RANDOM VIDEO GAME NEWS

[majestic]

I checked a few websites (because I was curious) and none of them has swtor in their top 10, whether it being popular, populous, healthiest etc. whatever at the end of 2018. So it might have been able to stave off death by starvation for a while, but I do honestly wonder why EA is bothering at the moment (unless there is something we don't know in their Star Wars license agreement).

 

The top 10 happened when they switched to free to play before and after Rise of the Hutt Cartel came out. The cash shop made some 200 million per year. That's the point I was trying to make, SW:TOR sold well enough and had enough subscriptions to easily cover the development cost (and then some) until the switch to the free to play model. And that is assuming the 200 million dollar develoment cost wasn't blown out of proportion like everyone assumed when the number came up.

 

I have no idea how well the game is doing at the moment. I'm just arguing that while SW:TOR did not become the cash cow EA wanted it wasn't a commercial failure for them.

[Bendu]

[HoonDing]

The Jedi Knight games were pretty fun.

Kyle Katarn prolly has been already erased from existence by Disney.

[injurai]

I need to see a lengthy gameplay slice to pass a judgement. Seems a bit stale at the moment, and I swear I'm not trying to find a way to rag on EA more. Though I'd like to, I'd also like a good SW game.

[213374U]

I have no idea how well the game is doing at the moment. I'm just arguing that while SW:TOR did not become the cash cow EA wanted it wasn't a commercial failure for them.

Seems you are spot on, and the game is apparently doing much better than I would have imagined. Either that, or Disney put a boot in their ass to do something about the license already.

 

They just announced what seems to be the biggest expansion since Shadow of Revan -- "Onslaught".

• New Storyline
• New Planets: Onderon and Mek-sha
• New Flashpoint - Corellia
• New Operation on Dxun
• Nautolan Playable Race
• Level Cap Increase
• The Spoils of war (further customization)

[ShadySands]

My bet is on Disney but I'm happy either way

[Katphood]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GLbwkfhYZk

Star Wars is a funny thing, the games always end up being more appealing to me than the movies.

[injurai]

Star Wars games often bring a certain familiar feel to the world which is otherwise too epic. The core cast of the films are the apex of a grand prophecy, while your character in the game feels far more grounded. Kotor in which you end as the pivotal character in the drama is mostly experienced as just another jedi knight.

 

I have a strong urge to place force unleashed now despite those games being rather middling... also the Ep 3 game was fantastic. A++ even had a fighting game tacked on to it which was awesome. Damn, I need to go emulate this.

[Keyrock]

What Star Wars has taught me is that the members of the Old Republic/Jedi Order/Rebel Alliance/New Republic are almost universally extremely stupid and incompetent and that they are only able to survive and eventually triumph because Deus Ex Machina, because the Sith/Empire got overconfident, and because the First Order is somehow even more stupid and incompetent.

 

As for the new trailer, there is zero gameplay so no comment until I see actual gameplay.

Edited April 14, 2019 by Keyrock

[Malcador]

Focus Interactive making 3 new WH games. Maybe an RTS ?

https://www.pcinvasion.com/new-warhammer-games/

[ShadySands]

I think I just had a waking nightmare of Dawn of War 3

[Chilloutman]

Focus Interactive making 3 new WH games. Maybe an RTS ?

https://www.pcinvasion.com/new-warhammer-games/

 

all 40K? I would not mind some RPG in WH universe, if in 40K something like KOTOr can actually work great in that universe

[Oner]

One of them is an Age of Sigmar game, the other two are 40k.

[Vitalis]

BioWare was also subject to being forced to develop games with Frostbite, which is a ridiculously difficult engine to code for. With Fallen Order and Apex Legends developed with UR4 and an updated Source Engine it may be likely the suits at EA will stop trying to deel throat Frostbite.

[injurai]

Not sure what is bad about Frostbite, I haven't played a game on it since BC2. But the rendering engine is impressive. It seems worthy of salvaging even if the rest of the ECS is a hot mess. DICE after all has some very talented graphics researchers.

 

Maybe it went to **** because too many senior developers with all the tribal knowledge left. That's what happened to Square's luminous engine. Fantastic rendering tech, but the ability to implement all the necessary logic systems began to crumble once the lead architect left. I believe the guy wasn't even Japanese, so what was left was hardly useful for the team to pick up and get started with.

[Vitalis]

Not sure what is bad about Frostbite, I haven't played a game on it since BC2. But the rendering engine is impressive. It seems worthy of salvaging even if the rest of the ECS is a hot mess. DICE after all has some very talented graphics researchers.

 

Maybe it went to **** because too many senior developers with all the tribal knowledge left. That's what happened to Square's luminous engine. Fantastic rendering tech, but the ability to implement all the necessary logic systems began to crumble once the lead architect left. I believe the guy wasn't even Japanese, so what was left was hardly useful for the team to pick up and get started with.

Frostbite was developed to look great and for FPS games, it had absolutely nothing required to develop RPGs.

[injurai]

Sounds more like issues relating to half-baked build tools than anything fundamentally wrong with the engine. All that BioWare jank with Andromeda seems more like **** QA from strained time tables and over cranked developers. The engine teams usually have it better since they are preparing for things farther down the road. The end game logic is a bit removed from the integrity of the engine.

[marelooke]

Not sure what is bad about Frostbite, I haven't played a game on it since BC2. But the rendering engine is impressive. It seems worthy of salvaging even if the rest of the ECS is a hot mess. DICE after all has some very talented graphics researchers.

 

Maybe it went to **** because too many senior developers with all the tribal knowledge left. That's what happened to Square's luminous engine. Fantastic rendering tech, but the ability to implement all the necessary logic systems began to crumble once the lead architect left. I believe the guy wasn't even Japanese, so what was left was hardly useful for the team to pick up and get started with.

 

I though this quote from the Kotaku article summed it up nicely:

“Frostbite is like an in-house engine with all the problems that entails—it’s poorly documented, hacked together, and so on—with all the problems of an externally sourced engine,” said one former BioWare employee. “Nobody you actually work with designed it, so you don’t know why this thing works the way it does, why this is named the way it is.”

On top of that its tooling is apparently seriously sub-par when compared to the competition and it takes ages to render something before you can test to know whether it actually worked.

 

Add to the above that the thing wasn't built for the kinds of stuff BioWare has been trying to use it for. It doesn't support third person, for example, that's something BioWare had to hack in, with barely any support from the Frostbite team from the sounds of it. It also couldn't handle the map sizes of DA:I and I'm sure someone at BioWare has a very very long list of other things the engine didn't support that are basic requirements for what BioWare was trying to do.

 

It might be a good engine, but if you use a tool for something its not designed for you're just setting yourself up for a lot of hurt.

 

tl;dr: Frostbite + BioWare = round peg, square hole.

[Zoraptor]

I'd agree in general, but I wouldn't put the engine near top of the problems- it doesn't really explain why Andromeda was worse than DAI despite coming after.

 

Sounds more like issues relating to half-baked build tools than anything fundamentally wrong with the engine. All that BioWare jank with Andromeda seems more like **** QA from strained time tables and over cranked developers. The engine teams usually have it better since they are preparing for things farther down the road. The end game logic is a bit removed from the integrity of the engine.

 

Yeah, Andromeda's main problem was clearly bad project management more than anything, they had more than enough time if they used it well. It's a massive game (as is DAI), but there isn't enough to hold interest. The fps gameplay is actually pretty good but it's hard to see how the RPG systems would have worked well on any other engine either, they're kind of disjointed in a way that suggests people were developing systems and even planetary narrative in isolation; and the characters, plot and antagonists being so poor is 100% not due to the engine. Plus despite Andromeda following DAI and theoretically having extra time to work out any kinks DAI was a far more consistent end product.

 

Bad project management seems to have be Bioware's ongoing problem too given Anthem and DA4 clearly have had or are having a lot of problems too with development being rebooted.

 

BioWare was also subject to being forced to develop games with Frostbite..

 

Supposedly they weren't forced to use Frostbite. ISTR they had to use the same engine for DAI and Andromeda but it didn't have to be Frostbite.

Edited April 15, 2019 by Zoraptor

[Humanoid]

I look forward to The Sims 5 in Frostbite.

[marelooke]

I'd agree in general, but I wouldn't put the engine near top of the problems- it doesn't really explain why Andromeda was worse than DAI despite coming after.

 

Sounds more like issues relating to half-baked build tools than anything fundamentally wrong with the engine. All that BioWare jank with Andromeda seems more like **** QA from strained time tables and over cranked developers. The engine teams usually have it better since they are preparing for things farther down the road. The end game logic is a bit removed from the integrity of the engine.

 

Yeah, Andromeda's main problem was clearly bad project management more than anything, they had more than enough time if they used it well. It's a massive game (as is DAI), but there isn't enough to hold interest. The fps gameplay is actually pretty good but it's hard to see how the RPG systems would have worked well on any other engine either, they're kind of disjointed in a way that suggests people were developing systems and even planetary narrative in isolation; and the characters, plot and antagonists being so poor is 100% not due to the engine. Plus despite Andromeda following DAI and theoretically having extra time to work out any kinks DAI was a far more consistent end product.

 

Bad project management seems to have be Bioware's ongoing problem too given Anthem and DA4 clearly have had or are having a lot of problems too with development being rebooted.

 

BioWare was also subject to being forced to develop games with Frostbite..

 

Supposedly they weren't forced to use Frostbite. ISTR they had to use the same engine for DAI and Andromeda but it didn't have to be Frostbite.

 

Clearly the engine wasn't the sole problem, although at least in Anthem's case it seems the original concepts they had went out of the window because they couldn't get them to work in Frostbite. Which doesn't mean it's impossible, but something being possible means very little when you don't have people on staff that can make it happen.

 

What I do have difficulty believing is the "they were not forced to use it" line. While sure, technically they probably weren't forced to, as in, nobody put a gun to their head nor do I consider it very likely they were outright told they "must" use Frostbite. But if a big corporation publicly states they want to standardize on something... then yeah, it's generally not a good idea to diverge from that, especially if you're a very visible part of said corporation, like BioWare is.

 

EA management: "Hai guys, we're going to standardize on Frostbite which is this awesome engine that can do anything we want it to and doing so will save us tons of money, because we no longer have to pay royalties to outside parties!"

Investors: "Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!"

BioWare management: "Yeah, that's nice and all but that engine won't really work for us, we'll use something else instead."

Investors: *confused faces*

EA management: *very angry glares in the direction of BioWare management*

[HoonDing]

EA should be wiser with their acquisitions. Nothing but incompetents.

[Katphood]

I am no graphics designer/programmer but Frostbite worked pretty well for DA: Inquisition.

[Zoraptor]

What I do have difficulty believing is the "they were not forced to use it" line. While sure, technically they probably weren't forced to, as in, nobody put a gun to their head nor do I consider it very likely they were outright told they "must" use Frostbite. But if a big corporation publicly states they want to standardize on something... then yeah, it's generally not a good idea to diverge from that, especially if you're a very visible part of said corporation, like BioWare is.

 

I could very easily see a situation such as: (1) DICE tells EA that Frostbite can be used for all sorts of games and (2) Bioware says they're happy to use it and shouldn't have any problems developing DAI on it; only after that does (3) EA decide Frostbite should be used as a policy/ preference because even their RPG studio says it should be ok for them.

[Malcador]

https://www.vg247.com/2019/04/16/obsidian-chris-avellone/

 

 

 

“So there’s a few things,” Avellone explains. “I think the most important thing is just communication on all levels, because what was really strange is that – even amongst the owner’s circle – there might be two owners who might actually really know what was going on with a certain project, with a certain issue, and the others might be in the dark. And that would happen at all levels.

 

Not sure how this is a problem.  My company works this...hm..