Black Geyser - Play with a custom Party

[HiddenX]

You can play Black Geyser with a custom party now:

Create Your Full Party, Difficulty Rebalance and Spanish Language

Full party generation, rebalanced game and more!

Ho there, adventurers!

The current update brings long-awaited features as well as some surprises! Summary of changes:

• Create up to 5 custom characters during character creation if you prefer
• A free online tool to create character builds that you can import into the game
• Charisma, Focus and Dexterity now enable more enjoyable and versatile character builds
• Balance: improved early-game and end-game difficulty for smoother gameplay
• Spanish localization (both for Spain and Latin America)
• Lots of bugfixes

[...]

Free Online Character Generator with Custom Party

Create a full custom party you can import into the game!

Greetings, adventurers!

As you know, a major game update is coming tomorrow that also includes the option to create your own custom party (more details can be found in our previous post).

In the meantime, we have also created a completely free, online Character Generator website for you. It allows you to export and download your character (or a full custom party), which you can import directly into the game (after tomorrow's update). As you can open the website from any location, you can have fun with character builds even when you don't have Black Geyser installed on your current device.

You don't need to own the game
to create a party with this online website. Anyone is welcome to use it!

Thank you for your continued support and feedback!

The Black Geyser Team

More information.

 

[MAHak]

My enthusiasm for this game fizzled out after a couple of play-sessions. But I might return after some major overhauls and a DLC or two. So it’s good to see that they’re still updating the game, as I like the settings, it being a fresh non-D&D take on high fantasy and the whole Infinity-vibe.

 

[Stingray]

Is there any reason to believe there's major overhauls or DLC coming? Have they said anything?

edit: nevermind, just found a Steam post from them confirming there will be DLC: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1374930/discussions/0/3489753940067326652/

 

[Morrandir]

My enthusiasm for this game fizzled out after a couple of play-sessions.

I just returned to it after a break of a few months. I think I'll finish it this time, but still I don't feel any enthusiasm. I don't think the game does something very wrong in particular, bit somehow there isn't anything exciting either.

 

[JDR13]

I just returned to it after a break of a few months. I think I'll finish it this time, but still I don't feel any enthusiasm. I don't think the game does something very wrong in particular, bit somehow there isn't anything exciting either.

It's just a very generic feel imo. Like you said, it doesn't do anything partiularly wrong, but it doesn't stand out in any way.

It's not a game I would recommend to someone unless they've already played all the IE games, PoE 1&2, Pathfinder, etc, and are just looking for another RTwP RPG.

 

[Couchpotato]

The simple reason is it's a budget Baldur's Gate clone. The developer raised $100,000 on Kickstarter and based on that small sum they manged to release a finished product.

So no it should not be compared to recent games with a larger budget.

 

[Stingray]

The simple reason is it's a budget Baldur's Gate clone. The developer raised $100,000 on Kickstarter and based on that small sum they manged to release a finished product.

So no it should not be compared to recent games with a larger budget.

According to their own guy, Rothgor, on this forum back in 2018, what they got from Kickstarter wasn't the only money that they had, presumably just a small fraction of it but we have no idea how much exactly:

The other reason for Kickstarter is that our (old and new) investors need a successful Kickstarter as a proof of interest. After that, we receive their final round of funds. And this also explains why it took us so much time to agree with investors: we want to retain full control over the project (including creative freedom). As a new studio, it is not easy to find investors, telling them "we need your money, but we want to keep full control over the project". This is why we don't want a publisher at the moment. One of the publishers who approached us was very tempting, but one of its conditions was that we aren't allowed (!) to do a Kickstarter at all.

And creating a full-featured RPG (inspired by Baldur's Gate) requires a lot of money. So you're absolutely right that we had some problems in the past finding enough investors, but that's now solved. We're now backed by several private investors.

Source: https://rpgwatch.com/forum/threads/...video-kickstarter-soon.39389/#post-1061498527

On top of that, this game was developed, to a large extent at least, in Eastern Europe where labor costs are much lower. The company is based in Hungary, and if you look at LinkedIn, all their employees who show up are there. Rothgor did mention that some German and Slovak speakers were involved as well.

There's no doubt the manpower/budget was much smaller than something like PoE, and probably the Pathfinder games too, but it's not like it was developed by some guys in California for just $100K.

 

[Couchpotato]

My point still stands it's a low budget clone but once again thanks for another analysis of one of my posts once again. Also yes the dollar can go a lot farther in certain countries.

Look at the ATOM RPGs for an example of good games made on a shoe string budget.

Still compared to Owlcat and Obsidian I'm sure GrapeOcean's funds were not as vast. As Owlcat raised over two million+ each game and Obsidian over four million+ each game.

 

[Stingray]

Yep the ATOM games are amazing. Finishing Trudograd right now actually. Haven't tried Black Geyser yet, but I will.

Still compared to Owlcat and Obsidian I'm sure GrapeOcean's funds were not as vast. As Owlcat raised over two million+ each game and Obsidian over four million+ each game.

We also know that Obsidian spent a lot more than they raised on Kickstarter to make the PoE games, and it seems pretty certain that Owlcat would have too. Hard to know the real budgets of any of these games to compare, but I saw shill'ish Black Geyser posters claim that PoE had "10X the budget" of Black Geyser on two different occasions...one was Centaur on here, and the other was GreenMagicSpell on the Codex.

 

[Couchpotato]

Yep that was my point I added the + to each number. So yes both Owlcat and Obsidian had investors and other capital to use as well. I'm sure GrapeOcean did as well.

Again for reference sake I bet GrapeOcean didn't even have a million dollars to use.

Anyway I can't wait to see what DLC they plan to release so thanks for the link.

 

[Centaur]

I heard the 10-15x budget difference on a live event from devs years ago. Probably same source of information as that GreenMageSpell got it from, whoever she is.

 

[Stingray]

I heard the 10-15x budget difference on a live event from devs years ago. Probably same source of information as that GreenMageSpell got it from, whoever she is.

She claimed to be the ex-girlfriend of one of the devs…

 

[JDR13]

Not hard to believe since PoE is 10-15x better.

 

[Centaur]

Not hard to believe since PoE is 10-15x better.

These misinformations are exactly why I'm needed in forums like this. I totally sympathize with the devs when I read stuff like this. Don't be bothered by the reality, by facts lol.

PoE is nowhere 10-15x better. Such a difference would mean Black Geyser is unplayable. I would say PoE is less than twice better. With a 10 times more budget.

Nonetheless, as an objective measurement number, Black Geezer has a 71% rating on Steam (and 74% for last 30 days). So not that far from the Pillars of Eternity series (87%). There is 16% difference, while the PoE team has like 20+ years more experience and dozens of products, against the Black Geeyzer team (zero products before, couple of years operation). Dividing 87 by 71, you get ~1,23. So, yeah, according to Steam users, PoE is merely 23% better than Black Geyser.

 

[Redglyph]

These misinformations are exactly why I'm needed in forums like this. I totally sympathize with the devs when I read stuff like this. Don't be bothered by the reality, by facts lol.

That marks you as completely biased, unfortunately, especially since you only post about Black Geyser.

About facts, PoE2 is already at least twice as long to complete, with two play modes, almost thrice the number of base classes, then there's the lore...

Those games are not even in the same league. Nothing wrong with that, it's just a different budget as we discussed, and a different level of maturity in the teams. I don't think the developers need any sympathy because they're certainly not comparing themselves to games like PoE or even less to Pathfinder.

 

[Couchpotato]

Great now I'm having flashbacks to another banned member who used review percentages to declare all crowd-funded Isometric RTwP games were terrible.

 

[Redglyph]

Yeah, I doubt that Steam scores are very relevant with their binary system.
And even if they were, scores are not linear so you can't make a ratio. Moreover, they are centered on 50% and not 0%.

EDIT: anyway, it's their first game, I'd say it's not bad at all. Let's see what comes next.

 

[Centaur]

That marks you as completely biased, unfortunately, especially since you only post about Black Geyser.

I made all this clear in a previous post (see last paragraph here). Not that I'd need to prove anything (since I'm a private person, not a developer), so just for the record, I recommend reading the above-linked paragraph about who I'm.

I'm generally a person in real life who stands up for the hard-working small man and minorities. Players have no clue with the difference in possibilities between an Obsidian and a Black Geyser Studios. Orders of magnitudes of difference.

Those games are not even in the same league. Nothing wrong with that, it's just a different budget as we discussed, and a different level of maturity in the teams.

The 2nd sentence is correct, I'm telling the same. It doesn't mean they aren't in the same league, because for that, "league" would have to be defined. For example, in very few things, Black Geyser is loved more by lots of fans than PoE. For example, PoE1 has had horrible lore dumps, even most of its fans hated it. Black Geyser is praised in this respect in many reviews I read. There are a few other aspects too where Black Geyser clearly beats PoE and players clearly appreciate them. In most aspects, however, of course, PoE series are far more superior. Due to budget and long decades of expertise of the team.

Yeah, I doubt that Steam scores are very relevant with their binary system

This is the same approach as a previous member called Nereida used (discrediting the scoring system to prove your point) but I'm happy you are using arguments, so unlike Nereida, it's possible to discuss the topic with you in a civilized way with arguments and counter-arguments. Have you heard that a "bad law is better than no law?". Steam scoring system has its issues, as EVERY rating system or rule system in the world. It has pros and cons. But it's simply false to claim that it doesn't offer a legitimate and valid comparison inside its own system. That is, two products on Steam are comparable based on their Steam score. A GOG score is not comparable to a Steam score, indeed. (BTW, GOG score. Black Geyser seems to have a much better score on GOG. It seems it fits even better their audience. And GOG audience is known to be less silly than Steam, and more receptive to real quality instead of just "wow, I want AAA graphics". Steam has lot of idiots.)

 

[Redglyph]

I made all this clear in a previous post (see last paragraph here). Not that I'd need to prove anything (since I'm a private person, not a developer), so just for the record, I recommend reading the above-linked paragraph about who I'm.

We've already discussed that. As I said then, nothing wrong with promoting a game, whoever you are, but it makes you biased whereas the other posting in this thread here have not shown this bias.

I'm generally a person in real life who stands up for the hard-working small man and minorities. Players have no clue with the difference in possibilities between an Obsidian and a Black Geyser Studios. Orders of magnitudes of difference.


The 2nd sentence is correct, I'm telling the same. It doesn't mean they aren't in the same league, because for that, "league" would have to be defined.

It has: budget, length and depth of the game, lore, maturity of the team. You say it yourself a few lines below so I don't see the point in arguing this further. It's hard to compare those games.

Have you heard that a "bad law is better than no law?". Steam scoring system has its issues, as EVERY rating system or rule system in the world. It has pros and cons. But it's simply false to claim that it doesn't offer a legitimate and valid comparison inside its own system. That is, two products on Steam are comparable based on their Steam score.

1) Read again what I wrote, I can elaborate a little but it's based on algebra and statistics:
- the average is from 0 to 100, 0 being bad, 100 being good, 50 being neutral (provided Steam didn't get anything wrong in their calculations, which I wouldn't put past them). You based your ratio on 0 so your scale is already wrong to start with.
- it is not a linear system, so you cannot use those respective scores in a ratio. It is not linear because it's a statistical average of binary decisions, each of which is based on a very subjective criteria on a set of completely different values (like quality of graphics, sound, music, gameplay, bugs, price at the time of review, competition, ...).
- it's a statistical average on a very long period of time, during which the game entered different phases and were scored on different features. If you're talking about PoE, it's even a different era of gaming, when people had entirely different expectations (I don't think it's PoE since it had about 40 times the budget of Black Geyser, while you mentioned 10-15).
- the number of samples is ridiculously low for Black Geyser, which means that the confidence interval is large - there's a big error margin. I can't be bothered to do the calculation but that on top of the binary system means you can't do much with those numbers except get a vague idea.

So yes, I'd say that a bad law is much worse than no law, because with a bad law you emit a false statement. Anyway, the "10-15x better" was a jest that you took too literally, there is no such thing as a product begin n times better than another.

2) Comparison: we ruled out any quantifiable comparison, but we haven't ruled out ordinal comparison: if one game has a higher score, it is an indication that it may be better.

But what is the score about? The score on Steam is based on this: "Would you recommend this game?" So it means that 87% would recommend buying PoE2 while 71% would recommend buying Black Geyser, at their respective prices and with the caveat mentioned earlier about time and confidence. Does it mean that any of those games is better than the other? No, at least I don't see how anyone could reach that conclusion.

At best, it gives us one single point in the respective demand curve of those games, at their respective price (or it would if all the scores had been emitted at the same price, which isn't true, but let's ignore that). Nothing more.

 

[Centaur]

You keep calling me biased merely because I'm not posting about anything else here than Black Geyser mostly (despite of the fact I clearly stated my motivations - supporting the simple, poor developers). If we define "bias" according to your interpretation, i.e. that promoting a game with posts automatically marks you as biased, then the opposite - arguing against a game's quality even by discrediting Steam's rating system - should mark you as biased too. Promoting (positive) and criticizing (negative) are the two different sides of the same thing. It doesn't really matter that you post everywhere else as well. Big companies are known to have undercover PR agents who post on forums a lot in a big variety of topics to make them perfect moles. If I was a PR agent, I wouldn't be doing it professionally for sure

That is, you keep trying to prove with walls of text in a Black Geyser thread that the user rating system on Steam (and wherever else, such as GOG) is not suitable to compare the quality of games because of their methological faults or deficiencies. Which is clearly not the case. These systems have processed hundreds of thousands of reviews so far, so they proved to be pretty accurate to do their job (which is maximize Steam sales while offering a good level of comparability / quality forecast for potential buyers about a game). Otherwise, Steam would have changed their system. So not sure who is biased here against/towards Black Geyser.