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Ryuu96 2 days ago

Please don't let this be about Avowed's CCU either...

The Outer Worlds all time peak CCU was 20,349 and Avowed is mid-week (after 5 days of early access) at 17k. The Outer Worlds went on to sell over 5m units. We went through this same song and dance with Indiana Jones as well (which Avowed is doing better than) and Indiana Jones went on to do 4m players in just under 2 months, had "solid" sales in December (Mat Piscatella) and Disney is reportedly happy with it and wants more.

Avowed meanwhile is around the same as The Outer Worlds which was a success, and once again, we do not know Xbox, Windows Store numbers, but now also, we don't even know Battle.net numbers. Avowed is performing based on Steam better than Indiana Jones which is an IP of over 30 years of history meanwhile, likely the majority of people playing Avowed have never even heard of Pillars of Eternity and think Avowed is a new IP, Lol.



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Ryuu96 2 days ago
Shaunodon said:
Ryuu96 said:

Half the complaints were "It doesn't do anything new" which can be applied to dozens of games, even ones which hit the 90s and would have also been able to have been applied to "Pillars of Eternity III but AAA" Lol. It's a criticism I find baffling but oh well. There were A LOT of people who loved Avowed but it was just those who really didn't like it dragging the overall average down.

It's better than The Outer Worlds Imo and the RPG Aspects/Dialogue feels better too but The Outer Worlds is rated higher.

Think it's also funny to use Kingdom Come II to try to drag Avowed when Kingdom Come I sits at 72 Opencritic and only 3% higher on Steam. It's like, yeah, Kingdom Come II learnt how to improve from Kingdom Come I and Baldur's Gate 3 (based on Dungeons & Dragons), learnt to improve on the past two entries. But fuck Avowed for not hitting 90%+ in the first entry in its franchise amirite?

It boggles my mind. Game is great, a solid start for a new franchise, it has received a strong reception from critics and players, now the only way is up for future entries which aren't bogged down by mid-development reboots, the gameplay is nailed and they've introduced people to the world of Eora, now is time to expand the lore even further.

https://www.vgchartz.com/article/462982/kingdom-come-deliverance-sales-top-8-million-units/

You must have forgotten this is a sales website.

Now remember that Kingdom Come was a first time project from a small team in Czech on a kickstarter budget. It got review bombed by some biased critics, yet the positive receptions from actual gamers helped it surge to a huge success.

Avowed is not a first time project from some new studio from nowhere. They had more than enough resources to do better. It's critic score and steam rating will all innevitably go down, as most feedback is already trending negatively.

You went from "Avowed sucks. Everyone hates it. Doom. They didn't learn a thing. Why didn't they do as good as Kingdom Come II" but when I point out Kingdom Come I's reception, you switch to "You can't use a gamer reception argument like I did because Kingdom Come I sold well" You accuse Kingdom Come of being review bombed by biased critics, those same critics gave the sequel glowing reviews, Lol. 

Kingdom Come I sits at 83% on Steam, by your same logic as Avowed, everyone hates it.

Avowed is not from a new studio, no. But it is from a new director, to most people Avowed would be seen as a new IP. There's not much they could have taken from Pillars to apply to Avowed aside from the lore. So by your same logic, Obsidian did a better job than Warhorse Studios in their first attempt at creating a new franchise and by all accounts, it is a solid release.

Obsidian has made clear, they don't want to work with massive budgets or massive teams.

Let em create solid entries like Avowed and The Outer Worlds. Not every developer on the planet has to reinvent the wheel to be a success.



konnichiwa 2 days ago

If everyone you see is also glowing about it too you must have an extremely curated list of sites and places you're willing to visit, because everywhere else I've seen talking about it is apatheitc at best. A

Hello??  Did you miss all those bluesky posts? What more do you need to know?

Anyway I also was dissapointed with Avowed because I really wanted that darker BIG RPG from Obsidian like many others in this thread when it was unveiled in July 2020?  But it is a good game for me so far it maybe even come close to being great....

I like to use facts tho and you can check the steam reviews it is like you are cherry picking because for every Negative/Bad review you have 4 Positive/Good reviews so I can't agree with your statement that people don't like it.  You have some youtubers who dislike it but then others who were amazed by it 'Digital Foundry' was also impressed....Heck even Asmongold seemed to like it...(and thats after 11 videos where he thought the game would be bad or shit).








Shaunodon 2 days ago
Ryuu96 said:
Shaunodon said:

This is why I use words like 'foreseight'. Larian started with 50 employees but their team size grew multitudes during the development of Baldur's Gate III. Why? Because they were actually inspired to make something innovative and ambitious. Where is the innovation and ambition with Avowed?

The only people I've heard glowing about Avowed are here in this thread. If everyone you see is also glowing about it too you must have an extremely curated list of sites and places you're willing to visit, because everywhere else I've seen talking about it is apatheitc at best. And that's the ones who were even willing to give it a chance, since there was barely anyone even interested to begin with.

Now consider how long this took to develop and how little return they're likely to see, you really want to convince me this is somehow a success? Pillars of Eternity II at least did well over time thanks to it's inherent quality and greet feedback. Avowed is only going to get much worse now that the game is actually out proper and reviews will likely dip more if anyone else is even willing to review it.

It's not like I'm here to specifically doom the game, since like I said, there are at least some parts that I still enjoy. But this is the reality whether you like it or not. This game is not well received overall, and the lack of general interest could be a blessing or curse, if you want to simply give it credit for not being a Veilguard level high profile disaster.

Larian growing doesn't change what I said though, every single development team grows during development, they all start in the double digits, but Larian at their height were triple the development team of Avowed's team with 6 more studios at their disposal. That is not something Obsidian wants to do and it is how they've been successful all these years, even Larian themselves said that isn't sustainable.

Not to mention Baldur's Gate 3 isn't a new IP either and has two previous successful entries to draw from. What the hell is innovative and ambitious about Pillars of Eternity but in AAA? Lol. You sure didn't make it sound anything special in your post, only simply "Take Pillars of Eternity...And make it AAA!" I'd say Avowed is plenty "innovative" in the gameplay department, it is best feeling first-person melee combat I've experienced in an RPG. Everything else sure, it isn't "innovative" but I don't really care because it's still great?

What's innovative about Forza Horizon 2? 3? 4? 5? Versus 1? What is innovative about the From Software titles? What is innovative about half the Yakuza titles? What is innovative about dozens of brilliant games? I'll tell you, nothing, Lol. That doesn't stop them from being great-amazing experiences though. If every single title had to change the wheel to be considered a success then 99% of this industry would be dead.

You definitely haven't explored much outside of your circle then, who are you listening to? Asmongold? I've literally posted dozens of highly respected critics and reviewers in this thread glowing about Avowed, I've given you another example of ResetEra (where the Xbox fanbase is very much in the minority). Are you just listening to rage-bait YouTubers?

You ask me a question which I couldn't possibly know (the development budget). You make an assumption that Avowed is going to get much worse based on nothing. There are over 120 reviews listed and it actually went up in average by one, Lol. It's unlikely to receive anymore reviews. It sure seems to me like you're hear to doom the game and make useless comparisons to other games.

  • "The game is not well received overall" - Based on what?
  • "Lack of general interest" - Based on what?

I don't have a circle. I just find whoever's talking about a product and keep listening if they seem like a sensible person. I'm not even subbed to most of these channels. The last one I'd never even seen before but the video just popped up randomly in my recommendations. So you're saying all these people are just rage-baiting bigots:

Those are all the reviews I listened to so far. And just like me, all of them tried their best to find positive aspects to talk about. But just like me, they were all generally disappointed and whelmed by the game.

If you think this is a strong start for a game that was teased way back at the start of the generation as a potential system selling title, I don't know what to tell you.



Shaunodon 2 days ago

Luke Stephens having one of the most negative responses is also ironic, considering he's someone who goes out of his way to not be negative of modern games and sit on the fence for as long as possible, even when he shouldn't.

But these people are all just rage-baiting bigots, right?



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Ryuu96 2 days ago
shikamaru317 said:

My thoughts on this whole debate:

-Yes, Avowed has some issues, but they certainly aren't that the game isn't a fully functional Eora life simulator with an incredibly deep player choice system, they are more so QoL issues

-No, Avowed is not a flop, it's showing signs of fairly strong sales (top 15 on Xbox player charts from the $90 edition alone and a #1 on Steam where it is beating out Monster Hunter preorders about a week before it's release) in addition to strong Gamepass download numbers

-Yes, Avowed was under reviewed, it was quite obvious that it got hit with Xbox tax, it's more of a mid 80's game than a low 80's game

-Avowed is not AAA and Obsidian didn't want it to be AAA, the dev team size was said to be around 100 people which makes it more of a AA project. Many at Obsidian have said that they have no interest in making AAA games due to the employee burnout that AAA causes. The AAA industry seems headed for collapse and Avowed is probably more likely to make a profit as a AA release than it would have as a AAA release due to budget reasons (game devs in the US are now making on average over $100k per year, a 300 person dev team AAA studio working on a game for 5 years is looking at a budget of $160m from internal developer salaries alone, in addition to external costs such as mo-cap and voice acting, localization team costs, external QA studio costs, and marketing, putting the total budget of an average AAA game in 2025 well over $200m. At $200m, the break even point for a game is 4m copies sold at full price after storefront cut, and the number of copies you need to sell only goes up from there the higher the budget obviously)

Agreed that it has some issues, it definitely isn't the world, dialogue, choices, etc, for me, so far. I'm loving it, I think it's better than The Outer Worlds, I too would put it around the mid 80s right now. I don't know if I agree with this Xbox tax business, Lmao, but a lot of criticism was unfairly "doesn't do anything innovative" which can be applied to so many games but doesn't, if the same criticism gets applied to Doom: The Dark Ages and The Outer Worlds 2 then at least they'll be consistent but I'm guessing it won't be and Doom will receive glowing reviews.

Worth noting we have Battle.net to contend with now...Makes tracking performance even harder, Lol.

I don't think there's any way Avowed isn't AAA. But it's on the more modest end of AAA. 120 core employees obviously isn't much compared to most AAA studios but that was still over 6 years and whoever knows how many external developers. But Obsidian has repeatedly said they ain't interested in huge budgets/huge teams and want to remain lean and mid-budget/mid-sized so Avowed is probably that.

I'd expect it will make a fairly decent profit back and Obsidian will go on to spit out The Outer Worlds 2 and then something else, then something else, etc. Lol. They've been consistent as hell for years and it has worked for them, they've not chased massive budgets and it has worked out for them. Don't fix what isn't broken I'd say, as much as some would like a big Fallout from Obsidian with their entire team working on it, Lol.



Ryuu96 2 days ago
konnichiwa said:

If everyone you see is also glowing about it too you must have an extremely curated list of sites and places you're willing to visit, because everywhere else I've seen talking about it is apatheitc at best. A

Hello??  Did you miss all those bluesky posts? What more do you need to know?

Anyway I also was dissapointed with Avowed because I really wanted that darker BIG RPG from Obsidian like many others in this thread when it was unveiled in July 2020?  But it is a good game for me so far it maybe even come close to being great....

I like to use facts tho and you can check the steam reviews it is like you are cherry picking because for every Negative/Bad review you have 4 Positive/Good reviews so I can't agree with your statement that people don't like it.  You have some youtubers who dislike it but then others who were amazed by it 'Digital Foundry' was also impressed....Heck even Asmongold seemed to like it...(and thats after 11 videos where he thought the game would be bad or shit).

Damn. When Konnichi is the voice of reason.

Apart from the Bsky dig.

I didn't actually know Asmongold liked it, I was trolling him, but even you acknowledged the "11" videos he put out slating the game.

Last edited by Ryuu96 - 2 days ago

konnichiwa 2 days ago
Shaunodon said:

Luke Stephens having one of the most negative responses is also ironic, considering he's someone who goes out of his way to not be negative of modern games and sit on the fence for as long as possible, even when he shouldn't.

But these people are all just rage-baiting bigots, right?

Uhhh, Luke stated that the game was a mess for him as in a technical nightmare but he enjoyed it when it worked

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/KfvNY0G5JP8

Luke is a mixed bag and he have stated that he like others will farm videos on both sides of the coin 'Positive and Negative' Can't really say he is going out of the way.

I would say Easy allies is one of the big groups that are not going out of their way to be Negative or farm on it...






Ryuu96 2 days ago
Shaunodon said:

I don't have a circle. I just find whoever's talking about a product and keep listening if they seem like a sensible person. I'm not even subbed to most of these channels. The last one I'd never even seen before but the video just popped up randomly in my recommendations. So you're saying all these people are just rage-baiting bigots:

Those are all the reviews I listened to so far. And just like me, all of them tried their best to find positive aspects to talk about. But just like me, they were all generally disappointed and whelmed by the game.

If you think this is a strong start for a game that was teased way back at the start of the generation as a potential system selling title, I don't know what to tell you.

No, I do not believe those are all rage-baiting bigots, but I do believe you're picking and choosing what to see so you can express fake outrage. You've posted a bunch of YouTubers who disliked the game, I've posted just as many, if not more, people who loved the game in this very thread, but those are ignored by yourself and only the YouTubers that have popped up in your recommendations count.

I can find positive aspects to talk about easy, as can many others, but we aren't going round like "Avowed is the best thing ever! Better than everything else! Our opinions are the only things that matter!" like you are trying to do with a select few YouTubers. You came in dooming the shit out of the game, comparing it to every other game, telling them how much they've failed and quite frankly, your criticism wasn't even well presented.

Yes, I do believe Avowed has got solid reviews (that's...a fact), and a solid reception from users, I do not know the full extent of its performance yet, but the charts are showing positive signs, Imo. I don't really see how when it was revealed has any relevance, videogames are revealed years in advance all the time now, can hardly avoid it.

And you can't just slap "It was meant to be a system seller so it's a failure" to every title, how many systems was it meant to sell? What score does something need to hit to be a system seller? How much mass market appeal does something need to have to be a system seller? Even some videogames which sell tens of millions I wouldn't exactly call system sellers, even some video games which critic in the 90s I wouldn't call system sellers. It's a useless description to dismiss every game as a failure because it didn't push an arbitrary amount of consoles.



Shaunodon 2 days ago
konnichiwa said:
Shaunodon said:

Luke Stephens having one of the most negative responses is also ironic, considering he's someone who goes out of his way to not be negative of modern games and sit on the fence for as long as possible, even when he shouldn't.

But these people are all just rage-baiting bigots, right?

Uhhh, Luke stated that the game was a mess for him as in a technical nightmare but he enjoyed it when it worked

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/KfvNY0G5JP8

Luke is a mixed bag and he have stated that he like others will farm videos on both sides of the coin 'Positive and Negative' Can't really say he is going out of the way.

I would say Easy allies is one of the big groups that are not going out of their way to be Negative or farm on it...

Most people say they enjoy the game. I generally enjoy the game. But it's also completely lifeless, uninteresting and ultimately forgettable. And that's what most people ultimately come to. They only recommend it through gamepass, because gamepass is a budget service made for games that you might feel are worth trying but don't actually want to buy.

How many outright say you should buy the game full price as soon as possible? How many are even remotely that convincted in their recommendation? They're all very ho-hum, trying their best to not be negative. But the general apathy is hard not to see; though people here have obviously trained themselves well to not see what they don't want to.

It's not like I wanted this game to be disappointing either. I just won't lie to myself about it.