Divinity Divinity: Original Sin - Enhanced Edition

[a Goat]

https://twitter.com/adreeadree/status/570757372332744704

Is there a mod to remove the thanks to RPGCodex at the start of Divinity: Original Sin

Lol.

But why?

 

[agris]

But why?

 

[whatevername]

LOL I went to Luculla forest at lvl 3 and got epic lootz like this

Spoiler

 

[Infinitron]

GameBanshee D:OS subsite: http://www.gamebanshee.com/divinityoriginalsin/walkthrough.php

 

[LESS T_T]

Soren Johnson was at Swen Vincke's GDC presenation: https://twitter.com/SorenJohnson

There was no sales figure, I guess.

Didn't know that Divinity: OS was proceeded by the disaster of Divinity 2 (MC 62) in '09. Big recovery. #gdc

Larian wanted to self-publish so that they wouldn't be forced to release their game early. #GDC15

Had too many people to start preproduction, so they started a small game and a big game. The small one become Divinity: OS. #GDC15

Started Divinity: OS with $1.5m Euros (self-funded) and eventually spent over three times that to finish. #GDC15

Got rest of the money with an SPV that controlled the game/IP that split the money 51/49 with investors. #GDC15

Used collateral form back catalog revenue for investors. #GDC15

Went to banks to get more money based off the idea that you could multiply the 20k KS backers by 10 to get at least that many sales. #GDC15

Went to Kickstarter and raised $1m from 20K fans. (Fell in love with small game at that point and cancelled bigger one.) #GDC15

Feels like D:OS gained 10 MC pts from player-driven design. Weekly tasks came from player feedback over the weekend. #GDC15

"Polish is the difference between a 7 and a 9." Vincke #GDC15

In-house QA found twice as many bugs as publisher/outsourced QA (per hour) #GDC15

Didn't put EXE on retail disc to make sure players/reviewers would be forced to get the newest version. #GDC15

500,000 words in Divinty: OS #GDC15

Had to hire 20+ translators at last minute to make up for 100k missing words. Missed by one day and had harsh reaction. #GDC15

Was a very dangerous thing because could have crippled reviews, which exponentially affects sales. #GDC15

Larian: Initial messaging matters so much because it is very hard to change. #GDC15

YouTubers have a bigger effect on sales than reviews. #GDC15

Don't forget to mail Twitch to tell them when you are doing something special so it can hit the homepage. #GDC15

Larian: Don't waste money on ads. $20k thrown away. (Paging @cliffski) #GDC15

Need to come up with stories to justify people talking about you. (In-game marriage proposal was one.) #GDC15

Put a priority on making saved games work for an RPG. Sometimes, the manually fixed players saves, one-by-one. #GDC15

Digital/retail split for D:OS was 95/5. #GDC15

Larian: NEVER be negative in public interaction. (I totally agree with this. Apologizing is not negative, btw.) #GDC15

Be careful about anti-monopoly laws, or distributors can sell Steam keys at their price (like $5). #GDC15

Only reason retailers was worth it was because they helped with the financing. #GDC15

Games have a long tail (for years!) so don't over-discount too early. #GDC15

Be careful with regional pricing as those keys can come back to your home market. Falling rubles can hurt you. #GDC15

Vincke: Was spending 90% of time on streams that would only generate 10% of revenue. Drop them. #GDC15

Effect of marketing is heavily amplified by your game's quality. So, spend the money if you pull off a good game. #GDC15

Final lesson: make sure first X minutes are great and them connect with key influencers lie @totalbiscuit, etc. #GDC15

Can turn around public negativity with generosity (gave away alpha access earlier and broader). #GDC15

Fantastic talk by Sven Vincke of @LarianStudios on realities of Divinity: OS finances. #GDC15

 

[Roguey]

So D:OS's budget was comparable to Wasteland 2 yet it ended up the more polished product. Less ineptitude.

YouTubers have a bigger effect on sales than reviews.

You hear that, Urquhart?

Digital/retail split for D:OS was 95/5.

Only reason retailers was worth it was because they helped with the financing.

Final lesson: make sure first X minutes are great

No need to worry about the rest until about a year after release of course.

 

[Athelas]

So D:OS's budget was comparable to Wasteland 2 yet it ended up the more polished product. Less ineptitude.

I dunno, this makes it sound like it's quite a bit more:

Started Divinity: OS with $1.5m Euros (self-funded) and eventually spent over three times that to finish. #GDC15

Got rest of the money with an SPV that controlled the game/IP that split the money 51/49 with investors. #GDC15

Used collateral form back catalog revenue for investors. #GDC15

Went to banks to get more money based off the idea that you could multiply the 20k KS backers by 10 to get at least that many sales. #GDC15

Went to Kickstarter and raised $1m from 20K fans. (Fell in love with small game at that point and cancelled bigger one.)

 

[Ellef]

Well going to the banks to get more money sounds like less ineptitude to me. If you trust your game, I don't see why you would only use KS money. I would hope inXile and Obsidian would do the same.

 

[SCO]

Uhhhh, it's my impression that the codex isn't even mentioned by name just 'greg martin enterprises' if you know what i mean.

 

[Infinitron]

We already know that D:OS's budget figure is clouded by the question of engine development costs.

Uhhhh, it's my impression that the codex isn't even mentioned by name just 'greg martin enterprises' if you know what i mean.

Your impression is wrong, both are mentioned

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.gamesradar.com/larian-studios-teases-next-project/

Larian Studios went "beyond all in" on Divinity: Original Sin, teases next project

It's telling that, in his postmortem of Divinity: Original Sin, Larian Studios founder Swen Vincke spent just as much time, if not more, talking about the business of game development rather the development itself. He painted a sobering picture of the many hardships that await game developers, especially those working on the size and scope of Original Sin. In essence, development is an all-or-nothing game. You should never compromise and release an almost-finished, buggy game just to match some marketing person's release calendar, because in the end the only thing that will be remembered about your game is the quality of its content.

Larian Studios learned this the hard way with a previous title, Divinity 2: Ego Draconis, which Vincke admitted was a massive flop that put the future of Larian into jeopardy, due largely to the fact they released the game before it was ready. They vowed not to let this happen to Original Sin. This is a sweet sentiment, but in practice it ran the studio into massive debt and stretched almost every resource they had to the breaking point as they continued to iterate and polish their game.

Listening to Vincke talk about all this highlighted a key skill all great game developers need: persistence. I'm talking biblical levels of persistence; the sort of persistence that comes from a deep, fundamental belief you were put on this Earth to make this video game. If you don't have that clarity of focus, you will compromise, and compromises lead to Ego Draconis. While this was a pretty heavy talk, Vincke did end on a positive note by discussing everything the studio had learned from their hardships with Original Sin and how they would apply those lessons to make their next games less stressful. That's right, games. Vincke made a quick note at the end that Larian is preparing to announce two new RPGs, but offered no further details other than this announcement likely won't happen until next year - or beyond.

 

[4249]

What was that supposed to be based on? On Swen's postmortem post? The GDC talk? What a shitty article

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/...cted_a_fallen_series.php#.VPWBYAD43iE.twitter

How Divinity: Original Sin resurrected a fallen series

Divinity: Original Sin, the second self-published release from Larian Studios, has become the Belgian company’s “most successful title to date,” according to Swen Vincke, the studio’s founder and creative director. The co-operative role-playing game, which launched in June 2014, was the sixth release in the series, and, according to Vincke, helped re-establishDivinity’s reputation after the preceding title, 2009’sDivinity: Ego Draconis, “our worst title to date.”

In a postmortem talk delivered at GDC 2015, Vincke revealed that Divinty Ego Draconis left the studio saddled with debt and considering whether or not the company was viable. “We started to doubt the future of our studio,” he said. “We needed to look at what we were doing wrong and examine what we had to do to turn things around.”

Vincke explained that he and his team identified numerous reasons that the studio’s previous title had failed. Prinicpally, he said, it was too ambitious and the team's approach too perfectionist. “Not only that: we weren’t in control of our own game,” he said. “We had both publisher interference and insufficient funding for our vision.” These realizations led Larian to create a “resurrection plan” for both the series and studio.

“We decided we had to go independent in order to be more in control,” Vincke said. “In the past we’d been designing games to make sure they would get through a publisher’s green-light process. But this isn’t always the best way to design. We had to make our own technology. We needed to do our own publishing. We wanted to be in control of the revenue from day one. We wanted to control the release date. Every one of our games in the past was released prematurely. This always leads to player frustration.”

According to Vincke the studio had “lost touch with our players” and “forgotten how to communicate with them.” As development on the game progressed, the studio closely followed its rivals and ensured that it only issued press releases and communications when there are lulls in the chatter about other titles.

Moreover, the team decided to incorporate player design suggestions during the game’s early access phase. “Player driven design is worth it,” said Vincke. “We had a choice to either ignore or embrace the feedback; we chose to embrace it. Every day there were long lists of to-dos gathered from our forums and Steam reviews. We had to distil this information into new tasks. It took a lot of energy, and there was resistance from the team at first, but once we started to see the results it became addictive.”

The game cost 4.5 million euros in total, money that was raised from a mixture of investors, royalties from legacy royalties and a Kickstarter campaign (this raised close to $1 million from almost 20,000 backers). The budget increased as development continued, but Vincke believed it was worth accommodating the vision and going "all in" as, in his experience, “releasing broken games will ruin your studio.”

 

[Jasede]

Excuse me- "A fallen series"? "Worst title"?

I don't know what I dislike more, Larian or Gamasutra.

 

[Roguey]

Their worst title to date is actually Beyond Divinity, shovelware trash.

If ED was such a failure I don't think it would have had an expansion pack or a free director's cut upgrade.

 

[Cadmus]

I dont get it, Ego Draconis was great. I suppose they mean financially...

 

[Infinitron]

Brofists to anybody who can find a recording or at least the slides of that GDC talk.

 

[abnaxus]

I had thought Ego Draconis did well in Germany.

 

[Roguey]

I dont get it, Ego Draconis was great. I suppose they mean financially...

Even then, the publisher screwed them with DD, resulting in their having to slamdunk the incredibly awful Beyond Divinity to stay afloat. Meanwhile ED got a pretty good expansion and free improvements.

 

[Cazzeris]

Divinity Original Sin confirmed for Windows 10. (2:57)

 

[Infinitron]

The video is about the "Windows 10 SDK", not Xbox. If they were going to announce D:OS, they would have done it yesterday together with all the other games.

 

[Cazzeris]

The video is about the "Windows 10 SDK", not Xbox. If they were going to announce D:OS, they would have done it yesterday together with all the other games.

Whoops, sorry then. Some guys at another forum mislead me to thinking it was coming for XBONE.

 

[hiver]

Feels like D:OS gained 10 MC pts from player-driven design. Weekly tasks came from player feedback over the weekend.

What does this mean? what are MC pts?

 

[LESS T_T]

Silly (but sometimes fatal for developers) Metacritic points.

 

[hiver]

fucking abbreviations...