Volourn

"At least Obsidian tries to do something different. Bioware doesn't have a single creative thought in their collective brain." This line of thinking continues to be hilarious. Obsidian hasn't done one original or creative thing. NWN2, KOTOR2, ME3 (aka AP), DS, FO:LV. Nothing creative. BIO has gone from making MEDICAL SOFTWARE to creating games. From RTS to Action RPGs, to RPGs to RPGsn with 'shooter elements', and they've created original material. Wake me up when obsidian actually does something on their own and soemthing different. P.S. The fact you then complain about the cancelation of the Alien RPg which is MORE proof that Obsidian hasn't done anythuing creative on their own says a lot.

Nah. Not true.

While I eprsonally don't care if someone knows my real name on the net (heck, i've given both my phone number and adress out freely, R00fles!); the idea they'll force someone to share their real name on the forums is scumbuggery to the highest level.

"Eh, not that ballsy to announce ME was a trilogy - like Blizzard, gamers are lemmings for Bioware games." Then, explain why taht while the majority of BIO RPgs sell in the heighbourhood of 3mil that JE got stuck in the 1.5-2mil rnage and why Sonic RPG was nothing but a blip on the radar despite the fact it had a built in double audience with both Sonic and BIo fans? No company can blindly rely on fans to blindly support them. Fans will drop you like a hot potatoe if you don't deliver what they want. fans don't give a crap about BIO or Blizzard. they care about the games they make because they enjoy them. Do they have leeway? Sure.. but that because their history speaks for themselves. If they stop delivering the goods people will stop buying the goods. This is why certain past popular publishers/devs exither no longer exist or are merely shadows of the past. " I do wonder what the one major flaw was in your opinion, for me it was more of a combination of things. " Oh. AP has more than one flaw (as well as more than one thing it does right) but when I refer to '1 fundamental flaw' I'm mainly referring to why it failed with the 'masses'. "Also, it's QA, quality assurance, not Q&A" Yeah, don't know why I added the &. I should know better.

"Please give us few examples of the huge risks Bioware has taken?" They went from making medical software to game devlopment. They went from action games to rpgs. They completely scratched their plans to make a full fledge RTS to make a D&D game under a publisher (Interplay0 that had utterly failed with the D&D license up to that point (DTU). Heavily focused on NWN's MP/toolset despite the fact their fanbase (including me at the time) much prefered SP games likethe BGs. Jade Empire's combat system definitely not typical BIO. Announcing ME series as a trilogy before ME was even released. That takes ballz. My question, is in what world does a company who has made sequels to two very popular games, and are making two more sequels to popular games taking bigger risks than the company that completely changed industries? Let's not forget that BIo flat out turned down sequeslm to their hit games and gave them to Obsidian to make some easy money while BIo focused on creating their own IPs. "As for your bioware nuthugging, cba to even comment." Only an ignorant tool truly believes I'm a BIO 'nuthugger'. If youn actually read my reviews of their games you'd know I'm anything but. It's funny that i criticzed the NWN OC a bunch but people don't remember that. let's not forget I have bought a higher percentage of Obsidian games (100%) comapred to BI0 (about 75%), found KOTOR are overrated. But, yeah, keep deluding yourself. "Main stream gamers like rpg mechanics?" BG series. NWN series. DA. FF (yes, turn base and all). " Since when?" Since forever. "Main stream gamers like a game that actually will punish you for your stupidity in developing your character? Since when?" Since forever. "No. Most of if not all blame considering release date fiasco goes to Sega. The game was ready, but Sega decided to push it back, not Obsidian. Since when is it good publicity to a game or good pr towards your customers to just remain silent about the release date when the game is supposed to be out during that month? And I'd like you to point out how you can blame Obsidian for Sega's stupid decision to release the game on the most crowded month of 1st half of 2010. Especially if you consider the fact, yes a FACT that the game was ready to be shipped anytime Sega wanted it to go out. " Reelase date did not matter. AP's fundamental flaw wouldn't have changed no matter when it was released. This is a fact. P.S. I like the way you make contradictory arguments on why AP 'failed'? So.. which is it.. was it Sega's screwing up the release date' or the make believe 'harcoreness' of the game?

"yay for emphasizing the most useless part of a review : the score. " I actually agree with this 100%.

And, you know more Q&A would somehow make it better? Q&A is not magic. Games throughout history have shown that even the buggiest games can succeed and/or be popular. Lack of Q&A, and bugs (btw, I haven't seen much if any bugs in AP myself) is not what hurt AP's chances at success. It's problem was not soemthing that was so eaisly fixable. It had a much more fundamental flaw.

"Well, we'll see with Fallout : New Vegas and Dungeon Siege III what Obsidian can do with a reliable partner." You sound like Troika fanboys.. with all three different publishers. Let's face it. This was Obsidian's fault. Not Sega - who has had their share of successes and failures with developers - so they will be fine. "Are we talking about the same Bioware who never tried anything risky in the first place and base all their design decisions on fan feedback?" Kiddin' right? BIO has done a lot more riskier things than Obsidian ever has. It's not even a contest. The only difference is that as much as I like Obsidian overall (I loved MOTB, and enjoyed both NWN2 and KOTOR2, though I loathed SOZ and am dissapointed in AP), is that BIO is much better at all aspects of game devlopment nor do they rely on other companies to tell them what to do. "It's just not the kind of game a mainstream gamer will appreciate, fundamentally that's all there's to it." Disagee. AP is exactly the kind of game main stream gamers would like. It's just doesn't stand up against the games its meant to. The biggest problem with AP is not bugs, C7C, writing, combat, or anything else, is that it comes across a rip off of other superior games and tries way too hard and falls flat. "I guess SEGA was too stingy to allow another round of Q&A tests during delay." More like it they felt it be a waste of resources. More Q&A would not have made AP any better. It wouldn't have changed the fundamental problem of AP which is just at the cusp of being a good game but has one major flaw that hurts it huge. "AP looks better than ME1, that would be the reference" No. No, it doesn't. "but the release fiasco was all Sega's doing and that ended up hurting the sales." Nope. Asb publisher, Sega shares some of the blame, but the majority of the blame goes to Obsidian. Just like most of the crddit for MOTB's greatness goes to Obsidian. Or should we say Atari desevres credit for it. Ahh.. I see how Obsidian fanboys works. Obsidian gets credit when things go well for them.. but, the publisher gets the blame when things go bad. Seems fair to me. Now, people who were claiming that AP was some huge levelm of financial success can stop the silly. This is Obsidian's first major misstep. I'm hoping DS3 will turn things around (I don't have much hope for FO: NV because it's trapped by crappy FO3 stuff though I'm sure it'llm sell fine based on name value alone). Obsidian: Good try on AP your first original IP. It has some good stuff, but it is what it is. The major flaw killed it from being a great game.

"Apart from being vehemently sucky into the extremes, they simply never garnered very much attention." Huh? BGDA was a very popular, successful game. Enough so to get a sequel, and offshoots. It was also a pretty good game.

EA, SS, Activision, and pretty much any other game company that still exists...

"The [non-Fallout] tech demo had more FO atmosphere in it's 4 minutes" No, it didn't. There was no atomsphere. It was a tech demo. btw, One can loathe Betehasda's FO3 and still feel the Troika fnaboys are full of it. Troike made two heavily flawed above average games that were fun, and below average game that had potential ruined by Troika's ignorance, arrogance, and foolishness. Hey, watch out, the bugbear is coming for you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! There are plenty of companies that could have made a financially successful *and* enjoyable FO3. And, yes, BIo is one of them though if you hate the BIo style of games you would likely hate their version of FO3 anyways. Then again, BIO never was interested in picking up anys craps from a dead Interplay IP. They had better things to do. It's why BIO is still successful while Interplay is playing funny MMORPG games.

"could have turned out much much worse with most other studios." Doubtful. FO3 is a crap game just like every other ES series game. It's also the reason why FO:LV will be the first Obsidian game I won't be buying until the price drops significantly. Bethesda is eaisly the worst ever 'successful' company I' ve ever seen.

"And even if there were horrible events in the Congo, should we now condemn them?" Yes.

"Deliberately making a foul to prevent a goal is simply cheating, no way around it, but if the consequences just aren't harsh enough to properly deter players from doing it, it just goes to show that something is wrong with the game." Huh? Tell that to the NHL player who hooks someone on the breakaway to stop theem or someone fouling at the end of the game in basketball. This is silly talk.

http://g.ca.sports.yahoo.com/soccer/world-...ball070110.html

"The thing is, it *is* enforceable. Anytime, if they find "some reason", they can ban your steam account, and then you pretty much lose all games associated with it. Steam, just like XBOX live for consoles, can, if they want, prevent you from playing games you bought (ok, only MP part of XBOX, but if console is banned, MP is impossible, as well as patches and anything else that uses live). In both cases, games rely on service that is not guaranteed to be available for you, just because you bough the game that uses it. Any transgression, can be "fined" by revoking those services. " No. It's not enforceable as written. It can't be enforced for 'random' reasons. They need a legit reason. Your xbox/MS example is proof of this. MS doesn't ban people for random reasons. They ban people playing with cracked xboxes. That's a good reason. If MS were to ban you from xbox live for a truly 'random' reason and you took them to court they would lose. Same with steam. Learn the laws, and don't fear them. The only reason why lots of these silly stuff gets thrown in the 'small rpint' is ebcause customers don't bother to fight them, and when they do, they can win. Small print or heck even normal print in contracts are not automatically enforceable in the law. That's up for the courts to decide. "(isn't DA:O?)" No.

" Read the fine print and they can deactivate your access to any product at any time without any reason. " Nonsense. Just because it's in the fine print doesn't make it legally enforceable. They do that, you sue them, you likely are gonna win the lawsuit.

"So if ME2 sold 1.8mil in over 5 months" ME2 sold 2mil in ONE week. " how is 300-400k in the first month so bad for AP" It isn't horrible if it actually sold that much. But, it's nwoehre as much as a company the size of Obsidian sis striving for? " when it had less than 1/10 the advertising? " 1/10th? L0LZ

"Tigranes' links do not indicate 3 million unit sales. Why do you continue to misrepresent other people's posts in attempts to support your incorrect statements?" Why don't you read the link again. It says ME2 moved OVER 2mil copies in the FIRST WEEK ALONE. Do youn honestly believe it moved 2mil copies EXACTLY in the first week and then proceeded to sell ZERO copies all these months later? Come on, now, let's not get silly.

"Well I'm not seeing 3mil units anywhere and did some searching last night." Did you even click on Tigrane's links? Why do you guys continue to besmirch and insult Tiogranes when Tigranes (not me) provided multiple links. "Your link" MY LINK!?! "Again, there's just one link saying that there has been sold 6.6m," I have NEVER claimed ME2 sold 6.6MIL copies. "but it's still no 5 million in one week like MW2. But common concensus is NOT 6.6m but something over 2 million units (as in, not 6 million)." That's awesome because I NEVER claimed either of those things. "Returning to the Obsidian's figures, the sales are at the level of a good RPG" If the AP sale reports are accurates, no it isn't. Espicially for a companmy striving to rach the BIO/BETH levels of popularity. BIo games tend to sell in the 3 mil range (with JE and likely S:RPG being the noteable exemptions amongst their RPGs that didn't). In fact, if eports are acurate, it's far elss than either NWN2 or KOTOR sold which means they've dropped quite a few customers. "miserably to the fact that the rest of the forum members see you as a Biow die hard fan" Such a hardcore fan that I haven't about half their games, find KOTOR overrated, thinking NWN OC and OSU are simply slightly above average, and find the NWN2 OC slightly better than NWN1 OC. That's die ahrd. Lets' not forget I post more here than there. *shrug* And, I love MOTB. I, for one, believe Tigrane's links because Tigranes is trustworthy you crybabies are not.

"I know they just started up a BioWare Ireland." Huh? Anyways, sounds like these 'tax breaks' would give European developers unfair advantages so I don't blame whatever publisher wouild try to stop it ebcause it be unfair for them if it did. Don't people bash the US when they try to give unfair advantages to various industries? Didn't the EU actually sue the over stuff like this? L0L

http://www.vgchartz.com/methodology.php That site is just estimate work. "I think nobody doubts that he saw the 1.8 number." Why do you keep quoting the 1.8 number like it's the number I quoted. It isn't. And, actually, more thana few people doubt I saw the number I did see. That's why they keep crying about it. "He could've easily dodged it by giving the link but well..." Why? So, the crybaby bullies could win? Sorry, I don't get intimidated by tough interent talk. "(not 100% accurate for a number of reasons, but generally pretty good)" Nah. It's pretty common knowledge that NPD lowballs sales numbers. They usually oome in at the low end of the sales. "hasn't even surpassed the original's sales numbers yet" yes, it it has. "EA/Bioware have to be disappointed" FALSE CONJECTURE. Nothing written or said by EA or BIO has suggested dissapointment. "I never said you have to be a shooter to sell well. In your defence, there's a typo on my post, it should be read like this:" yeah, but you did claim ME2 sold well because it was a shooter. That's silly talk for severalr easons: a) it';s not a shooter but an action rpg and b) BIO's history of games shows that their games would sell even if it isn't a shooter. c) ME series sold because of BIO's name. Plain, and simple. I do like how people keep insulting Tigranes and the link shared in that post. Bottom line is that ME2 has sold way more than 1.8 mil copies. That's a fact PROVEN in this thread with actual links.

"You are a bitch. This is fact. Why? Because I believe it to be true, so it must be true. Therefore, you are a bitch. Do I have to provide any evidence to back it up? Honestly, no.. using your logic I don't have to because I believe it to be true. " Wow. That's impressive. Flaming to such a high degree because I pointed out the fact that 1.8mil isn't an accurate number even though others have shown that i am, in fact, correct. Don't cry because I was proven right that 1.8mil is a silly number. L0L But, hey, I'm glad you feel it's okay to believe Tigranes is simply lying with the link provided. LMAO Why so mean and rude towards Tigranes?

I never claimed 1.8 mil. I claimed 3milish. Actually, I never calimed that either. I claimed an article had cliamed 3milish. "Anyway, I just read that Alpha Protocol has sold 15 million copies. Unfortunately I can't remember where I read it, but it does not matter, remains a "fact". You want to talk about the 15 million copies sold by Alpha Protocol?" Not fact. In fact, it's a lie. It's a lie because you know what you just posted is untrue. Why do you lie? At least the 1.8mil was just an oopsy. "At a guess the 6.6M is almost certainly a typo for 1.6 million and someone just has fat fingers)" Look. Why don't you and the other 1.8mil faqboys justa dmit you are wrong. Tigranes just gave TWO more links showing that ME2 has sold more than a meaisly 1.8mil copies. Just admit that the 1.8mil number is fraudlalent. "ME2 didn't sell well because it had critical acclaim, it sold well because they put a shooter in it. And because of them putting a shooter in it, they got critical acclaim." Must explain DA's success which at last call sold 3.2mil copies. LMAO "since we're all having a laugh with Volourn's facts." Only fools laugh at the fact that i read na article stating that ME2 had sold in the heighbourhood of 3mil copies. LMAO "And yes, you would be getting something out of providing us with a link: The fact that you are right." Nonsense. Providing a link doesn't make me right. Being right makes me right. Just like I don't have to show evidence that I was born December 27, 1976 to make it a fact. It's a fact simplyn because it's a fact. Don't confuse facts with evidence. "Until then, quit talking out of your ass until you can provide something of value." You troll crying doesn't change the fact the 1.8mil crowd are the ones talking out their asses. How many people must provide links to disprove the 1.8mil nonsense ebfore youa dmit it was a foolish number. I was right ebcause I am right on this simple fact: I read ana rtcile that sgtates that ME2 had sold 2.8mil copies at that time. That is fact. Tigranes: It should also be pointed out that the NPD always udnervalues the amount of sales for games - just look at their history of different games. They're all much lower usually than the typically accepted amount.

Are you disputing the following two statements: "I could claim the US invaded Iraq under the second President Bush" and "I was born on December 27, 1976" I've given no links to either of these yet they are undisputable facts. "But that doesn't mean that something posted on RPGCodex is a fact. And that's a fact." You seem to be under the mistaken impression that i'm some Codexian fanboy who thinks they never lie. the Codex are scumbags but the link in question comes from other sorces. They just poist the artciles so we cna all bash each other and game companies. L0L Still doesn't change the facts. I'm not linking anything because I'm not moivated enough to do the seartch to prove anything to you since I get nothing out of it. Just knowing I know the fact is enough for me. And, the fact iothers choose to remain ignorant is just a bonus. "Which is a fact, as well as the fact of ME2 becoming a TPS with some elements of RPG, gaining mainstream acceptance... and in this same market RDR has surpassed ME2, but RDR is a pure TPS and that is the market it is aiming... AP, falls more into RPG elements applied to TPS, but failing to gain mainstream acceptance in TPS market... so, the comparison ME2 vs. AP is out of context, ME2 has got a very clear target market, AP does not or it fell short to aiming that market, who knows, we haven't got the marketing strategy to judge... which is a fact..." Actually, all this is opinion and conjecture. Not fact,. Can't you tell the difference between the three?