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Tigranes

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Posts posted by Tigranes

  1. 4 hours ago, Chilloutman said:

    Its better than panic, I mean, this flu have 200K cases world wide and around 10K deaths and 90K recovered. Its really not that much worse than normal flu happening every year. I mean I hope it will not get much worse

     

    this is flu stats apparently (sounds really worse than I thought)

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza

    Influenza spreads around the world in yearly outbreaks, resulting in about three to five million cases of severe illness and about 290,000 to 650,000 deaths

     

    It really, really isn't. Remember that you can't just look at the numbers and say "that's the absolute objective nature of the virus, case closed". We know for a fact that nobody really has a good estimate of actual # of infected in the US, for example, and that will be true of many other countries as well. Every epidemiologist or public health expert treats the positive test / mortality rates with due caution, and never as an absolute basis for judgment.

    Even if we set aside the near future impact, we can look at what has already happened. The flu has *never* forced a relatively developed nation like Italy to have overflowing hospital corridors full of patients, wartime triage measures where you treat healthier people rather than the most sick people (i.e. tacitly accepting you can't save the latter), and so on. The flu has never hit Wuhan or Seoul as hard as this has.

    Nations don't like doing lockdowns and border shutdowns. They really really don't want to do it. Even doing it for a few days costs untold amounts of money. These things cause stock market crashes and depressions. You don't do it unless all the experts are screaming at you that **** is really hitting the fan.

    There is uncertainty & dilemmas about what exactly to do for each city/area and exactly how bad it is going to get. I wouldn't go out and tell people X is exactly how many people it will kill so Y and Z is exactly how everyone has to respond. However it is super definitively clear that this is not 'just the flu'.

    • Like 4
    • Thanks 1
  2. I'm not sure I understand the objection, but you can, in multiple places, sympathise with race supremacy views, dodge the question and demur, or mock/disagree with them. Same goes for varieties of communism, free market capitalism, etc, etc.

    Like any story-heavy game rooted in a scripted dialogue tree, you won't always have the exact dialogue option that you want to give. And like any well written story, you're often going to be in tricky situations where you can't resolve the situation exactly the way you want it. (You might have to partly work with people your character considers despicable, without the ability to totally convert their worldview or something.) But you're never forced to become, say, a communard if you don't want to. You are forced to play a character who's a washed up cop with a lot of baggage that has to one way or another try to solve this case.

    Sorry if that's not the point, but it's really hard to digest one giant long paragraph that is mostly describing how fed up you are.

     

     

     

     

    • Like 2
  3. This is a very polished game - there are a small amount of scripting errors, that's about it. Virtually no broken quests, no crashes, etc. They clearly opted to produce a polished game with plenty of 'depth' in each area instead of a 'large content' game, and there's no reason not to play now if you are interested.

    The game should please anyone who liked Age of Decadence, although it's a very different beast, in fact. It will also please anyone who wanted TTON to be good (or, I guess, if you enjoyed TTON). It knocks most games out of the park without hesitation in terms of atmosphere and style.

    For me, the closest experience is actually the way I play P&P - the feeling of saying 'alright, I'm going to play a cop who's been beaten up one too many times by life and now decides to weather the storm through florid performances of SUPERSTAR coloured by disco nostalgia', then finding all the skills and choices that support this, seeing the entire game shaped through that, and then, the game throwing me enough new information, choices, emotional moments, where said character goes through some kind of change - perhaps to a more sombre man who begins to accept his failures, perhaps to a paranoid apocalypse obsessed cop, etc.

    It is pretty great.

    • Like 3
  4. ""Forced" is the new black. It gets trotted out as an excuse for whatever a particular poster doesn't like"

     

    Well, I'm not hearing any arguments against sensibly and consistently designed gameworlds, just a lot of rhetoric about how you are either with quest compasses or against them. Not everything is a battle to the death, you know. As far as I can tell, I'm not even against anybody's viewpoint in this thread, because my suggestions don't really involve screwing with the compass.

     

    Zelda BOTW isn't exactly a paradigm of "we hate convenience, you must descend all the dungeon floors again every time you die". It's a pretty modernised console game with plenty of handholding. And that's OK. The fact that that's cited as a good example should show folks that this isn't about black or white. It's sad that we can't just have a discussion about things anymore on this forum, and great effort goes into turning everything into 'pick a side'.

    • Like 3
  5. Let me preface the reply by saying that, in ideal world, having NPCs and quest descriptions detailed enough to be able to play the game with compass/minimap disabled is the ideal solution. [...]

     

    It's exactly the same as emergent gameplay over scripted events. We all know the joy: having observed that goblins are curious and will check out a moving object, you decide to throw a barrel their way, then bomb them all when they are clustered. It's not half as fun if, instead, there is no such consistency, and instead you get a scripted game where a giant pop up tells you "QUEST UPDATE: THROW A DISTRACTION AT X SPOT", and then "QUEST UPDATE: THROW THE BOMB USING THE A BUTTON."

    The main difference between emergent gameplay and writing which doesn't facilitate play without quest markers is the parts of development process which need to be coordinated well. If you're building a systems-driven game, glaring bugs will become obvious fairly quickly and development of mechanics tends to be interconnected enough to make that possible (albeit still damned difficult)

     

    However, to make NPCs describe quests properly for player to be able to navigate by their descriptions means coordinating:

    - Level designers

    - Quest designers

    - Writers

     

    and, in case of last minute changes, you can add voice actors to the list. And, sadly, writing and level design aren't married in the same way as mechanics are, so if writer writes a thing and level designer then changes everything around and forgets to inform the writers / writers don't care anymore, you'll be informing player of things that are no longer true. God forbid that dialogue is already voiced.

     

    Now, I still think that when you do something, you should do it properly and all the reasoning I gave isn't much more than excuses from proper planning and work ethic. Sadly, we do live in the real world, and software development projects with insane milestones are especially prone to failures in the whole 'planning' bit. In other words, I want to play another game like Morrowind where navigation was a big part of the appeal, but I can definitely see why would development companies want to avoid this.

     

    Edit: Just to re-iterate, I also think that the lazy clutch of quest markers needs to be obliterated, sooner than later.

     

    Nintendo has realized this with their Zelda and designed it without a need for quest markers (they can be turned off and the game comfortably played without them). Assassin's Creed Oddyssey apparently allows to play with only having vague directions as opposed to knowing precisely where an objective is. Red Dead Redemption 2 is supposed to compensate for disabled minimap by more detailed descriptions etc. Prey's entirely designed to be playable without quest markers - and then makes disabling them cumbersome, but ... Eh.

     

    It seems that developers are slowly realizing how intrinsically detrimental compasses / minimaps are to gameplay. It seems designers are sick of creating these vast, detailed open worlds which will then be reduced to mere tunnels by slapping a direction arrow in. Let's hope development continues in this direction and Obsidian surprises us with their own, clever and novel, solution.

     

     

    I'm playing Zelda BOTW right now, and it's a delight. You can often look at a map and intuit where things are going to be (e.g. a clearing where the big miniboss lugs tend to sleep), or just look around and use your eyes and the scenery will make sense.

     

    When I use quest compass, I find myself not really taking in the scenery around me, because I'm just beelining for the next shiny objective, trying to just walk through lakes and jump over fences and mountains. (Indeed, the same thing happens with Google Maps & such; people change the way they explore the city.) It's lovely to have the option to be able to take in the sights differently if you so desire.

     

    Of course, you're right - and it's not easy to have all that coordination. But plenty of games have done it, older games, newer games, and it would be a pity if pursuing player convenience had the side effect of sidelining what should be a pretty basic goal to everyone's benefit: a world designed to make sense, quest compass or no quest compass.

    • Like 2
  6. Looks like agris has made the points well enough.

     

    It should be very clear why it benefits a game to have dialogues and quests and levels designed in a way that things make sense, regardless of whether you hate quest compasses or love them. Consider:

    • World A: You hear the goblins are attacking from the mountain to the north. You know what goblin camps look like because the game is consistent in how they look and what kind of places they tend to be placed in. So using common sense, you are able to take a walk to the big mountain you see, find some trails, and discover the goblin attacks. If you want, you could use the quest marker as well.
    • World B: You are told the goblins are attacking. But nobody told you exactly where it's coming from, and the game was designed in a way that goblins don't exactly have a known habitat, they're just sort of here and there. Without the compass, you'd have to aimlessly wander around, so really, the only choice is to turn it on and just walk where it tells you to walk.

     

    You would think that going for World A is common sense, but look at the history of RPGs and that's not necessarily the case. World A does take more effort. But I would say, again, whether you use the compass or not, there's a joy in discovering a gameworld where you realise goblins tend to hide out in shady crannies of mountains, instead of a game experience where I just say "mountain, river, whatever, none of it matters, game tells me to go somewhere kill stuff i go and kill."

     

    It's exactly the same as emergent gameplay over scripted events. We all know the joy: having observed that goblins are curious and will check out a moving object, you decide to throw a barrel their way, then bomb them all when they are clustered. It's not half as fun if, instead, there is no such consistency, and instead you get a scripted game where a giant pop up tells you "QUEST UPDATE: THROW A DISTRACTION AT X SPOT", and then "QUEST UPDATE: THROW THE BOMB USING THE A BUTTON."

    • Like 4
  7. The OP didn't say ban the compass, the OP said please design the game in a way that you can play without the compass if you wish. Most replies don't seem to address that at all.

     

    Designing the game so that you can choose to use or not use the compass improves the game for everyone. It means that the overworld is more coherent and sensible, and players who use the compass can still enjoy seeing how the levels work in a cohesive way, how the dialogues are written thoughtfully to describe where you're actually going, and so on.

    It's good for allowing different playstyles, and it's good for so-called 'immersion'. The only downside is that, well, you have to think a bit more as you make the game.

    • Like 2
  8. Eh, it looks fine I guess.

     

    Open world first person shooter may not be my favourite but that's OK. Gameplay wise it seems to be utterly ordinary for the subgenre, not much mechanical innovation going on.

     

    The aesthetic turns out to be a lot less Gilded Age and a lot more typical hodge-podge scifi with gigantic pauldrons and whatnot. I'm happy the outer planets at least include lush places and not brown-and-grey, but with Boyarski in charge it's surprising that the art direction is all over the place.

     

    Given that the gameplay will probably be good but nothing earthshaking, the question is setting and writing. Here's hoping they can get back to FNV form there.

  9. People have different opinions. As I get older, I learn that it makes me healthier to try and understand where they're coming from, even if I ultimately conclude that their opinions are bad ones. I used to get a kick out of talking about how ignorant or biased those other people are (and still succumb to it sometimes), but eventually I realised that when you do it, the silent majority isn't applauding with you - they're usually looking at you in pity.

     

    Many acquisitions of this kind in the industry have ended badly for gamers who wanted more good games, so I can certainly understand that fear. I think it's realistic to worry that Obsidian's future games might not be the kind of RPGs its longtime fans have enjoyed. We won't know for sure for a few years. At the same time, the realities are clear and I'm honestly surprised Obsidian hasn't gone bankrupt yet, so I'm not exactly keen on screaming that they're soulless sellouts. In the short term at least, it's a great opportunity for the developers working there right now.

     

    Which means it's hard for me to say this is going to be awesome or terrible without a doubt. But that's OK. Things in life usually aren't that clear cut - it's just that we're always tempted to declare it so, because it makes things so much easier for us. Hopefully it does end up unmistakeably awesome, by which I mean ALPHA PROTOCOL 2 PLEASE OH GOD*

     

    *will never happen.

    • Like 3
  10. No thanks. Obsidian have proven time and again that they struggle with making good action RPG gameplay. Even when I liked their attempt at it (Alpha Protocol), this led to a devastating commercial failure and hard times for the company.

     

    That said, this really might be what Outer Worlds offers, since over-the-shoulder / first-person, open-world-ish big market RPG has always been in Obsidian's / Feargus's ambitions from Day 1.

  11. The KS for POE, successful as it was, was never ever going to give them a basis to sustainably make games for perpetuity. For that, Obsidian needed to fire 80% of its workforce, trim down to ~10 people (which was the core POE team, by the way), cut the budget for POE1 & 2 by a huge amount (since they went over KS budgets), and in turn significantly reduce the scope and visual appeal of the games - and then still hope on tenterhooks they sell enough to fund their next game.

     

    The alternative is that you KS every single game. Not exactly viable, and I'm not sure that's such a utopian outcome.

     

    I knew what I wanted from the POE KS: give Obsidian a shot at an old school CRPG inspired by the IE games. I got that.

    • Like 3
  12.  

    Which makes me wonder why Obsidian felt they couldn't hold out any longer.

     

    Im obv speculating, but my gut tells me it could be something as simple as: owners arent getting any younger. they want to cash out and spend their 50s in a lower gear watching their kids grow up - furnished with a big lump sum of money that will see them nicely through to retirement in 10 yrs time.

     

    i work at a big firm thats done its fair share of acquisitions. one of the former owners of a company they bought is living the life o'reilly. hes chilling out in a cushy role that he negotiated as part of his terms for selling. i dont know how happy he was prior to selling his firm, but hes deffo happy now.

     

     

    It's not really that Obsidian couldn't 'hold on any longer' - at least some of the founders had a buyout as an exit strategy for a long, long time, if not quite from Day 1.

     

    And from a business sense, it would be insane to not think that way. Independent mid-sized games developers are simply not sustainable in this industry, and hasn't been for a long time. No time for me to hash out the details, but how many companies do you see making their own original games and remaining at a medium size, staying independent, making their signature style games, after a decade or so? Obsidian had an improbably good run given all the missteps, self-inflicted and otherwise, they've had along the way.

    • Like 1
  13. Tyranny has a promising start and a potentially great story/setting. They put all that promise into a giant bucket of pig swill and throw it downriver halfway through. After a while you're not really an evil overlord's special investigator, you're not a budding political novus homo trying to carve out your own territory, and nothing that happens in the story actually requires the conceit of an evil overlord or political intrigue. You just talk to Mr Mysterious Questgiver Evil Mary Sue (who is called, what the hell, Bleden Mark, what's next, a barista called Stah B. Uchs?) and then go kill everybody until you side with the remaining one (or just kill everyone). And then boom, a giant deus ex machina at the end that bulldozes it all.

     

    Meanwhile, the gameplay is a watered-down POE with none of the tactical complexity, made so easy that on Hard I could sit there reading a book and occasionally mash the skill hotkeys and win. (Yes, I did exactly this, not even a figure of speecH)

     

    I like Deadfire for all its faults, and I'm generally fondly disposed to flawed RPGs that try new things, but Tyranny was a big downer for me.

    • Like 2
  14. As a consequence of this merger, can we expect any improvements to inquiries about your website?

     

    This sucker's been percolating for more than 4 years, and still not word one you Obsidianites: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/66742-forum-edit-function-too-sensitive/

     

    You could at least pop in and call me out for the loser I obviously am for not giving up on that thread/question. "You're a loser Marceror. Go get a real life." That would at least be something. Do the vast resources of MS maybe, possibly allow for someone to check in on forum questions once or twice a year? Just wondering? :)

     

    There's always also a chance that the forums as we know it get closed down.

  15. It's worth remembering that 'Microsoft' doesn't mean one thing over time. When you have a massive corporation whose main strength is not in games, then it can sometimes be a question of "who is the one fellow in charge of games that they brought in to execute whatever wider strategy they thought up?" Does that person understand games as products and as an industry? Do they know anything about RPGs? Will they be gone in 12 months, with some other fellow to come in and cancel half the projects and change the entire strategy (as has happened before)? There's a wide variance in what kind of owner they could be for Obs.

     

    So presumably MS & Obs talked to each other about what MS wants to do, what kind of support they want to give, and Obs explained what kind of games they would like to make. And all of those things are subject to change at any point as well. It's better to see this almost as Obsidian shutting doors, and opening as Obsidian II, with new management and new strategy, and hopefully it goes really well, but we really can't know either way.

     

    Factually speaking, of course there are many historical examples of independent developers getting bought out then going straight down the gutter, with the result being not really great for the employees' creativity or job security. It's also worth remembering that in many cases, those same developers were either in dire financial trouble, or faced a growth bottleneck, so refusing the deal might not have necessarily been better for them either. It's one of those things where you often have to take everything you've got as a company, toss the dice - and you won't be the same company as before, but you have to hope you're still making some kind of good games (and still around as a company) a few years down the line.

    • Like 6
  16. I don't know what you mean by 'after finishing', but if you used iroll20s to enable cheats, then entered some command, then closed it - then you've made a cheat action in that save, so of course, achievements will be disabled for that save.

     

    It wouldn't make sense otherwise. You add gold or experience with the cheat commands, then the fact that you subsequently disabled further cheats doesn't matter.

     

    Anyway, why worry? Achievements are meaningless fodder. Play the game and enjoy it, with or without cheats as you please.

  17. The question is what Obsidian even wants to do, before any potential MS advice/overrule/interference/freedom. Presumably they would like to do a POE3, but otherwise, what does Obsidian want? Feargus has always wanted to do big budget Skyrim style blockbuster RPGs, which I never thought was Obsidian's strength or its reason for existence (we have other studios to make that stuff), but will that be what he pushes for now, for example?

     

    Obsidian has also always flirted with ARPG style games, and they've always partially/entirely flopped because Obsidian has had difficulties creating really snappy and polished action gameplay. Good ideas were ultimately mired in user frustration for DS3 and AP (and I say that as an AP worshipper). So is that something they now would like to try and do with a bigger budget, and if so, would they necessarily get it right?

     

    There's no real point decrying this as 100% doomed or 100% great at this point. Any such assessment isn't based on facts. Who is even going to take creative lead on Obsidian's next big project? That would also tell us a little bit more. Obsidian no longer has a star writer, they do have one experienced project lead (Sawyer). It will be interesting to see how Outer Worlds turns out, having begun before this happened. (Maybe it was MS-published all along?)

    • Like 2
  18. This is my first KS xp. Is that final day rush so certain?

     

    Yes, especially since they've almost reached the goal. It's very, very, very, very certain, based on dozens of similar curves in the past.

     

    It will be a smaller rush than huge ones like POE, because they don't have the same level of video updates, social media shoutouts and flashy stretch goals. But will it be enough for the few thousand dollars they need? 99.9999% certain.

    • Like 3
  19. Heh. Both obs and inxile at the same time? That's quite a day.

     

    I'm reserving judgment - Obsidian has always had to fight tooth and nail to stay afloat, and a 100-200 man independent developer making ~AA RPGs has always been a very unlikely proposition in terms of survivability. You have to imagine that this buyout was the best that they were ever going to get, and I wouldn't have liked to see them refuse this then go under a few years later.

     

    As for Obsidian's style & creative freedom, well, Obsidian's signature style in RPGmaking already ended after New Vegas. They've already been under something of a flux for several years now. So we will see what the future brings.

    • Like 3
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