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Dragon Age: Veilguard releases with over 70k concurrent players on Steam and 'Mixed Reviews'

Madflavor

Member
It's so crazy how many numbers BG3 continues to pull in. I just love the irony of the whole situation. The absolutely mogging that BG3 was gonna give DA4 could've been seen coming a mile away, but it's still satisfying to see. This whole year has been a huge win for anyone with a chemically balanced brain. The usual suspects of insane blue haired mutants and activists posing as storytellers, have been taking L after L after L
 
To be fair, there's plenty for the blue haired mutants to enjoy in BG3. The difference is that those elements are present, but not (particularly) forced in BG3 and the game is so damn good otherwise that nobody cares.

Which is precisely how inclusion/diversity/whatever should be done.

I'll forever be grateful to Larian for proving the "you can't have a profitable big budget hardcore RPG" narrative wrong in such brutal fashion.
 

GHG

Member
You know what, maybe @Killjoy-NL was right. What I'm seeing is that some of the most notorious Xbros are batting hard for this game at the moment and I really don't understand why:



In addition to @ManaByte , O Ozriel , @pasterpl and our little treasure @vaibhavpisal .

Whats wrong guys, is Indiana Jones coming in hot? Will this be a point of discussion going forwards:?



Feel free to tell everyone and let it all off your chests. How bad is it? What should everyone be expecting?


Guys I was wrong. As such, I have something to say, especially to you O Ozriel , since it's become apparent that this wasn't becuase of the upcoming Indiana Jones game.

tenor.gif



It was actually South of Midnight you were all preparing for.
 

Gtafans93

Member
I am so confused with Veilguard the gameplay and level design and even RPG mechanics and Choices are quite good but the Grit that got me into the series that adult dark fantasy, grit origins, 2 even inquisition had is gone. Now it's just fort nite lite Fantasy. How can they get to many things right but the soul of the game so wrong. Plus not having choices from 1 and 2 being in the game hurts so much. Keiren should of been a possible member to get if you had him available from your choices.
 

KungFucius

King Snowflake
I am usually on the side that bitches about the people who whine about DEI, but in this case, they have a small point. The gender identity questions in my character's room are ridiculous. Less than 1% are trans and of those, less have identified as a he/him male. Why the fuck does the game ask my character these awkward questions when looking at the character's past? I half wanted to click on it to see what the fuck it led to, but don't want to break the game so to speak.

This is next level inclusion and it is inappropriate and should maybe be a toggle during character creation that you have to actually turn on. It doesn't ruin the game, it is just unnecessary and weird and not wanted or needed by the vast majority of the people who will play this game. Why waste the time putting this there?
 

Mayar

Member
I am so confused with Veilguard the gameplay and level design and even RPG mechanics and Choices are quite good but the Grit that got me into the series that adult dark fantasy, grit origins, 2 even inquisition had is gone. Now it's just fort nite lite Fantasy. How can they get to many things right but the soul of the game so wrong. Plus not having choices from 1 and 2 being in the game hurts so much. Keiren should of been a possible member to get if you had him available from your choices.

This is a common problem with the RPG genre in 2020-2025. We have actually lost it as a genre, there is a widespread removal and simplification of all elements of RPG games, most likely in order to increase the number of buyers. This does not mean that we will completely lose real RPGs as a genre, but now this will happen extremely rarely, as in the case of BG3. Plus, there is also the fact that now games "must" be adapted for the most "advanced" users, so now they just lead you by the hand, make sure that you, God forbid, do not turn the wrong way, each puzzle is now as simple as possible and so that you do everything exactly as needed NPCs will also tell you with their voices where and what to move, so that you do it exactly. The developers simply stopped believing in players and their intelligence. The whole situation with the RPG genre can be described by this video.

Unfortunately, most games that are coming out now and have the RPG genre actually have nothing to do with RPGs or have RPG elements in a very small percentage.
 
This is a common problem with the RPG genre in 2020-2025. We have actually lost it as a genre, there is a widespread removal and simplification of all elements of RPG games, most likely in order to increase the number of buyers. This does not mean that we will completely lose real RPGs as a genre, but now this will happen extremely rarely, as in the case of BG3. Plus, there is also the fact that now games "must" be adapted for the most "advanced" users, so now they just lead you by the hand, make sure that you, God forbid, do not turn the wrong way, each puzzle is now as simple as possible and so that you do everything exactly as needed NPCs will also tell you with their voices where and what to move, so that you do it exactly. The developers simply stopped believing in players and their intelligence. The whole situation with the RPG genre can be described by this video.

Unfortunately, most games that are coming out now and have the RPG genre actually have nothing to do with RPGs or have RPG elements in a very small percentage.


The reason for this is the same as why writing sucks. Becase you need talent and a high IQ to make good games. A bunch of nobodies won't ever make a decent RPG with good level design and puzzles, if they lack creativity and brains. You can tell when a game is made by smart people or dumbasses.
 
Lost a third of its players since this time on Monday, which is hardly a huge day for gaming. Especially given the target audience for this game all have jobs.
 
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GHG

Member
I am usually on the side that bitches about the people who whine about DEI, but in this case, they have a small point. The gender identity questions in my character's room are ridiculous. Less than 1% are trans and of those, less have identified as a he/him male. Why the fuck does the game ask my character these awkward questions when looking at the character's past? I half wanted to click on it to see what the fuck it led to, but don't want to break the game so to speak.

This is next level inclusion and it is inappropriate and should maybe be a toggle during character creation that you have to actually turn on. It doesn't ruin the game, it is just unnecessary and weird and not wanted or needed by the vast majority of the people who will play this game. Why waste the time putting this there?

It's not an option because it's propaganda. Always has been, always will be.
 

Mayar

Member
Lost a third of its players since this time on Monday, which is hardly a huge day for gaming. Especially given the target audience for this game all have jobs.
In part, this is true, but in reality, everything is much more complicated and complex. The designer and programmers who work on games are far from stupid people, they need to know a lot and we can see this in the same Veil Guard - the design of the location is beautiful, the optimization of the game is good, etc. But they do not choose how the game will move and they are locked within the framework of the general design document, which is approved from above. Therefore, unfortunately, we have smart and talented people who are locked within the framework of the current system and new development standards. And they can do nothing about it, and nothing depends on them here.

As for writing the story and dialogues. Yes, it is a disaster, but this disaster is now actually on a global scale, television, cinema and games suffer from it. The number of talented authors is very small and they cannot cope with the market volumes that exist now. And new authors are simply not able to write at the same level (since they are actually a product of the system and the order that exists now), so we see a widespread decline in the quality of scripts in films, series and games.
 
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As for writing the story and dialogues. Yes, it is a disaster, but this disaster is now actually on a global scale, television, cinema and games suffer from it. The number of talented authors is very small and they cannot cope with the market volumes that exist now. And new authors are simply not able to write at the same level (since they are actually a product of the system and the order that exists now), so we see a widespread decline in the quality of scripts in films, series and games.


This is simply not true. Actually, it's an outrageous claim. The problem is that these people are NOT writers. There are MANY talented writers, professional or self-published, but they aren't picked because they don't belong to "the right demographics" and this happens everywhere in the Western world, in every country, the reason why literature prizes have gone down the drain.
 

Mayar

Member
This is simply not true. Actually, it's an outrageous claim. The problem is that these people are NOT writers. There are MANY talented writers, professional or self-published, but they aren't picked because they don't belong to "the right demographics" and this happens everywhere in the Western world, in every country, the reason why literature prizes have gone down the drain.
This is more of a technical question. You can graduate from a higher educational institution with a degree in Screenwriting, and yes, you will have a diploma in this profession. The problem is that this will not make you a good screenwriter, but technically, according to the documents, you are a screenwriter =)
 

PeteBull

Member
As for writing the story and dialogues. Yes, it is a disaster, but this disaster is now actually on a global scale, television, cinema and games suffer from it. The number of talented authors is very small and they cannot cope with the market volumes that exist now. And new authors are simply not able to write at the same level (since they are actually a product of the system and the order that exists now), so we see a widespread decline in the quality of scripts in films, series and games.
Yups, big contrast when for example we watched new deadpool and wolverine which actually was amazing(funny, brutal, interesting storyline, godly written characters, many crazy cameos, i could praise it for a long time ;p) vs most movies of the "new marvel" wave which were just dei and boring as all fuck.

I mean seriously, peak creativity with brutal and funny elements on top which is what us guys love the most even in the very opening of the newest deadpool, hopefully no1 is spoiled by now since it was super viral and every1 who wanted/cared watched the movie or at least snippest already(if not i strongly recommend the movie ofc).
 
This is more of a technical question. You can graduate from a higher educational institution with a degree in Screenwriting, and yes, you will have a diploma in this profession. The problem is that this will not make you a good screenwriter, but technically, according to the documents, you are a screenwriter =)


I am a fantasy/sci-fi writer, so I know full well what the literature landscape looks like. I'm not talking about a useless diploma, but investing hundreds of hours in honing my skills, learning genre conventions, worldbuilding, scene set-up, and many more things that any decent writer should know before starting to type. Reading a lot is also a must. It's a precondition to even think of writing.

These tourists don't do any of that. They have self-inserted themselves into the industry and their trash works. For people who make an effort to write something that doesn't make your eyes bleed calling these folks "writers" is the same as calling a shaman doctor.

In video games, it's far easier to find good writing in indie games than in AAA. There is talent out there, but the big names aren't hiring them, because they think an AI-assisted monkey can do the job. Hint: it can't.
 

Mayar

Member
I am a fantasy/sci-fi writer, so I know full well what the literature landscape looks like. I'm not talking about a useless diploma, but investing hundreds of hours in honing my skills, learning genre conventions, worldbuilding, scene set-up, and many more things that any decent writer should know before starting to type. Reading a lot is also a must. It's a precondition to even think of writing.

These tourists don't do any of that. They have self-inserted themselves into the industry and their trash works. For people who make an effort to write something that doesn't make your eyes bleed calling these folks "writers" is the same as calling a shaman doctor.

In video games, it's far easier to find good writing in indie games than in AAA. There is talent out there, but the big names aren't hiring them, because they think an AI-assisted monkey can do the job. Hint: it can't.
I completely agree. But unfortunately the very fact that we receive scripts and dialogues of such quality from people who have undergone training in the specialty and have education and diplomas in this field (The very fact that we can basically say that the Diploma is useless and I completely agree with this) indicates that the system does not work and it has failed. And this actually makes the situation even sadder than simply saying - "Oh, they are not Screenwriters." =)
 

Mayar

Member
That is a huge drop in less than 2 weeks.
Well, there's nothing unusual about it. It's a linear adventure game, after you've completed it once, you've basically seen everything (Well, yes, you can complete it with a bad ending, although that makes no sense). The game has zero replayability, so yes, it will lose users. And of course, I understand that in this topic it's popular to compare the game with BG3, but in BG3 each quest can be completed in many ways, and each companion's quest can also be completed in different ways with different, so to speak, outcomes. The game has a huge number of choices and forks that depend on many factors. That is, the games have huge replayability, which is why it still holds up so well online. I won't even mention the fact that the game has mod support and it's very good (directly from the developer), so I think BG3 will easily hold up for several years, like Skyrim, due to the diversity + mods from the community.
 

Denton

Member
Well, there's nothing unusual about it. It's a linear adventure game, after you've completed it once, you've basically seen everything (Well, yes, you can complete it with a bad ending, although that makes no sense). The game has zero replayability, so yes, it will lose users
You are talking about Steam concurrent players dropping. Yes it is normal for these to drop for SP games (although truly successful ones can sustain higher numbers long).

But the game dropping this far in the bestseller list means that very few new people are buying.
 

DonkeyPunchJr

World’s Biggest Weeb
I feel like Veilguard is sort of like a “Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi” moment for the series.

It looks great, it got high reviews from the access gaming media, lots of people bought it based on the series’ reputation and positive reviews. But then the audience got to experience it for themselves and realized it was a pile of shit with a ton of artificial hype around it. And it eroded the audience’s trust in the series + the reviewers who handled it with kid gloves.

The analogy breaks down there though. TLJ still made a good amount of money even if it was a huge drop off from The Force Awakens, and there was still value for their parent company to continue extracting from the series. Veilguard will likely never turn a profit, and BioWare is lucky if they don’t get euthanized by EA.
 

EviLore

Expansive Ellipses
Staff Member
The reason for this is the same as why writing sucks. Becase you need talent and a high IQ to make good games. A bunch of nobodies won't ever make a decent RPG with good level design and puzzles, if they lack creativity and brains. You can tell when a game is made by smart people or dumbasses.
Merit vs identity and ideology.

Merit produces the better outcome every time, unless your only barometer for quality is whether it is ideologically conformant.
 

Kacho

Gold Member
Well, there's nothing unusual about it. It's a linear adventure game, after you've completed it once, you've basically seen everything (Well, yes, you can complete it with a bad ending, although that makes no sense). The game has zero replayability, so yes, it will lose users. And of course, I understand that in this topic it's popular to compare the game with BG3, but in BG3 each quest can be completed in many ways, and each companion's quest can also be completed in different ways with different, so to speak, outcomes. The game has a huge number of choices and forks that depend on many factors. That is, the games have huge replayability, which is why it still holds up so well online. I won't even mention the fact that the game has mod support and it's very good (directly from the developer), so I think BG3 will easily hold up for several years, like Skyrim, due to the diversity + mods from the community.
We were talking about the games position on the global sales chart. It dropped to #30 and the game is less than 2 weeks old. This shows a complete lack of interest with players in general. Obviously due to the controversies and lack of RPG. Dreadful performance.
 

Mayar

Member
We were talking about the games position on the global sales chart. It dropped to #30 and the game is less than 2 weeks old. This shows a complete lack of interest with players in general. Obviously due to the controversies and lack of RPG. Dreadful performance.
Yes, I agree that it is very fast, but usually single-player games without replayability do not stay in the Steam charts for long (Very rarely and with a very large exception). I may be wrong, but it seems like BG3 is still in the top 20-30 on Steam, I just haven't looked for a long time? Although the game is already 1.5 years old. I just clearly remember that they had a big surge in sales right after the patch that added support for MODs from players to the game. Usually, players look at how much content I can get for my money, and mod integration helps a lot with this.

But overall, yes, the drop is quite strong, and most likely all the factors came together here. The overall rating of the players, the linearity of the game, not the best press. Plus, the game usually has the most important first week, I would even say the first 3-4 days, the game needs to make a really good breakthrough and gain a foothold at the peak, they did not succeed. Because as soon as the first wave of people interested in the game or DA fans passes, the buying interest begins to sharply decline. Then, in fact, only people remain - "I'll buy this on sale when the prices drop", but they usually do not add significant figures.
 

DonkeyPunchJr

World’s Biggest Weeb
Merit vs identity and ideology.

Merit produces the better outcome every time, unless your only barometer for quality is whether it is ideologically conformant.
I’m starting to think a lot more about toxic positivity as well. You can tell this game came out of an environment where nobody felt free to speak up and offer their honest constructive criticism. (And of course identity ideology is the ultimate “off limits” subject).

It’s a huge problem and it explains so much. It’s the reason we got Mrs. Freeze, it’s the same reason Sony spent 8 years and $400M making a game that literally nobody wanted, it’s the same reason a certain political party was stunned at how broadly their candidate was rejected by nearly every demographic.

The smart and successful companies will be the ones who look at the last 8 years and realize they need a corporate culture where constructive criticism is encouraged + taken seriously.
 

DeepEnigma

Gold Member
The reason for this is the same as why writing sucks. Becase you need talent and a high IQ to make good games. A bunch of nobodies won't ever make a decent RPG with good level design and puzzles, if they lack creativity and brains. You can tell when a game is made by smart people or dumbasses.
You got that right.

Some of the best and most iconic games, engines, stories of all time were from certified geniuses.

Allan Alcorn
Marc Blank
Carol Shaw
Toru Iwatani
Shigeru Miyamoto
John Carmack
Tim Sweeny
Sid Meier
Gabe Newell
Alexey Pajitnov
Hironobu Sakaguchi
Hideo Kojima
Hidetaka Miyazaki
Chris Avellone

Those are just popular ones. I can name another 50 easily from the golden age.

Now? The regression is very noticeable. Idiocracy levels of noticeable.
 
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Wildebeest

Member
Merit vs identity and ideology.

Merit produces the better outcome every time, unless your only barometer for quality is whether it is ideologically conformant.
Merit can be faked by being from the right family background, by doing and saying all the right things to get along with the right people. Genius cannot.
 

Mayar

Member
Oh, I forgot, for me the most interesting fact in the graphs. If you take the BG3 graph, for example, you can see a relatively flat graph with peaks and very long intervals between the hills, even when the game began to lose players sharply from 500,000 to 150,000, the graph trend remained (for convenience, you can take a scale of 1 week). The graph is flat, without the characteristic jerks downwards, even when the number of players began to fall sharply. These long straight intervals were most likely caused by the fact that, roughly speaking, some of the players were resting or sleeping and did not play, but sales continued, so straight lines were obtained. And naturally, in prime time we see peaks. If you look at the graph of the same DAV, we see a similar picture at the beginning, and the first days are clear straight lines, and then a clear line down after the main peak (and this is normal in fact) for two days, but then the graph turns into some kind of cardiogram of a patient with tachycardia with constant jerks up and down. I can assume that while people were resting and in between prime times, the number of sales was not so large that the game reached some kind of plateau, so we see constant jerks up and down. And I think this indicates just that people who bought the game are slowly going through it (Usually for casual players 1 week for such a game is just a good period), they are slowly leaving the game, but the sales level does not allow the game to reach some kind of stable plateau yet, due to the outflow of users and insufficient sales for this.

But these are purely my thoughts, I am not an analyst =)
 
I completely agree. But unfortunately the very fact that we receive scripts and dialogues of such quality from people who have undergone training in the specialty and have education and diplomas in this field (The very fact that we can basically say that the Diploma is useless and I completely agree with this) indicates that the system does not work and it has failed. And this actually makes the situation even sadder than simply saying - "Oh, they are not Screenwriters." =)
The system was always doomed to fail.

Writing, like painting or composing, is an art , not a craft. Schooling and training can only teach you some techniques to help you improve, but they can't make you an artist.
 

EviLore

Expansive Ellipses
Staff Member
Merit can be faked by being from the right family background, by doing and saying all the right things to get along with the right people. Genius cannot.
Genius can be faked. Happens a lot in the social science and pop science domains. People forge data in order to work backwards from it to seem like they had a brilliant, novel idea. See: Dan Ariely. People thought Malcom Gladwell was a genius too, which is just embarrassing if you read any of his work.
 

jason10mm

Gold Member
Genius can be faked. Happens a lot in the social science and pop science domains. People forge data in order to work backwards from it to seem like they had a brilliant, novel idea. See: Dan Ariely. People thought Malcom Gladwell was a genius too, which is just embarrassing if you read any of his work.
Come on, you know DAMN WELL his books are meant to be purchased and then placed on a shelf just to the right of your head so other people can see it on zoom calls and think you are wise and well read. Just like every copy of "The Book of Five Rings", "Meditations", and any number of topical trendy self help/leadership books :p
 

EviLore

Expansive Ellipses
Staff Member
Come on, you know DAMN WELL his books are meant to be purchased and then placed on a shelf just to the right of your head so other people can see it on zoom calls and think you are wise and well read. Just like every copy of "The Book of Five Rings", "Meditations", and any number of topical trendy self help/leadership books :p
Musashi's Book of Five Rings and Marcus Aurelius's Meditations are legitimately great, timeless books.
 

Nickolaidas

Member
IGN and PC Gamer are already backpedaling now that the game is universally hated and try to save face by claiming that 'yeah, train representation was awesome, but the game is actually shit'.
 

IntentionalPun

Ask me about my wife's perfect butthole
I am usually on the side that bitches about the people who whine about DEI, but in this case, they have a small point. The gender identity questions in my character's room are ridiculous. Less than 1% are trans and of those, less have identified as a he/him male. Why the fuck does the game ask my character these awkward questions when looking at the character's past? I half wanted to click on it to see what the fuck it led to, but don't want to break the game so to speak.

This is next level inclusion and it is inappropriate and should maybe be a toggle during character creation that you have to actually turn on. It doesn't ruin the game, it is just unnecessary and weird and not wanted or needed by the vast majority of the people who will play this game. Why waste the time putting this there?
Well it is an RPG, it’s asking you about the background of the character you want to play for that play through not asking about you.

There are 0% of people who are wood elves in the world but that’s who I choose when I play Skyrim about half the time.

It just seems like the bigger problem is it’s not a well written RPG.

Also maybe that intro character building thing isn’t good either, not saying it isn’t overdone, just pointing out for an RPG it’s not asking about YOU unless you want to role play as someone like yourself.
 
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gpn

Member
I've got to think Ubisoft is shitting their pants over this. When they delayed AC Shadows, they pretty much said the underperformance of SW Outlaws was due to its technical issues, so they were going to do extra polishing on Shadows to resolve that. And yet, by all accounts, DAV is stable and polished technically-wise, but tanking due to its content. Shadows will no doubt do likewise.
 

Mayar

Member
If you want to see something really funny, click this link. :messenger_beaming:

f78bfabb-00b6-55dd-bac2-4368fbae615b

I have questions for the Steam community and their health, but it seems that the Steam community was expecting Farm Simulator more than DAV
 
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