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[Toons]

Then none of Bioware’s stuff is your Jam…they introduced the first LGBT character in the entire Star Wars universe in the original KoToR with Juhani…Dragon Age Inquistion was stuffed with it: Dorian and Iron Bull being an item, Sera, Celene, Brialla…Kreme with the non-binary. This is the equivalent of figuring out Rage Against the Machine is a band that talks about politics….

Its the audience that changed. Not the studio. That happens more than most realized.

 

[Zathalus]

I think people are vastly overestimating the budget of this game, yes protracted development and all that, but Bioware is based out of Edmonton. Developer salaries are significantly lower (like a third compared to Seattle and Los Angeles).

 

[Ozriel]

You think the development of the previous iterations of DAV that were canceled and rebooted was free?

Cyberpunk cost over 320M also because, eventhough the development of its final iteration only started in 2016, there was team already working on other, later scrapped iterations of it since 2012.

Pre-production costs with a small team (in parallel with Andromeda and Anthem) aren’t ‘free’, but they’d make up a small portion of the overall cost.

I used the term ‘full production’ for a reason.

 

[Mayar]

Now looking at the stats on Steam, something tells me that the idea of releasing the game simultaneously with the Monster Hunter Beta was really shitty.

Monster Hunter Wilds Beta - 463,798 24-hour peak

This is just brutal, and right before the weekend.

 

[Windom Earle]

Now looking at the stats on Steam, something tells me that the idea of releasing the game simultaneously with the Monster Hunter Beta was really shitty.

Monster Hunter Wilds Beta - 463,798 24-hour peak

This is just brutal, and right before the weekend.

So you are saying AAA franchise Dragon Age needs to kneel before the beta of a formerly niche Japanese game?

Spoiler: spoiler

you are correct

 

[Westcliff]

Understandably, many people will only buy the game because of the big name and their positive experience with DA:I and most people aren't interested in the ‘culture war’. It is also normal for the first few hours of the game to be the most entertaining and varied (usually games are designed to be best at the beginning), the problems with the combat gameplay and storytelling will only emerge gradually, and will be widely discussed in the next few weeks. I predict that the mostly positive opinion on the game will change in a week or two when the first people have played through the game or are at least very far advanced, and when there are more reviews and videos analysing why the game is not as good. In the long term, the game is more likely to harm future Dragon Ages games.

 

[Denton]

Pre-production costs with a small team (in parallel with Andromeda and Anthem) aren’t ‘free’, but they’d make up a small portion of the overall cost.

I used the term ‘full production’ for a reason.

I seriously doubt all that time before 2021 was just preproduction with small team. In any case, at this point we can only speculate. My speculation is that the budget was around 150-200M incl. marketing. We'll see what numbers get released, if any.

 

[pulicat]

Now looking at the stats on Steam, something tells me that the idea of releasing the game simultaneously with the Monster Hunter Beta was really shitty.

Monster Hunter Wilds Beta - 463,798 24-hour peak

This is just brutal, and right before the weekend.

Monster hunter wilds is going to sell more than 12 million units on steam alone while Veilguard is going to sell around ~6m on all platforms.

 

[Hohenheim]

It's sad that a bad game is selling well... yes.

Ummm have you not played games recently

Again this isn't some right wing conspiracy. It's just how business works.

Have you looked at the AAA space lately in gaming? You don't think publishers follow trends? Most modern games have objectively been bad. With either poor optimization, poor writing or just general poor game design.

The worst people are the ones who think they are literally Jesus because they conveniently ignore everything to seem perfect. "How does it effect you personally" is not as smart as rebuttal as you think it is.

Business doesn't operate on feelings. It operates on how they can make the most money then quickest.

You keep focusing on the trans stuff which let's be honest, is your not so veiled agenda you are trying to push. I'm saying the game itself is bad, the combat looks shit/ is shit, the story is shit and according to all the gameplay footage out there the game design is shit too.

The only positive is that it seemingly runs well on PC but that's not what publishers are going to take away from it.

Pubs are gonna look at it and go, fuck we put barely any effort, hired some b-tier talent and we made bank, let's just keep doing that. Any other IP we got lying around that will keep the dummy masses placated with their need to consume and need for content

I never said that you're pushing some "right wing conspiracy".
I just disagree with your take and find it to be a bit destructive and paranoid-ish.
And yes, I've played LOTS of new games recently and have no fear of the whole industry turning into some echo chamber of DEI stuff.

Some of the 2024 releases i've played and finished this year is Dragons Dogma 2, Hellblade 2, Harold Halibut, A crabs tale, Still Wakes the deep, shadow of the erdtree, space marine 2, final fantasy 7 rebirth and plucky squire.

My conclusion after playing these (and lots of other games) is that the gaming industry is thriving. Lots of great and varied games in almost every genre, and lots of exciting stuff to look forward to.

It is, and will continue to be fine.

 

[acidagfc]

 

[Mayar]

Well, since you've already started...

 

[devutos]

Desperate leftists wanted to praise the joke of 70k that Veilguard managed and then Monster Hunter comes out with almost half a mil and shows what real AAA games do.

For a game that was in dev for 6-7years with at least one reboot, these results are a disaster, there is no way EA is happy with 70k for such a francize and a game that had both time and budget.

Some people just have no frame of reference when it comes to game sales, see a number that 'looks high' and engage in confirmation bias.

Reminds me of that Alan Wake 2 thread when the game sold 1 million: same thing there with people proclaiming how the incels lost and other nonsense. Without having the faintest idea that 1m for a title like that in 2023 was pretty damn bad. And indeed some time later it was confirmed how the game hadn't even broken even.

Still too early to call it for DAV, but if 70k were to be its actual peak, that'd be bad.

 

[acidagfc]

Jokes asides, I'd like to see the CCU 1 month from now.
Pretty sure BG3 will still be at 50K+, let's see how DA:V fares.

 

[Mayar]

Some people just have no frame of reference when it comes to game sales, see a number that 'looks high' and engage in confirmation bias.

Reminds me of that Alan Wake 2 thread when the game sold 1 million: same thing there with people proclaiming how the incels lost and other nonsense. Without having the faintest idea that 1m for a title like that in 2023 was pretty damn bad. And indeed some time later it was confirmed how the game hadn't even broken even.

This is the usual magic of numbers, people highlight big numbers and it turns them on. Although without knowing all the specifics, these numbers practically do not reflect anything (except for people's interest in the game). Since we do not know the budget, marketing costs, related expenses, etc. In order to draw at least some conclusions, we will find out only when EA releases a quarterly report. And as was correctly noted in the current realities and budgets of games, sales of 1 - 3 million copies sometimes mean absolutely nothing, since this does not even cover the costs of the game development itself.

 

[PeteBull]

Now looking at the stats on Steam, something tells me that the idea of releasing the game simultaneously with the Monster Hunter Beta was really shitty.

Monster Hunter Wilds Beta - 463,798 24-hour peak

This is just brutal, and right before the weekend.

If game was good it would easily get to 200k ccu imo, Dragons Dogma 2 released to 230k ccu after all, but lets see how it does on the weekend, maybe it gets big bump, we will see soon enough.

 

[StueyDuck]

I never said that you're pushing some "right wing conspiracy".
I just disagree with your take and find it to be a bit destructive and paranoid-ish.
And yes, I've played LOTS of new games recently and have no fear of the whole industry turning into some echo chamber of DEI stuff.

Some of the 2024 releases i've played and finished this year is Dragons Dogma 2, Hellblade 2, Harold Halibut, A crabs tale, Still Wakes the deep, shadow of the erdtree, space marine 2, final fantasy 7 rebirth and plucky squire.

My conclusion after playing these (and lots of other games) is that the gaming industry is thriving. Lots of great and varied games in almost every genre, and lots of exciting stuff to look forward to.

It is, and will continue to be fine.

again you bring up DEI now, All i said is that the crowd who can never allow any criticism of a game will jump into every thread now and point to this game and say "see woke not broke", i never said anything about DEI. You have a thinly veiled agenda and it is a bit obvious, the problem with many gaf members if that they want to write insinuations but not ever face what they are trying to say head on.

Look if you are just a consumer that's fine, just eat up everything put in front of you and say thank you, that's fine by me.

but you came into this thread upset with me for being sad that a lousy game is selling well, only to tell me "how does it effect me personally". Well how does what i am saying effect you personally?

if you enjoy modern slop then more power to you. I would prefer better made games got promoted, you'll see me not being hot on the fact that Wu Kong did well either because to me it's just Chinese copy/paste.

I don't think it's a radical as you believe it is to expect more from the games rather than them existing so that's good enough. I'd rather have 3 incredible games a year than 53434 generic slop.

I am not a netflix style consume everything because it exists type of person though, my time is limited and i love gaming so it shouldn't be so insane to think someone in that situation just wishes the games were better.

 

[Ozriel]

Desperate leftists wanted to praise the joke of 70k that Veilguard managed and then Monster Hunter comes out with almost half a mil and shows what real AAA games do.

For a game that was in dev for 6-7years with at least one reboot, these results are a disaster, there is no way EA is happy with 70k for such a francize and a game that had both time and budget.

‘Joke’? ‘Disaster’?
if 70k was so easy, why do most AAA single player games struggle to hit that benchmark? We’ve seen FFXVI and GoW Ragnarok struggle to hit half of that.

This is a game that only entered full development in 2021, so ‘6-7 years’ is a silly exaggeration.

It's sad that a bad game is selling well... yes.

You haven’t played it.
Consensus from those who have played it on Steam say it’s good.

Pubs are gonna look at it and go, fuck we put barely any effort, hired some b-tier talent and we made bank, let's just keep doing that. Any other IP we got lying around that will keep the dummy masses placated with their need to consume and need for content

Game had a standard development cycle, with hundreds of employees out on it.

‘Barely any effort’ is low tier BS.

 

[ValiantInstance]

You haven’t played it.
Consensus from those who have played it on Steam say it’s good.

After 2 hours played?

I'm not a fan of SkillUp but he plays far more games than I do. He said he was bored out of his skull after 10 hours, the combat gets boring and the dialogue is written for children. Barely anyone who has posted a review on Steam has hit the 10 hour mark before glazing the game.

 

[Ozriel]

Why do so many on here have such hate for this game lol. There are plenty of games I don't like but I just ignore them

I definitely don't make multiple threads and posts stating my hate for a game

It's pretty childish if you ask me

Completely weird behavior.
Yes, you disapprove of the game. But after stating that in the reveal thread, the gameplay reveal thread, the previews thread and the reviews thread…at some point one would expect them to stay away post-release and just move on.

 

[YuLY]

‘Joke’? ‘Disaster’?
if 70k was so easy, why do most AAA single player games struggle to hit that benchmark? We’ve seen FFXVI and GoW Ragnarok struggle to hit half of that.

Because they are ports of games that came out over a year before you dumb bastard.

Space Marine 2 (in a francize in which the first game came out in 2011 and undersold) had a peak of 225,690

 

[VolticArchangel]

Awww... is the fat little incel cunt having a breakdown?

Lmao is this the "Bu-bu-but will someone think about the PRONOOOOOOOOUUUUNS!? ", fatty baldo who went viral sometime ago for a game's character creator?

 

[Hohenheim]

again you bring up DEI now, All i said is that the crowd who can never allow any criticism of a game will jump into every thread now and point to this game and say "see woke not broke", i never said anything about DEI. You have a thinly veiled agenda and it is a bit obvious, the problem with many gaf members if that they want to write insinuations but not ever face what they are trying to say head on.

Look if you are just a consumer that's fine, just eat up everything put in front of you and say thank you, that's fine by me.

but you came into this thread upset with me for being sad that a lousy game is selling well, only to tell me "how does it effect me personally". Well how does what i am saying effect you personally?

if you enjoy modern slop then more power to you. I would prefer better made games got promoted, you'll see me not being hot on the fact that Wu Kong did well either because to me it's just Chinese copy/paste.

I don't think it's a radical as you believe it is to expect more from the games rather than them existing so that's good enough. I'd rather have 3 incredible games a year than 53434 generic slop.

I am not a netflix style consume everything because it exists type of person though, my time is limited and i love gaming so it shouldn't be so insane to think someone in that situation just wishes the games were better.

Listen, the DEI and woke stuff was not really directed to your post, more in general as those words come up all the time in these discussions.
I agree with lots of what you're saying and I definitly have no agenda!
My main point was, and is, that I find it a bit silly to wanting games to flop just because they're not for you, when there's TONS of great stuff in almost every genre.
I don't buy this whole "modern gaming is all doom and gloom" mentality. As for being a "netflix-ish consumer". I'm definitly not.
I buy 90% of my games, and i'm very picky.
Still, i'm very satisfied with the huge selection of great games being released year after year. And I avvoid the stuff I don't like. Like GAS games etc.

 

[vaibhavpisal]

After 2 hours played?

I'm not a fan of SkillUp but he plays far more games than I do. He said he was bored out of his skull after 10 hours, the combat gets boring and the dialogue is written for children. Barely anyone who has posted a review on Steam has hit the 10 hour mark before glazing the game.

I would say his and Mortismal’s reputations are on line with the way they have reviewed this game.

 

[StueyDuck]

Listen, the DEI and woke stuff was not really directed to your post, more in general as those words come up all the time in these discussions.
I agree with lots of what you're saying and I definitly have no agenda!
My main point was, and is, that si find it a bit silly to wanting games to flop judt because they're not for you, when there's TONS of great stuff in almost every genre.
I don't buy this whole "modern gaming is all doom and gloom" mentality. As for being a "netflix-ish consumer". I'm definitly not.
I buy 90% of my games, and i'm very picky.
Still, i'm very satisfied with the huge selection of great games being released year after year. And I avvoid the stuff I don't like. Like GAS games etc.

but you do see a difference between being sad that something not good is succeeding and wanting a game to fail right?

I want all games to be incredible, it's kind of the opposite of wanting them to fail.

 

[Ozriel]

After 2 hours played?

I'm not a fan of SkillUp but he plays far more games than I do. He said he was bored out of his skull after 10 hours, the combat gets boring and the dialogue is written for children. Barely anyone who has posted a review on Steam has hit the 10 hour mark before glazing the game.

You know you can filter reviews based on playtime, right? Theres a very decent number of people who have more than 10 hours in the game. And a lot more of them are positive than negative.

 

[KungFucius]

Are < 200 reviews really an indication of what people think of it? Most of those are people who rushed to put a hot take on there. Just scrolling down and every single negative review has less than 2 hours in the game. I don't care about the game but let's stop this nonsense and wait for the dust to settle.

It really depends on what their hot take is. If it is "DEI is ruining everything" then I agree, but if it is "This game runs like shit and I can't play without CTD" then it is reasonable unless they are trying to run it on a GTX 670/Athlon rig from 2010.

 

[ValiantInstance]

You know you can filter reviews based on playtime, right? Theres a very decent number of people who have more than 10 hours in the game. And a lot more of them are positive than negative.

3.74% of the reviews at the time of writing were posted at the 10 hour mark.

 

[Gexxy1]

You know you can filter reviews based on playtime, right? Theres a very decent number of people who have more than 10 hours in the game. And a lot more of them are positive than negative.

It's like people who play games longer like them more or something

 

[clarky]

Jokes asides, I'd like to see the CCU 1 month from now.
Pretty sure BG3 will still be at 50K+, let's see how DA:V fares.

Its a single player game. Its be around 5% of its all time high just like BG3

 

[Esparadrapo]

It's like people who play games longer like them more or something

Unless it's Starfield.

 

[Spitfire098]

Whole lot of this going on...

 

[Astray]

Guessing he went too hard in his personal war against Grummz. @Sentenza was calling out the dude earlier this morning.

Analysis - Review - Dragon Age: The Veilguard | Review Thread

Oh boy What makes this is how incredibly smug this bitch is while lecturing everyone with propaganda. Just like real life.

www.neogaf.com

lol

Mark Kern is a big lolcow but that breast milk story is just some people trolling him.

Honestly not worth a ban tho.

 

[Dazraell]

I seriously doubt all that time before 2021 was just preproduction with small team. In any case, at this point we can only speculate. My speculation is that the budget was around 150-200M incl. marketing. We'll see what numbers get released, if any.

Dragon Age 4 was actually in development since 2015

There were multiple attempts to create this game before they settled on Veilguard. If I remember correctly, one of these games was live service game, and other one was spearheaded by Inquisition's art director and he had that role for several years. Not sure when Veilguard's development started but I assume it was when that art director left (2021) and was replaced first by former dev who came back, and then by the current game director. If you will compare timespan of Veilguard and its previous iterations, you have multiple years between them. I highly doubt it was just a small team with a few people on it. They feel more like projects that made some progress before they were cancelled. Some of the staff members were reassigned to help with other projects, but if they wouldn't have anything in active development EA wouldn't announce this game in 2018

There is also the case of game's VO. BioWare themselves brag the script was almost twice longer than Inquisition, so costs for recording that probably wasn't cheap either

 

[Astray]

You know you can filter reviews based on playtime, right? Theres a very decent number of people who have more than 10 hours in the game. And a lot more of them are positive than negative.

People are so desperate to dunk on this game they actually bought copies to mess with the reviews.

I don't even give a shit about Bioware OR Dragon Age, but the seething is quite funny to watch unfold.

 

[IntentionalPun]

That seems a little mediocre but it’s pretty funny to compare it to a free beta that people only have 3 days to play lol

 

[HJuggernaut]

70k on steam for a new bioware game, this is incredibly low.

 

[Madflavor]

The cope in the thread is real. The game may be embarrassing, but 70k day one are totally respectable numbers. It’ll likely break 100k on the weekend. I said it before, don’t be surprised if the game doesn’t end up being the Big Bomba you expected it to be.

 

[BigBeauford]

Chuds held the first day

Most of the gain occurred in the afternoon from the Europeans who's probably oblivious to the culture war. Then it topped off during North American evening hours

Now comes the weekend, the most important time. The wokes will make a bigger charge. We must hold the line!

HOLD...your wallets.

 

[Laptop1991]

Too early to tell, wait a few weeks then see the review score on Steam lol.

 

[Tsaki]

Not trying to piss on your cheerios, what do you expect from a new Mass Effect game considering almost everyone that made the original trilogy has left and the last game was a disaster?

I don't care who left and who stayed; devs leave studios all the time. Doubt many (if any) R* devs that made San Andreas and 4, the best GTA games, are still in the studio. I'm still somewhat excited for GTA6.
This game is reviewing well enough, so I expect their next one to be better after the experience and feedback they got from this (well reviewed) game.

You do realize that a new ME from this Bioware would be an absolute nightmare, right?

I'll wait and see when it comes. Thankfully no one is forcing me to buy it so I have the option to keep my money in my bank account if what they produce is not to my liking.

GAF desperately wants this game to be a flop.

It’s a little sad tbh.

Oh yeah, definitely. It's reverse Stellar Blade on Reee.

 

[Go_Ly_Dow]

Well, since you've already started...

 

[BigBeauford]

That seems a little mediocre but it’s pretty funny to compare it to a free beta that people only have 3 days to play lol

The excuse wasn't that DA wasn't free, the excuse was it was Halloween night.

 

[Hawk The Slayer]

There were multiple attempts to create this game before they settled on Veilguard. If I remember correctly, one of these games was live service game, and other one was spearheaded by Inquisition's art director and he had that role for several years. Not sure when Veilguard's development started but I assume it was when that art director left (2021) and was replaced first by former dev who came back, and then by the current game director. If you will compare timespan of Veilguard and its previous iterations, you have multiple years between them. I highly doubt it was just a small team with a few people on it. They feel more like projects that made some progress before they were cancelled. Some of the staff members were reassigned to help with other projects, but if they wouldn't have anything in active development EA wouldn't announce this game in 2018

There is also the case of game's VO. BioWare themselves brag the script was almost twice longer than Inquisition, so costs for recording that probably wasn't cheap either

Agreed, some of those folks don’t give Dragon Age the respect it deserves when they think the game isn’t expensive when it is! Dragon Age Veilguard is a expensive AAA fantasy game and they don’t even have much faith in it like I do since I still believe it’ll hit around 300k this weekend when it’s prime time!

 

[ValiantInstance]

I don't care who left and who stayed; devs leave studios all the time. Doubt many (if any) R* devs that made San Andreas and 4, the best GTA games, are still in the studio. I'm still somewhat excited for GTA6.

I would say Dan Houser leaving is big reason to expect GTA 6 not to be as great as it could be.

Studios aren't a constant, the people matter. I waited years for a return to form™ for Asssassins Creed that never happened after Patrice Desilets left. David Vonderhaar left Treyarch after Cold War and suddenly the maps in Black Ops 6 are terrible. There are countless other examples.

I'm struggling to think of one where there has been a high turnover of a development team and the product stayed a similar quality or improved.

 

[Dazraell]

Agreed, some of those folks don’t give Dragon Age the respect it deserves when they think the game isn’t expensive when it is! Dragon Age Veilguard is a expensive AAA fantasy game and they don’t even have much faith in it like I do since I still believe it’ll hit around 300k this weekend when it’s prime time!

I initially thought it will have 20k in peaks so I was completely wrong on that end lol It's an interesting case either way. I do wonder if the peaks will be higher than its current high. Usually they stop at first day or a few days after launch, but at a same time it's a 50+ hours long game

 

[Hawk The Slayer]

I would say Dan Houser leaving is big reason to expect GTA 6 not to be as great as it could be.

Studios aren't a constant, the people matter. I waited years for a return to form™ for Asssassins Creed that never happened after Patrice Desilets left. David Vonderhaar left Treyarch after Cold War and suddenly the maps in Black Ops 6 are terrible. There are countless other examples.

I'm struggling to think of one where there has been a high turnover of a development team and the product stayed a similar quality or improved.

I’m super hyped for GTA VI, probably the most ever out of every gta. Vice City was my first GTA game and still has my favorite city. I spend almost 2,000 hours in V online but didn’t like the story of V and IV as much as San Andreas and Vice City. So GTA Vi should be my favorite gta of all times especially with a online mode included.

 

[ValiantInstance]

I’m super hyped for GTA VI, probably the most ever out of every gta. Vice City was my first GTA game and still has my favorite city. I spend almost 2,000 hours in V online but didn’t like the story of V and IV as much as San Andreas and Vice City. So GTA Vi should be my favorite gta of all times especially with a online mode included.

I agree it will be a good game, but I don't expect any hard hitting social commentary or funny missions. They won't touch stuff like the trans issue with a 10 foot pole. Bet your ass there'll be an Alex Jones listening redneck maga supporter though.

I don't think it will be woke, but more like a mid episode of South Park.

 

[Hawk The Slayer]

I initially thought it will have 20k in peaks so I was completely wrong on that end lol It's an interesting case either way. I do wonder if the peaks will be higher than its current high. Usually they stop at first day or a few days after launch, but at a same time it's a 50+ hours long game

I thought it’ll be at least 100k on launch since big budget western fantasy games usually attracts a lot of people especially from a well known brand. But being the optimistic and good person that I am. I can still see it getting up to 300k which is what it’ll need to look good. Cause 100k is still within much lower budget and scale games like Granblue Fantasy Relink, Stellar Blade, Space Marine 2, and Wukong. Happy that Relink got a100k cup during its peak so Veilguard should be at 300k soon!!!

 

[Wildebeest]

Whole lot of this going on...

My predictions are holding strong, but I'll elaborate.

Peak in the range of 100k+ decided end of weekend.
+It is a generic looking fantasy ARPG with Dragon in the name. Strong base of support.
+It is a fantasy type story with romance element. Strong base of support.
- No coop.
- Gameplay looks very basic and boring.
- Limited appeal to Asian markets, which is becoming increasingly central to success on steam.
- Romance heavy fantasy genre gives a strong base of support but puts a cap on how many people it appeals to.

These are significantly more negatives than a similar game like Dragon's Dogma, so I don't personally expect it to beat that game's peaks.

 

[SNPlayen]

My hunch is… it won’t be a success for BioWare / EA. Mass Effect is there last chance.