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[Steppenwolf]

It's no secret that DA][ didn't sell nearly as well as Origins and it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that the only way for Inquisition to match Origins' sales is to get back some of the fans they lost. Da][ was commonly viewed as "dumbed down" having borrowed ME2's philosophy of streamlining non-combat game mechanics. And since no toolkit was made available for DA][ options for fan-made content, an extremely popular feature for RPGs on PC, was severely limited in scope.
But they can do something about this. The PlayStation 4 and surely the NextBox are essentially PCs. This was sort of the case with the PS3 and the 360, but the PS4 is pretty much just a gaming PC. With that in mind, think about the possibilities of modding. 360 and PS3 games could already be modified using various programs on your PC and tranplanting their output to your console/s. BioWare could make a toolkit for PC and an interface for consoles for fans to mod all versions of Inquisition. I know there's interest in modding console games so the effort wouldn't go unnoticed.
What do you guys think?

[Allan Schumacher]

Just to pick up on that point, almost every piece of telemetry and game research into completion shows that the majority of games (beyond a pretty low playing time threshold) have a significant number of players that never complete them. Often a clear majority.

Unless there's evidence that DA2 had a far higher completion rate, which there isn't as far as I know, plus evidence that completion rate is closely correlated with sales/recommendations for that game and/or future games then its not a relevant point.

Fernando Melo gives a breakdown here.

I couldn't be tasked with whether or not 5% is considered significant or not, however.

On this list, I would only expect ME3's number to have changed in any significant manner.

[Allan Schumacher]

Since there's been no shortage of mudslinging going around in this thread, I did want to point out one thing:

Its a theory, although its by no means certain. The fact that DA2 week 1 sales and preorders surpassed DA:Os substantially would actually suggest the exact reverse - why would more people preorder a sequel if the original was widely disliked, given that the pre-order bonuses for both were broadly similar? Was DA2 marketed that much more effectively to people more prone to preordering? Did everyone really hate the demo?

Emphasis mine (nitpick: it's technically a hypothesis, but that's a pet peeve of mine...).

What many people have done in this thread is make a logically sound deduction. You have created a space within that logical creation you made, which is all fine and dandy.

Logic, quite often, is not reality. So while it's fair to say "DA2 didn't sell well because maybe people didn't really care for DAO" it's also fair to say "I don't think DAO's legacy hurt DA2's sales."

Since they're just thoughts and perceptions, or even opinions.

Getting into a huff because of a logical construct you have created, is almost never going to go well, since without validation of any hypotheses they are effectively just guesses.

Further, treat each other with more respect please.

[Allan Schumacher]

What lengths have Bioware/EA gone to, to assure that these figures are at least somewhat comparable?
And what are the theories about how they are even relevant?

I don't know all the details. I don't really deal with telemetry.

The actual reasons I ask these questions are in my mind very, very good, but I know you'll be angry if I detail them, so I won't. It's not a discussion we should have anyway.

Yet you mention it which spurs my curiosity without having to actually say anything. Kind of like saying "I have a secret, but I'm not going to tell you it."  Was that on purpose?

I've of course completed DA:O, but I've absolutely NOT completed every DA:O game I've started. I'm not even sure that was even my goal for those games.
I'm also absolutely certain that Bioware have NOT been able to record a single DA:O completion of mine, but if they had, how would my games fit into that statistics? Would I be noted as one game that has been completed? Or would I be recorded as, say, 40% completed, 60% not completed?

By my understanding (which might be incorrect), you'll be flagged as "completed the game." Subsequent attempts to restart the game will increment new games started and so forth, but when I did some cursory inquiries for a DA Week project, the feedback I got from analytics was that they were able to determine if a user had completed the game at all. When looking at the median time that people played ME3, they had the outliers that had logged hundreds of hours (only in the single player), which seems to indicate that they were looking at total time spent in the single player game, regardless of playthrough 1 or playthrough 20.

This also totally reflect my own relationship with games. Some games which totally pissed me off, I have indeed completed. And I have a pretty big pile of games that I like, and which I always planned and still plan to complete, while that may actually never happen, because other games and things keep happening to life.
Finally, I can confidently state that I will never, ever complete Morrowind or Skyrim. But I will keep playing them, and I will keep buying their sequels.

Sure, but I suspect you're probably playing those games for a lot longer than, say, 9 hours or so. Am I correct?

There's a difference between our games and Bethesda's games.

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 17 mai 2013 - 09:35 .

[Allan Schumacher]

My assumption is that it was done to get me to think about what those criticisms may be, but at this point that's neither here nor there for this thread.

[Allan Schumacher]

I'm not sure I understand this. Are you saying Bioware games usually only are played for nine hours? Or it only takes nine hours to beat?

9 hours could also just be a number. BioWare's games are a lot more linear than Skyrim's, with a more focused (and more interesting, in my opinion) narrative to go along with it. It's not even really possible to play DAO for hundreds and hundreds of hours without beating the game, whereas in Bethesda's game you can.

As such, game completion is probably not very interesting piece of telemetry for them.

[Allan Schumacher]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

StreetMagic wrote...

Not wanting to take any damage at all sounds more like obsessive compulsive behavior, than a flaw in game design per se.

If you were in a fight, would it be your objective merely to survive, or also to avoid being hurt?

If Hit points were in any way a meaningful representation of real life, this would have more significance.

I actually found myself losing more fights in Karate if I was too concerned about not getting hit, as it tempered my aggression too much and made me hesitate.  I'd argue that through learning how to take hits, and recognizing the vulnerabilities I presented to open up said hit, my skill growth in kumite was accelerated.  To the point where I'd understand an appreciable amount of improved experience gain in an RPG if you didn't flawlessly defeat your enemy.

[Allan Schumacher]

EntropicAngel wrote...

I don't like the idea of permanent penalties, personally. Probably a result of my years of coddling by this generation of gaming.

I was never a fan, and seeing such a thing was often a reload for me while growing up, so I doubt it's really changed that much.


I remember playing Jagged Alliance 2, and taking a critical hit in the shoulder and losing like 47 points of dexterity.  That's a reloadin'.
Hit in the head losing 15 points of wisdom?  You better believe that's a reloadin'.


Note, however, that that doesn't mean it's not necessarily a good thing.  Though I "hated" it, it was a mechanic I understood and, oddly, appreciated.  I just often treated it as equivalent to death excepting minimal situations.

[Allan Schumacher]

That may be true, but my suggestion would be to have the effect occur after a period of time. So the player would have to go back to a save before receiving the initial injury to avoid it. It would be limited to hard or above modes..

One concern with this is that, the later a consequence is presented, the weaker the relationship to the stimulus is. Giving players permanent stat decreases some time after the event runs the risk of seeming arbitrary, and placing barriers on the player understanding why said penalties were enacted.

Even if there was only a remote chance of it happening? I don't think it would. If only once out of 100 times a character "falls" in combat they had a chance at a permanent injury, who would reload every time?

This is a logical hypothesis, which makes sense, but is it reflected in reality? My logical counterpoint would be: "If the player knows it's an effect that will only happen infrequently, won't they be assured that they can replay the encounter and likely come out ahead?"

[Allan Schumacher]

This would only really work if hit points were in any way a meaningful represtation of real life.

Fortunately they aren't (and certainly never have been - at least not in any BioWare game. Maybe in a Shadowrun game), so we aren't bound by such restrictions.

It's great that you wish to completely avoid getting hurt, however, to be somewhat difficult, I did in fact win a match where I was the only person to get hit (i.e. my opponent did not get hit, and lost the match), because he decided to kick me in the face and it wasn't a full contact match. So yes, in fact, it was possible to lose without getting hit.

Furthermore, my Karate matches were much MUCH more likely to be determined via score, rather than knockout. So I could lose 1-2, or win 6-4. I got hit twice as much in my win, but the important thing is that I won.

Sometimes, from a roleplaying perspective, I recognize (or am at least led to believe) that there's a sense of urgency. A lot of the time fighting ultra-defensively is exceptionally slow, and when I see that someone is in a sense of peril, I'll be more aggressive and am more open to potentially taking hits because ultimately I know I'll be through the fight faster at that serves the story I am creating more appropriately.

So, in conclusion, it seems like a "players will get different things out of a system." Looks like another difference between myself and Sylvius.


As for your dismissive response to me pointing out hit points only being an abstraction of real life, it was more along the lines of "What does it mean to have 1 HP?" as well as "How come my health goes up so much faster than my damage?" to the eventual point of "It seems silly that I'm intrinsically incapable of killing my foe in a single hit." Since none of those things really have real life analogues. I.e. is having 1/4 HP the same as having 1/100 HP?

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 23 mai 2013 - 08:11 .

[Allan Schumacher]

That is an extreme example, but I think it demonstrates my point - the fear of the consequence can be an effective deterent, even if the exact consequence is not known directly after the mistake was made.

You don't even need to use HIV as an example. People are notorious for overestimating the likelihood of seriously threatening (or fatal) events occurring against them. Real life, unfortunately, isn't like a video game.

You say you'd like us to make sure the player is aware through in game mechanics? How so? If there isn't a specific event that is obvious, it will still come across as random. You'll still get paranoid gamers that feel that the game is out to get them, and so forth. So if there is a specific event, what stops players from just loading when that event happens, since the 1 in 27 (or much lower, as I've heard) chance just doesn't happen?

After all, as you indicate, knowing that it could happen has a powerful effect on people. How many people whom, after being notified of having unprotected sex with someone known to be HIV positive, would love to go back in time and "reload" prior to that encounter, even if they haven't been tested positive yet themselves?

I would make a caveat here. I don't think making potions/poisons/etc.
more available would help. Players will hoard items even if they can
carry 10, 20 or even 100 of them and they fall from the sky like
gumdrops. HOWEVER, I think DA2 took a step in the right direction with
this, but implemented the feature incorrectly.

If you had below a
certain threshold of an item, enemies/loot would drop them. Otherwise,
they would not. Example: if you had only one healing potion, it would be
quite likely that an enemy would drop a potion. If you had five, an
enemy would never drop a potion. This was done to prevent hoarding huge
inventories (where it was successful) but it still didn't increase
utilization rates because players felt the consumables were even MORE
rare than before... even though actually consuming said consumables
would result in more consumables being dropped!

Where are you getting your data for utilization rates?

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 23 mai 2013 - 08:24 .

[Allan Schumacher]

Rhazesx wrote...

I'm not sure why you used a game that is basically a AAA Advanced facebook game as an example. If your going to stretch that far you might as well went a little further and used Pong. Just because DA2 isn't a sandbox doesn't mean it shouldn't be modded. 

Crusader Kings is a pretty astonishingly amazing strategy game, and I find the reference to it being "basically a AAA Advanced Facebook game" to be an exceptional slight on the game.

It's a game that has fantastic replayability, combined with strategy and even roleplaying elements.  I would rather play a game like Crusader Kings than a game like Oblivion, because i enjoy it more.  It's why I own Crusader Kings 2, but not Skyrim (though I hear Skyrim is much better than Oblivion).

As reference, however, you could have also pointed out that Paradox's games are also typically highly moddable, so you actually missed out on a moment where you could have used his exampe against him.


The unfortunate thing about Skyrim, however, is that it's absurdly successful on the consoles as well, where modding is much, much more difficult to do (if even possible).  Skyrim's success could very well be more heavily influenced by the fact that it's a good game that delivered a lot on what people wanted.  I'd be surprised if its sales would not still be exceptional if the game didn't have a toolset.


Further, it's not like BioWare is a company that is completely clueless to toolset usage for games either.  Two games were released with a toolset (one with the core feature surrounding the toolset itself, even).

[Allan Schumacher]

Mount and Blade isn't actually made by Paradox, though I'd still disagree. Paradox's data files have always just been simple text files. Alternative scenarios and historical accuracy improvement mods have been very common.

Having said that:

On Nexus the most popular Skyrim mods have more than 1.7 million unique downloads. That's a minority of players?

If we specifically look at total units sold (including both platforms), yes it is.

If not, then the numbers would seem to indicate that virtually 100% of the Skyrim PC players picked up the mod (based on numbers here -- which would be surprising unless Skyrim communicates Nexus updates (it might)

Given that 14% of the game's owners on Steam never even reached level 5, however, I'd be surprised if almost 100% of the people downloaded the top mod off of Skyrim. How does the Nexus determine a unique download? MAC Address? IP?

[Allan Schumacher]

Bfler wrote...

Allan Schumacher wrote...

Mount and Blade isn't actually made by Paradox, though I'd still disagree. Paradox's data files have always just been simple text files. Alternative scenarios and historical accuracy improvement mods have been very common.

Then you should state Paradox development studio, because the game is also published by Paradox. And about what do you disagree with me here?

And in case of Nexus it is the IP.

Given we were discussing a Paradox developed game (Crusader Kings II), I didn't think it was all that necessary.  As an owner of Mount and Blade original and Warband (And EU2, EU3, HOI2, HOI3, Vicky, Vicky II, and CK2... and that doesn't include the expansions), I am aware that Paradox publishes the game. 

My disagreement that Mount and Blade is their best example of allowing modding, on the grounds of "Paradox didn't make the game and hence isn't the primary influence on how moddable Mount and Blade is (I give Tale Worlds that credit)" as well as "Pretty much every game that Paradox has built going back to at least Europa Universalis 2 has not only been very easy to mod, but have had extensive mod communities complete with all sorts of extensive total conversions and the like."  In fact, I believe Gaider himself is heavily involved in some of the ones for Victoria 2 (though I haven't spoken with him about this, directly).  The earlier games are games that survived in large part because early releases were often exceptionally buggy, but their settings and style hit a note with many modders that they did a lot of modding to help stabilize a lot of the released design content.  They also did a ton of work to overcome perceived shortcomings with the game.

[Allan Schumacher]

I disagree on this, totally disagree. Even old TES fans will disagree.

"The people" you mentioned here is who? Skyrim is not build based on what the people want but on what CERTAIN people want. The game is hyped, the old fans have been waiting for it for so long, and the advertisement is good, attracting new players, that boost it's sale.

But the game do not give what the real fans want. Surely you didn't hangout at Bethesda forum and seeing all those rages, and sure you don't even bother to read the fans blogs about Skyrim.

The modders only can enhanced the game, and so it not look so dull (and fixing the mess of bugs). The mods cannot give back spell making, levitation, mix match armor, and many more of what the people really want.

Sorry, but that Skyrim may not have directly appealed to fans of earlier iterations doesn't mean that Skyrim doesn't, in large part, deliver on what many people that bought the game wanted out of the game.

Further, I loathe the notion of the "real fan." People that are fans of Skyrim are "real fans" of Skyrim. Sorry that it's not the game that you specifically wanted, but that doesn't do anything to undermine that Skyrim's success is in large part because it delivered a quality game that people wanted to buy.

If it was a case of many people feeling duped and cheated into buying something that they didn't actually want, it wouldn't be receiving so much positive attention from critics and gamers alike. I'm not saying that there aren't people that wholly hate Skyrim and feel the game is utter crap (whether compared to prior TES games or not), but those people will exist for almost any title, especially one that sells over 10 million units.