Eternity Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Pre-Release Thread [BETA RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Azarkon]

Let's all blame every other Obs employee other than Chris, who most certainly knew the above part and went ahead and written way more over it anyway(which suggests he had another agenda; either challenging Sawyer or upper management), who brags about what could have been afterwards "It was gonna be PST all the way maaaaAAAN!! Oh, well...". Why is it when it comes to Chris quantity suddenly becomes better than quality? Was it good for you to read through Grieving Mother's same sequences all over again and again with a few changes at the end? And half of what Durance(the better one IMO) is his V.O. that you all seem to hate.

In retrospect there's a lot of Avellone's work that has a subtext of him trying to assert dominance and claim ownership over the setting he's working with. Like in KOTOR2 half the story is "this is what Darth Revan was REALLY doing..." and his New Vegas DLCs amounted to an attempt to make a second, superior New Vegas (with Old World Blues having an explicit theme of "this is where everything REALLY came from"). Of course he couldn't just write a priest of Magran, it had to be one of the people who set off the legendary Godhammer bomb, with much talk from Durance of the rituals and magic poured into it because Avellone didn't think "a big bomb" was high-fantasy enough. Anyway, it isn't too difficult for me to imagine that attitude surfacing behind the scenes as well, especially with how clear he's made it since leaving Obsidian that he felt stifled.

Reasonable assessment, but the natural follow up question is: would it have been that bad for Avellone to assert dominance and claim ownership over a setting or title?

We all know what Obsidian games look like without a firm hand.

 

[Fry]

All three Dark Souls games sold way more than PoE; it might be an idea for them to lean in to "unforgiving"

Are you really arguing the difficulty of Souls games has some relationship to their sales vs Pillars? They're third person controller-friendly 3D games mostly targeted at the console market. Apples and oranges.

 

[Quillon]

Reasonable assessment, but the natural follow up question is: would it have been that bad for Avellone to assert dominance and claim ownership over a setting or title?

He was a co-owner, if he wanted he could have but he was too proud, he wanted other people to suggest that he should be the lead and when that didn't happen & they pitched against him, he resorted to sabotaging his company's game to make the point that he should be their glorious leader! /true story.

Deadfire will be better off without him.

 

[2house2fly]

Reasonable assessment, but the natural follow up question is: would it have been that bad for Avellone to assert dominance and claim ownership over a setting or title?

He's pretty much my favourite video games writer so I don't think it would be bad, if he does it successfully (ie KOTOR2's retcons massively improve the first game's story imo) but his Pillars characters kind of feel like they didn't work out. Personally I wish he'd just been lead writer.

 

[cruelio]

Avelone has always been garbage tier and benefited from having a bigger name than all the other writers at Obsidian because omg muh Fallout bible (90% of which has been changed or ignored in subsequent Fallouts INCLUDING THE ONE HE WORKED ON). It's hilarious seeing the PoE trolls say they hate PoE's lengthy purple prose in one breath and then praise him in the next, who do they think wrote the worst of that stuff and the worst of the New Vagas purple prose (has anyone managed to listen to Courier hater guy whose name I can't even remember give his entire spiel? A single person?). I did a new quest in the FTL expansion, a game that literally needs needs zero story more complicated than "here's your reason to keep going right," and I knew instantly he was the writer because the writing was so overwrought and bad.

 

[cruelio]

This guy designed ALPHA PROTOCOL, a game so messed up they had to bring in Sawyer to try to salvage it and even Sawyer was like "fuck this, please let me work on a game that's going to be cancelled instead." Most notable Alpha Protocol accomplishment: gameplay so terrible the common advice to new players is "take stealth so you can skip the teriible levels and take pistols so you can instantly kill the terrible bosses and take gadgets so you can instantly hack the terrible minigames."

 

[Urthor]

Avelone has always been garbage tier and benefited from having a bigger name than all the other writers at Obsidian because omg muh Fallout bible (90% of which has been changed or ignored in subsequent Fallouts INCLUDING THE ONE HE WORKED ON). It's hilarious seeing the PoE trolls say they hate PoE's lengthy purple prose in one breath and then praise him in the next, who do they think wrote the worst of that stuff and the worst of the New Vagas purple prose (has anyone managed to listen to Courier hater guy whose name I can't even remember give his entire spiel? A single person?). I did a new quest in the FTL expansion, a game that literally needs needs zero story more complicated than "here's your reason to keep going right," and I knew instantly he was the writer because the writing was so overwrought and bad.

About $7M then? Hmn... with PoE profits and at least $4M from fig, I was thinking more tbh. Maybe they are funding Tim & Boyarski game from PoE pool

Super likely this is happening. THey're pretty obviously not doing the Baldur's gate 2 thing where you roll 100% of your profits into doubling the size of your dev team for the next game. If they wanted to they could roll everything they got from PoE1 into PoE2 and make a game with far more resources than the first one, instead they're going same size team same size game with the same number of people. It's probably be the same but with some rough edges sawn off, not a Witcher 3/GTA style revolutionary title with really high value content unfortunately.

Obsidian is doing the smart business move which is roll the profits from their CRPGs into a lowest common denominator console RPG that can take off and carry the studio, potentially selling 5+ million copies.

 

[Quillon]

DrNutt posted:
I will say that their attempts to build a bridge between grognards and casuals fell flat wrt stuff like health/endurance, making things needlessly complex.

rope kid posted:
And now people are upset because the Endurance/Health split is going away.

 

[Flou]

About $7M then? Hmn... with PoE profits and at least $4M from fig, I was thinking more tbh. Maybe they are funding Tim & Boyarski game from PoE pool

That money could/should fund few projects

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Seriously, what the fuck are they doing? It's like they don't want money.

 

[Iznaliu]

It's funny to see Chris Avellone become hated by the RPGCodex. Maybe he has become too popular.

 

[santino27]

Seriously, what the fuck are they doing? It's like they don't want money.

Not posting on Monday was borderline excusable, in my opinion, because of the holiday, but this is getting kind of absurd. Last week of the campaign, they should be posting every single day. And big reveals (like the stronghold update, presumably) shouldn't wait until the very end, but come in the middle of the campaign so they have time to generate more buzz and interest.

Given their experience with KS, I'm surprised how sloppily run the campaign has been so far. I've liked what updates they've shared, and have high hopes for the game itself, but the campaign should have been so much better prepped.

 

[Prime Junta]

Given their experience with KS, I'm surprised how sloppily run the campaign has been so far. I've liked what updates they've shared, and have high hopes for the game itself, but the campaign should have been so much better prepped.

They were really hungry for the P1 campaign. It was pretty much succeed or go out of business. They're clearly doing better now so that fire isn't there.

 

[undecaf]

Seriously, what the fuck are they doing? It's like they don't want money.

Maybe they already have their scope set up so that they don't necessarily need to milk it more than what comes naturally.

Didn't HBS have something similiar going on with one of the SR campaigns?

 

[AwesomeButton]

DrNutt posted:
I will say that their attempts to build a bridge between grognards and casuals fell flat wrt stuff like health/endurance, making things needlessly complex.

rope kid posted:
And now people are upset because the Endurance/Health split is going away.

Lol, after quite some time playing PoE, my conclusion is that the Endurance/Health split isn't achieving its design goal.

 

[Quillon]

SilverBackVamp


Sea Monsters and Ship Warfare confirmed? Well, I noticed there was a head of a Loch Ness monster on the Fulvano's Voyage map, will love this game even more if we can battle all kinds of sea monsters with a boat

Feb 22, 2017 | 08:10 AM

brennecke
DEVELOPER

hmmm...

Feb 22, 2017 | 09:57 AM

How would that work? Fight the tentacles of sea monsters all the time?

Maybe the ship will be the 6th slot on the sea...

...and have personality WL3 style adra-ship


I'd be game as long as there won't be TB minigame for naval warfare tho, probably.

 

[Seaking4]

This guy designed ALPHA PROTOCOL, a game so messed up they had to bring in Sawyer to try to salvage it and even Sawyer was like "fuck this, please let me work on a game that's going to be cancelled instead." Most notable Alpha Protocol accomplishment: gameplay so terrible the common advice to new players is "take stealth so you can skip the teriible levels and take pistols so you can instantly kill the terrible bosses and take gadgets so you can instantly hack the terrible minigames."

MCA is overrated by many but by all accounts he is the only reason that AP wasn't completely worthless. He was the one who wanted Obsidian to emphasize the reactivity in the game and that's AP only positive feature. Without him it would be a game with terrible combat, stealth, story, and no reactivity.

 

[oldmanpaco]

Not posting on Monday was borderline excusable, in my opinion, because of the holiday,

Every real business in the US except banks (need the fed) works on President's Day. It's barley barely a holiday.

edit: I hate that bad spelling button.

 

[ArchAngel]

It's funny to see Chris Avellone become hated by the RPGCodex. Maybe he has become too popular.

Few trolls do not a Codex make.

 

[Zed]

can't wait for the resurgence of the "I'm on a boat" music video

 

[Haplo]

DrNutt posted:
I will say that their attempts to build a bridge between grognards and casuals fell flat wrt stuff like health/endurance, making things needlessly complex.

rope kid posted:
And now people are upset because the Endurance/Health split is going away.

/QUOTE]
Lol, after quite some time playing PoE, my conclusion is that the Endurance/Health split isn't achieving its design goal.

Not sure. After a few skirmishes my tank is left with 1 HP and I have to keep him faaar back, as if an enemy just sneezes in his general direction, he's dead.
Then I try to make a last heroic stand and see far I can get without tanking, while depleting my main Barbarian's health pool and being far more liberal with spell use. Makes for some interesting encounters and tactics.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

I wonder why they're wasting effort keeping the ship a secret that everyone knows about anyway.

 

[Turjan]

Not posting on Monday was borderline excusable, in my opinion, because of the holiday,

Every real business in the US except banks (need the fed) works on Presidents Day. Its barley a holiday.

Still, it's one of ten federal holidays. It's nice when businesses observe it.

Granted, my employer had us work on Presidents' Day and Columbus Day, but we got Boxing Day and New Year's Eve off instead, which was a good deal.

 

[AwesomeButton]

DrNutt posted:
I will say that their attempts to build a bridge between grognards and casuals fell flat wrt stuff like health/endurance, making things needlessly complex.

rope kid posted:
And now people are upset because the Endurance/Health split is going away.

Lol, after quite some time playing PoE, my conclusion is that the Endurance/Health split isn't achieving its design goal.

Not sure. After a few skirmishes my tank is left with 1 HP and I have to keep him faaar back, as if an enemy just sneezes in his general direction, he's dead.
Then I try to make a last heroic stand and see far I can get without tanking, while depleting my main Barbarian's health pool and being far more liberal with spell use. Makes for some interesting encounters and tactics.

I'm glad the combination of game difficulty/party composition/particular combat encounter results in fun gameplay for you then. For example, I had a great time in Burial Isle yesterday - got wiped a few times, but in the end I cleared the lower half of the dungeon in one go, with three party members beaten to an inch of their lives. That was memorable and felt rewarding.

The first encounter I could call memorable and hard in PoE was the bandits in Black Meadow, at least if playing with a party of 4, composed of the game NPCs. If playing on PotD, there were tough encounters in the lower part of Eothas' temple too.

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

IMO, there needs to be a limit to resting supplies themselves. I.e., you can't just return to town and buy more if you run out. They could implement a terrain and movement based food element like Xulima. Resting will heal whatever, give you your spell casts back, but won't heal diseases, and fatal injuries take 24 hours to heal. Make the food limited by making it scale in price. Combine with rarer resources overall, I.e.money is hard to come by, and you will add much more tension, management, planning and consequence to the resting system. Especially when food is really expensive.

Xulima on Hardcore Ironman remains tightly balanced many hours into the game. Most RPGs are over by then (literally, the game would be over) while Xulima still remains tight.

If they balance the spell casts to be less overall, even better. Get that long-term decision making going on.