Direct sequel is definitely the biggest reason, all the talk about quality of game is senseless as that's something majority of people only realise after they already bought the game. There also would be people who bought into PoE1 due kickstarter cRPG rennaisaince hype but would not follow through, as well as people who got into genre with PoE1 and found that they do not like the genre altogether however even when you shave off those it's extremely underwhelming.
Main reason they lost me the first time around where they could have locked me in (like Torment) as an early buyer was the FIGStarter, which I have absolutely no interest in, but I considered getting it later. Then I discovered that they apparently stuffed it with progressive politics around launch and the "gay fish sex" stuff and bad writing became a small meme of its own and I lost interest paying for products where developers believe they can overtly superimpose their personal morals and politics on their customers or beat them down with exasperating YA novel writing. I'd rather watch a 70s/80s movie or play one of the hundreds of other games I already own instead, like CoOp some Vermintide or play through the DOOM campaign.
I can only assume as to other people's reasons, but I'm thinking those pointing towards completion stats for the first part and pointing out there's going to be "Expansions" and "DLC" that adds to the game early on before the game is even released are the most right. Why would people buy the sequel to a 100+ hour game when they haven't finished (or possibly even played/liked) the Prequel yet? They could just play that some more instead, which is why the player numbers for the first PoE have also gone up in recent days. Second problem is those that might know about the Expansion/DLCs and saw that they released one for the first game, which they for some reason situated to take place in the middle of it might just decide to wait it out. Those are largely rational reasons I can image from people who were interested in the first part, irrational reasons that don't require any active thinking are likely the lack of interest and general exposure/any kind of hype around the game, since there's nothing standing out about it that might move anyone to purchase it whatsoever.
I think people ITT are discounting how much nostalgia hangover plays into all this. DOS2, while doing a lot of new things DOS didn’t, has the advantage that there were never any built-in expectations from the first game.
Nostalgia-based games seem to have not sold as well when releasing sequels. The shadowrun games as well as XCOM2 come to mind.
I think a lot of it has to do with tons of hype surrounding a game’s initial release, and then once fans realize you can’t recreate those old games, they just lose interest or are dissapointed.
Just saying and repeating "nostalgia" over and over again isn't an argument, even if you believe it might constitute one.
It's like saying that Broken Age or Torment: NumaNuma didn't sell because of "nostalgia" while some other games like Deponia or Divinity sold in the millions, not because they promised something and delivered something entirely different or rather underdelivered on almost all fronts and customers were disappointed or became ambivalent. It's an argument to let the developers, designers and writers off the hook for producing an unnoticed or mediocre product (who by the way in both cases didn't try to recreate the environment that inspired them from back in the day or even
attempt to make something like their previous works, but applied their current sensibilities and ideas of what "the market might like" and fell flat on their face) and blame it on a diffuse vague feeling people have. Even though actual classic games like Fallout or Baldur's Gate 2 still hold up and still sell and are played even today, despite being dated, to the point that a parasitic entity latched onto their popularity to bleed it dry and siphon off said profits into their own coffers and to the point that another parasitic entity is using the carcass, distinctiveness and charm of the other one to launch their billion $ products off of. "Pillars of Eternity" is simply no "Baldur's Gate", even if they tried banking on it in the beginning to make it sell (which to a certain degree worked, as can be seen by the Sales and general success of the first PoE, that they just didn't manage to build upon). If it was even close, the sequel would have likely sold much better and I can guarantee you that nobody will come looking for the "Pillars of Eternity IP" any time soon.
Is that really a "lackluster" reception?
It's at 80% vs 94%, but most of it is whining about the price and recent expansion. I was going by the 88 vs 89 metacritic when I clicked the citation needed. My impression of it was also that it was all round superior to xcom 1.
People actually playing games usually care a lot less about "MetaCritic" ratings nowadays than you might believe, User ratings/reviews are a lot more important, especially since they're available directly on the Storefront where they make the purchase decision. Overall "Mixed" or bad reviews can be huge red flags and mean the death sentence for some products.
Naturally. But to break even and to make profit they've already covered 5 millions dollars of the game's budget with the Figstarter and yes it was spent, but it's still income for company, or well in this case was. Who knows how little money Feargus threw at the game before the Figstarter.
Point being, if they end up selling around 300k units at the initial rush you have what 5 million dollars coming in after Steam, publisher, FIG and taxes and with the 5 you've already gotten from Fig, you've covered the costs of producing the game.
I thought FIG, as opposed to KickStarter was actually an investment platform, and they'd have to pay people back from any possible profits they make? Another reason why it seems stupid to go with that platform instead of KickStarter or similar.
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