Larian Studios - Quality over Quantity

hehe, I too resort to lets plays. Its cool watching it like a series, a story whose gameplay you find tedious. But this game certainly did not appeal to me even as a video.
 
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Whith the add-on (forgot the name but I believe the acronym was FoV) I couldn't get through the change of pace part towards the end (I don't want to spoil it). But my lack of skill (and/or insight) prohibited me from getting through the gameplay. I even used a trainer but still couldn't get through (although I have to admit I hate gameplay timers). Eventually I settled to see the last 5% of the game through a let's play.

Yes, you mean one certain sequence. I solved it by playing stop and go. It felt tacked on. Apart from that I think the add-on was superb.
 
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PPS. These statistics are not very reliable since there are many people who don't even play the main storyline and instead just do there own thing in the game also many people that are waiting for patches before playing.

Yes, they are reliable. Because those people don't count. If a person loads Skyrim and walks in a circle literally triggering no achievements, that's not really playing the game. The people who haven't played it yet, well who cares? That doesn't affect what people who played the game have done in it ;P

Everybody who didn't finish DKS should give it another shot. The add-on is practically a different 20 hours long game. Skip Divinity 2, start with the add-on and build a new character. You'll be surprised how different the gameplay.

I think I shall. I tried replaying the game as I lost my previous save where I already was a dragon, and didn't even get that far. I totally forgot I could jump right into the addon. Now there's something to do today!
 
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Sounds like it should have made it a trilogy.
 
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You seem to be missing the point. It's not about graphics, etc. It's the simple fact that longer game length doesn't equal quality.

And you miss my point I'm not paying $50-60 dollars for a short game. I rarely ever do.
 
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Yes, they are reliable. Because those people don't count. If a person loads Skyrim and walks in a circle literally triggering no achievements, that's not really playing the game. The people who haven't played it yet, well who cares? That doesn't affect what people who played the game have done in it ;P

Have you even played an Elderscrolls game before? You can play for a couple hundred hours without touching the main quest. Also the first achievement "Unbound" happens at the very beginning of the game and only around 92% have done it so most likely around 8% have the achievements blocked right from the beginning. Since you can do pretty much whatever you want and many of those things barely touch achievements the percentages of people completing the achievements are not very reliable for determining how long people are playing the game.
 
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Have you even played an Elderscrolls game before? You can play for a couple hundred hours without touching the main quest. Also the first achievement "Unbound" happens at the very beginning of the game and only around 92% have done it so most likely around 8% have the achievements blocked right from the beginning. Since you can do pretty much whatever you want and many of those things barely touch achievements the percentages of people completing the achievements are not very reliable for determining how long people are playing the game.

I really don't understand the point you're trying to argue here. All I said was that for a game like Skyrim, Steam achievements would be a pretty reliable tool for Bethesda to determine what content a majority of players experienced or missed. The amount of people who play offline or are completely insane and block Steam are incredibly minute. I never said anything about "how long people are playing the game", but since Steam tracks the amount of time the game has been running, no matter what, that statistic is probably available to them as well.
 
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That was what my post about Skyrim achievement stats was in response to and why I said that the Steam stats are not reliable. In the article they are using the statistics to determine whether they shorten the game. The reason why so few people finished or even got through more then the beginning is most likely related to the dragon combat parts and not because of the length of the game. Based on the achievement stats from Steam for Skyrim a large portion of the players played a good portion of the game and since you don't even need to play the main quest to play a significant portion of the game it could be much more then what those stats indicate.

PS. I have read about people playing a couple hundred hours of Skyrim without even touching the main quest.
 
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All I said was that for a game like Skyrim, Steam achievements would be a pretty reliable tool for Bethesda to determine what content a majority of players experienced or missed.

If I do an text adventure game - should I include achievements as well ? This way I could see ... wait, how would I implement that ? And what exactly would I measure with it ?

I could let this game create a log of finished quests.This way I could see how people profgress through the game.

And I'd better lket it send to me after the game has been finished. Peple don't like to be nagged about online connections all of the time. I think that they are easier to be asked when there is one single burst-out - and that around the end.
 
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Why am I under attack for pointing out that it makes sense for companies that use Steam to use the achievements to understand what their users have done in the game? What's you peoples problem? Are you really stupid or are you just argumentative because you like arguing over nothing? Get a grip, guys. :p That's a big reason why they exist and since every PC player uses Steam and the amount that would go to the lengths you paranoid schizophrenics do to block achievements is minimal (except pirates, which is probably a big number, but that's irrelevent to this), they WILL keep using them to track their games metrics.

Have a good time being dumb guys, I'm not venturing into this thread again :)
 
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I dislike achievements and never follow them. They are 100% meaningless. I know folks who often go to great lengths to get them yet complaining how much work it is ... course some of that is the common OCD traits many gamers have.

I dislike them because if you go for them it often means giving up role playing. Course if you aren't role playing I can see how earning achievements would be more interesting. But for me I often make game choices solely on RP reasons and achievements are often against that.

Anyhow the point being is if a lot of people are like that (no idea if they are) following achievements as a measure of tracking something in a game seems unreliable to me as many folks may avoid them or just not care. I know any I have gotten have been purely at random based on what I was doing versus any purposeful intention.
 
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I didn't say that I was against achievements.

I was just - half jokingly, half seriously - poking around the thought of how to implement it if I did my own game and what it could/would tell me.
 
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I dislike achievements and never follow them. They are 100% meaningless. I know folks who often go to great lengths to get them yet complaining how much work it is … course some of that is the common OCD traits many gamers have.

I dislike them because if you go for them it often means giving up role playing.

^This^. I actually find achievments to be quite immersion breaking, and I'll usually go as far as modding them out of the game entirely if it's possible.

@darkling- Dude, chill out and stop exaggerating. No one is "attacking" you.
 
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I care about quests and how hard the game is, not silly achievements. I've always assumed those are aimed at whatever kiddies might be playing the game, tbh.


-Carn
 
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The amount of people who play offline or are completely insane and block Steam are incredibly minute.

I must be completely insane then. :p

I've been playing offline for more than a month and still get achievement notifications. I wonder if Steam is sneakily still uploading my stats?
 
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I just don't like companies cutting content based on something as unreliable as achievements or the amount of people who played through different portions of the game. Most of the time the reason why people only play a small portion of a game isn't because of the length or even the content itself. Like I said before for Divinity 2 it is the dragon portions but for Skyrim there are many reasons like people disliking the main quest in Oblivion, for roleplay purposes, because they encounter a bug, for something as arbitrary as not liking dragons, or many other reasons. It is better to have a variety of content and also ask the people what they liked and didn't like about the game rather then using achievements or length of play stats to determine what kind and how much content should be in the game.

PS. I don't like my games sending data online unless it is an online only game since I'm usually using my bandwidth for something else and also for the above reasons.
 
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I must be completely insane then. :p

I've been playing offline for more than a month and still get achievement notifications. I wonder if Steam is sneakily still uploading my stats?

Well you're in a serious minority created by your own paranoia!

And probably, yeah. And Bethesda is using those stats to determine what content people are experiencing. And that's okay. Don't worry.
 
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Achievements may be unreliable, but they're still the best data available: There's lots of it and, quite important, the user can't (unknowingly) tell incorrectly what parts of the game he spends his time on.
 
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