Armchair theories on why POE2 didn't sell super well

[daven]

3 hours ago, xzar_monty said:

This is what is generally called "an opinion". It's not as if there's anything substantial to back it up.

Yes but... the game probably would have done better with a more traditional setting.  In terms of sales to general audiences. I think the setting is quite refreshing for a game of this type but... eh we're not the casual audience are we?

[Bleak]

Can't help but find it amusing that people actually blame the setting itself. It was pretty traditional actually, with the exception of geography (which was masterfully made) and a mobile player "fortress". What they did with the setting is what really matters.

Ask yourselves the following questions:

1) How engaging was that mobile fortress, its upgrades, events or maintenance? Was it connected to the gameplay loop or character development? How much of a source of RP was it? Tried comparing it to the Mage Sphere or D'Arnisse hold in BG2?

2) What about the islands? Did they have enough content or felt empty? How many skill checks did their enviroments have? Were most of them just a plain area in which you had to kill something for a generic quest? What about the pseudo-locations (resource/item buildings). Did they have any compelling stories? How much of a difference was there in regards to gameplay when you got e.g. fruits from a clearing? 

3) How compelling was it to chase after Eothas? Did your actions cause any game-changing consequences during that sequence? Were there any meaningful variations during this chase? Did the rest of the world resonate with what was happening?

Edited January 7, 2020 by Bleak

[Boeroer]

Why should I ask myself those questions when discussing the reasons for Deadfire's mediocre success? Those are things you can answer once you bought and played the game for quite some time - not when looking at it in a store, deciding whether to buy it or not. Here the possible explanation "different setting put off potential players" makes more sense.

[Bleak]

51 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

Why should I ask myself those questions when discussing the reasons for Deadfire's mediocre success? Those are things you can answer once you bought and played the game for quite some time - not when looking at it in a store, deciding whether to buy it or not. Here the possible explanation "different setting put off potential players" makes more sense.

Forgive me if I misinterpret your reply, so in case you aren't joking - could it be that you are missing the fact that we are living in an information-driven society, where social media (gaming platforms included) are the deciding factor for market traction and news proliferation? 

In more simple terms: A potential buyer will never know all of the information I just posted or the answers to these questions, but the game will simply fall under their radar, because of the various reasons that this thread is attempting to examine.

Example: Say you have two products, both have invested the same in marketing and all selling factors (except the products themselves) are identical and none knows details about them. A is the jaw-dropping product and B the lackluster product. More people will pay attention to A, e.g. will bother to review it or even praise it -> A will be proliferated like the Australian bushfires (prayers to them, and to all of us for this horrible humanitarian and environmental disaster), B will obviously get less traction and coverage, so fewer people will even notice it exists, much less buy it because of it being praised.  

TLDR: A game's success can actually be influenced by the game's intrinsic qualities! So why wouldn't anyone examine the game's intrinsic qualities to find out why the game wasn't as successful as expected?

[thelee]

2 hours ago, Bleak said:

1) How engaging was that mobile fortress, its upgrades, events or maintenance? Was it connected to the gameplay loop or character development? How much of a source of RP was it? Tried comparing it to the Mage Sphere or D'Arnisse hold in BG2?

I actually thought the mobile fortress was a great idea, and I still like it.

 

People talk about the strongholds in BG2, but only some of the strongholds are decent or give you any real reason to invest time into them; people are just remembering the good ones. De'Arnisse Hold, Mage Sphere, and Thieve's Guild are probably the best, but it's rarified company.  Bard's gives you a huge money sink that maybe after many months of in-game time you can get some profit out of. Druid is lame. Priest is lame (a few dialogue checks essentially). Ranger is lame. Paladin is lame (basically just extra quest scaffolding around killing Firkraag). PoE1 with its lame stronghold had more interactivity than all those. Plus, as a place to hold your gear and spare party members, it was annoying because for a huge chunk of the game you couldn't even access your stronghold because you were stuck in the Underdark or in Spellhold or whatnot. ToB (an expansion that I hated anyway) obliterated any meaningful differences and gave you the same (along with music that annoyingly sounded a lot like Indiana Jones's mystical music). By contrast, Deadfire's follows you around and you can connect it to the gameplay loop via encounter checks and ship-to-ship encounters (not to mention it is one of five ways to Ukaizo).

 

1 hour ago, Bleak said:

TLDR: A game's success can actually be influenced by the game's intrinsic qualities! So why wouldn't anyone examine the game's intrinsic qualities to find out why the game wasn't as successful as expected?

It'd be one thing if you were talking about intrinsic qualities, but it seems more rather that you're nitpicking on your own critiques of the game. I find it extremely baffling that you're discounting everyone talking about the setting, which is the biggest most obvious change about Deadfire--and contrary to what JE Sawyer said--really played up in the lead up to Deadfire (notably with the console release they are downplaying pirate imagery and the cover art just focuses on the core NPCs), and instead focusing on extremely minor, objectively disputable aspects of the game. I would venture to say literally 0 people have said "well, i'd buy this game, but I heard it doesn't have a compelling stronghold like the De'Arnisse Hold, so maybe not." Many RPGs (IE-style even) sell well without any stronghold.

edit: original deadfire marketing imagery, versus console. notice the different emphasis?

Spoiler

 

Edited January 7, 2020 by thelee

[Boeroer]

59 minutes ago, Bleak said:

So why wouldn't anyone examine the game's intrinsic qualities to find out why the game wasn't as successful as expected?

Because people. At least not in the way you suggested.

Because "Ehh pirate game, no thanks" beats "So you know I had a little bit of time and watched the whole thing where StreamerDude played 123 hours of Deadfire and found out stuff about the mobile fortress, islands with skillchecks and meaningful variations during a chase for a god and now I think I'd rather buy Flappy Bird" as a reasonable part of an explanation to why Deadfire sold vastly less copies despite getting similarly good reviews from press, streamers and players. 

Edited January 7, 2020 by Boeroer

[thelee]

2 hours ago, Bleak said:

3) How compelling was it to chase after Eothas? Did your actions cause any game-changing consequences during that sequence? Were there any meaningful variations during this chase? Did the rest of the world resonate with what was happening?

It all depends on your definition of "meaningful." I think Obsidian is a little lazy in relying on end-game slides too much instead of in-game reactivity (this criticism is leveled more significantly at The Outer Worlds), but there's a lot that can change a long the way, even if the ultimate result is the same.

BTW (there may be more since I tend to do very similar things near the end-game), the biggest thing that I surprised myself into recently is:

Spoiler

If you resolved Forgotten Sanctum properly, Wael literally destroys Eothas.

With the 5.0 patch, you also get very different and more extensive reactivity at the end, including an extended sequence with Woedica.

 

By the way, the latter part of that is another instance of me hating on full VO. It was very obvious that they voice actor(s) they re-obtained were recorded under different circumstances because those sequences sound very different than the rest of the interactions.

Edited January 7, 2020 by thelee

[Bleak]

24 minutes ago, thelee said:

I actually thought the mobile fortress was a great idea, and I still like it... snip

I believe a mobile fortress is a great idea too. It is the execution I don't agree with. I've made a relevant post about it in the past explaining why in detail.

Is it not natural to compare it with the best fortresses rather than the worst and to compare anything with the brightest examples of its kind of that matter, if one wants to strive for something better? There are definitely both better and worse examples to compare it with and I never said anything along the lines of "this fortress is the worst", so that you have to point out that there worse examples. Of course there are (thankfully).

As for, say, the examples I brought up specifically, I disagree that they were better, especially, than the POE I fortress. Here is an old post explaining why in more detail.    

44 minutes ago, thelee said:

It'd be one thing if you were talking about intrinsic qualities, but it seems more rather that you're nitpicking on your own critiques of the game. I find it extremely baffling that you're discounting everyone talking about the setting, which is the biggest most obvious change about Deadfire--and contrary to what JE Sawyer said--really played up in the lead up to Deadfire (notably with the console release they are downplaying pirate imagery and the cover art just focuses on the core NPCs), and instead focusing on extremely minor, objectively disputable aspects of the game. I would venture to say literally 0 people have said "well, i'd buy this game, but I heard it doesn't have a compelling stronghold like the De'Arnisse Hold, so maybe not." Many RPGs (IE-style even) sell well without any stronghold.

edit: original deadfire marketing imagery, versus console. notice the different emphasis?

The thread is called "Armchair theories on why POE2 didn't..." - of course I would be posting my own theory/criticism here. And I certainly don't expect everyone to give the same answers I would give, to the questions I made. Now whether what I am mentioning is "nitpicking", something extremely minor or not, and what exactly can be considered as an "intrinsic qualities" of a crpg, that's up to debate  I strongly believe that the things I mentioned, in their core, are pretty important for the genre, when it comes to a new user's engagement with a crpg and especially when it comes to what a crpg fan is looking in a crpg, so we can agree to disagree here. 

The marketing imagery may show a clue of Obsidian's verdict in all of this, but keep in mind that their marketing imagery strategy is something in post-development that they can change or experiment with, while the things I mentioned aren't. If we really want to know what they came up with (as the "culprits"), we have to see their next sequel in the IP. Then we can agree or disagree with them. 

The stronghold is hardly the point here - put bluntly and generalizing the problem, the point is "content that lacks sufficient meaning, to engage the player", explained also in the examples I make in the posts I linked. If I wanted to make a proper attempt at narrowing that down, I would have to spend a lot of time here, therefore I try to convey it with the examples I make.

1 hour ago, Boeroer said:

Because people. At least not in the way you suggested.

Because "Ehh pirate game, no thanks" beats "So you know I had a little bit of time and watched the whole thing where StreamerDude played 123 hours of Deadfire and found out stuff about the mobile fortress, islands with skillchecks and meaningful variations during a chase for a god and now I think I'd rather buy Flappy Bird" as a reasonable part of an explanation to why Deadfire sold vastly less copies despite getting similarly good reviews from press, streamers and players. 

Trust me, I never overestimate people, but I think you do underestimate them. You could justify it with "because people", but I justify it with the assumption that an rpg/crpg/isometric fan would actually look into these things, because some of them are core elements of the genre. Besides the pirate theme being rather superficial and the game being a properly traditional crpg in its core and most of its aspects (which was obvious even without buying it), if you think the choice in theming can be that dramatic look no further than Fallout, Arcanum or SM Pirates. (What can bring a dramatic change is the consistency of the theme itself, which the game doesn't suffer from imo). 

1 hour ago, thelee said:

It all depends on your definition of "meaningful." I think Obsidian is a little lazy in relying on end-game slides too much instead of in-game reactivity (this criticism is leveled more significantly at The Outer Worlds), but there's a lot that can change a long the way, even if the ultimate result is the same.

BTW (there may be more since I tend to do very similar things near the end-game), the biggest thing that I surprised myself into recently is:

  Reveal hidden contents

If you resolved Forgotten Sanctum properly, Wael literally destroys Eothas.

With the 5.0 patch, you also get very different and more extensive reactivity at the end, including an extended sequence with Woedica.

 

By the way, the latter part of that is another instance of me hating on full VO. It was very obvious that they voice actor(s) they re-obtained were recorded under different circumstances because those sequences sound very different than the rest of the interactions.

Well in that context, meaningful would mostly mean, put bluntly, a variation that changes the player's gameplay/actions through the game. Getting a different skill for example depending on how you interacted with the souls was a neat, albeit small variation. I admit that greater variations, like, say, Eothas changing route, alternative textures/scenarios involved in locations and so on, might be too costly. 

Oh nice this may actually make me replay the game. Full VO are something I hate as well, too many cons, superficial pros.

[Boeroer]

18 hours ago, Bleak said:

[...] I never overestimate people, but I think you do underestimate them.

My image of humanity is generally positive. But this has nothing to do with underestimating people. It has to do with the time and money that the average player generally has at hand and the scope of sales numbers we are talking about. There surely are players who can't spare a lot of money but have time and will examine a game very closely before buying it. On the other hand there are players who don't have a lot of time but money so they just buy what they think looks good. And then there's a lot of players in between. Those specific behaviors cannot explain a massive sales drop like Deadfire's (compared to PoE) while - and I repeat myself - the reviews given by streamers, critics and users are nearly the same(!). So - if the problem was the execution of the things you asked above then the reviews should reflect that. Which they don't. So the overall quality and implementation of Deadfire doesn't seem to be the problem. But we discussed this in length already. 

So - is it more likely that a) all the players who passed on Deadfire did it because they consumed a lot of Let's Plays and asked themselves the same questions you did - or is it more likely that b) those players saw the new nautic setting and passed because they think "Hm... not my cup of tea"?

If you ask me and lots of others b) seems to be more likely than a). 

So far we have collected some simple yet reasonable explanations why Deadfire dropped so hard (since reviews were on par which suggests implementation and quality was not the problem):

• Players didn't like PoE for whatever reason and thus didn't buy Deadfire - while new players wouldn't want to start with the second part (sequel problem)
• Players didn't hear/read about Deadfire (marketing failure)
• Players didn't like changes that were announced before release (e.g. party size reduction)
• Players didn't like the move from Kickstarter to Fig
• Players didn't like the setting (pirate vs. medieval)

Other reasons like story, implementation, companions and whatnot can be an additional reason. But they can't explain such a massive drop while the reviews from critics and users didn't tank at all. If the reviews would have been bad then I'd say "sure". But they aren't bad.  

I didn't aswer your post because I object that there are players who asked themselves those questions before they decided to not buy Deadfire. That was not the reason. I'm just not thinking that this can explain a massive sales drop.
I also answered because you made it sound as if the theory "the setting put people off" is somehow ridiculous while your theory "they all closely monitored influencers" is really what explains it all:
 

23 hours ago, Bleak said:

Can't help but find it amusing that people actually blame the setting itself.[...]
What they did with the setting is what really matters.

Which sounds like a rather presumptuous approach that needed a refutation.

Edited January 8, 2020 by Boeroer

[daven]

The Ebon Hawke in KOTOR1/2 was awesome. I just wish on Deadfire's ship people had more stuff to say.

Edited January 8, 2020 by daven

[kanisatha]

Sorry but I think you all are continuing to over-think and over-analyze this question. The numerical complexity and sophistication of the PoE1/2 combat system is what throws off many casual gamers (meaning people who are NOT posting in this forum). We now have an entire generation of gamers who spent kindergarten to college avoiding anything to do with numbers. You can play through PoE2 entirely and still come away not having a solid understanding of how any of the combat mechanics of the game actually worked. As such even playing the game for just an hour can leave people very frustrated, frustrated enough to give up and refund their game. But it doesn't even have to get to that. Simply viewing a short combat gameplay video on YouTube or Twitch is sufficient for many to become frustrated. By contrast, just a few minutes playing D:OS is all it takes to gain a very good understanding of how the combat mechanics works and perhaps even to master those mechanics, because its mechanics are extremely simplistic, easy to figure out, and easy to use. That's all there is to it.

[omgFIREBALLS]

30 minutes ago, kanisatha said:

The numerical complexity and sophistication of the PoE1/2 combat system is what throws off many casual gamers (meaning people who are NOT posting in this forum).

In the least combative, most curious voice possible: What then is your explanation for Pillars 1 being more of a success, if they both had the same problem? Is it that people simply noticed in Pillars 1 that the complexity level was too high and didn't bother with 2 after that?

[Gfted1]

^That's what laid me low in the beta. For me, combat was a pile of red circles in the middle of my screen and I couldn't make heads or tails of what was going on.

[thelee]

1 hour ago, kanisatha said:

The numerical complexity and sophistication of the PoE1/2 combat system is what throws off many casual gamers (meaning people who are NOT posting in this forum). We now have an entire generation of gamers who spent kindergarten to college avoiding anything to do with numbers.

First off, in general, in most developed or developing countries, successive generations are more numerically literate than previous generations.

Second off, the kids are alright.

Third, doesn't explain why games like P:K do well. If anything, like I brought up in another thread, Deadfire is better than PoE1 here because so much more of the system is rationalized, there's less murk, there's a slower pace to combat, and encounters are less trashy and you have less party members to worry about. So this can't explain a massive sales drop.

 

I think if we want to go down this route, it's not the numeracy, but the fact that (as has been mentioned by some developer--possibly JE Sawyer) that RTSes aren't nearly as prevalent these days as back in the late 90s/early 2000s, so people just aren't used to the style of gameplay that RTwP is, and the context that it lives in makes less sense. But even here it doesn't explain a drop-off from a million+ sales, I think it only serves to explain why it's hard to grow your audience or find a new, less nostalgia-focused audience and therefore makes the case that RTwP is a niche genre now.

[xzar_monty]

2 hours ago, kanisatha said:

Sorry but I think you all are continuing to over-think and over-analyze this question.

You must be able to understand that while what you wrote is a possibility, there is no proof for it. Also, like @thelee points out above, your theory fails to explain the success of P:K, for instance.

To reiterate: I am not claiming you're wrong. But your argument has logical problems, and there is no proof for it.

[AwesomeOcelot]

1 hour ago, thelee said:

First off, in general, in most developed or developing countries, successive generations are more numerically literate than previous generations.

That wasn't the claim though. The gaming population can go in the opposite direction even if that's true. It would be hard to get evidence either way on this. You can look at successful RPG series and see trends though, it's true that RPG players are playing games that don't need as much maths. Even then, just taking that as a premise, the amount of gamers who are numerically literate enough to play a complex RPG can still grow because the overall gaming population can grow at a rate high enough that 5% of them is larger than 10% of them 10 years ago.

9 hours ago, Boeroer said:

Players didn't like PoE for whatever reason and thus didn't buy Deadfire

That was the case from what I saw on forums. Obsidian would have the data on how many people completed act 1, 2, and 3. I would say technical problems and bugs were an issue. It's certainly true that I much prefer playing PoE now than at launch, it's even more true for Deadfire vs PoE.

9 hours ago, Boeroer said:

Players didn't like the setting (pirate vs. medieval)

The amount of times this is brought up by people in forums is a good indication that at least a vocal minority didn't like it.

Fourth reason is lots of competition in the RPG space that PoE didn't have, from Obsidian itself, deciding to release RtWP RPGs in 2015, 2016, and 2018.

9 hours ago, Boeroer said:

Players didn't like the move from Kickstarter to Fig

Also just doing a second round of crowdfunding. Numbers are going to drop off. Kickstarting something gives the impression that once it's started, you don't need to do it again. PoE sold well, that money went back to Obsidian. Other models like Patreon exist for when you're pre-ordering or subscribing to something. People were willing to contribute to the Obsidian independence and survival project. Not so much the take on our risk, funding, and pre-order all our games so we can sell out to Microsoft project.

[xzar_monty]

15 minutes ago, AwesomeOcelot said:

@Boeroer wrote: "Players didn't like PoE for whatever reason and thus didn't buy Deadfire"

That was the case from what I saw on forums. Obsidian would have the data on how many people completed act 1, 2, and 3. I would say technical problems and bugs were an issue. It's certainly true that I much prefer playing PoE now than at launch, it's even more true for Deadfire vs PoE.

I also happen to believe that this is the biggest single reason. Mind you, single reason. There are others, too, but this is the biggest single reason. My main proof for it would be the fact that Deadfire's sales were poor right from the start, which indicates that unhappiness with Deadfire was not a major concern, but unhappiness with PoE was. Obsidian made Deadfire for an audience they thought was still there, but in this they were wrong.

The second biggest reason was probably the nostalgia thing. PoE satisfied a nostalgic hunger (which created excellent initial sales), and plenty of people thought that that was enough, they didn't want to continue the ride with Deadfire.

Edited January 8, 2020 by xzar_monty

[Boeroer]

@kanisatha's like:

3 hours ago, kanisatha said:

Sorry but I think you all are continuing to over-think and over-analyze this question.

...then starts to over-think and over-analyze this question as if he's M.O.D.O.K.   

[Boeroer]

8 minutes ago, xzar_monty said:

I also happen to believe that this is the biggest single reason. Mind you, single reason. There are others, too, but this is the biggest single reason. My main proof for it would be the fact that Deadfire's sales were poor right from the start, which indicates that unhappiness with Deadfire was not a major concern, but unhappiness with PoE was. Obsidian made Deadfire for an audience they thought was still there, but in this they were wrong.

But then: why are the user ratings for PoE so good? One should think if so many players were disappointed this should lead to mediocre reviews. But it didn't. On Steam (very positive), on Metacritic (8.3 user score) - the user ratings are so good. That contradicts that theory (being the single biggest reason) a bit.

[thelee]

20 minutes ago, xzar_monty said:

My main proof for it would be the fact that Deadfire's sales were poor right from the start, which indicates that unhappiness with Deadfire was not a major concern, but unhappiness with PoE was.

From JE Sawyer, the pre-order and day of sales were better than PoE1, but post-launch lagged significantly. They also had trouble getting marketing pieces out, and their market research leading up to launch indicated general awareness of Deadfire was much lower than PoE1. So the picture is more complicated. 

I don't doubt that PoE1 might have dissatisfied users, but it's hard to extract information out of that based on positive user reviews and how it sold well throughout a long dev support cycle (iirc longer than Deadfire, actually). I think the better explanation is not that it dissatisfied users, but that it satisfied users for a need that isn't very big and it didn't face as much competition for that not-very-big-need versus Deadfire. Coupled with a bunch of other factors (e.g. I still think their marketer sucking was a contributing factor, irrespective of any resistance they might have faced from press. I was a backer for Deadfire and hardly heard any press about it).

Edited January 8, 2020 by thelee

[xzar_monty]

5 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

But then: why are the user ratings for PoE so good? One should think if so many players were disappointed this should lead to mediocre reviews. But it didn't. On Steam (very positive), on Metacritic (8.3 user score) - the user ratings are so good. That contradicts that theory (being the single biggest reason) a bit.

Fair point. You are correct. So I hold my hands up. Like @thelee says above, "the picture is more complicated".

As for what @thelee also says above: yes, the satiated-nostalgia theory is precisely that PoE *did* satisfy its users -- who were then not hungry anymore. (Also, PoE had less competition than Deadfire.)

But yayy: Disco Elysium is really good!

[Boeroer]

It is good. Won some awards, too. But if I'm not mistaken its sales numbers aren't stellar as well.

[thelee]

1 hour ago, Boeroer said:

It is good. Won some awards, too. But if I'm not mistaken its sales numbers aren't stellar as well.

well, it's an indier indie game than deadfire. Also they didn't spend money on full VO 

[AwesomeOcelot]

Awards just mean game journalists liked it, doesn't make a game popular or good. Positive vs Negative Steam reviews don't mean much towards sales either, just means people couldn't be arsed to write negative reviews. The amount of reviews correlates a bit though, Deadfire has about half the reviews of PoE, a third of D:OS.

[rjshae]

The fact that the game sold poorly out of the gate suggests people had already made up their minds before it was released. I think the fact that the early releases of PoE1 had negative feedback played a significant role in that -- the people who left then didn't return later. It also was billed as a direct sequel, so that tends to limit your audience: it implied you had to have played and enjoyed PoE1 in order to want to play PoE2.

The sequel formula worked for BG because of the timing; it didn't work here. Likewise, movie sequels rarely do as well as the original. I don't know what the answer is for PoE. Maybe they just need to leave it fallow for a while then return when the time is right?