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Eternity PoE II: Deadfire Sales Analysis Thread

Lhynn

Arcane
Joined
Aug 28, 2013
Messages
9,823
I'm actually curious, since I remember you hated the guts out of PoE1. Did you like/are you liking PoE2 after the intro which you think is bad (rightly so)?
So far so good, its the gayest game i have ever played and thats annoying. The exploration is very well done.
I keep comparing it to final fantasy titles because the exploration has a very similar feel, with tons of hidden places and quests in different islands, also the open ended nature of the exploration, your interaction with the factions. Also really liking the vast amount of text adventures that make use of your skills, enjoying the combat system, it feels weighty and theres a lot more feedback. Liking the classes, they all feel distinct and this adds a lot of replayability. It has good attention to detail

The only bad things so far is the system itself, the accuracy/defense shit that buried the first game is still present here. Level in this game makes all the difference due to it.
The writing is also mostly bad, i skip it constantly. Tho i still pay enough attention to notice if theres anything interesting. Most sidekicks have good introductions that make you want to know more about them.

Overall its a fun game.

here's a very important reason the game sold like shit

9uif6WE.png
This aint a joke either. It has mostly to do with how underwhelming the companions are. They are complete rubish. Xoti, Eder, Aloth and the rest are just so bad they are unreadable.
Then you find a character that either completely foreign to the setting like Rekke, that is a complete mystery. Or someone like Ydwin, that is so intrisically a part of the setting that you may even start giving a shit about it.
Then you realize that this is all you get and you feel cheated, because in the incredible sea of shit thats the writing in this game you find something thats maybe worth reading, only to realize that this is all you get. Have fun during the next 20-30 hours!
 
Joined
Jan 18, 2018
Messages
1,301
Grab the Codex by the pussy
Maybe the fact that Obsidian became a fabric of isometric shovelware has something to do with it? Obsidian released three games before this sequel. If you flood the market with so many titles in such a short amount of time, your next big thing will lose all its appeal. I notice this criticism in this thread about the abysmal sales:

POE1 came out when fans were *starved* for a new take that felt like Baldurs Gate. Now over the past 3 years we have POE1 with multiple expansions, Tyranny, and D:OS2 which has won tons of awards. That might be enough to satiate the general populations desire for ISO RPGs with a voiceless protagonist.

Many players were also turned off by the ship mechanics and the pirates theme.

It was constellation of factors that made the game fail.
 
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Neanderthal

Arcane
Joined
Jul 7, 2015
Messages
3,626
Location
Granbretan
Wonder if that Firedorn thing turned off some folk, as I remember there were a lotta people on their forums saying they wouldn't buy next game after Obs caved to that fat tranny.

Can't see ship turning off grognards, they'll have all played Ultima and be used to long times alone wi copious amounts of seamen.
 

Trash Player

Scholar
Joined
Jun 13, 2015
Messages
438
The only bad things so far is the system itself, the accuracy/defense shit that buried the first game is still present here. Level in this game makes all the difference due to it.
One-size-fits-all Accuracy works well as a very generic power indicator: it actually sreamlines in a good way for non-kith monsters. For your DnD derivatives murderhobo though, we can agree not so. Honestly, this works much better for a setting that wouldn't raise simulationist-esque questions. I reckon it is less jarring for Superheroes and such.
 

Urthor

Prophet
Patron
Joined
Mar 22, 2015
Messages
1,872
Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
Honestly I do hope they flesh out Rekke for the expansions, but the issue is they can't flesh out rekke and maybe Ydwin and not flesh out the others, when I imagine a brand new companion is going to be better than just fleshing out the bad sidekicks.
 

Lhynn

Arcane
Joined
Aug 28, 2013
Messages
9,823
One-size-fits-all Accuracy works well as a very generic power indicator: it actually sreamlines in a good way for non-kith monsters. For your DnD derivatives murderhobo though, we can agree not so. Honestly, this works much better for a setting that wouldn't raise simulationist-esque questions. I reckon it is less jarring for Superheroes and such.
The problem is that defense grows as well as accuracy, meaning you will turn lower level monsters into red mist, while being immortal to them. stomp same level monsters if you know the system, and struggle temporarily against higher level monsters. Regardless of abilities or skills. It creates very predictable gameplay where you can gauge the threat by their level.

Baldurs gate never had that problem, you gauged the threat by their type, their composition, the environment, their abilities, etc.

Its a horrible system and should have died before PoE 1 was released.
 
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Quillon

Arcane
Joined
Dec 15, 2016
Messages
5,214
Chris is very bright and creative, but I don't need to read his wikipedia page to know he has never taken a writing class in his life.

Chris learned from the streetz yo! One does not need writing classes to create magic!
 
Self-Ejected

aweigh

Self-Ejected
Joined
Aug 23, 2005
Messages
17,978
Location
Florida
So while googling PoE2 shit I stumbled upon a SomethingAwful thread and the very first post I read:

If all the paths available through those factions are strongly right-leaning, and you're left-leaning, is it centrist to reject those paths on offer?

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx is the most woke ending

It's still probably better to mitigate the amount of colonialism taking place in the world.

:what:
 
Self-Ejected

unfairlight

Self-Ejected
Joined
Aug 20, 2017
Messages
4,092
It sold like shit because it was a Sawyer game that no one wanted. No one really wants RTWP other than people who are really nostalgic over games that came out 20 years ago. This system does not have any mass market appeal at all. Turn based is eternal and they tried a couple of new things with D:OS2, hence why it sold so great. Other than that they also tried really hard to make a fucking fantasy game world as shitty as possible thanks to shit unlikable characters and hamfisted diversity, again D:OS2 had this too but it wasn't as forced.
 

Flou

Arbiter
Joined
Mar 23, 2016
Messages
869
Location
Hellsinki
One of the reasons is that they completely shat the bed with their Fig updates. There just weren't any/many during this year. There's no excuse for that. After Katrina left to join Blizzard there weren't pretty much any updates at all. With the total lack of marketing by Versus Evil it's hard to get enough recognition to actually have people notice your game. I've seen Black Gaysir ad on Facebook at least 1000 times now, not a single Deadfire ad.

Why they didn't have steady stream of Fig updates is just plain retarded. You could have someone go shoot a video about the voice actors doing their lines, meet some of the developers that way. Anything!
 
Developer
Joined
Jan 30, 2005
Messages
460
Location
Moblin Villige
One of the reasons is that they completely shat the bed with their Fig updates. There just weren't any/many during this year. There's no excuse for that. After Katrina left to join Blizzard there weren't pretty much any updates at all. With the total lack of marketing by Versus Evil it's hard to get enough recognition to actually have people notice your game. I've seen Black Gaysir ad on Facebook at least 1000 times now, not a single Deadfire ad.

Why they didn't have steady stream of Fig updates is just plain retarded. You could have someone go shoot a video about the voice actors doing their lines, meet some of the developers that way. Anything!

I think part of this is the realization on the developer side (even developers on the Fig Board of Directors) that Fig updates don't get noticed nearly as much as KS updates (the % who go to see it are much lower) or videos the developers promote themselves as a company.

I don't 100% understand how Fig drives backers to their site or drives attention for their updates, part of me worries it's an interface problem or people simply don't see it as a place that provides as much news or marketing as the individual developer does.

Fig didn't even have PoE2's correct release date established when the date changed, for example, so even going to the site, it still listed the old date - part of this is just because I think developers felt Fig would be the last site/source a Backer would check, so they didn't give it any thought vs. their internal marketing efforts. But even that says a lot about the process.
 

Theldaran

Liturgist
Joined
Oct 10, 2015
Messages
1,772
By now people should have finished it. Well? Your verdict? Shit? Incline?

I don't want to read 200 pages of rant.
 

Ramnozack

Cipher
Patron
Joined
Jan 29, 2017
Messages
876
These neo-puritans that get triggered by any sort of body modification or dyed hair are very annoying.
Only common body mod I think is disgusting are fucking ear gauges. Fuck those things are gross as shit. Permanently disfigure your ear just to follow some dumb ass hipster trend and it doesn't even look good.
 

Fairfax

Arcane
Joined
Jun 17, 2015
Messages
3,518
PoE 1's new player experience certainly soured things for some people, I'm confused by Obsidian's logic in designing certain places for Act 1
The logic was "old school design" that is, put a few higher level areas where you inevitably wipe out and decide to tackle later when you're stronger. Vogel spoke out against this in 2010 as he was shifting towards current game design philosophies http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...expansion-thread.100006/page-200#post-4859720
Wasn't it just a matter of Sawyer not doing a balance pass there? Pretty sure he said it wasn't intentional.
 

Dexter

Arcane
Joined
Mar 31, 2011
Messages
15,655
They listed games like XCOM. Legend of Grimrock, Banner Saga, Shadowrun, that their sequels had lower sales than their first games, and blamed it on the fact that they were sequels, ignoring the elephant in the room: All these games were OVERRATED and sold far better than they deserved based on hype.

It is a common secret that the video game industry sells based on hype and manufacturing hype is often more important than actually developing a good game, which is why marketing and promotional budgets often overshadow development costs themselves...

Legend of Grimrock was a really poor game. The reason was it was real time party-based. That made controling your party a chore, especially magic users. It had poor content, pixel hunting, and you had to cheese enemies, for example backtracking while shooting. It had nothing on old first person RPGs like M&M, except the appearence, and sold based on hype and nostalgia. People got burned by the first game and didn't buy the second.

Shadowrun returns was an abomination. An RPG-lite that had barebones combat, barely any exploration or roleplaying, a trashy story, and a bland world. It was for all intends and purposes a glorified mobile phone game. Sequels barely improved upon its shortcomings, is it any wonder they didn't sell well?

Banner Saga was a Fire Emblem wanna-be with shallower combat and a cartoon aesthetic. The gameplay is pisspoor and the story barely worth caring about. Looked good on screenshots but it was forgettable. That is why only a tiny fraction of gamers bothered with the sequel.

XCOM was a very bad reboot for XCOM. Having been raised on the original and Apocalypse, my favourite, i eagerly waited for this reboot only to be utterly shocked at how trash it was. Especially at release with all the bugs. It had flash but no substance. Xenonauts was far better. At least Enemy Within added cool mechs, and since i love cool mechs, i bothered to finish a playthrough with Enemy Within. Then i uninstalled forever. Xcom 2 quality at release was pre-alpha at best, gameplay barely changed other than adding timers everywhere, and the graphics were barely improved while requiring a Top 500 mainframe to render at decent framerates. Is it any wonder it didn't sell?

Contrast these trashy games with Divinity Original Sin and how its sequel enjoyed better sales... Now your "sequel theory" doesn't apply, does it? DOS was a good game, so people bought the sequel. It is not rocket science people.

Blaming lower sequel sales on the fact that they were sequels is a cop-out. Saying that you should have named the games differently and pretend they were new games to get more sales is like saying "we fooled the suckers in buying our shit, and now we are going to name our next shit differently so we can fool them again". That is what i am getting from it.

As for Pillars of Eternity, i can't speak for the first one because i never finished it. I quit around 10-15 hours in. It was not bad, but it was BLAND. Boring. Too much text and a stupid combat system that to this day i never understood why they didn't just use DnD, in a setting i didn't care about, unlike for example stuff like Forgotten realms. Not to mention that PoE required 2 years and 2 expansions to become something playable. So is it any wonder people don't rush to buy the sequel? Asuming those sales numbers are accurate of course, steam settings change and all.
I can only speak for myself, but the main issue I have is I'm spoiled for choice (1130 games on Steam and counting, at least about a third or half of which I'd like to play (which is also why I can safely ignore and hit "Not Interested" on games which try to play politics, have annoying devs on Twatter or similar, since I have an inexhaustible Backlog of games I'm likely never going to get through competing for attention and am not dependent on single titles I really really have to play or get on release unless they really stand out). The rest likely games I either got from Bundles with something I wanted (or even Free games/Giveaways, there's not a week without a free game or two nowadays) that I don't care about or that I might have already played in the past before Digital distribution but just wanted to have in the library for convenience sake) and there's not enough time in the world (especially for 50-100 hour games that demand your full long-term attention as opposed to 2 hour movies or 45 minute TV episodes or short Indie games) to do that, plus you always gotta be in the mood for it.

Given the games above:
Legend of Grimrock: I got it from some external store in 2012, played it for about 15 hours and liked it overall, got over halfway through the dungeon, but the game got too repetitive at some point, there's only so many levels with the same tilesets and enemies you want to get through, not sure if I ever want to finish it since it isn't exactly a "story-driven game" where one would miss much. Funnily enough I got the sequel from some Bundle, but never got around to even install it.

Shadowrun Returns: Got it in the 2014 Summer Sale on Steam, but never got around to play it, it's not even particularly high on my list. I got both Dragonfall and Hong Kong in respective Bundles, but never got around to them.

Banner Saga: I nearly KickStarted this, but ended up getting it during Winter Sale 2014. Didn't get around to playing it till 2017 after the Sequel I had no idea about was out. I liked it overall, ended up buying and playing the second part right after, which wasn't as good but I still enjoyed. Will likely get the third part at or around release since I want to see how the story ends.

XCOM: I was never much of a big X-COM fan back in the day, but I got a physical copy of it around release due to Hype and was willing to give it a go. Played it around release for like 7 hours and overall had a positive experience, but I got a bit stuck on a story mission with squad members constantly dying and stopped playing with the plan to get back to it. Didn't play it since, but I might return to it at some point. No interest in the second part till I at least finish the first.

Divinity: Original Sin: Got the EE CE Winter Sale 2017, gifted the second copy and started a CoOp campaign with someone who had played the normal game before. Played around 4-5 hours, did some quests in the town etc. till I got tired. It didn't exactly "click" and came off a bit tryhard (both the setting, dialogue and characters), so I don't particularly feel like returning to it and don't have much interest in the sequel so far. Although I have to admit I'm not much of a fan of Larian overall, I played Divine Divinity back in the day and more recently played through Dragon Commander and thought it was okay (a lot better than my early impressions of D:OS). Might return to it when I run out of CoOp-able games though, so far I feel like Vermintide or Vermintide 2, maybe Don't Starve Together or similar are better time spent CoOp-ing and you can play them with more than two people too.

Pillars of Eternity: KickStarted for Physical tier, played for ~62 hours till near the end of Act II, overall enjoyed it although I had my mountains of issues with it (for one playing near release and there was some armor stacking bug making chars into ultimate tanks that I remember annoyed the shit out of me, there were issues with Caed Nua and its quests early on not working properly, I had chars just break engagement and stopping to attack in the middle of battle, the Backer NPCs were too many and very annoying/out of place, AI and Pathfinding had issues, Boring Leveling/Itemization etc.) and it got dull after a while with nothing particularly "standing out" about it and a somewhat generic fantasy world, although I remember liking Durance. Will probably return to it and finish when I get the White March and I'm in the mood. I'd be up for the second part if not for issues brought up earlier in the thread.
 
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Nael

Arcane
Joined
Dec 12, 2005
Messages
11,384
Location
Indy
I wonder if investing even more time and releasing this game after summer would make a difference it sales.

I think "after summer" would be a terrible time to release a game. People going back to school and such. You always want to release at the BEGINNING of seasonal breaks... Beginning of summer (nowish) and beginning of winter break (early December).
 

FreeKaner

Prophet of the Dumpsterfire
Joined
Mar 28, 2015
Messages
6,908
Location
Devlet-i ʿAlīye-i ʿErdogānīye
I wonder if investing even more time and releasing this game after summer would make a difference it sales.

I think "after summer" would be a terrible time to release a game. People going back to school and such. You always want to release at the BEGINNING of seasonal breaks... Beginning of summer (nowish) and beginning of winter break (early December).

11.11.11 is the ideal release date.
 

Nael

Arcane
Joined
Dec 12, 2005
Messages
11,384
Location
Indy
I wonder if investing even more time and releasing this game after summer would make a difference it sales.

I think "after summer" would be a terrible time to release a game. People going back to school and such. You always want to release at the BEGINNING of seasonal breaks... Beginning of summer (nowish) and beginning of winter break (early December).

11.11.11 is the ideal release date.

I see what you did there, dovahkin.
 

santino27

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Oct 1, 2008
Messages
2,678
My team has the sexiest and deadliest waifus you can recruit.
I wonder if investing even more time and releasing this game after summer would make a difference it sales.

I think "after summer" would be a terrible time to release a game. People going back to school and such. You always want to release at the BEGINNING of seasonal breaks... Beginning of summer (nowish) and beginning of winter break (early December).

11.11.11 is the ideal release date.
Can confirm. My niece was born on that day. (And at 11:11 AM, or close enough that they willingly fudged it on the birth certificate record)
 

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