Flouride

Update: Matthew Perez - Area Design (LinkedIn) Since I can't edit my post #88 in this thread is it possible some Mod could do it?

First it was about their design team changing, then you switched to specific two people leaving the company because they are mistreated (when I made valid point about how people do not tend to work forever for one company) and now you are back to the design people changing and how everything is ruined. Avellone, Ziets etc. started from somewhere, just as the new breed of Obsidian writers are starting up now. If you look at the people who have left Gonzales and Stout for example, both got a lead writer position from a good company. There aren't 10 Lead Writer positions at Obsidian, so they can't keep these people and it's pointless to expect them to keep all of their writers. Both Stout and Gonzales got a great opportunity from Obsidian, used it and moved onto other things. It's pretty much pointless to go cry after them and predict doom for the company due to that. Pretty much no one knew anything about a guy called Fenstermaker before he did some kickass designing and writing on F:NV. Since I'm pretty you don't own a time machine you can't predict just how good these new writers at Obsidian will turn out to be.

And I'm pretty sure Ubisoft never had any intentions on hiring them even if by some lucky chance they might have had enough people to throw at the project (which they obviously didn't at the time). Ubisoft is putting a lot of faith on some studio that has made "Rocksmith" and to the South Park brandname. The brand alone will sell a lot of games and well, the company can pretty much just copy as much from Obsidian as they possibly can, so maybe they won't **** it up.

Unless I'm completely mistaken, the same guy wrote Myrkul and the gods in PoE. So either Ziets has gotten worse, or just the fact that he had source material to base Myrkul and Kelemvor (and the setting overall) made it so much better. Though I think the PoE gods were just fine. Why should Obsidian worry about people getting into cRPGs in the 10's during 2006? There were no clear signs that D&D wasn't going to go down the toilet and good games using that license would cease to exist. Most people that played NWN were fans of Baldur's Gate, so yes I imagine those same people knew D&D at least to some degree when they got NWN2. Their creative vision was to create AAA games with their own brand of mechanism and good narrative design. How does working for a small publishers exactly accomplish that? So because it failed to deliver it's promise of IWD's dungeon crawling and the emotional writing of Planescape (for you and some otheres), it's hardcore cRPG all of a sudden? Like I said, you are sidetracking here... So 2 out of what 350 employees they've had since the beginning have left under some "mystery". Clearly they are worst thing since Nazis baking Jews in ovens. You are grasping straws here, desperately. It didn't work out for Mitsoda, it happens sometimes in life. And really, who the **** knows what happened with Avellone. He has said he wanted different things, maybe he didn't want to own a company any longer? Maybe he just wanted to be one of working class men in the company instead of carrying the torch for the whole creative department of Obsidian? Now he can pick and choose which projects to work on by signing onto work with different companies. He has earned that liberty and status with his previous work, so why not use the opportunity?

Sooo... are you gonna name that mystical IP or not? Probably not. Building a completely new IP to fit Mask of the Betrayer would have taken some of the power from that punch for sure. For a D&D/FR fan (or even if you know the IP) it is a lot bigger deal to be talking to Myrkul than some god they just created for a new IP that no one has even heard of. Case in point PoE. The conversation with the gods was in no way bad, but it still missed that sense of familiarity with the gods in question. Conversations with Myrkul and Kelemvor on the other hand worked pretty much to perfection because some/most players know those gods from either other games, the rpg or from books. And guess what, they created Alpha Protocol with Sega. They took the deal with Sega but created something different with it. How is that a bad thing? And no, they could not snatch a smaller publisher easily. Smaller publishers like Paradox didn't have the capital to publish Obsidian's game nor was Obsidian making games with 20 people at that time. And why should they, when they had 2x AAA games funded pretty much all of the time. The only hardcore thing about Planescape was the amount of dialogue and writing, and they never said they would include as much dialogue in the game as in Planescape. Icewind Dale had the tactical fights and I think PoE managed to capture that with the more difficult settings just fine. You are just sidetracking from the point I was making at this point... Have you ever worked in your life in a company with multiple people in it? Not everyone will superhappy with the company, co-workers, their bosses, salary, location etc. all the time. People leave companies for lots of various reasons, just because talented people sometimes rather go work somewhere else it doesn't mean they were mistreated, life happens. Family member back home might get sick, so you move nearer to them. Your career ambitions might change in time. There are only a number of Lead positions available at one company, so you move again if you can get a better position somewhere else. Writers also leave Obsidian because Obsidian is highly praised for it's writing, so bigger companies will poach some of that talent no matter what Obsidian does. I could go on forever for list of reasons people leave...

Hah, Jyrki Katainen (some banking minister high up in the EU) is calling this a cancer. It's funny when it was his political party and his successor that tried their hardest earlier this year or last year to get amnesty to people who have off shore bank accounts that they would be able to transfer their funds back to Finland and not be charged with anything... Would have definately been a great timing if that law had passed.

*sigh* At what age did you move onto Fantasy Island? In what world can the newly formed company take their pitch for MotB to some other publisher with "some" mystical IP that you can't even name as an example that would fit it and that would have the same recognition that D&D has when they have a publisher ready to put it out under D&D and as an expansion for NWN2 using some of the same art assets from that same game? While you are at it, look into that glass ball of yours and tell me the lottery numbers for next week. Both games are cRPG's so it that much of surprise for you that a well made AAA cRPG will get better reviews, recognition and sales than a Kickstarter game? I wouldn't call Pillars of Eternity a game for the "hardcore" cRPG gamers either. While it has some mechanics made for such gamers, it's still a realtime with pause type of game that tries to capture the spirit of Baldur's Gate (which was in no way a hardcore cRPG) and not a turn based cRPG that most would rather put under the label "hardcore". Imagine that... people actually change their jobs once in a while. Must be really depressing to be able to choose from multiple companies and different kind of games to work on, instead of just working for the same company for decades and doing nothing but cRPGs.

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/south-park-stick-of-truth-sells-5-million-sequel-c/1100-6434743/ Ubi paid 3.3 million dollars for the game + whatever expenses they had afterwards and according to that article the game has sold 5 million copies now. I imagine the game was quite profitable for Ubisoft in the end.

And I still think the biggest achievement for Obsidian is that they are still here. Even after all the **** ups they've made, all the *** drillings they've taken from publishers (*cough Bethesda cough*), the execs who cancel games their predecessors greenlit and the continually evolving industry. 13 years with ups and downs, and they are still here. If they were such bad people at running company and lacked ambition, they would have went down in flames years ago. Yet, here they are, looking stronger than ever (even if they aren't currently working on a game that you find innovative and fresh).

*snip snap* cba to quote. Yes, original NWN is associated with mediocrity, but that's hardly Obsidian's fault. Still the game series has lots of fans from both the original by BioWare and by NWN2. I personally prefer NWN 2 (even without MotB) over NWN. No idea if the expansion packs made the original game better, but for me who didn't play them Obsidian made that game better than the original. Also it seems like you fail to realize the world we live in. Obsidian and Feargus can't dictate to Atari in what form they will deliever Mask of the Betrayer. It's Atari who is running the show, they said expansion packs is all you are going to get and they made the most with at least one of them. Mask of the Betrayer is still a good game, whether it's called NWN2:MotB, NWN3, or just MotB. There's no way in hell, Atari was going to let them launch a new IP so it's either full on sequel or an expansion. Remember, this is the company that didn't have the balls to even greenlight Baldur's Gate 3, a game that would have basically printed money with the name alone. Your CD Projekt Red still sucks though, even if people compared Witcher 3 to PoE. One of them is full on AAA game with years of development and the other one is a 5 million kickstarter game. In what world won't that AAA game overshadow the kickstarter game, unless the AAA game is being made by complete twats. And you completely missed my point when it comes to finances, but I guess it just didn't fit into your "agenda".

One notable difference between these games and Obsidian's is that they're an original property which are owned by their original creators. One of Obsidian's greatest weaknesses (which also proved to be one reason of its [quality] downfall), is that they waste their best ideas on other people's IPs. (I mean, seriously, does KOTOR2 feel like a Star Wars game? Does MotB feel like a Neverwinter Nights game?) They are moving away from this with Tyranny, but unfortunately that IP seems to be owned by Paradox, which won't help Obsidian much. Another good example is CD Projekt RED. They started out with the video game version of The Witcher. Fast-forward 8 years later: They are one of the most well-loved video game studios in the world and The Witcher 3 is hailed by a huge amount of people as the best open-world RPG of all time. What does "Neverwinter Nights" games feel like? I always thought Mask of the Betrayer was a D&D game, not just NWN and other than the soul eating mechanism it played just like NWN 2. Who in their right mind would even want to play the OC NWN? Really? You are using CD Projekt Red as an example, the company that gets revenue from GOG.com as well. Why not bring up Valve as well? Also if you want to compare Obsidian to some Eastern European company you might want to consider the costs of running a business in California vs. Poland. The GDP alone is twice as high in USA than it is in Poland, not to mention rent etc. are way lower in Poland. It's far lot easier to build on that basis, when you've got money trickling from GOG.com and you can hire two workers (equally as good as their American versions) for the same money that most people get just 1 person.

Same here, with both PoE and Tyranny I really don't have a tickling need for an another fantasy rpg and since I have no idea what is so special about Pathfinder I'd rather play scifi/real world rpg over it

Stellaris looks and sounds so far like a day 1 purchase for me. Unless they've completely managed to **** up the late game, the game will dethrone Master of Orion 2 from the throne. Which is just about time. I know how to play that game through while blindfolded

Nothing is stopping them from getting more capital by crowdfunding it later on

Well, that’s fair, considering that I can’t understand people who accept the terms of service coming with Valve’s client Didn’t understand them when Steam first launched (was it with Half-Life?), and I guess I’ll never understand them… Fair enough. There's just that many games I would have to skip because it's on UPlay, Origin or Steam only.. I believe it was Half-Life 2 that introduced us to Steam. Internet connection was still rare when Half-Life came out.

I will never understand people who won't buy games because it's only on Steam. Didn't understand them back in 2005 and still don't understand them. But that just me...

I like the fact that the game is shorter and actually pushes for replayability. It's something that is often missing in cRPGS mostly due to the massive amount of time that it takes to fully play a 2nd and 3rd playthrough. While 80+ hours might work for people who play only 10 games a year and got plenty of time to spend just playing, it doesn't suit everyone. I also like that they are trying differ from PoE, so the rule settings etc. won't be just copied from one game to another and the fact that we won't start as some weakling that could be killed by group of rats. If the reactivity is really at Alpha Protocol's level that is something that will make me play the game over and over again (granted that it doesn't suck otherwise) and gaining abilities through choices, quests etc. sounds neat as well.

I wouldn't compare Bioware's and Obsidian's reputation systems. If you look at something like Dragon Age the whole reputation system is a cheap gimmick where you can just buy your companions with gifts where as in Obsidian's games it's mostly your actions and what you say that decide how your companions feel about you. Not sure if you played Alpha Protocol but that game did the whole reputation system pretty much perfectly. Everything you say and do in the game will matter when it comes to how others perceive you. If they can get Tyranny's reputation system close to what it was in Alpha Protocol or even in PoE it should be a lot better than the ones I've seen in Bioware's games (haven't played DA3).

That is nature of MMOs. But I was thinking them actually changing status from open beta to released. Then game moves from production to post release support. Of course classic phases of development are bit poor to describe products that continue to evolve after they are "finished". Which is why we have seen in past quite lot of web services that are in beta for years, just because their developers didn't have better vocabulary to describe state of their product. Yes, but even with post release support AW is going to have big team working on it. They can't really slack around in terms of updates when they are going against WoT. The playerbase is constantly expecting new maps, tanks and other updates.

I don't think the work on Armored Warfare is anywhere close to being finished. They are very busy making more content for it all the time and just because the game gets officially released won't change that fact.

True, it could be something else as well. Even a WoD game, or some new IP that they want to KickStart and they'll just have PoE 2 on the backburner/pre-production and plan it out with more time than they did the first time around.

The evil won would be really hard to fit into the PoE lore even if set in different time. It's much easier to come up with a new setting than fit this into the PoE mold. And it gives them chance to do different things with magic and other rule systems as well. Also, since they are most likely making PoE2 by now, releasing only games into the Pillars of Eternity setting would be risky and shortsighted, when they've got the chance to broaden their portfolio and maybe (depending on the deal) get to create a new IP and setting to release future games in. Not to mention, not everyone liked Pillars of Eternity, whether it was the setting or the rule system/gameplay, creating very similar game to PoE would not cater to those (especially when they've got that all ready covered with PoE2) potential customers. Fair enough I guess, but broading portfolio for Obs? Well, that's rich, not like they would really crave for something like that... hm, not sure. Anyway, from my point of view, most guaranteed customers would be exactly those, who liked PoE and in Obs place I would certainly try to work around that, rather than doing something completely new. Those few screens I've seen reminded me alot about PoE in the first place, that's why this game actually caught my attention. I'm sure if I wouldn't like PoE, I probably wouldn't be looking their new IP way... And on history argument, "several millenniums ago" wouldn't need much explaining I think... Well considering that they only own PoE brand, getting more brands under their name (depending on the contract) would be highly valuable for them. They can't just work on other people's IPs for eternity or ride that one PoE pony for tens of games either. Also Tyranny was already being made before PoE was even out, it would have been highly risky of them to put all of their eggs into the same basket. If PoE fails badly, what do you think would happen to a game that shares the same universe, rule settings and magic system? Several milleniums ago would be really cheap way to do it. It works for Star Wars, but a new brand? Cmon.... They would still be stuck with the rule setting and some of the same bestiary etc. There's really no point going that way when they we've got a team working on PoE 2 already.

Yes, that is a well known fact. Otherwise I'm sure they would have tried making a sequel to it by now. Would they though? I love the game, but they are running a business. It didn't sell well, it isn't even really a cult hit. If they really wanted to give it another go, they could probably easily lease or buy it from Sega. But I don't see the profit in it. From what I've understood/remember it did end up selling quite good... eventually. Naturally the horrible reviews it got from the weirldly biased NA press did hurt the sales a lot iniatially but the sales picked up with gamers recommending the game to each other. Can't remember if it ended up making profit for SEGA, but in proper hands I'm sure the development time for any sequel would have been much much shorter. I don't think it's a stretch to think they would have shopped around the idea for a sequel. Obviously they wouldn't have had the capital to make one on their own nor would have Kickstarter covered the costs either. But if the IP was theirs, they could have asked around other publishers if they are interested in publishing the sequel with certain changes being made to the game to get better reviews even in NA and not just Europe.

Yes, that is a well known fact. Otherwise I'm sure they would have tried making a sequel to it by now.

How come everyone is so sure the IP will belong to Paradox? It say so in http://www.tyrannygame.com/ if you scroll bottom of the page Tyranny™ is a trademark of Paradox Interactive. All rights reserved. 2016 Paradox Interactive But doesn't that mean that they just own the rights to the game (as they are the publisher, that's pretty much given), not the actual IP, the setting and possible sequels. There could be clauses in the contract that revert all rights back to Obsidian after number of years or if Paradox isn't interested in funding a sequel with a certain timelimit. Etc. They own game's most important IP, which mean that there can't be sequel that uses word Tyranny without Paradox giving permission to its use. Other IP rights that games have aren't as important as they mostly determine who owns art assets, music, writing, etc.. Because they make it possible to create spiritual successor, but not real sequel without trademark holders permission and they really can't prevent trademark holder to make sequel for the game if they want to do so. Well, they might own it for now. But with certain clauses in the contract those rights for the use of word Tyranny as well might revert back to Obsidian once the game is out and Paradox passes on the sequel. Until we hear from Feargus or someone else that knows for certain about this issue, I'm thinking it's pretty much 50/50 or as my childhood hero would have said fifty-sixty situation.