Pathfinder: Kingmaker sales and the single-player real-time-with-pause ceiling

[V_K]

the closest of a BG with 3rd edition rules

Nope, it's not. The closest thin is this mod for NWN2 recreating BG in that engine. Now go a live your dreams!

 

[deama]

I wonder what they're gonna do for a sequel? Whatever it will be, I hope they will fix the loading times.

 

[AwesomeButton]

I wonder what they're gonna do for a sequel? Whatever it will be, I hope they will fix the loading times.

The loading times are due to the framework (Unity) I'm afraid.

Look at D:OS' loading times. Custom tech. Then these unity based games like PoE / II , Kingmaker, I think also Serpent in the Staglands.

 

[Elex]

makes me wonder exatly what the FUCK WotC is doing. D&D is so fucking popular and they just completely removed themselves from videogames. 5E is pretty fun too.

5e is also perfect for a modern turn game.
i don't see any reason for a real time combat in 5e, basic rule are simple.

 

[deama]

I wonder what they're gonna do for a sequel? Whatever it will be, I hope they will fix the loading times.

The loading times are due to the framework (Unity) I'm afraid.

Look at D:OS' loading times. Custom tech. Then these unity based games like PoE / II , Kingmaker, I think also Serpent in the Staglands.

So I guess the question changes to: will they use Unity for the sequel? I'm hoping not, but chances are low...

 

[AwesomeButton]

I wonder what they're gonna do for a sequel? Whatever it will be, I hope they will fix the loading times.

The loading times are due to the framework (Unity) I'm afraid.

Look at D:OS' loading times. Custom tech. Then these unity based games like PoE / II , Kingmaker, I think also Serpent in the Staglands.

So I guess the question changes to: will they use Unity for the sequel? I'm hoping not, but chances are low...

I forgot to mention Tyranny and TToN, but I don't know about their loading times. Didn't play Tyranny, don't remember about TToN.

Well, I can't make a guess about what it would cost them to switch technology. Depends on what benefits the new tech will offer and if it will offset the investment of time in learning the new tech and adapting their "pipelines" for creating content.

 

[Morkar Left]

the closest of a BG with 3rd edition rules

Nope, it's not. The closest thin is this mod for NWN2 recreating BG in that engine. Now go a live your dreams!

Dude, the nwn2 engine is shit and ugly with dumped down combat and ai. No camparison to even the original bg engine.

 

[deama]

I wonder what they're gonna do for a sequel? Whatever it will be, I hope they will fix the loading times.

The loading times are due to the framework (Unity) I'm afraid.

Look at D:OS' loading times. Custom tech. Then these unity based games like PoE / II , Kingmaker, I think also Serpent in the Staglands.

So I guess the question changes to: will they use Unity for the sequel? I'm hoping not, but chances are low...

I forgot to mention Tyranny and TToN, but I don't know about their loading times. Didn't play Tyranny, don't remember about TToN.

Well, I can't make a guess about what it would cost them to switch technology. Depends on what benefits the new tech will offer and if it will offset the investment of time in learning the new tech and adapting their "pipelines" for creating content.

I played Tyranny and don't remember loading issues, but Tyranny's map sizes were bigger, and you didn't have a kingdom management interface that required a loading screen...

So I think it's more to do with "we put it into a loading screen cause it was easier and we were under time constraints".

 

[Great Deceiver]

Loadtimes have always been the bane of Unity framework games. I think it's unacceptable that the game takes 2 minutes to load initially and the constant 10-15 loadtimes between areas/screens on an SSD is also very annoying.

I believe there's a lot of room for improvement, though. PoE's loadtimes improved significantly after numerous patches.

 

[Shadenuat]

Sure Unity sure, but the design of some things in PK could have been streamlined to reduce problems with loading: adding more exit points in your capital, streamlining city building screen and other screens, etc.

 

[Great Deceiver]

I'm also fairly sure that indexing optimizations would make a big difference, outside of interface consolidation.

 

[glass blackbird]

makes me wonder exatly what the FUCK WotC is doing. D&D is so fucking popular and they just completely removed themselves from videogames. 5E is pretty fun too.

5e is also perfect for a modern turn game.
i don't see any reason for a real time combat in 5e, basic rule are simple.

I remember thinking that when 4e came out. Didn't like all the changes but they would definitely make for an interesting turn-based CRPG... then nobody made one.

 

[aweigh]

i mean, games like FF15 and Bard's Tale 4 also have horrendous loading times and they're not on Unity. Probably to do with the limitations of these off-the-shelf engines like unity/UE4 which are like RPG Maker now basically.

 

[TemplarGR]

The off-the-shelf engines are fine. It is just that they are not made for isometric RPGs... Especially UE4. That is an FPS engine through and through. Obviously a custom made engine would be best but then those games would never be made because of extreme cost...

 

[ga♥]

The off-the-shelf engines are fine. It is just that they are not made for isometric RPGs... Especially UE4. That is an FPS engine through and through. Obviously a custom made engine would be best but then those games would never be made because of extreme cost...

Cost and time... and then Bioware, then literally who, made the fucking IE engine in their car boxes with 20-30 guys.

 

[Urthor]

i mean, games like FF15 and Bard's Tale 4 also have horrendous loading times and they're not on Unity. Probably to do with the limitations of these off-the-shelf engines like unity/UE4 which are like RPG Maker now basically.

afaik it's all about how the save stores variable flags etc, if you want to optimise you have to minimise the amount of data in the save file which takes time and effort and smart people who know how to make good data structures.

 

[Ismaul]

Guys were talking about the D20 open game license ruleset. Is there a way I can download that ruleset, because all I have found so far is some broken links.

Google is your friend man.

The Hyperlinked d20 SRD is right here: http://www.d20srd.org/. Some guy has a version of it in PDF, dunno if it's complete/up to date.

The Pathfinder SRD is here: https://www.d20pfsrd.com/ and there's a PDF.

There are other sites with the SRD too, that might also have it for download. But generally some companies have taken to repackage the SRD with nice formatting and sell it, which is why WotC moved away from the OGL license.

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

Using the official 3.5E ruleset and a published adventure would've been much better and more successful, yes. However, OGL d20 would've been ruined by Sawyer (a 4E zealot) anyway.

Well he did fine on icewind dale and icewind dale 2 when he implemented those rules. In fact I think Icewind dale 2 may have been his best work and it had creative encounter design. You could be correct though, because even if he used D20 for PoE he had way more power over the project than he did when he worked on icewind dale I beleive, so its possible his agenda would have screwed it up anyway. At the very least I think it would have been more enjoyable than what we ended up with

 

[rusty_shackleford]

honestly I think a big part of their success (and I have harped on this point for years and met a lot of skepticism) is that there is a very large and hungry and fairly well off financially group of people who will absolutely support any well implemented and grognardy implementation of D&D into a computer game. I think D&D is way more popular than some people realize. I also think Obsidian made an enormous blunder not using D20 for PoE and if they had they would have perhaps doubled their sales (I have nothing but a wild guess on my part to say doubled, but believe it to be close to true). I think if somebody does one of these games with a ToEE type combat combined with a easy to use toolset and with graphic quality matching Kingmaker or PoE that they may very well challenge DoS II or AAA type numbers.

as we all know, just attaching D&D to a game makes it sell extremely well

let me go look up the sales figures for Sword Coast Legends

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

honestly I think a big part of their success (and I have harped on this point for years and met a lot of skepticism) is that there is a very large and hungry and fairly well off financially group of people who will absolutely support any well implemented and grognardy implementation of D&D into a computer game. I think D&D is way more popular than some people realize. I also think Obsidian made an enormous blunder not using D20 for PoE and if they had they would have perhaps doubled their sales (I have nothing but a wild guess on my part to say doubled, but believe it to be close to true). I think if somebody does one of these games with a ToEE type combat combined with a easy to use toolset and with graphic quality matching Kingmaker or PoE that they may very well challenge DoS II or AAA type numbers.

as we all know, just attaching D&D to a game makes it sell extremely well

let me go look up the sales figures for Sword Coast Legends

".........(there is a large) group of people who will absolutely support any well implemented and grognardy implementation of D&D into a computer game"

you obviously did not read my quote or perhaps skimmed it but I intentionally included the above phrasing because I knew somebody would make your argument. I see I needed to emphasize it for an entire paragraph perhaps to make sure the point was made strongly enough, because to me its an extremely important difference. Furthur in the paragraph I made the additional qualification that I also felt the presentation should at least approach PoE/Kingmaker in quality, but that is an easier and easier expectation to meet I beleive.

Bad and simple D&D rule implementation is not at all the same thing as proper and deep implementation. They are two entirely separate things, that have completely different market results IMO..in fact simple and bad examples will likely be greeted with hostility by the same crowd that would otherwise eagerly support and praise the game, so its not just some tiny difference, its of huge importance. However I do think a lot of publishers made and continue to make the same assumptions that you just did-- and I think they completely misunderstand the market results of games like Sword Coast Legends and just decide to make the simple seemingly obvious assumption that: "D&D is not that popular and its too complicated anyway"...

I think Kingmaker is a first step in destroying this myth. And this myth is a huge reason for the decades of decline in the first place, so I think its important to have it slain. The more publicly and bloody the death the better IMO.

 

[Tigranes]

"I have nothing but a wild guess on my part to say doubled, but believe it to be close to true"

I also liked this bit, really sold me

 

[TemplarGR]

What a stupid thread. A single game does not show anything about a genre or subgenre of games. A single game can succeed or fail based on any factor, including luck. You can't just pass judgement based on 1 game. This is so retarded the OP should have a "RETARDED" tag all over his profile.

Copied from another thread because i am lazy:

RTwP is a great system, and if done correctly is a vast improvement over turn based. IE games's system was essentially turn based with autopressed "end turn" that you could disable or configure in the options. All the calculations were still turn based under the hood. If you wanted to turn BG into a pure turn based game, you could in the options. Of course it would take centuries to finish a battle because DnD is slow, but you could if you were an autistic mazochist like all those turn based lovers. The fact that they didn't speaks volumes about their intelligence, their lazyness, and their lack of honesty...

The ceiling for games like that is a lot bigger than what POE and PK sales suggest. There are other factors at play, like the bugged releases, low production values, low marketing, etc. Also, RTwP was a mainstray in AAA games 2 decades ago, now modern gamers don't know about it, except us neckbeards. Without proper marketing campaigns and fancy graphicz, it is very difficult to push AAA sale figures. Also keep in mind that technically Dragon Age was RTwP, and it did really well on sales, even the garbage Inquisition sold like hotcakes... So, as i said earlier, it is a multi-factor problem and not just "the RTwP ceiling".

Another factor that no one talks about and i should probably start a thread to discuss it, is the "time to beat" factor. Those huge RPGs take a large amount of time to truly explore and enjoy. I have Divinity OS 1 & 2 and POE 1&2, Tyranny, Tides of Numenera, 2 Shadowruns, Kingmaker, Wasteland 2, and many other "incline" RPGs installed on my disk, and haven't really played any of them. I started all of them for a few minutes and then i quit, with the exception of PoE1 pre3.0 that i played for around 10 hours before quiting... They are not bad games, they are just huge and demand a crapton of time i simply don't have. And i am just tired of learning a new convoluted RPG system for each new game, why people can't just use FUCKING D&D system and call it a day? Perhaps that will be a factor in favour of Kingmaker, since i can play it knowing the rules beforehand.

But even then, if you add up all the time it takes to finish all those games, it must be around 1000 hours. Probably more. That's a lot of fucking time. If you played 10 hours per day, meaning you are an unemployed guy with no social life, it would take 100 days to finish them all. 100 days... That's more than 3 months playing non stop... And that only includes these games, what if people like to play non rpgs? What if people like myself just love Skyrim so much? I prefer firing up Skyrim, playing for 30 minutes with my Vampire Lord stealth assassin/necromancer hybrid, and then quiting and writting code or some shit. I don't find the time to truly immerse myself in those convoluted CRPGs like i did 20 years ago. And this is a huge factor in my opinion in low sales for these games. People may have the money now, but they don't have the time. Backlogs are huge. That is probably one of the biggest factors for the sales ceiling.

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

"I have nothing but a wild guess on my part to say doubled, but believe it to be close to true"

I also liked this bit, really sold me

Sorry about that. next time I will present a PDF of my extensive market research to convince somebody on RPG codex who would not change their mind no matter what I did.

I had the same exact responses when I predicted kingmaker would be a better game and sell very well a year over a year ago. Does not matter to me in the end. Obsidian will go out of business and these russian dudes will keep making games that are enjoyable and that we want to play and support. I think D&D has a huge part in this success. You can disagree, but you are wrong. Here is a PDF proving it....

https://www.scribd.com/document/389918860/Why-You-Are-Wrong

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[AwesomeButton]

all of this smells of confirmation bias.

what if its not about ruleset used, but number of featured headlines on home page? Would be nice to compile this statistic and compare how game is received on dex...