omnimutant Posted February 21, 2006 Posted February 21, 2006 I think that Troika only suffered from a small marketing budget and ultimatly thats what killed it. There are literally hundreds of games that are completly buggy and totally owrthless to play created buy much bigger companies with larger budgets. These companies still exist. These games are horrible but people still buy them, because the box reads like a cool game, or the PC magazine add or (bought off) preview sounded interesting. Some companies have the cash to put out tv commercials to get people to purchase the games. It's much like movie industry these day's. You can make the biggest POS to ever hit the screen, but if the preview looks cool, your gona get a ton of people paying to see it at least once. I think the majority of gamers don't really know or care who produced the game they are playing, and will probably purchase future games from that same company even though the game may totaly blow chunks. I think Troika suffered from the fact that they wanted to produce Original games right out of the gate, which no one had heard of, with very little money to market it correctly. I think Obsidian figured it out by starting with known titles to get established before moving on to somthing unique. This gives them a little more leway in case that new original title flops. Overall I personally Loved Arcanum. It had it's bugs and flaws but so does just about every opther game I can think of in existance. I was disapointed with ToEE but I think that had more to do with the fact that the P&P version of ToEE was nothing more then a hack & slash suicide fest anyway. They could have picked a far more intresting module to Replicate IMO. And see, they get flack for making ToEE the way that they did but all they wanted to do was be true to the real thing, and with that I think they did a great job. I just didn't like it. Never Played Blood lines, I'm not big on the whole vamp thing. Even thought it's not entirly correct to give them credit for Fallout, many of them did work on it, and it was a work of art!
ShadowPaladin V1.0 Posted February 21, 2006 Posted February 21, 2006 Troika games had serious bugs and lots of them. One of my favourite sayings "More bugs in a Troika game than in a rotting log". It's not like the games were not well publisiced either. Arcanum got huge publicity. GAME did a mail shot for TOEE. It's a kind of three strikes and your out thing. Arcanum buggy , TOEE very buggy Vampire buggy (even though it wasnt so bad). By the time Vampire rolled around everyone was very aware of Troikas reputation for bugginess. Even though Vampire was rather good (buggy as well though) it was at fire sale prices within a week or two. I have to agree with Volourn. Bioware is pretty much dead now. Deals like this kills development studios. 478327[/snapback]
Darque Posted February 21, 2006 Posted February 21, 2006 I can defend Arcanum with a very brief post.... It was awesome! Game over! ROOFles! (w00t) Game over man! (w00t) Game over! (w00t)
Gabrielle Posted February 21, 2006 Posted February 21, 2006 I can defend Arcanum with a very brief post.... It was awesome! Game over! ROOFles! (w00t) Game over man! (w00t) Game over! (w00t) <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Right on sister! That's what I think about Troika.
Gromnir Posted February 21, 2006 Posted February 21, 2006 "Game over!" well that portion, at the very least, is an accurate depiction o' troika. HA! Good Fun! "If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence."Justice Louis Brandeis, Concurring, Whitney v. California, 274 U.S. 357 (1927) "Im indifferent to almost any murder as long as it doesn't affect me or mine."--Gfted1 (September 30, 2019)
Gabrielle Posted February 21, 2006 Posted February 21, 2006 "Game over!" well that portion, at the very least, is an accurate depiction o' troika. HA! Good Fun! <{POST_SNAPBACK}> That was wrong.
Darque Posted February 21, 2006 Posted February 21, 2006 (edited) "Game over!" well that portion, at the very least, is an accurate depiction o' troika. HA! Good Fun! <{POST_SNAPBACK}> omg, that made me laugh out loud!!!!!!!!!!!!! :D Grommy FTW Edited February 21, 2006 by Darque
alanschu Posted February 21, 2006 Posted February 21, 2006 O RLY = silly "fad" that ranks up there with l33tsp34k and 'pwned' Hudson is forever.
Cantousent Posted February 22, 2006 Posted February 22, 2006 Not to derail the discussion, but who is the fellow in the picture? Boyarsky after the release of ToEE? Fionavar's Holliday Wishes to all members of our online community: Happy Holidays Join the revelry at the Obsidian Plays channel:Obsidian Plays Remembering tarna, Phosphor, Metadigital, and Visceris. Drink mead heartily in the halls of Valhalla, my friends!
Darque Posted February 22, 2006 Posted February 22, 2006 Not to derail the discussion, but who is the fellow in the picture? Boyarsky after the release of ToEE? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Go! Watch Aliens! Now!
Gabrielle Posted February 22, 2006 Posted February 22, 2006 Not to derail the discussion, but who is the fellow in the picture? Boyarsky after the release of ToEE? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Pvt Hudson from Aliens aka Bill Paxton.
Volourn Posted February 22, 2006 Posted February 22, 2006 (edited) "I think Troika suffered from the fact that they wanted to produce Original games right out of the gate, which no one had heard of, with very little money to market it correctly." Hahaha. That's funny. So very funny when 2 out of their 3 games are licensed ones, and one of those (TOEE) is based on quite possibly the most popular pnp module ever made. Sorry; but don't blame Troika's failure on them trying to be 'original' or 'having very little money'. Afterall, one of the reasons why they were able to make Arcanum is because of them pimping themselves as the Creators of Fallout tm. Not to mention the fact that Tim Cain has/had been in the industry for years. Troika wasn't a bunch of newbies who just randomly decided to start some silly game company on a whim. The only acceptable exuse for Troika's failure is that THEY made costly mistakes. Period. And, I say that despite liking 2 of their games in spite of their weaknesses (which both had enough of). Now it's game over. P.S. 'Til someone else posts.... Edited February 22, 2006 by Volourn DWARVES IN PROJECT ETERNITY = VOLOURN HAS PLEDGED $250.
Cantousent Posted February 22, 2006 Posted February 22, 2006 If Gromnir hadn't already cited it, I would have a few choice words to say about Identify. Was it a bug... or a design decision? Oh, that had me riled. Troika really could have used less help from the Troika Liberation Front on that issue. As far as ToEE, how could Troika take a module like ToEE and not even improve the role-playing? How? I guess maybe they did put more in there, but it just seems nuts. Fionavar's Holliday Wishes to all members of our online community: Happy Holidays Join the revelry at the Obsidian Plays channel:Obsidian Plays Remembering tarna, Phosphor, Metadigital, and Visceris. Drink mead heartily in the halls of Valhalla, my friends!
Gromnir Posted February 22, 2006 Posted February 22, 2006 toee were a great game to be throwing in the faces of troika fans... previous to toee release Gromnir and vol and maybe 2 other folks on the atari boards noted that toee were a pretty lame hack 'n slash module and that maybe toee weren't the best source material. not only does they choose an existing module so that Gromnir already knows where everything is and who all the characters are, but they manage to choose a crappy module on top of everything else they done wrong. the troika fan reply were near universal: the old tsr modules are simply a framework. troika is the dm and they will flesh it out as any good dm should. Gromnir reply: after reading the dialogues from arcanum, we is convinced that the troika writers couldn't author a recipe for toast w/o screwing it up beyond all reason. as expected, Gromnir "If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence."Justice Louis Brandeis, Concurring, Whitney v. California, 274 U.S. 357 (1927) "Im indifferent to almost any murder as long as it doesn't affect me or mine."--Gfted1 (September 30, 2019)
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