238 réponses à ce sujet

[Volourn]

"But I do agree that the combat system KOTOR was ''better'' than in DA:O or DA2."

Kiddin'? KOTOR's combat is probably the worst combat BIO has ever done. the best thing you could say about it was the 'light sabres were pretty'. KOTOR is the definition of dumbed down.

[Tommy6860]

RohanD wrote...

Volourn wrote...

Then explain why JE is relativelyn low end sales wise despite its rather impressive 89? Hmm..

JE came out on the XBOX first, which was a second rate console in the industry at the time without a huge market penetration compared to the far superior PS2 and was not known to be an RPG platform.

The Xbox is only second rate becauseit didn't have near as many games. But hardware-wise, the PS2 couldn't hold its jockstrap, and the Xbox also had online gaming well before the PS2 finally got one (though not as good) with its fourth release version.

[Korusus]

imported_beer wrote...

I don't think the person who dubbed this official realizes that he is missing the point but here goes. It is based on profit. DAO which has been in development for 5 years requires more sales to be profitable. DA2 with a significantly short development time requires less.

DA2 potentially requires far less sales to be profitable and could have made profits already for all we know. I don't know how much sales DAO would have needed.

So, quoting those kind of figures are meaningless until you can tell me what the budget for DA2 was. Which from his post, the OP obviously doesn't know.

I believe someone addressed this earlier on (or may have been another thread).  We don't really know how much money was invested in DA2 versus DA:O.  There are factors involved that go beyond development time.  Team size being a major factor. 

DA2 potentially requires far less sales to be profitable is a true statement, but it could also be the absolute opposite which would explain BioWare's insistence on "expanding the audience" despite DA:O (afaik) being their best-selling game...ever.

[VanDraegon]

Ostagar2011 wrote...

That's the whole point - it was supposed to be a CoD.

I dont recall reading that. How about a source?

Modifié par VanDraegon, 29 mars 2011 - 01:00 .

[NvVanity]

VanDraegon wrote...

Ostagar2011 wrote...

That's the whole point - it was supposed to be a CoD.

I dont recall reading that. How about a source?

Bioware wanted the CoD "audience" by that large amount of people playing. Not actual Call of Dragons: Kirkwall Warfare 2.

[Otterwarden]

imported_beer wrote...

I don't think the person who dubbed this official realizes that he is missing the point but here goes. It is based on profit. DAO which has been in development for 5 years requires more sales to be profitable. DA2 with a significantly short development time requires less.

DA2 potentially requires far less sales to be profitable and could have made profits already for all we know. I don't know how much sales DAO would have needed.

So, quoting those kind of figures are meaningless until you can tell me what the budget for DA2 was. Which from his post, the OP obviously doesn't know.

To market anything successfully you need not only to make a profit, but to have said model for making the profit be repeatable.  Even if they make a profit on this they have not demonstrated that it is repeatable given the undeniable backlash that resulted.  If the gameplan was to push out a product, ****** off a bunch of faithful customers, and make a quick profit you will probably be able to call it a success.  Next step?  Who are they going to sell their consolized version of DA3 to?  Metacritic scores for those versions seem no more enthusiastic than the PC.  Viewed from the longer perspective, this gamble to reinvent the wheel was a failure.

[Korusus]

Otterwarden wrote...

imported_beer wrote...

I don't think the person who dubbed this official realizes that he is missing the point but here goes. It is based on profit. DAO which has been in development for 5 years requires more sales to be profitable. DA2 with a significantly short development time requires less.

DA2 potentially requires far less sales to be profitable and could have made profits already for all we know. I don't know how much sales DAO would have needed.

So, quoting those kind of figures are meaningless until you can tell me what the budget for DA2 was. Which from his post, the OP obviously doesn't know.

 Viewed from the longer perspective, this gamble to reinvent the wheel was a failure.

That's my fear for DA2 not selling well or even just selling as well as DA:O.  I think the lesson BioWare will learn is that the market for the cinematic RPG is somewhat capped, and that if they really do want to pursue those higher numbers (in some cases approaching 10 million) that they'll have to do a rebranding of themselves away from the RPG identification (which they still have, even if some don't believe their most recent games are true RPGs).

So instead of doing action RPG hybrids (which have so far proven to only sell as well or worse than pure RPGs), the day may come where they just do pure action cinematic games.  And that will be a very sad day for me.  But perhaps an inevitable one, and a trajectory BioWare's already publically shown interest in pursuing.

Modifié par Korusus, 29 mars 2011 - 01:16 .

[DirewolfX]

http://gamrreview.vg...on-age-origins/
http://gamrreview.vg...on-age-origins/

It's beating Origins on 360 and only a tiny bit behind on PS3. VGChartz doesn't have data for PC DA:O, so no good comparison there, but PC is the smallest market, so I doubt it's as big of an impact as 360, which is more than half of the sales.

This game was never going to get CoD numbers.

[Otterwarden]

Korusus wrote...

So instead of doing action RPG hybrids (which have so far proven to only sell as well or worse than pure RPGs), the day may come where they just do pure action cinematic games.  And that will be a very sad day for me.  But perhaps an inevitable one, and a trajectory BioWare's already publically shown interest in pursuing.

A decision of that nature would be a fundamental remake of their company identity and, if they have already come to that conclusion, they should probably start rebranding themselves in that light.  See nothing wrong with going in a new direction, but it needs to be communicated clearly to its customers.  This awkward transition that they have chosen is creating more ill will than is necessary in my opinion.  I'm sure that their fans would be happy for them if they want to pursue ME2 type projects from now, but this strategy of continually telling your customers that they need to "evolve" is just silly.  The customer doesn't need to do anything unless you are a monopoly, and thankfully they are not yet the sole producers of these products.

[Eber]

randallman wrote...

Sidney wrote...

You could spam potions to the end of time in DAO. Did I miss buying 200 of them and never running out? You are talking about the cooldown time on one spell as a "major" change. Seriously, that's not major.  You do not auto-crit as a rogue, you have to get skills that allow you to exploit those you catch unawares. That's a change, major, not so much. Since DAO already allowed you to Shadow up and attack people I'm not sure changing the look means much - the "teleport" would be the PoV of anyone you stealthed in DAO. Again, that is a visual element not a mechanism.  Speed turned up, sound effects are all the "flash" elements. I was talking about.  What you've done is just what I was tlkaing about, parsing for every little variation.

Of course I'm parsing for every little variation.  The Devil is in the Details so to speak...  Its the 'details' that this game messed up the most.  You didn't HAVE to spam potions in DA:O, you could *gasp* use a healer!  In DA2, using a healer on any difficulty other than normal is really mostly pointless due to the cool down.  It *is* a major change, believe it or not.  Furthermore, backstabbing as a rogue gave you auto-crits in DA:O and in every other PnP RPG it gave at least a large advantage to the critical chance.

Don't be silly every team on every difficulty need a healer. After all heal is needed to get to haste. In all seriousness you seem to be overlooking that potions also have a really long cooldown so if you combine them with heals you get the distinct benefit of being able to heal approximatly twice as much. Using only heals is difficult (because of the cooldowns). Using only potions is difficult (because of the cooldown). Using potions and heals in combination significantly reduces the difficulty of the game. This was not the case in Origins where you could heal about as much as you wanted using only potions.

Attacking from the back does increase your chance to crit according to a loading screen I saw. It said the same applied to enemies and that I should keep my back clear which would explain the "immune to flanking"-property, it presumably counters this increased chance. How big this effect is I don't know. This game fails spectaculary at explaing it's own mechanics, something it has in common with it's predecessor.

Modifié par Eber, 29 mars 2011 - 01:33 .

[Gatt9]

DirewolfX wrote...

http://gamrreview.vg...on-age-origins/
http://gamrreview.vg...on-age-origins/

It's beating Origins on 360 and only a tiny bit behind on PS3. VGChartz doesn't have data for PC DA:O, so no good comparison there, but PC is the smallest market, so I doubt it's as big of an impact as 360, which is more than half of the sales.

This game was never going to get CoD numbers.

1.  VGChartz numbers are demonstrably wrong.  Google "Microsoft announced Mass Effect sells 1.6 million" and check it against VGChartz numbers,  they're off.  If you compare it to other known sales figures for games,  most of them are off.

2.  The PC is an order of magnitude larger than the Xbox and the PS3 combined.  WoW alone has over 10 million subscribers,  and that's just one game,  accounting for nearly half of the total number of 360's ever sold.  Even EA realizes this,  google "EA annouces the PC platform is the future",  that was 2-3 weeks ago.

[Otterwarden]

DirewolfX wrote...

http://gamrreview.vg...on-age-origins/
http://gamrreview.vg...on-age-origins/

It's beating Origins on 360 and only a tiny bit behind on PS3. VGChartz doesn't have data for PC DA:O, so no good comparison there, but PC is the smallest market, so I doubt it's as big of an impact as 360, which is more than half of the sales.

This game was never going to get CoD numbers.

www.huliq.com/10177/huliq-projects-dragon-age-2-sales-figures-will-exceed-45-million

"HULIQ projects sales of Dragon Age 2 will reach 3.25 million in
six months and 4.5 million in twelve months. For comparison purposes,
Wedbush Securities analysts Michael Pachter shared his firm’s
prediction, which is 2.5 million units in the first six months."

Do you see these type of figures coming out of this?  Maybe the Wedbush Securities figure can be reached, but that is not a given.

[Korusus]

Otterwarden wrote...

Korusus wrote...

So instead of doing action RPG hybrids (which have so far proven to only sell as well or worse than pure RPGs), the day may come where they just do pure action cinematic games.  And that will be a very sad day for me.  But perhaps an inevitable one, and a trajectory BioWare's already publically shown interest in pursuing.

A decision of that nature would be a fundamental remake of their company identity and, if they have already come to that conclusion, they should probably start rebranding themselves in that light.  See nothing wrong with going in a new direction, but it needs to be communicated clearly to its customers.  This awkward transition that they have chosen is creating more ill will than is necessary in my opinion.  I'm sure that their fans would be happy for them if they want to pursue ME2 type projects from now, but this strategy of continually telling your customers that they need to "evolve" is just silly.  The customer doesn't need to do anything unless you are a monopoly, and thankfully they are not yet the sole producers of these products.

I agree.  Which is partly why I cringe so badly at Laidlaw's interviews.  On the one hand he sounds like he's in denial.  But even that is forgiveable.  It's the constant trashing of DA:O and the trashing of BG2 that I've seen BioWare devs continually engage in over the years...the very same people that made those games.  Do they realize that many of their fans would love them to make cinematic action games?  But what their fans don't want is to be told that their favorite genre is "old" or "stale" or need "innovation" to avoid "genre death" or that DA2 is the next logical, evolutionary step of what Dragon Age: Origins (and BG2) began.

What I see in BioWare is a company that doesn't want to develop RPGs anymore (in favor of story-driven action games) and yet is unable to break away from their own reputation.  In that case maybe a bomb now and again is premeditated or at least subconsciously desired.  A little "Hey we tried with DA2...see how badly that turned out?  Now we can make the games we want to make and build a new reputation".

But that's just a theory...

[Otterwarden]

imported_beer wrote...

Not really. It depends on your ROI model. Having smaller, but more profitable expansions is a viable way to go if DA2 was profitable irrespective of this so called "backlash" you mention. How does one measure backlash? We only get to see the views of a subset of the gaming universe. That is at best qualitative. If they are calculating their ROI right, they would weight for the projected fall out of the "purist" segment against the potential gains of a more hybridized gamer. For that they need quantitative data. And if they are calculating their ROI right, they are measuring this segment quantitatively.

Not knowing how Bioware segments the market and what their development and marketing budgets are, I can tell you three different ways why this is a mistake, and three different ways why this can actually work for them.  Either way, to deem this a mistake on the basis of a qualitative variable like "backlash" doesn't make sense from a marketing perspective.

You have to guesstimate it.  There is no way to determine with certainty how many of your sales resulted in a dissatified customer.  The potential gains of the hybridized gamer would of shown up already in first week sales as they did in ME2 (an 82% gain in total sales if I'm remembering correctly).  If they can make it work for them that is great, but I saw no similar market expansion in the DA2 figures, so I'm not convinced that the masterplan worked.  Also, I return to the point that a product must be repeatable, and it is evident from all sectors that the company has been called out for pushing out a product under too tight a production schedule. 

Not wishing to enter a drawn out discusion on this, was simply pointing out that using profit a sole measure of marketing success is very short term.

[Sidney]

Korusus wrote.

But what their fans don't want is to be told that their favorite genre is "old" or "stale" or need "innovation" to avoid "genre death" or that DA2 is the next logical, evolutionary step of what Dragon Age: Origins (and BG2) began.

Yeah but so many of those fans are so narrow in what they want.

It started with the whole I can't pick a race things like PST didn't do that.  I have a destiny? No, horrors! Revan, ignoring Revan always ignoring Revan. RPG's won't always be BG2 or son of BG2. They weren't always that 10 years ago, they've haven't been since then and they aren't now. The core of the RPG is interaction and the player character and DA2 does both of those things and with the latter is is light years better than most other games and sure isn't any less than DAO.

I'm a lot more miffed about ME2 in terms of "pure" RPG-ishness than anything DA2 has done. I hate what FO has become with shooter combat and non-skill based lockpicking, hacking and whatnot.  I can see blow back on those and even tough I like both games THAT looks like the future of RPG's and that's much worse than a future of games using DA2 mechanics.

[Otterwarden]

Korusus wrote...

But that's just a theory...

www.swtor.com/news/article/story-star-wars%E2%84%A2-old-republic%E2%84%A2

“BioWare’s vision is to deliver the best story-driven games in the world.”

www.bioware.com/about

BioWare's vision is to Create, Deliver, and Evolve the Most Emotionally Engaging Games in the World”

www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_174/5439-Hippocratic-Game-Design.2

"Our studio's original mission statement was to
deliver the best story-driven games and through that process to engage
the world, to engage all our players emotionally in our games," says
Muzyka. Whether it was the narrative breakthroughs offered by Mass Effect or the ever-present morality systems that originated with Baldur's Gate,
these games are notable for the great lengths to which they go to
emotionally invest the player in the experience. To produce games like
this, deeply affecting pieces of entertainment, requires a vision well
beyond the collective of overgrown adolescents that often characterize
the industry at large. It demands the influence of two individuals who
have had the opportunity to relate to people in a fundamentally personal
way.


Got curious, so I looked up their mission statement.  Don't know if the first one has been superceeded by the second, but I did notice that horrible word evolve in there...lol

[sympathy4saren]

GrandiaRapp wrote...

But regardless we will all still buy Mass Effect 3 and Dragon Age 3 so they won't really care.
Even if Mass Effect 3 is so incredibly bad people will buy it.

Many, but not me. And I LOVE Mass Effect. I'm following this game closely.

[Otterwarden]

imported_beer wrote...

Otterwarden wrote...
You have to guesstimate it.  There is no way to determine with certainty how many of your sales resulted in a dissatified customer.  

You can with 80% projected accuracy if you segment your market properly. You would not do this by absolute sales, or console/pc sales alone, you'd do it by also determining where your copies sold, when you had your biggest spikes and geographical areas of sales. There are demographic databases against which you can plug this to see expansions that you cannot see while measuring absolute sales alone.

I was not postulating that profit is a sole measure either. I was merely stating without actually modeling on the basis of their sales data and marketing budgets both you and I are guessing. All we have is absolute sales data, type of medium for which it was sold and a subjective measure (backlash) that cannot be plugged into any ROI model. To use this to deem DA2 either a success or a failure does not make sense.

Why would where your copies sold determine whether or not you customer felt ripped off?  My point was you either do some market research (added costs) to judge product reception/satisfaction, or you simply guess.  And, any time you piggy back on your customer base to grab at a new market and they feel used, it is not a marketing success in my book.  If you feel differently that is fine.

[randallman]

Volourn wrote...

Kiddin'? KOTOR's combat is probably the worst combat BIO has ever done. the best thing you could say about it was the 'light sabres were pretty'. KOTOR is the definition of dumbed down.

I enjoyed it enough to play it 2x through on dark and 2x through on light over a period of a few years.

imported_beer wrote...

True, but  what if DAO was not that profitable? It could have been their
best selling game but may not have made them as much money as they'd
have liked purely because of the money sunk into it. They'd require more
profitable expansions to make the investment in it worthwhile. 

The
expansions may be a means to leverage the world through more profitable
expansions. It is one of many plausible theories. Not knowing their ROI
means we can come up with them endlessly. I just think it is kind of
unfair to use one number as "official proof".

This makes a great deal of sense, business wise - build a world out as a loss leader and then milk in the profits from sequels in the same world using similar lore with less development expenses.

But unfortunately, gamers aren't the type of people that generally appreciate 'less' the 2nd time through...

Regarding one number being official proof, I tend to agree.  However, the insane amount of negativity surrounding this game tends to sway my opinion to actually believe that this game won't meet sales expectations.  Furthermore, I have somewhat of a personal stake in this game NOT meeting its sales expectations so that they do better next time...

So there you have it.  I, and most likely many others, are actually hoping that this game is a financial failure for our own selfish reasons.

--Randall

[Blood-Lord Thanatos]

I want  Peace in this thread. who's with me?

Modifié par Blood-Lord Thanatos, 29 mars 2011 - 03:12 .