Why has PoE2 been sold so badly?

[Boeroer]

I'm pretty sure Deadfire's non-success was a big disappointment for him. And who knows what followed after that (in the office). I guess nobody was happy about it...

He even wrote on Twitter (today) that two years ago two big disappointments happened (and another one last year) - and that those prevent him from being truly enthusiastic and happy about anything nowadays. He didn't explicitly say it but I presume one of it was Deadfire (since the release was in May 2018).

It's kind of weird because Deadfire still has good reviews and most people who played it do like it. 

It's one of my most beloved games of all times - but of course that's not much comfort for him. I also only bought it once - like everybody else.

 

[Guest]

3 hours ago, flamesium said:

They absolutely did, and very successfully judging by the many millions of people who quite happily joined the Witcher franchise at TW3 with no prior exposure. Each game stands alone quite comfortably.

Sorry, but this just isn't true. All you're speaking to is the gaming community's willingness to jump onto a well-publicized AAA title.

Yeah a lot of people bought it. And yeah a lot of people liked it. That doesn't mean that it did what you're saying it did.

[Boeroer]

It's like saying that the Witcher has a truly nice beard in the third part and judging by all the people who bought Witcher3 that must be the reason for its success. 

Could be totally unrelated. Even if the beard is superdandily nice (which seems to be debatable) this doesn't mean that it's a prominent reason to buy the game. 

You have a theory but no data to back it up - like most theories we might come up with in this case. 

[SchroedsCat]

47 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

I'm pretty sure Deadfire's non-success was a big disappointment for him. And who knows what followed after that (in the office). I guess nobody was happy about it...

I did see that tumblr post of his where he basically says he'd only direct Pillars 3 if he certainly knew what went wrong with Deadfire. Just unlikely he'll ever know for sure. Even just a release date at the wrong time could break an otherwise great game's neck. Let's see if Microdoft feels like jumping on the bandwaggon again after BG3 comes out (...or into early access even).

Random thought in addition to this. Would releasing an "Eora Skyrim" or tactics game or whatever not alienate more Pillars fans? It would drive me away, I think.

[Boeroer]

Why would it drive you away? Simply not buying would be reasonable if you don't like those types of games. I personally would like to see those games. I'm not limited to isometric, party based role playing games. 

And after all: if they would aquire two million new fans but lose those 200K who bought Deadfire - should they care (as a company that has to earn money)?

Edited May 7, 2020 by Boeroer

[Sven_]

1 hour ago, Boeroer said:

I'm pretty sure Deadfire's non-success was a big disappointment for him. And who knows what followed after that (in the office). I guess nobody was happy about it...

He even wrote on Twitter (today) that two years ago two big disappointments happened (and another one last year) - and that those prevent him from being truly enthusiastic and happy about anything nowadays. He didn't explicitly say it but I presume one of it was Deadfire (since the release was in May 2018).

This was likely just a very personal Project. If him and Adam Brennecke hadn't pushed so hard, the first Kickstarter for PoE may have never come about. As reports go, initially the management did object to it. Maybe the reason why the current project is apparently of such a small scale. Expectations won't be as high. Pressure not either.

Still, sometimes games don't meet (audience/sales) expectations. And that isn't exclusive to games alone. There's entire (defunct) companies which catalogue of games should on all accounts been sold much much better (Looking Glass et all).

In case he's reading, when the game came out it allowed me to escape from -- and due to some of its subject matter at the same time think about -- the loss I had just suffered from in my life. I have my beefs with it, mainly the main plotline (and its integration) and some of the companions. But I was glad it was around when it was. Mechanically in particular it did a lot of things better than the first game for sure. If I'll ever get to meet him in Germany, I'm gonna buy him a beer and a plate of corpse loaf.

And hey, even the guy who ripped the first game a new one on the Codex enjoyed it... kinda.  

Edited May 7, 2020 by Sven_

[SchroedsCat]

39 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

Why would it drive you away? Simply not buying would be reasonable if you don't like those types of games. I personally would like to see those games. I'm not limited to isometric, party based role playing games. 

And after all: if they would quire two million new fans but lose those 200K who bought Deadfire - should they care (as a company that has to earn money)?

I hope my English is good enough to convey what I mean. Let's try. Best comparison I can make is people being salty at Bethesda because instead of developing what everyones wants (TES6) they develope and put time and resources into things nobody ever asked for like Fallout76 (or did, they're back to the Scrolls now, it seems).  So it's not just a question of not buying a product, it's more complicated. Sorry if I can't quite make sense of what I'm trying to say XD

[Guest]

I'd play Skyrim with Adra. But I don't know how they would avoid *not* making you a Watcher. And if you're going to end up being a Watcher in every game, what is the advantage of being a different Watcher each time?

I have to imagine I'm not breaking new ground with this question and I also have to imagine that why we *didn't* start Deadfire with a completely different character.

[daven]

What is the point in Skyrim in Eora? Just jumping on the bandwagon of another popular game?

Also, Skyrim isn't even that good. It's an OK game with great marketing and mass market appeal I guess? We are all RPG enthusiasts I would assume on this forum, so it would make sense that we'd rather that wasn't the direction they took.

Come on Boeroer, surely you get what he meant?!?!?

[Boeroer]

There is a difference in wishing for something and being sad that you won't get it on one side and being driven away on the other.

How can I be mad at Obsidian if Deadfire sells so poorly so that they have to make RPGs which sell better then? It's not like they didn't try. 

1 hour ago, SchroedsCat said:

I hope my English is good enough to convey what I mean. Let's try. Best comparison I can make is people being salty at Bethesda because instead of developing what everyones wants (TES6) they develope and put time and resources into things nobody ever asked for like Fallout76 (or did, they're back to the Scrolls now, it seems).  So it's not just a question of not buying a product, it's more complicated. Sorry if I can't quite make sense of what I'm trying to say XD

 That comparison is flawed because judging by the sales numbers Deadfire is what nobody wanted while Skyrim and other first-person RPGs like Outer Worlds is what everybody wants at the moment. It's just not what you want.

51 minutes ago, daven said:

What is the point in Skyrim in Eora? Just jumping on the bandwagon of another popular game?

Well... yes. Like PoE was jumping on the bandwagon of Infinity Engine games.
If you want to make successful RPGs you must either do the goofy D:OS style with multiplayer and silly writing - or a more actionesque first-person RPG it seems. Or pure action RPGs maybe.
Skyrim is just a popular example of a first-person RPG. I could also have said Outer Worlds on Eora or Witcher on Eora - but that sounds a bit misleading for different reasons. 

51 minutes ago, daven said:

Also, Skyrim isn't even that good.

It has a Metacritc score of 94 (which is pretty impressive) and sold extremely well (over 30 million copies - one of the most successful RPGs of all times). So clearly the majority of users and critics differ from your opinion. I liked it, too. I didn't play it as often as PoE/Deadfire but it was fun nonetheless.

Edited May 7, 2020 by Boeroer

[house2fly]

10 hours ago, flamesium said:

I would describe the main storyline of each Witcher game as self-contained and had no trouble recommending TW2 to people who hadn’t played TW1, or TW3 to people who hadn’t played either of the first two games or read any of the books. I absolutely would not describe the main storyline of Deadfire as self-contained and wouldn’t (and didn’t) recommend it to anyone unfamiliar with the story of PoE 1.

That's nuts, Witcher games are full of direct references to each other and the books. You can pretty much grasp it- you're a monster slayer, slay monsters, go on a quest for the emperor- but the first time player is going to be saying "I wonder who Yennefer is, I wonder who Ciri is, I wonder what the Wild Hunt is" etc. Deadfire doesn't assume anywhere near that level of background knowledge

[Sven_]

I too enjoyed Skyrim, but it's true that if you look to close, a lot of it is pretty shallow (the dungeons and puzzles, the melee combat, the lack of any consequences to anything and the inbuild GPS and mandatory, non-optional quest compass that kills what should be discovery). The TES series has been more than the some of its parts even back on Daggerfall already though. A first person game set in Eora could be pretty good. I'd imagine that Obsidian would add their own twists to it anyway. Fallout New Vegas is a far more interesting and deeper game than Fallout 3, for instance. Arguably it's one of the best games released ever since the collapse of the CRPG industry in the early 2000s/late 90s.

And as Josh is a history buff, maybe they could even take a few cues from Kingdom Come Deliverance. Which would be an awesome format for a spiritual Darklands successor btw. As for an actual PoE3, they should stick to the formula of the predecessors though -- or at least make it a party-based tactical game again in some way.

Edited May 7, 2020 by Sven_

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Sven_ said:

I too enjoyed Skyrim, but it's true that if you look to close, a lot of it is pretty shallow

It tried to be too many things to too many people. At its heart, it had a really good story. Unfortunately, you had to filter through too much crap to get to it.

I think Bethesda peaked with Morrowind.

Edited May 7, 2020 by Achilles

[Haljamar]

51 minutes ago, Achilles said:

It tried to be too many things to too many people. At its heart, it had a really good story. Unfortunately, you had to filter through too much crap to get to it.

I think Bethesda peaked with Morrowind.

They absolutely did. Morrowind had all sorts of uber powerful spells, awesome melee builds and weapons, and had a ****ing amazing story. Oblivion onward is just disappointment with all the nerfs, and lackluster stories they gave us.

[xzar_monty]

12 hours ago, SchroedsCat said:

I did see that tumblr post of his where he basically says he'd only direct Pillars 3 if he certainly knew what went wrong with Deadfire. Just unlikely he'll ever know for sure. Even just a release date at the wrong time could break an otherwise great game's neck.

It's not only unlikely, it's impossible. Too many variables that cannot really be checked. The only way to really find out why Deadfire bombed would be to re-run the universe several times from the time of the game's development, change just one variable in each re-run (and keep everything else in the whole universe where it was) and see what happens with each of them. Outside the novels of Peter F. Hamilton, we're not able to do that.

We can certainly come up with explanations whose probability varies from zero to substantial, but we can't really know. And I'm not even talking about the kind of certainty we can (only) achieve in mathematics, I mean everyday knowing, the kind where we're basically just pretty sure why something is the way it is -- we can't reach even that.

We've talked about this a lot here, and there have been some pretty good suggestions, like the nostalgia effect and so on, and I suppose that's the best that can be done.

[SchroedsCat]

Ah yes, Skyrim. Sadly it was really dumbed down from what TES once was. No classes and the faction questlines that were still pretty iconic in Oblivion were really lackluster. Don't get me started on the puzzles "we wrote the lock combination directly next to the lock for your convinience". Or every Nord falling over themselves to marry a dunmer with an amulet of Mara while previously establishing that Nords are a prejudiced pack.

Funny thing but ESO of all things does this much better. It even adheres to the world's lore much better than Skyrim. Lots of great quests and stories. And you even have to stop and think for a moment on the dungeon puzzles.

10 hours ago, Boeroer said:

 That comparison is flawed because judging by the sales numbers Deadfire is what nobody wanted while Skyrim and other first-person RPGs like Outer Worlds is what everybody wants at the moment. It's just not what you want.

I meant in a more personal sense. Kind of. Eh, let's skip that.

10 hours ago, Boeroer said:

It has a Metacritc score of 94 (which is pretty impressive) and sold extremely well (over 30 million copies - one of the most successful RPGs of all times).

Yeah but it was also released several times on every available platform. Bethesda would put Skyrim out on calculators if it could.

Edited May 8, 2020 by SchroedsCat

[Boeroer]

4 hours ago, SchroedsCat said:

Yeah but it was also released several times on every available platform. Bethesda would put Skyrim out on calculators if it could.

Which is what every developer/publisher should do if there's a good chance that it will sell well on the respective platform.

PC grogs who don't play a game just because it was also released on consoles or other platforms - and all those other gatekeepers really - can bite the dust* for all I care. 

"But it's going to get dumbed down!" :eyeroll

* not literally of course. 

[flamesium]

17 hours ago, house2fly said:

That's nuts, Witcher games are full of direct references to each other and the books. You can pretty much grasp it- you're a monster slayer, slay monsters, go on a quest for the emperor- but the first time player is going to be saying "I wonder who Yennefer is, I wonder who Ciri is, I wonder what the Wild Hunt is" etc. Deadfire doesn't assume anywhere near that level of background knowledge

I’m not talking about references or someone mentioning in passing a decision the player made in a previous game for flavour. If Ciri had been the focus of the previous games I guess it would be similar.

Each TW game has a standalone story; Deadfire has a continuation of the unravel-the-inane-metaphysics-of-the-setting story from the previous game. Herein lies the problem. Unfortunately it will remain the problem whether those who want Obsidian to keep making games for them and the nowhere-near-enough diehard PoE1 Watcher fans acknowledge it or not.

There’s no mystery here: Deadfire flopped on PC because they designed a product which was only accessible to a much smaller number of people than its predecessor was. It’s a shame that a lot of good work was wasted because of that poor decision to shut out potential new players in order to appease the existing fanbase, but it is what it is.

[kanisatha]

17 hours ago, house2fly said:

That's nuts, Witcher games are full of direct references to each other and the books. You can pretty much grasp it- you're a monster slayer, slay monsters, go on a quest for the emperor- but the first time player is going to be saying "I wonder who Yennefer is, I wonder who Ciri is, I wonder what the Wild Hunt is" etc. Deadfire doesn't assume anywhere near that level of background knowledge

Sorry, no. I was a first time player and I never had any of those questions. The game did an excellent job of providing all the information I needed to understand all those characters and all of the story. So much so that after having been a person who disdained AAA action RPGs, I so loved TW3 that I am now open to AAA action RPGs if they are of the quality of TW3.

[kanisatha]

20 hours ago, SchroedsCat said:

Random thought in addition to this. Would releasing an "Eora Skyrim" or tactics game or whatever not alienate more Pillars fans? It would drive me away, I think.

I agree with this. I would be cautious about a Skyrim in Eora. Skyrim became utterly boring to me around the midpoint of the game and I never finished it. But the general concept of a AAA open world RPG in third-person I am quite open to if done well. A Pillars tactics game, and especially anything that were TB, would absolutely make me feel betrayed as a very early supporter of the PoE1 KS and drive me away.

[flamesium]

Morrowind was great, Oblivion less so, Skyrim somewhere in between.

The good thing -at least commercially- is that Bethesda is smart enough to give themselves a clean slate each time. They don’t weigh their new game down with the baggage of the old. They can have a dip in quality for a game without it being terminal to the franchise, and new players can always easily join the franchise at any stage.

[Gel214th]

3 minutes ago, kanisatha said:

I agree with this. I would be cautious about a Skyrim in Eora. Skyrim became utterly boring to me around the midpoint of the game and I never finished it. But the general concept of a AAA open world RPG in third-person I am quite open to if done well. A Pillars tactics game, and especially anything that were TB, would absolutely make me feel betrayed as a very early supporter of the PoE1 KS and drive me away.

This is pretty much the path that Witcher took when you look at the game engine and gameplay from Witcher 1 through to what we eventually got with Witcher 3. Problem is W2 did well and W1 did well. pOE2 didn’t do so well. But , if MIcrosoft decides to push it then it could happen . In another four to five years if they started now. The Pillars of Eternity world is too amazing an IP not to make something out of it. 

[kanisatha]

5 minutes ago, flamesium said:

Morrowind was great, Oblivion less so, Skyrim somewhere in between.

The good thing -at least commercially- is that Bethesda is smart enough to give themselves a clean slate each time. They don’t weigh their new game down with the baggage of the old. They can have a dip in quality for a game without it being terminal to the franchise, and new players can always easily join the franchise at any stage.

It's funny. I hear a lot of people putting down Oblivion, but I actually enjoyed it way more than Skyrim.

[SchroedsCat]

10 minutes ago, Gel214th said:

This is pretty much the path that Witcher took when you look at the game engine and gameplay from Witcher 1 through to what we eventually got with Witcher 3.

The Witcher games always stayed true to being 3rd person action RPGs, even if the first game's combat was a bit on the weird side. It's not quite like a jump between isometric party based rpg to 1st person action game.

[Boeroer]

Why do people debate Skyrim now? Doesn't matter if you liked Skyrim or not. Nobody meant that Feargus wants to make a game that's an actual Skyrim clone in Eora. Skyrim's just a symbol to quickly transport an image - to avoid having to say  "first person action RPG" in Eora. Of course it wouldn't have the quirks of Skyrim. I mean come on... it would have others.

But really: of what use is it to debate if Skyrim was better than Oblivion in your opinion - in regards to a new Pillars game?

The reason why Obsidian thinks that a first person RPG in Eora (will not mention another game as placeholder again since the next random guy will write an essay on that game then, too) is simple: first person RPGs sold like hot cakes recently, Outer World's (which is the same but in Space) did very well. So they have the technology/engine, the knowledge and the (financial) motivation to make such a game. I'd say it's a given. 

Or how did Josh put it: "Feargus wants to make one - and usually Feargus gets his way."