Why has PoE2 been sold so badly?

[pesadelo]

I mean they can make a version of PoE in FPS but i would think it wouldn't have the depth of poe2, I personally would like a flesh out PoE3  isometric with more fuller regions more lore and less VA , go full on psico with less towns or citys that depending on our actions would get destroyed or prosper and more factions , better AI and better grafic optimization and lastly a good way to mod like skyrim, if beth did someting rifth is that it packed the games with the tools to make the game better .

Skyrim still sells because? The amount of good quality mods is awesome and some provide better content than beth themselves , heck some are even games in themselves like Nherim and Anderal or the epic mods from Skyrim.

I mean the real question to me is : Did PoE2 sell badlly ?Yes but was it a financial loss? I don't think so .

I would back a PoE 3 and so would many people i think , but the genre is or has a pretty low demographic for multi million sales and I think that is fine true good games get better the more you interface with it and the more you learn and understand the mechanics , I love both games and i still play them still.

[Rooksx]

16 hours ago, flamesium said:

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.

You have no hard evidence to make this claim with such certainty. This is just another example of, "PoE2 sold poorly because of the things I don't like" reasoning. 

[Gel214th]

4 minutes ago, Rooksx said:

You have no hard evidence to make this claim with such certainty. This is just another example of, "PoE2 sold poorly because of the things I don't like" reasoning. 

I’m confused as well. What made deadfire different to POE 1 in terms of game type other than the pirate stuff? 

[xzar_monty]

5 hours ago, Rooksx said:

You have no hard evidence to make this claim with such certainty. This is just another example of, "PoE2 sold poorly because of the things I don't like" reasoning. 

Indeed. What strikes me as particularly baffling -- and, truth be told, a bit worrying -- is that people make arguments like that (i.e. flamesium's argument) without apparently being aware that what they're actually talking about is their personal opinion only. It has no value.

[hobbitmonk]

I'll just throw my 2p in about why I personally still haven't got around to playing Deadfire, despite loving the first game and White March. For context, that makes me a lost customer I suppose.

 

As a disclaimer, I feel some people in these threads (I've skimmed a few threads, so I'm not picking on anyone in particular) are getting a little defensive. Devs and fans should both wonder why the success of the first game didn't translate into the second game, or this community will continue to dwindle and any hope of PoE3 will dwindle with it. I hope in 10 years time, the PoE community is thriving, and doesn't just consist of a few bitter fans sniping each other over where things went wrong. Anyway, my post is purely an explanation of my own opinion. But if you get enough opinions, you have data.

 

There's lots of reasons I could talk about. Some have already been discussed at length elsewhere. The most important one for me personally, and the one that probably biased me against the game from the outset, is that Deadfire as a setting is boring. I loved the setting and lore of the first game. Digging through the books and scrolls you find, learning about this world that you're only exploring a tiny fraction of. And most of it (Twin Elms not so much) is really interesting. The world is intriguing, and explores ideas that are normally only skimmed over in fantasy. It made me hope there would be sequels where you could see more of the world. Raedceras and the Living Lands in particular stood out to me as interesting and unusual as far as fantasy settings go. I was eager to see more. Instead, they went with Deadfire, and a pirate motif that was already feeling tired years ago. My enthusiasm deflated.

 

A few secondary issues that I'll skim over quickly to save boring you:

- The Eothas statue storyline didn't hook me. Core story seemed uninteresting and uninspired. That's a big problem for a rpg.

- I'm older now. I have a career and family that keep me busy. I don't have the same kind of time any more to dedicate to long rpgs. For instance, I loved FF7 as a kid. But I'm older now. The remake came too late for me. I don't care any more. Rpgs are a serious time investment, and I don't have that kind of time any more. Is the audience for CRPGs ageing out of viability? I don't know. Maybe? At least those in it for nostalgia.

- But if you're a young whippersnapper, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, just coming to CRPGs for the first time, there are a lot more CRPGs to choose from now. What makes Deadfire special? If you're in it primarily for the gameplay, PoE doesn't stand out as much as it did when it was released.

- Unlike, say, Zelda or Final Fantasy or Fallout, Deadfire is a direct story sequel. It's like picking up the third Harry Potter as your first Potter book. Sure you can, but I can't imagine why you would. It sort of sets a cap on what your audience is going to be. What they should have done was Discworld, creating new stories with new characters in a shared world. I know there are fuzzy examples that don't fit neatly into either category, but I don't think Deadfire is one of them.

 

This is turning into a ramble, so I'll end on some positives. I still have a lot of hope for PoE as a setting. There's so much potential there. Hell, I'd even be up for some novels. Think about what makes PoE unique. Because it's not pirates.

[SchroedsCat]

1 hour ago, hobbitmonk said:

- Unlike, say, Zelda or Final Fantasy or Fallout, Deadfire is a direct story sequel. It's like picking up the third Harry Potter as your first Potter book. Sure you can, but I can't imagine why you would. It sort of sets a cap on what your audience is going to be. What they should have done was Discworld, creating new stories with new characters in a shared world. I know there are fuzzy examples that don't fit neatly into either category, but I don't think Deadfire is one of them.

Funny you mention Discworld. Because again there are plenty of points, especially with the Witches and by extension the Tiffany Aching books or Death's stories where you will only get the full experience if you know the previous books. (Spoiler for the last Tiffany book)

Spoiler

Granny Weatherwax's death would have never carried the emotional weight it had, had it not been for knowing her previous tales.

 

[hobbitmonk]

25 minutes ago, SchroedsCat said:

Funny you mention Discworld. Because again there are plenty of points, especially with the Witches and by extension the Tiffany Aching books or Death's stories where you will only get the full experience if you know the previous books. (Spoiler for the last Tiffany book)

  Reveal hidden contents

Granny Weatherwax's death would have never carried the emotional weight it had, had it not been for knowing her previous tales.

 

I'll clarify then. My point with Discworld was merely that they had a choice of direct sequel (Harry Potter) or expand the scope (Discworld). Or if we're generous, they had a third option, quasi-sequel (Hobbit/LotR).

 

On a minor tangent about Discworld, I think you're doing Pratchett a disservice. For a setting as large and convoluted as Discworld, replete with byzantine read orders, you really can give someone a random Discworld book and they'll be fine. Except Light Fantastic I suppose, which ironically enough is probably the most direct sequel of them!

[SchroedsCat]

7 minutes ago, hobbitmonk said:

I'll clarify then. My point with Discworld was merely that they had a choice of direct sequel (Harry Potter) or expand the scope (Discworld). Or if we're generous, they had a third option, quasi-sequel (Hobbit/LotR).

I'm not arguing that these books are readable as single offs. It's just that knowing the bigger picture is so much more involving. Take the returning characters in Deadfire, it's like meeting some old buddies again. I like this kind of connective tissue between different installments, it pulls me deeper into the world. That's why I'd want PoE2 to once again feature the watcher.

[Rooksx]

1 hour ago, hobbitmonk said:

There's lots of reasons I could talk about. Some have already been discussed at length elsewhere. The most important one for me personally, and the one that probably biased me against the game from the outset, is that Deadfire as a setting is boring. I loved the setting and lore of the first game. Digging through the books and scrolls you find, learning about this world that you're only exploring a tiny fraction of. And most of it (Twin Elms not so much) is really interesting. The world is intriguing, and explores ideas that are normally only skimmed over in fantasy. It made me hope there would be sequels where you could see more of the world. Raedceras and the Living Lands in particular stood out to me as interesting and unusual as far as fantasy settings go. I was eager to see more. Instead, they went with Deadfire, and a pirate motif that was already feeling tired years ago. My enthusiasm deflated.

The island/pirate setting has come up as a negative a few times. If that's not to people's taste then fine, but how many RPGs have a pirate motif compared to the number set in a derivation of Tolkeinesque medieval Europe? If any setting is cliched, it's the latter. As with lots of popular culture, the continued popularity of that motif suggests that people don't want stories to take them too far out of their comfort zones, which is understandable because we naturally connect more strongly with things that are relatable. It just doesn't seem fair to call the Deadfire setting 'tired' when so many other RPGs have a far more generic backdrop. 

[hobbitmonk]

42 minutes ago, SchroedsCat said:

I'm not arguing that these books are readable as single offs. It's just that knowing the bigger picture is so much more involving. Take the returning characters in Deadfire, it's like meeting some old buddies again. I like this kind of connective tissue between different installments, it pulls me deeper into the world. That's why I'd want PoE2 to once again feature the watcher.

 

Fair enough. I'm not against that kind of texture. But there's more ways of achieving it than a direct sequel. Personally after completing PoE I didn't feel any sense of narrative incompleteness or lack of closure. Did you? Returning characters could have been integrated in other ways.

 

For the record, I'm not necessarily opposed to PoE2 being a direct sequel. I don't think it was financial prudent though. And narratively it feels unnecessary to me.

 

34 minutes ago, Rooksx said:

The island/pirate setting has come up as a negative a few times. If that's not to people's taste then fine, but how many RPGs have a pirate motif compared to the number set in a derivation of Tolkeinesque medieval Europe? If any setting is cliched, it's the latter. As with lots of popular culture, the continued popularity of that motif suggests that people don't want stories to take them too far out of their comfort zones, which is understandable because we naturally connect more strongly with things that are relatable. It just doesn't seem fair to call the Deadfire setting 'tired' when so many other RPGs have a far more generic backdrop. 

 

You're right, it's not fair. And yet it does make a certain kind of sense. This is an awkward point to explain, so bear with me. I think the difference is that Tolkeinesque settings can get away with it because it is the "every day" setting. For most people playing these games or reading these books, it's the default setting not just because of Tolkein's long shadow over the genre, but also because it roughly mirrors their own culture, their own history, and their own environment. As such, it's easier to drop into, and it's easier for an author to modify without confusing or disturbing the reader/player too much. So it made a good first setting for PoE, and it's likely to remain the standard in other fantasy settings for the same reason. The more complex the modifications you want to make to our own world in terms of ethics, theology, metaphysics, magic, technology, philosophy, politics, and so on, the less safe changing the environmental flavour of the setting becomes. It's another layer the reader/player needs to get acclimatised to. Not impossible of course, but the more you deviate from the standard setting, the more talented your writing team is going to have to be to do it elegantly and with minimal confusion. In PoE's case, the writers needed to convey some fairly unusual ideas like the way souls work in this setting and the nature of the Hollowing. That's the narrative focus. Having a heterodox setting could have muddled the focus.

 

Keep in mind I'm not defending this per se, just explaining it as I see it, and why fantasy settings so often play it safe, even if in other ways they try to experiment with things. I think part of it is financial considerations. Try too many things at once and you risk creating a mess that people stay away from.

 

So anyway, along comes the sequel. Now your setting is established. You can start experimenting more with the setting. You have a huge fantasy world to explore. You've already dropped some hints in the last game. Interesting possibilities you could explore; I like Raedceras and the Living Lands myself, but I'm sure there's others you could think of. And they chose... pirates. Maybe the second safest setting after Tolkeinesque? Maybe PoE3 will be zombie apocalypse...

 

Why pirates specifically send a lot of people to sleep is difficult to say. It's a very subjective problem. It should be cool. But somehow it just feels tired. Blame Pirates of the Caribbean perhaps.

[Rooksx]

@hobbitmonk I pretty much agree with all of that, particularly because many of those thoughts occurred to me when I recently started playing Pathfinder: Kingmaker. I knew zilch about the Pathfinder universe, and yet I quickly grasped the setting and lore as it's all quite familiar. Contrasting this to PoE did illustrate the advantage of a more generic setting - the writers don't have to do so much background work and can focus on crafting a unique story. One of the problems I had with both both PoE games is that they're too wrapped up in their own lore. You're quite possibly right to suggest that writing a story for PoE2 that was set in a familiar background would have been a lot easier. 

[Guest Ontarah]

5 hours ago, hobbitmonk said:

- I'm older now. I have a career and family that keep me busy. I don't have the same kind of time any more to dedicate to long rpgs. For instance, I loved FF7 as a kid. But I'm older now. The remake came too late for me. I don't care any more. Rpgs are a serious time investment, and I don't have that kind of time any more. Is the audience for CRPGs ageing out of viability? I don't know. Maybe? At least those in it for nostalgia.

This is related to my incessant complaints about the ruleset and difficulty spikes I've been lobbing the last few weeks.

I've been on an RPG playing binge for about 6 weeks now because I'm working from home and I can get what needs doing done each day in about 2 hours.

This is the first time that the investment required from these kinds of games hasn't turned me off in a long time.  Normally when I get home, I don't want high stress/ high difficulty battles,  I don't want to spend time doing esoteric math to optimize my build, I don't want to read page after page of tutorial and codex entries to understand what the heck is going on.  I don't want to *work.*  I want to play.

If your game takes *work* to get into there is a hard limit on the people who are going to give it a try and keep coming back for more.  Casuals are not interested in game as work.  Younger players are conditioned to think of game "work" in twitchy terms as a matter of muscle memory and repetition and practice, not something that feels like doing math homework.  And oldsters like me who used to do things like read the D&D player's handbook for fun have jobs and kids and bills and enough manuals to read in daily life as it is.

I get that some people find what I am describing as "work" as fun.  But I think they are a pronounced minority in the overall population of people who play games.       

[Guest Ontarah]

3 hours ago, Rooksx said:

The island/pirate setting has come up as a negative a few times. If that's not to people's taste then fine, but how many RPGs have a pirate motif compared to the number set in a derivation of Tolkeinesque medieval Europe? If any setting is cliched, it's the latter. As with lots of popular culture, the continued popularity of that motif suggests that people don't want stories to take them too far out of their comfort zones, which is understandable because we naturally connect more strongly with things that are relatable. It just doesn't seem fair to call the Deadfire setting 'tired' when so many other RPGs have a far more generic backdrop. 

I was kinda "eh" on the pirates' thing as well but it wasn't really something I had strong opinions about.  I think one difference worth mentioning though is that there's really not that much you can do with pirates thematically speaking.  It would help if somebody for once used the Barbary Pirates or the ancient Frisians or somebody besides the Caribbean buccaneers for their model over and over.  

Fantasy being set in a medieval world still has a lot of breadth in it though.  You can have a grimdark story that focues on political intrigue and the gritty realness of life in such a world like ASoIaF or the Witcher.  You can have a fantastical, chipper fairy tale rendition like in the Chronicles of Narnia or Ni No Kuni to use a game example.  You can focus more on the epic and high myth stuff like LoTR and God of War.  And others.  I've never really gotten sick of this setting for the very reason that people keep coming up with clever new ways to use it.

Pirates are kinda just pirates in everything I've ever played or read or watched.  

[SchroedsCat]

59 minutes ago, Rooksx said:

@hobbitmonkI knew zilch about the Pathfinder universe, and yet I quickly grasped the setting and lore as it's all quite familiar. Contrasting this to PoE did illustrate the advantage of a more generic setting - the writers don't have to do so much background work and can focus on crafting a unique story.

That's where opinions really diverge because I'm unbelievably tired of these generic DnD worlds. New lore is exciting, Torment was fantastic. Consequent worldbuilding everywhere. Same reason I like Pillars. 

[Guest]

47 minutes ago, Ontarah said:

This is related to my incessant complaints about the ruleset and difficulty spikes I've been lobbing the last few weeks.

I've been on an RPG playing binge for about 6 weeks now because I'm working from home and I can get what needs doing done each day in about 2 hours.

This is the first time that the investment required from these kinds of games hasn't turned me off in a long time.  Normally when I get home, I don't want high stress/ high difficulty battles,  I don't want to spend time doing esoteric math to optimize my build, I don't want to read page after page of tutorial and codex entries to understand what the heck is going on.  I don't want to *work.*  I want to play.

If your game takes *work* to get into there is a hard limit on the people who are going to give it a try and keep coming back for more.  Casuals are not interested in game as work.  Younger players are conditioned to think of game "work" in twitchy terms as a matter of muscle memory and repetition and practice, not something that feels like doing math homework.  And oldsters like me who used to do things like read the D&D player's handbook for fun have jobs and kids and bills and enough manuals to read in daily life as it is.

I get that some people find what I am describing as "work" as fun.  But I think they are a pronounced minority in the overall population of people who play games.       

"Story difficulty is for player who are more interested in exploration and story development than the challenges of combat. The game's combat mechanics are heavily biased in the player's favor to make battles extremely easy"

[Rooksx]

24 minutes ago, SchroedsCat said:

That's where opinions really diverge because I'm unbelievably tired of these generic DnD worlds. New lore is exciting, Torment was fantastic. Consequent worldbuilding everywhere. Same reason I like Pillars. 

The point isn't so much about which makes for better stories, more that the generic setting does have the advantages of being readily comprehensible and flexible. Building a new world can be interesting, but it can be difficult to balance that with telling a compelling story.

[Guest Ontarah]

1 hour ago, Achilles said:

"Story difficulty is for player who are more interested in exploration and story development than the challenges of combat. The game's combat mechanics are heavily biased in the player's favor to make battles extremely easy"

I don't want to shoot fish in a barrel either.  This forum.  Good god.  I think I'm about done. 

[Sven_]

42 minutes ago, Ontarah said:

I don't want to shoot fish in a barrel either.  This forum.  Good god.  I think I'm about done. 

You bring up a couple viable points -- however, naturally, this entire series came about because games that required a modicum of "work" went out of style, fashion and publishers who'd fund them to begin with. And Obsidian have already tried to streamline much (in some cases successfully, in others they've arguably made things even more complicated, e.g. D&Ds straight forward simple Maths damage calculation vs. Pillars percentage based formula). It's something that could be balanced some more, but eventually you'd probably reach a point where the point of such a project is lost. I think we can all agree on that a big part of what makes Bethesda games so successful is that you can jump straight in, but... there's got to be various kind of middle grounds. Publishers such as Paradox have proven that there's markets for different experiences too. I don't mean that as a criticism, mind. As you argued, what's one man's "work" is another man's "leisure".

That said, I've recently read an older interview with Guy Henkel (Realms Of Arkania, short stint at Interplay as a producer), and he argued that Baldur's Gate already back then had proven that there was a market for "lighter" RPGs. If you've played the RoA games (no way you could even manually make a character without a look into the manual), probably all a matter of perspective. It's kind of like how World Of Warcraft was seen as the "casual" thing in the MMO space back upon its release -- and now Blizzard reach that older audience again who'd gotten tired of the many streamlining made to WOW by releasing WOW Classic.

As for the Pillars games specifially, at no point from my experience were you forced to optimize characters builds on normal difficulties. This is much more pronounced on Pathfinder Kingmaker, in which it is also possible to make flat out horrible characters that unlike Pillar's counterparts neither hit a thing nor can take any damage/spell themselves  (the game was considered successful regardless). On the higher end of difficulties that is subject to change naturally. That there are/were sudden spikes in difficulty is another matter (the first being the Temple Of Eothas in PoE1).  Deadfire got around that via the skull markers. That's my experience, though. 

 

Edited May 9, 2020 by Sven_

[Guest]

3 hours ago, Ontarah said:

I don't want to shoot fish in a barrel either.  This forum.  Good god.  I think I'm about done. 

They give you 5 ****ing options, mate. None of them work for you?

Really?

[Guest]

3 hours ago, Sven_ said:

 That there are/were sudden spikes in difficulty is another matter (the first being the Temple Of Eothas in PoE1).  Deadfire got around that via the skull markers. That's my experience, though.

In my experience, the difficulty spikes were almost always off the crit path.

Edited May 10, 2020 by Achilles
typo

[Guest]

3 hours ago, Rooksx said:

The point isn't so much about which makes for better stories, more that the generic setting does have the advantages of being readily comprehensible and flexible. Building a new world can be interesting, but it can be difficult to balance that with telling a compelling story.

I was listening to a podcast last week and one of the guys speaking made the point that Hollywood plays it safe because audiences like things that are familiar. We got 30 Marvel movies because those characters were already known quantities, even before the first one was made. We get a new James Bond movie every couple of years since 1960-something for the same reason. Reboots of old tv shows, adaptations of popular books, remakes of movies that people have already seen. Audiences want things they already know.

Anytime someone tries to do something new or different, it's inherently risky. Obsidian tried to put there own spin on isometric reboot and got lambasted for it. They bet big on the idea that players would try new things if new things were made and got their teeth knocked in the dirt for their effort (not just Deadfire, but Tyranny and probably safe to say most of their other games as well).

Meanwhile, on their own community forum, you can find discussions where people without the slightest hint of irony ask why Obsidian "plays it safe"

[Rooksx]

Which podcast? Marvel movies are exactly what I was thinking of when I earlier said that people don't want stories that take them out of their comfort zones. Each one is a variation of the same template, yet they are enormously successful. They are solid evidence that the general public like stories that hit familiar beats and don't do anything too different. 

[Guest]

48 minutes ago, Rooksx said:

Which podcast? Marvel movies are exactly what I was thinking of when I earlier said that people don't want stories that take them out of their comfort zones. Each one is a variation of the same template, yet they are enormously successful. They are solid evidence that the general public like stories that hit familiar beats and don't do anything too different. 

Here you go

[hobbitmonk]

3 hours ago, Achilles said:

I was listening to a podcast last week and one of the guys speaking made the point that Hollywood plays it safe because audiences like things that are familiar. We got 30 Marvel movies because those characters were already known quantities, even before the first one was made. We get a new James Bond movie every couple of years since 1960-something for the same reason. Reboots of old tv shows, adaptations of popular books, remakes of movies that people have already seen. Audiences want things they already know.

Anytime someone tries to do something new or different, it's inherently risky. Obsidian tried to put there own spin on isometric reboot and got lambasted for it. They bet big on the idea that players would try new things if new things were made and got their teeth knocked in the dirt for their effort (not just Deadfire, but Tyranny and probably safe to say most of their other games as well).

Meanwhile, on their own community forum, you can find discussions where people without the slightest hint of irony ask why Obsidian "plays it safe"

I've heard this before, but I think it oversimplifies things a little. Mainstream audiences want familiarity yes, but not TOO familiar. Using Marvel as an example, the difference between the early Marvel films and the later films is actually quite significant imo. Imagine jumping blind into a recent Marvel film, with universe-shattering stakes and a miasma of different characters and settings messily slapped together. Viking gods? A talking raccoon in space? Why is the green man so angry? It would be absolutely nonsensical. You'd have no idea who these people are or what's going on or why you should care. The Marvel formula works because the similarities and differences between the individual films work together effectively to keep audiences coming back. Familiarity with just the right amount of novelty.

 

PoE was an indulgent nostalgia piece (I mean that in a nice way) that captured genre interest at a time when CRPGs were not really popular. Things are different now. Would changing the setting to something more familiar (or exotic) have been sufficient to make Deadfire a success? I don't know. Probably not. Imo Deadfire's lack of success is down to a confluence of smaller failures, not just one magic bullet. The pirate setting is my personal bugbear, and it seems to be a significant enough problem that lots of people mention it. But I think the biggest problem financially was being a direct sequel to a nostalgia piece. The nostalgics in the audience were satisfied with PoE. The newbies to the genre have other CRPGs to choose from now. So where does that leave Deadfire? Trying to sustain interest from a depleted audience of people who played the first game. It's not a recipe for financial success.

 

As for Tyranny, that one's a bit trickier to explain, but part of it is probably poor marketing. It completely passed me by when it first came out. I've seen other people mention the same problem. It wasn't until it popped up in a Steam sale that I even knew it existed. I have played it, though not to completion, and the setting and concept seem more interesting than Deadfire.

 

It's sad if developers feel they can't take a risk or experiment because everyone is chasing the mainstream audience. I hope that isn't the case. There's something to be said for knowing your niche, being part of that niche, and developing for that niche. Not every game has to aim to be the gaming equivalent of Marvel or Bond. But while we're on the topic of films, successful independent films tend not to have stuff like bloated and unnecessary stretch goals. The best independent films have the confidence to be the authentic vision of the writer or director, and be tightly focused on that, to the exclusion of unnecessary fluff. Or is that too much to hope for in the Kickstarter age?

[Boeroer]

If you blame Tyranny for poor marketing you must blame Deadfire's marketing even more. Even Josh said recently that it felt that nobody new about the release of Deadfire. Surely a lot of players who didn't follow Obsidian or are part of the "community" had no clue that Deadfire was even out. 

This was different with PoE. Alone because of Kickstarter but also because it was a "new thing" and kind of a desperate story which naturally got the attention of all sorts of media.

The guy responsible for the Deadfire marketing campaign had to leave the company...

I also blame Versus Evil: outside of a very small "community AoE" like on Twitter or in the respective forums I saw very, very little of Deadfire before it came out. 

Add perceived "Pirates of the Caribbean" setting (which it is not, but you can't know from glancing over it on Steam or GoG etc.), more competition, direct sequel, maybe disappointed PoE players, even saturated nostalgia and a small target group to begin with (remember only 40% overlap between D:OS and PoE) and I think it becomes more clear why it might have failed - still foggy enough though.

We will never know for sure, we can just make educated guesses.

By the way: Josh constantly tried to hit the brake with the pirate stuff during development, but many developers were pretty exited about it and got carried away with it from time to time. So maybe if Josh was more of an autocratic director we would have a game with less pirate-vibes, but he is not so... I was a bit sceptical at first but I came to like it.

Edited May 10, 2020 by Boeroer