Unhealthy interest in sales figures

[Ninjerk]

They should continue to taunt such people. Occasionally a thing will come along that gains a reputation (deservedly or not) of being made to be easily consumed and ends up being more successful for it. E.g. Dark Souls, Conceptart.org (before the 13987th drama fest)

 

[MRY]

Goral I don't disagree with your frustration regarding these grievances, but they are really not materially different from the bitching we got about Primordia (e.g., "pixel hunting" in a game that has hotspot labels, "puzzles too hard" in a game where there is an integrated hint system, etc.). Richard Cobbett not only wrote a negative preview of the game, he wrote a negative review of the game for another site, then he went on Twitter insulting people who were giving it positive reviews, then went on RPS comments to complain further. IGN gave us like 2.5/10 or something. A more paranoid man might suspect GameJournPros at work. :D Primordia's Metacritic score is 72, much lower than AOD's 81.

But the thing is, you don't need to reach everyone, and you don't need to reach all your customers all at once. The nature of indie games is that once they hit a certain critical mass of popularity, they are self-sustaining. WEG's press push for Primordia was (and remains) minor compared to its others titles, but at a certain point the word of mouth sustains itself -- more people played Primordia during the Steam sale than any other WEG title, seemingly about twice as many as any other title. I don't think that's because Primordia's better than those games, it just hit the critical mass in a way none of them (other than Gemini Rue) managed. (My sense is that Technobabylon might be the only other post-Gemini Rue WEG title to get that kind of reaction.) Gemini Rue's critical mass sustained it for a very long time. Eventually it simmered down, but the game is still routinely one of the top two or three WEG titles at any given time. There are always more gamers who can be reached, even for throwback, niche titles.

Probably the outer limit of people who would enjoy AOD is in the order of a couple million players. I don't think it will ever reach that many people, but I do think a couple hundred thousand is totally within the realm of possibility.

 

[Lurker King]

Goral,

This is what’s going to happen:

- As time passes, more and more causals will buy the game, either by steam bundles or by other random process.

- 99% of them will hate the game and only 1% of storyfag causals will like playing as merchants.

- The game had 8 refunds in 5 months, so only a few will request for a refund. There are numerous reasons for this. I bet that the main reason is that they try so hard to beat the game that they lose sense of time and pass the 2 hours mark.

- 90% of the players that hate the game will not bother to write a review because they are too lazy.

- The haters that shit on the game will not influence the good players who discover the game by chance. So new solid players will buy the game, whether it has shit reviews or not, because they can read and interpret popamole whining.

That being said, you should try to answer the popamole complaints in every opportunity you can, explain things, etc. Don't underestimate psychological warfare, it is a real phenomenon.

 

[Trias_Betrayed]

what's funny is that even in awesome mod they'd probably get their shit kicked in anyway which would just make their hatred intensify further, should do it

 

[Lurker King]

Some players don’t even know how to equip a weapon! Apparently, pressing “I” to access the inventory is asking too much.

 

[Viata]

Some players don’t even know how to equip a weapon! Apparently, pressing “I” to access the inventory is asking too much.

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/iron-tower-and-obsidian.107863/#post-4505489
It's funny though, the game even has a combat tutorial.

 

[Goral]

Some players don’t even know how to equip a weapon! Apparently, pressing “I” to access the inventory is asking too much.

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/iron-tower-and-obsidian.107863/#post-4505489
It's funny though, the game even has a combat tutorial.

These comments were probably before the tutorial appeared.

Spoiler

Or some retards thought they don't need a tutorial.

 

[Viata]

Yeah, but still there are tutorial now and yet you see people complaining.

 

[Lurker King]

The idea that you need to read a tutorial to learn to play a cRPG is completely alien for them. Can you imagine these guys trying to play JA2? LOL

 

[Konjad]

to be honest I always skip tutorials too

 

[Trias_Betrayed]

I skipped the tutorial, still figured out how to open the inventory. Then again I'm a mensa genius so, I can't expect the plebs to know how to open their inventory, it's some very complicated stuff.

 

[Viata]

to be honest I always skip tutorials too

Sure, most of the games I do the same. But I don't go to forum complain about the game being xyz because I skip tutorial.That's the point.

 

[Fenix]

To be honest, I have read on 2ch (.ru imageboard) that shortcuts are not perfect.
Like there wasn't implemented something obvious etc., and that helpscreen is outdated.
I suggest it should be fixed, because it can lower impression for overall very good game, that isn't very accessible for broad audience.

 

[~*´¨¯¨`*·~-.¸-AIN'T]

- The game had 8 refunds in 5 months, so only a few will request for a refund. There are numerous reasons for this. I bet that the main reason is that they try so hard to beat the game that they lose sense of time and pass the 2 hours mark.

I think it's simpler than this - most people just don't try to get refunds. Maybe it's just pure laziness, but I also think a lot of people understand that, while they might not like something immediately, sometimes if they try again in a few months they find they can manage to get into a game and enjoy it. It's certainly happened a few times with me, and it's more likely for games that have higher learning curves (like AOD).

Plus of course, there's the fact that on Steam people often buy a bunch of games on a sale that they thought sounded interesting and then never even install them.

 

[Trias_Betrayed]

Doesn't steam limit the number of returns that you're allowed to have? I imagine most people are more conservative on refunding games under 60 bucks because of that

 

[huckc]

The steam returns can't help due to this game being a gem. I went from "wtf was I thinking" to "this is the best rpg I've played in years" in 24 hours or so.

 

[HoboForEternity]

oh yeah, anyway how is the first year sales figure?

 

[Vault Dweller]

60,291 copies sold.

 

[t]

60,291 copies sold.

Getting ready for the spike caused by DR release!

 

[Goral]

Especially since it should have also Russian, Polish, German, French, Spanish and Italian translations.

Edit:
Russian, Polish and French will be out for sure. Spanish should also be released since they even translated AoD which has WAY more text than DR. And German translator is working on DR as we speak. Only Italian is a rumour. Arch-Vile

 

[t]

AoD sits at 12th place of the bestseller list on GOG now, right in front of Underrail. DR at the last place in top 25. Sounds quite good considering they are in the middle of the sale.

Impatient for some news in a week or two!

 

[Shadenuat]

I really see no reason why AOD's sales should stop, or even materially slow down. 55,000 customers represents a pretty small percentage of the total possible player base -- I'm not saying there are five million people who could play AOD, but I'm sure there are at least a couple hundred thousand. The easiest data point for me to work off of is Primordia

Primordia's looks are eternal, like any decent pixel art or animation. And it's audience is eternal too - a pool of waifus who sit at home or at work and have nothing to do, have a PC but can (or prefer) to only play puzzle/adventure games since they're easy to understand.
AoD was ugly at birth, and will forever be ugly, and it's audience is small and angry. IMO, whoever wanted AoD already bought it. Making it prettier, roleplaying more intuitive and maybe adding romance with Miltiades would have helped, but not much. It would have been a more tactical decision to kick player in the balls a bit later in the game, but I guess then it would't be "real" AoD. Not saying Colony Ship RPG should begin with killing rats so Avellone could at least have some time to promote the game instead of dying 7 times in a first fight, but maybe yes it would be a smart choice to begin their next game with killing rats and stonewalling newbs at about 2 hours later in the game so they won't be able to refund it haha.

 

[MRY]

AOD will live on forever like some kind of weird Grateful Dead live recording or obscure movie that exists only on a worn VHS or elusive lunch truck that is just one step ahead of the health department. People will brag about having experienced it, and others will seek it out. Amu superficially off-putting qualities are transmuted into part of the appeal.

 

[HoboForEternity]

i can see this slowly having some cult follower or even a legend. i mean planescape torment sold and reviewed badly when it came out. look at it now/

 

[tuluse]

i can see this slowly having some cult follower or even a legend. i mean planescape torment sold and reviewed badly when it came out. look at it now/

This is mostly false. PST didn't sell as well as Baldur's Gate, but it sold much better than Fallout eg.

 

[HoboForEternity]

i see.

yeah, but still i agree AoD will live. i can still see myself doing a playtrough at least 2-3 times a year for the next several years. even probably up till the CSG is released.