Why did this game fail?

[El goblin]

It's awesome, it's probably the best tool to play D&D online with friends. I'm amazed with the campaign creator mode, so many props and customization.
So, what happened? Bad marketing?

[Lao Dan]

Originally posted by Syad:

a cleric with a bow

Lots of clerics can use more than the traditional blunt weapon sets.

[Syad]

Originally posted by Lao Dan:

Originally posted by Syad:

a cleric with a bow

Lots of clerics can use more than the traditional blunt weapon sets.

Not D&D clerics. Plus there is a female dwarf, a male mage etc. "Breaking the stereotypes" is not why i play games, A D&D game should behave like one and don't try to be Diablo 3 wanna-be, for it will lose that comparison.

[Cryomancer]

Originally posted by Fnord:

Originally posted by earl528:

As far as a perfect replica of D&D Ruleset? hmm?
I used to DM and play D&D back in High School, and I love the game. Which is why I loved Baldur's Gate.
But a D&D Ruleset can get cumbersome for a video game. Being a D&D fan, I feel this is sacrilegious for me to say; but I prefer a video game that has the Essence of a D&D-like game without the cumbersome rulesets (i.e. I do not want to refer to various tomes when playing a video game).

I totally agree. And not only can D&D get a but cumbersome, it also has things that could be handled differently, either giving more granularity to the system, or just make things smoother and more easily understood, when you've got a computer doing all the book-keeping for you.

(And let's not go into the balance issues and rule bugs that the D&D games tends to have....)

I think something like Pillars of Eternity or Divinity: Original Sin is, in the end, better than something like Baldur's gate. I do like Baldur's Gate, but I think the AD&D ruleset holds it back (this is even more true for BG2, which enters players levels where AD&D really starts breaking down. BG2 is better than BG1, but high level AD&D never worked particularly well, without a lot of tinkering and tweaking).(...)

My unique critique to NWN is the fact that they nerfed to oblivion some classes. An example A Wizard focused in conjuration. Is perfectly viable in pnp, but in game :
- Summons are limited to 1(this makes minion necromancer unviable too)
- Some conjuration spells like incendiary cloud in PnP can ignore SR(spell resistance), in game can`t ignore.
- The opposite school have the best spells in game. Time stop, stone to flesh, greater stonekin, etc http://nwn.wikia.com/wiki/Transmutation
- Have a bigger party means less XP
(...)

Other problem is with some prestige classes. For example, in PnP dragon disciple can choose what dragon they will be. In nwn they can only be red(silver dragons are probably the most common heritage for dragon disciple since they live between humans and enjoy human society), other example? Arcane Archer. Can only imbue fire(an there are a lot of fire resistant/immune creatures) while in PnP can imbue frost and electricity. NWN isn`t perfect, but still an example that a game very close to PnP can be a sucess.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

When i saw "sword coast legends", i searched for reviews expecting a new nwn1 and what SCL is? A game that can`t please PnP lovers, can`t please "tactical rpg" lovers and can`t please "action rpg" lovers.

Originally posted by Syad:

Originally posted by Lao Dan:

Lots of clerics can use more than the traditional blunt weapon sets.

Not D&D clerics. Plus there is a female dwarf, a male mage etc. "Breaking the stereotypes" is not why i play games, A D&D game should behave like one and don't try to be Diablo 3 wanna-be, for it will lose that comparison.

Clerics in D&D are a representation of his divinity, so a cleric with bow isn`t a problem. About "male mage", what is the problem? There are tons of famous Wiz/Sorc in D&D lore that are male. To be honest, i hate gender locked classes. In D2 you can`t make a female necromancer or a male sorcerer.

[Fnord]

Originally posted by C4MP3R:

.

Is this the moment when I admit to actually thinking NWN is a terrible game, and I really hate it? ;) I do genuinely hate NWN 1. I do think NWN 1 is another one of those Jack of all trades, master of none, games that make compromises that did not work. But we're on different sides here, I would say. You did not mind the NWN 1 compromises that much, while it broke the game for me, while I still think the compromises made for Sword Coast Legends were "alright".

Your point about balance changes does stand though, and you're right. In that regard NWN does a better job than say Baldur's Gate. D&D 3.0 is a better balanced system than AD&D to begin with, but they made even further improvements in NWN (well, most of them were improvements), while at times it feels like BG2 in particular makes the balance issues even more glaring than in tabeltop, as you've not got a GM who can "fudge" things a bit to make things better.





Also, in regards to the cleric archer thing, I've not played D&D 5th edition yet, but does that edition not allow clerics to equip bows & crossbows?



And about gender-locked classes, I agree, I'm not a fan of them either. Unless there's a very good reason to gender-lock something, don't do it (like if you're got a religious institution that strictly prohibits a gender to have a certain role, which would mirror how things sadly work in the real world to some degree, that might be grounds to gender lock something).

[Cryomancer]

Originally posted by Fnord:

.

If i remember correctly, in Dungeon Lords online, Valkyrie is restricted to females(and thats make sense, is like restrict dragon disciple for those who have draconic bloodline. Isn`t like "you need to be female to be a caster" b*****t). About BG1, BG1 isn`t a bad cRPG. The problem is : Compare a 1998 game with a game launched almost 2 decades later(DOS2 for example).

And the DND rules improved much too. For example, the armor class rule in 3.0 is far better than 2.0 and 3.5 corrected a lot of imbalances of 3.0. I personally din`t liked BG2. Hated the dungeon layout, and the linearity. The main problem with dungeons? Some stupid things of computer RPG`s that only bad DM puts on PNP, example?

Indestructible wood door. Doesn`t matter if you can make rain meterors. You will need to search a lot of barrels to find a key. And do stupid puzzles like open randomlly levers to open an idestructible wooden door. This doesn`t require inteligence, only slow down the game. In BG2 i feel that i spend more time searching for items than actually exploring a world and role playing. I don`t know if IWD is better but IMHO BG1 is a good game(considering 1998), BG2 is a average game.

------------------------------

One recommendation. Try NWN2. If you prefer a "party" gameplay, you will only have this experience in nwn1 if you play online.

PS : A cleric that follows a deity with favored weapon = longbow like Solonor Thelandire using longbow isn`t a problem IMHO.

[Fnord]

Yeah, something like Valkyrie has it kinda hard-coded into it that it's a female class. But it's not uncommon for games to have (more or less) equivalent counterparts.

I do think you should be able to compare older games to newer ones. Older games will be at a disadvantage, for a number of reasons, but some are still good enough to be worth playing to this day. (Eye of the Beholder was a game I first played in 2010-2011, and I think it's great).

I thought BG1 felt.. clumsy. BG2 puts a larger focus on story and writing, while BG1 is quite clumsy about story progression and pacing. The difficulty curve in BG1 is also really wonky.
Yeah, key hunts, or just searching for some random item that's hidden somewhere with no real good indication of where is no fun, and just ends up slowing down the game. Even D:OS falls into this trap, sadly.
And you could bash some locks in BG, so it's not like they could not have found a way to make it so that you could break down a door with a well placed fireball.

I did try NWN2, but even fully patched, the game was unplayably buggy for me. I was still experiencing an issue that was supposedly fixed, where the camera would get stuck in the ceiling, and I had odd rubberbanding issues in the game (considering it's an offline game, that makes no sense!). I wish I could play NWN 2, because it seemed better than NWN 1 in most ways, but the bugs just killed the game for me.

[lobstermadness]

Single player is great so far. Story telling is better than expected. Voice acting better than expected. Unfortunate the game bombed

[Berserk Slayer]

Originally posted by Fnord:

Is this the moment when I admit to actually thinking NWN is a terrible game, and I really hate it?

Allow me to don my flameproof trousers and step in front of you, and say I was unimpressed by both NWN 1 and 2.

I mean, since the unpopular opinions are coming out in force. BG2 all the way, baby.

[Cryomancer]

Originally posted by Fnord:

(...)

True. NWN2 camera is pretty bad and require tons od mods and customization to be playable.

But coming back to SCL, IMHO if they din't "marketed" this game as a "D&D" ( Drop The Dnd Label https://forums.swordcoast.com/index.php?/topic/406-drop-the-dnd-label/ ) the game will probably receive much less hate. I was expecting a new nwn in 5e(din't purchased, but almost purchased). To be honest, i see more "D&D" things in DA:O(Dragon Age Origins) than in SCL. Not saying that DA:O is a bad game, is a amazing game and i recommend(only the first - Origins)

Look to that interview
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-T7jDUvXwE

[Arsene Lupin]

So much discussion of something so simple. The game was marketed as a D&D game, but it doesn't really try to accurately adapt the D&D ruleset(s); the developers also misrepresented the game as a NWN-style DM game, even though it's actual campaign-making tools weren't even *close* to being in the same league.

So basically they knowingly got the biggest CRPG nerds on the Internet hyped for a game they *knew* they knew SCL was never going to be. It was going to blow up in their faces no matter what, so the goal seems to have been to grab as many pre-orders as possible... and hope for the best?

So when SCL released, it naturally blew up in their faces, and developer N-Space ended up folding shortly thereafter.

TL;DR small developers of a mediocre co-op CRPG tried to get more media attention/pre-orders by portraying their game as something different than it was, and it predictably resulted in the studio shutting down.

[RPGmodsFan]

Originally posted by Fnord:

Originally posted by earl528:

As far as a perfect replica of D&D Ruleset? hmm?
I used to DM and play D&D back in High School, and I love the game. Which is why I loved Baldur's Gate.
But a D&D Ruleset can get cumbersome for a video game. Being a D&D fan, I feel this is sacrilegious for me to say; but I prefer a video game that has the Essence of a D&D-like game without the cumbersome rulesets (i.e. I do not want to refer to various tomes when playing a video game).

I totally agree. And not only can D&D get a but cumbersome, it also has things that could be handled differently, either giving more granularity to the system, or just make things smoother and more easily understood, when you've got a computer doing all the book-keeping for you.

(And let's not go into the balance issues and rule bugs that the D&D games tends to have....)

I think something like Pillars of Eternity or Divinity: Original Sin is, in the end, better than something like Baldur's gate. I do like Baldur's Gate, but I think the AD&D ruleset holds it back (this is even more true for BG2, which enters players levels where AD&D really starts breaking down. BG2 is better than BG1, but high level AD&D never worked particularly well, without a lot of tinkering and tweaking).
...

As far as Game/Combat Mechanics, Pillars of Eternity (PoE) is fine, EXCEPT mage class abilities is too broken up into different classes. (e.g., Chanter for summoning spells, Cipher for Drain spells, Wizard for damage/combat spells, who does Charm spells?) Which hardly leaves room for the other classes in your party.

Divinity Original Sin 1 & 2 are great games (and much better than PoE, imho).

[Fnord]

I actually liked PoE more than D:OS. Both are great games, but I found the combat system in Pillars to be a bit more engaging. But I also like Real Time with Pause more than Turnbased, so that will have coloured my view of which game has the better system.
But as for the caster classes in PoE, I liked how all of them had different ways to build their power. And despite the plethora of casters, I ended up running with a party that was quite well rounded. Wizard, Fighter, Priest, Cipher, Druid & Paladin was the party I ran for a large portion of the game.

But a lot of the PoE classes have coutnerparts in D&D. Wizard<->Wizard, priest<-> cleric, chanter<->bard, druid<->druid. It's only the cipher that really stands out as being an odd duck (it's not really a sorcerer counterpart, even if it learns spells in a similar way). But there's less overlap between the classes, they don't share spells like clerics & druids or wizards & sorcerers do.

[Cryomancer]

Originally posted by Fnord:

I actually liked PoE more than D:OS. Both are great games, but I found the combat system in Pillars to be a bit more engaging. But I also like Real Time with Pause more than Turnbased, so that will have coloured my view of which game has the better system.
But as for the caster classes in PoE, I liked how all of them had different ways to build their power. And despite the plethora of casters, I ended up running with a party that was quite well rounded. Wizard, Fighter, Priest, Cipher, Druid & Paladin was the party I ran for a large portion of the game.

But a lot of the PoE classes have coutnerparts in D&D. Wizard<->Wizard, priest<-> cleric, chanter<->bard, druid<->druid. It's only the cipher that really stands out as being an odd duck (it's not really a sorcerer counterpart, even if it learns spells in a similar way). But there's less overlap between the classes, they don't share spells like clerics & druids or wizards & sorcerers do.

Yes, the greatest problem with DA:O IMHO is the slow moviment animations. That killed Wizardry 8 which is is a good old game. About SCL, i see more "D&D stuff" in PoE than in SCL. And we probably will never have other DND cRPG soon in 5e. The market tendency is more and more action. Compare Dragon Age Origins with DA:2 and Inquisition.

I an not saying that a cRPG should be very close to D&D rules, because i love Arcanum the first RPG that i have played in my life was M&M VII but you should not create false expectancy in your public.

[Fnord]

I had the exact same feelings about Wizardry 8. There's a fan-patch that speeds up animations, but it also breaks the sound, making combat feel oddly hollow. Wizardry 8 is a game I wish I could like, becuase there's a lot of good to be found in there, but the slow combat just killed it. In this regard I think a lot of turnbased CRPGs (and strategy games, for that matter) actually got worse when they started pushing 3D.



It's hard to say exactly what went wrong with SCL without knowing the details, but the combat system and character progression, much like many other parts of the game, feels like it was changed quite late in development, to fit an ever approaching deadline. And I think, although I'm of course more guessing than anything else here, that the original would have been a bit closer to D&D, had they've been able to do what they wanted. But basically, the entire game has the telltale signs of soemthing that is not quite what the developers intended. I can't think of many parts that don't feel like they suffered at least a bit from this. Even the interface feels incomplete.

I'm hopeful for the future of the CRPG market though. While Dragon Age has moved towards more actiony territory, the mid-budget games have not. D:OS, Shadowrun, Pillars of Eternity, Torment and so on all feel like they're attempts at making something in the spirit of the 90's-style RPGs, with some modern improvements. We had a long drought of RPGs like these, and it came to an end witht the rise of Kickstarter.

[bozo]

Originally posted by Arsene-Lupin:

So much discussion of something so simple. The game was marketed as a D&D game, but it doesn't really try to accurately adapt the D&D ruleset(s); the developers also misrepresented the game as a NWN-style DM game, even though it's actual campaign-making tools weren't even *close* to being in the same league.

So basically they knowingly got the biggest CRPG nerds on the Internet hyped for a game they *knew* they knew SCL was never going to be. It was going to blow up in their faces no matter what, so the goal seems to have been to grab as many pre-orders as possible... and hope for the best?

So when SCL released, it naturally blew up in their faces, and developer N-Space ended up folding shortly thereafter.

TL;DR small developers of a mediocre co-op CRPG tried to get more media attention/pre-orders by portraying their game as something different than it was, and it predictably resulted in the studio shutting down.

This accurately summed up why the game failed.