Eternity PoE II: Deadfire Sales Analysis Thread

[Russia is over. The end.]

At a price of $45, that's 45x280.000 = 12.600.000.

The fuck is wrong with you? You sold a title on steam and yet you're still valuing a game at $45. Are you retarded or what?

Divide it by 2 to get a realistic number after sales and poor currencies. Moron.

 

[Strange Fellow]

At a price of $45, that's 45x280.000 = 12.600.000.

The fuck is wrong with you? You sold a title on steam and yet you're still valuing a game at $45. Are you retarded or what?

Uhh, isn't that the current price of Deadfire?

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

At a price of $45, that's 45x280.000 = 12.600.000.

The fuck is wrong with you? You sold a title on steam and yet you're still valuing a game at $45. Are you retarded or what?

Uhh, isn't that the current price of Deadfire?

Jesus literary character Christ, it's been discussed a million times over.

1. Account for poor currencies: https://steamdb.info/app/560130/
2. If a game has been on sales, multiply its price by 0.7 to account for that.

 

[HoboForEternity]

better voice acting, optional coop and better wrting.

not sayin deadfire writing and voice acting is amazing, but they are better than DOS 2 in every way

 

[ArchAngel]

At a price of $45, that's 45x280.000 = 12.600.000.

The fuck is wrong with you? You sold a title on steam and yet you're still valuing a game at $45. Are you retarded or what?

Uhh, isn't that the current price of Deadfire?

Jesus literary character Christ, it's been discussed a million times over.

1. Account for poor currencies: https://steamdb.info/app/560130/
2. If a game has been on sales, multiply its price by 0.7 to account for that.

Also Steam takes 1/3 of the sales.

 

[ArchAngel]

1/3 ?? That is a lot!

Big boys can negotiate a lower cut taken by Steam but I doubt Obsidian is one of those boys. And most of those boys opened their own digital delivery platforms. Even Bethesda now.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Wow.

We are still debating if PoE was unsuccessful for the mechanics.

We're not, obvious facts don't need to be debated.

 

[The Great ThunThun*]

Wow.

We are still debating if PoE was unsuccessful for the mechanics.

We're not, obvious facts don't need to be debated.

What makes people think that the mechanics were the cause is something I do not understand. I gladly acknowledge that I *speculate* that it was the setting and the storytelling. But the mechanics side seems to have "facts" in their hand. I would be interested in knowing what they are.

 

[Quillon]

They have unique turn based combat, the Origin system, better voice acting, optional coop and better wrting.

Origin system is a thing made for co-op, does nothing for SP nor to better the story and you can be anyone of the characters at anytime, such freedom, rejoice. VO is more or less the same. DOS2 certainly doesn't have better writing and it has shit pacing post act 1. What makes it appealing to wider audience is co-op, combat system & environmental interactions. And its fully 3D

 

[Lacrymas]

The combat was the best part of PoE1, though. Well, the only part worth playing it for, how good it is compared to other games is debatable. The matter of fact is that most players didn't even finish act 1 (i.e. didn't defeat Maerwald), and I doubt you can formulate any kind of concrete opinion about the mechanics from so little time spent on the game. I'd even go as far as to say the combat is best up to level 9ish-10ish, before you get the ridiculous difficulty-breaking stuff. At most, you can say that people weren't expecting RTwP to be the way it is (a bit *special*, if you get what I mean) and that's why they dropped it, but that's a stretch and won't be the only reason.

The opening is weak and contrived, and the plot chugs along disastrously, the companions aren't Bioware-like, the actual slice of the setting we get to explore is shockingly lame and boring, there's a lot of pointless reading (I won't be surprised if people thought the Watcher thing was all about backer NPC stories), there's a lack of drama and momentum, the maps are claustrophobically small and get smaller and smaller, etc. It's pretty telling that people couldn't play for 3 hours to get to Maerwald, so there's definitely something up with that.

 

[fantadomat]

Most of the people who played the Kotors and the DA's did so on consoles using a controller. Which meant that they didn't manage their party, but simply played them like a single-character action RPG while the party AI handled the rest (and for that matter, so did most PC players probably, thanks to the terrible interfaces of these games). And NWN was a single character game. So no, the success of those games wasn't becaue they were RTwP.

That is pretty stupid statement matte "People played it on console therefore it is not RTwP!",can't see your logic,if anything else they were using the pause even more than the PC crowd.

You continue to dodge my question, so I'll ask it again: why do you think turn-based RPGs continue to be made by all sorts of different developers, but why has nobody else made RTwP RPGs (outside of the Freedom Force games)? Do you think it's easier to market the rare subgenre of RTwP RPGs of which there exist only about a dozen of than it is to market a turn-based RPG, of which there exist thousands of and which almost anybody is like to have played one of at some point in their lives?

People use TB because it is cheaper to make while offering decent amount of tactical options. Also it is a lot technically easier to implement that RTwP.

I just looked at the codex top 50 and noticed that most top 20-30 games are mainly RTwP or action rpgs,only Fallout 1&2 and jagged alliance 2 are TB. Don't know from where it comes that "all good rpgs are TB".

better voice acting, optional coop and better wrting.

not sayin deadfire writing and voice acting is amazing, but they are better than DOS 2 in every way

Both of them are really bad,it is hard to compare them. Deadfire one is more in your face tho,maybe because it is a lot more.

 

[Quillon]

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.

It ain't about finishing it, lots of people don't finish GTA games but they enjoy playing it nonetheless. But I very much doubt many, especially - new to genre - people that tried the game has enjoyed it, main game is boring as fuck if you ain't a combatfag. Which is why we don't see that 1 million who bought pillows 1 effecting the sales of deadfire so I agree with

I blame that PoE1 was shit.

 

[Strange Fellow]

Wow.

We are still debating if PoE was unsuccessful for the mechanics.

We're not, obvious facts don't need to be debated.

What makes people think that the mechanics were the cause is something I do not understand. I gladly acknowledge that I *speculate* that it was the setting and the storytelling. But the mechanics side seems to have "facts" in their hand. I would be interested in knowing what they are.

I can't speak for anyone but myself, but if either the mechanics or the story had been excellent I would have bought Deadfire. If either the mechanics or the story of PoE1 had been excellent I would have bought the expansions.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Wow.

We are still debating if PoE was unsuccessful for the mechanics.

We're not, obvious facts don't need to be debated.

What makes people think that the mechanics were the cause is something I do not understand. I gladly acknowledge that I *speculate* that it was the setting and the storytelling. But the mechanics side seems to have "facts" in their hand. I would be interested in knowing what they are.

The kind of changes Obsidian have done to mechanics clearly indicate there was some massive problem they were trying to mitigate. First game on launch was so easy, it could be effortlessly beaten on PoTD just by selecting entire party and left clicking on target after target. And yet they decided to spend considerable resources onto making additional difficulty mode that makes everything drastically easier.

I'm not sure if I ever actually heard about any game other than Pillars having to be patched with Extremely Easy difficulty mode after launch. You don't do that unless significant portion of your playerbase is doing something you didn't predict.

Then you have mechanical changes in Deadfire which are drastic and focus on decluttering and simplifying the combat, which is an incredibly strange thing to do in a sequel to something as unexpectedly successful as PoE1. If your indie game becomes a smashing hit, you stick to the winning formula, not rework everything from the ground up. And the only explanation that makes sense is that all that telemetry shows people only liked the game despite the mechanics, not because of them.

It's also a fact that the one of most common complaints you'll see on mainstream forums and social media is that combat is an incomprehensible clusterfuck.

So yes, mechanics are the problem. They are not they only problem, main quest in both games sucks and that doesn't help, making a direct sequel to the game that a lot of people bought, but few people finished, was a dumb idea, and we could go on and on. But the fact that IE-style party based RtWP is costing them sales is not up to debate.

 

[Quillon]

So everybody keeps saying that Deadfire was a sales dud... got some hard data on that? And can anybody compare that with the original Pillars?

We have daily player numbers and data extrapolated from achievement numbers. And we try to be clever based on those. But everything suggests it sold around 200-300K everything combined.

I'm not sure I've got the numbers right, but this is how I see this. Let's be generous and assume 280.000 copies with Steam, GOG and other sites.
At a price of $45, that's 45x280.000 = 12.600.000.
Steam's and other's site cut (30%) = 3.780.000
Taxes (I'm ont sure about american taxes, but maybe 10%?) = 1.260.000

That leaves us with 7.560.000. Game's budget could be around 10 million, of which 4 milion is crowdfunded. So Obsidians own contribution is 6 million, which at this point Obsidian has broken even, even if we take some more expenses into account (distribution costs and publisher PR). Which is a disappointment after PoE1, but it is not losing money at least.

You forget that Fig takes a big chunk of profits.

Wasn't it 3% or so of the funding they take? If they take "big chunk of profits" I'd suggest MCA to look into it, might be its a new Feargus-Tactic

 

[Quillon]

Wow.

We are still debating if PoE was unsuccessful for the mechanics.

We're not, obvious facts don't need to be debated.

What makes people think that the mechanics were the cause is something I do not understand. I gladly acknowledge that I *speculate* that it was the setting and the storytelling. But the mechanics side seems to have "facts" in their hand. I would be interested in knowing what they are.

The kind of changes Obsidian have done to mechanics clearly indicate there was some massive problem they were trying to mitigate. First game on launch was so easy, it could be effortlessly beaten on PoTD just by selecting entire party and left clicking on target after target. And yet they decided to spend considerable resources onto making additional difficulty mode that makes everything drastically easier.

I'm not sure if I ever actually heard about any game other than Pillars having to be patched with Extremely Easy difficulty mode after launch. You don't do that unless significant portion of your playerbase is doing something you didn't predict.

Then you have mechanical changes in Deadfire which are drastic and focus on decluttering and simplifying the combat, which is an incredibly strange thing to do in a sequel to something as unexpectedly successful as PoE1. If your indie game becomes a smashing hit, you stick to the winning formula, not rework everything from the ground up. And the only explanation that makes sense is that all that telemetry shows people only liked the game despite the mechanics, not because of them.

It's also a fact that the one of most common complaints you'll see on mainstream forums and social media is that combat is an incomprehensible clusterfuck.

So yes, mechanics are the problem. They are not they only problem, main quest in both games sucks and that doesn't help, making a direct sequel to the game that a lot of people bought, but few people finished, was a dumb idea, and we could go on and on. But the fact that IE-style party based RtWP is costing them sales is not up to debate.

Mechanics as in amount of patches/system changes etc have little effect on combat clarity(visuals, sounds, animations are 90% of it) and it certainly wouldn't effect enjoyment of combat for the non-combatfags who doesn't delve into combat systems deeply.

 

[Lacrymas]

PoE's combat smells of dry overtheorizing and not enough practical testing or not enough attention paid to how it actually plays. It's like you fed a robot the keywords of "RTwP IE-style combat, fast-paced modern sensibilities, some kind of (faux) complexity" and that's what popped out. It's not surprising many people found it to be incomprehensible, that's because it is. I wouldn't say Deadfire is clearer, it's just slower, so you can process what is happening better, but I think it still isn't enough for the average player.

 

[ArchAngel]

PoE's combat smells of dry overtheorizing and not enough practical testing or not enough attention paid to how it actually plays. It's like you fed a robot the keywords of "RTwP IE-style combat, fast-paced modern sensibilities, some kind of (faux) complexity" and that's what popped out. It's not surprising many people found it to be incomprehensible, that's because it is. I wouldn't say Deadfire is clearer, it's just slower, so you can process what is happening better, but I think it still isn't enough for the average player.

Tyranny is even slower and has 4 party members. For that reason I found the combat more fun. But biggest reason I found it more fun was because while base combat was basically same crap as PoE, you leveled up your characters by using abilities so for me the fun was in optimizing the leveling process instead of anything else. Kind of how you play diablo like games where you try to optimize the speed of killing stuff and amount of loot you get to pick up.

 

[Flou]

Lindsey Laney was already laid off. Can't afford to have an artist lounging about drawing a ton of portraits anymore.

Are you sure she was laid off and didn't just quit?

 

[The Avatar]

PoE's combat smells of dry overtheorizing and not enough practical testing or not enough attention paid to how it actually plays. It's like you fed a robot the keywords of "RTwP IE-style combat, fast-paced modern sensibilities, some kind of (faux) complexity" and that's what popped out. It's not surprising many people found it to be incomprehensible, that's because it is. I wouldn't say Deadfire is clearer, it's just slower, so you can process what is happening better, but I think it still isn't enough for the average player.

Its only incomprehensible if you didn't bother to look it up- because its not really explained anywhere. It's basically d20(expanded to d100) with some modifications, so maybe they expected people to already be kind of familiar with it. The mouseover tooltips in the combat log make it pretty clear to me. The average player maybe not so much.

 

[ArchAngel]

PoE's combat smells of dry overtheorizing and not enough practical testing or not enough attention paid to how it actually plays. It's like you fed a robot the keywords of "RTwP IE-style combat, fast-paced modern sensibilities, some kind of (faux) complexity" and that's what popped out. It's not surprising many people found it to be incomprehensible, that's because it is. I wouldn't say Deadfire is clearer, it's just slower, so you can process what is happening better, but I think it still isn't enough for the average player.

Its only incomprehensible if you didn't bother to look it up- because its not really explained anywhere. It's basically d20(expanded to d100) with some modifications, so maybe they expected people to already be kind of familiar with it. The mouseover tooltips in the combat log make it pretty clear to me. The average player maybe not so much.

No, it is not d20. It is as much d20 as d10 or other similar systems. The way it rolls its hit chance does not make it similar, it is all the details that do. Vancian casting has more to do with d20 than how they implemented hit chances, armor, resistances, critical strikes and attack speeds.
But here they again fucked up with their fear of making the game too slow so in the end they made a clusterfuck that nobody really likes (except those that played later version with good AI that played it for them).

 

[Lacrymas]

Its only incomprehensible if you didn't bother to look it up- because its not really explained anywhere. It's basically d20(expanded to d100) with some modifications, so maybe they expected people to already be kind of familiar with it. The mouseover tooltips in the combat log make it pretty clear to me. The average player maybe not so much.

I meant incomprehensible when you actually play it. Nobody can say the combat is clear in PoE and isn't a clusterfuck of microsecond recovery times and more color jizzed in your eyes than in a Pride Parade. You can calculate the mathematical formulas and people have done it, but you aren't thinking about the formulas when you are playing, all you are thinking is "wtf is going on".

 

[The Avatar]

Nah I'd still stay it's basically d20 except with percentages- and adopted to a real-time game. So instead of multiple attacks per round, so you have attack speed and recovery. Rounds aren't something that should be in a real-time game, so it makes sense to replace that rule. Of course there are many other changes, but it's still modified d20 at it's core.

 

[Strange Fellow]

Vancian casting has more to do with d20 than how they implemented hit chances, armor, resistances, critical strikes and attack speeds.

Yep. Tangentially, the thing I like best about the IE games (Torment notwithstanding) is AD&D. PoE disappointed me in the way it gave magic users (and everyone else, really, but that's another matter) so many toys to play with at low levels. The thing about AD&D that few systems made specifically for games take heed of, is that it makes leveling and casting spells feel like a big deal. When you only have the one fireball until you rest again, casting it is a much more significant decision, and the effect of the spell is likewise much more significant. I know, this has been said a million times already... but not by me!

I'll also add that I think it's a damn shame that newer games don't treat levels as an in-universe commodity that you have to pay for anymore. Makes it feel a lot more special when you do make a level, and could even somewhat curb the speed at which the economy is broken in every RPG ever.

 

[The Avatar]

Its only incomprehensible if you didn't bother to look it up- because its not really explained anywhere. It's basically d20(expanded to d100) with some modifications, so maybe they expected people to already be kind of familiar with it. The mouseover tooltips in the combat log make it pretty clear to me. The average player maybe not so much.

I meant incomprehensible when you actually play it. Nobody can say the combat is clear in PoE and isn't a clusterfuck of microsecond recovery times and more color jizzed in your eyes than in a Pride Parade. You can calculate the mathematical formulas and people have done it, but you aren't thinking about the formulas when you are playing, all you are thinking is "wtf is going on".

Did you try pausing? Or reading the combat log?