Eternity PoE II: Deadfire Sales Analysis Thread

[Major_Blackhart]

Mediocrity reigns supreme in this industry it seems.

Interplay succeeded because they were really the first of their kind. As a result, they exist nowadays as a lesson of what not to do in a lot of ways. But still I view them as more of a test subject to a new environment.

I never understood their obsession with consoles. Where were the mega bucks? At the time, almost every single major studio was owned by one of the big controllers. And Interplay wasn't a studio, it was an umbrella corp, like Nike. Interplay's failure in a lot of ways was to understand that the guys who had control over the console industry are still the guys who make the consoles and reap a TON of rewards.

 

[Trash Player]

PoE2 wasn't really "dumbed down" though, Roguey. Honestly anyone who claims it was is just edge-lording with a bit of try-harding. The VO thing tracks, though.

EDIT: Or did you mean DOS2?

The system has potential but the current encounter design does not do it any justice.

Funny, when I bring those things up concerning Wizardry people say those mechanics are "outdated", and their removal in Bradley games were incline.

Ain't life strange.

People here are more likely to defend games made in 90s than in any other time period.

 

[Keith Brown]

Ok, thanks Roguey and Jokzore. So all this discussion is for nothing.

Which discussion are you referring to? Because Steamspy is accurate if you're dealing with titles that sold more than 100k, e.g. http://steamspy.com/app/291650 http://steamspy.com/app/240760 http://steamspy.com/app/272270 http://steamspy.com/app/362960

Last time I checked, those are all in the ballpark of accuracy (though PoE is far closer to 1 million than 2)

You seem to have missed the news about Steams change in privacy settings and how it affects steamspy. It's completely inaccurate as of a month or so ago and now means nothing.

 

[MRY]

MRY what do you think about all this?

(1) As Vince will tell you, I'm a terrible businessman, willfully so; like with a Golden Age Spaniard, it's a mix of weird pride and rank incompetence.

(2) I'm also a mediocre judge of human nature, but notwithstanding this flaw, I'll note that many of the RPG companies we're talking about are run by folks who came up in an era where RPG sequels outperformed the preceding game. In the 80s and 90s, that was the typical model, I suppose in large part because the market grew faster than the quantity of quality games. If you thought PoE was Baldur's Gate, you might think PoE2 was going to be BG2. And right now, top-tier RPGs (like The Witcher, Elder Scrolls, and Mass Effect) also seem to have escalating sales. I think Vince is probably right, but when you're dealing with folks whose formative experience was an era with expanding sequel sales, and whose aspiration is to be like the games in this era that still have expanding sales, it's easy for an armchair psychologist to guess at the cause of this blindness.

(3) For better or worse, Obsidian was clearly trying build a ~Forgotten Realms that would become an RPG staple -- in other words, to capture the branding of D&D. And I suspect inXile was hoping to have its ~Fallout. In some ways, this commits you to rehashing the setting. Of course, it turns out that rather than building upon a foundation, they may have been merely exhausting the soil. But, again, it's hard to slight them too much.

(4) PoE's development involved, I gather from Darth Roxor, an enormous investment in conceiving Deep Lore. This may be a squandered investment, but never underestimate the sunk cost fallacy. Starting a new setting from scratch is expensive if you want to make it deeply lored.

(5) The same is true for doing a new ruleset.

(6) Moreover, there's a nontrivial risk that if you do some adjacent form of fantasy, you'll just be using the setting designers' second-best ideas. IMO that's why fantasy authors first books are so often their best. Vince has wisely decided to go to a different setting to avoid that risk (and his next setting, Inquisition ~Spain, would be another totally different setting). But as Vince has noted, his path entails a different risk: non-fantasy RPGs are a much harder sell. If instead of PoE2 they had made a scifi Pillars of Creation, who's to say it wouldn't have done even worse?

(7) The assertion that Obsidian never made a good game is insane. Obsidian rightly has three games in the Codex's top 20. For myself, MOTB is in the top five.

[EDIT: Fixed some typos.]

 

[Trashos]

Besides, the supposed death of Bioware was celebrated too early. Their doom is a delusion that we tell ourselves because we hate these games and want to see them fail. I thought that everyone was hating ME:A, until I talked to my cousin who bought this aberration at full price on release. He buys a lot of games and plays them all. I tried to explain to him how bad the game was and he simply dismissed all the criticisms and said he enjoyed the game. That after all the fuck ups in the development of this game, being blasted by the game journalists, etc. The game was after all a financial success. Triple-A studios are like Jason, they can die multiple deaths and survive as if nothing had happened.

Come on, that article is citing clear corporate BSing.

Also Andromeda was a massive flop no matter what bunch of retarded journos are talking about. The whole studio get dismantled and bioware got kicked in the balls.

Agreed.

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

Come on, that article is citing clear corporate BSing.

Sure, but the point is that I was shocked by the indifference some players expressed from all the criticism and bugs.

 

[Goral]

Like Felipepe already mentioned, PoE1 only seemed well received, but the completion rates tell a very different story.

Completion rates for DOS are even lower so it's no argument considering how well DOS2 sold.

 

[KyivAfter12am]

Anyone who thinks that the first week sales are defined by the game's mechanics is kidding himself. Most people buy games based on emotional response. Does the game evoke nostalgia? Did they see pretty pictures of the game recently? Did the game manage to generate memes? Any controversy? Did any major streamers like it?

Incredible as it is, full VO might not have been a bad idea, as it made the game look better on streams. Big streamers like Cohh carnage hyped VO up, because it means that they don't have to read the characters' lines aloud the whole time.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Like Felipepe already mentioned, PoE1 only seemed well received, but the completion rates tell a very different story.

Completion rates for DOS are even lower so it's no argument considering how well DOS2 sold.

That's a pointless comparison. Act 1 of DOS is huge, Act 1 in PoE is like 5 hours of content.

 

[felipepepe]

Looking at how extremely low PoE1's achievement %s are - only 43% finished Act 1 - it probably suffers from the same issue as Legend of Grimrock: a lot of people bought it blindly due to the hype but found out that they don't like IE-style games.

You just described most games on steam.

While it's true that few people finish games, PoE's case is special. 43% for Act 1 is way too low. That takes what, 2-3 hours? That's saying 57% of players couldn't endure the game for more than 3 hours!

For comparison, look at Skyrim, the biggest hype RPG of all - 49% reached Leve 25! That's A LOT more hours into the game.
Same thing for Fallout 4 - 46% reached Level 25.
In Dark Souls III 43% is killing Dancer of the Boreal Valley.
In X-COM at 43% you've built a Power Armor, which is mid/late game stuff.
In Obsidian's own South Park: Stick of Truth 47% finished the entire game! Yeah, it's statistically more likely for you to finish Stick of Truth than to finish ACT 1 of PoE.

Those are very shitty stats. You have to be crazy to look at that and think you'll be a slam dunk by just adding voice acting and a few tweaks. IE games are niche, PoE2's sales shows the market's true size.

 

[PrettyDeadman]

Like Felipepe already mentioned, PoE1 only seemed well received, but the completion rates tell a very different story.

Completion rates for DOS are even lower so it's no argument considering how well DOS2 sold.

That's a pointless comparison. Act 1 of DOS is huge, Act 1 in PoE is like 5 hours of content.

If it is pointless, why did you bring up completion rates then?
Also, how come you have almost 2 million parrots?

 

[The Great ThunThun*]

(3) For better or worse, Obsidian was clearly trying build a ~Forgotten Realms that would become an RPG staple -- in other words, to capture the branding of D&D. And I suspect inXile was hoping to have its ~Fallout. In some ways, this commits you to rehashing the setting. Of course, it turns out that rather than building upon a foundation, they may have been merely exhausting the soil. But, again, it's hard to slight them too much.

I am quite sure there is a scope for a new fantasy setting in the market. Dragon age was the last attempt and despite what people think on the codex, before the second game it did make a lot of people very happy. If Bioware had stayed focused and made a self-consistent/contained setting with a story spanning 3 games which provided a complete single arc, DA would have only grown in stature. Instead, they jumped on "create our own universe" bandwagon and failed at it. The setting was simply not mature enough for set-piece stories, even if they tied into each other somehow. Bioware assumed that they did not have to explain the mystery that they had successfully set up at the DA:O game with DA2 and that was their mistake. They quickly realised this for DA3 but then it was already too late.

With PoE, the world is actually blander, and they blew their load with the first story. There is no real mystery now and that kills pacing. Moreover, it is FR-lite with Gods interjecting into mortals lives a la time of troubles. It's a badly done time of troubles, that is all. BGs built on an already popular foundation of D&D and that gave them an edge for those who did not know what was on. Moreover, BGs were not made for adults and that is the most crucial point here. Most gamers today are probably adults. They have grown up with games and sadly, that had made them nostalgic for the better games of their childhood. I can't blame them for wanting more of the same but you can not simply dial up the edge of the story that made BGs good, introduce a lot of modern issues in it and hope it will be good/tasty.

(4) PoE's development involved, I gather from Darth Roxor, an enormous investment in conceiving Deep Lore. This may be a squandered investment, but never underestimate the sunk cost fallacy. Starting a new setting from scratch is expensive if you want to make it deeply lored.

Expense well spent if it is productive.

(5) The same is true for doing a new ruleset.

Here's a funny thing. The ruleset is the least important part of a BG clone. For any such game to succeed, needs a good story, prettiness and romanceable companion and clever banter. Most people on earth are not Grognards enough to care about how optimized their characters are. Only on the codex can one get into such a conceit, surrounded by Grognards. All Obsidian needed to produce was a ruleset that a) works b) is balanced c) has pretty lights, and it would be in business. But. Sawyer, whether he admits it or not is a grognard himself. He genuinely wants to create a new better D&D. And that effort is hardly necessary to sell PoE.

(7) The assertion that Obsidian never made a good game is insane. Obsidian rightly has three games in the Codex's top 20. For myself, MOTB is in the top five.

Whenever Obsidian makes a good game it has one ingredient that shines. And that is not the ruleset.

 

[Dexter]

Besides, the supposed death of Bioware was celebrated too early. Their doom is a delusion that we tell ourselves because we hate these games and want to see them fail. I thought that everyone was hating ME:A, until I talked to my cousin who bought this aberration at full price on release. He buys a lot of games and plays them all. I tried to explain to him how bad the game was and he simply dismissed all the criticisms and said he enjoyed the game. That after all the fuck ups in the development of this game, being blasted by the game journalists, etc. The game was after all a financial success. Triple-A studios are like Jason, they can die multiple deaths and survive as if nothing had happened.

They literally closed the studio down and let the majority of employees go, then they put the Mass Effect franchise on ice. There's no bigger "failure" than that, you're hallucinating about it being a "financial success": https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2017/08/04/so-long-bioware-montreal-we-hardly-knew-you/

He is not dumb, I can tell you that. But notice that in this case he simply used common sense and steam spy. Other people that have been paying attention to sequels were all saying the same thing. Sequels for cRPGs are bad. Avoid them like the plague. But apparently the big shots on some studios can't see these basic facts because they are completely disconnected from what is happening around them. That also explains why a guy like Fargo, who is a veteran of the industry, decides to release Torment in the same week of Zelda's release. Such a rookie mistake. He is now making a sequel to Wasteland 2. Well...

This is an extremely dumb analysis though.

Both Tyranny and Torment: Numenera were new games/IPs and they were huge failures/disappointments that sold even less than even PoEII (although it's about on track to barely beat them) and for Torment despite being a more successful KickStarter to start with: https://www.pcgamesn.com/tyranny/tyranny-sales-paradox-obsidian https://www.pcgamesn.com/torment-tides-of-numenera/torment-tides-of-numenera-sales

On the other hand you bring up D:OS2 which apparently sold considerably more than the first game despite being a sequel, so that's already where your "theory" falls apart. A new game/IP doesn't guarantee Sales and a sequel to an existing game/established IP even in about the same market doesn't have to sell less. And let's not even talk about The Witcher franchise and its exponential growth from Sub-NWN2 production values by an unknown Potato company to AAA mega-blockbuster that other branches of the entertainment industry have taken interest in (NWN2 was released a year before The Witcher and Obsidian had the same opportunity to build a franchise and iterate upon it, and even worked on similar larger projects for publishers like New Vegas, South Park or Alpha Protocol and had the opportunity for an Exclusive AAA title with Stormlands and even the Alien franchise, why didn't they capitalize on any of said opportunities and instead ended up here?): http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/the-witcher-franchise-sales-revealed.120906/

It's curious that you mentioned the Banner Saga 2 because we discussed this before. Read this: Stoic's John Watson at NASSCOM GDC 2016: The Banner Saga 2 was a commercial disappointment. They overestimated the interest in the second game and tried to add a bunch of fancy stuff that nobody asked, just like Obsidian did. In this thread you will find posters criticising their sequel (trilogy!) model.

Banner Saga 2 on the other hand was a huge failure of Marketing, nobody even knew there was a Sequel or that it got released. There were lots of articles and reviews for the first games, but I didn't even notice that a second part came out and ended up buying it much later. There's also a point to be made about games with hundreds of hours of content that people will likely not get into until they're done with the Prequel.

Oftentimes the end result and what people are saying about it and whether they're recommending it to people counts, so even if Torment started off with more enthusiasm, they didn't pull through, it was a huge disappointment and the Sales didn't materialize. At the risk of repeating myself, but the worst thing you can do is design unmemorable/uninteresting bland characters with a dull story in a generic setting that nobody (or very few people) will remember, look forward to revisiting or feel any deeper connection to/look back fondly on and without any kind of theme or hook pulling people back. It's the game design equivalent of serving gruel. There's games where despite them being mediocre, the design of the main character alone will push million of sales, generate various ... ehm fan comics and innumerable discussion threads years later so the game doesn't vanish from consciousness and culture and can still generate Sales: https://wccftech.com/nier-automata-strong-sales/ Neither Pillars of Eternity, nor Torment: Numanuma are such games, they're forgettable with nothing specifically standing out if one wants to be gracious.

IE games are niche, PoE2's sales shows the market's true size.

Why ruin a perfectly good post by adding far-fetched supposition with nothing to back it up?

 

[Urthor]

The reason they closed the studio down is because the PR from Andromeda was so disgustingly awful they actually didn't want to continue it. Andromeda was destroying the EA brand, hard.

Actual game definitely made sales and Andromeda 2 would have made money, you're not wrong. But it was the wider Electronic Arts ruined Mass Effect story that had to die, because it fucked EA in general.

And they actually didn't "shut it down," there are still EA devs working out of that property, they just don't do independent projects there anymore and have instead reassigned it to doing other work. Also very few people were outright fired, large portions of devs shuffled to other projects

 

[TT1]

I still think that PoE2 will sell constantly for years and years (as PoE1). But thinking about the game so far and possibilities for having "small sales":

- people are playing other things like DOS2 or KCD
- bugs, so they are waiting for patches
- pirate setting is not that interesting for fantasy players
- naval combat is boring
- big site reviews are "game is great but more of the same"
- bland companions
- after Nunenera and Tyranny maybe we have some fatigue

But, I am pretty sure Obsidian is profiting and they knew about it all. I dont think they got it by surprise.

About VO: maybe the costs were payed by publisher aiming consoles?

About %: maybe its good to compare with Tyranny, the most recent obsidian game. 50% completed act 1, and its a small act, like PoE1.

 

[markec]

The game was after all a financial success.

If the game was a financial success we would have seen atleast few DLC. If you actually read the article and not link it only for its title you would realize that the "success" is that the 1st quarter of that year when the game was released had higher income of all EA products then the last years 1st quarter. Which means nothing seeing how previous year at that time EA didnt have any big releases.

 

[felipepepe]

IE games are niche, PoE2's sales shows the market's true size.

Why ruin a perfectly good post by adding far-fetched supposition with nothing to back it up?

This was said many times before: stuff like Grimrock, Tyranny, Numanuma, W2, PoE, Expeditions, Underrail, etc... these are not million sellers, their core audience is in the range of 50-250k on Steam.

Sometimes you get old-school RPGs who surpass that, like Grimrock 1 or Darkest Dungeon, but they reach a broader audience by offering something that looks new and/or riding a massive hype wave.

PoE1 was the spiritual sequel to Baldur's Gate, made by the New Vegas guys, at the high of the Kickstarter frenzy. PoE 2 is PoE 1 with ships. It's cool, but it's not gonna draw people from the broader audience.

 

[ilitarist]

With EA being as big ship as it is they have a very different definition of success. They have a lot of "risky" projects and they're ready to see some of them fall. They have reliable money producer series like FIFA and Need for Speed - they know those games won't get any awards but when you buy some game for your kid you buy one of those. Those games cost a lot to produce and they don't become breakaway hits. They certainly see BioWare games as blockbusters that can potentially fund many other endeavors, profitable or not. Any smaller company - including Paradox - would have cherish Andromeda and produce content for it. But EA has bigger projects to work on. They might want reliable income from MEA DLCs but they already have "reliable income" covered, as in a stable river of money that will allow them to survive a hypothetical flop of every project for a few years.

MEA lack of DLC is not a sign of a flop, it rather shows that they have enough money to be able to put BioWare to work on something bigger for a few years. Pretty sure that the mountain of cocaine they've bought with DAI sales is still not finished.

 

[gruntar]

While it's true that few people finish games, PoE's case is special. 43% for Act 1 is way too low. That takes what, 2-3 hours? That's saying 57% of players couldn't endure the game for more than 3 hours!

For comparison, look at Skyrim, the biggest hype RPG of all - 49% reached Leve 25! That's A LOT more hours into the game.
Same thing for Fallout 4 - 46% reached Level 25.
In Dark Souls III 43% is killing Dancer of the Boreal Valley.
In X-COM at 43% you've built a Power Armor, which is mid/late game stuff.
In Obsidian's own South Park: Stick of Truth 47% finished the entire game! Yeah, it's statistically more likely for you to finish Stick of Truth than to finish ACT 1 of PoE.

Those are very shitty stats. You have to be crazy to look at that and think you'll be a slam dunk by just adding voice acting and a few tweaks. IE games are niche, PoE2's sales shows the market's true size.

You can reach level 25 in both Skyrim and Fallout 4 in about 10 hours of casual play but its comparing apples to oranges anyway, because Bethesda games are designed as a time wasters. South Park is a special case, you can make any game looks bad by compering some random chivo to it's completion rate. I would guess most PoE 1 players didn't drop the game immediately after completing Act 1, they did it somewhere in Act 2, witch happened to be the longest. You could complete 80% of BG2 content without reaching chapter 3 out of 7. All in all, there is nothing out of ordinary in PoE 1 achievement stats, in fact it's completion rate seems pretty solid when compared to actually similar games like Wastland 2 and DOS.

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

They've been using that spiritual successor to BG crap to generate excitement, and as a result they use RTwP. My whole thing was that BG was successful in spite of RTwP, not because of it. I never felt it added anything vs. other forms of combat.

That's what you need to admire about Bioware and their publisher. They are ruthless pragmatic. They quickly identified that RTwP was a nuisance to most players, so they adopted RT in DA2 and never looked back. Some fans bitched about it and they added a ridiculous "strategic" camera mode in DA:I that nobody uses. The problem of Obsidian is that they are too afraid to take risks with things that matter (combat, etc), but take too many risks with stuff that is unecessary (walls of turgid prose, romances, etc.). They can't get over the RTwP thing because they believe in an ex-bioware fan base out there. That prevents them for reaping more profits and players.

 

[Sensuki]

Hmm

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

Anyone who thinks that the first week sales are defined by the game's mechanics is kidding himself. Most people buy games based on emotional response. Does the game evoke nostalgia? Did they see pretty pictures of the game recently? Did the game manage to generate memes? Any controversy? Did any major streamers like it?

Steam is a power house because it is allowing pseudo-gamers to buy stuff they don't have time to play in an impulsive manner. The numbers are inflated and there are too many variables to consider. There is a lot of randomness to it.

 

[fantadomat]

While it's true that few people finish games, PoE's case is special. 43% for Act 1 is way too low. That takes what, 2-3 hours? That's saying 57% of players couldn't endure the game for more than 3 hours!

For comparison, look at Skyrim, the biggest hype RPG of all - 49% reached Leve 25! That's A LOT more hours into the game.
Same thing for Fallout 4 - 46% reached Level 25.
In Dark Souls III 43% is killing Dancer of the Boreal Valley.
In X-COM at 43% you've built a Power Armor, which is mid/late game stuff.
In Obsidian's own South Park: Stick of Truth 47% finished the entire game! Yeah, it's statistically more likely for you to finish Stick of Truth than to finish ACT 1 of PoE.

Those are very shitty stats. You have to be crazy to look at that and think you'll be a slam dunk by just adding voice acting and a few tweaks. IE games are niche, PoE2's sales shows the market's true size.

You can reach level 25 in both Skyrim and Fallout 4 in about 10 hours of casual play but its comparing apples to oranges anyway, because Bethesda games are designed as a time wasters. South Park is a special case, you can make any game looks bad by compering some random chivo to it's completion rate. I would guess most PoE 1 players didn't drop the game immediately after completing Act 1, they did it somewhere in Act 2, witch happened to be the longest. You could complete 80% of BG2 content without reaching chapter 3 out of 7. All in all, there is nothing out of ordinary in PoE 1 achievement stats, in fact it's completion rate seems pretty solid when compared to actually similar games like Wastland 2 and DOS.

Did you even read the post? 43% finishing the first act means that the majority of players dropped out before finishing act one,not during act 2! If you take 43 from 100 you get 57,and this is bigger than 43 aka majority. Also his comparison is pretty accurate.

 

[fantadomat]

Hmm

You having 26 friends on steam is disturbing,i will give you that .

 

[Roguey]

Like Felipepe already mentioned, PoE1 only seemed well received, but the completion rates tell a very different story.

Completion rates for DOS are even lower so it's no argument considering how well DOS2 sold.

That's a pointless comparison. Act 1 of DOS is huge, Act 1 in PoE is like 5 hours of content.

http://steamspy.com/app/291650 Pillars Playtime total: 21:00 (average) 07:46 (median)
http://steamspy.com/app/230230 D:OS Playtime total: 22:15 (average) 07:26 (median)

They're more or less equal.

This was said many times before: stuff like Grimrock, Tyranny, Numanuma, W2, PoE, Expeditions, Underrail, etc... these are not million sellers, their core audience is in the range of 50-250k on Steam.

Well Pillars of Eternity literally is a million+ seller. Though whether it got that way via fluke remains to be seen. We'll see what PoE 2 looks like in a year.