WHY HAS OBSIDION NOT REPLIED TO ANY OF THIS?

[Worldshaper]

Im just curious..after all this bitching on the forums( and for MORE than good reason) ..I have yet to see any responces to anything from anyone at Obsidion....Is this what we can expect to see when NWN2 hits shelves???

 

As a big fan of Star Wars, and of Kotor 1....I can only say, that I am appalled and totally let down by this sad shape game. Released with more bugs than I can count...This trully is a sad thing, after Lucas Ats new President makes this long winded speech in a recent magazine about how they are turning things around..only to slap its followers in the face with this rushed to release product.....

 

Don't know where the blame lies specifically..( though, being a tester myself...Im sure Lucas Arts holds a huge amount of it...but this does not let Obsidion off the hook by any means..) I will never purchase another product from either ...as it seems they have both thrown in their lot with big money, low quality buisness.

 

There go my hopes that you guys would make a decent NWN2 sequal...I see now what it is I would have had to look forward to..... :angry:

[Aryanne]

Well there are 2 other rpgs on the way if NWN2 isnt your cup of tea.TES 3 morrowind 4 and dragon age(from bio) are on the way.Guild wars will hold you over til 2006.

 

WHY HAS OBSIDION NOT REPLIED TO ANY OF THIS?

 

 

Because they f%&ked up and they know it.Besides rushed or not a game reflects its devs this is true for any game.

[void_pelican]

as has been stated many times before, obsidian had an INCREDIBLY short development cycle for a product of this magnitude. this may account for some of your complaints. however, as part of this short cycle, there was also an incredibly short Q&A process, which i believe was done by lucasarts.

 

i would not blame obsidian for any shortcomings of KOTOR II. i know they all worked very hard on the game, and are probably saddened themselves that decisions at lucasarts may or may not have contributed to any 'unpolished' aspects of the game that was released.

 

they are also not posting here because, i would guess, they are CONTRACTUALLY PROHIBITED from doing so. i.e, they would be fined. it's not their game legally, its lucasarts' game, and lucasarts probably has the final say on any information on the game OR patch that is released.

 

please take your bull**** elsewhere. and finish highschool. you ass.

[Wankenstein]

please take your bull**** elsewhere. and finish highschool. you ass.

 

Seconded.

[JamieKirby]

please take your bull**** elsewhere. and finish highschool. you ass.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Thirded. lol

[Dkunsberg]

No, hes right, but I know the reason. I think theres hope yet for NWN 2. Heres what I think. I recently read a article on gamespy that cleared everthing up. KotOR 2 was published in a hurry. so it wasn't bug checked, or made mr a maximum peromance. Thats why ppl are encountering so many bugs. They wanted to hit of a sequel to KotOR 1 fast, hopeing that the well deserved reputation of KotOR 1 would alone take these games off the shelves. Personally for me it worked, as for the magority of people who bought this game. I think since obidisain has seen their error here They'er taking some time to publish this game. At least I sure hope so, NWN is one of the most awe-inspiering games ever, it'd better not be ruined. Plus, Obdisian can't affrod another screw up that will poison their name again. Its got allotta people waiting for NWN2. Me as one of them. So, for gameplays sake, I hope NWN doesn't come out for another three years, four would be prefferable

David

[void_pelican]

dkunsberg,

 

obsidian probably had very little to do with the publishing schedule of kotor II. lucasarts wanted kotor II out the door a good while before christmas, to maximize profits as you say, and release it before the engine got _too_ old and ugly, compared to other games. lucasarts is a massive publisher and with star wars has a massively successful intellectual property that they have very tight rein over. obsidian is still a relatively small developer, although they have landed some nice projects so far. considering how 'lucky' obsidian must have been to develop kotor II, they almost certainly weren't in a position to tell lucasarts they needed another 6-8 months to polish the game - in all probability the tight publishing schedule was set mostly in stone from the very start. perhaps one day obsidian and their publishers will have more of an id/activision relationship, and be able to have 'when its done' release dates.

 

once again i doubt very much that obsidian had much input into when the game would be published and i woudln't attribute any problems with kotor II to some kind of nefarious intent on obsidian's part - their errors, if you could call them that, were mostly due to time constraints. all imo of course.

[Dkunsberg]

dkunsberg,

 

obsidian probably had very little to do with the publishing schedule of kotor II.  lucasarts wanted kotor II out the door a good while before christmas, to maximize profits as you say, and release it before the engine got _too_ old and ugly, compared to other games. lucasarts is a massive publisher and with star wars has a massively successful intellectual property that they have very tight rein over. obsidian is still a relatively small developer, although they have landed some nice projects so far.  considering how 'lucky' obsidian must have been to develop kotor II,  they almost certainly weren't in a position to tell lucasarts they needed another 6-8 months to polish the game - in all probability the tight publishing schedule was set mostly in stone from the very start.  perhaps one day obsidian and their publishers will have more of an id/activision relationship, and be able to have 'when its done' release dates.

 

once again i doubt very much that obsidian had much input into when the game would be published and i woudln't attribute any problems with kotor II to some kind of nefarious intent on obsidian's part - their errors, if you could call them that, were mostly due to time constraints. all imo of course.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Well, I agree with you. it's not obdisians fault, so we can switch all my insults to lucas arts. my question is, why did get it out in 2004, why not christmas 2005. This would have fixed everything. Also, it was dumb to think that this graphics would get out dated. Out of ten game PC players maybe 7 of them have good game cards. for the other maybe 30% (not based off anything real so I'm making a guess) have low graphics. This would hit stocks of with maybe a 1/3 incrase in sales. People who have shlumy graphics cards could play the game and lucas arts would be able to make alot more money. Also, the bug fix would bring these off the shelves even faster. Not to mention the build of extra suspence that would sell more KotOR II for those anticipating KotOR I ppl. the longer you wait, the more you want it. Why?

David

[Judge Hades]

Personally, I don't care about how long or how short the development cycle is. As a game player all I care about is the bottomline. That bottomline is how enjoyable the game is and the quality of its code.

 

Do I solely blame Obsidian? No, of course not. LucasArts is to share responsibility equally for the game.

[Reveilled]

When Obsidian signed a contract that allowed Lucasarts to push release dates, rush QA, and to force them into silence, they became as responsible for all of those things as Lucasarts, because ultimately, they gave them that power.

 

They are as responsible for this game's faults as they are for the game's qualities.

[Judge Hades]

Right on.

 

Obsidian, and developers in general need to adopt the "Its done when its done" mentality and tell publishers to back off. Sure the publishers won't like it and might withhold money at first but if developers, as a whole, stick by their guns and *gasp* unionize on some level they can force publishers to yield.

[airic]

Who cares what is in the contract. The title of this forum is "PC Technical Support (Self-Help) - KotOR2" See the (Self-Help) part. If you want professional tech support for the game go over to support.lucasarts.com They are responsible for tech support not Obsidian.

[Oerwinde]

When Obsidian signed a contract that allowed Lucasarts to push release dates, rush QA, and to force them into silence, they became as responsible for all of those things as Lucasarts, because ultimately, they gave them that power.

 

They are as responsible for this game's faults as they are for the game's qualities.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

If Obsidian was an established developer with enough clout to tell the publishers whats what I'd agree, but the problem is it was either do it under LA's terms, or not make a game at all, then all the nice people at Obsidian would be looking for new jobs.

 

Personally, I think what Obsidian should do is push to get the job making KotOR3, point to all the complaints about KotOR2 so they can get a better amount of time to make it, and stick one or 2 guys on finishing up the KotOR2 ending as bonus content to be released with KotOR3.

 

And as a response to the thread title, they did... on the Bioware boards.

[Bazooka]

When Obsidian signed a contract that allowed Lucasarts to push release dates, rush QA, and to force them into silence, they became as responsible for all of those things as Lucasarts, because ultimately, they gave them that power.

 

They are as responsible for this game's faults as they are for the game's qualities.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

If Obsidian was an established developer with enough clout to tell the publishers whats what I'd agree, but the problem is it was either do it under LA's terms, or not make a game at all, then all the nice people at Obsidian would be looking for new jobs.

 

Personally, I think what Obsidian should do is push to get the job making KotOR3, point to all the complaints about KotOR2 so they can get a better amount of time to make it, and stick one or 2 guys on finishing up the KotOR2 ending as bonus content to be released with KotOR3.

 

And as a response to the thread title, they did... on the Bioware boards.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

well, that really would be cool... I'd really wanna play the ending that was intended...

[Horus]

Who cares what is in the contract.  The title of this forum is "PC Technical Support (Self-Help) - KotOR2"  See the (Self-Help) part.  If you want professional tech support for the game go over to support.lucasarts.com  They are responsible for tech support not Obsidian.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

I found they're not that kind of professional.

[KwizzN]

Who cares what is in the contract. The title of this forum is "PC Technical Support (Self-Help) - KotOR2" See the (Self-Help) part. If you want professional tech support for the game go over to support.lucasarts.com They are responsible for tech support not Obsidian.

 

This naturally only applies to North America, for Europe its Activision. LA won't even read your mail if you aren't from North America, merely say it's not their job.

[Bazooka]

Who cares what is in the contract. The title of this forum is "PC Technical Support (Self-Help) - KotOR2" See the (Self-Help) part. If you want professional tech support for the game go over to support.lucasarts.com They are responsible for tech support not Obsidian.

 

This naturally only applies to North America, for Europe its Activision. LA won't even read your mail if you aren't from North America, merely say it's not their job.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

From the activision site:

 

For support on lucasarts titles bought in the UK please refer to http://support.lucasarts.com or http://www.lucasarts.com

 

[airic]

I found they're not that kind of professional.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

That may be, but the point still stands that per Lucasarts, they are the ones to provide technical support, at least with NA and appearantly the UK as well.

[softnerd]

Funny. Don't get me wrong, a company selling a product should:

 

1. Try their best to QA a good product and,

2. Back said product up after release.

 

However, I'm a software architect for...well, I won't say who...and I just think it's soooo funny to browse game forums and read the rantings of people having technical problems. I'm not trying to insult anyone, but people, you really don't understand how tough it is to QA a game product for the PC. There are so friggin' many driver issues that you have to deal with it's really not even funny. Not only do you have to deal with lots of drivers (video, sound, etc.), but you have to deal with lots of crappy, poorly programmed drivers as well. It's not your fault that x driver was written by a crew of overworked, opium-addicted monkeys, but you have to try to code around it nonetheless. Now imagine trying to work with someone else's code that was originally written for Xbox and then ported for the PC version of DirectX on top of any other driver compatibility issues. Yikes, that's ugly.

 

That's why 99% of all PC games released have LOTS of technical issues with certain hardware or system configurations. Maybe you've been lucky and have only experienced said problems with a couple of titles, but believe me, they're there. In every game. For someone. If you can't handle trying to troubleshoot or waiting for a patch, then get an XBox or a Playstation where there is only one set of hardware specs to deal with. I'd say you could get a Mac, but...um...companies don't really release too many games for Macs.

[Bazooka]

Funny.  Don't get me wrong, a company selling a product should:

 

1. Try their best to QA a good product and,

2. Back said product up after release.

 

However, I'm a software architect for...well, I won't say who...and I just think it's soooo funny to browse game forums and read the rantings of people having technical problems. I'm not trying to insult anyone, but people, you really don't understand how tough it is to QA a game product for the PC. There are so friggin' many driver issues that you have to deal with it's really not even funny.  Not only do you have to deal with lots of drivers (video, sound, etc.), but you have to deal with lots of crappy, poorly programmed drivers as well.  It's not your fault that x driver was written by a crew of overworked, opium-addicted monkeys, but you have to try to code around it nonetheless.  Now imagine trying to work with someone else's code that was originally written for Xbox and then ported for the PC version of DirectX on top of any other driver compatibility issues.  Yikes, that's ugly.

 

That's why 99% of all PC games released have LOTS of technical issues with certain hardware or system configurations.  Maybe you've been lucky and have only experienced said problems with a couple of titles, but believe me, they're there.  In every game.  For someone.  If you can't handle trying to troubleshoot or waiting for a patch, then get an XBox or a Playstation where there is only one set of hardware specs to deal with.  I'd say you could get a Mac, but...um...companies don't really release too many games for Macs. 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

In most cases you're completely right, but in this case that's bullsh*t.... There are not just problems on some configurations, but there are problems on (allmost) all configurations with Ati cards and particular sound cards... IMO that's just crappy QA work.

 

The 'funny' thing is that the same problems existed with the initial pc version of KotOR1, and after it was patched, a lot of problems were solved. But for KotOR 2 they used the unpatched engine they also used in the initial KotOR 1 release... That's something I really don't understand. That's just doing your work in a really crappy way.

[Kiwegapa]

Obsidian is a new studio, and apparently from some of the posts made by devs that I have read, they had NO QA team on this game, instead leaving that job to LucasArts who dropped the ball. Having learned from this current mess, Obsidian has implemented their own in-house QA team for NWN 2.

 

Yeah, Obsidian made a couple of mistakes. But the ones made by LucasArts are so glaring as to cast Obsidian's few mistakes amongst their brilliant design into insignifigance. If KOTOR 2 had had another year or even six months for completion, I guarantee you that it would have been just as good as the first game or perhaps better.

 

Reading the scripted dialog that was left unused in the game files almost makes me cry for how good this could have been, but was prevented from being.

[Wankenstein]

Way to go dipsticks. You got em to shut the forums down.

[softnerd]

Funny.  Don't get me wrong, a company selling a product should:

 

1. Try their best to QA a good product and,

2. Back said product up after release.

 

However, I'm a software architect for...well, I won't say who...and I just think it's soooo funny to browse game forums and read the rantings of people having technical problems. I'm not trying to insult anyone, but people, you really don't understand how tough it is to QA a game product for the PC. There are so friggin' many driver issues that you have to deal with it's really not even funny.  Not only do you have to deal with lots of drivers (video, sound, etc.), but you have to deal with lots of crappy, poorly programmed drivers as well.  It's not your fault that x driver was written by a crew of overworked, opium-addicted monkeys, but you have to try to code around it nonetheless.  Now imagine trying to work with someone else's code that was originally written for Xbox and then ported for the PC version of DirectX on top of any other driver compatibility issues.  Yikes, that's ugly.

 

That's why 99% of all PC games released have LOTS of technical issues with certain hardware or system configurations.  Maybe you've been lucky and have only experienced said problems with a couple of titles, but believe me, they're there.  In every game.  For someone.  If you can't handle trying to troubleshoot or waiting for a patch, then get an XBox or a Playstation where there is only one set of hardware specs to deal with.  I'd say you could get a Mac, but...um...companies don't really release too many games for Macs. 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

In most cases you're completely right, but in this case that's bullsh*t.... There are not just problems on some configurations, but there are problems on (allmost) all configurations with Ati cards and particular sound cards... IMO that's just crappy QA work.

 

The 'funny' thing is that the same problems existed with the initial pc version of KotOR1, and after it was patched, a lot of problems were solved. But for KotOR 2 they used the unpatched engine they also used in the initial KotOR 1 release... That's something I really don't understand. That's just doing your work in a really crappy way.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

Well, speaking of ATI cards, the game was QA'd with Catalyst 4.11. In my experience the video works great with that driver. Subsequent versions of the driver don't work properly. This is an OpenGL game, a platform to which ATI is not known to pay a lot of attention. If I were to guess, I would place more of the problems with ATI drivers on ATI. But maybe that's just me and my crazy tendancy to form opinions based on evidence...

 

I posted another thread detailing how to drop the 4.11 version of the OpenGL driver into your KOTOR2 folder. For most people who are truly having ATI problems this will fix it. Give it a try:

 

http://forums.obsidianent.com/index.php?showtopic=30786

[Chamdar]

I posted another thread detailing how to drop the 4.11 version of the OpenGL driver into your KOTOR2 folder.  For most people who are truly having ATI problems this will fix it.  Give it a try:

 

http://forums.obsidianent.com/index.php?showtopic=30786

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

The 4.11 Catalyst version will NOT fix all the issues related to problems with ATI graphics cards. You should check your facts before posting lies. In my case I have tried version 4.2, 4.3, 4.11, 5.1, 5.2 with different bugs for each version. 4.2 and 4.3 has glow but crashes after a movie. The rest has no glow and other issues like worse fps in some cases. The list goes on and on and other people can not even run the game with any driver.

[softnerd]

The 4.11 Catalyst version will NOT fix all the issues related to problems with ATI graphics cards. You should check your facts before posting lies. In my case I have tried version 4.2, 4.3, 4.11, 5.1, 5.2 with different bugs for each version. 4.2 and 4.3 has glow but crashes after a movie. The rest has no glow and other issues like worse fps in some cases. The list goes on and on and other people can not even run the game with any driver.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

<sigh>

 

Lies!?! <laughing> Don't you think that's a bit melodramatic, child? A fix is not necessarily a fix for everyone, son. The vast majority of people who were actually having video driver problems who have tried this have had much success. I've played through the game twice with not even a hiccup with a Radeon 9800 Pro. Did you consider that this fix will not work with your particular crappy card? Did you consider that your problems might not even be your video driver? No, the saber 'glow' does not work with most ATI drivers. It's sad, I know. Let's all take a moment to cry about it. This fix works with most of the mainstream ATI cards. I'm sorry if it doesn't work for you. That doesn't make it, <laughing again> LIES!!! Please grow up a bit before posting........LIES!!!