Eternity PoE II: Deadfire Sales Analysis Thread

[Roguey]

Ultimately I blame RtWP - overwhelming sentiment is that combat is incomprehensible for newcomer players.

And yet Baldur's Gate was the most successful D&D party-based D&D game of all time and Pillars promised to be more welcoming.

*Sensuki pops in with an "I told you so!"*

 

[aweigh]

Man, how many times do we need to reiterate that 'how many ppl finished it' has no bearing on sales? Something like 100% of Codexers rarely finish all of the games they like.

 

[Bester]

Man, how many times do we need to reiterate that 'how many ppl finished it' has no bearing on sales? Something like 100% of Codexers rarely finish all of the games they like.

I guess unless you prove it, you can repeat it as many times as you want and I still won't be convinced? That's how it works.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Ultimately I blame RtWP - overwhelming sentiment is that combat is incomprehensible for newcomer players.

And yet Baldur's Gate was the most successful D&D party-based D&D game of all time and Pillars promised to be more welcoming.

*Sensuki pops in with an "I told you so!"*

A more welcoming tumor is still a tumor.

 

[Roguey]

I guess unless you prove it, you can repeat it as many times as you want and I still won't be convinced? That's how it works.

D:OS 2 sold more and faster despite only a small fraction of players completing the first one.

A more welcoming tumor is still a tumor.

RTwP has both good and bad feelings that can't be replicated with turn based or pure real time (the same is true for the other two).

 

[Cross]

RTwP has both good and bad feelings that can't be replicated with turn based or pure real time (the same is true for the other two).

Amount of RTwP RPGs in existence: maybe a dozen or so, almost all of which were made by Bioware or affiliated developers using Bioware's engine (Black Isle/Obsidian).

Amount of turn-based RPGs in existence: too many to list, easily in the thousands.


Gee, I wonder which of these types of RPG is more likely to find an audience.

Baldur's Gate's success had little to do with it being RTwP, that much is obvious from the fact that the Black Isle RTwP RPGs sold nowhere near as much. Feargus bet on the wrong horse. RTwP was a fad owing to the 90's RTS craze. Most modern RPG players don't even know what marquee selection is, much less are they comfortable commanding a party of characters in real-time (with pause) combat.

 

[Roguey]

Amount of RTwP RPGs in existence: maybe a dozen or so, almost all of which were made by Bioware or affiliated developers using Bioware's engine (Black Isle/Obsidian).

Amount of turn-based RPGs in existence: too many to list, easily in the thousands.


Gee, I wonder which of these types of RPG is more likely to find an audience.

RTwP given that Baldur's Gate and its sequel sold more than any other individual turn based western RPG released before and for many years after. D:OS is the first to match/exceed it. This particular subgenre of RPG was abandoned for close to a decade because publishers didn't see big bucks in it.

Baldur's Gate's success had little to do with it being RTwP, that much is obvious from the fact that the Black Isle RTwP RPGs were nowhere near as succesful.

Two were linear combat crawls and the third was weird and full of words. The turn based PoR:RoMD and ToEE didn't do nearly as well (though writing was also a factor; also the first was utterly terrible).

For more on the turn based side, Fallout and Fallout 2 did pretty decently for themselves, but not Baldur's Gate good. Van Buren was going to have an optional real time with pause mode because Fearg knew what the people wanted.

 

[Mustawd]

RTwP has both good and bad feelings that can't be replicated with turn based or pure real time (the same is true for the other two).

Fuck Rtwp. If I ever see Rtwp in an alley im gonna follow it with my car till it gets home. Watch it park his car in his home and go into its house. Wait a few hours, and then set off firecrackers in its mailbox.

Fuck RTwp.

 

[fantadomat]

Gee, I wonder which of these types of RPG is more likely to find an audience.

Clearly the first one,seeing how Bioware games sold millions of copies while turn based didn't. People don't want to waste 40 minutes on a encounter planing every turn.

 

[Roguey]

People don't want to waste 40 minutes on a encounter planing every turn.

Until the likes of new xcom and Original Sin anyway.

 

[HoboForEternity]

D:OS 2 sold more and faster despite only a small fraction of players completing the first one.

its not a direct sequel

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

RTwP given that Baldur's Gate and its sequel sold more than any other individual turn based western RPG released before and for many years after.

BG got away with tumor inducing gameplay because RTS was the most popular genre in those days. Right now it's not even a genre at all, it's fucken dead.

Don't get me wrong here, it's easy for us to be captain hindsight and it might have made more sense during Project Eternity campaign to go for RTwP. But when you look at Deadfire and see the amount of effort that went into making the combat digestible for modern gamer, you really have to just sigh and wish they'd have taken a risk of going TB with the sequel.

 

[Cross]

RTwP given that Baldur's Gate and its sequel sold more than any other individual turn based western RPG released before and for many years after. D:OS is the first to match/exceed it. This particular subgenre of RPG was abandoned for close to a decade because publishers didn't see big bucks in it.

The computer RPG genre was all but dead from the mid-90's onwards (barring the brief late 90's/early 2000's revival Baldur's Gate was a part of). Attributing Baldur's Gate success purely to it being RTwP is foolish when there's barely a sample size of relevant games to compare it with.

But why are we even speculating about whether Bioware's success had to do with RTwP, when Bioware abandoned party-based RTwP gameplay after Baldur's Gate, only revisiting it briefly with Dragon Age: Origins. Neverwinter Nights is technically RTwP, but since you only ever control a single character, it being RTwP is almost entirely pointless. Kotor too is technically RTwP, but the consolized interface restricts how much control you have over your party members, so you end up controlling one character while party AI controls the rest.

 

[Roguey]

BG got away with tumor inducing gameplay because RTS was the most popular genre in those days. Right now it's not even a genre at all, it's fucken dead.

Don't get me wrong here, it's easy for us to be captain hindsight and it might have made more sense during Project Eternity campaign to go for RTwP. But when you look at Deadfire and see the amount of effort that went into making the combat digestible for modern gamer, you really have to just sigh and wish they'd have taken a risk of going TB with the sequel.

People still kept buying all those Dragon Ages. Turn based Pillars could have ended up like Tides of Numenera (worst case scenario) or Wasteland 2 (better, but not a million strong).

The computer RPG genre was all but dead from the mid-90's onwards (barring the brief late 90's/early 2000's revival Baldur's Gate was a part of). Attributing Baldur's Gate success purely to it being RTwP is foolish when there's barely a sample size of relevant games to compare it with.

I can and will. You know what also didn't do as well as BG in the mid/late 90s and early 00s? Those old dinosaurs Might and Magic 6-9 and Wizardry 8, that holy grail Jagged Alliance 2, that western jrpg Anachronox that gets praised for its writing.

 

[aweigh]

If there's even one single game coming out, then it isn't dead. 95% of all games are complete unplayable trash anyway, so the amount of games coming out of a certain kind has little bearing on the practical health of the genre.

 

[Roguey]

Yes, we've established Baldur's Gate was a huge success. But every other RTwP RPG hasn't been particularly succesful. Somehow from this you draw the conclusion that RTwP RPGs have far more appeal and sales potential than turn-based RPGs, even though there have been tons of succesful turn-based RPGs for as long as the genre has existed.

Yeah and you dismiss NWN, NWN2, KotOR, KotOR 2, DA, DA2, and DAI on technicalities even though they're all rtwp and million+ sellers (and if you think any one of those would have sold more if they were turn based you'd probably be wrong) and we're going in circles since I already noted that there's not a single turn based RPG that achieved BG sales until D:OS.

 

[Moink]

Nothing to actually add but I agree with the sentiment of "fuck RTwP"

 

[fantadomat]

RTwP given that Baldur's Gate and its sequel sold more than any other individual turn based western RPG released before and for many years after. D:OS is the first to match/exceed it. This particular subgenre of RPG was abandoned for close to a decade because publishers didn't see big bucks in it.

The computer RPG genre was all but dead from the mid-90's onwards (barring the brief late 90's/early 2000's revival Baldur's Gate was a part of). Attributing Baldur's Gate success purely to it being RTwP is foolish when there's barely a sample size of relevant games to compare it with.

But why are we even speculating about whether Bioware's success had to do with RTwP, when Bioware abandoned party-based RTwP gameplay after Baldur's Gate, only revisiting it briefly with Dragon Age: Origins. Neverwinter Nights is technically RTwP, but since you only ever control a single character, it being RTwP is almost entirely pointless. Kotor too is technically RTwP, but the consolized interface restricts how much control you have over your party members, so you end up controlling one character while party AI controls the rest.

You do realise that even Mass Effect games are party based RTwP?

People don't want to waste 40 minutes on a encounter planing every turn.

Until the likes of new xcom and Original Sin anyway.

It is really strange that they sold that much,especially xcom 2. Divinity 2 i could attribute the fails of Obsidian,InExile and Beamdog. All of them promised a lot and non of the delivered,while larian delivered what it promised. The first Xcom was a new iteration of a over hyped classic,every YouTube game celeb was praising the originals and how good they were even if most of them never played it. A lot of people could have been influenced to buy it. Maybe they enjoyed the first one and decided to buy more of the same?!

 

[frajaq]

NWN, NWN2, KotOR, KotOR 2, DA, DA2, and DAI

Wow, I wonder if these games you mentioned have elements in common that the PoE series doesn't have

 

[Roguey]

Wow, I wonder if these games you mentioned have elements in common that the PoE series doesn't have

It's extremely funny and poetic how the nwn2 and kotor2 slam dunks were more successful than Deadfire.

Even the DA2 slam dunk was more successful than Deadfire.

Even DAI was more successful than Deadfire and that came after the disappointing DA2 and with a big side of bandwagon.

 

[fantadomat]

I must add that PoE2 didn't fail because it is RTwP,but because the series were made by an high functioning autistic person that hates RTwP and have unhealthy obsession with balance.

 

[aweigh]

there's not a single turn based RPG that achieved BG sales until D:OS.

what about FF7 :D

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

NWN2, KotOR, KotOR 2, DA, DA2, and DAI

Big budget games funded by mainstream publishers sell more copies than indie games that exist only because bunch of people gathered coin into a hat?

I am shocked. Shocked.

 

[Roguey]

Big budget games funded by mainstream publishers sell more copies than indie games that exist only because bunch of people gathered coin into a hat?

I am shocked. Shocked.

Deadfire's budget should be comparable to if not greater than KotOR 2's and NWN2's.

 

[fantadomat]

NWN2, KotOR, KotOR 2, DA, DA2, and DAI

Big budget games funded by mainstream publishers sell more copies than indie games that exist only because bunch of people gathered coin into a hat?

I am shocked. Shocked.

A rating is not enough,here is a wall: