Larian Studios Forums Divinity 2 - Ego Draconis (English) Divinity 2 - Ego Draconis Divinity 2: RANT!!!

I have not been following this forum for quite a while, seeing that there isn't much to discuss about.

However, I open this topic to voice my small complaint. Because it seems clear now, that Divinity 2 is following the pattern of all the videogames which are produced with only the German market in mind. Which means that the international (or even just the english) version is delayed and delayed, never getting a clear release date, and when it finally does, the game gets ignored by most media and scores poor reviews because it turns out to be of quite mediocre quality.

I had big hopes for this game, but I now realize I was wrong. I shall have to turn to DA: O for a good rpg experience.

Which games would that be? If you're referring to Drakensang - that's based on a German role-playing system that is mainly popular in Germany, and the game was produced in Germany, so it's quite understandable that it was produced with the German market in mind. Apart from German games, is one of the very few games the German version of which is published before the English version. Often enough, it's the other way round.

According to a press release from May, the English voice recordings were finished. Larian never said why the English version is delayed so much, but to me it seems highly probable that it could have been published together with the German one - if the English/American publisher had agreed (or if there had been an English/American publisher at that time).

I fully understand that you don't like the delay and the lack of information, but I can't see the "pattern" you're talking about.

Real shame you would pass on a great game because it's not being released according to your time line!

I saw the game at PAX and saw an amazing game that I will be standing in line to buy on the day of release here in the good old USA!

If a game is good I buy it, if it's not what I like I do not buy it, but as a hardcore gamer since 1985, I would never pass on a game because it was not released when I wanted.

If Europeans would have that attitude, we'd never buy any games at all

Ok Then Goodbye
Its not Larians fault its coming in December.
Its up to the Publisher.
All this extra time equals a better game!

Huh ? Normally it goes vice versa !

I really don't understand your point of view, because 99 % of ALL games are made for the English-language market ! It's the Europeans who normally suffer delays !

Be greatful that the international market will receive a far less bugfree game than the Germans do ! You haven't seen the time when here in the German technical forums-part hell broke loose ! People were not complaining, not ranting, they were behaving like small children ! They were flooding the forum with threads saying "when does patch 1.02 come !"

I really don't understand you, and I quite feel insulted by your "rant". It's the europeans who usually suffer delays !

The people of the English-language market live like in Heaven ! Games are polished, relased nearly big-free, and sometimes even enhanced ! They get many more patches than localized versions do ! Do you know about the patch- / version niumber mess of Jagged Alliance ? I have recently bought the game called "The Orb", where the German version of the game only got a single patch - and the English-language version many more !

THAT's kind of insulting !

Thank you for expressing that you expect Europeans to deliver top games meanwhile companies are free to delay and delay games for the European markets and don't even feel deliver games in great qualities !

Neverend and Gods - Lands Of Infinitiy for example were greatly expanded - of course for the English market only ! The Expansions of Majesty never reached Germany ! We still have to play with the standard version because you don't even get the expansions via ebay Germany or Amazon Germany !

Seems I must import them - but on the reverse, how many people are willing to import non-English versions of games because they aren't getting them !

The mess is that everyone is clearly optimizing for the international market. Imho, just because the international market (and that means: The English-language market) is the only market delivering the needed amount of revenues to balance out the nowadays huge developing costs ! A failure in the English-speaking market might very well also mean it's a failure for the company itself !

That's why companies are - that's what i believe - optimizing fot the English-language international market - optimizing for local markets consumes just too much money against too little revenues !

pssst, don't tell ze Zermans but the german release is actually one huge closed beta (get a key buy bying it). Not that D2 hasn't been tested properly before that release... Anyway it just means Larian can rid the International release of bugs, and tweak some features the german owners of the game pointed out improvement.

All in all, everything you said is imo wrong, reviewers give out bad scores because a game has been released later in one part of the world than another. Games don't get worse by time either, on the contrary like I said 'patches'. Mediocre games get mediocre scores as good games get good ones, looking at the german reviews, it's a good game and will only be better once released in the US.

The imho bad thing is that the testing wasn't done more thoroughly.

Who will be happy ? The international market, because they receive a much better games than we did ...

LOL @ Op. You obviously haven't followed DA:O that closely then, not to be aggravated with them as well. They originally announced release as spring of this year(after announcing console versions of a previously PC only title), so in the grand scheme of things, their delay is longer than Div II.

lol speak 4 urself haha
jk but iw ould

I have to admit that it's very rare for other countries to get priority on any game over the English speaking market, and particularly the US & Britain. As a Brit myself, I obviously don't mind getting most games before the non-English speaking nations and I certainly don't begrudge anyone else their chance.

If a company's main audience is in Germany (And you only have to look at the massive German community here at Larian to see that it is!) then it only makes sense to release in Germany first, surely?

I have NO problems with this decision, and I'm perfectly happy to wait on the English version.

I honestly cant understand why people go into the forums to complain that a tittle hasn't come out yet because they WANT to enjoy it sooner, like they "own" the game to the form of having the right to complain or even "demand" that the publisher does what they want.

Realy, its like twilight zone for me. I come to this forums to learn more of the game, give some advices, mingle a little with people in good sport to exchange some info about tastes and opinions, but honestly, complaining and RANTING about a video game being delaying and they want to play it NOW seems like a 12 year old complaining to mommy they NEED their icecream now and if they dont have it then the icecream company its the boogey man that disapointed them and they'll never buy icecreams from them again.


Oh well. Maybe there's something that realy gone over me and i cant understand, or perhaps i'm just old. Oh well.

*pats him* Yes, you're old.

He is bit right about German to rest of the world attitude about German games. Gothic 3 was somewhat successful even without much marketing..

But on other hand, as I see patches, it will be ok to release it bit later.

One thing would be nice and good.. give it some publicy, bit of adds? If I wouldn´t like Divine Divinity, I would probably never noticed that this game exist. And I´m in country NEXT to Germany..

I think its sad that game like this (and those before) don´t get deserved publicy. Cause games from Larian are really good.

Ofc if that works for you (economical point of view), its ok..

PS: If you want and MUST play it and you are willing to sacrifice English dub, theres way to make German version to English (text only) one. But I guess you are bit lazy to search net, otherwise you would know.. (cause I wanted to play game too, but I was bit more determined than you, I guess )

Well, I see some of the answers here are, as usual, blinded by the typical fanaticism that brings a player to defend ANYTHING about a gaming company, even when there are obvious faults.

1) English isn't my language. So I don't belong to the "spoiled" market of native english players who are used to get all the games before the other countries. So don't tell me about how USA and english speaking countries always get the games first: I should know already. When I say I wanted Divinity 2 to be released outside of Germany, I meant an international version.

2) When I said that Divinity 2 is showing all the symptoms of a game released mainly for the german market, I didn't mean only Drakensang. I also meant Gothic, I also meant Loki.... I meant all the games of somewhat mediocre quality who become very popular in Germany but never gain big success overseas. No magazine outisde of Germany is speaking much about Divinity 2, which in my opinion is already a big sign that the game is as mediocre as the titles I have mentioned above. Seeing that the game is being delayed, and that no one really cares to speak about it apart german people, is making it all too obvious that Divinity 2 isn't as good a game as I hoped.

3) Time ago, I was assured by some staff member that Divinity 2 would get released before DA: O. It seems it wasn't true at all. I personally believe that the only chance that Divinity 2 had to sell a decent amount of copies, was to hit international release before the much bigger titles that will start being put on sale starting from this very month. But now, I predict Divinity 2 will sell very little copies.

What you are saying makes no sence at all? You are jumping to conclusion of a game you newer tried...

I wouldn't say that Drakensang, Gothic and Loki have much in common, except that they were developed in Germany, and I don't even think Loki was very successful in Germany. German games will perhaps not as easily become an international success as US games, but that's probably also true for French or Italian games ... and it's the same with movies or music (even English-language music from non-English-speaking countries).

Sure, was published first (and successfully) in Germany, but unless you're implying Germans generally have a bad taste with respect to games, I don't see why this should mean it's just a mediocre game.

The lack of a big international media coverage is not very surprising for a game from a small or medium company that will only be published in two or three months (English version). Even if were a bad or mediocre game, most magazines wouldn't simply ignore it, but give it bad or mediocre (p)reviews. Have you found any? If not, it's maybe just too early.

On the other hand, I agree that the information policy for does not seem very clever, whoever might be responsible and even if you consider that it's quite common for games companies not to stick to their target release dates.

Asuming the quality of a game, on the market it is first released, is a downright stupendous thing to do. Games get released to select markets first all the time, first USA, or Japan, Europe... Same goes for moviesn Tv-Series, Music albums, books etc... Saying all those pieces of entertainment are mediocre is an outright lie or misinformed claim. There are many reasons this happens,

Distribution: as Larian works with different distributers arround the world, different Publishers... all these elements that get a game into the shelves near you don't just sit and wait on a game till they are bored of it to release it, they all have other products with their own shedules to be considered.

Localization: Just translating text is only a part of localizing games, and that alone is big load of work if you don't want to dissapoint your buyers with crappy translations. Again Larian isn't the only element in this localization thing, games need to get rated, approved by consumer boards etc... this is slightly to totally different in each region, only the really big developers and publishers have the contacts and resources to pull this off to get a game released simultatiously all over the world.

Getting a feel: might sound a bit dirty but it isn't, it is not a lazy trait to use a part of the targetted market to test your product on. Once your confident there aren't any major defects or blunders in it. Bugtesting costs money, people need to get payed, and you'll never get it done as fast as thousands of customers could. When games get released to new markets after it hit another one first. It's nearly always an improved version of it.



If you still trust the word of developers on release dates... as I stated before, this isn't something developers fully control, even they can only estimate. And why is it a concern of yours how much the title sells? Divine Divinty wasn't the bestseller either, but it gave a small studio like Larian the resources to keep existing and even spend years on developing a sequel. Worse, with even the small number of sales it had (comperatively to bigger titles of much bigger studios) it still got many awards, more so than those better selling titles. Quantity != Quality.

Lar might have stated to the press a lot depends on this game, wether it sells good or not. But don't you go thinking they aren't realistic. They're not expecting to outsell say... Fallout 3, or Bioshock, or Diablo III. It's a game marketted towards RPG fans, who like story and depth, the resource put into it, and the expactions of the team behind it are within the limits of the targetted market. If they just wanted to sell a lot of games, more resource would have gone in hyping and advertising than in making a good game.

Wether or not D2 will sell enough, if it's good enough or not. Can't be predicted on a thing than what market it is first released to. I hope the best for D2, but am by no means a fanboy. If it ends up to be a horrid game after all, or mediocre I might not even play it. But I won't sit back while you or anyone else makes rediculous assumptions like you just did.


Rant over.

The funny thing is; this guy is not only confusing game quality with game sales, but also is he confusing Divinity 2 with a mediocre game the likes of Loki. If you decide not to buy a game because you think it won't be a blockbuster... Fine. But then don't run your mouth about the game quality or the marketing strategy, because, quite frankly, you're ignorant of those things, and it has no bearing on your choice of purchase.