some people, I guess), but I do hope that Obsidian has looked for areas that didn't produce returns commensurate to the added complexity for reworking or elimination in the sequel.

[algroth]

 

 

 

I'm secure enough, thank you, and I've been called worst things directly from people in this forum but I don't care on personal matter. But this whole "dumbing down" talk implies generalization and superiority and I'm starting to dislike the term (not that I ever liked it to begin with). And no matter how sure I feel for myself, it's always irritating to hear derogatory generalizations. If you hear someone talking racist in the bus, won't you call them out even if you're not a target? It's not about me, it's about people thing they're better because they do A and think that others that doing the B they don't like, are dumb (or whatever).

 

The term "dumbed down" is not meant in a perjorative way, at least as far as I am concenred, as in "game is dumbed down for filthy casuals". Not everyone wants all their games, or any of their games for that matter, to be complex, challenging and hardcore, and there is no reason on earth why they should either and no reason to critisise them for it.

 

The point is that the most successful cRPGs by far from the new RPG Renaisance, Pillars and Divinity Original SIn, are uncompromisingly hardcore  whilst those that have been dumbed down (I told you already Greg, Stop it!!!), er sorry, "streamlined", have been much less successfull.

 

The brunt of the "dumbed down" slight is therefore aimed at developers who believe they have to do it to reach a wider audience when in fact it does precisely the opposite and seriously ticks off longterm fans to boot, leading to widespread critisism from this harcore fanbase across the interwebs which further depresses sales.

 

It is aimed at the devs, not some sort of notion of "filthy casuals" and , as far as I am concerned anyways, it is certainly not aimed at you for enjoying Tyranny.

 

Why do you find it dumbed down or streamlined, though? I will agree that it was not very challenging in terms of combat, but that can be chalked more to poor balancing than bad or "easier" mechanics. Also it's hard to claim a game like Tyranny is aiming for a "wide audience" when it is so overtly working towards disturbing and morally challenging the player, in a Milgram sort of way almost. This game is pretty much inherently working against mass appeal.

 

 

Yes, it's the combat bascically for the twin main reasons of lack of friendly fire and reduced party size. Otherwise Tyranny is a very good game, but combat is really crucial in an RPG for probably a significant majority of players IMO. The effect of the changes is to dramatically reduce the tactical depth of combat and no amount of balancing can put it back IMO: it becomes essentially a question of raw power in terms of defensive and offensive stats - can I nuke you before you nuke me?

 

Lack of friendly fire I can understand, less so a reduced party size which is not something I feel has any relevance to how tactical or challenging a game is. But for the former, whereas it's true that lack of friendly fire makes casting spells in the densest concentration of characters in a fight easier, the AoE in the game are pretty drastically reduced compared to the likes of Pillars, making positioning and targetting more relevant through these means as well. I think Tyranny is the easier game, mind, but more because of poor balancing than actual mechanics or lack thereof, but when all is said and done both present pretty comparable though different sets of mechanics.

Edited March 20, 2017 by algroth

[Katarack21]

I actually had a tougher time on my first playthrough of Tyranny than with PoE. The smaller party made combat *more* difficult for me because of the more limited options; you can't, for example, set three tanks to block a line and then blast with three casters. That simple and direct strategy is a total no-go. After I adjusted it became much, much easier but it did have a learning curve for me.

[algroth]

I actually had a tougher time on my first playthrough of Tyranny than with PoE. The smaller party made combat *more* difficult for me because of the more limited options; you can't, for example, set three tanks to block a line and then blast with three casters. That simple and direct strategy is a total no-go. After I adjusted it became much, much easier but it did have a learning curve for me.

Ah, I can't say this was my experience, personally. I felt the first act, act-and-a-third had some fights that made me reload a couple of times, but these aside there was no encounter, not even those with the Archons, where I recall needing to reload out of having lost the fight. Not the case at all with Pillars, which had me spam-reloading with plenty of the boss and bounty fights: a line of tanks in front of a creature that could one-shot the entire party meant pretty little when all was said and done.

[Katarack21]

The curve is pretty bad in Tyranny; by the time you get to fight the Archons, you're so powerful that they're basically no challenge. Like was said by somebody else, I think a lot of the problems with combat in Tyranny come down to balance issues.

[Varana]

Also, I find it quite questionable to just assume that the supposed "dumbing down" of Tyranny and TToNumenera would be responsible (even partly) for lower sales. That simply ignores that both PoE and D:OS are, compared to those two, pretty mainstream. PoE is a standard pseudo-medieval fantasy world with Elves and stuff and lots of combat; D:OS is colourful and fun and they're setting up multiplayer arena matches at their presentations. They won't sell Call of Duty levels, but as RPGs go, their appeal is pretty broad.

Tyranny, OTOH, is a somewhat short game with a rather odd premise (or how many people really wanted to play mid-level North Korean government officials?) that wasn't promoted much, and TTON ... is a weird novel with some visual help where it's perfectly normal to not see any combat for at least a third of the time you play the game (and has some real issues). I suspect those might play a larger role in sales numbers.

[Katarack21]

Who *doesn't* want to pllay a petty bureaucrat with delusions of power?!

Edited March 20, 2017 by Katarack21

[firkraag888]

Also, I find it quite questionable to just assume that the supposed "dumbing down" of Tyranny and TToNumenera would be responsible (even partly) for lower sales. That simply ignores that both PoE and D:OS are, compared to those two, pretty mainstream. PoE is a standard pseudo-medieval fantasy world with Elves and stuff and lots of combat; D:OS is colourful and fun and they're setting up multiplayer arena matches at their presentations. They won't sell Call of Duty levels, but as RPGs go, their appeal is pretty broad.

Tyranny, OTOH, is a somewhat short game with a rather odd premise (or how many people really wanted to play mid-level North Korean government officials?) that wasn't promoted much, and TTON ... is a weird novel with some visual help where it's perfectly normal to not see any combat for at least a third of the time you play the game (and has some real issues). I suspect those might play a larger role in sales numbers.

I think the dumbing down of tyranny did effect its sales.

 

The review sites are flooded with reviews saying how mindless and boring the combat was.

 

I think that, compared with it being a "dumbed down" 4 member party put off a lot of people.

 

A lot of the core POE fans (me included) where keenly following tyranny hoping that it would be the equivalent of an extension of pillars, or even better, better then pillars.

 

I was hugely let down when I played it. And so where the 1,000,000 odd Pillars fans when they read the reviews about the combat and magic systems tyranny implemented. 

 

The numbers speak for themselves. 160,000 purchases on steam over this time period is a complete flop and a commercial failure.

Edited March 20, 2017 by firkraag888

[Katarack21]

The review sites are flooded with grognards. You can find reviews bitching about the amount of text in Torment. Online reviews are meaningless babble.

[anameforobsidian]

I'm not saying this to be edgy, but if you're tank n' spanking Pillars you're doing it wrong.  The only fights that's really applicable to are the dragons.  The vast majority of other fights favor armored or semi-armored damage dealers.  Sure casters can play master blaster, but status spells like Gaze of the Adragan are far more powerful than pew-pew spells like Minoletta's Precisely Piercing Burst.  I'm not saying 3 front 3 back is a bad formation, but 3 tanks in the front is a bad party build.

 

 

And Tyranny wasn't just derided for the ease of combat; it took several hits in professional reviews for how rote combat was. That's either bad system or encounter design.

Edited March 20, 2017 by anameforobsidian

[Katarack21]

Pfft.

[algroth]

 

Also, I find it quite questionable to just assume that the supposed "dumbing down" of Tyranny and TToNumenera would be responsible (even partly) for lower sales. That simply ignores that both PoE and D:OS are, compared to those two, pretty mainstream. PoE is a standard pseudo-medieval fantasy world with Elves and stuff and lots of combat; D:OS is colourful and fun and they're setting up multiplayer arena matches at their presentations. They won't sell Call of Duty levels, but as RPGs go, their appeal is pretty broad.

Tyranny, OTOH, is a somewhat short game with a rather odd premise (or how many people really wanted to play mid-level North Korean government officials?) that wasn't promoted much, and TTON ... is a weird novel with some visual help where it's perfectly normal to not see any combat for at least a third of the time you play the game (and has some real issues). I suspect those might play a larger role in sales numbers.

I think the dumbing down of tyranny did effect its sales.

 

The review sites are flooded with reviews saying how mindless and boring the combat was.

 

I think that, compared with it being a "dumbed down" 4 member party put off a lot of people.

 

A lot of the core POE fans (me included) where keenly following tyranny hoping that it would be the equivalent of an extension of pillars, or even better, better then pillars.

 

I was hugely let down when I played it. And so where the 1,000,000 odd Pillars fans when they read the reviews about the combat and magic systems tyranny implemented. 

 

The numbers speak for themselves. 160,000 purchases on steam over this time period is a complete flop and a commercial failure.

 

On a personal level, I'm a big fan of Obsidian, Black Isle, isometric RPGs and Pillars (you can in fact read my review for it here), and yet only heard of Tyranny's existence two weeks before it was being released. I wouldn't be surprised if it flew over the radars of several more casual Obsidianites and Pillars players. Considering one of the main criticisms levied towards Pillars was to its combat, I think it's hard to point at combat mechanics being the factor that made the sales difference between either.

 

As to whether it's a complete flop, I'd like some more concrete numbers first. What was the game's production budget? How much, exactly, do Steam sales cover (considering it can be also bought through Amazon, as far as I understand, and through Paradox's own site)? What is the approximate number in terms of money that it has so far gathered? The number of Steam purchases only represents one side of the story.

Edited March 21, 2017 by algroth

[Katarack21]

It's not a commercial failure. You fail basic economics every time you say that.

 

Once again, I'll bet Tyranny was extremely cheap to make and they certainly made a profit.

[algroth]

It's not a commercial failure. You fail basic economics every time you say that.

 

Once again, I'll bet Tyranny was extremely cheap to make and they certainly made a profit.

It's why I'd like to know the budget. I'm not sure the game was "extremely cheap to make", but you can only know whether it was a success or failure depending on production cost, projections and so on, both of which I reckon were lower than Pillars'.

[Katarack21]

I'm betting on cheap because the team was small and it mainly used technology already developed for Pillars. Combined with a fairly short development cycle and the fact that the premise had been sitting around for a while, it seems like a game that should have been fairly inexpensive to make.

[firkraag888]

The Budget for Tyanny consisted off 3 roller skating monkeys that where working on the design team who where paid weekly in salted peanuts

[Katarack21]

You know, play time and challenging games is one place wherw being disabled and chronically ill gives me an advantage.

 

Go incurable ailments!

Edited March 21, 2017 by Katarack21

[FlintlockJazz]

Who *doesn't* want to pllay a petty bureaucrat with delusions of power?!

You know, you're probably joking but one of the disappointments I had with Tyranny was that you couldn't do the whole petty bureaucrat thing trying to keep order and 'greater good'.  I went into the first act thinking that I could try and keep order, protecting the general people while making necessary sacrifices ("Gotta kill you to keep up appearances but the rest of you can go"), but in the end it all just boiled down to "Pick one of three sides or go at it by yourself".  I think I was expecting something more... 'political' I guess?  Less fighting, more talking.

Edited March 21, 2017 by FlintlockJazz

[Wormerine]

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

Yeah, that is right, I am not a fan of cooldown based combat (Dragon Age, Tyranny.) Not that the cooldowns are bad themselves. Just the way they were implimented in DA and Tyranny was poor. It took a lot of choice out of the combat. Infinity Engine combat was based on choice - how to buff, how to debuff. It is not perfect and a more intuitive combat system would be appreciated. In Tyranny there is no choice. You have abilities which you spam whenever they are available. It is a mindless system and one which gets dull after a longer period of time. I like Tyranny and KOTOR as they were short RPGs and didn't have time to get bored with combat (and were very storydriven). DA:O on the other hand? oh gosh, most of the game was combat with an unengaging system. So yeah, some of the things they mention do worry me though I will wait with my judgement until the game is out. PoE combat can be improved, and I hope it is what they are doing.

[Ninjamestari]

What Flintlock said. Tyranny had its moments, but was a very disappointing game overall. It devolved from the interesting political intrigue into a juvenile power fantasy way too quickly. And let's be honest here: the combat and the leveling/skill scheme in Tyranny sucked rat droppings. The spell creation system and the sigils were the only interesting thing in it, and they too were spoiled with a cooldown based casting which lead to the "Cast these heals when they come out of cooldown and invest to constitution and quickness and you'll become immortal", which to my dismay worked on PotD. Then there are the ridiculous consequences of the skill system, like making a high constitution HP-healermonster will lead you to getting a ton more XP than making any reasonable character, thus the more unreasonable build you make the stronger it will end up - bull****.

 

Basically, Tyranny copied Skyrim, even to the point of having those "5 ranks per level" training limits, which considering how much that game sucks is never a good idea. Tyranny had two things going for it: the setting, which was awesome, and the sigil system, which was interesting and would've been awesome if it was based around a mana-system instead of cooldowns.