Obsidian Entertainment - Josh Sawyer Taking a Break

Originally Posted by Carnifex
Boy oh boy, if the Larian team did get their hands on this project, and made a new game out of it similar to their products from ten years ago, that would simply be the best news, ever. I could totally let that whole Shroud fiasco fade from my memory!

This so much this as I said already their recent Co-Op Ultima inspired RPGS are not the type of games I play. I would literally fund the game if I had millions of dollars to spare.

Originally Posted by borovnica
Also about it selling poorly on release… What did you expect we have much more RPGs now than we did when PoE1 launched. After all PoE1, Wasteland 2 and to some extent DoS1 was engine behind the revival of somewhat 'dead' genre.

Sales don't matter as much with this type of game; you've already sold enough copies through the crowdfunding phase to finance it. That being said, I'm highly skeptical that we're seeing accurate sales figures at this point, so all the talk about poor sales is just people being unnecessarily negative.

I installed it and started a few times. After the latest patch, I get the sound cutting in and out at random times. Plus, the performance is pretty bad. I think I might put it away for a few months and come back when it's sort of finished.

Originally Posted by rjshae
Sales don't matter as much with this type of game; you've already sold enough copies through the crowdfunding phase to finance it.

That's no true, the crowdfunding money is only a portion of those games budget.

For example, POE2 budget was ~14 millions (FIG investor estimate, could be more with the full VO which wasn't in the plan originally). The crowdfunding was 4.4 millions and half of it was investor money who expect their money back, not "pre-orders".

POE2 break even sales number was 500k in the FIG investors documentation.

It's too bad that Valve seemed to decide to stop these sales numbers from getting out with their new "privacy" policies. Maybe some of these companies got very sensitive about people knowing, approximately, how well their games sold. But it still is relatively harmless info for people to know, in my humble opinion.

Anyway, I found an article where the steamspy guy says he may be able to keep going, using other sources. Although they are less reliable. So the margin of error will be larger.

https://megagames.com/news/steam-spy…-work-afterall

newer article:
https://techfrag.com/2018/05/06/stea…ee-statistics/

Originally Posted by azarhal
That's no true, the crowdfunding money is only a portion of those games budget.

For example, POE2 budget was ~14 millions (FIG investor estimate, could be more with the full VO which wasn't in the plan originally). The crowdfunding was 4.4 millions and half of it was investor money who expect their money back, not "pre-orders".

POE2 break even sales number was 500k in the FIG investors documentation.

What I said is true because it was a relative statement, not an absolute. You're right that additional funding sources are needed, but they aren't needed nearly as much as for a game that depends entirely on sales at release.

Originally Posted by azarhal
That's no true, the crowdfunding money is only a portion of those games budget.

For example, POE2 budget was ~14 millions (FIG investor estimate, could be more with the full VO which wasn't in the plan originally). The crowdfunding was 4.4 millions and half of it was investor money who expect their money back, not "pre-orders".

POE2 break even sales number was 500k in the FIG investors documentation.

So, the Figstarter brought in less than half of the original, they spend more on it by all accounts, and at the end of it, decided to splurge on full, fun but pointless VO? I'm sure someone is not happy with the sales numbers …

Originally Posted by Polyester
So, the Figstarter brought in less than half of the original, they spend more on it by all accounts, and at the end of it, decided to splurge on full, fun but pointless VO? I'm sure someone is not happy with the sales numbers …

The Figstarter had half the backers of the first one (POE1 had 77k backers, POE2 had like 34-36k). POE2 was the only FIG project that wasn't like 90% investors money too (I haven't checked later projects).

As for sales, POE1 took 6 months to get to 500k sales (march to october 2015), Obsidian dev made a comment how direct sequels like Deadfire don't sale as well. I doubt any of them are really looking at sale numbers right now really…

Originally Posted by azarhal
The Figstarter had half the backers of the first one (POE1 had 77k backers, POE2 had like 34-36k). POE2 was the only FIG project that wasn't like 90% investors money too (I haven't checked later projects).

As for sales, POE1 took 6 months to get to 500k sales (march to october 2015), Obsidian dev made a comment how direct sequels like Deadfire don't sale as well. I doubt any of them are really looking at sale numbers right now really…

Sure, but you don't do full VO for a game that would drop out of steam top 10 in 2 weeks.

I think PoE2 will sell a little better than Tyranny. Maybe 400,000 if they are lucky with sales taking it beyond that. At the moment a lot of people probably find the price point quite high compared to the risk they are taking on whether or not it is a game they will enjoy. I find the exploration fun and I like the graphics.

Combat still doesn't do it for me. It is better around the edges however the core still remains. I really wish the combat was round based as that would make co-ordinating my party attacks easier. The ship combat is a complete waste of time as I suspected it would be. Also, as others have mentioned, people are waiting for the full experience. I suspect they will end up waiting for the sale after awhile rather than pay full price.

Loving the game, personally.
The slower combat is a big plus.
Multi-classing lends itself to more interesting builds and party set-ups.

@hairyscotsman2
I agree that the slower combat is a big plus and I like the multi-classing. Just a question of timing things for me as abilities have different activation times. It gets trickier with lots of different abilities because you have to keep track of how long things take to activate when deploying them. As I get more familiar with them I suspect that will be less of a problem.

Good riddance!

When paradox release their quarter and year end 10k we should know a bit how battletech and poe 2 sold over time.

Originally Posted by Morrandir
Iirc in Joxer's world it's an MMO as soon as the game is not hosted privately…

No. That would mean peer based decentralized MMOs using torrent or blockchain tech without dedicated servers aren't MMOs. They are.

Oh well, then you need to give us another definition.