Tyranny Didn't Sell: The Usual Obsidian Flop

rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/paradox-admit-tyranny-sold-below-expectations-dlc-still-in-the-works.115226/

>“Obsidian did a great job of capitalising on the timing of Kickstarter and the wave of nostalgia for these type of titles,” goes his hypothesis. “We've seen that most of the titles after Pillars of Eternity, if you look at Wasteland, Torment - they haven't been anywhere near that kind of success. So maybe it's that a lot of nostalgia fed into the initial bubble and that's why. These games have a market, but it's never gonna be that peak [again].”

>Wester shoulders the responsibility for Tyranny’s marketing, which ran with the slogan: 'Sometimes, evil wins.' It was an approach that wisely brought Tyranny’s twist on RPG morality to the fore - but didn’t touch so much on its singular world and cast.

UH OH, DIVINITY 2 PROVES THAT WRONG

Wow it's like Obsidiots don't want to admit that Obsidian creates generally unlikable and unsellable games

>B-BUT POE SOLD!

Only because of Baldur's Gate nostalgia

Other urls found in this thread:

boards.fireden.net/v/search/subject/Tyranny Didn't Sell: The Usual Obsidian Flop
twitter.com/NSFWRedditVideo

...

I know that it's Sup Forums. I know that nobody actually seeks deeper discussions, just memes and shit slinging.

But this topic is vital to understanding sales figures and cognitive biases.

For instance, Divinity: Original Sin 2 (please, OP, Divinity 2 is actually a different, very under-appreciated, game) enjoyed the whole power of the hype machine. Everyone wanted to be "cool" and say "yeah, I dig true oldskool turn-based games. I bought DOS2, see?".

But look at ELEX. A truly overlooked and old-school game with so much love and detail put into exploration, dialogues, and quest design. It is being obliterated in both media and reviews, because it's not "cool" to play or be knowledgeable about Gothic-like games.

I like Divinity: OS, despite its numerous flaws. But recently I've seen several random people saying "play it! it's like Ultima 7! That's what developers said!". And I ask "OK, but have you yourself played U7?". The answer is obvious.

The perception and accolades of entertainment products has little to do with the actual intrinsic value of the object. Modern gamers have created a simulacrum of the gaming and appraisal process.

Btw, Codex has also become an echo chamber, to my greatest disappointment. Sup Forums has been one for a while.

Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
CAMPAIGN SUCCESSFUL
$4,407,598
OF $1,100,000 GOAL
400%
OF GOAL

...

Elex sucks in a good way like pic related

D:OS2 sold because it's 1. it's good and 2. it's a sequel to a good game. Do you honestly think that hundreds of thousands that bought it did so to look cool in eyes of their peers? Please.

Mighty Number 9 was a success on Kickstarter too. Your point?

How many more times are you going to nake this thread you unbearable autist?
Seriously what's up with Sup Forums constantly making the same threads over and over again?

I consider Expeditions: Conquistador, Underrail, Age of Decadence, Blackguards, and many other recent TB titles to be superior to DOS1. Do I need to spell out how many sales were there?

You underestimate the power of hype. No, really. Often marketing expenses are greater than development costs, and it does pay off.

>I consider Expeditions: Conquistador, Underrail, Age of Decadence, Blackguards, and many other recent TB titles to be superior to DOS1.

All of those were shit games btw

Honestly there has been 0 good modern WRPGs.

Deadfire is Mighty Number 10.

I played first three out of titles you listed.

I didn't like Expeditions: Conquistador's combat, which, combined with the fact that there's pretty much nothing but combat in the game, made it unplayable for me. Played for about an hour.

I really tried to like Underrail, but after seeing how fireball looks in that game, I just couldn't bring myself to continue playing it. Game looks worse than the one it tries to imitate, 20 years after.

Age of Decadence seemed okay, but at some point, few hours after, I stopped and never got in the mood to continue it. No idea why.

From my point of view D:OS1 is vastly superior to all of them, and this is reflected in sales.

user, please name me one game in the past 7 years that does a good Gothic impression. One would be enough.

People don't even know what good quest and open world design actually is. Are you saying that animations and hitboxes are more important to you than actuall RPG mechanics, choices and consequences, reactivity? Then I rest my case.

Encounter design in Blackguards 1 was excellent. Much better than in DOS1. Do I need to tell you how quickly did the sequel go on sale, and what are its sales numbers?

Come on Sup Forums, you have to be knowledgeable about video game industry, what is the point of this fucking board then.

I honestly doubt you have played ELEX or Blackguards. W2 is shit, that I concur.

Didn't Elex actually sell decently?

shit games doesn't sell more news at 11

being this delusional that those low tier titles are better than Dos 2 or even dos1

It's like I was right when I said edar was spamfag.
wow
who'd have thunk

Yes and its sequel was confirmed before ELEX even released.

I don't get why people gush so hard over AoD, sure the combat system is fun but encounter design is pretty braindead and the AI is even worse than DOS, you only ever face challenge due to being constantly outnumbered. Optimization is also pretty shit, I had to deal with either running at a million FPS or having crazy input lag with vsync on.

The combat isn't what made AoD good.
All the different paths through the well-written story was the best part.
In my favorite playthrough I didn't even participate in a single fight.

It sound decently for German Indie Trash. Even South Park the Meme Game sold better.

>triple A pleb franchise sells better than german plebfilter
Makes you think

Was it really a flop?

Cant imagine this game costing more than 4 mil to make.

Cocaine is extremely expensive.

No, it's a spammer the mods are aware of.
boards.fireden.net/v/search/subject/Tyranny Didn't Sell: The Usual Obsidian Flop
He has other threads he spams too, way too much to list.

For its premise, Tyranny was completely pussified and tame when it came to showing the evil. Where was the slaves, the mass graves, the rapes?

>Often marketing expenses are greater than development costs,
Thats for AAA games tho
Dos2 is an indie game. Do you really think those eastern european fucks coding out of some literal who country had cash for marketing?

Then why is NV the RPG of the decade huh?

pwned bitch

>Belgium
>Eastern Europe

>Blackguards 1
>good in any way
So you're just a hipster?

Same shit
Barely better than poland

I can't wait for Deadfire. I'm making new character just to dual class it with something.

There is a natural substitution, when media outlets create hype by posting news on the supposedly old-school game in order to be perceived as "competent" and "knowledgeable". Partially the reason of the success of first big kickstarters.

Blackguards 1 had so many problems, but not appreciating the encounter design? Have you really played it? Do you prefer the encounter design of Pillars when it came out? Are you one of those who support higher difficulties being HP creep?

Tyranny was funded entirely by Paradox. Still, it was manpower Obsidian could've put to PoE2 instead.

Why didn't it sell? I enjoyed it

A shame since Tyranny was objectively better

Well, on one hand you have Tyranny, which, although it seems at first glance it brings new things to the table, it actually doesn't.
The main promise, to be evil, is kind of meh. For the kind of setup they did, another chosen one story was really disappointing.
Also, companions are mostly bad and story has TONS of issue.

Then you have DOS 2. Not only is the game much longer, but it also kept the promises they made. It's a really fun video-toy, where you can explore and try things for a long time.
It has at least 4 times as much content as Tyranny. Better characters, better graphics, better explorations, more interesting combat.
It comes with mod support, DM mode, multiplayer, couch-coop.

And they costed almost the same!

Thats Skyrim

While the "hype theory" can explain some, I agree, it fails to account for the fact that Tyranny just wasn't that good. It wasn't bad - there was some cool stuff in it deserving of a second iteration in my opinion, but it sold itself on premises it did not live up to.

>It comes with mod support
This is a big factor, why the hell can't Obsidian make PoE support mods?

What's your point? Elex still sold like trash from the perspective of articles like OP.

Didn't try Elex yet, but I did try to get into Gothic not long ago and failed. I don't doubt it's a good game, but there are certain titles that, if you didn't play them back in the day, it can be a little harder to get into them years later.
It seems to me that PB games are not really user friendly in a lot of ways. I'm not saying that makes it a bad game, but it helps to explain the poor reception.
Also, animations look like ass.

I thought we were done with this shit.

Besides, comparing Tyranny and divinity to each other is completely unfair, same with comparing PoE1 to divinity 2. Wait until Deadfire comes out so we can at least have a fair comparison.

Have you ever actually played Tyranny? its extremely shallow, there is only one interesting companion, you fight against either flavorless humans, those werewolf things or wisps throughout the game and it ends abruptly when you think the real action (fight against the Plague Archon or something) is going to begin.

D:OS2 offers 10x of the content Tyranny has offered and that's only one of the reasons it sold better..

Some of those games are really good (blackguards suck nigger). But you can't compare them to DOS1 because of ease of use and accessibility.
It doesn't matter if Age of Decadence it's a better game, I have friends that play tabletops rpg for the past 2 decades, playing vidya non-stop and hated AoD, didn't understand it or just hated how gated it was and how much you had to plan your run.
And they have a point, It took me several tries until I understood I had to plan ahead and save skill points and maximize at all turns if I wanted to end the game. And eventually, I understood it, and played with different builds and tried everything.
But I had to fucking work for it. While DOS2, even if it has it's difficulty curve, it's much, much more accessible.
No amount of marketing can compensate that. No amount of marketing would be able to sell age of decadence or underrail to a normie.

Blackguards 1 had a horrible combat system that looked good but undermined the game. And by the end, the game is unbearable.
I don't think you could compare that soft dark eye version with something like DOS2.

Underrail is definitely better. Conquistador is a worse game, but a better RPG.
You need to invest time and effort in these game to understand them first, and enjoy them second.

How many times are you going to make this thread, you fucking autist?

ELEX is being obliterated because no matter how much love they put into the design, the execution of gameplay is so below the bar for what's acceptable these days.

I didn't need to invest time into Fallout. It was beautiful and it was easy to get into.
I need to invest time and what do I get as a result, that visual diarrhea that is Underrail? No thank you.

Obsidian has been doing nothing but sjw gamers for years now. why would anybody want to buy a mostly story driven game from them?

Underrail also lacks punch in its combat and good writing.

We all have our investment threshold though.
So many modern mass market gamers would tell you Fallout was too complicated to get into.
It asked too much effort of them.

Hardest thing to get into is the damn scaling, shit looks tiny in Fallout at 1080p.

But when Wasteland 2 has better design, combat and writing than Underrail (and WL2 has SJW writing shit too), that's a problem.

Yes, within my 20ish person friend group only me and one other guy bought dos1 and we played it a bunch and were genuinely excited for dos2
I think atleast 14 or 15 of them bought dos2 and only 3 or 4, besides me and the guy that I played dos1 with, ever even got off the first island

It's not a threshold. I played the shit out of Dwarf Fortress. I got into it by following wiki pages. It's much more of an investment than what Underrail needs. The problem is that with DF, you get an amazing simulation that has almost no alternatives, and with Underrail, you get a game that is worse than 20 years old Fallout. The investment is not worth it.

ELEX is super janky and the translations are bad. If you understood its native language and english you'd know how badly it entirely changes the tone and meaning of conversations. Its getting "obliterated" in reviews because its a very aquired taste that requires a tolerance for that kind of thing.

Is it possible to play it with German audio and English subs like The Witcher?

Elex would be a great game but the shitty controls and the small annoying stuff like animation every time you pick up something kills it

>It's not a threshold
>The investment is not worth it.

Which is beside the point call it a threshold, call it a return-on-investment-to-complexity ratio, various audiences have various level of complexity they deem tolerable depending on the game.
Hell it can be both really - the user I was talking to is saying Fallout wasn't an investment. Maybe to him, but to others, it is, and that's why they don't play the game.

Because Obsidian can't actually do much unless the lore is already written for them.
Yes, they can make edgy storylines and write in popular culture but that's only when the story is already set in a well written lore like New Vegas has all of Fallout series to work with.
Their own games with their own settings seem to suck and people know it but won't admit it because they're too busy justifying it with "it's buggy because they got screwed over for the tenth time by mean publishers".

That's not true. The pillars setting is actually good and very complete even if not terrible original.
I even used it once for a tabletop campaign and it worked very well.