D&D 5E How To Make a Good D&D Videogame

[Reinhart]

That's not a 51% out of 100% given as a review - that's 51% of people given two choices, recommend or not, choosing to recommend the game.

...and that is even with it being generally true that people are more probable to speak up to trash on something than to praise it, and with reviews coming from people that chose not to recommended the game including such contradictory information as having played the game for 127 hours and saying "I didn't like it."

Now, if you knew that the 51% I was talking about was 51% of nearly 2000 people saying "yes, get this game" and you still wouldn't buy anything under 70%... that's a different story entirely, especially since there is no way at all to guarantee that you are getting info from people with preferences similar to yours (i.e. there might be 2000 people that have played the game and chose to review it, but not all 2000 like what you like so some of the "don't get this game" reviews might actually be listing things you like and the reviewer doesn't as reasons to avoid the game). I mean, I know that 70% of my friends, let alone a group of complete strangers with nothing in common other than the broad quality of "likes videogames", don't agree with me about what is or isn't a good video game even half of the time.

What you seem to miss is that there's a built in sampling "bias" for these things, especially when it comes to multiplayer games. I use bias in quotation marks because it has special meaning in statistics that differ from how it's used elsewhere. You have to take into account the greater body of results when understanding any metric. At 51% approval Sword Coast Legends is at the bottom 12% of games on Steam. It's kind of like how Hoard of the Dragon Queen has a 52.5% at ENWorld presently. That puts HotDQ in the bottom 13% for D&D products here. The point is that it's not especially common for a steam product to acquire a worse rating than what Sword Coast Legends managed. Or even more to the point, it's very easy to find a product that people like more.

 

[DEFCON 1]

...and InXile has partnered with Monty Cook to do a Numenera based Torment 2 game so they are not exclusively using their own IP.

I don't consider any of the isometric rpgs trying to capture the essence of games more than 15 years old as really AAA game productions.

 

[Scribe]

I recommend the Enhanced Editions from BeamDog for Icewind Dale, and BG1 and 2. They are not modern, but that doesnt mean they are not fun.

There's even new content coming for BG1 in the New Year.

 

[Shasarak]

I don't consider any of the isometric rpgs trying to capture the essence of games more than 15 years old as really AAA game productions.

Trying to capture the essence of games more than 15 years old is all the rage now a days aka Fallout 4 and Starcraft 2 part 3.

 

[variant]

I would rather have a D&D game in the vein of Dragon's Dogma or Skyrim with a actual modding tools than anything that's isometric.

 

[Jester David]

Like making a good football game: sticking close to the official rules but streamlining things when possible.

 

[Demetrios1453]

Who Is Paradox Interactive?

PI is a Swedish game studio with humble beginnings. I am a huge fan of their games and was introduced to Hearts of Iron 2 (a WW3 grand strategy game) back in 2009. They have also recently bought the rights to the World of Darkness RPG line. They have a fanatical fanbase (similar to Paizo) and are very friendly to modders and have actually had their fans publish some of the mods to their games. In 2012 they released Crusader Kings II (CKII)a grand strategy game starting from 1066 AD and in 2013 they released Europa Unversalis IV (EUIV). EUIV is my other current addiction and it has been cutting into my D&D time while CKII has a popular Game of Thrones mod where you get to play as the royal houses of Westeros set during Robert Baratheons revolt.

CKII has sold 1.1 million units and over 2.5 million expansions sold and 5 million DLCs (according to wikipedia). Forum scuttlebutt on the had it developed on a budget of around 1 million dollars.

EUIV by June 2014 (less than a year after release) had 700 000 registered users on steam and it used the same engine as CKII.

True these games are for a different genre but CKII in particular seems it could be adapted for a D&Desque type game as it has RPG elements to it. All four games here have rave reviews (generally 8.5-9+ on review sites) and all were developed for cheap. They may not be selling 5 million+ copies like Halo/Mass Effect/CoD etc but they also cost a fraction of the price to develop. They also have loyal and rabid fanbases and positive word of mouth for the most part.

I would rather have a good game with nice graphics than a bad 3D type pile of poodu that looks nasty and they have to give away for free. Once you get that kernal of gamers you can always grow it in sequels and expansions later. WoTC seems to be trying to go for the cart before horse approach.

Great to hear the praise for Paradox - I was introduced to them way back in 2001 with the original Europa Universalis and have been a big fan of them ever since. I'm even a moderator emeritus over on their forum and still haunt the EU4 (and sometimes other games') forums daily (it shouldn't be hard to figure out who I am over there given my screenname here!). I like them simply because the have a passion for making their games, a determination to do them well, the zeal to keep supporting and improving them well after launch, and the fact the developers regularly interact with the the regular forum population, explaining their choices (Wiz, the main developer for EU4, had a huge post a few weeks ago, breaking down exactly why DLCs are priced the way they are - that's transparency at an almost unheard-of level!) and taking suggestions that are often actually implemented in game. I agree wholeheartedly that more game design companies should be like them, and I would love to see someone make a D&D game with the passion Paradox puts into their games...

Oddly enough, I'm also running through the Baldur's Gate again, with the enhanced version. Even almost 20 years old, it's still a heck of a game, clunky interface and annoying 2e rules notwithstanding. That's a good amount of the reason Pillars of Eternity did so well, catching the spirit of what made games like the BG series so special. I can only hope that more companies see that and we see more similar games in the future...

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

What you seem to miss is that there's a built in sampling "bias" for these things, especially when it comes to multiplayer games. I use bias in quotation marks because it has special meaning in statistics that differ from how it's used elsewhere. You have to take into account the greater body of results when understanding any metric. At 51% approval Sword Coast Legends is at the bottom 12% of games on Steam. It's kind of like how Hoard of the Dragon Queen has a 52.5% at ENWorld presently. That puts HotDQ in the bottom 13% for D&D products here. The point is that it's not especially common for a steam product to acquire a worse rating than what Sword Coast Legends managed. Or even more to the point, it's very easy to find a product that people like more.

I don't actually think "there are other games you'd like more" and "you won't like this game" are synonyms, so I don't really think that "the (admittedly slim margined) majority of players that have bothered to give their input on the topic recommend this game" loses any of its weight just because there are other games which a majority of players that have given their input on recommend them and happen to be more of a majority.

Also, I have to wonder if the reason why there isn't a larger percentage of games on steam with a lower rating has to do with that in order to get a rating in the first place a game has to actually look good enough to convince people to play it, and then those that get drawn in to playing have to care enough to actually provide feedback - and when a game is a real stinker, it is usually obvious and it is avoided without any bad reviews, and some portion of folks that do try it out and find it to be bad don't "waste time" on a review that states "yes, this game is as bad as it looks."

 

[Lidgar]

Pillars of Eternity is a solid game, if retro isometric is your thing.

 

[Ricochet]

Go for Pillars of Eternity. It is very, very good, and captures a lot of the highs of Baldur's Gate in a more modern and optimized user interface and with a lot of bells and whistles of modern games amid the old-school feel.

It even has cool cutscenes with choices that I haven't seen anywhere since Darklands in the 90's.