In one of his recent posts Josh Sawyer stated that "if we consider making another Pillars game in this style, we’re going to have to re-examine the entire format of the game" (https://www.pcgamer.com/obsidian-will-need-to-re-examine-the-entire-format-of-pillars-of-eternity-before-making-a-third-game/). Obsidian is still analyzing why PoE2 sold so bad. And there's no easy answer to that. I think that one of the reasons was the setting. Boom for pirate setting is long gone and people had already enough of games that use it. Any other ideas?

One is almost certain. Unfortunately we won't get another isometric PoE game that uses a formula similar to the fist two games.

I guess the answers are there, if you do a good and honest analysis.
Even the first PoE, with the privilege of time, is receiving worse and worse score from recent reviewes.
They should probably analyse both games to have a full picture.

Both games suffered from problemtic (very buggy) start.
Tasteless story. Often non-interesting combat or very confusing.
Non-meaningful mechanics. Interesting game world with flatliners NPCs.
PoE II got a ridicullous setting: a god stomping the world. With pirates.
Something not even the most deluded D&D player would put together.

The list can go on.

I'd say what drives me nuts in first PoE (I am playing it for 2 days now and never before) is that from the beginning it is "too high". For example in BG you had only make it to the inn to meet some friends. There is special ability also... but it is only casting minor healing once a day (even if your D&D class normally cannot cast such spell) and you will obtain it after finishing first chapter, somewhere after 10 h of gameplay in average.
The rules are unknown to players, so I have little knowledge what adjusting the parameter during level up do with game mechanics in relation to my character. In D&D games, especially older ones, excerpts from rulebooks were in the manual and always you can buy whole ruleset.
The GUI is not bad but sometimes confusing.
Spells in cRPGs are often quite ... dumb. I played in many RPG systems (most with D&D rules from AD&D 2nd ed. to 5th ed.) and D&D spells are... intuitive and logical. These home-bred pseudo-spells are overcomplicated and non-intuitive. And it is not only about spells but other similar abilities (like "powers" in D&D 4th ed.) also. In Dragon Age, d20 based system relatable to D&D was used and this part of game mechanics was OK, but the class abilities were often unusable. In PoE it is the same, plus the underlying mechanics is non-transparent to players.
Storytelling is not very good. The story starts quite high for 1st level character - magic ruins, high level spells, complex system of traps... nothing ordinary character can survive (and it is railroaded to make it through).
Unfortunately making a good RPG is about storytelling AND good mechanics AND usable abilities etc etc.

PoE II would have been a huge success for Obsidian if not for these things:

1) It was released far too early--there was no turn-based mode, even the introduction was awful right after release--the writing was super-verbose--it really was very poor. That's saying something--when you notice how *bad* the writing is in a game intro!

2) Rather than an episodic release for PoEII, Obsidian should have planned the entire game inclusive of all episodes for release at the same time, much later--PoE1, which I bought, and then I bought the episodes dribbled out later, was disappointing--I didn't think the episodes "flowed" enough--rather, things were so disjointed between the episodes that they reminded me much more of mods as opposed to professional game products. So, when PoE II shipped, I waited until most of the patching and all of the episodes had been released before buying it--because of my experience with PoE1.

Bot PoE1 and II would have been much more enjoyable released as complete games instead of episodically, and with 90% of the needed patching already done. With PoE II, a truly excellent game after it hit 5.0, turn-based should have been included from the start. I thought the turn-based mode was excellent--added a lot of fun and interest for me when playing. I bought both games, and so I feel I did my part and that having done so I can make a few observations about the games.

Basically had PoEII been released 9 months later with turn-based mode included, and the editing made to the game's writing as it was, the game would have sold far better than it did, imo. I don't see how the game made it into production with the intro being so atrociously written--it was *that bad*--something you rarely see these days in a game! There seemed to be nobody at the helm for the game to have been released as it was, imo. To me it's obvious why PoEII didn't sell that well: it was far from a complete game when it shipped--lots of stuff missing (turn based) and left out (remaining episodes.)

I don't think this should be that difficult for them to understand. Based on what an excellent game The Outer Worlds is--it's very good thus far--I know Obsidian is capable of doing much better. Now that PoEII is finished--it really is a first-class game. It just took far too long after release to get that way, more's the pity! By the time the game was truly ship-shape most of the original customer base interested in PoE II had moved on.

Um. Neither PoE nor PoE2 were episodic releases...

PoE was base game + one expansion that they decided to split into two parts because they feared players would lose interest if they took too long to add new content to the game. A decision they later admitted was a mistake. I have no idea what you are talking about re. "the episodes not flowing enough" -- The White March content is easily the best part of PoE and by many considered one of the main reasons to play the game at all.

PoE2 was base game + post launch DLC releases. Like Fallout: New Vegas, and like most other games out there. The DLC were also never meant to tie into each other -- they are clearly separate stories, though IMO they do a great job at tying into the overall narrative. And, again, they were the highlight of PoE2. It seems to me that this is where Obsidian's strength lies -- in smaller, more focused stories, rather than big sprawling CRPG's. The success of The Outer Worlds also seems proof of this.

Turn-based mode was never planned or promised. It was a feature two developers experimented with after all the planned development (DLC, patches, etc.) had wrapped up and, knowing how popular TB is with a certain subset of their fans, they released it as a BETA feature at first, and then eventually as an official feature. It was something for the fans.

All that said... I think the commercial failure of PoE2 had more to do with PoE than with PoE2 itself. PoE rode a wave of Kickstarter popularity and publicity during its campaign, development, and even post-launch, that had very much died off by the time the second game was announced -- and had all but disappeared when it was released -- and I think the hype around old school games, crowdfunding, etc. won them a LOT of sales from people who might not actually have been the core audience for this type of game.

I also think that some people, maybe more than we think, didn't get what they wanted out of PoE. Meaning that, although it looked like the Infinity Engine games, it didn't play very much like them, and the general tone and atmosphere of the story and world didn't feel very much like the Forgotten Realms at all. It was more serious, its themes were heavier, it was very exposition heavy, with almost none of the whimsy a lot people familiar with BG and BG2 might have expected. It was great in its own right, but it might not have been what people expected or even wanted, thus considerably lessening a lot of spontaneous buyers' interest in a sequel.

And yes, I also very much doubt we'll see another isometric PoE game. It's well known that several people at Obisidian are interested in doing a Skyrim-like PoE game, so I would think that's where they will take the series next. Which is a damn shame because the PoE2 rule set / combat and gameplay mechanics are amazing -- IMO the best implementation of real-time with pause to date.

I'm surprised the games didn't sell well. They felt like a huge success to me.

I personally still wonder if this genre is for me at all. I personally love open world exploration and the feeling of mystery, which is what always draws me to CRPGs, but what puts me off is always the large amount of dialogues (without full voice overs) and the complexity of the character building system.

In the end these games to me always feel like I'm spending most of my time doing things I don't enjoy, like looking up guides on good builds, reading tons of text and just working through task lists (e.g. talking to all NPCs in town and selecting all dialogue options not to miss anything). And combat feels also pretty boring, because either you mindlessly mash through everything on easy mode, then it's mindless, or you play on harder modes and then you have to pause and input commands like every second, which feels annoying.

I actually bought PoE II because I still found PoE I enjoyable (and liked Tyranny), but haven't played it yet, because I just couldn't muster up the motivation to go through the tedium of looking up good builds and reading tons of dialogue, yet.

Well, reading dialogue is one thing you won't have to do in Deadfire, as the game features full voice overs. As for looking up good builds... I don't know that that is necessary in the PoE games, at least not when playing on the lower difficulty settings. The system is designed around a "no bad choices" philosophy and IMO they also do a pretty good job at explaining the various aspects of the system in-game. Just pick the spells and abilities that seem fun and if you pay at least some attention, you should be fine.

Do you have any good build/class for someone who prefers turn-based mode but doesn't wants it to be too complex?

Not too worry about bad dialogues choices. It's more like I'm already stuck at just deciding for a class.