Eternity Josh Sawyer at Digital Dragons: Deadfire post-mortem

[Desiderius]

Removing overpowered builds is exactly what should be done. That's completely different than streamlining the vast majority of meaningful decisions out of a game, in my mind to some extent to rationalize delivering a content desert dud of a sequel. Creating those decisions (and that meaning) is the heart of good game design and for whatever reason they didn't put the requisite time and effort in to deliver it.

Respect your elders, Infinitron. It’s how to make your games suck less.

 

[Atchodas]

Word on the street was that Deadfire is shit right from the release Im very confident that it had big influence on sales numbers because people just don't blindly buy cRPG games its not GTA or Assassins Creed that masses would buy them by default, players who are new to cRPG's buy the game only if its praised by everyone and cRPG veterans usually do some research and dont purchase bugged cRPGs on day one

 

[TheImplodingVoice]

What does Roguey have to say about all of this? Is (s)he? finally going to take responsibility for Sawyer and Deadfire?

 

[Atchodas]

Only Sawyer himself can take responsibility for Deadfire however it is evident from shit that he posts that he aint ready for that, he says he Is responsible for it but won't acknowledge the reality of why it was bad so he is not being sincere at least not yet, thus no redemption for him.

 

[J_C]

but won't acknowledge the reality of why it was bad

Since it wasn't bad, there is nothing to acknowledge.

 

[Roguey]

What does Roguey have to say about all of this? Is (s)he? finally going to take responsibility for Sawyer and Deadfire?

I gave up on Deadfire during the Fig campaign, Josh should have listened to me.

 

[J1M]

Seems like a lot of important business decisions over there at Obsidian are made based on randomly chosen remarks from streamers and copying the latest game that sold a million units.

Odd, with all of those designers and veterans on staff I would have expected 'fun' to be more of a guiding principle.

Just kidding, game design is like fashion design now. It's about doing something different to get noticed or achieving some internally-defined goal, not about creating a fun game. People working on a game should enjoy playing it. Enough that it slows down development at times.

 

[hexer]

Obsidian comes off as a company where decision makers don't share a common vision.
Too many cooks spoil the broth.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Obsidian comes off as a company where decision makers don't share a common vision.

Besides their love-hate relationship with the genre, they're basically split between following their own vision and arbitrarily catering to some vocal parts of their customer base. While the end product isn't necessarily schizophrenic, it is at best mediocre.

 

[Tigranes]

Seems like a lot of important business decisions over there at Obsidian are made based on randomly chosen remarks from streamers and copying the latest game that sold a million units.

Odd, with all of those designers and veterans on staff I would have expected 'fun' to be more of a guiding principle.

Just kidding, game design is like fashion design now. It's about doing something different to get noticed or achieving some internally-defined goal, not about creating a fun game. People working on a game should enjoy playing it. Enough that it slows down development at times.

Obsidian has never, ever, ever had good upper level management or organisation or anything of the sort. They've always been an incoherently run company that miraculously puts out memorable flawed gems by the sheer virtue of talent and RPG experience, both of which has been seeping out of the company in recent years.

Kind of like, well, Black Isle.

 

[Elex]

Word on the street was that Deadfire is shit right from the release Im very confident that it had big influence on sales numbers because people just don't blindly buy cRPG games its not GTA or Assassins Creed that masses would buy them by default, players who are new to cRPG's buy the game only if its praised by everyone and cRPG veterans usually do some research and dont purchase bugged cRPGs on day one

so it’s rpgcodex fault!

 

[JarlFrank]

For all the sales and praise PoE got, a quick glance at the stats should have clued them that for all the raving very few people actually bothered to finish the thing. Making Deadfire a direct continuation was probably a very bad move.

In most games, like 10-20% of buyers ever finish... and a sizable chunk of your players will play between 0 and 120 minutes. It's the norm now to have many people buy Steam games they'll never really play, and only a minority actually finish even once.

Would be interesting to know if POE's completion stats or other proxy data were even lower than this dismal average, though.

Sequels always seem to invite stupid and pointless ways to piss people off, though. E.g. direct sequel = plenty of people whining they can't import their game and all their XP and items and decisions from first game. Surely it could have been something set in Old Vailia where Eder and a couple others make a reappearance, and maybe the whole place is being turned upside down by the major consequences to the setting, like fake gods -> everyone goes all in on animancy.

13.2% of players beat the first game on Steam, according to the achievement tracker: https://steamcommunity.com/stats/291650/achievements
About what I expected, given its length and mass appeal.

Checking the completion rate of other RPG:

ELEX has 22.8%
Divinity: Original Sin 2 has 11.6%
Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition has 6.9%
BG2 Enhanced has 7.8% (Throne of Bhaal only 2.4%)

But you have to compare these stats to the percentage of players who got the first achievement (finishing the tutorial/intro section) to get the real percentage of players who started and finished vs those who started and abandoned. Especially in the BG EEs there are many people who bought the game but didn't play it at all yet, leading to a comparatively small percentage who finished even the first quest.

 

[Verylittlefishes]

This fire needs to be dead.

 

[Daidre]

This fire needs to be dead.

No "postmortems" for a living.

 

[hexer]

Especially in the BG EEs there are many people who bought the game but didn't play it at all yet, leading to a comparatively small percentage who finished even the first quest.

Yeah, from what I see in global achievements only 42% players left Candlekeep.

 

[Silly Germans]

Especially in the BG EEs there are many people who bought the game but didn't play it at all yet, leading to a comparatively small percentage who finished even the first quest.

Yeah, from what I see in global achievements only 42% players left Candlekeep.

The rats in the Reevor's storehouse were just a notch too tough, perhaps a little more balance would ...

 

[JarlFrank]

Obviously that means 60% of people who bought the game haven't even installed it yet. I certainly have my own share of bought but not yet played games on Steam, so the earliest achievement which you usually get after the prologue is a good indicator of how many people haven't even installed the game yet. ATOM RPG gave you an achievement for starting the game for the first time, and that achievement is owned by 99.2% of players. That means 0.8% (let's round that up to 1% - not a small amount of people depending on how many copies ATOM sold in total; if it sold 10.000 copies, there are 100 people who bought the game but never even launched it once) of people who own it never launched it.

Now, the Infinity Engine Enhanced Editions are also part of bundles. Maybe someone just wanted Planescape Torment but got the bundle because it was on sale and he thought why not, this way I'll also own the BG games if I ever wanna get around to those. This way games end up in the libraries of people but can go unplayed for years, but since those people now own the game, their achievement stats are tracked towards the global total.

So in general, taking the percentage of people who finished the very first achievement (usually directly after the tutorial - I think for the sake of statistics, giving an achievement for launching the game for the first time like ATOM did is a good idea and lets you track completion rates more accurately; there are people who give up before the end of the tutorial, after all, because they realize it's not their kind of game) and cutting out the percentage who didn't gives you the actual playerbase, and to calculate the amount of players who finished the game you have to take the amount of players who got the first achievement into account.

A 5% completion rate might actually be closer to 10% or even 20% depending on the percentage of owners of the game who actually started playing it. If you own the game but haven't yet started, you don't yet count as a player.

Also, some games make it harder to track completion rates accurately by releasing Enhanced Editions that offer their own entry in the Steam library. Wasteland 2 has the original version and the Director's Cut. Divinity Original Sin has the original version and the Definitive Edition. What about a player who started on the original, then abandoned it when the DE came out, and played a full playthrough to the finish in the DE? In the statistics, he appears as someone who started and abandoned the original, but also as someone who started and finished the DE. In reverse, someone who finished the original and started a second playthrough on the DE but abandoned that halfway through appears as someone who didn't finish the DE.

Those kinds of things make these "how many players actually finished the game?" statistics pretty wonky.

 

[Bonerbill]

Since it wasn't bad, there is nothing to acknowledge.

 

[Roguey]

Playtime averages and medians (moreso medians) are a bit more reliable.

PoE: 24:47 (average) 18:51 (median)
ELEX: 14:03 (average) 18:57 (median)
D:OS 2: 66:13 (average) 51:18 (median)
BG:EE: 13:11 (average) 08:10 (median)
BG2:EE: 11:03 (average) 16:04 (median)

Half of PoE's and ELEX's players have played greater than 19 hours, fewer people care to stick around for the BGs, meanwhile D:OS 2 has people hooked into messing around.

 

[Desiderius]

Playtime averages and medians (moreso medians) are a bit more reliable.

PoE: 24:47 (average) 18:51 (median)
ELEX: 14:03 (average) 18:57 (median)
D:OS 2: 66:13 (average) 51:18 (median)
BG:EE: 13:11 (average) 08:10 (median)
BG2:EE: 11:03 (average) 16:04 (median)

Half of PoE's and ELEX's players have played greater than 19 hours, fewer people care to stick around for the BGs, meanwhile D:OS 2 has people hooked into messing around.

My guess is that more than a decent amount of that comes down to word of mouth. Hearing people talk about games makes me want to try them, some of which I already had in my library from buying them on sale.

 

[Van-d-all]

Playtime averages and medians (moreso medians) are a bit more reliable.

PoE: 24:47 (average) 18:51 (median)
ELEX: 14:03 (average) 18:57 (median)
D:OS 2: 66:13 (average) 51:18 (median)
BG:EE: 13:11 (average) 08:10 (median)
BG2:EE: 11:03 (average) 16:04 (median)

Half of PoE's and ELEX's players have played greater than 19 hours, fewer people care to stick around for the BGs, meanwhile D:OS 2 has people hooked into messing around.

I'd expect ELEX to have highest numbers, since people buying into that, usually would know what they're getting, but instead it seems to be evenly spread among all the games, except EEs. In the end I think it just shows that DOS2, despite it's flaws, is simply the most enjoyable to play of all those games. EEs on the other hand, have shit numbers, because anyone who cared about BG already finished it, so majority of it's players are just kids that heard about the classic and wanted to try it out but couldn't really get past it's non-popamole design.

 

[Jedi Exile]

Dunno why there is so much negativity against Deadfire, because PoE was much worse. It didn't even have turn-based combat

Actually, with TB combat Deadfire is one the best games I've ever played.

 

[Silly Germans]

Playtime averages and medians (moreso medians) are a bit more reliable.

PoE: 24:47 (average) 18:51 (median)
ELEX: 14:03 (average) 18:57 (median)
D:OS 2: 66:13 (average) 51:18 (median)
BG:EE: 13:11 (average) 08:10 (median)
BG2:EE: 11:03 (average) 16:04 (median)

Half of PoE's and ELEX's players have played greater than 19 hours, fewer people care to stick around for the BGs, meanwhile D:OS 2 has people hooked into messing around.

I'd expect ELEX to have highest numbers, since people buying into that, usually would know what they're getting, but instead it seems to be evenly spread among all the games, except EEs. In the end I think it just shows that DOS2, despite it's flaws, is simply the most enjoyable to play of all those games. EEs on the other hand, have shit numbers, because anyone who cared about BG already finished it, so majority of it's players are just kids that heard about the classic and wanted to try it out but couldn't really get past it's non-popamole design.

If my knowledge about statistics serves me well, id think that a lower mean than median implies many outliners among the distribution at very short times, i.e. many people dropped it after a fairly short time, in comparison to the average time. And knowing that
there is a lower bound we can actually assume that this goes for many people, unlike the opposite case, where a single extremely long play time can pull the average way above the median.