Trying to figure what PoE2 sold less

[Helz]

2 hours ago, curryinahurry said:

But if it takes another 3 years for the game to break even, then you have the carrying costs of the 15 people who were employed to make the game, unless they were all fired after the game was released or moved to another game in development.

It's at least 100 employees, and that is exactly what they do. The next games were Outer Worlds and Grounded.

[curryinahurry]

Yes, but POE 2 cost a lot more than  4 million us dollars to make.  They borrowed that money from the publisher.  Thus my original point about paying back in a timely manner or not being able to get future investment for a similar game.  In that case they would have to be able to produce a game solely by crowdfunding, which would be a much smaller game. Even smaller than the original POE, which likely cost at least double what the Kickstarter money they raised. The crowdfunding money is essentially the down payment for these games.  If investors can't be enticed from the crowd-funding success, you're looking at much smaller games. 

All of this is moot however as Obsidian is now owned by Microsoft.  Thus Boeroer's post  about 2d rpg's on game pass.  2d or not, the idea of episodic content in Eora would be great.  

Edited January 11, 2022 by curryinahurry

[ElSavant]

As someone who just started the Game, I find a few reasons why people wouldn’t like Deadfire as much as Part 1.

 

First and foremost, it tends to run like ass. The sometimes heavy stuttering and constant micro freezes after half an hour of playtime get really annoying.

 

The fact that you have to choose between 3 classes when you get a new party member and can’t change your choice in game. One of the great things about part One was that you could always recspec your crew to your liking, and that feature has gotten a heavy blow with this design decision.

 

The whole ship thing. I don’t want to manage a ship crew, feed them, keep them happy, and then these stupid ship battles…if I wanted something like buccaneer I would have bought.

 

The Game has a lot of improvements from the first one, but also a lot of stuff that seems unnecessary and frankly doesn’t fly with me or rather I endure for the rest of it.

[Boeroer]

I assume you bought the game before you experienced those things?

[xzar_monty]

Haha. That was my first thought, too.

[ElSavant]

52 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

I assume you bought the game before you experienced those things?

I read it would run kinda bad, but I presumed there would a workaround for the stuttering. After all, there an also a few guides on how to stabilize New Vegas for example. Apparently, I was wrong.

 

The Multi Class thing I wasn’t aware of. I knew there was multi classing, but not that the choices you made were irreversible.

 

If we talk about things everyone could obviously see before buying (or not buying) the Game, I think the Pirate Theme didn’t do the Game any favors. It just feels kinda off all in all.

 

IIRC, Pillars 1 had the big plus that it was one of the first rather big Games that where a huge success on Kickstarter. That of course created quite some thunder back then, which helped marketing a lot. Pillars 2 didn’t have that kind of exposition. Plus, I think that a lot of people who bought Part One maybe out of the Blue where quite overwhelmed with the Mountain of Lore the Game threw at the player. For me as a fantasy fan that is no problem, just my jam, and if you establish a new Gaming Universe that is simply necessary.

 

But the regular player who maybe expected something more easy going like Dragon Age, that could have been off-putting. Too much to read, not enough action. And these Players would also have no interest in a Sequel with part one maybe rotting on the Pile of Shame.

[xzar_monty]

15 hours ago, ElSavant said:

But the regular player who maybe expected something more easy going like Dragon Age, that could have been off-putting. Too much to read, not enough action. And these Players would also have no interest in a Sequel with part one maybe rotting on the Pile of Shame.

How do you equate this with the fact that Pathfinder: Kingmaker and Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous seem to be doing very well indeed?

[ElSavant]

4 hours ago, xzar_monty said:

How do you equate this with the fact that Pathfinder: Kingmaker and Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous seem to be doing very well indeed?

Maybe it had the advantage of a D&D License. Or maybe the Publisher did a more target-oriented marketing?

 

Or maybe, and that may sound mean, People are already excepting an Obsidian Game to run like Ass at release, plan to wait until things have been smoothed out and you know how it is…out of sight, out of mind.

[kanisatha]

23 hours ago, ElSavant said:

The Multi Class thing I wasn’t aware of. I knew there was multi classing, but not that the choices you made were irreversible.

For me, this is as it should be. Your class choices should be irreversible. Respecing should only be for changing your choices of abilities, skills, spells and the like, if that.

Whatever happened to the concept of living with the choices you make? Isn't that at the heart of roleplaying?

[thelee]

6 hours ago, ElSavant said:

Or maybe, and that may sound mean, People are already excepting an Obsidian Game to run like Ass at release, plan to wait until things have been smoothed out and you know how it is…out of sight, out of mind.

P:K and P:WOTR are exceptionally buggy games. P:K is a lot better these days, like years of patching later, but I'm pretty sure there was widespread expectation about WOTR being buggy as hell. Nothing about Deadfire/PoE even come close to comparing - whether its game mechanics functioning, engine stability, or just general "being able to complete the game." People still bought WOTR in droves. edit: i have a beefy gaming PC, and in the late game of WOTR I cannot get higher than 30 fps and I pretty much have to run in turn-based mode because the stutters are so unbelievable (and even in turn-based mode, an enemy turn will go by where I have literally no idea what happens because the game freezes for like 5 seconds while trying to resolve what happned).

 

edit: also, Obsidian having a reputation for having buggy games did not prevent Outer Worlds from being one of their best-selling projects ever (I believe someone said only F:NV beats it, which was a follow-up to a famous IP).

 

edit 2: not going to deny that Obsidian has a reputation, but this goes back to my main point to underline in any discussion of sales. An explanation has to be consistent with other data points. People bring up bugginess/instability as a deterrent, ok, but then you have to reconcile that with other games, Obsidian or not. If you can't reconcile that, maybe you end up with a better explanation (e.g. Pirate theme is an interesting recurrent theory and in fact I will note that current marketing [e.g. steam hero image, ultimate edition box art] seems to play down the piracy/nautical angle quite a bit).

Edited February 14, 2022 by thelee

[Boeroer]

2 hours ago, thelee said:

edit: also, Obsidian having a reputation for having buggy games did not prevent Outer Worlds from being one of their best-selling projects ever (I believe someone said only F:NV beats it, which was a follow-up to a famous IP).

By the way: Grounded reached 10 million players last week.  

Edited February 14, 2022 by Boeroer

[Boeroer]

It's funny: Grounded was a project which started as a small "well why not?" project of enthusiasts. When Obsidian announced they will have a game with a new IP, everybody was speculating like crazy about new awesome RPGs and whatnot. And then they revealed Grounded... and most gamors(TM) were like "Lool wut? This is stupid!" 

Obsidian today: 

[kanisatha]

19 hours ago, Boeroer said:

By the way: Grounded reached 10 million players last week.  

Way to go, Obsidian!! Not my game, but extremely happy for them.

[Boeroer]

Yeah, same.  

[kanisatha]

The sales numbers for Grounded have had me doing some thinking. It is my understanding that TOW also has done extremely well in sales. So it would appear the sales numbers for PoE2 are a unique outlier for recent Obsidian games. As such perhaps all the theories across multiple threads in this forum alone trying to explain those numbers are all irrelevant. Maybe it was just a case of some idiosyncratic factors (including clearly also a bad marketing strategy) all coming together coincidentally in a 'perfect storm' for PoE2, where there really were no meaningful factors about the game itself driving those lackluster sales figures.

Personally, I feel (very strongly) that Obsidian and Sawyer are having exactly the wrong reaction to those PoE2 sales numbers. If it were me, my reaction would be to be even more passionately motivated to do a third game, if for no other reason than to demonstrate/prove that the low sales of PoE2 were a meaningless aberration, a fluke.

If Obsidian and Sawyer do come to their senses and stop wallowing in PoE2 self-pity, I would have one piece of advise for them. DO NOT try to yet again recreate the rules and mechanics of the game as was done going from PoE1 to PoE2. Just leave those things along. Okay, I suppose it would be fine to tinker with a few things where there is a broad consensus including with the fanbase that some improvements are warranted. But generally, let the rules and mechanics be. Focus all of the game development time and resources and talent on the story, the characters, and the world. Do this, and I am convinced they can have yet another hit in their hands.

[Bosmer]

15 minutes ago, kanisatha said:

If Obsidian and Sawyer do come to their senses and stop wallowing in PoE2 self-pity, I would have one piece of advise for them. DO NOT try to yet again recreate the rules and mechanics of the game as was done going from PoE1 to PoE2. Just leave those things along. Okay, I suppose it would be fine to tinker with a few things where there is a broad consensus including with the fanbase that some improvements are warranted. But generally, let the rules and mechanics be. Focus all of the game development time and resources and talent on the story, the characters, and the world. Do this, and I am convinced they can have yet another hit in their hands.

I share many of your views / hopes. I also hope that, one day, someone (maybe Josh again?) will have the necessary confidence and passion to tackle a PoE3. I really believe it would be a feasible project, and maybe also significantly cheaper, if they concentrate on the core strengths of PoE2. This obviously includes the gameplay mechanics.

In the end, Obsidian seems to have high hopes in PoE's Lore, otherwise they wouldn't put their largest project in this setting. So hopefully, given a succesfull release of Avowed in the next two years, someone at Obsidian might want to tackle another cRPG in Eora and gets the necessary ressources

 

 

[xzar_monty]

24 minutes ago, kanisatha said:

Personally, I feel (very strongly) that Obsidian and Sawyer are having exactly the wrong reaction to those PoE2 sales numbers. If it were me, my reaction would be to be even more passionately motivated to do a third game, if for no other reason than to demonstrate/prove that the low sales of PoE2 were a meaningless aberration, a fluke.

Do you work in the game industry, or something that is very closely comparable to it? If not, then I would say this:

It is quite easy to put forth something along the lines of "If it were me", but life has a funny habit of showing that these claims cannot actually be made. By and large, the only honest answer to the question, "What would you do if you were in person's X position?", is, rather astonishingly, "I don't know". So, unless you have been at least very close to where Obsidian and Sawyer were after the release and aftermath of Deadfire, you don't know. One of the possibilities is, of course, that you'd do precisely as you now think you'd do. But you might also fall into severe depression. You might want to get out of the whole industry. You might want to design a totally different kind of game. You might be quite confused. The choices that people make in these situations reflect their whole life and experience up to that point, they are not just a reaction to a singular, isolated event.

Please note that there is no criticism intended here, and I am not trying to be clever or unkind. It's just that these situations are more complex than they seem.

As for your argument that Deadfire is a very curious outlier: that could indeed be true, and I agree that it does sound like a distinct possibility. The problem with this theory is that I can't see any way to either prove or disprove it to any reasonable degree. But again, I do agree that it does sound like there's something to it.

[Boeroer]

Isometric, RTwP, single-player RPGs for PC only are quite a narrow niche. Narrowing it down even further with a lot of writing (I like), nautic theme (I like), no Kickstarter boost (fig) and bad marketing (never saw an ad for it) surely didn't help.

 I guess in order to have success nowadays you have to break out of that niche in at least one way, be it optional turn based combat or a tactics approach, mutliplayer, 3D-graphics or whatever appeals to a broader target group.

Deadfire is a gem - but it seems it's a well hidden one. 

[kanisatha]

2 hours ago, Boeroer said:

Isometric, RTwP, single-player RPGs for PC only are quite a narrow niche. Narrowing it down even further with a lot of writing (I like), nautic theme (I like), no Kickstarter boost (fig) and bad marketing (never saw an ad for it) surely didn't help.

 I guess in order to have success nowadays you have to break out of that niche in at least one way, be it optional turn based combat or a tactics approach, mutliplayer, 3D-graphics or whatever appeals to a broader target group.

Deadfire is a gem - but it seems it's a well hidden one. 

I agree, and I personally would be okay with some of those changes to the old, classic formula if they would bring in more people, even if I personally don't need or care for those changes. My fundamental philosophy as a person is in support of things that make the widest range of people happy (but without sacrificing core principles). For example, I actually prefer third-person perspective over the isometric perspective. I view high-end graphics as a luxary, but one I would be happy to have. Full voice acting; some form of multiplayer; release of a toolset so people can create mods; all things I can live with even though I don't want any of them myself. And having both RTwP and TB combat is especially fine, so long as they don't cave to pressure to make it only TB.

[Accursedimmortal]

After completing POE 1's complete edition on console and loving it, I couldn't wait to play the sequel. A year later I saw a teaser which showed the sequel as a pirate game. All that desire and yearning disappeared. 

I'm posting this because I just finished deadfire. It's a wonderful game but I know what my issues were which can shed a light to poor sales.

1. Fantasy and pirates are a strange combination. I hated it immediately, and pushed it from my mind. Years later, I wanted to experience POE again through it's sequel irregardless of pirates.

2. Divinity Origin Sin 2 occupied my time on the PS4 when POE 2 was released. In many ways DOS 2 was a superior game to POE 1. Not just in gameplay but the story itself had less world building and therefore less jargon to remember. The technical aspects of short loading times were a godsend.

3. POE 1's ending was very conclusive. So seeing Eothas taking over a statue that destroyed my base felt like overreaching plot. Why not the body of a living giant instead?

 

After purchasing it I picked up and put it down several times.

4. Loading screens every new area including going inside a house. It made playing this game a chore. I'd prefer a single long loading screen with no loading afterwards like Witcher 3.

 

 

 

[Sven_]

Imagine if the movie industry were like this. Imagine if they abandoned ship immediately after the first so-so received project. Imagine they'd never made another Alien after Alien³ -- okay, bad example (even though I went to both Resurrection and Covenant back in their days, and got some enjoyment out of them).  

Personally I also wouldn't mind as much a change of formula. The "kickstarter renaissance" is truly the reason why I've come back to playing RPGs on a larger scale again. As in the never ending quest to reach ever larger audiences, every reasonably sized RPG dev still left on the block seemed to be more occupied in creating action/interactive movie kind of experiences coupled with barebones character progression systems (Bioware et all) and/or open world games with similar (Bethsoft et all). Well okay, and there is/was Germany's Piranha Bytes, still being busy trying to remake Gothic over and over.  

 

However, I've also always held the opinion that the truly next BG won't quite 100% look like it. If a ~25 years old game is your gold standard, you may never surpass it. Deadfire already was a tad less traditional, however in a format in which shipping a hundred thousand copies was considered a success back then already. If that wouldn't have been the case, most of BIS games would have never been made (or even gotten a sequel), as outside of BG1+2, none of these isometric rtwp games were million + sellers.

That's not to say I don't enjoy the isometric party-based rtwp formula. Not at all. Else I wouldn't have bought the new Pathfinder last year. However, if there isn't a similar way to conclude a "Watcher's trilogy" teased by the end of Deadfire: There's likely more ways to keep the spirit of those games intact without necessarily copying that formula down to a T.

Tactical combat doesn't need to be presented isometric.
Nor do branching quests and storylines aiming to somewhat replicate the freedom of a tabletop campaign.
Nor do complex and powerful character systems full of player choice and customization.
Partys have also been done in numerous ways already in formative years.


Take a look at New Vegas -- to me to this day the only AA/A RPG past Troika's demise I've played that actually stays true to the 90s roots, or rather, what studios such as Origin/BIS/ later on Troika et all tried to accomplish. And succeeded in doing so. It's basically oldschool Fallout, just being played from a different perspective (unsure about the Outer Worlds yet, as sources I trust and gameplay I've watched paint is as a game not nearly quite as bright). Unfortunately, despite its strong sales, it's never seen much imitators, let alone Bethesda actually taking lessons from its design (rather, they try to expand their audience even more by now clearly aiming at the FPS crowd also). 

 

Edited February 20, 2022 by Sven_

[xzar_monty]

14 hours ago, Accursedimmortal said:

2. Divinity Origin Sin 2 occupied my time on the PS4 when POE 2 was released. In many ways DOS 2 was a superior game to POE 1.

Here we enter the world of pure subjectivity, and of course there's nothing wrong with that. But just to give a different take on these two games: I thought PoE was superb, and D:OS2 was utter rubbish. It is poorly written, doesn't look good, only has turn-based combat, and so on. It took me all of two hours to toss it aside, and I'm not getting back to it.

[thelee]

On 2/19/2022 at 10:57 AM, Accursedimmortal said:

1. Fantasy and pirates are a strange combination. I hated it immediately, and pushed it from my mind. Years later, I wanted to experience POE again through it's sequel irregardless of pirates.

this is the most reccurrent theory and one that doesn't really have an obvious contradiction, so it's something that seems relatively plausible to me. it's also uniquely a theory that doesn't involve someone having already bought the game. personally i really enjoyed the polynesian/age-of-sail setting, but maybe there was a bit better way to handle it when talking about it to the playerbase than "PIRATES".  i'd be curious to know of the players who put off by their perception of the setting, what they ended up thinking about it after they actually played it (including yourself). did it end up being ok? not nearly as off-putting? or just as off-putting and you played through it despite it? or too distasteful and you gave up? i have a weak hypothesis that for most players who were put off by it, it wasn't nearly as bad as they thought it was going to be, which would say a lot of how important the right messaging/first-impression is.

Edited February 21, 2022 by thelee

[Pseudechis]

I'm definitely of the crowd that loved POE but had no idea that deadfire was even a thing. 

If I'd known I would have backed it from day 1. 

POE was the best iso crpg I've played since the glory days of BG and IWD, a close second is Tyranny. 

Its not just nostalgia either it's genuine enjoyment of iso CRPG party control gameplay. I wish there was more of it but it can be hard to find good ones. I really tried to get into pathfinder kingmaker but its buggy as hell and kinda clunky gameplay. 

People have discussed deadfire sales and POE3 again and again and all sorts of reasons crop up but some I see voiced a lot by players is too much narrative, not enough gameplay, setting wasn't typical fantasy setting. 

I think all these points a terrible because the narrative in POE and POE2 paints a really immersive world one of the best in a long time, the games weren't the longest but had sufficient content to keep you busy both for the side quest story OCD's and the power big fight min maxers.

Lastly the setting was refreshing. Fantasy is always set in the same dark age medievil tolkien-esque eurocentric setting. There is nothing wrong with this setting but its been done to death. Setting a rich fantasy world in the early age of exploration was amazing. It also gives oportunity to explore some really adult themes such as colonialism, resource exploitation, salvery and land title. It may have been set on a ship but you didn't have to be a pirate as many claim, you could be a merchant, an explorer, a raider, the game lent itself to any of these ideas with its faction choices. 

I'm still holging out for a POE3, but then again I've been waiting for KOTOR 3 for years and what we got was a lacklustre MMO so I'm not holding my breath sadly.  

[Cartoons Plural]

I concur with the people that said deadfire didn't really sell to the degree Obsidian expected because many people who bought pillars of eternity 1 didn't really like or even play pillars of eternity 1. its really that simple.

The original pillars came out around the time of a nostalgia wave from people like me who were 90s teens who played too much Baldur's Gate and wanted a grand adventure real time with pause game like those, however when pillars actually came out they found they didn't like this gameplay conceit so much anymore. it was clunky, immersion ruining, awkward, a relic, and so on. turn based is just clearly superior, they said. A shift in taste that is kind of amazing if you gamed at all in the late 90s while diablo and RTS ruled the universe and being able to real time multitask just showed how much more intellectually superior you were but i digress. i have always preferred turn based and currently do a lot of gloomhaven so i'm perfectly aware that turn based can be more thoughtful and fun but criticizing a game pitched and produced to be a successor to infinity engine games for being real time with pause is kind of like complaining that a wes anderson movie would have been better off if it was grim & gritty.

I think a lot of people bought pillars 1 because of critical reviews and high ratings. I know some who never really played it purchased it because of baldur's gate nostalgia and when they fired up the new game they were like ah, yeah, i'm so over this. A lot of people just simply didn't understand the way the game was made because they didn't ever play Baldur's Gate and had no nostalgia for it. they simply just don't want to read too much and think that its 'bad writing' (phrases like wall-of-text or text vomit), they don't want to explore much on their own (complaints of 'pointless' wilderness maps), need quest markers to find things, and so on. Contemporary gamers need games to have simple stories with unambiguous universal morals, quippy dialogue, action packed and full of avatar customization drops and cheevos for them to stay invested. As we all get older and many of us have careers and families to spend time on, under 30s are going to be the main people who buy games and will make your game successful by turning it into an ubiquitous meme, especially games that aren't multi-million dollar, football game ad packaging, casual-oriented pick up and play for 30 mins and put them down again AAA cross-platform titles. So if you're shooting for big sales numbers this is the demographic you have to appeal to. if you're making arty indie games for old people who like to read with modest sales goals, like weather factory does, you'll have more "success" since that's all based on perception anyway.

This reaction was compounded when deadfire came out because the flavor of the month at that time was divinity original sin 2: a straightforward godmode story in which you were practically encouraged to be batman villain evil with quippy dialogue full of jokes and Easter eggs and to top it all off glorious turn based combat. Go browse the negative reviews of Deadfire on steam from the year or two after it was released and you'll see almost every single one of them cross-promotes D:OS2. I think its interesting nobody has really mentioned DOS2 in this thread. I mean its easy to forget its not like people still talk about it, and Larian seems to be stuck in some kind of early access grift loop with the wholly unnecessary Baldur's Gate 3. At the time it seemed like the consensus verdict from the people who were searching for the objective, definitive reason why the game missed sales expectations was that pillars was a throwback to Baldur's Gate and not built like D:OS2. Perhaps this is true, but that's not a flaw with the game, that was the entire pitch for funding development, which I've already said. The grousing about RtWP in particular became so inescapable here on the obsidian boards that the pillars team literally added a turn based mode at the end of the support cycle in an attempt to appease them.

and frankly, this is a recurring issue. I don't necessarily think this is why it didn't meet sales expectations but I want to dig into this, at the risk of being blathersome. i think pillars series shows the pitfalls of sourcing the community for direct involvement in game design. after the first game was released people complained about the pacing and how boring and dreary the setting was so in deadfire they changed it to make it less "edgy" & more open world, like the Baldur's Gates were. And people complained about that instead, that it wasn't as deep and dark as the first game. And those aren't the only changes made from "community feedback" eg complaining from randos: the backer NPCs were stupid and boring (facts), there's too many spells to choose from, can't multiclass, its not 100% voice acted (ugh), there's too many 'walls of text' (double ugh; its called a paragraph) etc and yet when deadfire came out: what happened to the backer npcs, there's not enough spells, multiclassing is not that good, the dialogue is simplified and the story isn't as compelling, the voice acting is uneven, etc. 

the lesson? never make a game based on kickstarter promises and fanbase feedback and wishlisting or you'll be forced to try to please that which is unpleasable. and maybe i'm wrong but thats probably why tyranny performed relatively better, it wasn't saddled with kickstarter promises and backer wishlisting and nostalgia for playing baldur's gate games or pie-in-the-sky sales goals tbh, it was just able to do and be its own thing. it seems like no matter how many changes you make to reflect feedback the negative feedback will flow in against whatever choice you make. its a law of the internet: people who are happy with things don't comment and people who have an axe to grind do. 

furthermore i think the sales rumors and perceptions (this game didn't really sell badly, it didn't totally bomb either, its not lawbreakers) tended to have a negative feedback loop for people buying into the game. People, especially mainline gamers, don't like buying unpopular things, they want to play the game that is trending on twitter, stuff they can either play with friends or talk about with friends. That seems to be the main motivation to buy any game in this stage of the social network economy. Not only is there the rampaging Fortnite gorilla, but recall stuff like the brief fleeting infatuation with fall guys leading into the endless punishment of among us. this game didn't trend on twitter. no amount of marketing can make up for the fact that streamers aren't streaming and posters aren't posting. Honestly, would this game even be fun to watch on a stream? I have a hard time imagining it would be, compared to something like GTA, Fortnite or Elden Ring.

At the time, people on here seemed to believe that the perception of low sales meant definitively that it was a bad game and searched out the objective design reasons why it failed which is extremely faulty reasoning. Stuff that isn't broadly popular is not objectively bad, in fact a lot of times the stuff that is broadly popular has attained that popularity at the expense of depth and uniqueness. This game makes a very direct reference to Deep Space Nine by naming the ship the Defiant. Little history lesson from an old person who was there, that show got ragged on by everybody for being boring and not actually star trek because they weren't exploring. yet over time, thanks probably to streaming facilitating binging serials, DS9 has grown to be regarded as one of the best things under the Star Trek brand and one of the earliest examples of the emerging "prestige television" serial. 

i said at the time deadfire is peter gabriel genesis: full of great steve hackett riffs, bizarre but heady lyrics, big ambitious ideas it sometimes realizes, totally messy and all over the place, it reaches for things that it can't quite grasp but i like that approach and find it more interesting and laudable than phil collins genesis. thats me tho

Its a good game, its not a great game and it seems to have made money so I'm not sure why anyone should worry about its popularity. Many things greater than this game aren't broadly popular either. And like DS9 or the Velvet Underground maybe it will become more appreciated with age.