Yeah, I think that people in general weren't too hot on PoE1 and so they didn't bother with the sequel.
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Obsidian's Pillars of Eternity 2 sold like shit. (~110,000 sales)
- Thread starter shiftplusone
- Start date
Ah that's tragic! I adored the first game, I thought it was well received and respectably profitable?
I guess I'm part of the problem, I would love to play #2 but I just dont have the time (due to work) to play an epic rpg, so I didn't buy it yet.
I guess I'm part of the problem, I would love to play #2 but I just dont have the time (due to work) to play an epic rpg, so I didn't buy it yet.
It's not pirate themed. It's Polynesian themed far more than anything else and of its four main factions one is a pirate confederation and they are quite far from being "pirate-y."
The game had almost 0 hype after the Fig campaign which I think raised a similar amount of money as PoE 1 did but there was never any real hype for it outside of that unlike 1.
Then they made the bad decision to have every line voiced and it clearly impacted the quality of the game and gave it an incomplete feeling at launch. Companions just stopped having things to say to me roughly halfway through. The series just hasn't connected with gamers like the original sin series has.
Then they made the bad decision to have every line voiced and it clearly impacted the quality of the game and gave it an incomplete feeling at launch. Companions just stopped having things to say to me roughly halfway through. The series just hasn't connected with gamers like the original sin series has.
Wasteland sold well didn't it? Torment seemed to do ok. Seems more like a PoE and obsidian problem to me than a CRPG problem.
We've known the sales were low for a while, but it's still surprising and disappointing. I loved both PoE and PoE2; they're among my favorite games of the last decade, and definitely in my top 5 RPGS of all time. It's disheartening when the things you like don't make it in the market, because now it seems pretty unlikely we'll get a PoE3, or anything similar.
It's doubly disheartening when contrasted with the success of DoS 1 & 2 and Pathfinder, which are nominally in the same genre as PoE but which (at least for the DoS games) don't hold my interest the way the PoE games do. Now even if a company chooses to make a CRPG, if they've "learned the lesson" of the last few years, they're less likely to make a game I enjoy.
It's doubly disheartening when contrasted with the success of DoS 1 & 2 and Pathfinder, which are nominally in the same genre as PoE but which (at least for the DoS games) don't hold my interest the way the PoE games do. Now even if a company chooses to make a CRPG, if they've "learned the lesson" of the last few years, they're less likely to make a game I enjoy.
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I can't agree with this in any way.
The game was quite polished, content-rich, and just overall extremely well made and good at launch.
If it didn't sell then that's either a marketing failure or a failure of gamers as a whole :P
Yep.
This is pure nonsense because it was quite clear full VO was a very late addition to the game decided upon right around the new year just months before launch at the request of upper management, with some of the VO work not even being ready for launch prior to the one month delay where they were planning to patch it in. So they didn't limit the writing staff with the foreknowledge of having to accommodate VO and the idea that they would, or more importantly even could, cut a ton of content from the game just months before launch due to VO is also nonsense.
Plus the game had tons of content and reactivity and was quite polished as Durante states, save for a few bugs here and there, mostly with save imports, as is typical.
Never played the PnP Pathfinder, but plenty of various incarnations of D&D plus all of the well known CRPGs. I might pick it up after the patch of the BIG patch.
Did you even play the second? The first Divinity: OS was like that, but the second was far more serious and grounded.
POE at times was a slog to get through, especially all of the purple prose. Plus, I had to start skipping every single backer NPC I found to even finish the game. I did enjoy it overall, but it wasn't a game that I could easily replay for the dialogue. The second game is a massive improvement and also adds much needed QoL changes. The only thing that felt like it could have been left out (or changed) for a better experience though was the ship combat.
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It is popular to blame 'gamers' these days.
Shame on you gamers!
I love DoS2, and Pathfinder does a bunch of things great - and some things really horribly. But POE1/2 always felt like the one striking just the right balance between new and old.
I guess I'll buy it on Switch just to support them :/ Though I already did with that $200 fig.
Which is another matter too - even if they haven't sold well, those 33000 copies through fig, was paid with an average of $130. Maybe not so bad off after all?
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I imagine the way Pillars 1 was handled kind of bit them in the ass. Incredibly buggy and the game didn't really feel as good as could be until the DLC release, so I imagine many people were waiting for balance and bug passes.
And they were probably kind of right to do so, sadly. The game had a ton of balance isses. Was notably too easy, and I say that as someone that's not very good at these games and only beat 1 on normal. The game is in a much better state now, and is a great game in general, but I can see why people might have wanted to wait on this one.
And Versus Evil, just man, they did not do anything for this game. Or any of their games, looking at their catalogue. Do they just toss money at developers or what, because they don't seem to be doing anyone any favors actually marketing their games.
And they were probably kind of right to do so, sadly. The game had a ton of balance isses. Was notably too easy, and I say that as someone that's not very good at these games and only beat 1 on normal. The game is in a much better state now, and is a great game in general, but I can see why people might have wanted to wait on this one.
And Versus Evil, just man, they did not do anything for this game. Or any of their games, looking at their catalogue. Do they just toss money at developers or what, because they don't seem to be doing anyone any favors actually marketing their games.
I don't like pirates either.
Fortunately, the game is really only as pirate-y as you want it to be. There's even an option to turn off the sea shanties that your crew sing.
Anyone who disables the shanties should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law
The CRPG bubble has burst for most players, I backed Kingmaker but I just can't be arsed to start it yet due to mixed reviews and not in the mood..
A game has to be massively hyped or have mega coverage/reviews in order to sell well these days. Or be a new IP which helps.
A game has to be massively hyped or have mega coverage/reviews in order to sell well these days. Or be a new IP which helps.
Compared to Divinity OS 1 and 2
"There's an obvious option here we're not going to tiptoe around. Divinity: Original Sin sold 160,000 copies within its first week, becoming Larian's fastest-selling game and making the studio critical darlings overnight. The sequel had sold over a million copies in two and a half months, and generated $85 million in revenue in 2017 according to SuperData Research."
https://www.pcgamesn.com/divinity-original-sin-2/divinity-original-sin-3
"There's an obvious option here we're not going to tiptoe around. Divinity: Original Sin sold 160,000 copies within its first week, becoming Larian's fastest-selling game and making the studio critical darlings overnight. The sequel had sold over a million copies in two and a half months, and generated $85 million in revenue in 2017 according to SuperData Research."
https://www.pcgamesn.com/divinity-original-sin-2/divinity-original-sin-3
That number is almost unbelievably low. The first game has sold over a million copies. PoE II is better than the first game in every way except the main story, at least in my opinion, and it sells 1/10th of what the first game sold. Only consolation is that Pathfinder: Kingmaker and DoS 2 have sold well still so it's not the CRPG genre itself is doing that poorly. PoE II's sales number just don't make any sense to me at all...
I mean lets be real here. The genre has never been a huge seller. Even stuff like BG2 and Fallout. If you are >500k you are doing pretty well. If you are near 2 Million you have the one of most sucessful CRPG ever.
And the audience knows this, which is why this genre in particular has very sucessful kickstarters.
I kickstarted PoE 1 and 2 and D:OS 1 and 2 and can definitely say that PoE 2 was (by a fair margin) the weakest of the 4 "main" entries in to the genre in the recent past. Especially sticks out since D:OS 2 was the strongest, and one of my top 10 games of all time.
Edit: In fact, I far more enjoyed Tyranny than PoE 2. Very disappointing game for me.
Edit: In fact, I far more enjoyed Tyranny than PoE 2. Very disappointing game for me.
Most people simply got burned with PoE1, atleast i was one of them, expected a high fantasy baldurs gate successor and got a pseudo intellectual fantasy game talking about soul mumbo jumbo 24/7, guess thats why kingmaker is way better received because it follows the generic D&D formula way more even when its using pathfinder instead of forgotten realms setting and people long for such games because no one is using the license anymore or when they do they fuck it up like Sword Coast Legend's.
Atleast that was my problem with it.
Atleast that was my problem with it.
Pretty good summary of my experience as well. And apparently, we are far from being isolated cases.
The competition has dramatically risen on the CRPG market when you make the comparison with some years ago. And when it comes to CRPGs I don't waste time any longer with Obsidian's output, I prefer waiting to see what an editor like Larian can come up with instead.
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So they either wrote a game with a lot less companion dialogue or chose to cut away what they couldn't get voiced at the last minute and what they felt was cut-able. Because those companions were definitely incomplete. Even some of their quests abruptly ended. Just talking about launch period though because I haven't played it since may or june.
We kind of guessed it even before the acquisition leak. No official numbers were given back then but any estimates presented it as flop. Obsidian couldn't go on like that for long at their current size without outside intervention.
There's a reason Obsidian has been floating around as a potential acquisition in the MS OT ever since E3.
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I don't think the genre is shrinking at all. Like every video game, success or failure is heavily execution-dependent. PoE may not be bad, but I think the clear consensus is that it's nothing close in quality to the heyday of Infinity Engine RPGs, despite better tech and decades of design lessons.
If the genre was really weakening, we wouldn't see the successes mentioned in this thread. There's pent-up demand for great games of this style; there's very little demand for middling ones. But isn't that the same situation with every genre?
Personally I didn't bother buying Deadfire because I felt exhausted on the genre after completely DoS2. It was a very long game, and my play time was protracted because I put it down for some other stuff at one point.
Yup as I just said in that OT, when your game is selling like this something has to give at some point. People will shit on MS for purchasing them no doubt, but games selling like this is just unstustainable for a studio of Obsidian's size. At least when the game sells like shit MS has Game Pass to back it up and make some revenue from, so the direct effect on Obsidian will be smaller if any.
Even if you didn't like PoE1 is still worth getting 2, it's really an improvement over the first game except the main story (Not that PoE1's story was particularly memorable anyway). Though the game is not without issues either, I feel like it is almost everything PoE1 should have been. It's no BG2, but it's a decent way to pass time.
Well, the signs were all there since the start. Steam concurrent players peak doesn't tell lies.
For me, it's clear that they simply don't have the capability of making long RPG. Their games always fall apart at the last stretch. Not to mention more bugs you find the further you progress.
For me, it's clear that they simply don't have the capability of making long RPG. Their games always fall apart at the last stretch. Not to mention more bugs you find the further you progress.
The issue with companion dialogue was tied to the borked rep system. They burned through it too quickly because most players were like beloved by them all by the time they got through nekehtaka. While nobody was as long winded as Durance, there's quite a lot of dialogue for many of them.
This pretty much nails it for me. I lost interest pretty quickly in PoE1. I was expecting a pretty by the numbers DnD style story line, and it wasn't that at all.
He's such a miserable human being.
Mainly how well it explained mechanics and the UI, etc in general felt a bit old and clunky, having buttons and things plastered on the UI that you didn't need to see at that time.
I remember having trouble with a character when I started and the build I choose. Only to find out that the build didn't work because a mechanic that said it did one thing actually didn't work if you were using a certain weapon, which was no where explained in the info or anything which completely messed up my character and made me restart after getting like 10 hours in.
It just felt a lot rougher for a new player to get into in terms of how well it explained and showed the mechanics and systems and getting you to understand everything.
It's both. For the vast majority of users, it's not very different from a KS.
I think there are a couple of things going on here.
1. Obsidian was conservative in companion quest design, perhaps in response to several of the first game's companions going over budget and causing problems.
2. Obsidian actually wrote a ton of companion dialogue, but because more of it is reactive to the PC or other companions, most players actually see a lot less of it. Maia, for example, has some cool late-game interactions that I think relatively few players will experience. So in a way the "quests end abruptly/companions stop having new things to say" problem is similar to the trouble with the main story: so much of the budget went into breadth (i.e. sidequests) that Obsidian lost track of how short and insubstantial the main quest would feel.
Exactly. Good guy Phil strikes again. Nobody can hate the guy, so lovable.
I blame gamers, as I always do. Though I've also only bought the first one so far, so I'm part of the problem.
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If you're talking about the amount of in menu dialogue and their side quests I'd agree that it's lacklustre. On the other hand they react more to your choices in other quests and have more party chatter when you're on the move than any other game I can thing of.
Edit: Beat by decoy.
i don't know why, but i'm skeptical that is D:OS2 that sapped POE2 sales THAT much
i don't even know why i haven't bought it havin liked poe and especially winter march
Game is BEAUTIFUL too...
I made a nice gallery on Insta to show it off:
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bp3Xeb5F6uJ/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
I made a nice gallery on Insta to show it off:
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bp3Xeb5F6uJ/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link