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Forums - Sales Discussion - DQXI Switch in the West

vivster on 30 September 2019
gamingsoul said:
I love rpgs but I have never been able to really enjoy dq games, they are too long, too grindy, they basically feel like nes rpgs with modern graphics, sorry to disappoint people wanting this series to take off in the west but final fantasy or persona this is not, at least not now...

Not judging at all since DQ is an acquired taste. But this perfectly illustrates why it's not popular in the west.

The only JRPGs ever that are popular in the west are the ones tailored to western sensitivities. The DQ series does aboslutely nothing to endear itself to the west and that's absolutely fine. It's quite pointless to try and argue if a game should be more popular with a particular audience. Every game is exactly as popular with its audience as it should be and that is how it should be. Might as well ask if the unpopularity of gay porn with straight males is due to bad marketing. Not everygood thing has to be popular with everyone.



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vivster on 30 September 2019
Ljink96 said:
gamingsoul said:
I love rpgs but I have never been able to really enjoy dq games, they are too long, too grindy, they basically feel like nes rpgs with modern graphics, sorry to disappoint people wanting this series to take off in the west but final fantasy or persona this is not, at least not now...

When was the last DQ you played? Couldn't have been XI as you don't grind in that game. Unless you willingly use the Draconian rule sets to make it harder on yourself. True, FF is huge in the west but Persona...eh...it's still pretty niche all things considered. A lot of people are vocal about Persona but FF, it is not. There are DQ games that have sold as well if not better than P5 in the west (DQ8 and DQ9 come to mind with DQIX doing 1.5M outside Japan across NA and EU. In April 2019, P5 shipped 2.4M WW including Digital across PS3 and PS4. I don't know the breakdown of this by region.

DQ games since DQ8 have not really been NES like. 1-7 sure those all played like NES games but 8 became more like FF before XI. 

All lies. DQ games have never changed from their origin, if that were so I wouldn't enjoy the newer ones as much as the first ones.



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Ljink96 on 30 September 2019
vivster said:
Ljink96 said:

When was the last DQ you played? Couldn't have been XI as you don't grind in that game. Unless you willingly use the Draconian rule sets to make it harder on yourself. True, FF is huge in the west but Persona...eh...it's still pretty niche all things considered. A lot of people are vocal about Persona but FF, it is not. There are DQ games that have sold as well if not better than P5 in the west (DQ8 and DQ9 come to mind with DQIX doing 1.5M outside Japan across NA and EU. In April 2019, P5 shipped 2.4M WW including Digital across PS3 and PS4. I don't know the breakdown of this by region.

DQ games since DQ8 have not really been NES like. 1-7 sure those all played like NES games but 8 became more like FF before XI. 

All lies. DQ games have never changed from their origin, if that were so I wouldn't enjoy the newer ones as much as the first ones.

Well, there are 2 things that separate the NES games from the post 7 era. Skill trees, and a 3rd person battle system...and uh maybe Voice Acting. I personally dislike the older Dragon Quest games despite developing remakes of those games myself. The first person battle system...ech I don't like it. That has been gone since 8. The battle system is turn based, but that is even true for a lot of games today that garner praise. 

There are people who wouldn't touch the NES games with a 10 foot pole that will play 8, 9 and 11. That's kinda what I'm getting at. Most of that is probably presentation, but there's not really much DQ can do to be "modern" besides make an action RPG but nobody in the west even played the Heroes games despite being exactly that. 

Last edited by Ljink96 - on 30 September 2019

Mnementh on 30 September 2019
vivster said:
gamingsoul said:
I love rpgs but I have never been able to really enjoy dq games, they are too long, too grindy, they basically feel like nes rpgs with modern graphics, sorry to disappoint people wanting this series to take off in the west but final fantasy or persona this is not, at least not now...

Not judging at all since DQ is an acquired taste. But this perfectly illustrates why it's not popular in the west.

The only JRPGs ever that are popular in the west are the ones tailored to western sensitivities. The DQ series does aboslutely nothing to endear itself to the west and that's absolutely fine. It's quite pointless to try and argue if a game should be more popular with a particular audience. Every game is exactly as popular with its audience as it should be and that is how it should be. Might as well ask if the unpopularity of gay porn with straight males is due to bad marketing. Not everygood thing has to be popular with everyone.

I agree. And as I like often japanese styles of gameplay more than the action oriented western style - I think I don't want the devs to 'westernize' their IPs.



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Darwinianevolution on 30 September 2019

I will eventually pick it up, but right now I have too many unplayed games on my catalogue, and a JRPG like DQXI is a time sink, so I'd rather wait for a discount.



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Xxain on 30 September 2019
Ljink96 said:
vivster said:

All lies. DQ games have never changed from their origin, if that were so I wouldn't enjoy the newer ones as much as the first ones.

Well, there are 2 things that separate the NES games from the post 7 era. Skill trees, and a 3rd person battle system...and uh maybe Voice Acting. I personally dislike the older Dragon Quest games despite developing remakes of those games myself. The first person battle system...ech I don't like it. That has been gone since 8. The battle system is turn based, but that is even true for a lot of games today that garner praise. 

There are people who wouldn't touch the NES games with a 10 foot pole that will play 8, 9 and 11. That's kinda what I'm getting at. Most of that is probably presentation, but there's not really much DQ can do to be "modern" besides make an action RPG but nobody in the west even played the Heroes games despite being exactly that. 

These are technical evolutions; things that are expected to change based on the advancement of technology and what is standard at that time vs series evolution where a redesign of elements are done some at the behest of the developers themselves to refresh the series. Just in case you need example; Classic RE to RE4. Dragon Quest, minus changes where it would be mandatory or they'd end up looking completely outdated, has not had any changes to its formula at all.  

Dragon Quest Heroes is not what a proper advancement of Dragon Quest would be. Its another DW with a DQ skin. The end.



Ljink96 on 30 September 2019
Xxain said:
Ljink96 said:

Well, there are 2 things that separate the NES games from the post 7 era. Skill trees, and a 3rd person battle system...and uh maybe Voice Acting. I personally dislike the older Dragon Quest games despite developing remakes of those games myself. The first person battle system...ech I don't like it. That has been gone since 8. The battle system is turn based, but that is even true for a lot of games today that garner praise. 

There are people who wouldn't touch the NES games with a 10 foot pole that will play 8, 9 and 11. That's kinda what I'm getting at. Most of that is probably presentation, but there's not really much DQ can do to be "modern" besides make an action RPG but nobody in the west even played the Heroes games despite being exactly that. 

These are technical evolutions; things that are expected to change based on the advancement of technology and what is standard at that time vs series evolution where a redesign of elements are done some at the behest of the developers themselves to refresh the series. Just in case you need example; Classic RE to RE4. Dragon Quest, minus changes where it would be mandatory or they'd end up looking completely outdated, has not had any changes to its formula at all.  

Dragon Quest Heroes is not what a proper advancement of Dragon Quest would be. Its another DW with a DQ skin. The end.

Later in my post I explained that these things were chalked up to presentation. The "technical evolution" thing I don't agree with because things that are expected to change can be quite subjective. So I'll leave that there. Evolution also implies that the evolution is inherently better or more advantageous than the previous which is also highly subjective. These things didn't have to change for DQ to be consistently popular in Japan. Dynasty Warriors is not a genre. Heroes is an Action RPG.

What would the "proper" evolution of Dragon Quest be? Final Fantasy with Dragon Quest skin? I'm not sure what proper evolution would even mean in this context. I dunno, I just want Dragon Quest to be Dragon Quest.



RaptorChrist on 30 September 2019

One of Dragon Quest's main appeals is the fact that it hasn't changed much over the years. Combat mechanics haven't changed much at all. Same equipment, same core stats, same sound effects. They have avoided changing their formula intentionally. The original Japanese version of DQXI didn't even have voice acting, and the reason it was added was specifically because they wanted to reach a bigger western audience.

This is why the game has the option to play in the old, 2D mode; one of the features of the game is to play the game the same way it would have been played had it been created 30 years ago.



Xxain on 30 September 2019
Hiku said:
Xxain said:
Dragon Quest's low western sales have nothing to do with marketing. All JRPG fans are aware of Dragon Quest. It has to do with a lack of interest; the west is not interested in Dragon Quest. Its too traditional. Monster Hunter used to be like this as well and it took a total redesign of the series to capture western audiences.

Combined western sales will definitely be over a mill, but it will still be a Japanese thing.

I bet it's not uncommon for people to not be interested in franchises they've never tried before.
Persona 5 is not very different from previous installments. It only scored 3 points higher than Persona 4. But it reached a much bigger audience this time. 

Spiderman also sold significantly more than any previous Spiderman game, and more than any superhero game in history even, iirc.

I think both presentation and marketing plays an important role in these scenarios where they manage to reach people that were previously uninterested in the franchise/genre.

Square Enix has attempted multiple times to strengthen Dragon Quest foothold in the west though. At this point if you consider yourself a JRPG fan then you know what Dragon Quest is. These JRPG fans are buying Persona, they're buying Nier, they're buying Tales, Xeno, but not Dragon Quest. It cant be a marketing thing.



Dulfite on 30 September 2019

I'm planning on getting it, despite finding 7 on the 3da (my only Dq experience) to be off-putting, though I never finished it. That said, the hold up right now is the fact that my Switch backlog is already stupid huge. I'm just now getting to Astral Chain, and the next two games will be Luigi's Mansion 3 and Links Awakening before I even have time to buy DQ11, unless someone can prove to me that it is a superior game to either of those two in terms of what I enjoy. I'm hoping DQ11 is considerably better and less grindy feeling than 7.