667 réponses à ce sujet

[Yrkoon]

Cyberfrog81 wrote...

Yrkoon wrote...

If I was in his shoes I wouldn't be in that position to begin with. The last thing I'd *ever* do is alienate the core by making such genre-warping changes to the most  financially successful title of my company's history.  Which is what he did, and did proudly, with DA2.

Seem reality-warping to call anything in DA2 genre-warping, but maybe that's just me. Or maybe it's a topic for another thread.

The last two.

And second, I'd come on here and promise improvements/corrections on even the MINOR flaws in my game. That's  just basic Professionalism  101.  You will ALWAYS come out ahead when you own up to your mistakes instead of denying their existance.

Not in this place. He'd just add fuel to the fire.

Perhaps.    But we don't know that for sure.   I for one, would stop my b**ching campaign instantly  if I knew  that someone who matters was actually acknowledging my  (member of the core fanbase) existance  on these forums.  David Gaider has come on here  on another thread   less than a week ago to discuss the Dialogue wheel.  He listened and responded to just about everyone who had suggestions on how to improve it.   (didn't promise  anything,  but he did listen, he did respond, and he did let us all know that it WAS a discussion worthy of his attention.  And that's why I don't complain about the Dialogue wheel anymore)    Why can't Laidlaw come on and do the same with the gameplay design?  hmm?  in fact, why hasn't Laidlaw come on here AT ALL  since the game came out?

Modifié par Yrkoon, 24 avril 2011 - 10:53 .

[Cybermortis]

Yrkoon wrote...
 Why can't Laidlaw come on and do the same with the gameplay design?  hmm?  in fact, why hasn't Laidlaw come on here AT ALL  since the game came out?

Well, lets see. 

I pointed out in another thread that the decision to make ME2 available for free download if you had DA2 might have had nothing to do with DA2's poor sales. I noted that the decision to do the above could easilly have been taken long before DA2 was released in the hope that it would get people into the Mass Effect series, and therefore increase the number of potential buyers for ME3 later in the year.

Within 10 minutes two posters accused me of being either a 'biosheep' who blindly defended the game, or someone working for Bioware. Neither is remotely correct.


Now imagine if I was one of the Developers of DA2 and known to be one. What kind of response would my comments have got then?

[Kimberly Shaw]

Weak 6 sales are in (cwutididthar?)

Edit: Nevermind I see someone beat me to that knowledge 2 days ago. The main thread should be updated!

Anyway, the game's sales are what we should expect.  I'm surprised the ps3 sales are stable.

Modifié par Kimberly Shaw, 24 avril 2011 - 02:08 .

[Sabriana]

Kimberly Shaw wrote...

Weak 6 sales are in (cwutididthar?)

Edit: Nevermind I see someone beat me to that knowledge 2 days ago. The main thread should be updated!

Anyway, the game's sales are what we should expect.  I'm surprised the ps3 sales are stable.

ME 2 was ported to PS3 only a short while ago, at least that's what I heard and read. So for those owners, ME 2 is more or less a 'newish' game.

Could there be a connection? Maybe yes, maybe not. But it's something to ponder.

[In Exile]

Rather than what Bioware will change for DA3, I think a better question is whether or not there be a DA3. EA doesn't seem to want 5-year development cycles (a Bioware dev mentioned that much, much earlier in DA's development) and if DA2 really is unprofitable and irredeemable for EA, it would make more sense for them to canibalize the DA2 team into other projects.

[Ghostwize]

So making around 70 million dollars in sales is a bad thing I suppose. Yeah, Bioware sure is in trouble with this one........

[KingDan97]

Here's why Dragon Age 2's sales were really bad:
-Random player X sees advertisement
-Thinks "I liked Oblivion, that was an RPG right?"
-Drops 60$ on game
-Gets bored an hour in
-Repeat for 1mil+ consumers
-See Dragon Age 2 commercial
-"Well the first one sucked"
-Change channel till commercials are over

Honestly, we already knew that was something Bioware was looking into. They have the internal data of just how many players finished their games and where they stopped. They KNEW how players treated Origins and there are a lot of players that don't like being lied to with the trailer game dissonance. They certainly know more about their games than a site that puts out "estimates" based on small retail grouping, because not every area of the country/world will buy games the same way. And since they retroactively change their "estimates" to fit with the NPD all of the current DA2 estimates are about as valid as an industry "analyst".

I'm not saying word of mouth wasn't part of it, but it was a very different part. A lot of people would've bought Dragon Age Origins out of faith built on Mass Effect, KOTOR or any of the other "lite" RPGs Bioware has put out. They would get bored in the face of Dragon Age and it's long tutorial and quit than look at Dragon Age 2 and think of the game they quit an hour in.

And the OP really has no basic idea how the heck a preorder works apparently, since as with a lot of posts I see here, it seems that the general perception is that it's somehow a binding contract. You can cancel at any time, this is not a mystery, it's a fact. If I decide I don't want it on launch day I can walk into Gamestop and cancel my order. If I decide I don't want it and I've bought through the internet than they couldn't charge my account till it shipped anyway so I can cancel my order.

You all claim to be voting with your dollars but wouldn't it be better to cancel as troubling news comes in so that Bioware/EA actually see in hard numbers the ammount of people who didn't like the changes they made as the news flowed? That gives them hard quantifiable proof that as news came out there were those who didn't support the changes.

[erynnar]

LostScout wrote...

Bioware does not know when people stopped playing the game. They know when people stopped allowing feedback to be uploaded. This is a huge difference, and it is at the heart of the mess that is DA2. The fact that Origins sales continued at a stable rate which was much higher than DA2's rate is a good clue that there weren't large numbers of people who were unhappy with DAO and badmouthed it to their friends. DA2's initial high sales were due to people who liked Origins and purchased it sight unseen. Then the word of mouth got out and sales took a nose-dive. Bioware designed DA2 to appeal to people who didn't like DAO and gave up on many of the people who did, but they have failed to find that market sweet spot that they were looking for.

This^ And if people really weren't playing DAO and advising friends from buying it, then the pretty colored graph wouldn't look the way it does.  That we saw people not playing past Ostagar so we totally revamped the game thing is horse****. Were there people who quit? Sure, but they weren't in the majority.

And I for one played on my husband's account because I stole DA from him.  I didn't always log on ( I would forget his password and he would be gone so I couldn't ask him).  Basing your next game on whether people bothered to log on or not would be the height of stupidity. Do I think they really did...with the way DA2 turned out...maybe they did. Or maybe the listened too much to marketing monkies who told them that the millions of people on FB playing Farmville was the audience they should go for. Or a combo.

Whatever it was, they should go back to DAO, and start from there.

[Sabriana]

erynnar wrote...

LostScout wrote...

Bioware does not know when people stopped playing the game. They know when people stopped allowing feedback to be uploaded. This is a huge difference, and it is at the heart of the mess that is DA2. The fact that Origins sales continued at a stable rate which was much higher than DA2's rate is a good clue that there weren't large numbers of people who were unhappy with DAO and badmouthed it to their friends. DA2's initial high sales were due to people who liked Origins and purchased it sight unseen. Then the word of mouth got out and sales took a nose-dive. Bioware designed DA2 to appeal to people who didn't like DAO and gave up on many of the people who did, but they have failed to find that market sweet spot that they were looking for.

This^ And if people really weren't playing DAO and advising friends from buying it, then the pretty colored graph wouldn't look the way it does.  That we saw people not playing past Ostagar so we totally revamped the game thing is horse****. Were there people who quit? Sure, but they weren't in the majority.

And I for one played on my husband's account because I stole DA from him.  I didn't always log on ( I would forget his password and he would be gone so I couldn't ask him).  Basing your next game on whether people bothered to log on or not would be the height of stupidity. Do I think they really did...with the way DA2 turned out...maybe they did. Or maybe the listened too much to marketing monkies who told them that the millions of people on FB playing Farmville was the audience they should go for. Or a combo.

Whatever it was, they should go back to DAO, and start from there.

I agree. I almost never logged on when playing DA:O. I don't like it when my game 'phones home'. I don't want any corporation to snoop around my system. No! Thank! You!

I logged in only to upload images. What would they see if I *did* let them snoop? Well, they wouldn't see the 10 + finished games (me and kids combined), because I always take finished games out of the save-folder and keep them on a portable drive.

They would see all Origins times 3 (me, 2 kids), that never got anywhere, because we were simply curious about how each origin feels when played.

They would see about 9 + games in various stages of progress. Yes, I still play it. But I play several simultaneously, and my play-time is limited. My kids behave the same way (apple and tree stuff, ya know). So yes, looking at my feedback, they'd see a lot of unfinished games.

However, what they would completely fail to notice is that all those games are "Games in Progress". They would also not know that all the Origins to Ostagar games were simply not finished because we *set out* to not finish them, at least not right away. But we still wanted to see all of the Origins.

The "we checked it, and all those millions of people didn't like the game" excuse is nothing more than poorly done research with very questionable research tools.

The conclusions drawn from faulty and inadequate research (if they even did any kind of proper research) were therefor full of errors, and if they didn't see that, then I feel very sorry for their research department. Because they seem to be clueless on how to actually perform research that gives significant statistics.

[erynnar]

Sabriana wrote...

erynnar wrote...

LostScout wrote...

Bioware does not know when people stopped playing the game. They know when people stopped allowing feedback to be uploaded. This is a huge difference, and it is at the heart of the mess that is DA2. The fact that Origins sales continued at a stable rate which was much higher than DA2's rate is a good clue that there weren't large numbers of people who were unhappy with DAO and badmouthed it to their friends. DA2's initial high sales were due to people who liked Origins and purchased it sight unseen. Then the word of mouth got out and sales took a nose-dive. Bioware designed DA2 to appeal to people who didn't like DAO and gave up on many of the people who did, but they have failed to find that market sweet spot that they were looking for.

This^ And if people really weren't playing DAO and advising friends from buying it, then the pretty colored graph wouldn't look the way it does.  That we saw people not playing past Ostagar so we totally revamped the game thing is horse****. Were there people who quit? Sure, but they weren't in the majority.

And I for one played on my husband's account because I stole DA from him.  I didn't always log on ( I would forget his password and he would be gone so I couldn't ask him).  Basing your next game on whether people bothered to log on or not would be the height of stupidity. Do I think they really did...with the way DA2 turned out...maybe they did. Or maybe the listened too much to marketing monkies who told them that the millions of people on FB playing Farmville was the audience they should go for. Or a combo.

Whatever it was, they should go back to DAO, and start from there.

I agree. I almost never logged on when playing DA:O. I don't like it when my game 'phones home'. I don't want any corporation to snoop around my system. No! Thank! You!

I logged in only to upload images. What would they see if I *did* let them snoop? Well, they wouldn't see the 10 + finished games (me and kids combined), because I always take finished games out of the save-folder and keep them on a portable drive.

They would see all Origins times 3 (me, 2 kids), that never got anywhere, because we were simply curious about how each origin feels when played.

They would see about 9 + games in various stages of progress. Yes, I still play it. But I play several simultaneously, and my play-time is limited. My kids behave the same way (apple and tree stuff, ya know). So yes, looking at my feedback, they'd see a lot of unfinished games.

However, what they would completely fail to notice is that all those games are "Games in Progress". They would also not know that all the Origins to Ostagar games were simply not finished because we *set out* to not finish them, at least not right away. But we still wanted to see all of the Origins.

The "we checked it, and all those millions of people didn't like the game" excuse is nothing more than poorly done research with very questionable research tools.

The conclusions drawn from faulty and inadequate research (if they even did any kind of proper research) were therefor full of errors, and if they didn't see that, then I feel very sorry for their research department. Because they seem to be clueless on how to actually perform research that gives significant statistics.

I would like a customer survey. Which seems to me one of the ways to get info. Would some people ignore it? Forget? Not bother? Sure. But I for one would fill it out. I would love for them to ask questions comparing DAO and DA2.

[ejoslin]

LostScout wrote...

Bioware does not know when people stopped playing the game. They know when people stopped allowing feedback to be uploaded. This is a huge difference, and it is at the heart of the mess that is DA2. The fact that Origins sales continued at a stable rate which was much higher than DA2's rate is a good clue that there weren't large numbers of people who were unhappy with DAO and badmouthed it to their friends. DA2's initial high sales were due to people who liked Origins and purchased it sight unseen. Then the word of mouth got out and sales took a nose-dive. Bioware designed DA2 to appeal to people who didn't like DAO and gave up on many of the people who did, but they have failed to find that market sweet spot that they were looking for.

I've pointed this out before, but, depending on how they're gathering their numbers, people not making it past Ostegar means NOTHING, especially if they're not tracking it individually.

Say you have someone who played through the game three times, but played all the origins.  There you go -- half of the playthroughs never made it past Ostegar.  I'd still say that person enjoyed the game.

It is very easy to make numbers say what you want them to say.  As the saying goes, there's lies, damn lies, and statistics.  And most people don't know enough to properly read statistics as it is (this really is a highly specialized field).

Modifié par ejoslin, 24 avril 2011 - 04:58 .

[Sabriana]

I would too, Erynnar. All they had to do was ask, and I would have gladly provided them with honest and constructive feedback.

[Cyberfrog81]

ejoslin wrote...

I've pointed this out before, but, depending on how they're gathering their numbers, people not making it past Ostegar means NOTHING, especially if they're not tracking it individually.

Haven't they've confirmed that they are? A high number of people apparently quit before getting very far with their first and only character. How reliable/valuable that information is is still debatable, of course.

For the record, I also think DAO is the superior game. But I didn't fall in love with it, and it certainly isn't superior in every way. I think DA2 is underrated; better than it's generally given credit for. But since we're on the topic of sales, no, I don't think it deserves to sell better than DAO did.

It is Dragon Age though (even ignoring lore, I play it pretty much exactly like I played Origins, constantly pausing, setting companion tactics so I can mostly control my own character), and it is an RPG. Just not a better one than Origins.

That doesn't mean the solution is going back to "Origins style", trying to clone their previous success. While that would make some people happy, it's not the way for BioWare to remain the widely respected giant in the world of RPGs. They need to look at feedback for all their games, learn from it, and hopefully deliver better products. They're already doing this, but DA2 still falls short of expectations... which brings us back to resources and DA2 not getting what it would have needed to be recognized as a high quality title.

Modifié par Cyberfrog81, 24 avril 2011 - 05:18 .

[ejoslin]

Cyberfrog81 wrote...

ejoslin wrote...

I've pointed this out before, but, depending on how they're gathering their numbers, people not making it past Ostegar means NOTHING, especially if they're not tracking it individually.

Haven't they've confirmed that they are? A high number of people apparently quit before getting very far with their first and only character. How reliable/valuable that information is is still debatable, of course.

For the record, I also think DAO is the superior game. But I didn't fall in love with it, and it certainly isn't superior in every way. I think DA2 is underrated; better than it's generally given credit for. But since we're on the topic of sales, no, I don't think it deserves to sell better than DAO did.

It is Dragon Age though (even ignoring lore, I play it pretty much exactly like I played Origins, constantly pausing, setting companion tactics so I can mostly control my own character), and it is an RPG. Just not a better one than Origins.

That doesn't mean the solution is going back to "Origins style", trying to clone their previous success. While that would make some people happy, it's not the way for BioWare to remain the widely respected giant in the world of RPGs. They need to look at feedback for all their games, learn from it, and hopefully deliver better products. They're already doing this, but DA2 still falls short of expectations... which brings us back to resources and DA2 not getting what it would have needed to be recognized as a high quality title.

Have they confirmed that?  I haven't seen it, but that doesn't mean they haven't (I haven't followed all that as much as I should).  Another reason why that data may NOT be relevant is game rentals.  Someone rents the game, likes it, then goes out and buys it.  I don't know, I don't know how they concantonate and sort their data.  And I don't know what they're holding up as the norm as they look at those figures.  Data analysis really is far more complex than people realize.  It's very easy to get numbers to say what you want them to say.  It's far more difficult to actually figure out what they're saying. 

Also, there's the secondhand market.  How would that be tracked?  

And of course none of this takes into account poeple who play unconnected to the internet or choose to not upload their data.  Some people may play a little bit before turning off the data tracking.  The sample itself has issues because of these things.

I'm not talking about DA2 here.  I liked DA2 -- I've played through it multiple times and am hoping for a toolset.  I liked DAO more.  That's not relevant to what I'm saying here, though.  I'm not sure WHY going back to an Origins-style game would make them lose respect -- that actually doesn't sound too likely.  I think DA2 would have been better received had they spent their limited time and resources building on a very successful game rather than tearing it down and starting from scratch. However, what I think is irrelevant.

Modifié par ejoslin, 24 avril 2011 - 05:29 .

[In Exile]

ejoslin wrote...
Have they confirmed that?  I haven't seen it, but that doesn't mean they haven't (I haven't followed all that as much as I should).  Another reason why that data may NOT be relevant is game rentals.  Someone rents the game, likes it, then goes out and buys it.  I don't know, I don't know how they concantonate and sort their data.  And I don't know what they're holding up as the norm as they look at those figures.  Data analysis really is far more complex than people realize.  It's very easy to get numbers to say what you want them to say.  It's far more difficult to actually figure out what they're saying. 

Also, there's the secondhand market.  How would that be tracked?  

And of course none of this takes into account poeple who play unconnected to the internet or choose to not upload their data.  Some people may play a little bit before turning off the data tracking.  The sample itself has issues because of these things.

None of these matter if there's no reason to suppose the population is distinct. So long as the sampling method is some variant of an SRS your ability to extrapolate isn't impaired (at least in terms of what proportion of your total user base did x).

[terdferguson123]

A lot of people on here are saying DA2 will fail financially because its sales are lower. It would seem that way but you must remember Sales Revenue is only part of the picture. For those mathy types let me show you some functions to help explain.

Let's let R = Revenue, C = Cost, P = Profit, and X = Sales.

R(x)= $59.99x

C(x)= variable cost(x) + fixed cost
Let's say for example each unit costs them $5.00 to make, and they have fixed costs of 10million. (Again this is just an example)
C(x)=5x+10,000,000

P(x)= R-C
P(x)= 59.99x-(5x+10,000,000)
P(x)= 59.99x-5x-10,000,000
P(x)=54.99x-10,000,000

Now you can solve for a break even point to see what they need to sell in order to start making a profit.

0=54.99x-10,000,000
10,000,000=54.99x
181,852 units.

Again this is just an example as I do not know the actual costs of DA2, but I imagine they are probobly half (if not less than half) of what DA:O cost to make. The point is that by doing some simple math you can easily see that Profit takes equal importance from Sales Revs as well as Development costs. If they take a cut in sales but decrease development costs in half it won't matter, DA2 will still be more profitable than DA:O.

Modifié par terdferguson123, 24 avril 2011 - 06:03 .

[Yrkoon]

LostScout wrote...

Bioware does not know when people stopped playing the game. They know when people stopped allowing feedback to be uploaded. This is a huge difference, and it is at the heart of the mess that is DA2. The fact that Origins sales continued at a stable rate which was much higher than DA2's rate is a good clue that there weren't large numbers of people who were unhappy with DAO and badmouthed it to their friends. DA2's initial high sales were due to people who liked Origins and purchased it sight unseen. Then the word of mouth got out and sales took a nose-dive. Bioware designed DA2 to appeal to people who didn't like DAO and gave up on many of the people who did, but they have failed to find that market sweet spot that they were looking for.

Pretty much exactly this.

But in the end, this whole  "people quit after an hour"  discussion   is a pointless red herring.  DA:O was bioware's biggest selling game.  Perhaps instead of using their "metrics" to determine how long we played, they could have used their analysts to determine why DA:O sold so well in the first place.    Or is that  too radical of an idea?

[ejoslin]

While it's true that extrapolation can be valid, this is not random sampling -- if it were random, of course you can extrapolate.  The problem is you're not taking numbers from population x, population y, and population z -- you're taking numbers from population x and assuming that y and z will do the same.  Perhaps they will, but my gut tells me they won't.  Not that what my gut says matters much.  It's possible those numbers are insignificant.  But you cannot know that.  how can you possibly tell whether people are no longer playing the game as opposed to turning off data tracking?  There's not even adequate controls in this sample.

Another issue is we don't know what the data are being examined against. As an example (and I don't know number for any of this), say 50% of all people who are tracked do not make it past ostegar and they are tracking individually and it is somehow confirmed that they really are no longer playing. What does this actually tell you? It really doesn't tell you much unless you're comparing it to other games and have points to compare.

Modifié par ejoslin, 24 avril 2011 - 06:20 .

[erynnar]

Yrkoon wrote...

LostScout wrote...

Bioware does not know when people stopped playing the game. They know when people stopped allowing feedback to be uploaded. This is a huge difference, and it is at the heart of the mess that is DA2. The fact that Origins sales continued at a stable rate which was much higher than DA2's rate is a good clue that there weren't large numbers of people who were unhappy with DAO and badmouthed it to their friends. DA2's initial high sales were due to people who liked Origins and purchased it sight unseen. Then the word of mouth got out and sales took a nose-dive. Bioware designed DA2 to appeal to people who didn't like DAO and gave up on many of the people who did, but they have failed to find that market sweet spot that they were looking for.

Pretty much exactly this.

But in the end, this whole  "people quit after an hour"  discussion   is a pointless red herring.  DA:O was bioware's biggest selling game.  Perhaps instead of using their "metrics" to determine how long we played, they could have used their analysts to determine why DA:O sold so well in the first place.    Or is that  too radical of an idea?

You serrah are a radical of the highest order!  And I twirl my mustache at you and bid you good day! I said good day!:lol:

Really, it isn't a radical idea, but one that seems to have been overlooked by Mr. Laidlaw? BioWare? EA (not that they give a crap as long as they get money and lots of it)? 

[Yrkoon]

  Indeed. I wonder how many people quit after playing Call of Duty for an hour?

Modifié par Yrkoon, 24 avril 2011 - 06:12 .

[erynnar]

Yrkoon wrote...

Indeed. I wonder how many people quit after playing Call of Duty for an hour?

Same here.

[Cyberfrog81]

Seems like a fair question. I quit Dead Space early. I couldn't shoot straight and it was an unforgivable experience by design. That doesn't make it bad game design.

Maybe I'll get back to it some day.

[Shatterkiss]

terdferguson123 wrote...

A lot of people on here are saying DA2 will fail financially because its sales are lower. It would seem that way but you must remember Sales Revenue is only part of the picture. For those mathy types let me show you some functions to help explain.

Let's let R = Revenue, C = Cost, P = Profit, and X = Sales.

R(x)= $59.99x

C(x)= variable cost(x) + fixed cost
Let's say for example each unit costs them $5.00 to make, and they have fixed costs of 10million. (Again this is just an example)
C(x)=5x+10,000,000

P(x)= R-C
P(x)= 59.99x-(5x+10,000,000)
P(x)= 59.99x-5x-10,000,000
P(x)=54.99x-10,000,000

Now you can solve for a break even point to see what they need to sell in order to start making a profit.

0=54.99x-10,000,000
10,000,000=54.99x
181,852 units.

Again this is just an example as I do not know the actual costs of DA2, but I imagine they are probobly half (if not less than half) of what DA:O cost to make. The point is that by doing some simple math you can easily see that Profit takes equal importance from Sales Revs as well as Development costs. If they take a cut in sales but decrease development costs in half it won't matter, DA2 will still be more profitable than DA:O.

It's certainly true that the games have different development costs, but EA is probably seeing that DA2 is going to get about half the sales that DAO did and thinking "lost sales."  It isn't just about making a profit if a game makes far less in profit than expected.  They said that they were looking to expand their customer base for the DA series and instead they shrunk it in half. 

[ejoslin]

I hope DA2 is profitable enough that there is a DA3. And I hope they take what people seem to like about both games and build upon them and make a fantastic game with an engaging story.

I would be a very happy fangirl!

Modifié par ejoslin, 24 avril 2011 - 06:39 .