Wow - I missed a flame war. My only comment (not directed at a specific individual) if you are going to call someone dumb or fool and they ask for sources you should provide such.
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As to the underlying question about Chris making games good or bad: I can't tell a dang thing because I don't know how the game would have changed without him. I know that I liked several games he took part and I think there are a couple I'm less fond of that he also took part in. Also I'm not even sure if what made me like the game was due to Chris or not. Frankly I don't care enough to find out. Having said that a lot of recent games that Chris took part in I really liked a lot; and I dont' really care if he was the reason I liked the game - it doesn't matter to myself.

So, allow me to bring this thread back to the topic….

From my understanding, Avellone worked on two companions (Jubilost and Nok-Nok) and extra story chapter.

As for the trailer, I have no idea why Owlcat decided to make it so short and didn't flash out any of their key features.

This older one does a better job than the new/official release trailer:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5mP0AxgTZEA

They really should have shown off their character creation page, game UI, camping and more kingdom building system.

I'm going to quote wolf's posts here with beta screenshots he took with FRAP in case anyone is interested:

https://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/show…7&postcount=57
https://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/show…5&postcount=81

Level cap is 20. Nice.

While I think a lot of these games do a better job balancing things at lower levels; I also feel that if they require a level cap (i.e, people actually hit the cap and then can't level any longer) something is broken.

If people want to see any thing in particular from the game, that I have access to (like character stuff) let me know as I am in Beta and can take a screenshot.

This and Bard's Tale being released within a week of each other. I'm torn. Which one should I play on release? Or should I wait for patches and dlc for both?

Decisions decisions.

Play the one that is less buggy at release.

Well this one has a season pass. I doubt Bard's tale will have a dlc; but it might have a definitive/enhanced version that is a free update in a year - you can never tell.

I really hope I'm well immersed in some spectacular game when both of these release so I don't immediately dive in. I suspect both of these might see a wee bit of updating and patching after the fact.

Kingmaker trailer is not as good as pillar's. So what? PoE1 was such a "meh" game, Tyranny was so boring, and the system of both games was such a disaster that I'm going to wait for a 75% off now to buy PoE 2. Meanwhile, I backed Kingmaker and I'm so hyped to play it (mainly because I'm a Pathfinder GM and my players already finished the second book of the Kingmaker adventure path).

And about Avellone, he working or not in a game is not a criterion for me to chose a game to be honest. I would agree that he is somewhat overrated. Like he would make the game so much better all by himself. Honestly, he didn't make PoE1 a great game and I think that kingmaker would probably do just fine without him because the idea of the game is really good. But I'm not a game designer and I never worked with him, so who knows right? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It is hard for him to make PoE1 a great game when he didn't work on it.
All he did was create Durance and Grieving Mother and then other people wrote conversations for those two characters.

If that is not working on the game, fine he didn't. But even though, I don't think that Durance and the grieving mother were all that great. Actually I really hated Durane with all that unnecessary lore about the goodness of fire (Maigrin or something like that?). Durance IMHO was the most annoying companion.