Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous has sold a million copies - A stellar or abysmal performance?

[luj1]

The fact that it was a flop on release is a result of poe1 being shit.

Simple.

Only Soyer is trying to turn it into a mystery. And his dick suckers such as Infinitron, Roguey. There is no mystery. The first game was just shit. The dude fucking made tours to mystify his own failures and milk more attention. He still does on Twitter. Luckily for him there are like 7 people who find PoE lore interesting.

 

[Cross]

My take is that Pillars 2 tanked because of two things:

1) Over-saturation of these kind of games started with Wasteland 2.

Oversaturation of what? We're still talking about the same handful of games years after they released. Even with the so-called cRPG renaissance, there just haven't been that many cRPG releases in any given year for the genre to have become overcrowded.

Both the Pathfinder and Divinity: Original Sin sequels sold more than their predecessors. Deadfire is the outlier here.

 

[Roguey]

It's accurate to say there was more competition and choice in 2018 than there was in 2015, though calling it oversaturation is going too far.

 

[RegionalHobo]

well it must be one of the reasons they are doing a pivot to the warhammer gameplay and the '' third person shooter '' game.

in the end rtwp or even crpgs are quite niche

that said 1 million sales in dollars when you are a studio in eastern europe is pretty great

as a bonus, i know i'm not in the majority about this in the codex, but i liked kingmaker a lot more than wotr. i never liked really high level bullshit in this type of game

on the other hand the forest game is in a really popular genre '' 1/2 week survival game to play with friends ''. i don t know about your friends but mine, that always played something online all those years, are pretty desperate to play pretty much anything.

 

[ropetight]

Just for comparison see how Pillars 2 did.

Deadfire eventually made a profit.

399.3 k .. 958.3 k on reviews
~1.14 M by PlayTracker
~643.5 k by VG Insights
~935.0 k by SteamSpy

Close enough to a million.

Josh did say that Deadfire had 'long legs'. It didn't sell well on release probably because 'pirate setting' and probably because their marketing strategy seems to mostly involve just using Critical Role.

In any case 1 million copies sold on the release months seem to be the golden ticket for these projects. I mean, Owlcat is even considering a third season of DLC if season 2 does well enough. How large are these dev teams even?

My take is that Pillars 2 tanked because of two things:

1) Over-saturation of these kind of games started with Wasteland 2.
2) Ship battles mini game. It almost put me off of the sequel. I prevailed and actually found it ok. But I can imagine numbers that were scared off and didn't buy it at the end.

Oversaturation with Wasteland 2 already? It was first RPG crowdfunding success - it took some time to make, but there was not that many games of its type at the time of release.
But with W2, PoE, Torment Numenera and Larian it started to get saturated by the time of PoE2.

Ship minigame was badly designed and boring, but so was sanctuary in the first.
It is something else.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

I believe that the market size for tactical RPG's is about 4 million players.

Among what populace? Americans? People who speak english? You could go as far as to say there are billions people who play video games. If you want to count only countries worthy of at least getting the game localized, then it's still hundreds of millions of people.
Btw, I can't wait for Africans to catch-up in few decades and start making their own games, hoping for something original out of them.

Educated people from third world countries are euro/anglo-philic, so it's very unlikely they'll stray away from the given path.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Oversaturation? The games just weren't good.

Pillars is about as interesting as a bowl of cold oatmeal. Ditto for NumaNuma. Bard's Tale 4 was also junk. Deadfire was actually an improvement but the damage had been done; too little too late. Wasteland 3 was.. okay I guess? Owlcat games are more railroaded, linear, and forced than a typical JRPG. DivDiv games are good *in spite of* their worldbuilding (lol), characters (lolol), and "story" telling (loooool)

All of these games have the same problem: muh story. They can't just let you make six guys and head off into the dungeon (except, to an extent, Deadfire). Oh no, you gotta listen to the words. BG 1 and 2 had free roam, Fallout 1 and 2, Arcanum, even ToEE let you tackle the dungeon however you wanted. None of these games claiming to be inspired by these classics seem to understand what made them fun.

For some reason no one seems to mix party-based RPGs and sandboxes anymore. Ultima, Magic Candle, Wizardry 7/8-- open world, big party.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

Have you noticed that absolutely no other pseudo-iso party-based RPG released in the last ten years does Larian numbers? Good reason for that.

Magic Larian sauce? Larian cheat codes to the market? Oh! How about that few companies actually release them, and Larian releases them in a playable state, unlike Owlcat?

DA: Inquisition did "Larian numbers". That was in the last 10 years. It was the most successful launch in Bioware history in terms of units sold according to their press release at the time, and sold the same amount of copies in its launch week as Dragon Age 2, which sold over 1 million in less than two weeks.

Meanwhile, Owlcat took 3 years to reach a million copies on Pathfinder: Kingmaker. And the people who bought early got rewarded with a buggy, broken game. Same with Wrath of the Tranny, in terms of its buggy release state.

Gosh, it's almost like they've established a bad reputation by releasing buggy, broken games. What if that's affecting their sales and not their lack of magic Larian sauce?

 

[Tyranicon]

Oversaturation? The games just weren't good.

Pillars is about as interesting as a bowl of cold oatmeal. Ditto for NumaNuma. Bard's Tale 4 was also junk. Deadfire was actually an improvement but the damage had been done; too little too late. Wasteland 3 was.. okay I guess? Owlcat games are more railroaded, linear, and forced than a typical JRPG. DivDiv games are good *in spite of* their worldbuilding (lol), characters (lolol), and "story" telling (loooool)

All of these games have the same problem: muh story. They can't just let you make six guys and head off into the dungeon (except, to an extent, Deadfire). Oh no, you gotta listen to the words. BG 1 and 2 had free roam, Fallout 1 and 2, Arcanum, even ToEE let you tackle the dungeon however you wanted. None of these games claiming to be inspired by these classics seem to understand what made them fun.

For some reason no one seems to mix party-based RPGs and sandboxes anymore. Ultima, Magic Candle, Wizardry 7/8-- open world, big party.

I wish I could fist you twice.

The problem with modern isometric cRPGs is the story is just not memorable in the good ways. I can't bring to mind a single cool moment or character from Pillars, Pathfinder, DoS, etc.

Surprisingly, a few stuck with me from NumaNuma, despite how much that game sucked.

If you want good story, get good writers, not people who are gonna get replaced by ChatGPT in a few months.

If you can't do that, fuck off with the story and just throw some dungeons at the player.

 

[Desiderius]

D:OS I and II, like Dark Souls, have fights that will smoke your ass and make you think/git gud to get past them, like Worm/Ship back-to-back in D:OS II. So did the great games back in the 80s Golden Age.

I think faceroll is underrated factor in sales slacking, and games that respect/aren't afraid to piss off the player do relatively well.

Some of it is rageclicks, but I think for whatever reason like Soyer Kotex underrates how fun it is to simply figure shit out and get better and experience mastery. Lot of gamers lack opportunities for that in rl by no fault of their own.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

Oversaturation? The games just weren't good.

Pillars is about as interesting as a bowl of cold oatmeal. Ditto for NumaNuma. Bard's Tale 4 was also junk. Deadfire was actually an improvement but the damage had been done; too little too late. Wasteland 3 was.. okay I guess? Owlcat games are more railroaded, linear, and forced than a typical JRPG. DivDiv games are good *in spite of* their worldbuilding (lol), characters (lolol), and "story" telling (loooool)

All of these games have the same problem: muh story. They can't just let you make six guys and head off into the dungeon (except, to an extent, Deadfire). Oh no, you gotta listen to the words. BG 1 and 2 had free roam, Fallout 1 and 2, Arcanum, even ToEE let you tackle the dungeon however you wanted. None of these games claiming to be inspired by these classics seem to understand what made them fun.

For some reason no one seems to mix party-based RPGs and sandboxes anymore. Ultima, Magic Candle, Wizardry 7/8-- open world, big party.

BG2 didn't have free roam, in fact it was very linear. However, BG1 and 2 were the ones that kickstarted the need for an overarching story regarding your characters. And fantasy nowadays is all epic all the time or it won't sell. The fact that the audiences' first interaction with a game will most likely be through a stream or let's play changed how content is paced in games.BG 1 and 2 is also seen as the first crpg that injected "life" into companions, in a way that they felt like the actual characters the designers made which is true. This was a conscious effort and decision. People expect "quirky" npcs, romanceable companions... in that regard, Bioware won, and well, they had the best selling games in the genre after all.

You only have to say you're "inspired" by Baldur's Gate to get people to buy your game. That was the only thing that attracted people outside of Obsidian and Black Isle fans to Pillars of Eternity. It's the only thing gaming media would mention too.
All in all, the kickstarter crpg phase was more positive than negative. Inxile fucked up big time imo. Kickstarter is not good for gaming at all, so the fact that they even delivered playable games is already a feat (which goes to show how bad gaming is for Kickstarter campaigns).

But it all ended up being like the Legend of Grimrock case. That game fooled normies into playing a game they hate, but once the novelty wore off, they barely made a fraction of what the first one earned.

I enjoyed those games, more or less, but I find it hard to go back to them. The 10s were a weird era, but certainly better than the mid to late 00s.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

BG2 didn't have free roam

Chapter 2-3, and the post-underdark section before the finale, are totally open. The player can head to the next section of the game with 2-8 level difference depending on how much they explore, plus a huge variety of equipment, general questing, strongholds, etc. Compare that to either Owlcat game or Divinity OS titles, where the player is always on a strict level and equipment tract for the whole game. They're a lot more like the Icewind Dale games, which were niche even in the Infinity engine days.

fantasy nowadays is all epic all the time or it won't sell.

Yet, it still doesn't sell.

https://writingcooperative.com/half...-books-sell-fewer-than-12-copies-a8b0e0f9f04c

BG1 and 2 were the ones that kickstarted the need for an overarching story regarding your characters

BG 1 was Saerevok's story, BG 2 was Irenicus's story. KotoR and NWN were also all about their villains. The focus of later Bioware games wasn't story or characters, it was cinematic presentation. I've gone over this at length elsewhere, but Bioware games are all about tricking you into feeling like you're in a cool movie. Mass Effect was just Star Trek. The characters, lore, "bridge crew", and technobabble are there because that's what you expect to see in a Trek type show. If you got super interested in the ecology of the Krogans, the game failed. That stuff is just there because Captain Picard would have loved it.

Top-down isometric games are obviously bad at this type of storytelling. That's going to be a sad lesson for Larian with BG3. It's true that people like fun characters but it's a mistake to see that as a draw. No one bought Dragon Age 3 saying "Man I hope this game has a lesbian elf with a face that looks like cottage cheese." More like, if I have to use pre-made characters, make them interesting. Owlcat fucked this up by making nearly every character in their game rotten and horrible. Romance is a red herring, men want harems. If a game features a ton of hot babes who you can choose from, great. Witcher 1 ftw. The female characters in BG 2 were gorgeous, not the slags we see in modern games.

This all goes back to Roxor's essay on RPG writing. More words =/= better. Modern games try to bury players under a mountain of garbage. There's a thing in the writing world called Beta reading. Everyone playtests their gameplay, but seemingly no one playtests their story.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

BG2 didn't have free roam, in fact it was very linear.

It didn't have interconnected areas that could be walked to, but all sidequests were non-linear.

BG1 had relatively the same design, in that some areas were gated by story content, but the rest could be explored freely. Couldn't find the bandit camp until you did Nashkel. The Cloakwood until you did the bandit camp etc.

Only linear part of BG2 was the asylum and underdark arcs, both of which had explorable areas tied to them, multiple ways to enter and multiple resolutions/ways to leave. After that, everything could still be explored at the player's leisure.

The main flaw was the story that pushed the player to not take their time doing side quests.

 

[lukaszek]

rpgs got too big budget compared to market size and expectations.

And its not just about aaa/aa studios. Look at colonoscopy ship. When was it announced... 2016? Dunno whats iron tower team size but I do consider scope to be too big considering how much time they spend.
Vault Dweller dont you sometimes have those thoughts before falling asleep that smaller games would fit better?

What would be largest rpg studio these days. Larian? From what I can see they will release bg3 4 years after announcing it for the first time. Looking at various dev times in past years, it gotta be some record?

 

[Vault Dweller]

Vault Dweller dont you sometimes have those thoughts before falling asleep that smaller games would fit better?

Smaller games don't sell.

 

[Grauken]

Of course you can do pirates wtih their historical context, but trying to do it without the historical context the setting cannot stand on its own legs.

The most successful manga of all time is One Piece, in a fantasy world where pirates rule the sea and it has no connections to our world or history. The series and assorted mechandise has sold roughly $20.5 billion

Citation

 

[Grauken]

Vault Dweller dont you sometimes have those thoughts before falling asleep that smaller games would fit better?

Smaller games don't sell.

Who wants to play a tiny cRPG that's finished after 10 hours, that's barely the prologue

 

[Delterius]

Of course you can do pirates wtih their historical context, but trying to do it without the historical context the setting cannot stand on its own legs.

The most successful manga

now apply that to the actual rpg market and the audience's preferences and you'll see there's a clear slant for wizards in castles games

you *can* sell non standard settings. but there's a reason planescape, arcanum, bloodlines, and so much else become cult classics while wrath and bg3 become mainstream gotys in the genre. it's not that the bar is lowered for 'medieval fantasy'. it's that any game set there has 80+ years of marketing built into our culture, from robin hood to lotr to D&D and beyond.

'what about pirates of the caribbean'. did you know there were five of those? i sure didn't. i only watched the three good ones. one film series with a half life of a fried egg does not add up to centuries' worth of generations dreaming of being knights and princesses. deadfire's marketing was simply not up to snuff.

 

[Grauken]

you *can* sell non standard settings. but there's a reason planescape, arcanum, bloodlines, and so much else become cult classics while wrath and bg3 become mainstream gotys in the genre. it's not that the bar is lowered for 'medieval fantasy'. it's that any game set there has 80 years of marketing built into our culture, from lotr to D&D and beyond

Before the MCU movies, nobody thought superheroes would dominate cinema as much as they do today. These cultural shifts happen in waves and eventually, they die. There was a time when fantasy was tiny (as a Tolkien-derived setting) and it can go that way again. There was a time when pirates were massively bigger than fantasy, just that was long before modern computer games. Nobody really can predict those shifts in the long run.

That said, my point was really that Jarmaro's argument that you can only do pirates successfully with their historical context is utterly retarded

 

[Delterius]

Before the MCU movies, nobody thought superheroes would dominate cinema as much as they do today. These cultural shifts happen in waves and eventually, they die. There was a time when fantasy was tiny (as a Tolkien-derived setting) and it can go that way again. There was a time when pirates were massively bigger than fantasy, just that was long before modern computer games. Nobody really can predict those shifts in the long run.

That's an interesting point. We've lived under the supremacy of sword and sorcery since before I remember and I can't see its end. Maybe we are on the tail end of that zeitgeist, maybe we're half of the way through. Who knows, perhaps in 50 years people will only be interested sci fi. Or it could be that sword and sorcery itself will change - if I grew up in a world battered with climate collapse I might just put a focus on low fantasy and more arcadian settings and worlds as my own escape.

That said I think that if Deadfire's marketing was any good then it could have been the game where three empires and a bunch of pirates clashed over supremacy in fantasy Indonesia. It would be like Morrowind's 'weirdo mystic vietnam', only it's a tropical paradise with ancient ruins rather than an ashy miseryland. There are many different inspirations you can draw from when selling the side stories told in Deadfire. From exploring pyramids to pimping out your own ship. But they settled for just having critical role do the voices. It's ridiculous.

 

[lukaszek]

'what about pirates of the caribbean'. did you know there were five of those? i sure didn't. i only watched the three good ones

there are 4 more? tell me which 3

 

[Delterius]

'what about pirates of the caribbean'. did you know there were five of those? i sure didn't. i only watched the three good ones

there are 4 more? tell me which 3

i can't the codex has to be a family friendly outlet due to the australian broadcasting act of 1966

 

[Roguey]

Who wants to play a tiny cRPG that's finished after 10 hours, that's barely the prologue

I do, preferably an extremely reactive one.

 

[lukaszek]

Who wants to play a tiny cRPG that's finished after 10 hours, that's barely the prologue

I do, preferably an extremely reactive one.

once can dream for such with roman-alien-post apo setting

 

[Desiderius]

nobody thought superheroes would dominate cinema as much as they do today

Superhero movies have been big for a long time. They're dominant because all the other genres collapsed due to the people who used to go to them locking themselves in their coof convents/getting tired of wokel product placement.

"Medieval fantasy" is so resilient because Tolkien designed his saga to be the (missing) touchstone of Anglo-Saxon culture.