Thread 722955401

The Pillars of Eternity games were good and I still don't understand why 4chan and RPG Codex got so filtered by them.

>>722955401 (OP)
yes. crpgs were replaced by nu-bioware and bethesda console shit in the early 00s. it wasn't until project eternity and wasteland 2 crowdfunds that the industry wisened up to crpg interest

>>722955771
>game is shit
>you got filtered cope brainlets
Name a more iconic duo

Sort of like how single player games where dead
And horror games where dead
Nobody wants long involved rpgs these days, better to make hero extraction shooter game 37.

How is it that the people in charge publishing and selling games seem to know the least about games out of anyone?

>>722955771
>were good
The problem is they were fine. It was Obsidian saying "Know how every single game we've ever released we told you so sorry but it's shit because the publisher forced us? Well OPEN YOUR WALLET AND RELEASE YOUR DREAMS WE'RE MAKING THE ULTIMATE RPG" and then they delivered fucking Pillars of Eternity. And it's a fine game, but if that was the pinnacle of what unshackled Obsidian can do then lol, lmao even

>>722955771
RTwP was the worst decision they could have made for the game. The late game fights devolved into seizure-inducing visual vomit where you had no idea what was happening.

The setting was also pretty boring, which is one of the most damning faults for a CRPG. It had some good ideas here and there, but a lot of it was just bland and dull.
>what if elves and humans got along with each other? what if italians were black people? what if dwarves were inuits? wooooow so original

DnD clones were fucked because Neverwinter Nights basically hit the peak at easy moddability to fart out any sort of DND campaign you may want without it being too obnoxious to do.
IMO, it's still better, and all BG3 offers is shallow fidelity for a genre where people have some fucking wooden little gnome nigger on sheets of paper on squares labeled "forest"

>>722955401 (OP)
Sawyer is afucking piece of shit who tried to force Bethesda into letting them make an isometric game in the GECK instead of the 3D game that was stated in the contract they agreed to. He went fucking years blaming Bethesda and every fucking publisher for how shit their games were until rumors of NV2 came out and he's there sucking their dicks and praising them like a colossal faggot

They still don't make those games. The only reason Baldur's Gate 3 was so successful was it had the interaction of old RPGs with the presentation of the newer shit like Mass Effect so normalfags ate it up.
The same people who like BG3 do not care for real RPGs like BG1 & 2

>>722955401 (OP)
this was true until millenials became adults then baldurs gate 3 came out and you could fuck a bear.

>>722957740
No, the reason BG3 got good was because of the faggot netflix show

BG3 is still in alpha and is abandoned
>b-b-b-but they said it's finish and like patches bro
It's about 20% of what was promised and the majority of the players never make it past act 1

>>722957881
I never said it was good, just why normalfags liked it

>>722955771
shit tier customization. Honestly blame Icewind Dale because every other isometric RPG suffered between a split fan base of dedicated characters and your own creations.

>>722955771
"Pillars of Eternity was chock-full of writing styles which experienced writers tend to advise against," he said, his nose twitching. He glances to the left, then the right, then up, then down. You notice one of his sleeves is a slightly different shade to the other. "In fact, you could say that the writing of Pillars 1 was bloated, and constantly interrupted the flow of -" he paused, yawning loudly and scratching his backside with a lazy pawing motion - "dialogue. Like people don't need to know - " time seems to slow, and you feel that once upon a time in another life, this man was a farmer "- a bunch of useless details to get an understanding of who a person is. Where you meet a person and how they speak can communicate it with good writing." He said, wearing a rag-tag tunic, frayed pants, and with a slightly unkempt beard, hinting that he was some sort of peasant.

>>722957964
'got good'/'got succesful' is the same, anon in this context. I'm not saying it's good, I'm saying it got good with faggot casuals whgo don't like games

>>722958042
IWD was funny since at the time of previews in magazines, the developers literally said it was 'for expert players'

>>722958069
I think PoE was trying to capture a weird mixture of P:T but trying to make it more D&D in terms of combat and classes
Like it tried to do the 'there's a DM but it's railraoded to the ploat'

>>722955771
the fuck were you talking about
/v/ loves PoE1
they secretly like PoE2 because as a game it's even better but the writing definitely wasn't as good

>>722957881
>No, the reason BG3 got good was because of the faggot netflix show
What?
Are you confusing BG3 with Cyberpunk?

>>722958261
>it doesn't know
saar, your things are stranger, saar

>>722955401 (OP)
BG3 made like 600 million dollars and is one of a kind success based on years of groundwork, strong IP and COVID making people interested in RPGs
Average gacha game makes 30-50m a month

>>722957515
They blew their load way too soon. There's no mysticism to keep you engaged in the setting. You don't have to care about the morality of Eothas or the BITCH goddess because they're just overblown golems running on a script. Every mystery gets an answer without any room for ambiguity, and then the sequel makes everything you do in both games completely irrelevant.
A setting that jumps from the American Revolution straight to the Atomic Age should have been a lot more interesting than generic fantasy villages and generic fantasy city and fantasy races standing in for real world cultures wholesale. There's barely any reactivity in game that even points to that history because even Jesus getting Nagasaki'd right before the game starts is only really relevant to a handful of characters. And the sad thing is that it really easily could have been so much more.
Palegina says old forts like Caed Nua are obsolete along the coasts because of ship cannons, well, how do cannons stack up against wizards?
>dont know dont care lol
Great! Thanks! All those wordswordswords to dump exposition and you can't devote any screentime to challenging or exploring those ideas.
I really liked PoE 1. I really, really liked it, especially when it ramps up with the DLC adventures. But man did they try so hard to make me not care about it after that first honeymoon playthrough.

>>722958412
Or, it's just agreat advertising campaign and convincing normies it's real Dungeons and Dragons but without 'nerd shit'

>>722958069
Except that's well written, I enjoyed reading it and the image of that unkept yawning pretensions critic is perfectly fleshed out in my head

>>722955401 (OP)
kinda right
a funny stat i learned is that a huge chunk of BG3 playerbase never finishes act 2, let alone 1
and the game gets real fucking shit in act 3 so they never know that

>>722955771
PoE1 was fine, PoE2 was dreadful
>>722958193
>it got good with faggot casuals whgo don't like games
So did Elden Ring. Basing the quality of a game on its popularity with normies is useless today because gaming is a normie hobby

>>722958342
5e DND taking off in 2016 because of Stranger Things has nothing what-the-fuck-soever to do with BG3.

>>722955401 (OP)
Kind of true but not really. The bigger issue was more that consoles were such a huge part of the marketshare and most crpgs, even till this day, play like ass on console. BG1 and 2 did gangbusters on PC they...just weren't on console, and everyone wanted that PS2/Xbox money.

What was really amazing was how big WoW got back then, with it being PC exclusive. FFXIV is probably the mmo best optimized for console ever made and that still can't touch peak WoW numbers.

>>722958342
by the time BG3 released literally nobody gave a shit about that show anymore

>>722958542
ER had 11 years of conditioning their fans to bullshit and to worship them
The normie worship is the perfect metirc

>>722958616
>the saar doesn't understand
You're either a troll or a troll

>>722955771
>Implying Deadfire is good
Tell me you have brain damage without telling me

>>722955771
>The Pillars of Eternity games were good
They're not. Firstly, there is no choice. No choice in an RPG is a big no no. Secondly the writing is bad, it mistakes quantity for quality.

>>722958069
I know it occurred to you to simply label the game verbose before you chose to post this instead. I like your style.

>>722955401 (OP)
the suit opinion on what sells well is "only the best-selling games matter at all"
hollywood has gone the same way, thinking they need to spend a gorillion dollars to make a new Endgame or a movie isn't worth investing in at all
they're basically just going all-in, gambling on the belief that if they spend a ton of money that means they'll make a ton of money; they are wrong but they'll never figure this out

>>722958675
>ER had 11 years of conditioning
No it didn't. DkS3 and Bloodborne didn't have anywhere near the normie appeal of ER. The only difference is time; ER was released in the age in which gaming became a normie hobby

>>722955771
PoE1 is just boring, from the lore to the combat. Some of the party members are super bland too, like grieving mother. I've tried 5 times in as many years to beat the game, but give up in Act 3 every time.

>>722957515
Thank god they did RTwP and not another generic turn-slop.

>>722955771
This is a newfag from /vrpg/ for those unaware. /vrpg/ has some Sawyer-fag (this was a game dev involved in Pillars) who ritualistically makes a thread every other month about how his favorite e-celeb is perfect and makes everybody totesMADrawrxD with his writing.

>>722955401 (OP)
DnD was always a niche, even within the nerd community.

>>722958853
I went all-in on a custom party Icewind Dale style as soon as I could and had a much better time than the average player.

>>722958830
nope

>>722959204
Cheers for the concession.

>>722955401 (OP)
>Nintendo makes totk
>WTF THIS IS OBJECTIVELY BAD GAME DESIGN, I SHOULDNT HAVE TO FIND MY OWN SOLUTIONS TO PROBLEMS, I dont even have to 100% the game to beat the final boss, literally the worst thing ever.

>troons make buggery simulator
>WOAH this game is LITERALLY PERFECT because I can solve problems ANY way that I want, this PLAYER FREEDOM is unprecedented! I killed the final boss by telling him he's being racist!

>>722959575
Who are you quoting?

>>722955771
PoE1 was
>Ugly
>Boring
>Cold
>Shallow

What do I mean by that? I speak as a backer.
>Ugly
Ugly 3d models and uglier cloaks. No items looked unique or good that I found.

The big city looked boring and wasn't interesting to explore. It felt more lifeless than Amn and more sterile than a TF2 map like Redfort. I distinctly remember looking at some white brick wall texture and thinking it was far too clean and they used it too much.

>Boring
Combat was both boring and obtuse. It wasn't worth the effort to learn how the fishman's music ability worked when the effects were so mundane and seemingly minor. The rest of combat wasn't very exciting or interesting. Tied to that, traveling through the wilderness wasn't very interesting and had enough combat encounters that I got annoyed by them, not excited.

Obsidian tried to make a big mystery out of something that was glaringly obvious from the backstory and the lore that was in-game. I knew as soon as the prologue was done what the likely "truth" of Eadwyn and the Dyrwood War and the soul sickness was about. And for what I played of the game, I didn't see enough of it to care.

Aed Nua was just... blah. Yeah it's a player-customizable base but none of that stuff was tied to companions, the main story, nor interesting or unlockable at a decent pace. Grinding my way through the Endless Paths ended up becoming unfun by the time I reached the spiderweb caves. I don't know how much deeper I could go but I was sick and tired of this endless battle dungeon without secrets or shortcuts.

>Shallow
After 20 or so hours, I still felt like my companions were still pretty flat. I can't remember any of them having random sidequests pop up or any notable interactions between them. They were just named pawns with some voice acting.

>Cold
It's a meme to use soulless to describe things, but PoE unironically felt soulless to me. I don't think it was the art, but I do think the combat and maybe the writing were both at issue.

>>722959728
literally every "critique" youtuber not named matthewmatosis. One of them (It was one of the zelda fanboys, probably nerrel) literally did the same "critique" twice but said it was bad when totk did it and good when bg3 did it.

And then they all got raped by BG3. Fuck off retards.

>>722955964
Brainlets and getting filtered by any game that isn't mass produced slop meant for absolute golems.

>>722960005
Your brain is all fucked up by pumping it full of yoochoob slop

>>722960057
xDDD

>>722955401 (OP)
Coping idiot. When people started realising that BG3 was good he claimed it's unfair to compare it to PoE. Idiot.

>>722955771
The first one is good then the series went globohomo.

Remember that you are on /v/ you're not allowed to like games, remember to be miserable at all times, nothing is good, nothing is fun, everything sucks.

>>722960953
To the consumerist slave a discerning taste appears as an unconditional hatred.

>>722955771
Unrelated but whenever somebody say PoE I can never tell whether they're referring to Pillars of Eternity or Path of Exile

>>722961106
I'm a third-worlder, I pirate everything, but different from you, I know what actual hardship and misery is like.

You are the consumerist here, probably, the thing is, you're miserable, contrarianism is rotted in your brain, everything must suck, nothing is good, don't enjoy thing, just complain ad-nauseun, that'll sure make you feel better.

>>722960953
Honestly, yeah
I'm getting real tired of post-ironic internet
The average /v/ anon would rather make another 100s rage-baiting threads about Pillars than actually admit they're tsundere over it

>>722961247
There's a causal relation between your slavish, third-world valorisation of hardship and misery, and improverished, undiscerning taste. Contemplate this whenever you wonder why your ancestors lead you to where you are today and why my ancestors cteated the advanced technological conditions for us communicating.

Up to this day I don't understand PoE hate among codexKEKs (majority of them are shitting /v/ and /vrpg/). It had little amount of combat encounters (fixed in DLC) and not so many classes but overall it was kino

I liked pillars.
It is really fun and sad to see that obsidian had a very "no dating sim" ideology for their series. Then BG3 came in with "YOU CAN FUCK EVERYONE" and it sold millions.
I know tons of women who like bg3 and whence they talk about it is always about how they love shadowheart or ship they gay vampire.

>>722961909
xD

>>722958636
Still related. Retailers wanted to stock console games way more than they want to stock PC games. Especially in the era of Big Box when PC games were the size of a phonebook and a console game came in a jewel case. PC boxes shrank down to boxes around double thickness DVD size, but they were still treated as second class citizens at retail. Your big department store would have Blizzard games and the current big FPS. But they weren't going to buy isometric PC only RPGs.

>>722955771
Pillars of Eternity is awesome, but mainly for people who are a fan of detailed world building. It has one of the coolest Pantheons in games, as well as really smartly designed fantasy nations and history, but it's narrative voice can be really scholarly and make the game seem dry and wordy to a lot of people. And of course no romance at all in the first game which was a huge self-own for a game explicitly trying to throw back to BG2.

>>722962032
What did he mean by this?

>>722955771
like a fly to shit every time

>>722962123
God damn do I miss Sierra..

>>722961976
>RPG epic adventure with dating sim elements with companions you recruit
An odd thing to think about because that's how Bioware made a name for themselves.

>>722961637
You talk like contrarianism has not found it's way to your head and found ample space within, which also brings up another point that you may be so attached to hatred as mechanism of coping because your own misery, nobody that is really happy would defend post-ironic internet discourse, being brown in a first world country may be the reason you feel so miserable and feel the need to spread misery everywhere you go.

There's more hating for hating in this thread than valid points, and that repeats aaaaaall over /v/ all the time.

>>722955401 (OP)
crpgs almost died yeah

>>722960205
it's unfair because larian is a euro company. euros have access to cheaper labor, proper regulations, and so on. it's like playing on easy mode. if bg3 was made in america, it would need triple the budget

>>722957515
Fly.

>>722957714
>Sawyer is afucking piece of shit who tried to force Bethesda into letting them make an isometric game in the GECK instead of the 3D game
Based.

>>722955401 (OP)
this article is a perfect example of why game journos clickbaiting scum. It makes it look like its about retailers telling devs people dont want crpgs and retards like OP fall for it, but what he actually said it was that games on Infinity engine didnt sell and thats is 100% true. While other devs shifted to engines capable of making 3d crpgs like neverwinter nights 1 & 2 and kotor, this idiots wanted to keep making games on a very buggy engine that was pushed to its limits

>>722961976
I don't care about dating sims though.
It's sad that's what basically RPGs are becoming.
It all started way back but the turning point was DAO.
Loved that game though, and truly enjoyed Pillars, although it does stretch somewhat.

But that brings another problem on /v/ if you make a shorter RPG you can have more branching paths and replayability, but no, they demand that Devs create these monstrosities of a plot where you're burned out even before the last third half.

I'd gladly have shorter RPGs with the lenght of Tyranny than another Pathfinder Kingmaker and it's endless last chapters.

>>722955401 (OP)
Lol sounds like literally the same excuse Japanese suits give, Yoshi-P might as well be the one saying it. CRPG and JRPGs are alive and well, the shitty skeletons of old studios need not apply

>>722962512
if it ain't broken don't fix it
>buggy engine
they just needed more time

>>722962346
>Triple the budget.
That's why you get slop produced by outsourcing to India and China instead.

>>722962597
Lmao, more time for what? So you can complain about the time it took to make?
And STILL didn't buy?

>>722962163
Ask the anon spamming newfag buzzwords and images.

>>722961909
This joke would've land true if zoomers had played Pillars.
It didn't happen though, you just look like an ass anon.

>>722955401 (OP)
They've been telling that turn based combat is dead and buried for 30 years now.
Guess what, it's still going strong.

>>722963237
And you need another one?

>>722962739
I don't understand.

>>722963237
persona saved tb rpg in the west

>>722955401 (OP)
why do these fag journos all use that same fucking image for ever bg thread, are they afraid of actually using a picture of the game?

>>722962323
Brown people perceive going against herd as "contrarianism". They willingly choose not to subject themselves to the principle of the survival of the fittest and never strive for greater heights.

"crpgs" have always been bad games and both devs and fans operate based on vibes and ideas of how things "should be" with very little care for how they actually play. they disappeared for like 15 years and when they came back the devs hadn't learned a single thing and were making the same shit decisions they were making in the 90s.

>>722964503
My dude, you are NOT going against the herd, you ARE the herd, look around you, read the thread, where do you think you are?

Brown people are unable to think in two steps, you understand that brown people follow the herd, but the second step is still clouded to you.

>>722962805
>This joke
It's not a joke. PoE is good game and not adding romances was a mistake

>>722964512
Everything has always been bad.
>>722964636
It is, not adding romance was a mistake on the first because you had romance-able characters.
But the portraits on 2 made me wanna vomit.
It doesn't help that Nexus kept taking down the fixed portraits.

Although, for me, romance is boring, it sure is a good way to sell.

>>722964512
Yes anon, every game was always bad and everything sucks.

>>722955401 (OP)
>retailers
add it to the list

>>722955401 (OP)
I'm so tired of them trying to make it seem like pillars is on the same level as baldurs gate 3.
No, pillars is a fucking 90s game made from fan crowded money
Its as lazy as a dev can get

>>722964612
Lmao, this
Contrarianism has become the new normal

>>722955401 (OP)
They didn’t and still don’t. BG3 succeeded solely on the weird takeover of DND by theater kids and on the visual novel dating sim minigame.
If it had been DOS3 it would have been the same modest success as DOS2. It hasn’t created some renaissance.
In a year or two all the BG3 clones will start hitting after starting development in 2023/4, and nobody will buy them, just like nobody bought or remembers most of the random open world slop that came in 2014-2018 after Skyrim.

I bought Divinity Original Sin 1 and 2 during the autumn sale. Is 1 good or should I go right to 2?

>>722964814
How DARE they use crowded money? The nerve!

>>722964895
I haven’t played 1 but 2 is literally BG3 with marginally worse graphics.

>>722964975
I haven't played BG3 yet. Last crpg I played was PoE2. It was aight.

>>722964895
DoS1 is them figuring out the combat system and making stupid Larian jokes. The story is extremely forgettable. You can safely just skip to 2.

>>722958342
Why did you pick a show that hasn't been relevant in over ten years rather then the currently running most popular "Live DnD Campaign" cartoon that Amazon heavily pushes?

>>722965234
SAAAAR DO NOT REDEEM

>>722955401 (OP)
He's referring to IE games 20 years ago, doofus.

>>722958813
>they are wrong but they'll never figure this out
They're gonna have to given the flops happening both in Hollywood and the games industry right now.

>>722964783
there is a clear difference between games that are shit because the devs didn't have the budget to make them good or they were trying to make them good but a decision they made turned out to be bad, and your average crpg where being fun to play wasn't even in the top 5 of their priorities. only crpg fans will defend a game because "at least it was trying to be a 'real rpg'".

>>722958069
Completely agree, anon. I kickstarted that shite and couldn't get through the first chapter. In addition to your observations, I have never encountered worse exposition dumps. Excruciating game.

>>722955771
I found the world and setting boring, and the in-world "unique words" for what was basically there for uniqueness sake just obtuse

My headcannon is that the "suits" of these companies will see a game that becomes a breakout hit and then dumps a ton of resources into developing a clone of it and finally going to market 5 years after the interest of that type of game has completely waned. Concord, for example. YEARS after stuff like pubg, fortnite, and overwatch.

The success of Baldurs Gate 3 will also cause these companies to shit out an inferior clone in 5 years after everyone forgot about it.

I couldn't really get into it myself, but I appreciate that BG3 swung by and made a ton of money and made other studios shit themselves

>>722965878
You don't even like crpgs nor do you play games.

>>722967612
Solasta 2 is around the corner, shame is another turn-slop without the option for RTwP.

>>722955401 (OP)
HA! HA! HA!
Yes but it was worse! Being beholden to retarded retailers was an incredibly shitty situation. Now to be fair because it took up space in their warehouses they have to ask for what will sell or be stuck with unwanted inventory forever.
So now you know when retards say steam "ruined" gaming that not only are they wrong but they're fucking stupid!

>>722955401 (OP)
>Neverfuckingwinternights still alive 23 years later
>All it had were some shitty proto-lego map editor and a shitty few story chapters
WHO THE FUCK IS THIS NOBODY AND WHY THE HELL DOES HE HAVE SO MUCH POWER IN THIS INDUSTRY??

>>722955401 (OP)
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_PC_games
CRPG were not big sellers for PC in the 80s and 90s. It was FPS games, RTS and simulation games. The only RPGs that gained some success were MMOs.

>>722955401 (OP)
most western rpgs were licensed D&D shovelware because of cargo cult behaviour
Bethesda came in swinging with Oblivion and killed all competition

>Make it needlessly complex to appeal to all the chuds
>Add sex and romance to appeal to the women
>generally just a 6/10 genre
Yawn

>>722968367
I've seen this reaction image thousands of times over the years and never remember to ask for the code.

>>722955401 (OP)
He's bitching again. Shit was always in Obsidian's pants, no one else put it there.

>>722971452
Every time sawyer opens his mouth or posts about something in regards to his career. The more he comes across as a whiny bitch who might not be as competent and capable as he seems to pretend he is. Especially compare to his superiors signing his checks

>>722963237
Bethesdrones nearly killed CRPG.
>demonized turn based combat
>trick retards into thinking that real RPG shouldn't have RPG mechanics
>give the expectation that RPGs should useless shit and be fully voice acted
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_UqcLpElUU

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/nYoi0_sUgSA
RPGs are not life sims and there are better life sims than Skyrim.

>>722965656
>They're gonna have to
No, they don't have to and they won't.

They will absolutely die on this hill lest they upset the almighty investor and be forced to eat crow.
Only once the company value has plunged to obscene levels will they finally sell out to private equity and pull the ripcord for the golden parachute while literally everyone else gets fucked over.
PE will then gut the company, either to sell it's parts or to try and save it from the immense lack of creative investment made on behalf of the company for the past 25 years.

It literally just happened to EA, they hold a SHITLOAD of goldmine IPs that, while not absurdly lucrative, would turn a very healthy profit if they would just create games with them at the appropriate scope with a realistic budget.
Instead they milked FIFA and battlefield until FIFA pulled their license.
Then, instead of doing LITERALLY ANYTHING, they immediately threw up their hands and started looking for PE buyers.
EA, the fuckers who own the rights to Dead Space, Command and Conquer, EXCLUSIVE RIGHTS TO ALL STAR WARS GAMES.

These fucking people would HAPPILY watch their own company burn before they give you what you want, they don't give a shit. They will not make a product you want, they will make a product they want and you will buy it or they will take their ball and set it and themselves on fire.

>>722955401 (OP)
>Baldur's Gate
>First game to use the Infinity Engine
>Released 1998, the same year as Unreal and Ocarina of Time
I can see why a retailer would say such a thing, sprite-based isometric games don't exactly have that immediate wow factor that 3D games were booming with at the time. Even magazines would often decry a game for being 2D during this period, at least they did here in Europe.

>>722955771
The gameplay was okay but the story and setting were ass and actively kept people away from finishing it. Fucking Larian can end a game better than that, what the fuck was Josh thinking?

>>722964783
he's right though
developers focused more on designing them than actually playing them
it's why the combat is always bad

>>722972427
miss when artfags hadn't taken over computer rpgs

back when rpgs were just dungeon crawling and battles, no gay storylines or whatever

>>722962123
>Especially in the era of Big Box when PC games were the size of a phonebook and a console game came in a jewel case
The big boxes were fine, they matched the same sizing standards as normal PC software packages (to an extent) so retailers could easily line them up in-between the boxed copies of Windows and System Mechanic Pro. Those games weren't being shuffled into the same department as the console games until digital distribution took off and killed the need to have retail copies of PC games for 90% of consumers, or it was one of those smaller-than-average funcolands barely hanging on in the strip mall before being absorbed by gamestop.

>>722959575
>ToTKiddie still salty about BG3.

>>722955401 (OP)
>>RPG devs stopped making games like Baldur's Gate 'because retailers told us no one wanted to buy them'
But "RPG devs" didn't stop making them.
Isn't he just explaining why Bioware stopped making them?

And in response to a game developed by Larian who developed games like it in spite of all that.
Alongside Owlcat who kept developing games like that.
Etc

It's not as if it's ever been a genre with massive competition.

turn based combat sucks and is a cope for devs who cannot design or animate good combat. in the past, turn based was necessary because of technical limitations, and the only reason tabletop rpgs are turn based is because humans are the computers doing the number crunching and simulation (again, technical limitations).

People don't like BG3 either. Most only bought it because it would be like Skyrim or Fallout (the only "RPGs" normies know about).

>>722973680
larian and owlcat are european developers

>>722955771
Lame combat
Lame leveling system with boring or lack of choices
Most dialogues lead nowhere unique, all those checks are meaningless
Setting is boring

>>722973721
6/10

>>722955401 (OP)
There was a mini-crash in the early 2000s especially with PC games that no one remembers. A bunch of devs going under, a severe games drought, and so on.

If zoomers understood what was going on with PC games from approx. 2000 to 2006 the Gabe worship makes more sense in context

>>722973795
Yes and? Europe have got retailers too.
And American developers still sold games at European retailers and vice versa.

>>722955401 (OP)
Investors are all retards and any business that actually wants to do well long term makes sure that investors never make any significant decisions ever.

Half of the whole secret to China's seemingly unstoppable rise is that they have organized their economy in such a way that investors NEVER make any decisions about anything. You keep seeing dipshits predicting their imminent collapse because they WOULD have collapsed several times over if they had an investor-run economy.

>>722964612
I'm on /v/, a minority demographic amongst the gamer population, arguing with a third worlder who finds it inconcievable that I dislike something on its own terms and who instead chooses to believe that I must be outsourcing my opinion to the herd like he does but in the opposite direction ("contrarianism").
PoE is a mediocre to poor series of games.

>>722958069
Good post even though i like the game.

>>722958069
kek I wanna see your take on Torment Tides of Numenera

>>722964975
Eat ahit nigger, DOS2 is better than BG3.

>>722974529
>china is a complete no-namein the gaming industry, best known for making shitty clones and producing dota players
>suddenly out of nowhere burst onto the scene with massively popular games
Wtf happened?

>>722955401 (OP)
rtwp is the reason crpgs never took off
turn based is the reason crpgs came back
also fuck you josh sawyer, your games suck

>>722963820
Because then normie would think
>"what, that's a videogame? Booring"
You need more eye catching images for normies to click.

>>722975815
bg2 is soon 30 years old. nobody wants to see those shitty graphics.

>>722955401 (OP)
And no one still does. Tencent botted and shilled bg3 to hell and back.

>>722955771
The first one is OK as the first game in a series
The second one is fucking ass

>>722976613
the first one was ass too.

>>722962554
Dating sim elements (and pets) are unironically how you get the female audience
A relatively large proportion of BG3 players are female because it has dateable companions and cute animals. Also murderhoboing because female gamers are also murderhobos

>>722955771
>fantasy world inspired by european cultures
>all the powerful fighters and great leaders are women or black
>white men like always sidelined to weaklings, comic relief or bad guys
just stop hating straight white men and people will stop hating you in return

>>722979531
No, bro, you don't get it. They've got to tear down, subvert and destroy the prevailing culture (whiteness and masculinity) to enable the socialist revolution to happen. Read Gramsci and everyone after him. You've got to destroy the culture if you want to bring forth a socialist revolution, since the economic situation will never do it in the West.

>>722975749
>rtwp is the reason crpgs never took off
I legitimately think that there is no real way to fix RTWP. I don't know why it feels so ass. The only good thing about it is kiting.

>>722955771
RTwP is shit

Fucking Gamestop had killed all the gaming hobbyist shops, and Gamestop didn't stock PC games. You couldn't find a physical PC game release anywhere. Gaben identified the service problem and Valve came to exist. 20 years later asshurt Timmy would shart his diaper because while Epic Games was abandoning PC gaming Gaben was saving PC gaming.

>>722955401 (OP)
RTWP was a mistake. BG1 and 2 play like ass, but POE is even worse, not to mention it having an utterly generic story and bland setting, both of which try to be more than meets the eye by adding wordswordswords to every description and dialogue.

>>722961976
>I WANT TO UAVE VIDEOGAME SEX!!
>I NEED TO HAVE VIDEOGSME SEX!!

>>722955401 (OP)
Blame the stores and not the hack studios

>>722955401 (OP)
And they were right...

>>722958412
> one of a kind success
It's not the first WRPG to use sex and relationships as a selling point. BioWare did it first with Mass Effect and Dragon Age.

> based on years of groundwork
Every game takes years to make.

> strong IP
I will give you that. It's not an interesting IP, but DnD and Baldur's Gate are more recognizable than Larian's own franchise.

>>722958495
I dropped it part way through Act 2.

>>722957740
One of the core reasons is all the voiced dialog and long ass conversations. It's basically a movie like Cyberpunk.

>>722980051
women do be like that

>>722980038
I personally enjoyed POE's combat, especially if you turn the difficulty up. You're right about the writing, it's so fucking shit especially in the sequel. This is an issue all Obsidian games have these days. They're incapable of creating excitement.

>>722955771
The first one was pretty well liked despite falling off a bit on the writing towards the end. Overall it was a pretty good game and I beat it a couple times.

The second one was pretty divisive with the writing but I really like the changes they made to the combat in it, and I really liked the setting. ngl though I get what they were going for with the ending but like bro, GIVE ME A FUCKING FINAL BOSS, like damn. It's something every rpg ever does, just give me a cool guy to fight.

>>722971114
>Bethesda came in swinging with Oblivion and killed all competition
By making an Action Adventure game and calling it an RPG.

>>722955401 (OP)
It felt like they had no marketing whatsoever. They mainly got propagated by a small group of people between each other who were really into them. But if you stop making them completely and then release a good successor of the genre, then social media can make it boom like crazy. Something similar happened with Bravely Default years after turn-based JRPGs slowly phased out.

>>722955771
It's 100% culture warriors that hate Sawyer, you never see any real arguments against it other than vague assertions that it's "boring" or "overwritten".

>>722957740
BG3 is way more or a real RPG than the bioslop games.

>>722958069
A quality shitpost on 4chan? Am I having a nightmare again?

>>722955401 (OP)
>implying Soiyer ever made a good game
>>722955771
pillars is fucking liquid diarrhea of video games

>>722955771
rpgcodex hates everything though.

>>722974585
Wrong. You are the herd.
/v/ is not a minority anymore, most of the threads on /v/ are just contrarianism and most places on the internet are the same post-ironic cesspool, the only difference is that here you can say nigger not even, since blueboard and all most of the critics on the thread are just contrarianism and hate for the sake of hate, misery for the sake of misery and as far as I can see you are no different. You can't hold an argument and lack self-awareness.

>>722955771
They're "good" gamee but BOOORING.

>>722985862
Rpgcodex loves the Pathfinder games

Sawyer is a retard who can't make a half decent RPG if he tried. Just look at what a shit show Avowed was.

They stopped making them because if you ever have the gall to make one not based on some variant of Dungeons and Dragons you get a legion of seething retards who review bomb the game and spend literal years sperging out about it.

>>722958069
Man I wish /v/ was still good and full of quality takedowns like these

>>722955771
The only parts of the games I found interesting were the seafaring and the volcano vikings; the numidium guy would have been interesting if I didn't get lost in the essays of text the game subjects the player to. The fish fuckers and Italian negroes were annoying as fuck, the game would have been better if the were deleted. One other thing I was going to play it again when Avowed was being hyped as Skyrim 2 instead of fantasy TOW goyslop but the file size is fucking horrendous.

>>722980051

sex is the centerpoint of female existence
it's by design

>>722990452
I dunno, Kingmaker and WOTR seemed to do fine.

>>722990452
I have Dungeons and Dragons fatigue.
Boomers are a cancer, they're worse than Zoomers, it's like the japanese way to keep traditions no matter how shitty they are.
They still use fax machines, and faggots here still demand le dnd.

>>722993464
That's his point dumbass.

>>722993578
His point was that nerds confine devs to only follow the 5th ed. DnD formula, which clearly isn't true, dumbass.

>>722993650
DUMB
ASS

Playing IWD2 for the first time right now, its a nice dungeon crawler in 3.0 d&d, love it so far

>>722958486
>That's well written
Now imagine 200 hours of it.
Telling gets incredibly fucking old instead of showing.

>>722957515
>anti-RTwP retard reveals the memes were right all along, and he just hates is because he is too stupid to understand 2 thing going on at the same time, and also too retarded to press space bar and assess the situation
We already knew you guys were literal morons, but it is nice to get it from the horse's mouth.

>>722993464
Kingmaker and WoTR are both based on a variant of DnD retard.

>>722955771
There are a few issues the game has, but overall I think 1/2 are fine:
>World building is ass. Almost all world building is proper noun vomit regurgitated by random NPCs. Makes many conversations feel lifeless and boring. No one talks like this IRL.
>Writing in general is very hit or miss. A mixture of decently written fantasy stuff combined with modernisms that keep leaking their way in creating a pretty uneven style.
>Game series goes out of its way to "twist" conventional factions. They went out of their way to make HUMAN RACE factions, what I mean is that their intelligent, capitalistic, competent traders are all black. This is weird. No one does stuff like that anymore. It should have just been mixed race.
>Game's writing on religion feels like an atheist/agnostic flirting with Christianity, but it is such a major part of the game that it drags it down
>RtwP is ass. It has always been ass. It will always be ass. Their ghetto version of turn based in 2 doesn't count.
>Very little world activity compared to something like BG3
>RPG systems are significantly dumbed down compared to a game like PF1/2 or even BG3
Basically I think PoE1/2 are fine CRPGs. If someone woke up from a coma and wanted to play some CRPGs I would not recommend them first. They're in like the tier 2 of modern CRPGs.

>>722993749
Learn to read ESL
>>722994381
>Here are examples of games that did well that aren't 5th ed dnd
>that d-doesn't count..
Lol

>>722994547
Literally nobody but you is talking about 5e.

>>722994547
Holy fuck you are a retarded nigger, I thought you had just misread but you actually don't even know what Pathfinder is.

>>722955401 (OP)
I can believe that, back in the early 2010s with games like Skyrim and Mass Effect 2 normifying the genre and simplifying it beyond belief. No major EA-like publisher would've bet on games like Kingdom Come Deliverance or Baldur's Gate 3 being as popular as they ended up being.

>>722958069
People act like PoE is some verbose mess filled with purpose prose and then you play it and there’s like an extra sentence of description

>>722990452
>PoE makes every stat useful for every class so that there are multiple possible builds even within the same class
>”what the fuck Barbarians aren’t supposed to be smart they are supposed to be 17 strength 13 dex 15 con 9 int 9 wis”

>>722995082
I remember when it released there was a DnD autismo having an absolute melty in every thread for WEEKS about Paladins not being tied to worshipping a god in the setting.

>>722958342
Nigger are you fucking stupid?
>>722976419
>Google trends
SAAR...

>>722955401 (OP)
I stayed away from the games because of weird racial based stuff within them. I don't consider myself a schizo but around that time I just felt like I didn't need to deal with any of that kind of stuff. Now the culture crap has obviously intensified, but yeah that was my initial reason for just deciding to give them a pass. Not like their reputation was so good that it necessitated a second opinion.

>>722958069
You aren't wrong but the problem is vastly overblown. The real problem with the writing of the game is that there aren't that many memorable characters. On the top of my head I can name Durance, Grieving Mother, That's, Lady Webb.

Real time with pause is good when the systems are built for it from the ground up.
Taking D&D, a turnbased system, and forcing it into a real time with pause system. Is awkward as fuck and a lot is warped or lost in translation.

>>722994930
You really shouldn't expect anything else from /v/
On this thread alone there may 1 or 2 valid criticism about the game, you know when you read because it feels like the person have played the game
The others are just veiled contrarianism or because they got personally offended by something, like the "gods are not real" thing

>>722955401 (OP)
Kinda, but I blame consoles. Publishers wants more money and they need console crowd, but their classic rpgs wouldn't be popular, they needs something like dragons age and Mass Effect.

>>722961976
>Then BG3 came in with "YOU CAN FUCK EVERYONE"
except the goblins

>>722990452
This. The seething about PoE's stay system is especially revelatory, because in Baldur's Gate you could dump your charisma all the way to 3 and have basically no reaction from the world and Pathfinder has equally retarded stuff like fucking CHARISMA being the equivalent of constitution for undead and nobody has ever complained about those.

>>722964512
It varies, they had a strong simulationist streak which could be good but at times led them to abandon solid turn-based combat for really shitty real-time combat or make "real scale" garbage like Daggerfall. But on the other hand games like BG1/2 had some fun combat and dungeon crawling, and classic Fallout had combat that was mid and unbalanced skills but the overall structure and adventure and agency was very good.

I think by the time Bioware was making stuff like KOTOR they were settling into a weird hybrid of computer and console design and it was actually a pretty good idea.

>>722995559
Even as a female?

>>722995478
Not really, people have this weird perception of RTwP as a different system but the only difference between Turns and RTwP is that in RTwP the turns are taken simultaneously.
Usually the same outcome you would have in RTwP is the one you would get in Turn-Based the biggest difference being usually the positioning.

That's how I know people don't know what they're talking about, they don't really understand what RTwP in d20 systems is.
If anything you could criticize that it feels clunky to operate, but that's mostly the devs fault.

In the end I agree with you though, DAO, being as simplistic as it was, felt way better to play with than most infinity games in RTwP.

>>722961976
I happen to believe that romance is an integral part of an epic fantasy adventure. Lord of the Rings had love, even if it wasn't the main focus. It can go too far and be cringe, but having a weird "no romance, ever" stance is weird. I also get the vibe that Sawyer doesn't want romance because he wants to protect the women or something. Either way, they don't even include a canon romance like in Final Fantasy or something lol.

>>722955401 (OP)
they probably did "market research" which has always been shit

I will never forgive Sawyer for making Ydwin non romanceable. Deadfire deserved to fail for that alone.

>>722962554
>It's sad that's what basically RPGs are becoming.
>It all started way back but the turning point was DAO.
No rpg comes close to BG2 in terms of romance content, shut the fuck up

>>722996690
DAO script is bigger than the bible itself.
How does it feel to be a secondary that doesn't even know what he's talking about?

>>722955401 (OP)
Dont know if it comes across in the article, but that was the era of FF7, everyone wanted to make the next FF7 (including Bioware and Black Isle, if you read interviews from the time you learn they adjusted development to appeal the same way) and every retailer wanted to sell FF7.

>>722955401 (OP)
Gaming generation grew older, those who used to play those games have less time to do it, am a wagie and I just can't into a deep plot if I know I can only ever play few hours a night before I get tired, and might not have the oomph play for a few days. Being middle aged sucks

attempting to finish pillars for the nth time rn

it's very barren - game's as simple as a nail
I see the attempt at making "an epic fantasy adventure" but the story so far (10h) isn't very epic. Combat encounters are ass.

>>722958069
To borrow a term from a time since long past gone
>"Epic"

>>722993951
My god the misinterpretation of "show don't tell" by gamer retards makes me seethe every time. The "Tell" in show don't tell does not refer to dialogue, it refers to how the author communicates to the audience.
>Anon lives in his parents' basement
Tell
>Anon sighed as he looked at the basement walls of his childhhood home
Show

>>722958069
Sounds about right, verbose description should have been locked behind dialogue options, could have even tied it in to skill use.

>>722997423
that's funny cause that's exactly what drew me in to the story and characters. Then Pillars 2 tried upping itself ridiculously with the hecking epic pirate adventure with world ending stakes and it completely lost my interest in no time

why /v/ pretends Deadfire is worse? It's agreed upon it's an uprgade
https://www.reddit.com/r/projecteternity/comments/qx1dru/poe_1_or_deadfire_which_is_better/

https://www.reddit.com/r/projecteternity/comments/15un212/poe_1_vs_poe_2_which_is_ultimately_better_in_your/

>>722997651
True, "show don't tell" means like playing out what happens.
>Anon can't feel his left arm. His chest feels tight. His legs becomes weak and suddenly he collapses.
Show
>Anon has a heart attack.
Tell

Nowadays you get "show and tell something completely contradicts what is shown". That is because Death of the Author means headcanon is equally valid as authorial intent and everything in the story must interpreted like the story was written by an omnipresent seer transcribing real life events.

>>722997651
It's also mostly a bullshit phrase that was invented by MFA schools because their idea of model writing style is modelled after Raymond Carver and because it's easy to teach and it only got popular on the internet because it allows midwits to have a quick and easy way to feel like they know what they're talking about AND it appeals to modern ADHD attention span deprived sensibilities that can't stand long paragraphs which by contrast were the norm during the Victorian era.

Picrel is the average user of "Show, don't tell" on the internet.

>>722997651
Show don't tell is about films. It means instead of a text crawl saying "The good king defeated the evil dragon" you show it.

>>722955401 (OP)
Sounds like corpo propaganda.

I remember this period. Corporations absolutely HATED computer games and were desperately trying to reify into being a reality where they were totally dead and everyone played consoles. They 70% succeeded.

This resulted in a world where no matter how successful a CRPG was it just had to be consolized and "streamlined." And therefore we got things like Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance. And even that was never good enough. Nothing ever was. I don't think this mentality was ever totally placed in reality though. It was always elite gaslighting fighting against genuine opinion. Powered by a "line goes up" greed mentality that anything that isn't maximized i.e. Madden or NBA was actually unprofitable and worthless. The same reason everything has to chase things like the Fortenite dragon today. Corporations don't change, they just sometimes lose against actaul good things and popular will.

It's hilarious how buck broken people still are about BG3.

>>722955401 (OP)
People still talking about the old games while nobody, besides some fujos, is talking about Boulders Gayte 3.