MonkeyLungs

Agree on this one. Also it got a patch 10 years into its life cycle. Dedicated support. The only thing that gave D2 depth was the amount of classes and the length of the game. Going back to playing D2 and Titan Quest, I realized how ridiculously repetitive the games are. I think at this point many people play D2 because its D2, it was a fantastic game for its time but its flaws are really starting to show when compared to current games I think DS3 on its own merits is fun single player quick arpg fix with no aspirations for being a memorable title. It doesn't stack up very well to older games at all in my opinion because it leaves out so many features I consider essential to this genre. I have PSP games with much richer feature lists and way more modes of play including online MP where nobody shares a screen and you get persistent character saves ... on PSP. The gimped MP on Xbox 360 is a massive offender in my book they have great examples to learn from (Borderlands, RDR -for the awesome way rockstar do dynamic hosting between xboxes for public matches so basically the rooms never shut down until the last person leaves, its brilliant- , Sacred 2 the action RPG KING on 360). The shared online camera is a technical deficiency that destroys the MP for me. It takes all of the fun out of the experience. It is oly tolerable in local co-op because you are right there with the person and that just makes it inherently more fun (presumably you like the person you couch co-op with though).

They don't need a bigger tutorial. They need to include an interactive pdf type thingy that is a fun and interesting rulebook of the RPG mechanics of the game. They can include tutorials and little how to videos in the interactive game mechanics and rpg ruleset book/file/thingy.

Well... yes. This is Business 101, my friend. If you cut costs then the profit margins are larger. That's why businesses have looked into cutting operation costs for years. If say a business can cut 100,000$ off the energy bill by changing the light-bulbs they use, they increase profits by reducing costs. This is applicable in the game industry as well. If you spend less on development and advertising (double-edged sword, to be honest) you CAN increase profits... IF a reasonable amount of product is sold. So, while it's possible, admittedly we need details. I'm just trying to interject some logic into the discussion. My points are that as long as the target audience sales are sufficiently permeated in the market then you have reached at least ONE milestone of success. You have sold the product to the target audience which is "supposed" to be your largest market. Anything after that is additional success via sales through a secondary market. Make sense? You don't actually believe I was able to turn your earlier post into a single succinct sentence and not understand what you were talking about do you? I was agreeing with you but i wanted to make your post shorter so I could condense it for use in my next post. Which is located above this post.

No idea but the production of the engine adds value to the overall project no matter what. even if it cost Obs a bit more initially it can be a crucial investment. Also, it is stable and this has been pretty much universally declared their most bug free release ever, no small point. So we have my hypothesis: DS3 is selling poorly on conosles. Then we have another from talon's post: Efficiency of development leads to greater margin for financial success. And another: Creation of Onyx adds unmeasured but very important value to the overall project. Value as investment in game development infrastructure. Addendum: Tested via release of DS3, title is commonly held to be most bug free release for company yet. Note to self: I think this is actually more important than I considered it before. Overall assessment in light of informative discussion: Even though sales appear to be poor on consoles the unknown true numbers could present a different story than what sales rankings are telling. However they also may not and sales may indeed be poor for DS3 on consoles. Because of development efficiency lower sales have a diminished negative impact due to low production costs, unfortunately at this time we have no idea of the budget of the title however it has been noted that Obsidian is known for ability to produce under tight budgets and time constraints. Creation of the Onyx engine adds further value to the project in three ways: 1. Created Onyx, assest for development. 2. Tested engine during development of DS3. DS3 said to be most bug free Obsidian release yet. 3. Advertising of engine creation and engine capabilities. this comes with ups and downs though based on public and potential investor perception.

That would be an interesting quote to see for sure. I would not put it past a marketing person to say something like that though.

Oh really? I hope you don't make a habit of stereotyping and judging people. Don't be silly, I judge nobody. I hate everyone equally. Um ... (reads posts) .... /scratches head in confusion.

So the efficiency of the development process allows for a larger margin of success? Then we need some idea of the budget of title. I did read that SquareEnix was projecting that 1,000,000 units sold would be enough for a successful project but that is purely heresay and I have no evidence to back it up. Just mentioning it as something that I have read on this forum somewhere. Would link it if I remembered and wasn't too lazy to look it up.

Also the little fishing villages and the pirate hideouts that didn't have anything to do with the main quest but were just cool.

LoL .. yeah sometimes PvP evokes an adversarial tone. Among friends it can be really fun but I'm generally into cooperative gameplay rather than adversarial gameplay. Also if a game has balance issues they aren't as big of a deal in co-op.

I believe we know enough to formulate a general idea for how well Dungeon Siege 3 is doing. Go and check out online retailers that have sales rankings and see what games are selling best and where Dungeon Siege ranks against them. Game companies don't like to tell you when their product is selling badly so they never say anything unless it is selling really well. You don't need the corporations to tell you how their products are selling, that is what sales rankings are for. Sure, we may not have absolute concrete numbers but we do have the general idea. My hypothesis stands: Dungeon Siege 3 is selling poorly on consoles. How does it rank on games played? Where is it on most played games on PS3? How about Xbox 360?

Co-op is sweet. However good co-op partners are the best players to PvP with because you are all friends and you all know how each other play and everyone plays fair and PvP without mods or hacks.

To bring us back to DS3 ... world design. I think if you can't/aren't willing to make a big open world for an ARPG and you want to make corridor maps then you need to make huge amounts of corridor maps ... and possibly provide some procedurally generated dungeons. Developers skimping on world design is a real let down for me. If your maps are going to broken up into zones then make the zones really big and impressive like Borderlands. If your game is a collection of corridor maps then provide alot of them and preferably don't make corridor maps because they suck. If you are going to make an open world map make it fun to explore and packed with hidden secrets.

Your idea of maybe having to make a totally separate character for PvP or the arena or horde idea (ie separate game modes) would be a workaround to having to implement a persistent character save system and would probabaly make the possiblity of getting different game modes more 'do-able'.

Exactly! I don't PvP in sacred 2 (unless it against friends that I know don't mod or hack) but I'm stoked that it is there as a gameplay mode!

I was just kidding actually I totally support arena/horde mode and free or cheap DLC.

What does this have to do with anything? I have a subjective opinion on why I think the sales are bad but that is outside of the current conversation. In the last few posts we have been talking specific ally about my very simple hypothesis. Dungeon Siege 3 is sell poorly on consoles. <--- Simple statement, this is just my hypothesis. I then listed the Amazon.com sales rankings for North America. I picked them because they have sales rankings and they are very popular, the top ot one of the top online retailers in North America. We established that I am just using NA as my frame of reference because it is the largest video game market. I am in full admittance that these are not the kind of methods that will get me publised in an economic journal for university. This is a very cursory glance at one retailer. However I feel confident that Amazon is a popular enough site to help me to establish a trend of sales for this game in relation to other games being sold by the same retailer. Each platform gets it's own set of rankings.

Massive open world with hidden secreats everywhere has to do with world design and art direction. You really have to go off the beaten path to see some of the amazing vistas, like hidden waterfalls and caves and statues. These have to do with the art direction and presentatioon of the visual world because they are presented visually. You have to explore the hand crafted environments to really get the most out of the graphics because the world design and art direction are tied together. I also believe that being able to go into all buildings and castles etc. is a part of the graphics because it is tied to world design and art direction. Part of the art direction was to make the hamlets and towns in such a way that allows for the player to fully explore the buildings in the town or hamlet. All of these elements work together to bring the graphical representaion of the gameworld to life.

Hey, we finally agree on something! I don't give you any hypotheses because there's no reason. We'll see numbers when they're announced. Until then all we can do is guess (or maybe act like you, trying to convince people that the game is bombing by "examples" that have no context). I ahve given plenty of context for my data. I'm not claiming to be the holder of all truth. I made a simple statement. Herer are some numbers: Amazon.com Sales rankings for Dungeon Siege 3 game: Xbox 360 = #78 PS3 = # 82 PC RETAIL DISC = #35 PC DOWNLOADS = #21 I also have these numbers from yesterday and the numbers are DOWN today. Down by big margins on the consoles and down by smaller margins on the PC.

Well, for example where do you have the statement from that Amazon is the primary online retailer/retailer at all for video games? Even in North America? Also the game was quite high in preorder sales on Amazon reaching the 19th place in overall video games at times (To compare Alice never really went under 100). Which also suggests it could be just a rather strong backslash since a majority who wanted it, preordered it. We'll see if sales stabilize. That's a good questiuon actually. Gamefly probably rents more titles than Amazon sells but I don't think we should factor in rentals. I also haven't found any real data yet just different comnay speaks. Might have to check public investor report or soemthing. I don't even care enough to do all that work to be honest with you, I actually need to get back outside to do some important work. There might be an online store that sells more copies of video games than Amazon.com but I'm not finding any evidence of that currently ... so I will rephrase my statement: Amazon.com is one of the primary, if not the top, sellers of video games online in the North American marketplace. Based on the observing DS3 sales and trends on Amazon.com website and by reading reviews from customers on said website I am making the hypothesis that sales for DS3 are pretty poor.

Here's one: Earth is big and NA is just a "small" part of it. Crazy theory I know. You may have heard of it. North America is the primary market for video games sales. If you want to judeg trends in sales its a perfectly viable market to focus on. You did NOT present a hypothesis on sales of Dungeon Siege 3. Try again. Once again here's mine(hypothesis BTW, this is my educated guess): Dungeon Siege 3 is selling poorly on consoles. I could be totally wrong but at least I'm willing to put my opinion into a clear and succinct format that is easy for people to read, understand, and to investigate. Your statement is just a snarky rebuttal to my post that has no value.

I love IE games. Very very fun games.

True true. I don't disagree with you guys. care must be taken when doing polls or your pollss are rubbish no matter how many people you ask. I can concede this. So we have to go by more data focussed methods .... Sales, sales rankings, number of players playing online during week 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 etc., Size/activity of online community.

And none of these have anything to do with graphics. I think world design and art direction have everything to do with graphics. Sacred 2 looks lightyears better to me than DS3. So I guess the gameplay of DS1/DS2 is only 'loads better' to people who like to click the mouse button and appreciate the more automatic take on combat? Yes that is about right. People who didn't mind the more automated type of combat for their party because for them the MECHANICS of the gameplay that were part of the underlying ruleset were just as much a part of the gameplay and depth of gameplay as pushun buddons is to other folks. I would prefer combat that has lots of semi automated features and a really in depth rulesystem and a great combat log to a combat system like DS3 anyday. An action game needs to be like Ninja Gaiden (Xbox 1 version) quality to really get me excited about pushun buddons.

Over the many years I've loved many games. I have yet to ever go to some website and write a user review for one, positive or negative. It wouldn't surprise me if a great many purchasers are the same. I won't claim it's a majority (how would I know) but if something sells 1,000,000 copies, judging from a few hundred user reviews each from several/dozens of popular websites may not be the best indicator. Note I say "may not", rather than an absolute, since I'm not a mind-reader, nor have I talked to every single soul who purchased any game. There could also be many disgruntled buyers who never use the internet to express themselves, too. Point was only that I think it's hard to prove one way or another, in most cases. Do you honestly believe that every single customer has to write a review in order to give a representation of the reception of a title? I don't even think a majority of customers needs to do the reviews. A strong inidication of response can be gained from a much smaller sample size.