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Phlegmish
Jul 2, 2011



RottenK posted:

i dunno why avellone quitting is seen as a bad thing, got forbid a western rpg isn't full of lovely word vomit

Planescape: Torment is great. His Pillars of Eternity characters, not so much.

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Wicked Them Beats
Apr 1, 2007

Moralists don't really *have* beliefs. Sometimes they stumble on one, like on a child's toy left on the carpet. The toy must be put away immediately. And the child reprimanded.

Accordion Man posted:

Most independent AA studios like Obsidian either went defunct or got devoured by the major publishers less gen, if anything I'd say Obsidian knew what they were doing to weather that storm. And you really can't say Obsidian is "overtime and overbudget" when they delivered both PoEs in a reasonable timeframe and they both released without any real serious technical problems.

Well we have no real way of knowing for certain if they were on schedule or on budget with either title since all production was handled internally. Though they clearly learned at least some lessons from their massive scheduling failures on previous titles. I'd say they probably did have budget problems with Pillars 1 since they ended up splitting the White March DLC into two parts so they could get sales going before the DLC was finished. And while they didn't have the major bugs that something like Alpha Protocol suffered from (aside from atrocious load times), they did have to do a lot of patching to get the games up to snuff. But I don't have any complaints about their post-release support for Pillars 1/2, that's been stellar (pity they seem to have abandoned Tyranny, though).

Phlegmish posted:

Planescape: Torment is great. His Pillars of Eternity characters, not so much.

Yeah, Avellone's Pillars writing gave us Durance, aka Kreia Mk. 2, and Grieving Mother, a character that literally never interacts with anyone except the player. Both are garbage and if I recall correctly would have been even worse before they were rewritten to fit into the game properly.

Avalerion
Oct 19, 2012

Tyranny had very little marketing done for it from what I remember - and what it got was kind of bad too. If there was some grudge that would explain it (though also really stupid from a business perspective).

Hieronymous Alloy
Jan 30, 2009


Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!




Morbid Hound
Is anybody playing the Bard's Tale IV game that just came out?

I backed it back at the dawn of time on Kickstarter and promptly forgot about it, now I've been . . . . pleasantly surprised. The remaster of the original game was well-done and helped me while away a week's worth of evenings. The "new" game has a lot of glitches and klunky poo poo as I've come to expect from kickstarter RPG's (there doesn't seem to be a respec; save points, wtf) but the combat grid system is (so far at least) a nice hybrid between a fullly tactical RPG like D:OS and a final-fantasy-style row-combat RPG.

Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 21:07 on Sep 21, 2018

FreeKillB
May 13, 2009
Tyranny is an unusual entry in an already-niche genre. I don't think saturation-level marketing would have made an enormous difference, it's just that Obsidian is trying to make a living in the middle ground between safe & popular AAA fare (the sort of thing where saturation-level marketing CAN be used to hedge your bets safely) and cost-conscious indie development (where you can sustain development on a much smaller audience). It's hard to trim down costs without giving up the level of polish that the market expects, and there are so many games out there now that very few properties are guaranteed to do well. There's a good reason most studios of this size either have vanished or have been bought up, they are pretty much all one title away from bankruptcy.

I'm not claiming that Obsidian is well-managed per se, but they have survived in a cutthroat environment. I hope that Pillars 1/2 did well but likely they didn't do well enough to take Obsidian out of this precarious paradigm.

Ham Sandwiches
Jul 7, 2000

Larian shows you can make those games fun and interesting and well written, even by a small / indie team. Obsidian's recent games like Tyranny and path of exile 1 were absolutely boring / amateurish in comparison. I have no idea what particular structural issues they're wrestling with, but given their inability to produce content rather than excuses, I can't imagine it will be a big loss if they end up running out of cash.

It gels real well with what Avellone wrote and yet people dismiss it because it was posted on rpgcodex :shrug: I don't feel bad for Obsidian they're just another semi-failed company on life support churning out mediocre half baked titles cashing in on stuff their fans want to see but they can't really deliver. They're not the first, or the only one, in that position. It just seems like a rough way to pay bills.

CottonWolf
Jul 20, 2012

Good ideas generator

Also, Obsidian have had an unannounced secret project in the works for well over a year. I don’t get the impression they’re going to fall over any time soon.

senrath
Nov 4, 2009

Look Professor, a destruct switch!


Hieronymous Alloy posted:

Is anybody playing the Bard's Tale IV game that just came out?

I backed it back at the dawn of time on Kickstarter and promptly forgot about it, now I've been . . . . pleasantly surprised. The remaster of the original game was well-done and helped me while away a week's worth of evenings. The "new" game has a lot of glitches and klunky poo poo as I've come to expect from kickstarter RPG's (there doesn't seem to be a respec; save points, wtf) but the combat grid system is (so far at least) a nice hybrid between a fullly tactical RPG like D:OS and a final-fantasy-style row-combat RPG.

I haven't had a chance to play it yet, but the bits I've seen in reviews and such look promising. Though I was confused that they decided that a great way to give out the backer DLC code was in a 97 MB PDF file.

EightDeer
Dec 2, 2011

DoctorTristan posted:

What actually happened with Paradox? I figured they’d fallen out, but all I’d heard as to why was Avellone going “Urquhart promised them they’d be able to stick my name on it as a selling point and they were very pissed off when I quit”.

There's a rumour going around that Obsidian took the money Paradox gave them to fund Tyranny's development and transferred some of it to Pillars II's budget without asking permission. Paradox was Not Happy about it.

Of course, nobody who actually knows what happened has said anything (and it's very unlikely they ever will), but that's the rumour.

Chairchucker
Nov 14, 2006

to ride eternal, shiny and chrome

THUNDERDOME LOSER 2022




Ham Sandwiches posted:

Obsidian's recent games like ... path of exile 1

lol what

Fur20
Nov 14, 2007

すご▞い!
君は働か░い
フ▙▓ズなんだね!

path of exile 1, the version where you redid all the chapters three times

path of exile 2 is the one where the hard and ultimate zones are new and different :v:

Chairchucker
Nov 14, 2006

to ride eternal, shiny and chrome

THUNDERDOME LOSER 2022




OK but also Obsidian Entertainment had nothing to do with Path of Exile.

Ham Sandwiches
Jul 7, 2000

lmao the acronym threw me, I wrote path of exile and was thinking pillars of eternity, sorry about that one

Zane
Nov 14, 2007

Ham Sandwiches posted:

Larian shows you can make those games fun and interesting and well written, even by a small / indie team. Obsidian's recent games like Tyranny and path of exile 1 were absolutely boring / amateurish in comparison. I have no idea what particular structural issues they're wrestling with, but given their inability to produce content rather than excuses, I can't imagine it will be a big loss if they end up running out of cash.

It gels real well with what Avellone wrote and yet people dismiss it because it was posted on rpgcodex :shrug: I don't feel bad for Obsidian they're just another semi-failed company on life support churning out mediocre half baked titles cashing in on stuff their fans want to see but they can't really deliver. They're not the first, or the only one, in that position. It just seems like a rough way to pay bills.
they've delivered enough of what their fans have wanted to attract consistently good reviews and to keep in business. they now also independently develop and finance their own properties. a big step up from the previous ~10 years of their existence. everything else is a subjective and essentially tenuous value judgment.

Zane fucked around with this message at 02:46 on Sep 22, 2018

Babe Magnet
Jun 2, 2008

Ham Sandwiches posted:

lmao the acronym threw me, I wrote path of exile and was thinking pillars of eternity, sorry about that one

Warframe also has a Plains of Eidolon that you spend a lot of time on, so now instead of getting Exile and Eternity mixed up I just cycle through them

Oasx
Oct 11, 2006

Freshly Squeezed

Wicked Them Beats posted:

Well we have no real way of knowing for certain if they were on schedule or on budget with either title since all production was handled internally. Though they clearly learned at least some lessons from their massive scheduling failures on previous titles. I'd say they probably did have budget problems with Pillars 1 since they ended up splitting the White March DLC into two parts so they could get sales going before the DLC was finished.

To be fair, the Pillars games were made on a relatively low budget considering their content and amount of polish that went into them. Their closest rpg competitors probably cost a lot more to make.
Splitting up a large expansion so that you can actually make some money is not something to be ashamed of, it is probably what you have to do as a smaller developer making large games.

StrixNebulosa
Feb 14, 2012

You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

https://twitter.com/SimoRoth/status/1043531662494195713?s=19

SubNat
Nov 27, 2008


Honestly, this is like one of the earliest kickstarters I've backed.
It's kind of insane that it's been in early access for nearly 5 years at this point.

Is it actually good at this point? I remember trying it way back then when I got a backer key, for maybe 30 min or so.

No Dignity
Oct 15, 2007

Rimworld deserves an honourable mention for successful kickstarters. It's an incredibly fun and flexible game and by far the best Dwarf Fortress-like for people with normal brains, even if the lead dev is a bit of a goon.

StrixNebulosa
Feb 14, 2012

You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

SubNat posted:

Honestly, this is like one of the earliest kickstarters I've backed.
It's kind of insane that it's been in early access for nearly 5 years at this point.

Is it actually good at this point? I remember trying it way back then when I got a backer key, for maybe 30 min or so.

:shrug:

I'm waiting until it's done before I install it and play.

That said I am really impressed that he didn't abandon it when it had mixed reviews on steam and no one liked it.

atholbrose
Feb 28, 2001

Splish!

SubNat posted:

Is it actually good at this point? I remember trying it way back then when I got a backer key, for maybe 30 min or so.

Me too. Steam shows me as having 23 minutes in game, last played in 2013. I had actually forgotten all about it until I was checking my list of Kickstarter projects earlier today, saw it, and ran across the same tweet Strix posted.

Stabbey_the_Clown
Sep 21, 2002

Are... are you quite sure you really want to say that?
Taco Defender

I've been playing this for a few days and I'm only about 40% of the way in at most and it's good. I guess it's what some would call a Metroidvania, as certain areas are blocked off until you acquire other things. I've seen a few areas which need a double jump to access, and I think I need something to swim underwater, others are just "find X keycard". I just acquired the double jump.

The time-control gimmick might be the game's most unique feature. You can temporarily stop time for everything except yourself. Enemies are invulnerable while time is paused, but you can use them as platforms to reach otherwise inaccessible platforms. Obviously it also lets you evade traps and dodge certain attacks (usually only needed for bosses). After a while, there is a fast travel system, which lets you warp between various areas in the timelines and complete quests (which are of the type 'kill X enemies' or 'retrieve X items').

It's got a story which seems simple enough on the surface, but it gradually gets more shades of gray than just "Lachemi Empire = bad". It's revealed through occasional cutscenes and dialogue, but more often from documents you find in the world.

The weapons are unique, they're a pair of orbs orbiting the player which shoot out to attack at slightly greater than melee range. You get different ones on a regular basis, but that doesn't necessarily mean the older ones are obsolete, as the orbs gain experience through use. They're always available. :orb:
Your basic Blue Orbs are weak, but shoot out the fastest. Blade and Iron orbs shoot out a sword and hammer which are more powerful, but slower.
There's also a secondary weapon which is your Spell Necklace item. Spells use Aura points, which gradually regenerate over time, but do longer-range or AoE attacks which typically one-shot all small enemies. Spells need to be briefly charged up to use. They include a forward-shooting wave of balls, a giant fuckoff sword which slashes everything in front of you, a burst of flames in front of you, that sort of thing.

The game's biggest flaw might be that it could be too easy - well at least on normal difficulty. You can carry lots of items and use them at will in the pause menu. Items to restore health, aura, sand are pretty easy to come by, but you don't have to use them if you don't want to. If you die you just go back to the last save orb you touched.

I like the way the game handles the enemies as well. The first time you encounter a new enemy, it's all on its own, letting you get a handle for its attack patterns. The enemies and bosses are designed in a way that if you're on the ball, you can avoid taking any damage at all.

Stabbey_the_Clown fucked around with this message at 17:22 on Sep 23, 2018

The Moon Monster
Dec 30, 2005

Chairchucker posted:

OK but also Obsidian Entertainment had nothing to do with Path of Exile.

I'm assuming some Pillars of Eternity->PoE->Path of Exile confusion happened.

super sweet best pal
Nov 18, 2009

I get the names confused all the time despite having played a good bit of both.

Fur20
Nov 14, 2007

すご▞い!
君は働か░い
フ▙▓ズなんだね!

The Moon Monster posted:

I'm assuming some Pillars of Eternity->PoE->Path of Exile confusion happened.

yeah this is guarantee what happened but i was just being a fucker, i often conflate them on purpose

Hieronymous Alloy
Jan 30, 2009


Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!




Morbid Hound

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

Is anybody playing the Bard's Tale IV game that just came out?

I backed it back at the dawn of time on Kickstarter and promptly forgot about it, now I've been . . . . pleasantly surprised. The remaster of the original game was well-done and helped me while away a week's worth of evenings. The "new" game has a lot of glitches and klunky poo poo as I've come to expect from kickstarter RPG's (there doesn't seem to be a respec; save points, wtf) but the combat grid system is (so far at least) a nice hybrid between a fullly tactical RPG like D:OS and a final-fantasy-style row-combat RPG.

Update on this:

It's a pretty good game IF you really like dungeon crawlers with lots of puzzles, don't mind save point saving, and have a SSD

BUT for some reason they de-implemented respecs in beta and I wouldn't advise buying it until they put respecs back in due to the way the skill trees work

Overall it's a good game but in the "wait to buy till after they patched it" category

Hav
Dec 11, 2009

Fun Shoe

SubNat posted:

Is it actually good at this point? I remember trying it way back then when I got a backer key, for maybe 30 min or so.

No? The last time I played it everyone starved to death tending plants, so it wasn't ready for prime time, and given the pace back then, I'd be surprised if he's done.

This was more on my 'pitch someone some cash' axis of kickstarter, though.

edit: Just checked it. <deep breath>

Okay, there's a 'tutorial' that does this thing of a slow full screen teletype over the screen that you have to confirm. The UI is pretty awful; audio conveys no information and your colonists are communicating via email, which is an odd choice given the ubiquity of SMS messages in the 1990s.*

It's a brave effort, but don't part with money for it.


* No, it doesn't have relevance, but neither do emails as a communication method.

Hav fucked around with this message at 21:36 on Sep 24, 2018

Skyscraper
Oct 1, 2004

Hurry Up, We're Dreaming



Crabtree posted:

Basically political reddit or chanboard poo poo. Open racism from what could have been devs themselves for all the moderating they did to stop or care about it. Still basically is that on iDGi.

Oh, I was picturing more of a Star Citizen type problem with toxic fans, I guess a lot of racists also kickstarted this game?

Mr Underhill
Feb 14, 2012

Not picking that up.
Shiiit, it's starting to look like Nighthawks is going to cut it really close, if it does make it. That bastard Megazver jinxes again.

Megazver
Jan 13, 2006
Don't sass me, pal, or I am posting "oh Mr Underhill's game seems to be getting pledges kinda slow..." when you kickstart your next game.

Like, as soon as it goes live.

Megazver fucked around with this message at 21:31 on Sep 24, 2018

Mr Underhill
Feb 14, 2012

Not picking that up.
Heh. But seriously, with this one I was convinced your reticence was out of place. Come to think of it I don't think wadjet eye has any other way of reaching their huge fanbase about the campaign other than twitter, and maybe facebook. Which is weird if you think about how potentially huge a fanbase it is.

Megazver
Jan 13, 2006

Mr Underhill posted:

Heh. But seriously, with this one I was convinced your reticence was out of place. Come to think of it I don't think wadjet eye has any other way of reaching their huge fanbase about the campaign other than twitter, and maybe facebook. Which is weird if you think about how potentially huge a fanbase it is.

Eh. They got a big day one mention on RPS and PC Gamer and a bunch of smaller websites - and game sites just don't post about Kickstarters these days unless it's something by a studio like Obsidian, Harebrained or Larian - and they also got shout outs and plugs from pretty much the who's who of adventure game community. I feel they've probably reached as many people as it was realistically feasible.

Although, tbh, I am getting the vibe Dave is kinda hands-off sink-or-swim with the whole thing, not too invested if it doesn't make it. Hence the Kickstarter as a gauge for interest instead of just funding it with his own money, hence Cobbett doing all the publicity. Hell, he didn't even do a news update for it on Unavowed's Steam page. (Although, to be fair, he just doesn't seem to write any updates on Steam at all.)

Wicked Them Beats
Apr 1, 2007

Moralists don't really *have* beliefs. Sometimes they stumble on one, like on a child's toy left on the carpet. The toy must be put away immediately. And the child reprimanded.

If Nighthawks can get another, say, $20k over the next 7-8 days then they should just make it with the last burst of funding that tends to roll in at the end of a campaign. They're probably on track to just squeak over the top.

Their real issue is that $125k is a pretty big ask these days for anyone who isn't one of the aforementioned "big" crowdfunding players. Obsidian would get $125k in about four hours the first day of the campaign.

ulmont
Sep 15, 2010

IF I EVER MISS VOTING IN AN ELECTION (EVEN AMERICAN IDOL) ,OR HAVE UNPAID PARKING TICKETS, PLEASE TAKE AWAY MY FRANCHISE

Wicked Them Beats posted:

If Nighthawks can get another, say, $20k over the next 7-8 days then they should just make it with the last burst of funding that tends to roll in at the end of a campaign. They're probably on track to just squeak over the top.

Kicktraq was predicting a 108k bust last I checked.

Wicked Them Beats
Apr 1, 2007

Moralists don't really *have* beliefs. Sometimes they stumble on one, like on a child's toy left on the carpet. The toy must be put away immediately. And the child reprimanded.

ulmont posted:

Kicktraq was predicting a 108k bust last I checked.

Kicktraq just takes the average daily funding rate and multiplies it by the days remaining and calls that the "trend." It does no actual forecasting or predicting or any math more complicated than what a fourth grader could (they have some "experimental" projection charts that attempt more complex calculations/predictions but they're basically never right and have a huge margin of error).

Most kickstarter campaigns get a large influx of pledges at the end roughly equal to what they got in the first day or two of funding, and that extra $20-$30k that kicktraq is incapable of actually predicting will likely put Nighthawks right at or above their goal.

tldr Kicktraq is bad for anything that isn't seeing exactly how many pledges a campaign got each day.

Crabtree
Oct 17, 2012

ARRRGH! Get that wallet out!
Everybody: Lowtax in a Pickle!
Pickle! Pickle! Pickle! Pickle!

Dinosaur Gum

Skyscraper posted:

Oh, I was picturing more of a Star Citizen type problem with toxic fans, I guess a lot of racists also kickstarted this game?

Well it is a game where a techno totalitarian western European conglomerate rules most of the world and it's sort of presented as benevolent.

StrixNebulosa
Feb 14, 2012

You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

Megazver posted:

Although, tbh, I am getting the vibe Dave is kinda hands-off sink-or-swim with the whole thing, not too invested if it doesn't make it. Hence the Kickstarter as a gauge for interest instead of just funding it with his own money, hence Cobbett doing all the publicity. Hell, he didn't even do a news update for it on Unavowed's Steam page. (Although, to be fair, he just doesn't seem to write any updates on Steam at all.)

The vibe I'm getting is more that Cobbett is the one behind this kickstarter - Dave's willing to have it be a Wadjet Games thing, but it's not his pet project, it's Cobbett's.

Phlegmish
Jul 2, 2011



Pathfinder: Kingmaker was released today. Any first impressions?

Megazver
Jan 13, 2006

Phlegmish posted:

Pathfinder: Kingmaker was released today. Any first impressions?

"It needs 35gb to install? Jesus!"

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Perhaps a hamster
Jun 15, 2010


Just booted it up. Already in love with the amount of options in the settings screen. :allears:

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