PE: cRPG gamechanger? Or no? Random musings...

[Regenshire]

Don't forget that the game already has sold just shy of 75k copies, 18 months before it's even due to come out. That's a huge success right there, in my books. And for my part at least, I can tell you that if my boxed copy hadn't had a digital download included, there would've been another copy purchased by my buddy, meaning actual demand at this early stage is higher than even the backer numbers imply.

 

I am curious how Kickstarter campaigns will be registered for sales figures purposes for this and other games. Its not a pre-sale after all, its funding with a reward if the project is a success. That might seem like semantics, and maybe it is, since the end result is very similar, but they are very different vehicles since you aren't actually purchasing something but are instead of funding a project that happens to have a reward scheme once it is completed.

[eselle28]

I don't think it's likely to change the way that multimillion-dollar AAA titles are designed. A lot of PE's design decisions - starting with basic ones like not including multiplayer/coop and not doing a console port - are just not on the same page as what major publishers are doing, and I think it would need to sell exceedingly well for them to look to it for cues.

 

 

I do think that it might be part of a vanguard of medium-budget games catering to audiences who aren't completely satisfied titles created by big publishers, but who also want a little more polish than can be found in many low-budget Steam downloadables.

[Katrar]

I think it is entirely possible that OE will come up with a very good system that people generally understand to be superior to the hand holding of modern RPG's, but that it will not be adopted - at all - by publisher driven developers, who will consider PE to be a one-off "successful old school RPG in spite of the old school part".

 

They will be wrong, of course, but my prediction is that very few of the groundbreaking decisions made by Obsidian during the course of this game's development will be picked up by the rest of the game development ecosystem for various and sundry reasons.

[Gatt9]

So far, PE is offering some interesting and exciting changes to accepted rpg mechanics. Here are two I find interesting.

 

1. Hitpoints are now a two tiered system: stamina and health. This attempts to offer the benefits of regenerating health in stemming rest based save scumming while attempting to maintain a system that allows for attrition. Curative spells are largely gone as well.

 

2. Spells are now based on a mix of regenerating spell point system with higher level spells requiring rest to regain. In other words, all wizards are sorcerors who regen spell points on the mid and low level spells while still having to rest for the "big guns." Spell "sets" can be swapped at a cooldown cost.

 

What I see here is an attempt to take the benefits of more modern systems and marry them to the virtues of older implementations of said systems. Frankly, I love this. Sure, how rest is handled in this game is very important to the viability of all this. Still, this is exciting stuff.

 

When Avellone was interviewed by RPS, the interviewer seemed overly negative. To RPS, PE seemed to be simply a return to simpler times and nothing but a child of nostalgia.

 

When I look at changes like those above, however, I see something different. PE has the potential to move the genre forward in some significant ways. It can maintain deep, strategic gameplay while also minimizing tedium and annoyance. Can a rpg maintain the importance of rest and attrition while avoiding abuse of the rest or save/load? Can one keep the strategic planning of 2e dnd while avoiding the constance hassle of constantly memming/resting for a series of spells to take down necessary spell protections/etc? Few mainstream games ask these questions because the answers do not matter to their bottom line.

 

I was once told its not what you do but why you do it. I think there is truth in this. The PE team is not trying to hit a metacritic score. They are not trying to hit an ESRB rating. They are not trying to ensure they land on Walmart shelves. They are trying to make a great rpg for US. I think that vision will be evident in the final product.

 

I also think they may well impact the industry as a whole. How awesome would that be?

 

Maybe that is why I (we?) donated to this thing. What do you guys think? Will PE change how other cRPGs are made in the future? Or is this the last hoorah for real party based cRPGs?

 

PE won't change how other games are made.

 

You have to remember, these changes are not occuring because they make for a better game. They're occuring because some players might click the "Rest" button after every battle and then complain because they clicked it too much.

 

That's not a good reason to change mechanics.

 

Further, one could easily argue that these are derivatives of Console game's health regeneration and cooldowns, so PE can't really change anything by using a system that's commonly used already (And disliked by a significant number of people).

[Piccolo]

As others have said, I don't think they're trying to be innovative with Project Eternity. I think the main objective is to create a "best of" Infinity Engine game, with a few other features and improvements taken from other cRPGs.

 

I certainly hope that it has a big impact on RPGs in general though. More than anything, it should show that there's still a big audience for cRPGs, and that a lot of gamers are generally fed up with common trends seen in newer RPGs, like excessive streamlining, hand-holding, fully voiced dialogue, graphics over content, consolization, etc.

Edited October 17, 2012 by Piccolo

[el pinko grande]

If this game puts up huge sales numbers, sure, things will change. And I think it's possible that it will sell quite well, though I don't think it will put up the kind of numbers that will make the big publishers change their business model. What it might do is encourage other companies to enter the mid- to low-budget PC RPG market, which I think would be great.

[Infinitron]

You'll know the game has changed if you see a company developing multiple medium-sized projects simultaneously - sort of like Sierra On-Line's business model in the late 80's and early 90's.

 

Feargus said:

this kind of project is just not one that fits in the traditional model. The big publishers are built around making games that cost millions of dollars to make, millions of dollars to promote and market and millions more to build the units that get shipped to stores. Their organizations are built around that model. To make the same amount of revenue on games like Project Eternity, they would have to ship hundreds of games a year instead of ten or twenty. They are just not built that way.

Edited October 17, 2012 by Infinitron

[AGX-17]

CRPGs have been dead as a genre since the early 2000s if you don't count Dragon Age (and you shouldn't as of DA2.)

[descalabro]

well. Let's see how well the game mechanics will work once the game is completed. I think only then we may or may not guess future cRPGs will have some of those changes applied.

 

In what concerns the effect of Kickstarter on future games, I have no doubt that this is going to continue bringing big changes, not only RPG-wise but for games in general.

Edited October 17, 2012 by descalabro

[Plasma Jesus]

It's way too early to tell, but the potential is certainly there, most likely it will change "true RPGs" and we should see some more old style RPGs in addition to the Mass Effects and Skyrims...which would be fantastic if you ask me.

[Karkarov]

My cautiously optimistic hope is that the game is an instant classic, sells something like 1.5 million units and makes Obsidian flush enough with cash that they can self-publish like Blizzard does from here on out.

 

Uh Blizzard does not "self publish". They are owned by Activision, the largest video game publisher in the world. Blizzard makes the game, the people who own them publish it.

 

Also again, talking sales at this point is an exercise in futility. There is no way to tell how well the game will sell at this point. You also have to account for Kickstarter. After all, at least 70k+ of the games sales were all from this KS funding. Even if it does 500k copies in the end it will actually only equate to around 400-420k.

 

Either way the game and Obsidian don't need to concern themselves with redefining the genre. They just need to focus on making the best game they can so that when it does launch it has the highest possible chance to be a profitable venture capable of helping them fund their next game.

[PsychoBlonde]

 

Maybe that is why I (we?) donated to this thing. What do you guys think? Will PE change how other cRPGs are made in the future? Or is this the last hoorah for real party based cRPGs?

 

We're gonna have to wait to see how well it sells before we can really start hypothesizing on this stuff. If it does reasonably well, though, I expect we'll start seeing more games that try to mix up the old "standard" mechanics in new and interesting ways.