What Would Your Eberron CRPG Feature?

[Kaodi]

Good Question...

Should it really be that hard to make a single-player D&D computer game that sells well? I mean, if you have decent graphics, decent storyline, good rules adaptation and EXERCISE A LITTLE QUALITY CONTROL.

Case in point (and I imagine this is at least somewhat typical of many): I slavered over Pool of Radiance leading up to its release. I was going to buy it. It was a D&D CRPG! It came out, it had tons of bugs and was slow as hell... My Purchase - R.I.P. Now, sometime later, Temple of Elemental Evil. I think, " Great, this shows way more promise than that last one did, before they screwed it up! " Comes out... Buggy as hell... My Purchase - R.I.P. Oh ya, I should mention, Troika - R.I.P. ( I still think it was the publishers fault for screwing it up. The wrong company may have gone out of business. )

Now, what was the common failing point of these two games? Was it the gameplay? No, not really, though I heard zombies didn't help PoR. Was it the storyline? No, again. The rules adaptation? Not a chance. It was the fact that the games just would not function the way they were designed too.

Conclusion: It shouldn't really be hard to make a D&D game (at least a D&D CRPG) that sells well, no matter what you do, as long as it works properly on the requisite number of systems.

 

[SteelDraco]

D&D has produced a number of excellent games over the years, so there's no reason they shouldn't do a decent single-player RPG game in the Eberron setting. After all, most of the other settings have had several - Forgotten Realms has the Gold Box games, the Baldur's Gate stuff, and the Icewind Dale games. Planescape had Torment, which IMO is still one of the best PRGs ever made. Ravenloft had a couple of first-person RPGs, and even Dark Sun and Al-Qadim had one or two. And these were all good games. I'm kind of baffled that they haven't done something similar for Eberron, considering how much people seem to like the setting. Maybe they're concerned about comparisons to the Final Fantasy series?

Though, recently, I've been baffled by the decisions made by the electronics people in regard to D&D licensing in general. DDO seems to have intentionally ignored all the lessons learned by successful MMOs, and gone in a completely un-fun direction (no world exploration? Really? Painfully slow level progression? No viable soloing? Ugh.) Dragonreach didn't seem like something to appeal to the RPG crowd, possibly because (I'm guessing here) single-player RPGs don't sell as well as a really successful strategy game. But if you're going to make something that is intended to appeal to an RPG market, wouldn't it make the most sense to make an RPG?

 

[trancejeremy]

Hmmmm, I wonder which setting D&D Tactics is set in?

It's got 2 psionic classes, which would tend to make me thing it might not be set in the FR or Greyhawk (where psionics aren't too common, I think)

 

[LrdApoc]

Hmmmm, I wonder which setting D&D Tactics is set in?

It's got 2 psionic classes, which would tend to make me thing it might not be set in the FR or Greyhawk (where psionics aren't too common, I think)

Based on my interviews at E3 witht he producer it is in its own world - nothing preexisting. Looked pretty promising as well.

 

[LrdApoc]

Hmmmm, I wonder which setting D&D Tactics is set in?

It's got 2 psionic classes, which would tend to make me thing it might not be set in the FR or Greyhawk (where psionics aren't too common, I think)

Based on my interviews at E3 with the producer it is in its own world - nothing preexisting. Looked pretty promising as well.

 

[trancejeremy]

Hmmm, thanks for the info.

 

[Kaodi]

D&D Tactics

Unfortunately, that game is on PSP. And I can almost guarantee I will never buy a PSP. Of course, I used to say I'd never buy a DS, and I still haven't, but as time goes on, it gets more and more attractive, because of all the neat or thoughtful games that come out for it.

Back to the main gist of the story though, I was trying to come up for a name for said Sarlonan RPG. So far, my favourite candidate is Dreamland or The Dreamlands or something in a similar vein. Maybe that's kind of lame, so you could go with a straight reference and call it The Darkness That Dreams.

Unless there *is* a new game waiting in the wings to be announced, I find it perplexing that there has been no true Eberron CRPG yet. I'll bet if Dragonshard had used the story for an RPG instead of a RTS, it would of been wildly succesful.

 

[Steel_Wind]

I thought I read that despite the large number of game-crippling bugs, the shovelware that was Temple of Elemental Evil had sold rather well.

If they just fixed the bugs on that engine I'd buy every game they published using it.

ToEE did "okay". Piracy factor on it was extremely high though and the shelf life was abysmal. And of course, ToEE was set in Greyhawk - not Eberron.

On the other hand, DragonShard and D&D Online - both Eberron titles - have both underperformed to a significant degree.

Atari and/or some private equity fund would have to throw in the high 7 figures to make me want to bet a development studio on Eberron. (In other words, take no risk, grab the non-refundable advance on royalties, do the work and call it a day).

Sorry. The FR is a far safer bet, even though there are plenty of sucky FR games in D&D's history, too. Paying through the nose for a license means you should at least take the best the license has to offer. The best means: the largest pre-sold audience the brand has.

In the end, developing a licensed title is just another form of marketing. Instead of spending your ad dollar on hype, you spend it on a well known brand with a pre-sold audience by way of royalty to the licensor. It's advertising by other means. When the price is the same, you sure as hell don't choose Eberron for your money when the FR costs the same.

YMMV.

 

[trancejeremy]

Do you have a general/rough figure for ToEE's sales? Just curious, because I'd like to compare it to D&D Tactic's probable sales. (I think that's been in development for almost 2 years, and I don't think it will make money with how much it will probably sell - ~50,000 copies or so)


(I know it's a bit off topic, but if it does well, it's about the only hope of getting a PC turn based game, I think)

 

[Steel_Wind]

Do you have a general/rough figure for ToEE's sales? Just curious, because I'd like to compare it to D&D Tactic's probable sales. (I think that's been in development for almost 2 years, and I don't think it will make money with how much it will probably sell - ~50,000 copies or so)

(I know it's a bit off topic, but if it does well, it's about the only hope of getting a PC turn based game, I think)

Last I checked NPD (which was quite a while ago), it was about 550,000 units or so. A lot of those sold at bargain prices though when it was deeply discounted and it may be that the digital distro numbers are in that number too.

For comparison, the BGark Alliance console series actually did better.

I'm really not sure, sitting here, what ToEE's final sales were. At the time, it did about the same - a lil better initially at least - than one of the NWN XPs which was released at about the same time. Atari did some odd things with distro on ToEE though, including some electronic distro through Kazaa/Morpheus. The sales data is kinda flakey on it as a result.

I do know that it was *heavily* pirated and delays in localization hurt sales abroad.

I'm not aware of anyone in the biz suggesting ToEE needs a sequel though.

The thing I liked most about it? The writing!

Ok. Maybe not.

It was a bitch for localization, but I liked the radial which used ENGLISH flyouts. No icons, no guessing. Just... Words. In. English.

The formatting was way off when localized to other languages though. There were jokes about what it must have been like to play in Germany, with a radial that took up half the screen.