Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous vs BG3

To be fair, "decreasing player chart numbers" (assuming you mean # of players that play concurrently/each day) isn't a great metric of how well a game has sold. WotR isn't multiplayer or releasing significant new constant, so it's expected for the player count to drop.

I agree with your last sentence, but I doubt any of us have reputable data on that... There was a survey on this forums way back that I think showed ~70% of BG3 EA players were familiar with D&D 5e, but of course forum users are a biased sample and "% of BG3 players who play D&D" is not the same statistic as "% of D&D players who will play BG3." This is yet another thing that'd be super interesting if Larian put on an official pre/post-EA survey and then released that data. And like one of the only valid reasons for a dedicated BG3 launcher - to advertise for and link to that survey.

Solasta is a VERY niche game, I'll never buy it, because it doesn't have a real plot whatsoever, despite being one of those fabled D&D players myself. You cannot say that gameplay there is great, if all encounters there are predetermined therefore can be tweaked to make them more fun as opposed to go wherever you want games. Criticizing gameplay and refusing to buy the game because certain home rule was added or some other rule was not included is a totally different behaviour, don't you think? BG3 has already sold more copies (over 2M+ just in Steam) in EA state than legendary BG2 in 20 years, P:K, and P:WotR combined. WotR, which GM4Him called successful, in comparison sold a meager 500k+ in Steam. So, your extreme point of view doesn't make sense.

In order to asses a game's success, you have to take into account the budget. Undertale sold 1-2 million copies and Cyberpunk 2077 sold ~15-20 million copies; but it'd be an extreme stretch to say that CP2077 is more successful than Undertale.

WotR sold 250k copies in its first week, so let's say ~1.5-2 million copies will be sold eventually (P:KM sold ~1 million after 3 years).
BG3 sold ~1.2 million copies in its first two weeks of EA, so let's say ~15-25 million total? (For comparison, Witcher 3 sold 30-40M and DOSII sold ~500,000 after a week and probably 3-5 million in total - I found a source saying 2 million after a year)
Roughly, BG3 will sell ~8-18x more copies than WotR.

P:WotR raised ~2 million on kickstarter, so let's say it cost ~$7-10 million to make (60 employees at $50k/yr for 2 years= $6M).
BG3..."has a triple-A budget" so let's say $70-125 million. (250 employees at $50k for 4 years is $50M)
Roughly, BG3 will cost 7-18x more than WotR.

Seems about the same level of successful to me!

Not necessarily. It's not just the price of the game (incl. various editions) but also the associated merchandise, if a game has any. A lot of revenue can be generated through sales of all those coffee mugs etc. Though I'd say games are behind other fictional works like movies in this regard.

That's certainly true. I'm also not including other intangibles such as: the benefit game X has for the company, leading more people to buy their next game Y, and I'm sure a few other effects. But again, all of these things still need to be divided by the cost to make the base game.

I feel like crpgs in particular don't sell that much merch, but I wouldn't be surprised if vastly more BG3 merch was sold compared to WotR, even taking into account their budgets.

Sorry. This just made me LOL.

I say 5 M, 10 M at the extreme most. Let's come back to this a few years from now and see who was right.

Totally fair; I erred on the higher side with my estimates to give BG3 the best possible chance! If BG3 only sells 5-10M copies then it will be ~2-3x less profitable as WotR only counting copies sold.

CP77 is a successful scam. Note that you have to take into account the value of the company. Despite CP77 generated money for the game itself, CDPR stocks dropped more than 50% therefore the company lost more than gained by CP77 sales.

You're forgetting that BG3 is in EA where the rest of them are in full release... BG3 hasn't even been really marketed.

Your calculation are wrong. The profit counts in absolute value minus expenses. Your logic is that investing $1 and getting $20 over a span of a year is more successful than investing a $1M and getting $2M. I'll take such "less successful" route any day. And, by the way, Owlcat is registered in the tax haven to avoid taxation, I would be surprised if they pay their employees more than $20k-25k per year, more like $15k-$20k (on average) with no benefits. So, I guess, it makes them even more successful.

Could you define a scam for me?

Agreed. This just reinforces my point that it's important to look at more than just "copies sold."

I have not forgotten. See the underlined "of EA" of my post. This is why, to get total copies, I multiply the BG3 copies sold in the first 2 weeks of EA by ~10-20, whereas I multiplied WotR first-2-weeks-of-RELEASE by only ~6-8. And I used googled "typical AAA budget" to get the expected cost, which should cover lifetime marketing expenses - including post-EA.

But we're talking about companies with different amounts of money and # of employees. You have to use some relative scale or else any comparison becomes useless. Going with your example, you could say that someone who invested $1 and got $1M has performed the same as someone who invested $1M and got back $2M. Technically both people made the same amount of money, sure. But guy #1 clearly did much better. There's probably some sweet spot where you take into account both absolute profit and relative profit, but I'd argue the more accurate metric is closer to the relative profit side.

I'll take your word on the tax haven thing; $15-20k salaries would indeed vastly cut down on expenses.

Cyberpunk2077 is sitting at 76% positive out of over 400k reviews on Steam currently. So I'm curious, is it a "scam" if a large majority of people got what they wanted and are happy with their purchase?

Plenty of entertainment products are financially a success, while being actual garbage.

The fact BG3 sold 1.2 million copies as EA (and I was there at the start of the EA, this product was nearly unplayable) simply proves my point.

BG3 was sold on its name. Nothing more.

I'm not a Larian fanboy as anyone here can tell you but you're severely underestimating just how many fans they have from DoS2. Yes, the BG name is big, but there is a reason wotc is letting Larian do Baldur's Gate 3.

Of course it is a scam. Who cares how much positive were reviews? Victims of the pyramid schemes often defended the fraudster because people never admit that they were duped unless damage is so big that they cannot take it anymore. It's a human nature. I had a friend who was sucked into a pyramid scheme and even after he lost lots of money was producing the exact same arguments as you are like "what is a scam? it was not", "I was totally happy with it", "If it wasn't busted I'd have been rich", etc. You're nothing new. 76% is a VERY low approval rate, Fallout 76 also has the same approval rate of 76%. It's hard to find a game with lower rating. Tell me, what RPG has lower rating?

This doesn't address anything I put. BG3 in a way is also a niche game, hell, all CRPGs are. It'd be actually less niche if it implemented the 5E rules because D&D has so many players.
I can say gameplay in Solasta is great because I bought both games and played both. Solasta plays better, MUCH better. All the encounters are balanced around your party's spells and abilities, thus making it rewarding when you use those. BG3 is balanced around gimmicky mechanics such as shoving on every turn, surface effects, exploding barrels, getting high ground and eating food that completely negates the difficulty. You also don't have to use your abilities, many of which are not even implemented (such as only rogues getting extra bonus actions).
I never said anything about Solasta's plot, just that the gameplay is immensely fun, probably the most fun I've had with TB games. Therefore I don't see anything extremist in implementing the system the game is supposed to be based on, less so considering the number of D&D players and possible cross-sales, i.e, people that play BG3 and want to buy the books.

Maybe because they lied so much during development.

I don't think that it will be a niche game and a lot of people will be against homebrew rules. Purism is an anchor that slows down the progress. If you don't like certain rule then complain about it specifically, don't whine about all rules in general. It's very clear that you haven't played BG3 for a long time because your statement about food and height advantage are already incorrect. I also was against food restoring health, they removed that mechanics. I have no problem with shoving, it's a fun mechanics, good addition. Surface effects is a great addition, they just need to make sure that they appear only where it makes sense. Exploding barrels are good if it makes sense for them to be placed there. I also don't like random explosives everywhere.

Yes it is a very low approval rating. You didn't answer my question: what RPG in the present or in the past has lower rating than CP77? Fallout 76 has the same rating as CP77, but is there any RPG with worse rating? You don't know bad RPGs or what?

< Purism is an anchor that slows down the progress.>
LOL.
Solasta is a purist game? Are your shitting me? Its a mechanically detailed MODERN game that pushes the boundary on pen and paper gameplay!

Id say BG3 is the total opposite, staying to its DOS2 roots and not BUDGING much. Literately copy and pasting many elements. Id say its even DOWNGRADING or REMOVING the gameplay and all aspect previous RPGs have been doing (day/night cycles, Time and urgency, random encounters, party controls and UI, itemization, spell choices, class choices, NPC companion count etc.....) Not exactly progress. I mean if you DONT LIKE cRPGs I guess you could call it progress???

DOS2 gameplay is faster, more dynamic and fun in a crazy sort of way; which fits the game.
People are blinded by the pretty faces, graphics and cinematics. Remove/downgrade all those in BG3 and you have a game that still needs tons of work in the gameplay, UI and atmosphere department.