Arcanum

[Walsingham]

That is so correct...I mean they should one the skills a little bit better than that but again its a old school game that well programmers didn't wanna finished up the game and dropped it publishing company to get it out on the market. It was totally sad when they didn't bother add more patches for it. Until the fan who loved the game decided to add in the unofficial patches and made the game even more fun to play.

 

Too bad that they when totally out of business though...

 

Do you mind if I ask whether you've had someone check your speech centres for woodworm?

[Gromnir]

That is so correct...I mean they should one the skills a little bit better than that but again its a old school game that well programmers didn't wanna finished up the game and dropped it publishing company to get it out on the market. It was totally sad when they didn't bother add more patches for it. Until the fan who loved the game decided to add in the unofficial patches and made the game even more fun to play.

 

Too bad that they when totally out of business though...

 

is good that they went out of business. talent that were being wasted at troika gots dispersed to other more viable developers. the system works. huzzah. most o' the folks who has been applauding arcanum in this thread is part o' the same dozen or so that has been building arcanum's non-existent legend over at codex for the past decade. in their addled estimation, arcanum appears to have actually become better in the last few years. strange. nothing new.

 

if one feels like sharing hugs with like-minded fans, make an "I LUV ARCANUM" thread over at codex. no doubt it will leave you all warm and tingly.

 

http://www.rpgcodex.net/index.php

 

is nothing being developed by obsidian save dungeon siege iii, which hardly even counts as a crpg. absence o' casual fans leads to more concentrated hardcore pov... which may not be a good thing now that we consider.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Volourn]

" talent that were being wasted at troika gots dispersed to other more viable developers."

 

Yeah, like that guy who went into real estate! Or those guys who went into MMO development? Or those guys who vanished into thin air enver to be heard of again! R00fles!

[Gromnir]

" talent that were being wasted at troika gots dispersed to other more viable developers."

 

Yeah, like that guy who went into real estate! Or those guys who went into MMO development? Or those guys who vanished into thin air enver to be heard of again! R00fles!

 

exactly. the folks with the talent moved on to other jobs where there talents would be useful. where is the confusion?

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Crazy Tuvok]

" talent that were being wasted at troika gots dispersed to other more viable developers."

 

Yeah, like that guy who went into real estate! Or those guys who went into MMO development? Or those guys who vanished into thin air enver to be heard of again! R00fles!

 

exactly. the folks with the talent moved on to other jobs where there talents would be useful. where is the confusion?

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

 

Yeah Gromnir because that is just exactly how the world works. Those who are talented get to move onto to other jobs in their chosen field and the hacks have to do something else. Nobody undeserving has to make a career move and everyone who has to make a career move is deserving.

 

The universe really is just that balanced and fair that talent always succeeds on its own virtues and those that don't are talentless.

[Gromnir]

" talent that were being wasted at troika gots dispersed to other more viable developers."

 

Yeah, like that guy who went into real estate! Or those guys who went into MMO development? Or those guys who vanished into thin air enver to be heard of again! R00fles!

 

exactly. the folks with the talent moved on to other jobs where there talents would be useful. where is the confusion?

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

 

Yeah Gromnir because that is just exactly how the world works. Those who are talented get to move onto to other jobs in their chosen field and the hacks have to do something else. Nobody undeserving has to make a career move and everyone who has to make a career move is deserving.

 

The universe really is just that balanced and fair that talent always succeeds on its own virtues and those that don't are talentless.

 

*snort*

 

conversely, we find that most often the folks that complain 'bout the lack o' fairness in the american business world is the ones who don't work hard enough or don't have enough talent. am gonna suggest that your woe-is-me scenario is far less likely than Gromnir's. yeah, the fact that a certain stench possibly adhered to a troika resume mighta made a lateral move difficult for some. even so, talented folks who works hard will get jobs. find some rare exception is possible, but the exception is noteworthy only 'cause they is exceptions... particularly as we is talking 'bout 2005 and not 2011.

 

btw, am not saying that everybody gets the job they deserve. is all kinda politics and unspoken qualifications that sees less talented folks promoted over more talented. even so, the scenario o' a genuine talented developer not able to get job (different than don't want) in spite o' hard work is far more difficult to believe than is the unfair theory o' business.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Enoch]

Yeah, it's hard to argue that Troika's repeated screwups on the business side of things (dealing with flaky publishers, agreeing to too-tight deadlines, not scoping their projects to comport with said deadlines, etc., etc.) didn't hold back those talented developers who they did have on-staff.

[Zoraptor]

Real Estate Dude (Jason Anderson?) is back in development anyway. At inExile?

 

So far as I can recall just about everyone who was at Troika is still working in games development.

[Minchi]

Oh yeah do u remember when they tried to make a sequel to Vampire the masquerade and failed badly and Activision had to cut their paid before the studio went bust. I just found it kinda sad right about know...You know if they tried to work on the coding and hammer out all the bugs before sending it to publisher it would be good but again they screwed up...XP

 

I hope one day we will See Vampire The Masquerade 3 sometime in the future you know...

[Niten_Ryu]

Real Estate Dude (Jason Anderson?) is back in development anyway. At inExile?

 

I think he's in Turtle Rock Studios now - Not sure if they have ties to Valve anymore. Is Leo still at Blizzard ? Timmy working some MMOG project in Carbine (NCSoft? ).

[GreasyDogMeat]

I have to say I agree with Gromnir. Every Troika game was a disaster in one way or another. I'd say their best game so far was Vampire and even it was a mess at released that is only really playable now thanks to fan patches. There was some talent at Troika and I hope that talent has found new jobs at other companies. Some of them may have even gone to Obsidian.

[Gizmo]

Is Leo still at Blizzard ?

On Wikipedia he is listed as the lead world designer on Diablo III.

Edited April 16, 2011 by Gizmo

[Slowtrain]

I have to say I agree with Gromnir. Every Troika game was a disaster in one way or another.

 

 

I don't know if I quite agree with "disaster". Dai-Katana was a disaster. Troika's games were all pretty good in their own ways, all of them just lacked fine tuning and proper QA.

[GreasyDogMeat]

I don't know if I quite agree with "disaster". Dai-Katana was a disaster. Troika's games were all pretty good in their own ways, all of them just lacked fine tuning and proper QA.

Perhaps not disasters. As someone who actually beat Daikatana, it does put the word 'disaster' into perspective. beating it was a mission of masochism.

 

Obsidian is a bit similar to Troika in that their games often require polish or feel rough around the edges, but the draw has always been immediately apparent for me with Obsidian games. Troika games have required a LOT more scratching at the surface to find the good.

[Jaesun]

Troika games have required a LOT more scratching at the surface to find the good.

 

Not at all. Bloodlines was a delicious feast from start to finish (after the final Official patches). It still today is one of the best cRPG experience upon equal level as Mask of the Betrayer. No scratching at the surface required.

[Minchi]

Whoa that is like the only game that i never beaten or played o.o;;; I hope it gets eventually gets put in GOG or something so we can truly play it even though it was a bad game though...

[Slowtrain]

The similarities between Troika and Obsidian are...unsettling.

[Volourn]

They have very little similarities outside the obvious 'ropg developer' and 'headed by a handful of former BISers'.

[Gizmo]

Whoa that is like the only game that i never beaten or played o.o;;; I hope it gets eventually gets put in GOG or something so we can truly play it even though it was a bad game though...

Bloodlines?

 

I could not find it anywhere boxed, so I bought access to it on Steam. The game won't run "as is" from them if you have more than 2 Gig RAM, and their official tech support advice is to tell you to cripple your RAM indefinitely.

 

(I had to resort to a 3rd party hack to get it to work, but it works now and is very playable.)

[Ice9]

In my mind, Obsidian is essentially Troika 2.0. Excellent game concepts marred by bugs and an inability to release a game that damaged at launch. Obsidian had a head start though; they were handed the right to make big sequels to already established IPs.

[Tigranes]

I think there's quite big differences at the management level though - Obsidian isn't the master of project management and they've had problems with publisher relationships, polish, etc, but overall they've managed to pull through the difficult early years and establish themselves in a way taht Troika never could, who were essentially in danger already after Arcanum and just slid down to oblivion from there.

 

I'm not the greatest fan of their sequel strategy but I think it's undeniable Feargus ensured the company's survival and initial growth with some clever dealmaking. Certainly FO:NV for instance achieved sales, audiences and a combination of critical acclaim & popular appeal that no Troika game ever did, as much as I love Arcanum. You can't seriously compare this to, say, a decision to make TOEE, which was pretty inexplicable from a business point of view.

[GreasyDogMeat]

Not at all. Bloodlines was a delicious feast from start to finish (after the final Official patches). It still today is one of the best cRPG experience upon equal level as Mask of the Betrayer. No scratching at the surface required.

For me it really did. I absolutely hated the game my first time through. Between the bugs (and they were BAD), not being into the whole vampire thing, the main story being interesting, but then turning so pointless, hating the initial ending I got and possibly my biggest mistake: playing as a Malkavian. After that first time with Bloodlines I was raging and quite happy that Troika had gone kaboom. Thats what those bastards get for this steaming pile of game!!

 

A year or two later I gave the game another chance with a fan-patch and with a character who could actually RESPOND to dialogue and I had a much more enjoyable game. I still didn't like the major plot of the game, seemed so pointless, and I'm still not really into vampires, but the game is actually quite good, especially how the seven different vampire races play. The game also has great atmosphere.

 

Temple of Elemental Evil really showed me how important a story is to me. The game's combat is great, the music and atmosphere are also really good (I love the town theme music and would enjoy just exploring and listening to it) but the voice acting and story... I've been more engrossed with Gold Box era games like Pool of Radiance and no I'm not exaggerating. Troika claimed a lot of the game was nerfed because of the publisher, but then I find out stuff like a brothel was cut from the game. I'm sorry, but being able to visit some hookers like Fallout 2 and Arcanum would not have saved ToEE. I did manage to get to the final boss, but just quit because I was just not having a good time with the game.

 

Arcanum was a middle ground for Troika games IMHO. The setting and music was great, the story was ok, but holy heck were the graphics and combat horrible.

 

Many of these three games have some fundamental problems here. SERIOUS problems. With Obsidian, while each of their game has been flawed, it hasn't really been anywhere near the game killers that Troika had IMHO. Part of it may have just been luck for me. People have complained about Alpha Protocol being really buggy, but other than a few minor problems I've never had a game stopper like I've had with EVERY Troika game. Heck, with Neverwinter Nights 2 and, especially, the expansion packs the only real flaw I saw with them was I didn't think it was very well optimized for computers of the time.

 

I used to be worried that Obsidian would go the way of Troika, and who knows maybe they will, but they seem to be doing better and better while Troika was just up and down and sideways all over the place. You might say Obsidian got it easy with big name sequels, but Troika had a D&D release, and D&D held a lot of weight (at least with me) at the time after all those insano-awesome infinity engine games. Temple took D&D to new lows for me.

 

It is a shame Troika went under, but after their record I wasn't surprised and I do hope they found new jobs at other dev companies because there was talent there.

[Slowtrain]

One difference I think, agreeing with Tig, is that Obs seems to be better at getting projects that have commercial value than Troika did, although Alpha Protocol does feel like a Troika game in a lot of ways.

 

But, DS3, though not much interest for me personally, seems a much more potentially lucrative financial choice than ToEE on its best day.

[Niten_Ryu]

In my mind, Obsidian is essentially Troika 2.0. Excellent game concepts marred by bugs and an inability to release a game that damaged at launch. Obsidian had a head start though; they were handed the right to make big sequels to already established IPs.

 

I agree. Obsidian tries to survive by taking jobs that none else will. KotoR 2 with crappy engine for console and PC in hidiously fast schedule - Sure, we'll take it. Dungeon Siege 3, the brand that should have been killed after first game and definately after movie - Yes, we'll waste our top of the class writing talent in game biz for that turd of a brand. It's no wonder that MotB is Obsidians best game, as development tools, rule set and world aspects were already made. This allowed Obsidian to focus in their strongest parts - the writing and characters.

[Tigranes]

Thinking that KOTOR2, NWN2, FO:NV and DS3, all in all, are 'taking jobs that noone else will' is pure nonsense. They all had their legacy problems but the first three have been definitely worth it for Obs, and probably the publishers, so far.

 

All of Troika's games had sales figures like 100k-200k in the first year (can anyone remember?), while Obs' sequels break million point.