Pillars of Eternity II - Flopped

Game is still a flop number wise.

Lets go ask Swen how selling 2-3 million copies each for Original Sin 1 & 2 feels. As the rest of those so called old school revival games barely sell 300,000 copies.

Correction PoE 2 barely has 110,000 copies sold since it's May 8th, 2018 release.:lol:

Frankly this is why Obsidian will never be a triple AAA studio ever again. Just watching those documentaries, and reading past employees experiences I can see why.

They are basically the little studio that could but never quite reaches the goal line.
 
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Arkadia7 said:
Some reasons that put me off from buying it:

The setting was interesting but not really going to have widespread appeal to fantasy fans…one major problem. The Caribbean and Caribbean Indians/tribes, ok, you are creative, but is that going to be a big draw for classic rpg players? Nope.

Also, ship combat is ridiculously dumb and terribly done. They should not have put any ship to ship combat in the game if they were going to do it so badly.

The story also sounded pretty bad and uninteresting, and I saw several complaints about it when reading steam reviews.
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I think you nailed it. The who pirate/caribbean thing was a bit of a turn off. Seems to me that they were trying to appeal to the masses since everybody likes pirates, right? I'd prefer that they stuck to the mainland and fleshed it out. I was hoping for a hard core Baldurs Gate feel. I hope they take the technology they learned and make another game.
 
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you said:
Fig, kickstarter, indie it is all the same (unless they do really well and then have to pay investors). Btw there should be a sec filing regarding the payout to fig investors.
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Because they filed for public investment there's going to be a lot more scrutiny. They'd better have their ducks in order. Again, they would have been better off just asking for free money. Still, they got $3m which I wonder if they would have got on KS again.

I've noticed there's a lot enthusiasm at release with these crowdfunded games but at some point people go meh.

But again, where was the marketing? If worse came to worst, they could have done a John McCain and done all sorts of gimmicks. Hire Johnny Depp or sell blood if you had to.
 
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It is sad really and I hope rumors about the acquisition of Microsoft isn't true. Obsidian is one of the bastions of old school RPGs and if Microsoft bought them we wouldn't see any classic style RPGs in the future.

By the way, selling numbers aren't any indication for the quality of the game. Maybe bad marketing is the culprit. Don't forget that in the past all of Troika's RPGs sold poorly (their best selling product is Arcanum and only sold 250k copies, Bloodlines was under 100k), but that didn't prevent all three of them becoming cult classics.
 
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I doubt anyone here is trying to associate sales with quality. We all know the two have nothing to do with each other.

I think the main reason people care about sales numbers is to see how sustainable these games are, whether or not we could expect a sequel of a given game, etc.
 
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I don't mind the pirates setting at all, but I could never warm to the stat system. Guess my mind is too "old school" but I can't get used to strength being important for spells and healing, just nope.
 
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axellslade said:
What? They had to sell 580,000 units(29 million dollars @ $50/unit) to break even with investors?

Twenty nine million dollars spent on a sequel worse then it's predecessor which had what, one fourth of that money to be spent on it's development?
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No, that is what investors needed to break even. Obsidian/Fig didn't share all revenue with investors. Only 0.85 I think (unless they decided to share even less).
 
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Another example: this studio submitted to whims from customers in order to improve their product.
Their customers couldnt play RTwP so accomodation was made. Customers told they wanted an unusual setting, delivered.

This studio improved their product according to the listen to their customers mantra. Result: less sales. A flop.

No art in that. Artists know how to listen to critics. They do not sway to the whims of their customers.
 
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Stingray said:
I just checked it, and it assumes $45 price for all units (game is actually selling for $50), and also the break-even number on their chart is 543.65K, not 580K, so yeah the guy who posted on Twitter is a little off already.

Source: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1658966/000121390017004888/f253g2051017_figpublishing.htm
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That's not the doc I saw back then, it had a graph in it. That doc clearly mention a /$14m budget" (that's what is split into shares) and I remember the $28m cut-off too, it was on the graph (I'm kind annoyed I never been to find that doc on FIG post crowdfunding).

The $26/28 I saw was an average price sale that included future price reduction (i.e. the graph was showing estimate of the longterm sales revenues).

Interesting, it says the dividends are going to be paid on May/November 15: Dividends on Fig Game Shares – Pillars of Eternity II will be declared every six months, as of every May 15 and November 15, and paid thereafter, in all events after such time (if ever) as Pillars of Eternity II is successfully developed and published and Pillars of Eternity II sales receipts begin to be received.
 
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henriquejr said:
c) More important: when indies/small studios see that a game with such visibility and a huge name behind it (Obsidian) flop plain and simple, what they'll think? Are they gonna to take the risk? Could this led to a drought of new RPG titles in near future?
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I'm not popular with my opinion here, I know.
What I've told a thousand times here, that cRPGs are extremely dangerous business-wise.

What we see in the past 2-3 years are just a few runaway successes (Divinity, Wasteland2, etc), but not the rock solid proof that hardcore, quality (whatever this means) cRPGs are good business.

Make no mistake, I love cRPGs (that's why I'm here on this forum), but I have absolutely no rose tinted glasses when it comes to reality.
 
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Wow, I had no idea so many people here didn't like the sequel... I played it right after I played Divinity OS2, and although the styles are different, I consider them equals overall. I cannot imagine getting much better from a producer in today's day and age.

You all are very hard to please, indeed.
 
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ChaosTheory said:
Wow, I had no idea so many people here didn't like the sequel… I played it right after I played Divinity OS2, and although the styles are different, I consider them equals overall. I cannot imagine getting much better from a producer in today's day and age.

You all are very hard to please, indeed.
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Some of us weren't too pleased with PoE 1 so we didn't even bother to try the sequel, especially after they simplified its mechanics even more ;)
 
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ChaosTheory said:
Wow, I had no idea so many people here didn't like the sequel… I played it right after I played Divinity OS2, and although the styles are different, I consider them equals overall. I cannot imagine getting much better from a producer in today's day and age.

You all are very hard to please, indeed.
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Same. I rate PoE2 very highly, and it's likely to be my GotY ahead of Kingmaker and Kingdom Come, two games I also enjoyed greatly.
 
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I haven't bought or played Pillars of Eternity Two as of yet, but I'll bet in advance that I'll like it more than I did Original Sin Two. What stops me from buying Obsidian games the day of release is the knowledge that there will be more content down the road, so I just wait for all that to be released before plunking down my funds these days.
 
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Most of people here would know of my view on PoE games already. I was thinking of trying it out once all DLCs are out and its on hefty sale but not interested anymore. Don't think I will have time to play tbh.
 
purpleblob said:
Most of people here would know of my view on PoE games already. I was thinking of trying it out once all DLCs are out and its on hefty sale but not interested anymore. Don't think I will have time to play tbh.
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I was first waiting for all patches, DLCs and at least 50% off sale but now after Kingmaker release I would rather do another run of Kingmaker in those 50-100h I would spend on PoE 2.
 
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This is really sad to hear.

I think i am one of the (few) people that quite enjoyed playing PoE 2. I even liked it more than the first one. Yea there are some things that might have put people off but still it offers so much things. Real shame.
 
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Yes, it's a pity, but I think we've probably seen the end of Obsidian making these types of games, anyway. It's sitting my collection, waiting until all content is in. I'm really looking forward to playing it, and I was hoping they might redo the ship combat, perhaps for the definitive edition.
 
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I think we've seen a flood of rpgs on Steam since Pillars of Eternity came out in 2015. BTW, that game had sold around 400k+ copies in the same period, if I remember correctly, and something like 750k in the first year. There are now a ton of Japanese rpgs being ported, indie rpgs, and AAA games with rpg elements. I totally agree with Duerer. Some of these games have seen runaway financial success. Darkest Dungeon, Stardew Valley, Pillars 1, Legend of Grimrock 1, Battle Brothers, both Original Sins et., but for every one of these games there are 20 others which fail. The market is saturated and I think the bubble is going to burst at some point. This is the second RPG renaissance, like we had in the early 90s, but at some point as financial failures destroy developers the number of rpgs created will decline, so enjoy it while it lasts.
 
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duerer said:
What I've told a thousand times here, that cRPGs are extremely dangerous business-wise.
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Not as dangerous as MMOs. Destiny 2 - failed. Dawngate - failed. There are numerous examples.

Currently the only safe bet is cheap scamware on phones. Till everyone and their mother says what's enough is enough.
Ripper said:
I think we've probably seen the end of Obsidian making these types of games, anyway.
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Good. They need to kill Unity already and license whatever other engine. Unity just can't do what Obsidian wants to.
 
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