CAN WE PLEASE GET A MEANINGFUL FIG UPDATE!

[rheingold]

Devs have to be really careful about showing game footage to early. It tends to come back and bite them in the ass later.

And I'd really like them to not waste any time on updates but to just work on the game I've paid them for!

[Sedrefilos]

I mostly think that the updates seem underwhelming. During the development of the first game, the return to classic iso-rpg ala IE games was something new and every tiny bit they showed us was something never seen before. Now there are tens of iso games and we already know how the game's gonna look like etc so small bits don't mean much. I do believe the only thing that's gonna excite me, aside of the final game in my hands, is an extended gameplay video of 10 minutes or so, showing all aspects of the game: dialogue, scripted interactions, companion interjections, UI, inventory management, settlement exploration, map exploration, dungeon exploration and, of course, combat. But I wouldn't expect anything like that happening before winter, to be honest.

Edited May 18, 2017 by Sedrefilos

[Quillon]

I'd like to see an update on skills in the near future; there are about 17 of them now IIRC.

 

Then NPC scheduling, over-world map navigation, crew system, subclasses...

[injurai]

I mostly think that the updates seem underwhelming. During the development of the first game, the return to classic iso-rpg ala IE games was something new and every tiny bit they showed us was something never seen before. Now there are tens of iso games and we already know how the game's gonna look like etc so small bits don't mean much. I do believe the only thing that's gonna excite me, aside of the final game in my hands, is an extended gameplay video of 10 minutes or so, showing all aspects of the game: dialogue, scripted interactions, companion interjections, UI, inventory management, settlement exploration, map exploration, dungeon exploration and, of course, combat. But I wouldn't expect anything like that happening before winter, to be honest.

 

In some ways, I'd prefer if updates were used as a marketing device. Look, I like, no, LOVE Pillars of Eternity. I've backed both games now. I rate PoE+TWM as perhaps my favorite rpg of the past two generations. I make the effort to stay up to date, I read text descriptions and feedback from the team. But there are those who don't, and instead hitch themselves mainstream opinion vectors. Where many of the opinions are armchair by people that you know can't feasible play all the games they seem to form strong opinions on.

 

Just recently Paradox released a statement declaring Tyranny as having not performed as well as they were expecting. Well... they gave Obsidian the typical short grunt work cycle and budget. They were hoping to capitalize on the new upswing of infinity-like crpgs. The Neogaf thread on Paradox's statement was filled with the general sentiment that:

 

1. People didn't know it existed until it was out.

2. It was Obsidian not doing the proper marketing steps, as opposed to Paradox... their publisher.

3. PoE was a favorite but most other crpgs have been disappointing.

4. Obsidian HAS USED ****TY UNITY FOR 2 ENTIRE GAMES NOW!

5. Not noticing the beauty of pre-rendered back grounds because of ****ty 3D models and flat scenes, looks outdated compared to modern titles.

6. I love Obsidian but I'm going to wait until their V:TM-B game comes out x_x

X. The hardcore fans there don't really put a dent in the impressions of the less informed.

 

The aggregate take away from a large general gaming forum, that is in eternal September, and tracks niche interests that could include taking interest in a crpg would be:

 

1. Strong Marketing Pushes are necessary. Ones that will generate the most positive word of mouth discussion. Which starts from people who already track the game. Meaning they need to talk about "revealed feature x" at the same time as the general audience. Not 3 months earlier. General audiences deserve to be clued into hardcore impressions. I'd say this is especially important if you don't have a considerable marketing budget that can usurp word of mouth interest.

 

2. Really sell people on that PoE is not just nostalgia but something new and worth while.

 

3. Target the most lucrative word of mouth vectors, namely YouTube, and the demonstrate why PoE is a worth while experience. For many people this might indeed be story mode, so really sell that aspect of it.

 

4. Appeal to young people in marketing as your primary concern, and keep previews heavy on demonstrable content like unfolding narratives which are easily conveyed. Unlike the number-systems that drive the game.

 

5. Sell people on character crafting and a robust ability to living out roles which rival AAA games. People love choice especially when it comes to crafting a characters identity.

 

6. Potential for crafting a very attractive player character (but not exclusively). And yes I still hope Obsidian blue balls everyone except Eder.

 

---

 

Most of the above deals in properly marketing the game. Finding out what features are best used to sell the game to non-fanatics like myself. Pull in new audiences.

 

A few like attractive player models I'd hope they already are sort of planning for,  because that's something that has to be planned way earlier than marketing. But it's an rpg and you want to let people know that they can live out their ideal protagonist.

[Sonntam]

1. Strong Marketing Pushes are necessary. Ones that will generate the most positive word of mouth discussion. Which starts from people who already track the game. Meaning they need to talk about "revealed feature x" at the same time as the general audience. Not 3 months earlier. General audiences deserve to be clued into hardcore impressions. I'd say this is especially important if you don't have a considerable marketing budget that can usurp word of mouth interest.

 

I think it would help if we had any isometric RPGs that had a real hype machine going on. Original Sin is doing pretty well, but I wouldn't call it exactly "well known" either.

 

Also: money. Money is a big problem, because Original Sin is on beck and call of the publisher who makes sure there is good marketing going on. Obsidian does not spend a lot of money on marketing, any marketing is done by the dev team and as Tyranny has shown, Paradox is not that good at marketing anyway, so they can't help out much. 

 

2. Really sell people on that PoE is not just nostalgia but something new and worth while.

 

... is it, though?

 

I mean, all RPG fans I know are well aware of PoE. They liked it, they know it's out there, they will play the sequel. 

 

But assuming you want to pull in more mainstream gamers, you are a bit out of luck. Consider Shadowrun games. Dragonfall and Hong Kong had been superb. Good writing, pretty visuals, great companions. Dragonfall had some really AWESOME strategical gameplay. But none of the games are flashy. They are isometric games and if there is anything customers know by now is that isometric = old-fashioned. You could probably beat that with animated dialogue scenes and full VO, but it's still nothing "flashy". 

 

Otherwise people won't give a damn about the new cool feature called "multi-classing". If you are a grognard, you may be interested, but why should anyone else care? It's not multiplayer, it's not romances, it's not full VO.

 

 

3. Target the most lucrative word of mouth vectors, namely YouTube, and the demonstrate why PoE is a worth while experience. For many people this might indeed be story mode, so really sell that aspect of it.

 

Obsidian gives a lot of copies to livestreamers to generate more hype for the game. 

 

... it doesn't work. Or at least it did not work at all for PoE. All the small names livestreamers streamed it, the big names did not give a damn, though. A game where you need to read a lot of text is not exactly youtube material. It's not what gathers the most views and likes for the letsplayers, so why would they bother?

[injurai]

Hmm, maybe get Jimmy Fallon to play it live.

 

Otherwise, I see what you mean. There is perhaps a ceiling when it comes to generating interest out of the blue in the non-grognards.

[rjshae]

At this point, any updates are going to have release date marketing implications so I'd expect they will be providing notifications from that perspective. If they start showing all the neat new features too far in advance, potential customers may lose interest. I'm expecting then that we'll only get infrequent updates, with more shown closer to the release date.

 

Just a guess.

[Sedrefilos]

How is isometric old-fashioned when Diablo 3 and all Diablo clones are isometric, all MOBAS are isometric, all strategy games are isometric, most handheld console games are isometric and many many more. The old-fashioned thing about Pillars is the 2D backgrounds. Unless we're talking about the rpg genre alone, which in that case it is true, but crpgs are part of the video games in general so can an rpg be old-fashioned just because it's isometric? I don't think so. Obsidian marketed Pillars as old-school/fashioned that's why all reviews note that. It's true that they based many aspects of the game in the old IE games but appearances aside, Pillars is not an old-fashion game and tbh it takes the genre much more forward than other blockbusters that focus more on world building, graphics and action and less on roleplaying.

Edited May 18, 2017 by Sedrefilos

[injurai]

How is isometric old-fashioned when Diablo 3 and all Diablo clones are isometric, all MOBAS are isometric, all strategy games are isometric, most handheld console games are isometric and many many more. The old-fashioned thing about Pillars is the 2D backgrounds. Unless we're talking about the rpg genre alone, which in that case it is true, but crpgs are part of the video games in general so can an rpg be old-fashioned just because it's isometric? I don't think so. Obsidian marketed Pillars as old-school/fashioned that's why all reviews note that. It's true that they based many aspects of the game in the old IE games but appearances aside, Pillars is not an old-fashion game and tbh it takes the genre much more forward than other blockbusters that focus more on world building, graphics and action and less on roleplaying.

 

Well there is always the aesthetic association. There is modern swing music, but the genre will always be associated is old fashion ways. It's probably scene as the most conservative and tempered of the "fun" dance musics. Being musics that are flirtatious, energetic, and not stifled.

 

Similarly I think, pre-rendered backgrounds are just associated with a certain era. It's all about hyper-realistic 3D graphics or clean flowery cartoon graphics. The sort of two dialectical poles of most graphics progress. Think Uncharted vs Overwatch.

 

Imo PoE feels like a modern 2015 game, where ME:A feels like it's trapped in 2007. But it's hard to impress upon people aspects like this unless they are have already played the games. It's the new player that is always the hardest to reach. So association dominates people's impressions until they take a further look. There are a lot of games fighting for people's "second looks" before they buy.

[Sedrefilos]

I think non-AAA games appeal to people who spend more time in searching for games, learn about them, want the experience only this medium can provide where blockbusters appeal to those who don't care much, just want to have somw fun with a game this week and look up the new arrivals, their covers and maybe some trailers. Just like blockbuster movies or books. That said, I think lower budget games have a large enough audience and can make money for their publishers because of their relatively low cost.

[Katarack21]

This *has* been a long time. An update would be quite appreciated.

[smjjames]

This *has* been a long time. An update would be quite appreciated.

 

Did they keep a regular schedule for the updates for PoE or did they just do them whenever? Just wondering.

 

But yeah, a sort of status update or stuff on what's new and what's happening would be nice.

[AndreaColombo]

PoE updates were biweekly, IIRC.

 

Personally I don't mind the silence. Don't get me wrong, I love meaty updates as much as the next guy; however I understand they have a busy schedule to release the game in Q1 18 and updates take time to put together, so I'm fine with their focusing on game development instead.

 

Also Josh drops tidbits on Twitter fairly often, which some of us are reposting over here, so it's not like there is complete radio silence.

[Wormerine]

It's odd that no one asked OP what a "meaningful" update looks like. 

 

So far the updates look to me as same updates as for first PoE, except with a bit more beef. With PoE screenshots and gifs were truly rare. Gameplay updates about classes (aka what is class X and how does it play) worked for the first game, but you can barely do that in PoE 2. Many sub-classes sound like they are in a very early stage and could still change drastically at this point.

 

So what would you expect Obsidian to provide? 

Expensive CGI trailer misrepresenting the game.

[Flouride]

PoE updates were biweekly, IIRC.

 

Personally I don't mind the silence. Don't get me wrong, I love meaty updates as much as the next guy; however I understand they have a busy schedule to release the game in Q1 18 and updates take time to put together, so I'm fine with their focusing on game development instead.

 

Also Josh drops tidbits on Twitter fairly often, which some of us are reposting over here, so it's not like there is complete radio silence.

 

Not only does it take time to come up with meaningful updates, but there is also limited amount of interesting updates they can do. They don't want to run out of update worthy material well before the game is ready to ship and since it's a plot driven game they can't really go much into detail about the plot without spoiling the fun of discovery. They don't have the budget BioWare/Bethesda has to promote their games with CGI trailers to ramp up the hype either.

 

E3 is coming up, just because they aren't releasing anything right now, doesn't mean there won't be awesome stuff coming up and working on E3 promotional material takes time and is a bigger priority than a Fig update. Your average Fig update won't really raise up much hype, it will get picked up by some gaming sites and might attract some people to follow the campaign, but a great E3 presentation/presence will have gaming sites, Youtubers and gaming magazines write/talk about the game, creating much more interest globally.

 

So with their limited resources it is quite expected that they won't always have biweekly updates or meaty updates. You need to save some of those for E3, GamesCom etc. to keep the game on people's radars, not just on those of us who donated.

[Quillon]

E3 is coming up, just because they aren't releasing anything right now, doesn't mean there won't be awesome stuff coming up and working on E3 promotional material takes time and is a bigger priority than a Fig update. Your average Fig update won't really raise up much hype, it will get picked up by some gaming sites and might attract some people to follow the campaign, but a great E3 presentation/presence will have gaming sites, Youtubers and gaming magazines write/talk about the game, creating much more interest globally.

 

So with their limited resources it is quite expected that they won't always have biweekly updates or meaty updates. You need to save some of those for E3, GamesCom etc. to keep the game on people's radars, not just on those of us who donated.

Will there be E3 presence tho? Last time they were in Paradox booth, no publisher relation announced yet...unless fig will have a booth for the games in the platform or Obs do it themselves...

[injurai]

Good point about E3, I keep forgetting about it.

[Flouride]

 

Will there be E3 presence tho? Last time they were in Paradox booth, no publisher relation announced yet...unless fig will have a booth for the games in the platform or Obs do it themselves...

 

 

Not sure, would be quite weird if they weren't there at all. No booth would be understandable, they cost money and they could just rent a conference room or something like that from nearby hotel. It's an opportunity I'm sure they don't want to miss out on, all those press folk in one location...

[anameforobsidian]

No update might be better than the last fig update.  I'm being serious.  The first campaign was full of interesting mini-articles from people on the team about plans for the game.  The whole campaign feels kinda pro forma compared to the first.  We'll see though.

[injurai]

I think this campaign was actually run more confidently, but last time they had a lot of fresh stuff to report so it felt a bit more indepth. It's not like they can show us all their engine work for the first time again. This game is all about content, and new gameplay systems probably are too much WIP at this point.

 

I agree, it feels like we are due. But I do want meatier updates, so I will wait. Articles just about "daily life on the Deadfire team" might be neat. Just so we can hear about overcoming challenges on things that are related but not directly the game itself.

[Labadal]

Update #33 - Some Quick Reminders

POSTED: 05/20/2017

Greetings Deadfire adventurers, it's time for a quick update on Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire's continuing (and concluding soon!) backer and investment campaign. We want to notify you of a few pressing items, and also tell you that we love you. There, we said it. Be careful, you've got our hearts.

Investor News

In case you missed out on making an investment reservation, Fig still has some Fig Game Shares available for Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire!  If you're interested in earning a return from sales of the game, check out the link below:

https://www.fig.co/campaigns/deadfire/invest

Backer Surveys

We know you backers want to get your items locked down and set so we can start building your packages and sending them out. The surveys to help you do that are almost done and will be out to you next week. Get psyched!

Tyranny Coupons

Hey, have you redeemed your coupon for a discount on our awesome cRPG Tyranny yet? If not, don't worry, we've got your back. While the coupons were originally set to expire on Wednesday, May 31, we've extended them until Sunday June 18th! You've got more time... but don't wait too long, the chance to get Tyranny at a discount won't last forever.

Maia Update

Finally, a quick update on one of our companions! You didn't think we'd let you get out of here without some cool info about Deadfire, did you? Below are a couple of images of Maia Rua, our Aumaua Ranger, elder sister of Kana Rua, from Pillars I. Maia is wearing (in two of the pictures) a set of padded armor that is wearable by any companion in Deadfire, or the player.  

Stay tuned for more info on the campaign and our characters, plus a lot more video content, as the team ramps up our pipeline on the way to E3!

[Aleh1811]

Not really very exciting as an update, just really glad this is coming sooner than later. I think Pillars 2 just doesnt carry the same level of excitement of the first one. The first one was about reviving a lost genre. Why is this one exciting? they should use the updates to tell us about it. At this point, the only thing I get is "is like pillars 1, but better", and that's enought for me, a fan of isometric rpgs, to buy it, but how about the rest of people? It doesnt even make me all that excited.

[Sonntam]

Not really very exciting as an update, just really glad this is coming sooner than later. I think Pillars 2 just doesnt carry the same level of excitement of the first one. The first one was about reviving a lost genre. Why is this one exciting? they should use the updates to tell us about it. At this point, the only thing I get is "is like pillars 1, but better", and that's enought for me, a fan of isometric rpgs, to buy it, but how about the rest of people? It doesnt even make me all that excited.

 

Yeah, this is exactly why I like Pillars of Eternity 2. 

 

Developers always try to add more bells and whistles. Just improving on the original product does not seem to be enough for anyone. That's why developers switch engines (which does not always lead to graphical improvements or more stability), add multiplayerer components (which can be a hit or a miss), completely change the tone of the game and overhype the game based on features which end up not to be as cool as the marketing campaign made them out to be.

 

Are you not tired of the old hype joyride? What was the last time you got hyped and did not end up disappointed?

[Sedrefilos]

No Obsidian participation in E3 as I can see. Neither Paradox.

https://www.e3expo.com/

[Sonntam]

No Obsidian participation in E3 as I can see. Neither Paradox.

https://www.e3expo.com/

 

Well, Obsidian said they will be on E3. So I guess they won't be there with a booth, but will only do interviews with journalists.