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Gary Indiana

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This is where Jaesun chimes in about vgchartz.
 

ArchAngel

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I don't have a problem with someone making a new good dungeon siege like aRPG, but why cannot we get a proper D&D game after all these years and why did they try to market this game as something else than a Dungeon Siege spiritual successor?
The latter question is easy to answer. The DS franchise is dead in the water now that Obsidian has successfully blown their chance to make something bigger (like a true RPG or strategy/RPG) out of DS3. And nobody wants their product to be associated with a burned out brand.

Now as for why the developers cannot stay true to D&D - it's much more of a mystery. My wild guess would be that WotC don't see any money in true adaptations after ToEE. Of course all of Troika games were extremely niche, so ToEE isn't necessarily a good indicator of how well a true D&D-based video game could possibly perform. But business guys are often blind to such fine nuances.

Not a real mystery. Baldur's Gate 2 sold like 2 million copies, Dragon Age sold like 5 million.

More importantly, D&D makes simple board and card games that are meant to be bait people into buying/playing the more complex P&P RPG. Likely the same production attitude extends to whatever cRPGs they are willing to create.
DA:O would be good goal for them if SCL was not called D&D and if could be as good as DAO if it did ignore its D&D roots. But so far I only seen a pathetic D&D game and a bad DAO like game
 

Rostere

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PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 RPG Wokedex Shadorwun: Hong Kong Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
vgchartz is not a reliable source. Their numbers differ greatly from those given by developers/publishers in many cases.
 

Telengard

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Oh good, I was worried they might have actually tied #missiles to character level, and might have actually followed a single d&d rule. Now, it's a straight point buy system. Each pip will net a permanent new missile. Just as HP Surge II will net the fighter a permanent boost to regeneration.

I did give some thought to what a spellslotted cooldown hotbar would look like. Little selectable numbers over the box so power slot could be selected on the fly., and thus offer choice between damage vs cooldown time. But that would be way too complex for what they're going for.
It is hard to say how close the rules are to D&D 5E actually are without looking under the hood or playing the game. I can only tell that they are very flexible and maybe somewhat lax with their implementation.

With what they have presented, you can do a process of elimination thing, and quite simply too.

So, take a step back and examine spell slots with cooldowns. Now, with a limited number of castings, spell slots means something - shift up a spell from a lower tier, lose a spell slot for a spell of higher tier. But with cooldowns, everything is unlimited casting. So, shifting up a spell level means nothing, since you have infinite casts at every level, and thus you might as well shift up every spell automatically.

Of course, they could pull a sorcerer, and restrict the number of spells a mage can have in his head. But there aren't enough spells in play for that. To have shiftable spell levels with cooldowns, you would need a good array of second level spells to fill all the second level slots if the player didn't shift any first level, plus you would need a wide array of first level spells to fill the first level slots if the player shifts every first level spell possible. Now, with memorized spells, this isn't such an issue, because the player fills empty slots with repeat spells of those remaining. But with cooldowns and infinite casts, every spell will always and ever only occupy one slot. Thus, a hole made by shifting a first level spell up must be filled by a new first level spell.

And that hotbar has a notable lack of such possibilities. A mage of the shown power level with cooldown spell slots would have filled that hotbar and be well on his way to filling a second.

But just as telling, the fighter and rogue have the same power ranks on their abilities. So, unless they suddenly get slots too, the game cannot function under that system. But it can function under the old standby of filling in a couple of power circles every time you level. It can also function with a highlight unlock system, where everything starts out unhighlighted, and as characters gain levels, new acquired abilities become unlocked, but there is no reason for them to remove player choice quite that far.

(And what's more, we can count tabs. There's the Character tab they showed, which just records class/level/ equipment. Then there's the unshown Abilities tab. And unless there's some radical redesign, that's then going to be it for character development. I picture DA:O-style class-based combined combat & noncombat Abilities tab)
 

Roguey

Codex Staff
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Dragon Age sold like 5 million.
Where did you get that from?

Wikipedia said:
Up until February 2010, Dragon Age: Origins had sold "triple platinum", that is more than 3.2 million copies, worldwide.
Far from spectacular for a multiplatform game.
http://investor.ea.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=707298
The Dragon Age franchise has received over 80 awards from critics around the world, and has sold over 8 million copies to date*.

That includes DA2 but I'm sure the sales lean more towards Origins. Origins and the Ultimate Edition package with all the DLC were on retail shelves for years after release, which isn't unusual for RPGs, but is for most games, which tend to disappear within or after a year or so.
 

imweasel

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Yep, Dragon Age Origins sold very well, DA2 not so much. IIRC Baldur's Gate sold like 3 - 4 million copies which was a lot for a PC game from 1998. BG was a huge hit.
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Yep, Dragon Age Origins sold very well, DA2 not so much. IIRC Baldur's Gate sold like 3 - 4 million copies which was a lot for a PC game from 1998. BG was a huge hit.

Baldur's Gate 1 alone? Nah.
 

Telengard

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http://web.archive.org/web/20080409131841/http://www.bioware.com/bioware_info/about/
  • Baldur's Gate, released in 1998, has sold over 2 million units for PC and has won many industry awards; in 1999, BioWare released Baldur's Gate: Tales of the Sword Coast, a Baldur's Gate expansion pack. It debuted at #1 worldwide and sold over 600,000 units
  • Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn, was released in Sept. 2000 and continued the award winning story line of the Baldur's Gate series, selling over 2 million units so far; in June 2001 Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal was released, the expansion pack to the award winning Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn, and the conclusion to the Baldur's Gate series, selling more than 500,000 units
http://investor.ea.com/releasedetail.cfm?releaseid=443674
EDMONTON, Canada, Feb 08, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Leading video game developer BioWare(TM), a division of Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: ERTS), announced today that Dragon Age(TM): Origins has sold-in over 3.2 million* units worldwide.

*According to internal EA data
The figures for 5mil that are bandied about a lot are a bit looser, and it would probably be better to say they are projected estimates since the above date, but still very likely accurate.
 

Roguey

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Nice try but this press release doesn't say anything about DA:O. "The Dragon Age franchise" in 2012 included Awakening and DA2.

I think DA:O was a great game but I don't believe they sold 5m copies of it. 4m is possible (if we count Ultimate Edition).
Expansions barely sell at all (just look at those BG xpack numbers above), and DA2 selling as well as Origins is ludicrous.
 

sser

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I'm more excited for this than most other games coming out. I really hope it owns up to the concept.
 

Tigranes

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Indeed, the concept of 'kind of D&D kind of BG kind of Dragon Age kind of but not quite as good'.
 
Self-Ejected

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Better than BG2? It's possible, especially with this team. Better than Fallout 1? Not a chance in hell.

vv Oh, you're trolling.
 
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