156 réponses à ce sujet

[Das Tentakel]

Thank you.

 

The problem with this is that there are many different methods (because there is no consistent or reliable method) to count and derive an estimate. Actually, that is not itself the problem, but rather that the exact people who did this also have a political need to justify the changes they recommended for the DA franchise in DA2.

 

Problem and problem... this discussion could continue with how much damage this way of reasoning (measuring things like completion rate) is doing to EA.

 

The difference in completion rate between DA:O on the one hand and DA2, ME1 etc. is easily explained by DA:O's greater length. A third or so is not atypical for a biggish RPG, if I remember figures quoted by Swen Vincke (Larian) correctly.

 

Interestingly, by way of a Gedankenexperiment I assumed a 80/20 division among 4 million DA:I players (no way do I think this is reliable, but it was fun to do).

 

The result:

4 million players; 200 million hours played.

Upper 20% (800,000 players) played 160 million hours, average 200 hours. However, apply 80/20 to this group as well, and you end up with the upper 20% (160,000 players) playing 800 hours on average, and the lower 80% 50 hours (in reality this would be more of a sliding scale, with some real junkies playing 1,000 hours or more, with lots of players playing for 50-100 hours).

Lower 80% (3.2 million players) played 40 million hours, average 12.5 hours.

 

I'm a historian by background and not a mathematician and like I said, this is just some fiddling around with numbers. However, some interesting observations:

800 hours is in the general ballpark (600-800 hours) boasted by some members of BSN;

50 hours is about the amount needed to finish DA:I while mostly ignoring all the filler;

12.5 hours is enough to finish the prologue and play in the Hinterlands for some hours and getting thoroughly sick of it.

 

Somebody more mathematically skilled is welcome to try and play with the variables and come up with a 'hypothetical' Pareto analysis. What I'm taking away from it is that 200 million hours may not be that impressive, in fact it might even be bad news. However, without hard data and comparative material (other RPG's) it's just mindgames; DA:I might even be the most favourite game evar in this respect, if the numbers for other RPG's are significantly worse.

[Elhanan]

I would say that more telemetry data is required; not speculation and assumption.

[kingjezza]

Are those completion rates for Origins per play through or per person?

[Eelectrica]

I think it's difficult to read much into completition rates. As I recall from Steams achievement list Borderlands 2 had around 25% completion rate, and it was a huge success for Gearbox and 2K. It ended up with even more addin DLC than was originally planned.

 

Although when planning where in the game DLC would fall, completion rates have to be a consideration if it was going to be post ending. If only 25% of the player base can reach the point to where a DLC can be accessed, then developers would have to factor that in I would think.

[midnight tea]

I remember reading an article written by Borderlands 2 dev (http://kotaku.com/fi...dium=Socialflow), where he says that most players don't ever finish games they play - hence the reason why game devs usually don't polish endings as much as other parts of the game and focus on bringing proper epilogue/tying of loose ends in DLCs.

 

Quote from article:

 

 

(...) why are most video game endings kind of disappointing? Is it because the developers are stupid and don't know how to bring closure? Or is it because, on average, only a small percentage of the people who buy your game will see its ending and every moment you spend polishing it is one you haven't spent on other parts of the game? Parts that a way bigger chunk of your players will actually interact with?

 

If you had to choose, which would you rather put time into: the beginning of the game, which will hopefully ease players into your world and make them interested enough to continue playing and see all the cool stuff you have in store for them? Or the ending?

 

In a sense, this is why I consider the downloadable expansion Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep to be the "true" ending of Borderlands 2. Now, I'm pretty happy with the ending of BL2 – we wrapped up the main plot and had an epic boss fight—but we didn't really get a lot of time to just hang out with the main characters and decompress. The story ended, but we didn't have an epilogue.

 

Flash forward to Dragon Keep's development. We not only had the time and budget we needed to wrap up the story completely, but we knew full well that anyone who grabbed the DLC would (thanks to its comparatively less insane running time) be more likely get through the entire experience and get the whole story.

[SirGladiator]

Thanks for sharing that article, that's really good insight and it makes a fantastic point.  Everybody plays the beginning of games, not everybody plays the ending, so naturally you've got to work harder on the early parts than the parts only some people play, but at the same time, for those who do finish the game, they love the game and want to play all of it and then some, the DLC can provide an even better ending than the game had anyway, so everybody wins!  I've always enjoyed DLC, so the idea of DLC adding a new an improved ending to games is something that appeals to me a great deal.  The fact that it enables the developers to focus on making each part of the game extra awesome, by focusing on the early portion up until the game comes out, then focusing on the ending after the game is already out and they can focus all their attention on making the 'true' ending absolutely perfect, that's a formula for awesomeness!

[bEVEsthda]

Somebody more mathematically skilled is welcome to try and play with the variables and come up with a 'hypothetical' Pareto analysis. What I'm taking away from it is that 200 million hours may not be that impressive, in fact it might even be bad news. However, without hard data and comparative material (other RPG's) it's just mindgames; DA:I might even be the most favourite game evar in this respect, if the numbers for other RPG's are significantly worse.

 

It could probably be done if one could obtain some completely random samples.

My guestimate would be that 200 mil hours in May (it was May, wasn't it?) is pretty good. Not phenomenal, but not bad at all.

But as In Exile was mentioning somewhere, success is measured in regard of expectations. This is where we don't know so much, but it is clear - has been clear for a long time - that DA:I is compromised by several factors. First of all, is that a game is primarily sold by its prequel. So DA2 reputation would hamper sales and EA/Bioware would have been aware of this. This is why a badly received game is often the last in a franchise. It's too much of an effort to revive it. But that is exactly what they still tried to do with DA. Thus the massive investment that is DA:I. EA really wanted to keep the franchise alive. Second is that there are still the bitter-enders around. Those who will not forgive that this is no longer DA:O. That also results in negative vibes hanging around.

Thirdly, the game may have been less than stellar on old gen consoles and the PC implementation was also a disappointment.

 

So what did EA/Bioware expect? Hope for? And how did it do in relation to that? I think that is what will decide whether we will get a DA4.

 

P.S. After having now seen the MP part of DA:I, my thoughts on many things have changed a lot. I'm suddenly very alienated. I don't think I want any DA4 any longer. Not from those people. The other is this thought about EA and the developers: They really wanted this? A game like this? Customers like these? This was their vision?

- Well, how about that!