Idea for Multiplayer/co-op

[tajerio]

Well, let's look at the sales numbers:

 

" As of 2006, total sales for all releases in the [baldur's Gate] series was almost five million copies"

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baldur's_Gate

 

"Planescape: Torment received widespread critical acclaim upon its release,^[50] but only made a small profit."

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planescape:_Torment

 

Icewind Dale 1 and 2 also both sold very well and spent a lot of time a the top of PC game sales.  Planescape?  Didn't sell.  Even Fallout, one of the greatest games in PC history, was a niche game that didn't sell anything like the Infinity engine games.  Fallout 2 sold an awful 200,000 copies.  

 

Bottom line, BG almost single-handedly saved the PC gaming industry.  And it was on the backs of D&D fans, many of them playing multiplayer on their LAN's or via direct IP connect.  The devs had no way of gauging how popular this was.  They downplay it because they don't want to code it.  

 

So what's being made here is another Planescape, at very best, and no successor to the BG series.  It may be a good game.  But very few people will ever play it.  You'd be lucky to get to the 200k units threshold.  

 

Those sales figures are accurate, yes.  I'd venture to guess, though, that the principal reasons BG did better than Planescape were, in no particular order: the much more familiar setting of the Forgotten Realms, the superior combat, and the more standard fantasy main plot.  I'd be hard pressed to agree that multiplayer was a huge component of its success.

 

Also, it never ceases to amaze me how one difference between PoE and the BG series leads people to the conclusion that PoE can't be a successor to it.

[Amentep]

No romances or multiplayer in PoE..........

 

Multiplayer romances for PoE2!

I'd like to keep my multiplayer romances in real life.

 

[ADorothy]

My point is this:  add cooperative play Obsidian!  Make a new kickstarter to do it, if you can't fund your own business.  Or how about just going with the proven successful formula and open up your game to the maximum audience?  When you make a good multiplayer game, you sell many copies, not just one.  And you get legions of sales reps for your games out there telling their friends to buy it.  With as many friends spread out across the world, and the ability of the internet to form communities, it's the perfect time in gaming to rekindle the classic cooperative multiplayer experience.

 

Until then, I'll be buying many many copies of BGEE and BG2EE, because it's still more fun to kill goblins with my friends than by myself.

[Amentep]

I think you're missing the fact that the Kickstarter was pitched as a single player game, therefore its maximum audience is those who want a single player game like that being offered.

 

While the audience that enjoys co-op play may overlap with the audience who wants a single player game like that being offered, by no means the person who primarily plays with their friends the audience for the game.