Larian Studios Forums Divinity 2 - Ego Draconis (English) Divinity 2 - Ego Draconis LOYAL DD FANS:TIPS ON A"HACKING-LESS"NEXT-GEN RPG?

Thanks, Raze <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

If it's shop sales, it's a highly significant figure. If it's company sales it's still somewhat significant, but less so as we can't know how many were left on shelves.

good thinking everyone.i missed a couple of points before reading your opinions.maybe my fears were overrated,but in the end,we still hope that larian's next gen rpg will generate enough money to justify another sequel in the future.i just hope that larian is reading this post to know how much its fans stand by their loyalty <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cry.gif" alt="" />

Hmmm... sales figures, huh? Well that'd depend on how the retailer calculates them. Some count "a product which has been shipped to a customer" as "a product sold" or "a record of transaction = product sold", "once product shipped to store = sold", etc., etc.

Furthermore, you'd have to count in "discount sales", "bundle sales", etc., etc. In short, it's lot of logistics and only with hard data, then you'd only be able to derive the figures.

You guys all know the old saying, I'm sure: "There's lies, damn lies and statistics."

This is why I am always very, very careful with statistics...

Grandia: I don't really buy a lot of games, preferring to rent them or borrow them from various friends. That's 'cos they're very expensive in my country. Plus, a lot of games just don't interest me. For example: (yeah you might clonk me for saying this) I just didn't really enjoy BG1 nor Planescape: Torment for many various reasons. I prefer freedom in a battle and enjoy a flowing style of dialogue and narration.

The last few games that I really enjoyed without bugs? Hmmm... uhhh... few games that I can think of. QFG 4 was rushed for release time and I'd to scour the internet for fixes so it'd run on my pc.

Arcanum was bugged to hell.

Heck, no offense to Larian, Divine Divinity also had quite a few bugs.

But then again, nowadays games are more and more complex so it's difficult to isolate bugs 'cos there're many variations of systems. Having beta-tested some very indie game(still incomplete) which was in 2d, I can tell you that "it's tough, man" for those testers and developers. 'Cos that game I tested was really short but imagine a huge, complex game like DD: lots of areas, movement, interface, maps, items, 3d, etc. Sometimes, a bug that was already fixed crops up again and sometimes, after having fixed an entire area, you find that 'cos of "bug B"(which sometimes isn't too critical), you might have to redo that entire area. So for the developers, sometimes, they'll choose to fix the issue which has a higher priority first.

It takes hours to hunt down a single bug sometimes and often, you go nuts trying to "make" a certain bug occur. The complexity of the modern computing systems and combination of drivers, software, etc. makes it a nightmare for developers. Sometimes, developers are forced to release a game without being able to fix all the bugs 'cos quite simply, you can't fix everything. You can only cross your fingers and hope that nothing critical occurs.

'Cos, it often takes like 2 to 3 years more to fix everything and well, you often don't have the $$$ or resources to do it. Furthermore, by the time the game is released a few years later, there might have been another game released which is similar to it. As they say, ideas are great but it's also about being early in releasing the product.

Yep, you're quite right. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/think.gif" alt="" />

Wouldn't it be better to hope that their next RPG is good enough to generate sales? Larian, in my view, had a fairly good initial product (Divine Divinity) but with a dismal followup (Beyond Divinity).

As such, I won't be rushing for their next RPG until it has gained considerable (and credible) positive feedback. And not at all if it uses obnoxious CD-checks (Divine Divinity is the only game I've encountered that has problems with a no-cd patch) or online activation.

From what I've heard about BD, I can assume that Larian will definitely learn from the issues and use that experience to create another quality product. After all, what kinda company would squander all that money for nothing? <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

You only faced these issues with BD? You must be really lucky. I've had friends who'd problems with cd/online checks from games like Still Life, Ankh, Half Life2, Dreamfall, Splinter Cell: Double Agent and many other various type of games including indie games. When they tested the cds on various computers, the same problem occurred for many of the games, no matter how much hardware was disconnected/replaced or how many modifications they made to the o/s.

Do note that the cds were original and cost quite a bit and the hardware was quite new too. (Edit: They often ended up using no-cd hacks to circumvent these issues. After all, time is a resource and if the technical support isn't that helpful, then you'd want to try another method so you can play the game.)

There're still many games which use Securecom and Starforce and other types of crappy protection. Chaos knows what kinda suffering those poor gamers have to go through.