What made Troika fail and what made Obsidian succeed?
>>3867696>what made Obsidian succeedobsidian was constantly on knife's edge between bankruptcy and making next pay. they were just a tiny bit business savvier.
>>3867696money, mostly
>>3867696Idk, but I think Obsidian's games actually being functional had something to do with it.
>>3867696>What made Troika fail and what made Obsidian succeed?Troika tried making their own games, while Obsidian made standalone expansions for Bioware and Bethesda
Troika spent too much time and money on Bloodlines.
>>3867696What happened with Troika was no publisher answered their calls after Bloodlines. They simply couldn't get anymore work. I love how their ending was "we're shutting down, but everyone gets fair severance and medical".
>>3867696Kickstarter existing.
>>3867727more true than people realize. according to urquheart obsidian had bankruptcy date LITERALLY marked on their calendar in case poe1 kickstarter failed.
>>3867701>>3867704>>3867727These three
>>3867727I would have gladly donated all my savings and my soul to Troika for VTMB2
Troika decided to open up with a crpg when crpg's were simply not selling.TOOE was just bland and would barely find success even in the 90's let alone 2000's.Bloodlines was a clusterfuck and was never gonna save Troika.Them attempting to bid for a license(fallout) that lost all meaning was the final nail in the coffin.Obsidian on the other hand got cheapskate higher ups who only made sequels/expansions to popular franchises.
>>3867696I think it's because consoles were really taking off around that time, video games were starting to take over in popular culture in general, and PC gaming started to lose a lot of people because it was always harder to get into PC gaming with how expensive it was and the technical knowledge it required to get it working. consoles were just hammering that nail in the coffin. Troika was using outdated tech, too, at the ass-end of a dying genre of games, and isometric rpgs really didn't start making a comeback until 5-10 years ago. Then, of course, World of Warcraft came out in 2004 and damn near killed everyone.
>>3867779Doesn't help that vtmb released the same day as half life 2
>>3867780I think all those games released in November, including WoW, so it was the beginning of the end. It makes sense no one really paid attention to VTMB. I don't even really remember any marketing for it. A lot of people would end up signing up to Steam in 2004, as well, since yeah, Half-Life 2 released and I think it came with a deal for Steam or whatever. At least that's when I signed up, November 16 2004.
>>3867780The way I remember it back in the day was that it came out a few days before hl2, and so was technically the first source engine game released, which I always thought was amusing. But apparently I misremembered
>>3867785nta, but I seem to remember that being the case, too. Maybe HL2 was delayed a few days and VTM released before it, but everyone just remembers the official release date or whatever... I dunno.
DEI cash.
>>3867786didn't helped that the game was broken beyond belief. I remember not being able to play the game because some ladder in the sewer would throw you under the map.
>>3867696Troika was owned by artists. Obsidian was owned by business people.
>>3867822An Italian artist, contemporary to da Vinci, was one asked why his art was so beautiful, yet his children were so ugly.>Ah, but my art was made in the light of day, while my children were made in the darkness of night.
I always felt that, for all of his *shared insight and wisdom*, Tim Cain was and is a reasonably big talentless fraud. He's made fallout 1 and has managed to coast on that for the rest of his career, releasing blunder after blunder, now in an industry which, he admits, has nothing to do with the one that he thrived in 30-some years ago
>>3867841He's a good programmer and has come up with good ideas, but there are many people who made those games and Cain would have been replaceable.
>>3867844>has come up with good ideasOver the last 25 years, though?I'm sure he's fine as far as programmers go, but there's no actual way to measure that that I can think of. His games have been plenty buggy
>>3867841You can say that for any game developer. See: Peter Molyneux.
>>3867855After troika died and he started getting buttfucked he hasn't had a single good idea. Inceldom is what made him powerful.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcIchbZ4eK8
>>3867869>You can say that for any game developerAnd I'm eager to. Fuck Boyarsky too and while we're at it, fuck Avellone for good measure
>>3867841>managed to coast on that for the rest of his career, releasing blunder after blunderThe only other games he had authority over after that were Arcanum, ToEE, and Outer Worlds, and two of those are great games despite their reception. Supposedly, he didn't want a creative role after dealing with the office politics of Fallout 2 and Wildstar, which he left partway through development. He's not a John Carmack who can shoulder the work of an entire development team, but no one is. Cain's career was actually a pretty normal one by the standards of any field. It sounds like you're not only overestimating his importance, but also the visibility and general influence of programmers.
>>3867731Wild, because PoE2 was so much better but didn't get nearly as much attention from players / marketing hype. Didn't Obsidian make Fallout New Vegas???!
>>3867731Yes, it's the actual answer, that's why I gave it.>>3867925>Why didn't more people play PoE2?They played PoE1.
>>3867965>They played PoE1.Rekt
>>3867925Well by the time PoE2 dropped the novelty of bringing back isometric CRPG had worn off
>>3867925Because PoE1 was just a very mid game that was ridiculously overwritten.
>>3867844Seems to me that Tim's strengths are how well he works with other people, and him developing tools to make work easier for the others.Good fit for a lead position in a small studio of like-minded fellows.
>>3867696As much shit as people give him Feargus Urquhart managed to keep Obsidian afloat. Those were rough days for RPGs in general.
>>3868004>Those were rough days for RPGs in general.There were a lot of shitty RPGs. Developers like Bioware, Bethesda and Blizzard thrived.
>>3868004>>3868011it's astonishing obsidian survived kotor2 and nwn2 as the initial games
Isnt current obsidian mostly back to where they were. Lots of the previous great devs who worked on obsidians classics like nv and kotor 2 are currently employed at Obsidian ?
>>3868027>Isnt current obsidian mostly back to where they were. Lots of the previous great devs who worked on obsidians classics like nv and kotor 2 are currently employed at Obsidian ?I find that extremely unlikely. Indians, more like it.
>>3867776>Troika decided to open up with a crpg when crpg's were simply not selling.WrongThe main issue with Troika stuff was that it was outdated and buggyTemple of Elemental Evil was released a full year after Neverwinter Nights.
>>3868163There was a problem with retailers and it would be a few years until Steam would make them irrelevant.
>>3868165Sawyer is talking completely out of his ass hereThe reality was that unstable buggy games were poison for retailers. Diablo 2 and its clones were going strong even in 2002 and all of them were 2d Isometric. This is one of the bigger problems with "CRPG" developers. They lack self awareness and introspection and will keep making excuses on why their failures were due to some other nebulous factors.
>>3868165>>3868167Want to know something even funnier?A little studio from Belgium released a 2D isometric game the same year as Neverwinter Night and went on to be extremely successful
At least in the case of VtMB, they got utterly fucked by the publisher like right after release.
>>3868171Divine Divinity? Tbf, the rules were different in Europe.
>>3868167Diablo 2 isn't a single player crpg, it's a multiplayer hack and slash.Retailers would have no idea how buggy or not-buggy a game was when they were ordering it.>>3868171Divinity did okay but it wasn't a massive success. Just look at the state of Beyond Divinity.
>>3868175>Diablo 2 isn't a single player crpgSawyer wasn't talking about CRPGs>Retailers would have no idea how buggy or not-buggy a game was when they were ordering it.Are you retardedRetailers would read reviews before ordering stock. TOEE wasn't even Troika's first game so they had a track record they could rely on and the publisher knew better than anyone else on how buggy the game is so they would refrain from spending too much on marketing and just cut their losses.Again zero knowledge and no introspection.
>>3868177Yes he was. >Retailers would read reviews before ordering stock.Retailers have to order their stock months in advance. There are no reviews, review copies, or gold masters printed. The state of one game doesn't reflect the state of a future one.
>>3868180>Retailers have to order their stock months in advanceThey only do that for games with a marketing budget, presence and preorders.No retailer is buying stock for annual D&D shovelware #12 in advance.>The state of one game doesn't reflect the state of a future one.This has to be sawyer himself here to defend his retardation lmao
>>3868182>They only do that for games with a marketing budget, presence and preorders.Do you not know how the retail and shipping industry works?
>>3868183Enlighten us all then with your supreme knowledge
>>3868184The retailers need to put in their orders months in advance so the company can know how many units to manufacture and then have those units shipped out all over so they can all be put out on the same designated day. It's not something that can be done on a dime.
>>3868185Publishers don't manufacture units based on retailer demands in the first place so I don't know where you learned this horse shit from
The devs were all too happy to chase the console market. Just look at Obsidian today, digital distribution is right there but all they want to do is chase trends and produce marketable console experiences. These guys always have someone else to blame and are probably repeating bullshit their boss fed them to justify themselves.
>>3868188You really think they pay the money to print millions of copies and hope the demand will eventually be there?
>>3868197You can just stop humiliating yourself at this point.Atari knew better than anyone the absolute state of TOEE, they spent just enough money on pressing and marketing it to not break contract.
>>3868198ToEE sold better than Arcanum because it was a Dungeons and Dragons product, but that was the last break the retailers were willing to give. Original IP, forget it.
>>3867917>It sounds like you're not only overestimating his importance, but also the visibility and general influence of programmersI can concede that, but I also wouldn't go as far to call Arcanum and ToEE anything other than decent. Outer Worlds is a joke and let us not even talk about OW2
Their games were really missing a good user interface. At least Arcanum. It was just so difficult and bizarre to know what the hell was going on. They really needed someone on the team to be like "Ok, you can nerd out on stats and quests and different builds, but we REALLY gotta smooth out gameplay. We really gotta narrow our focus so the user can get grounded." Diablo II was GREAT at that. A child could figure out 80% of the game in like 5 minutes. Then it adds layers and layers of depth as you go. There was a good UI dude who helped fix some of fallout's screens, but he quit before it launched. If he had stuck around maybe that would have been the magic sauce to balance out Tim and the main artist guy.
>>3867696Feargus always had his eye on the prize of surviving long enough as a startup to get a corporate buyout. Troika was actually trying to make the games they wanted to play
>>3867925PoE was the peak social media FOMO of Kickstarter. So many people that clearly don't give a shit about CRPGs in any other context were all in on that game.
>>3868249I don't know if it's that so much as a bunch of aging BG fanboys realized they don't like BG clones anymore, especially in some tryhard homebrew setting. They just quietly walked away.
>>3868252I find it easier to replay and finish BG1 than I do to replay and finish PoE1, for what it's worth.
>>3868165I know the kind of slavs that play CRPGs hate Steam and don't want to hear it, but retail was a terrible burden on all medium-sized PC genres. All the industry culling and the rush to consolize anything that could possibly be consolized was entirely because in the 2000s Babbages died and Walmart stocked a half shelf of PC shit that could only accommodate the fastest selling AAA and everyone else could get fucked to death.Steam gives the same store page access to Gary Grigsby's World at War as it does Call of Duty. That's all you have to give it, you can hate everything else about it, but it changed how PC works and the 2000s were a terrible low point for the old way.
>>3867696valve jews.
>>3868389>neo-nazi fascist G.W. Bush typesTell me that you’re a delusional leftist without telling me that you’re delusional leftist.
>>3868391meant to post that in the vtm thread, mybadway to take a joke though
>>3868392Forgive me. Your sarcasm is indistinguishable from the real thing, nowadays.
>>3867696Falling standards.
>>3868202Makes sense. Keep in mind this was when D&D's name carried weight.
I wouldn't call what Obsidian is doing right now succeeding. They are making games that are the video game equivalent of a direct to DVD movie.
>>3868691>when D&D's name carried weightso, any time in the last few decades?
>>3868691D&D's name will still automatically make your game a hot topic. Just because 30% of grognards and 60% of chuds on 4chan (the other 70% and 40% are in denial still) have come to terms with the fact D&D sucks doesn't mean that it doesn't have millions of normie fans. D&D is in fact bigger than ever.
>>3868916>30% of grognards and 60% of chuds on 4chan (the other 70% and 40% are in denial still) have come to terms with the fact D&D sucksjust say 100% of hipsters
>>3867734Your donations would have been useful during the development of VTMB. Pretty much everyone involved came out with PTSD over the whole thing and never wanted to touch the IP again. Except for b mitsoda, who actually came back to it and now *definitely* has PTSD.
>>3868165The problem is 2d CRPGs are stuck reinventing the wheel and not improving anything, Fallout 1/2 had the clay faces, great animations and gore, meanwhile newer CRPGs are very basic, Deadfire at least graphically and modelwise looks good but it doesn't have any detail and it doesn't make you feel immersive.
>>3869007>everyone involved came out with PTSD over the whole thingalmost like they are a bunch of weak little nerds and mentally ill faggots>b mitsodaglove man was never stable
Since Obsidian's claim to fame was always taking other studio's games and making clunky, messy, but better in key ways sequels to them, we need the following to happen>EA sells Dragon Age and Mass Effect to Obsidian>Activision sells Arcanum to Obsidian>Larian hands off Baldur's Gate 4 to Obsidian
Looks like Shitsidian will go bankrupt soon.
>>3868916No, what people know as far as vidya goes is BG3.
>>3869471I’m not sure which would be worse, Larian doing another Baldurs Gate, or Obsidian. Truly cursed
>>3869751we almost got a obsidian bg3
>>3869755 (checked)It would have been so good bros...
>>3869107I dunno, having to shit out an unfinished game with the publisher breathing down your neck while going bankrupt might do that to you too.>glove man was never stablePerhaps, but they done did him dirty. Pretty sure he and his co-writer got the sack well before the entire studio got canned, which musta sucked extra hard.
>>3867696>Obsidian succeedIn what? Being the producers of AAA-priced barebones garbage that's only good at being made to look discount TES on trailers?
>>3868167>Diablo 2 and its clones were going strong even in 2002 and all of them were 2d Isometric.He said "zero supporting data"2000s Blizzard had completely unrivaled brand strength in the PC games industry. No one else even came close. No retailer was going to deny Blizzard anything at that point in time.>But Blizzard did...>Will your game have that blue Blizzard logo on it?>Well no>Then fuck off
>>3869751Old Obsidian it would have been a janky rushed mess but with some really interesting hook that gave it SOVL. New Obsidian it would be a janky rushed mess with the plot themes having the subtlety of a brick through your window.
>>3867696>what made Troika failGoing by Tim Cain it was their "everyone is equal even though we three have our own entire savings & mortgages on the line and all the responsibility towards the publishers" nonsense that created most of their issues, along with some publisher fuckery and basically having hold down triple jobs except with the promise of not actually being bosses who could tell someone we're doing things X way and no ifs or buts about it so none of them want to do it again.
>>3869750Even before BG3 there were millions of people playing 5E. 5E got hip years ago.
>>3867696>and what made Obsidian succeed?If Obsidian is a success, then I hope I fail at everything for the rest of my life.
>>3869755>Black Isles is le ObsidianKill yourself.
>>3867696Obsidian still exists but I wouldn't call it succeeding.
>>3870307That's rude.
>>3873736Just type 'bump', anon, it's far less gay.
>>3867696>TroikaQuite possibly the funniest series of longrunning unintentional sabotage campaigns to plague any video game company>Arcanum in pseudo-dev hell because publisher won't pay up and Troika has to ship out buggy semi-finished game>Bloodlines in pseudo-dev hell because Valve doesn't allow them to use the source engine if they release the game before HL2, which is then delayed, but Activision prevents them from touching up the game, delaying it, or getting more funding during the HL2 delay so that the game releases basically at the same time and is buggy/unfinished>decide to work with white wolf again but they go fucking under and the werewolf game runs out of funding, doesn't find a publisher, and troika has to disband because it still hasn't gained the same insane cult following that it has nowObsidian is relatively lucky in hindsight, constantly having somewhat reliable publishers for their games
>>3869007They were working on the WtA sequel before getting shutdown, but then got jewed by everyone>they made assets (and good ones at that) for freeIncredible
>>3873801What was ToEE's curse?
>>3873745How about you kill yourself faggot.
>>3873833made by a really small team that basically did a good job adapting the ruleset, but everything else is kinda eh.
>>3873833Wasn't the game buggy and unfinished, among other things
>>3873855lol, hypocrite.
>>3873881>hypocriteno?
>>3873833ToEE was being made in D&D 3.0 ruleset, but suddenly WotC released 3.5e and insisted that the game should use this new edition and it was like 5 months before the release date. Devs asked publisher to extend the schedule, but Atari rejected, so the game was rushed.
>>3867696jews at valve forced troika to work with the latest source engine halfway after bloodlines was already being developed, which made them rush out a half finished game, killing much of their sales potential before it finally released and making the game buggy and glitchy as fuck after.
>>3867696Obsidian leeches off other studios IP, but when they make their own games they are shit
>>3874743Imagine if devs back then tried to actually fix their games and create a legacy instead of crying about circumstances online of the "evil corpo" forcing them to release badly managed games. Why are gamers such losers who love these narratives?
>>3874783>Imagine if devs back then tried to actually fix their gamesIn that specific instance, that killed the studio and they went out of business.
>>3874850It the case of that studio, that was their third time mismanaging a project only for players to come in later and fix their game. I think nerds love the "blame an external bully for their problems" narrative.
>>3874783You realize you can't fix games if no publisher is going to pay your salary, right? This is usually why broken games end up staying broken as publishers cut their losses and instruct studios to move on. This is a bit different in modern day where you can see the benefits of playing the PR game, though.
>>3874912No Man's Sky did it. The fact is that cutting their losses and hopping from project to project caused studios to burn all goodwill. This is especially foolish with long tail genres like RPGs.
>>3874913>No Man's Sky did it.Hello Games also had the benefit of existing after updating over the internet became universal.The No Man's Sky "redemption" is also extremely artificial driven almost entirely by people who haven't played the game.
>>3874919Yes, any support at all would've been groundbreaking. Instead, they gave up, continually and it was always someone else's fault.I agree that NMS is a garbage game, before and after, but they have continued to work on it and did regain goodwill somehow.
>>3874913>The fact is that cutting their losses and hopping from project to project caused studios to burn all goodwill.Publishers don't care about this because they can't quantify it. "Good will" means nothing to bean counters.
>>3874931Publishers actually encourage themselves to be blamed by devs so that they become the "bad guys" precisely because they understand developer goodwill.
>>3874908>It the case of that studio, that was their third time mismanaging a project only for players to come in later and fix their game. I don't disagree as to your broader point about mismanagement, but in the specific cases of ToEE and VtmB, Troika did get fucked pretty bad by the publisher. As noted by other anons, with ToEE, they were ordered to hastily implement 3.5 DnD at the last minute with no extension, resulting in a rushed game, and for VtmB, Valve had fuckups getting HL2 to market, so VtmB was artificially delayed, and the publisher wouldn't let them use the time to improve the game.>I think nerds love the "blame an external bully for their problems" narrative.I wonder if you were playing games in the 90s, or if you're younger and just used to hearing washed up game devs bitch on forums about shit that happened to them back in the day. Publishers used to be absolutely ruthless and there are innumerable devs that went under due to publisher malfeasance, and innumerable games that were rushed and ruined. "Fuck you, it ships by Christmas, we don't give a fuck if it's done or not." Tale as old as time.This isn't to absolve all devs of all responsibility, and I'm not claiming that it's always the publisher's fault and never the devs. Clearly, when the same story keeps happening to the same people, there's an element of developer management incompetence. But if you were playing games in the 90s, it's not at all a stretch to believe that the publisher would shoot everyone involved in the foot by rushing a shit product instead of giving it another 6-12 months in the oven to make a better game that would sell more copies.
>>3874951Also, this makes modern dev fuckups even less excusable once they have enough money to self-publish. Notable recent examples were Cyberpunk 2077 and Baldur's Gate 3. Both devs were sitting on giant piles of money, were in complete control of their publishing, and have only themselves to blame for rushing out buggy and unfinished games, rife with cut content.
>>3874951>I wonder if you were playing games in the 90sI was playing them in the 80s, first RPG was in 1986. I've long heard gamers crying about evil publishers and I've long grown tired of the narrative, which is often pushed by marketing.>>3874952See, Kickstarter is when I started to see behind the curtain and realize that publishers stepping on dev's throats was probably needed in many cases, otherwise they would milk development forever and still not release a good game.I'm really just trying to bring some nuance to the table here.
>>3874955>publishers stepping on dev's throats was probably needed in many casesNta. I think so too. No guarantees that extra time goes where needed, or it could just possible cause more bloat and more problems. And financial stuff on the publisher's side too. It ain't free.I have a faint memory of John Carmack talking about the dangers of prolonging development, not sure.It is a damn shame, seeing brilliance in unfinished, but that's the way she goes.
>>3874955>otherwise they would milk development foreverSee: Star Citizen
>>3874952The problem is companies are beholden to both public expectations and shareholder opinions, so there's only so many delays for the sake of quality a game can take before it will be released to an uncaring audience. Not excusing them of course but ultimately the game has to come out or dev interest will also fade and make the product worse
>>3874955>I'm really just trying to bring some nuance to the table here.Same, that’s why I said>I don't disagree as to your broader point about mismanagement>This isn't to absolve all devs of all responsibility, and I'm not claiming that it's always the publisher's fault and never the devs. Clearly, when the same story keeps happening to the same people, there's an element of developer management incompetence.You’ve got a few years on me then, I started in the early 90s. Can’t speak to what things were like in the 80s.
Contrary to popular belief, all Troika's games turned a profit:- Arcanum sold 243,000 copies ($8.8M revenue); ToEE sold 128,000 ($5.2M); Bloodlines underperformed initially but broke even via long-tail sales.However, publishers deemed these returns "too niche" compared to mainstream hits. As Tim Cain said:>Publishers could spend money at other developers where their rate of return was much higher... Our games sold to a niche audience.Troika was repeatedly denied contracts for new projects despite profitability.
>>3874783it's called corporate sabotage, bloodlines reached gold in preorders before valve forced the engine switch, because they decided to release half life 2 before it.troika released a patch a month after launch that fixed some problems but not all, unofficial patches fixed many other bugs, even a serious memory leak issue that plagues current game releases
>>3875194Only in vidya can people churn out broken work, make minimal effort to fix it, blame others, and then get nerds to defend them for decades.
>>3867696>Obsidian succeedmaking game pass fodder for microsoft is a success?
>>3875269>making game pass fodder for microsoft is a success?Feargus got his dream.
>>3875198troika sued valve over the forced engine switch and lost to judge shenanigans.switching game engines mid development while forcing a release date or legal action happens, would damage or kill any, "vidya" you brainlet
>>3875851>troika sued valve over the forced engine switch and lost to judge shenanigans.Holy schizo. Things that happen in your head aren't real, take your meds.
>>3875851Troika made a choice to use Source, they weren't forced into anything. They were only mad at Activision for freezing the project months before Half-Life 2 was released and not paying for any additional development.
>>3876007Based Tim Cain calling people schizos back in 2004
>>3876007>just pay us for several more months to finish our mismanaged product mr. publisher, sir!
>>3867696Obsidian makes solid games with reasonable budgets so they don't need to sell an insane amount.Troika was just extremely mismanaged.
>>3868004>FeargusHe is one of the main reasons Deadfire had the problems it has. Almost every single bad thing in that game was something Feargus pushed for and overruled Josh on.
>>3876014TROIKA:-Decided to use a beta engine-Tried implementing several features they knew couldn't be done-Constantly missed deadlines-Released a buggy gameACTIVISION:-Gave money to people who constantly failed-Decided to give them delays to make the game better-Actually wasted money on marketing a game that was probably going to failTim being a piece of shit as usual.
>>3876026they would never release the game if activision didn't send David Mullich there
>>3876024>Feargus pushed for and overruled Josh onThe weak shall fear the strong
>>3876026To be entirely fair both of these are true.
>>3876007forced to ship, after their hl2. which meant engine switch. forcing them to rush out a half finished game.but no forcing happened... keep lying.
>>3877036There was no "engine switch." They were always using Source and updating it as Valve improved it. They made a choice to use a Work in Progress engine to make their game. They weren't game dev newbies, they knew what that would mean.
>>3877370That guy barely speaks English and posts nonsense constantly, you aren't going to get a conversation out of him, he's just bumping the thread.
>>3867841>releasing blunder after blunderOnly in terms of sales or critics. Arcanum and ToEE are some of the greatest true cRPG's.
>>3867696>What made Troika fail and what made Obsidian succeedThey saw xenos, and they respected that rather than disrespect that as a form of 'respect.'
>>3876024This is also true, but doesn't negate what anon said.
>>3876024What did he do?
>>3877370there was an engine switch, hl2 used a different source engine than bloodlines was developed originally for. in the lawsuit this engine switch was disclosed
>>3882908>hl2 used a different source engine than bloodlines was developed originally forBruh.
>>3877413>>3882910
>>3867696OP + everyone who provided his theory = all retarded sheep.Tim Cain himself knows best why Troika failed and he explained it in a multitude of his videos. OP is a Bioware lover obviously.
>>3882940Based, if you haven't watched Tim's videos, you have no right to say anything about Troika or Fallout.
>>3882940tim is gay
>>3868163ToEE had like 17 month development time out of which last 2 were spent on shoddily converting it from 3e to 3.5. they were dealt a dogshit hand and troika took it because timmy always wanted to make a dnd game.
>>3882940Tim Cain is a moron that has no business or game design sense. He is also a doghsit programmer.
>>3882972Top kek, I bet you're either a "vibe coder" or some entitled brat who uses modern cringe programming languages like Python, Rust or whatever. Or something faker like JavaScript and "frontends".You would shit yourself if you had to program anything in C, much less C in the 90s when you had to know so much more, and basically you would never be able to make your own engine in anything. Tim Cain did all that in the 90s - as a programming veteran already at that time.
>>3883015Zoomie using zoomie words.The games were practically broken at launch, he was always a terrible programmer. And him making a shitty engine in c doesn't make him any better.His engine was so good it wasn't even used for anything other then fallout 1 and 2.
>>3882941>the “I’m on a first name basis with a YouTuber” schizo is back
>>3883023>ZoomieProjecting underage child who has nothing to relevant say. The engine was incredibly good, that's why it was used for Fallout, Fallout 2, and as a base for Arcanum's and ToEE's engine. The only "buggy" game that was "broken at launch" was Bloodlines which Tim worked on only near the end because of staff shortages, and he only worked on the boss fight AI. You will never program anything even 1% as complex as Tim Cain's engine for Fallout, which he did in his SPARE TIME for free(!!!) and which was easily portable to Mac because it was so well made. You will never code something as good as the worst code Tim made.
>>3883028Yes we should call him mr Timothy Cain, sir
>>3883030>ToEE wasn’t “buggy” and “broken at launch”Stopped reading here.
>>3883030>The only "buggy" game that was "broken at launch" was BloodlinesYou never actually played either arcanum or toee, especially at launch, didn't you?Holy shit, you are actually a zoomie that is defending their youtube celeb. This is actually embarrassing.
>>3883058Projecting underage child who has nothing to relevant say, doubling down on outing himself.I read the reviews in magazines AT THE TIME ARCANUM RELEASED and none of them complained Arcanum was "broken at launch" - which they did, in the same magazines (same authors) when Bloodlines came out later. It was no buggier than other big RPGs at the time, some of then didn't even mention bugginess at all.>Gamestar>LeveL>ScoreNamedropping all the magazines I read as a kid, and I played Arcanum when one of them released it as a "cover game" (a kid like you has no clue what this means, and google will tell you that it's "a game on the magazine's cover page), years before Drog's patch.COME AT THE KING, BEST NOT MISS, PROGRAMMING SKILL-LESS UNDERAGE CHILD*mic dropped*
>>3883061>Projecting underage child>I googled magazine reviewsWhy didn't you actually play the games,eh,zoomie?>COME AT THE KING, BEST NOT MISS, PROGRAMMING SKILL-LESS UNDERAGE CHILD*mic dropped*Reddit spacing and horrible humor, yup, a zoomie.
>>3883063AND AGAIN, THE CHILD OUTS ITSELF.NONE OF THE MAGAZINES ARE GOOGLEABLE ANYMORE. Their archives are long gone + Gamestar died before you were even born.>desperately trying to run away and distract with all of his child distraction "hehe reddit spacing is totally to out folx[sic] who deny it being reddit spaci-ACK"That's the sound of me snapping your tranny zoomie neck.I invented double spacing before your daddy's favorite website (Reddit) was born.>hehe I was doing this ironica-ACKNope you weren't & your new zoomie cope, pretending that you know it isn't real, won't work either.I am older than your biological father, lil zoomie mutt. I am the biggest Alpha of RPGs, /vrpg/ itself is all children to me, and you're just a mutt zoomie tourist who thinks /vrpg/ is "full of old folx[sic]".*mic obliterated in hand*rekt
>>3883023>The games were practically broken at launch, he was always a terrible programmer.the QA testing for ToEE and VMTB was outsourced dogshit where testers supposedly only played classes they liked which led to half the classes being bugged as fuck in these games. no idea about arcanum but I think that just sucked because the project had too much of a large scale.
The amount of excuses sycophants make for these hacks is ridiculous. I wonder what it'd be like to have that in my life, some group of tards making excuses fore every one of my failures. Horrible thought. Game dev is cursed.
>>3883088Keep wondering, fox
>>3883088>hacksIf that's the case then I'd rather have the hacks back than the serious "games are just products guys" professionals we have now.
>>3883091Gibberish dichotomy.I'd rather have good games.
>>3883095No shit, everybody wants that. Problem is everyone has different ideas of what a good game actually is. Troika's games are great RPGs, so for me they are good games; hardly what I would consider failures. I played them without any unofficial patches and they worked just fine.
>>3883107>werks on muh masheenSycophant 101>Troika's games are great RPGsSo does this mean that any mistakes within those games are external to Troika's will?>I played them without any unofficial patchesNo, you haven't, you were probably 5 when they released based on your posting style and played prepatched GOG installers.
>>3883113>Sycophant 101If they work, they work; the fuck do you even want me to say? Game systems don't require a high degree of perfection. What matters is if they're interesting or not.>So does this mean that any mistakes within those games are external to Troika's will?How does that have anything to do with them being great RPGs or not? You should try to explain yourself first before pointing fingers at other people. So Troika's games are failures according to you; they failed at what, exactly? Sales? There are plenty of good games that didn't sell well when they were released, and in Troika's case it was only Bloodlines that was an actual flop. You can easily find the interview where Tim said that their other games made a profit.
>>3883119Works on your machine means nothing, it's the shield of all buggy, poorly tested software.>How does that have anything to do with them being great RPGs or not?Because you can still objectively view games you like. Just because you like VtM:B, I do myself, doesn't mean you can't recognize that it's a poorly made, unfinished, game. This isn't some kind of voodoo where you need a plucky underdog to make a "real" interesting game and "oh well, gonna be bugs" while competent people are always soulless. The fact is that you are fanboying and can't be rational.
>>3883061>Gamestar>LeveL>ScoreWhat is this shit? I have never heard of any of these. At least mention PC Gamer, Computer Gaming World, or a meme like Maximum PC or PC Accelerator or whatever the one with the tits was
>>3883122>doesn't mean you can't recognize that it's a poorly made, unfinished, gameZoomies can't do this. Any attack on the product they are consuming is an attack on themselves.
>>3867696Weren't most of Troika's games bugged out the ass and dependent on community patches to run?
>>3867696That gaming company name is Failure alone.
