SCL: Stumbled coming out of the gate or simply fallen on it's face?

[Reinhart]

Do you have a link? I'd love to look at that and see how much they responded to WotC's feedback. And what feedback was left.

I saw it a few weeks ago on the official swordcoast.com forums from a user named "Mad.Hatter" who outlined which game files contained what data, and what it meant for the game's future updates and mod-ability. I skimmed the first few pages of the General Discussion forum and didn't see the thread anymore, but I did see a few people discussing it in other threads. Wish I could be more helpful than that, but hopefully that's enough for you to find what you're looking for.

 

[Corpsetaker]

According to Steam's API I think at least 64,500 licenses for SCL have been sold and not returned. That's unfortunately still less than they had at their peek two days after launch. Of those, it looks like about 50k actually installed it. Those numbers sound good compared to 5,000, but it's not a great return, especially when you consider that Valve gets a distribution cut on all of those sales. The above is not a huge development team, but they are skilled workers that will easily cost several million dollars to employ during a couple of years of development. So I agree with Jester, it's possible that they're still in the hole, and it's not clear there's enough income to justify supporting this product unless something dramatically changes.

Don't forget those may also contain people who purchased the deluxe which came with 5 copies I believe.

 

[Reinhart]

Don't forget those may also contain people who purchased the deluxe which came with 5 copies I believe.

Good point. I wonder if that accounts for some of the ~14,000 uninstalled but sold copies of the game.

 

[Celtavian]

I wanted to pick this game up. I read the reviews specifically stating it was not like Neverwinter Nights and Baldur's Gate. I loved both of those games. I was hoping for a similar experience. I didn't want to play an ARPG with constant monsters and auto-generated tile sets and populations. I wanted more of a story and an interesting static world. I also was turned off by the game engine not using the 5E rules. If I wanted a fantasy ARPG, I'd play Diablo is my feeling.

 

[amerigoV]

I didn't want to play an ARPG with constant monsters and auto-generated tile sets and populations. I wanted more of a story and an interesting static world....If I wanted a fantasy ARPG, I'd play Diablo is my feeling.

Ok, tongue in cheek I have to say this: Some people are upset that you fight in dungeons that may not make sense (random) while killing hordes of monsters and taking their stuff in this game. I mean, what the heck do these people DO when they play D&D?

 

[darjr]

I wonder if someone at that company is thinking just that.

 

[Jester David]

Ok, tongue in cheek I have to say this: Some people are upset that you fight in dungeons that may not make sense (random) while killing hordes of monsters and taking their stuff in this game. I mean, what the heck do these people DO when they play D&D?

Its great for Dungeon Delve and its a start, but you need some reason to go into the dungeon. Even Diablo gave you some quest.

 

[Jester David]

Looking for something data on Fallout I found these sites: http://steamspy.com/ and https://steamdb.info

Because I find this stuff interesting, here's the SCL pages: http://steamspy.com/app/325600 and https://steamdb.info/app/325600/graphs/

It pegs SCL at 62k owners with 50k players. It looks like half the players have stopped playing in the last two weeks and the number of owners dropped by 10k.
The charts on the second page (you need to scroll down a ways) are interesting and watching the numbers dip up and down is rather, well, disturbing.

It's also down to the 220s in the Top Selling SteamChart:
http://store.steampowered.com/searc..._ASC&sort_order=ASC&filter=topsellers&page=10
(Which I mention because the official D&D podcast said it was near the top of the chart at launch day. I just listened and got curious.)

When you compare this to other games, the flat number of owners is pretty remarkable. And unfortunate.
I actually feel kinda sorry for N-Space at this point...

 

[Obryn]

So a friend of mine got a free gift key as a mea-culpa-slash-attempt-to-expand thing. He gave it to me, and it's so far failed to catch my interest.

But if you see install numbers going up, this is likely why. They're literally giving it away already.

 

[Reinhart]

One of the frequent problems with multiplayer computer games is participant critical mass. Simply put, multiplayer games need a certain number of players present at any given time in order to reliably deliver their game experience. Of course, it varies significantly based on the style of game-play and what the players expect. 40 players makes a full Battlefield scenario but a pretty empty World of Warcraft server.

One of the common complaints I've seen about Sword Coast Legends is the lack players online. It sounds like this is a major problem for players outside of North and South America who play in less than peak hours. Lately the peak concurrent players are on steady decline, but the minimum players concurrently online tends to regularly dip just below 200 players.

Now Steam's not reporting whether those ~200 players are actually playing multiplayer or not. I would be surprised if the majority of them were actually participating in multiplayer. Still, let's be generous and say that half of them are. then that means there are probably about 20-30 games being hosted during the slow hours. Then you have to factor into compatibility issues: We're talking games being hosted on servers all over the world and SCL is available in Spanish, French, Russian, Italian, and German. So before you get to figuring out if you're compatible as far as play style and personal chemistry, you're probably already limited to only a handful of possible games, if any.