This game simply doesn't care about getting finished

[TheFnafManiac]

To explain the title, let me ask you to look at the achievement page for the game:

1) 1 out of 4 people who start the game never leave Cierzo.
2) Only a bit over 1/4th of the playerbase has learnt a breakthrough skill.
3) The vast majority of people give up on the game BEFORE joining a faction. Only 95% of people who have bought this game actually play it, and out of that 95% only 75% leave Cierzo as mentioned above. And out of that 75%, only 15% join the easiest to join faction, and it's the highest joined faction. 12% join the Catholic Church Lite faction and 9.5% join the Isisn't faction. Even if we asume that these people have joined only one faction and not multiple over different playthroughs, that's a cummulative 36.5% of the 75% of people who left Cierzo. Do the math. that's 27% (roughly) of the players who even started the game. and that's if we asume that they don't overlap at all.
4) Out of the people that join Cierzo's faction, only 1 out of 5 finish the quest line, at 3.2%. The Levant Kingdom is next at 2.6% and then the Catholics Lite at 2.5%. As for the DLC factions and their questlines, only 0.6 % finish either of them and 2.85 and 2.6% join the faction/start the rebuilding.
5) Only 0.6% of players finish all three base game faction quests.

What I want to get at is that even if people leave favourable reviews for the game, the vast majority of them will never finish it, or even do something with it.
And why would they? The story can literally end the moment you save your house from immediate foreclosure. If you simply never join a faction you can just simply end the game there and the war and strife of the main quest will never happen. You can just keep that character as a Cierzo villager and never venture outside of the walls again. Or you can just go around as an adventurer and just keep killing all the non-story bosses and exploring... until you get bored because there is no purpose for you to get stronger aside from fighting these bosses, but to get stronger you need money in order to get skills and items. Some skills, however, are tied behind faction quests. But joining a faction starts all the timers for world-altering quests that can impat you negatively if you don't do them in major or minor ways, give little to no reward if you do them, and are generally a hassle to clear. So no one joins a faction, andthey simply just go around with whatever build they have made and slaughter mobs and mini bosses until they get bored and quit the game, or at least drop that character and begin a new one.

The problem with this game is that it simply doesn't care. It doesn't care about you finishing it, and it doesn't care about keeping you playing it. It onlycares about you paying to buy it, and to make you play two hours if possible so that you cannot refund it.

If the resources spent on making a splitscreen mode that relies on making the players consciously split the loot so that one of the two won't just be left behind while the other gets all the rewards were instead directed on making the story slightly longer, more enganging and the game in general more respectful of your time the game would be a lot more popular and would be a lot more approachable. The game devs were simply too greedy but also too lazy about what they wanted the game to have; they wanted a huge world with many places to go, many things to do, many dungeons to conquer, but also to be as cheap and easy to produce them as possible, with many annoying systems to draw out the play time to excuse the 40 bucks price of the base game on release and the 20 dollar price of each of the DLCs on release.

If the devs had instead made the base game be only about clearing your debt and the map be limited in Chersonese but with a couple of other small villages around, the debt being like 10 times more, the time limit being 3 to 5 times more and the tribal favour being the result of a questline or you completing many side missions that eventually make you an important member of the tribe and the game being 10 dollars, with the other regions being released as dlcs 1 by 1 and with each having a similarly different story to play through and with a similar price, the game would be a lot less tedious and meaningless compared to now, as you would a) have a clear goal that you could finish in a lot less time of running around like a headless chicken, b) you could do ALL of the content in one sitting instead of having to do at least 3 playthroughs that require you to start all over again each time and c) they would be able to focus the resources between game quality and splitscreen equally without eventually making both subpar as they did now.

[Phoenix Cat]

I'm interested in where you got your figures?? I only payed 5.99 for the Definitive Edition. I think I will get my moneys worth.

[TheFnafManiac]

I bought the game in 2021 in a pack but didn't get the dlcs with it. Then I did some reseacrh in sites that archive prices and discounts for digital game stores and found that upon release the game was 40 bucks, the soroboreans dlc was 19.99 and the three brothers was at the same price, with all of them slowly dropping in price within the next few years.

Edit: Also, if you paid 6 bucks for it, good for you. You got it at a reasonable price. The game on release was outrageously overpriced for what it offered. That's why you will see a lot of negative reviews with a refund indicator on old reviews.

[MOW]

People have very short attention spans when it comes to games. I watched many people play this on stream and a lot of them play a lot and just simply don't accomplish anything. The game is very good at a sense of adventure even without accomplishing much. The game is very good value on sale. People are just so picky and weird about games. Just play the game or don't and leave a review or don't....

One interesting thing you said is "It doesn't care about you finishing it, and it doesn't care about keeping you playing it." Why would it care? its on the old model of gaming were you make a game you sell the WHOLE game then add a few expansions, then people buy it and review it. Key point, you buy it because it looks interesting and others like it. But modern gaming is total garbage, they only give you reasons to play it by making it free to play, battle pass, daily quests, login rewards, events and updates, gatcha, endless garbage to collect, and much much more. Then it hits you why you are even playing that game. I like forza horizon, but why can I only unlock certain cars during certain times? Or even worse I played the crew collected a bunch of cars now the entire game is just being deleted even though I bought it. But those games have/had plenty of reasons to play so they must be good lol.

The key to old model of game buying is get it when the price is right. Every game has a price that would seem like a good deal. The new stuff is always worse value than old stuff plain and simple. They start the price high then lower it over time. Funny thing is games get better due to patches and update plus they get cheaper. I'ts like aged wine that tastes better but somehow becomes cheaper.

[300385]

"What I want to get at is that even if people leave favourable reviews for the game, the vast majority of them will never finish it, or even do something with it. "

The game is very hard and i think Twitch and others support help to sell many game actually.

The rules is for many games , i checked achievements on ENshrouded and Pacific drive its the sames issue.

So Outwards is a very good game but very hardcore for new players . And many players haven't the time to play .

Maybe outward 2 wiil be easier ... or not.... lol

[Winter's Embers]

i'm sorry but your whole argument doesn't wash. It doesn't matter if the game cares whether you play or not, it matters if YOU care if you finish it or not. A lot of people end up getting this game as part of a pack or deal offered by Steam. They want one or two games on it but can't pass up the massive savings that Steam offers for the bundle so they buy the whole thing. And Outward sits in their purchase library, never installed, never played. I acquired Outward in just that way. Then I took a chance, installed it, and put a thousand hours into it. Yes, sometimes I just wander, never doing story material. Sometimes I test builds. Sometimes, I wipe out all my saves and just start over, erasing old inventories and seeing if I can refill them.
It isn't up to a game to care if you want to play. It's made to be played, plain and simple, and if you don't play it after shelling out your hard-earned, hefty price of 6 bucks, that's on YOU and your idea of gaming, not on the game you didn't want to play.
I have over a hundred games on my Steam account (yeah, not that many) but in perusing the achievement stats on the game, Outward pretty much measures par for the course. Complex, difficult to understand games often have very, very low completion percentage while simple, lead-you-by-the-nose-and-never-challenge-you-intellectually games have higher percentage but they all fall into a pretty familiar pattern and Outward settles in nicely among them.
I think your long-winded and rather pointless arguments, while almost entertaining to read, smack of a desperation to seem relevant by pointing out only your opinions on what 'makes a game good.' Factually, it falls short.

[TheFnafManiac]

Originally posted by Winter's Embers:

i'm sorry but your whole argument doesn't wash. It doesn't matter if the game cares whether you play or not, it matters if YOU care if you finish it or not. A lot of people end up getting this game as part of a pack or deal offered by Steam. They want one or two games on it but can't pass up the massive savings that Steam offers for the bundle so they buy the whole thing. And Outward sits in their purchase library, never installed, never played. I acquired Outward in just that way. Then I took a chance, installed it, and put a thousand hours into it. Yes, sometimes I just wander, never doing story material. Sometimes I test builds. Sometimes, I wipe out all my saves and just start over, erasing old inventories and seeing if I can refill them.
It isn't up to a game to care if you want to play. It's made to be played, plain and simple, and if you don't play it after shelling out your hard-earned, hefty price of 6 bucks, that's on YOU and your idea of gaming, not on the game you didn't want to play.
I have over a hundred games on my Steam account (yeah, not that many) but in perusing the achievement stats on the game, Outward pretty much measures par for the course. Complex, difficult to understand games often have very, very low completion percentage while simple, lead-you-by-the-nose-and-never-challenge-you-intellectually games have higher percentage but they all fall into a pretty familiar pattern and Outward settles in nicely among them.
I think your long-winded and rather pointless arguments, while almost entertaining to read, smack of a desperation to seem relevant by pointing out only your opinions on what 'makes a game good.' Factually, it falls short.

First off, 95% of people who own this game here on steam have the "Make a character" achievement, meaning that most who get it at least try it out. So, your "never played it, never installed it" achievement counts 5% of the game owners and you could say it went out of the window faster than a Russian official that Putin doesn't like.

And yet, only 75% of the total owners even bother to get out of the first town, less than 1/5th of them bother to play the game long enough to start the actual main story and even when it comes to simple actions such as fishing, cooking a fkn gaberry jam or mining. "Complex games have similar rates for achievements"? Elden ring's achievements are far higher in acquisition percentages, with the lowest being 9% for the 'platinum' achievement. Sekiro? 9.2% for the same. Are you saying that Sekiro and Elden Ring are easier than this game?

But let's compare more similar games to this one. Rust has a similar rate of achievement %, true, but Rust is a lot harder than this one, and the achievements with very low percentages are the ones who are really hard to get, not the ones you would expect to be as high as 25 or 30% because they are part of the main story of the game. Same goes with the achievements for The Forest.

Your desperation to defend a game that is clearly flawed is telling on itself when you have to try to sound like some intellectual but end up sounding like a pompous jackass instead. And you're not even the only one. Go to the negative reviews that have their comments allowed and you will see the army of neckbeards who could kill the wendigo of Conflux mountain with their body odour alone sling insults and "git gud" comments at legitimate criticisms of the game, such as gamebreaking bugs both in solo and coop play, the emptiness of the world compared to its size and the lack of a map within dungeons. Sure, a complete map of every random dungeon would be too much, but the map being filled out by you as you explore could be done and has already been done in other games before. When Fate, Solomon's Keep and Titan Quest have that feature and are games that are almost 20 or more years old, you should be embarrassed to defend the lack of such a feature.

Hell, even your "personal experience" description is irrelevant and downright stupid as an example, because what I spoke about was people never finishing the game, not people "not finishing every character playthrough they make". If you join a faction even once, you get the achievement. Even if you make another character and join the same faction or none at all, this won't affect the percentage as the client tracks the achievements on an account basis, not character basis. "Yes, sometimes I just wander, never doing story material. Sometimes I test builds. Sometimes, I wipe out all my saves and just start over, erasing old inventories and seeing if I can refill them." Yes, sometimes I just wander, never doing story material. Sometimes I test builds. Sometimes, I wipe out all my saves and just start over, erasing old inventories and seeing if I can refill them." Cool, so 85% of the playerbase got so sidetracked doing the exact same thing as you they didn't even started the main story of the game. At least try to make more valid claims if you want to defend the game, because this had as much weight as a fart in a hurricane behind it.

And if you want facts, go check the steam charts to see how many people play the game. The pattern is the same; sales come, the game is sold, people try it out for a bit and then drop it like a hot potato as indicated by the drop of players the month after the season sales end. That's why the recent reviews for the gaem until yesterday were 'Mixed'.

[BenchWarmer]

Thanks for the write up. I enjoyed reading it. It encapsulates why I play Outward. Because most people don't.

[Rhomak]

Elden Ring and sekiro are actually way easier than this game not even close

[Samseng Yik]

Thanks for your information.
I already aware 80% of internet public gamers are :
- low skill, require handholding.
- don't know how to read a map.
- complain in every soul like forum, if possible also roguelike forum.
- bad rage management
- think their own taste are real quality detection.

Probably this is why I play so much brutal game,
- Lie of P, infamously most difficult soul like
- All From Software games starting from DS1, include Bloodborne
- All masterpiece roguelike, such as Slay The Spire, Dead Cell, Hades, Ziggurat, RoboQuest

Starting since birth, I already aware I am different from idiotic mainstream low brain.
This is why I enjoy outward, unlike the lowly dim witted

[Winter's Embers]

Originally posted by TheFnafManiac:

While I applaud your writing, I fail to even grasp why you care about a game that's 5 years old. It was already proven to be a niche game liked by few, discarded by many as being 'unlike other games.' Yet, you come here, 5 years later, and talk about statistics.
Again, I ask, WHO CARES? The people who don't like it moved on 5 years ago. Maybe you should too.
As for reviews, you should probably note that I left one of those negative reviews and it still stands today as a negative.

[Apocalypse]

I love the game but the sotry always seemed like an aterthought to me, never cared about it. Finished it once to see what's what. Love the game just as an adventure sandbox though and still got hundreds of hours out of it.

[QueenEtna]

I am struggling lol tryna find the church faction but am lost and keep dying. Really testing my patience xD

[TheFnafManiac]

Originally posted by Samseng Yik:

Thanks for your information.
I already aware 80% of internet public gamers are :
- low skill, require handholding.
- don't know how to read a map.
- complain in every soul like forum, if possible also roguelike forum.
- bad rage management
- think their own taste are real quality detection.

Probably this is why I play so much brutal game,
- Lie of P, infamously most difficult soul like
- All From Software games starting from DS1, include Bloodborne
- All masterpiece roguelike, such as Slay The Spire, Dead Cell, Hades, Ziggurat, RoboQuest

Starting since birth, I already aware I am different from idiotic mainstream low brain.
This is why I enjoy outward, unlike the lowly dim witted

And yet you showed that you are exactly the dimwitted kind of neckbeard I referenced in another reply. I too have beat the souls trilogy with thousands of hours on both versions of ds2, demon's souls on an emulator which means playing only with keyboard on a laptop for both camera movement and attacking and Daggerfall and Morrowind among many other rpg games. You really aren't that special.

And this game isn't brutal; It's simply badly designed. Sure, you could apply the "brutal" tag for those who don't do the tutorial and think there is absolutely no explanation on how to do stuff, but you fkn trogspawn act like having subpar mechanics is a "100% 4D chess move by the devs". No, it's not. I work in game development for a smaller studio and this game simply misallocated a crapton of resources on splitscreen co-op, something the head of the studio has admitted himself, while ignoring a lot of problems and hoping the "brutal difficulty" explanation would fool people like you. And it did.

As I said, I work for as a game dev myself, and this game has three problems I was taught to avoid; 1) Making the game boring with an easy to disengage game loop 2) Poor quality on most mechanics, especially on core mechanics such as combat, and 3) The gimmick of the game isn't good enough to cover for the other shortcomings. If I make a looter shooter, the gunplay and loot should be good enough to cover for things my game might lack. If I make a story driven rpg with a focus on stealth instead of combat, the stealth and story should be good and not tedious to go through to cover for the lack of immediate action. Thief 4 had a massive problem with this. And if I make a moba, the gameplay should be good enough that I can keep people coming back even if my game has no lore or clear end aside from the match's end. Simple concepts, in all three of which the devs of this game dropped the ball on. And because of mentally handicapped people like you who defend subpar quality because it makes them feel "different" like some 8th grade emo kid the devs who just ship out unpolished, unfinished messes of games can keep getting away with it and turn a profit too.

[TheFnafManiac]

Originally posted by Tay:

I am struggling lol tryna find the church faction but am lost and keep dying. Really testing my patience xD

Go to Monsoon from Chersonese, the path from Berg (Enmerkar forest) is blocked. It's the upper path exiting the map, north of the pylon on the map.

[Cosmic Muse]

Originally posted by Rhomak:

Elden Ring and sekiro are actually way easier than this game not even close

That was never a part of either side's debate. Go home.