1. My bad! That was the answer to the claim from a different post, that stated "If I started 10 characters, and only played through to completion on 2 of them, I still saw the end game content."
3. We can not tell either way, true, though I would not expect from newcomers to franchise expect no story from RPG.
4. Not familiar with the game. Can it be more people like fantasy over sci-fi? And short engaging story is more attractive to them?
5. Transformers: Age of Extinction is not an RPG, it's a third-person action game, why bring it here?
6. I am arguing only one thing (and was answering one question) - in STORY_DRIVEN RPGs the story is supposed - you know - DRIVE the game. If it does not do that, people get bored and quit - then the quality of the story is not good enough.
7. I'd say marketing, PR and huge success of previous game was the reason for more people to buy ME3. As for "bought the story game and complain about story" - I did the opposite - bought Skyrim and complained about absence of story, when I should not have expected any. So, yes, happens, but I doubt all of the quitters are like this.
8. See p.6. Success for the story is when story-consumers finish the story. If half of your budget is in the story but nobody bothers to look it through, you are making games of different genre and can fire half of your employers.
3. I wouldn't either, but it clearly happens. I'm thinking some people do have much more money than I do and buy games on a whim, especially if they are on a discount.
4. But the ME series has overall better completion rates than DA or TW, so that doesn't seem to be the case. I'm also not familiar enough with DS to speculate with any degree of certainty, but I think it's as Straykat says: they're hardcore, combat-focused games that people finish to get gamer points for having beaten it.
5. I was talking about movies. My point is just that because many people like something that doesn't make it good. I was raising it as a counter to your claim that if more people finish the game, that must mean the story is better. I find that to be an excessive value placed on majority opinion.
6. Story-driven RPGs tend to be lackluster in every other area. I can't think of any story-driven RPG with particularly awesome combat, for example. They are also very long and that is bound to discourage the more casual players.
7. I doubt all of them are like that as well, but it wouldn't surprise me to learn that a significant portion is. Remember, many video games, not just RPGs, are abandoned by a considerable number of people after playing them very little or not at all. This is especially true when you consider multiplayer games are much more popular than single player ones. Most gamers are not really of a mindset that you need to "complete" a game.
8. Go back to my Endless Legend example. It is a strategy game where the goal is to beat your opponent(s) yet over 80% of the people who've bought it have never won a single game, which can only be for lack of trying because the lower difficulties are ridiculously easy and even a drunken snake could beat them. By your logic, Amplitude Studios are making games of a different genre and should fire half their employees.
Aw, I would have preferred a chart with more data. Not just percentages, but actual nunber of players. Some games are played by a small, dedicated fanbase, which probably tends to produce higher completion rates. Some are bought on a steam sale, which will probably mean lower completion rates.
And some games don't coddle you to inevitable victory... if you mess up your character skills in Blackguards, for example, the game will eventually get so hard that many people won't feel like completing it. Games that are smooth sailing (like BioWare's) are likely to have a higher completion rate.
This bears underlining, because I think it might explain many of the numbers on the list. DAO has slow, plodding and somewhat difficult combat, if you're not familiar with that particular type of gameplay. When I first tried playing it, ages ago, I got stuck because I couldn't beat any of the levels. Arl of Redcliffe? Bugged, for some reason, and even leaving that aside I found it difficult. Nature of the Beast? Couldn't get past the damn dragon in the entrance of the ruins. The Broken Circle? The Fade sequence got me stuck. A Paragon of Her Kind? Since I couldn't beat any of the other levels, the mercenaries you encountered early on absolutely destroyed my party.
I suspect the same thing goes for other games with tactical, party-based combat, like Divinity: Original Sin and Pillars of Eternity. Even for The Witcher, a series with lackluster tutorials and in which combat has an inverse difficulty curve. First time I tried TW2 I also gave up because every battle felt impossible to win, and in TW1 I couldn't figure out how the combat worked until after the prologue. DA2 and shooters like the ME games are easier to wrap one's head around, I imagine.