Revan91

WTF Obsidian, I understand this is probably Take Two's decision but still WTF. Epic Store is awful, I don't want to install that ****, at least until it becomes good/acceptable.

I haven't said they used Fig money on it (although it's possible and other devs do things like that, see inXile and how they used T:ToN's money on WL2, but I think Obsidian is way more trustworthy than scam artist Fargo), just that I would rather have them use their money on something else. Also, you keep treating me like an idiot for saying that these games don't go well on consoles, but it's common knowledge. You know what happens when a game is successful? It makes the news, see every piece on IGN, Game Informer, PC Gamer (etc.) about how well D:OS and PoE sold on PC. Have you seen anything like that about the console versions? I'll answer for you: no. About a year ago, maybe more Swen said to the Codex that D:OS sold about 1.5 million copies on all platforms, then just looking at Steamspy the game was at 1.1 million, just there, and it's not counting GOG. Which means that both ps4 and xone sold about 300k copies together, about 1/4 of the PC version alone. And it's the most successful KS rpg we're talking about, PoE was less successful and its console versions were released later on and probably sold even less. It's a viable market? Probably so. It's worth to chase it? It depends, I guess, but compared to the PC market it's really small (and i provided some data to back my claims). And you say "if everyone thinks like I do then it's always gonna be a small market", well hopefully so. Because if it becomes the bigger market you can dream of having an rpg made with PC in made, and instead will get controls and UI studied for a gamepad. No thanks. And while I like your vision about having games on all platforms makes everyone happy and all, history tells us that it comes at a cost. Just look at BioWare and the constant decline in both quality and complexity, since they became more and more console-focused. Call me selfish, but I don't want a new BioWare, the old one is already enough for me.

I get were you are coming from. I am just guessing, but I doubt simpler mechanics are reason why ME or Witcher3 sold better. It is not about simplifying mechanics - it’s about boosting presentation. No matter what you sell visuals are the best marketing tool. Even in music where visuals are pretty much meaningless and good cover album or an attractive artist has higher chances of success not matter how they sound. All those titles had great, expensive trailers. They sound and look great (well except Bethesda trash, but it’s trailer even made me dip into Skyrim). I havent seen someone who picked up PoE and said: it’s way to complicated. Most complains are: top down isn’t immersive, it’s not fully voiceacted, graphic look like 2003 etc. Now, boosting presentation does come with cutting complexity - full dialogue with recognisable cast will encourage less writing and reactivity. High quality model of main character and full voice acting him/her will limit character creation choices. Design becomes more about reusing the same animations and set pieces without player feeling constrained instead of giving player space to role play and designing game around responding to those choices. Deadfire seem to open up compared to POE1 with more choices and freedom of exploration so is that really the case? If PoE port made its money back and not much else... isn’t it worth porting it again? Even if gained just a bit of extra cash, from a narrow audience - that is still a gain right? Do they need to make (quoting Jim Sterling) not only some money but ALL OF THE MONEY? Couple sells last time, maybe more sales with Deadfire. If they don’t loose money by doing a port why not do it again? Nothing lost, potential future customers gained. If they hurry they could sell the DLC as well. I kinda agree with you: presentation is king and having great graphics helps really a lot of course. But in a game with top-down perspective you cannot have the visual appeal of, say, The Witcher 3. It can look good of course, and in fact both PoE and PoE2 even more do look good, but it cannot have the graphical impact that something like TW3 has. Besides that, complex mechanics are still a huge turn-off for some people (and a pro for someone else), so even with the best graphics possible if the game is complex and "hard" it won't sell as much as something that looks great and is also easy to play/understand. Which is why Dragon Age: Origins sold way less than Skyrim: DA:O is not particularly complex as an rpg (it's a lot more casual than PoE and even way more if compared to Fallout 1 and even BG2), but it was way more complex than the average AAA rpg those days, it sold pretty well because of marketing and pleasant enough graphics (although it wasn't the best graphics of the time, nowhere near), but more action-focused games, with less complexity sold way better. Ironically, BioWare then tried to make Dragon Age more and more casual and action-focused with each game, but it didn't translate in better sales, so there's a lesson to be learned too.

Console players are not retarded and not capable of understanding vancian magic, but still they're used to action gameplay or cooldowns and other casual stuff, hence if they see something a bit more "hardcore" like PoE or even D:OS they don't exactly rush to buy it. In fact, the market for these kind of rpgs on consoles is less than 1/4 than what it is on PC. Now, that's probably enough to get the porting money back and even some more, but if a developer want to do well on consoles the road to follow is the BioWare and Bethesda's ones, aka easier, more casual games. Again, I like more casual and broader rpgs, like Mass Effect (1 and 2) or The Witcher 3 (which is a masterpiece imo, even if its systems kinda suck in some ways), but I want something else from PoE: I want something more in the veins of Baldur's Gate, which is a more hardcore and in-depth rpg focused on its PC roots. I'll admit I overreacted a bit initally, tbh, because it's true and I know it now that I cooled off a bit, but still I want the money that goes on PoE to be spent on the PC game and improving that, not on making console ports (even if I know that it doesn't cost too much it's money I'd rather see spent on something else, even VO - and I don't care much about that either) I don't care about and that are kinda useless for a RTwP rpg that is a nightmare to play with anything other than mouse and keyboard.

I know you posted this in earnest so don't take this personally but... This is hilarious. Not only is this an insane over-reaction but they really have to say in their crowdfunding campaign that their sequel to a game that was on console is going to be on console or it is a betrayal? Oh my god I am dying laughing here. I don't know why I find this so funny. I was overreacting, you're right. Still, when you go to crowdfunding asking money in order to make an in-depth PC rpg that's what people is gonna expect, announcing a console version is not something I gave them money for. Then again, maybe it's a perfect world and the game will be great (I certainly expect it to be at least good) and not at all compromised for console players, but we won't know for sure until we play it. Having said that, some of the changes to the game kinda look in a different way, now that we know of the porting, since coincidentally they all happen to make it easier for console gamers. And anyway, PoE was ported to console more than two years after its release, I wasn't happy about it tbh, but obviously it never interfered with the PC version. Now they're announcing it even before the game is released. If they keep up this pace, PoE3 will be multiplatform from the start (which would definitely impact the game as well). This is crazy talk. Just by looking at all the beta streamings it's pretty much clear that the game has been developed with a PC in mind. The menus, the controls, everything screams "This is a PC game!". The changes they've made have been based on player feedback and also their own ideas. So nothing has been dumbed down, expecially not for consoles. Also, there was no way they could say during the crowfounding campaign that there was going to be a console port since they probably didn't even think about it, because they were busy developing the game on PC first. Besides, more people that buy the game = more money Obsidian gains = more likely they'll keep making PoE games. Also, there'd be more people with whom to share opinions and geek out about the game, that should also be a plus. More people buy the game = we're all happier isn't really true. Just look at BioWare and how going for consoles changed their games, definitely not for the better since we stopped getting BGs and we got Dragon Age II, Inquisition and ME3. Console gamers have different tastes, they don't like (generally, ofc a very very small number of them do) these games, and in fact you can look at the sales data to realize it: since D:OS (the most commercially successful rpg of this kind by far) sold more than 1,5 millions of copies on Steam alone, while on both consoles together it sold less than a third of that number. T:ToN flopped hard on PC as well, but according to Fargo its console sales were even worse, and I've never seen PoE on any console chart since its release on ps4 and xbox, and I would guess it sold pretty poorly as well (enough to get the porting costs back and maybe get a little profit, since porting the game wasn't expensive, but again nowhere near PC sales). If you want your games to go well on consoles you have to change them. If you port a somewhat classic rpg and leave it at that, basically no one will buy it for their ps4 or xbox. When they hear or read "rpg" they think of Mass Effect, The Elder Scrolls, nuFallout, The Witcher 3 (which is a masterpiece even if it's pretty casualized, but it's rare), not Pillars of Eternity spiritual heir of Baldur's Gate, a game the 99% of them never heard of. So, if developers want to do better on consoles, the way is to casualize the games, make it more spectacular, cinematic, full of action and "awesome", and while I wouldn't have a problem if Obsidian wanted to make a multiplatform action rpg that can sell millions of copies on PC and consoles like the ones I named before (in fact Project Indiana will be multiplatform and not an hardcore rpg, and I'm fine with that, well actually I'm very hyped about it), that's not the direction I want them take with PoE, a game that was funded by fans to see something very different from that.

Your an idiot, they are not making a console game. Obsidian is making a pc game and console build is being ported by another dev team. I am not sure what is so hard to understand. Yeah sure, big man, that's why they've been dumbing the game from what we had with PoE1: because they wanted to make a true PC game, not to make it easier for console peasants. One PC less in the party, no more camp supplies, no health/resistance anymore, basically no more vancian magic with everything being per encounter plus empower. All for us PC gamers backers, sure. The game isn't even out and the porting has already been announced, with PoE3 I guess it'll be multi-platform from the start, and probably even more casualized to chase (and fail at that) the console market that typically don't care about these more in depth rpgs. If you actually followed the development of the last game and this, these changes are to do with player feedback. The change in party size is maybe the only thing you can point to, but Tyranny worked well with 4, and you can't claim that the change was done on account of making a console title. Already you can have many pets in your party, so it's not like the game is getting that much more simple. They did it for other reasons to do with the flow and design of combat instances, which makes a lot more sense. Just because there is change, it doesn't automatically mean dumbing anyhting, Some changes are subjectively good and some are subjectively bad. It has nothing to do with intelligence though. I liked PoE 1.0 and liked it even more with 3.0, I don't recall that many people wanting health/resistance bar or supply camps to be gone. I know some people played the game poorly and rested after every fight or so and then complained about the rest limitations, but I don't think it's wise to accomodate those player feedbacks, since it makes the game worse and go in a different direction than the one promised in the initial pitch (the heir of BG thing). Changing party size from 6 to 5 isn't a big problem to me, honestly, I may even like it more, but sure as hell it also makes it more console-friendly, and since it's not the only decision which goes in that direction it's not exactly a coincidence.

Your an idiot, they are not making a console game. Obsidian is making a pc game and console build is being ported by another dev team. I am not sure what is so hard to understand. Yeah sure, big man, that's why they've been dumbing the game from what we had with PoE1: because they wanted to make a true PC game, not to make it easier for console peasants. One PC less in the party, no more camp supplies, no health/resistance anymore, basically no more vancian magic with everything being per encounter plus empower. All for us PC gamers backers, sure. The game isn't even out and the porting has already been announced, with PoE3 I guess it'll be multi-platform from the start, and probably even more casualized to chase (and fail at that) the console market that typically don't care about these more in depth rpgs.

This is a ****ing betrayal of your player base, Obsidian. Next time you go to crowdfunding make sure to say it before that you're making a ****ing console game, instead of a more hardcore RPG made for PC. Also, you can do without my money in advance.

Good post. Just two things: first, and it's not a really important issue, but how come you have 0 Italians showing in your surveys (even some African countries did better) when I know I did the survey and also some other friends of mine (all Italians) did? Second: about the DLC/expansion question I think you should've asked your fans how they feel about mid-game content and post-game content. I, for one, prefer Mask of the Betrayer-style expansions (not only because it was a masterpiece) rather than White March or New Vegas DLCs which force you to reload an old save or start a new game and play for several hours before you can enjoy the new content. I think it would've been useful to know this piece of information too.

I've only just lurked GAF a few times, but it always seemed terrible to me: people getting banned for no reasons, thought police, hive minded users, everything needed to be political and if you had the "wrong" opinion about something you were deemed a racist/sexist/homophobe/etc piece of **** and banned (even if you didn't actually say anything offensive). It's funny that it's always these kind of guys (like the owner of GAF) who turn out to be huge hypocrites who say one thing while acting a lot differently IRL.

Edit: WTF? The forum has deleted my post when I pressed "post" instead of sending it correctly. Edit 2: I'll write again. Well, I agree completely with the poster above. As much as I liked TWM (and it was really great, part 2 especially), I much prefer having expansions a la Mask of the Betrayer, that are instantly playable right from the start menu. Also, I think DLCs like TWM or the New Vegas ones feel like they're made for people who just buy GOTY editions of your games, and instead are kind of a pain in the ass for your most loyal fans who buy the games at day one and then have to start a new game and replay for 15-20 hours just to gain access to the new content, or reload an old save if they still have it which comes with other problems, like the fact that you have a strong PC that will not face any challenge since the DLC is made with level 7 PCs in mind.

Yes, I mean old school ones. Dragon Age:Origins would probably make the cut, at least it had some effort. The sequels were EA rubbish. The console versions don't need to be huge successes, they are meant for extra profit, especially in PoE's case since the core audience will be on PC's for a long time. Although in some cases the company might have an existing fanbase even on consoles. if you look at Obsidian's portfolio there's plenty of multiplatform games there so having a customer base on consoles isn't far fetched idea in that case.. Yes, the core audience is on PC. That much is clear, as the games will be better on PC. I think it comes down to which company is making the game. InXile doesn't have much of a following outside the PC gamers, even there they are slipping. In Larian's case the IP is old, but still fresh unlike Wasteland IP. Divinity 2 was released on XBOX360, so there might be some existing fans on consoles as well. Well, DA:O had a way higher budget, so it's not fair to compare it with the likes of D:OS, PoE and WL2. I liked it and it's probably the last good rpg from BioWare, but with that budget and marketing it's obvious that it sold quite a lot, on consoles as well as PC. I agree with you that Obsidian is surely more known by console players than inXile and Larian, so there might be some fans there who could try more of their games, although PoE is very different than New Vegas, KotOR II and the other multi-platform games they made, so while a new NV-style game would probably be very successful I don't think too many of them will be willing to try PoE's console versions. On that note, maybe Cain and Boyarsky's project, which should be multi-platform, will be more welcome by console players, although of course it's too early to say anything about it, since we know nothing about that game right now.

1. What other western turnbased/proper RPG can claim numbers like that on consoles? It shows there's a viable market for such games and not only for Final Fantasy and Skyrim and it's clones. When you compare the numbers, you have to take into account that the PC version has been out much longer, has been on multiple sales and was part of the D:OS2 Kickstarter campaign. Yes, even without those it would still be in favour of the PC version. But the port is also cheaper to make than building the game from ground up on PC. In that sense the sale numbers are great. If the game had sold more... well it depends. Does Larian go all in and hire plenty of more staff members and do they skip the Kickstarter for D:OS2. I doubt they would want to skip the Kickstarter campaign even in that scenario. It's free marketing for a small company and I don't see Larian doing a Kickstarter for multiplatform version of D:OS2 since it would alienate PC gamers and the risk is just too big to take. If by proper RPG you mean "old-school" rpgs, probably nothing else. WL2 sold definetely less, T:ToN failed terribly and well, most of the other post-Kickstarter rpgs (or even some indies like AoD, Underrail, etc.) never released on consoles so we can't compare their numbers to Larian and inXile's titles. D:OS sold definetely enough to cover the cost of the conversion (which were probably low) and get some profit out of it, but it's also the most successful rpg of this kind in the last years. I don't know if WL2 made much of a profit on consoles, for instance (probably a small one). So, one fail (T:ToN) and two games that managed to get some profit, but none of them were huge successes, unlike D:OS and PoE on PC. Looking at the numbers I think it's fair to say that the audience for this genre is mostly on PC. Beyond that, we should also consider that to many console players D:OS was probably the first game of this style that they tried, they may have found a new genre that they like but they may also have tried out of curiosity and discover it's not really what they want, so It's not certain that next "classic" rpgs would sell even as much as D:OS.

1. For a game that was ported to consoles year after the PC release it is a good and solid number. It's a niche market even on PC, selling 300-400k on consoles is amazing and I'm sure they made a hefty profit with those numbers. They aren't releasing it as a multiplatform game because they asked money on Kickstarter and it would be just bad PR to do that, not to mention the company doesn't have endless resources. For them it's more important to get the game out on PC than release it on all platforms at the same time because their core audience is on PC. With the 300-400k copies sold, I'm sure they will end up releasing D:OS2 on consoles as well later on. 2. No, they didn't port the games because back then it would have been technically pretty much impossible to do that, so instead they came up with a way to bring the franchise on consoles. Dark Alliance games were one of the few succesful games Interplay released on consoles. Interplay was late to the console party and went under because of that, not because they focused on consoles. PC piracy was ridicilous back in those days, I'm pretty sure everyone at my school who played Fallout had it as a pirate copy. You can't succeed when 75% of your potential clients won't pay for the content but will get it for free instead. 1) How can those be amazing numbers when PC alone (one platform vs two platforms) sold about 1.5 million copies? Of course it's not a Witcher 3 which can sold like 10 million copies, but still it had great sales on PC, so there's a not so small audience there, while on consoles the audience for this kind of games is much smaller. I agree that D:OS2 will probably get ported to consoles about one year after PC release, as D:OS1, but the fact that it will be out for PC first proves that consoles are a secondary market for this type of rpgs. If it sold as much on consoles as it did on PC, D:OS2 would probably release as a multiplatform title. 2) You do have a point here, PC gaming back then was not at its best. Still, I don't think that making a spin-off for consoles like Dark Alliance means BG got ported to consoles too, and Interplay failed because of mismanagement more than anything else, Icewind Dale, BG and even Fallout all made profits (although BG made far more money than the other IPs) and those were PC-centric games, but their non-RPG departments wasted too much money and BIS' success couldn't save the company.

And surprise surprise, it looks terrible to play with a pad, even if it's just the beginning and there are no more than three PCs to control in the party, and none of them is a caster. Who could ever have imagined that a game like, with a lot of micromanaging and and a gameplay precisely studied for m&k, this would've played terribly with a pad?