inXile General Discussion Thread

[Zorba the Hutt]

Is someone doing this with TToN boxes?

Prob works best with games people want to buy

 

[FeelTheRads]

Fargo not interested in making games for the pol subforum

Well, that's suitable. A company of people who don't play games making a game for people who don't play games.

From "By Gamers, For Gamers" to "By Casuals, For Casuals".

Is someone doing this with TToN boxes?

Locking physical releases to Steam... such a great idea.

 

[FeelTheRads]

By the way, I googled how Interplay's tagline was exactly since I wasn't sure anymore and found that actually Razer have the same thing except reversed (For Gamers. By Gamers).

I wonder if Herve knows.

inb4 Razer is owned by Herve's evil good neutral twin.

 

[Lurker King]

Exactly. They're constantly repeating the number of words in T:ToN like it's a guarantee of success, which only indicates that they didn't really get why PS:T was good. Yeah, it had lots of words, but those words weren't written simply to justify some arbitrary bloated word count.

More communication with the fans, and paying attention to their likes and dislikes can only, if inXile hasn't been entirely devoid of any business acumen, result in a good thing for both.

Let me get this straight: Developers who don’t know how to do their job and have an arrogant attitude towards their audience will hire another community agent to increase the flow of feedback from a knowledgeable audience, so that they can avoid their own mistakes regarding core design principles of multi-million projects. Nah, not gonna happen. They just hired a random dude to pretend they care about their audience. That’s all.

 

[Bester]

Exactly. They're constantly repeating the number of words in T:ToN like it's a guarantee of success, which only indicates that they didn't really get why PS:T was good.

Nobody knows why it was good, it's the same as nobody knows what an RPG is. I'd say if you want to replicate Torment's success, find extremely passionate and talented young writers, not the old farts who try to do everything by the formula. But see, that's what I say. Somebody else says something different. There's no point in "listening to the community", nobody really knows shit.

 

[Sizzle]

Let me get this straight: Developers who don’t know how to do their job and have an arrogant attitude towards their audience, will hire another community agent to increase the flow of feedback from a knowledgeable audience, so that they can avoid their own mistakes regarding core design principles of multi-million projects. Nah, not gonna happen. They just hired a random dude to pretend they care about their audience. That’s all.

Maybe we're just reading too much into this (yeah, yeah, I know, this is the Codex, it's what we do), a community manager (or whatever his title is) is a pretty standard position in the gaming industry, most (non-indie) companies have them.

There's no point in "listening to the community", nobody really knows shit.

Somewhat true, but I'd argue that, for example, not a single person (who's ever played video games before) could possibly like T:ToN's combat, and that most of the complaints about it (slow, buggy, boring, etc.) would be almost universal. So while "the community" can bicker about the specific ins and outs of systems/characters/narrative structure/etc. their overall impressions are valuable data for any game developer.

Case in point - you're making a product for people who like reading in their computer games. Now, I've seen some people praising T:ToN's writing, but even they admit that there's simply too much of it. So you're not listening to the nitpicks of one lone autistic wanker who's unhappy with the sound quality of Battlecry_03.wav, but hundreds of people who bought your game and are all unhappy with pretty much the same thing. That's cause for alarm, careful analysis and appropriate changes to the game based on that feedback.

 

[Bester]

Somebody somewhere inevitable loves PST's combat.

Decisions by committee is a shitty way of making decisions. However counter-intuitive it may sound, listening to community is wrong in many cases, and since it's impossible to determine when it's ok or not ok, it should be altogether avoided.

 

[Lurker King]

Nobody knows why it was good, it's the same as nobody knows what an RPG is.

Just because there is no universal consensus about abstract generalities, doesn't mean that you can't have proper feedback and understanding about what made a specific cRPG tick. You can pinpoint the strenghts of BG2, PS:T, FO, etc. This is not relativism.

 

[Sizzle]

Somebody somewhere inevitable loves PST's combat.

There's a big difference between PS:T and T:ToN's combat. PS:T's combat is bad, but mercifully quickly over. T:ToN's is simply terrible - painfully slow, buggier than an anthill and mind-numbingly boring.

Decisions by committee is a shitty way of making decisions. However counter-intuitive it may sound, listening to community is wrong in many cases, and since it's impossible to determine when it's ok or not ok, it should be altogether avoided.

And yet - if most of your intended audience agrees that a feature (or system, or character, or whatever) is awful, what's the point of keeping it like that? Simply because "the fans are retards, I know best"?

To me, that screams that you're not a good game designer (because you're not making a product for yourself, but for others), because a competent GD - just like a good movie director, writer, etc. - knows that sometimes you have to compromise: cut things you personally like, or expand upon the things you personally don't, in order to make a better product.

 

[Bester]

There's a big difference between PS:T and T:ToN's combat. PS:T's combat is bad, but mercifully quickly over. T:ToN's is simply terrible - painfully slow, buggier than an anthill and mind-numbingly boring.

I only had two big fights in TTON (AI robots and underground things) and I thought it was ok if you could speed up animations. And it's actually possible to mod it in very easily, so in my view, the combat is easy to fix.

if most of your intended audience agrees that a feature (or system, or character, or whatever) is awful, what's the point of keeping it like that?

Because there is supposed to be a bigger picture. If you replace every character that isn't to the audience's liking and you keep doing it without ever stopping, you won't have a good game. There are tons of examples where this is true. Gamers don't see what makes the game tick. They want conveniences, but as you add more and more convenient things, the game falls apart and becomes a "log in, one hit the final boss, he's dead, end of game". A game is a good balance of players struggling against something and rewards for this struggle, and a story in between. If you make rewards too OP, (as the audience would like), the game falls apart. Anything that brings unbalance makes the game bad.

And so it's a game designer's job to make the tough calls on what stays and what goes. Like a pilot piloting a plane. He shouldn't listen to anyone, and in the end it'll be his responsibility and his alone.

I'd agree that the players' input on the story is ok to listen to in broad strokes. But not what you cite.

 

[Bester]

You can pinpoint the strenghts of BG2, PS:T, FO, etc. This is not relativism.

Like you've never seen people say BG2's combat was shit "because RTWP IS SHIT". And I happen to love BG2's combat. To each his own.

 

[Lurker King]

You can pinpoint the strenghts of BG2, PS:T, FO, etc. This is not relativism.

Like you've never seen people say BG2's combat was shit "because RTWP IS SHIT". And I happen to love BG2's combat. To each his own.

You are being disingenuous. Suppose that you decide to make a game for a BG-type of audience. My point is that you have some properties that you can recognize such as mage-duels, hard-counters, magic items, hundreds of quests, one-dimensional characters, 2D art and painted backgrounds, etc.; that are responsible for the success of BG2. The same thing holds for any other game. This is not rocket-science, but it takes a kind of developer that takes games and their audience seriously.

 

[Bester]

My point is that you have some properties that you can recognize such as mage-duels, hard-counters, magic items, hundreds of quests, one-dimensional characters, 2D art and painted backgrounds, etc.; that are responsible for the success of BG2.

Yeah, and PoE was supposed to have mage-duels and hard counters, and it doesn't, even though the "developer speaks with the community, etc etc". So...
And I disagree about 1d-characters. I think they were deep.
And I don't think the dimensionality of graphics is relevant.

Everybody has their own opinions about everything. The only thing absolute is that all post-2004 games are shit and we'll never see good ones again.

 

[Zombra]

if most of your intended audience agrees that a feature (or system, or character, or whatever) is awful, what's the point of keeping it like that?

Because there is supposed to be a bigger picture. If you replace every character that isn't to the audience's liking and you keep doing it without ever stopping, you won't have a good game. There are tons of examples where this is true. Gamers don't see what makes the game tick. They want conveniences, but as you add more and more convenient things, the game falls apart and becomes a "log in, one hit the final boss, he's dead, end of game". A game is a good balance of players struggling against something and rewards for this struggle, and a story in between. If you make rewards too OP, (as the audience would like), the game falls apart. Anything that brings unbalance makes the game bad.

All you're saying is that taking community feedback to an extreme is bad and pandering to players is bad. Duh. You extrapolate this to mean all community feedback is bad and developers should never listen to ideas or engage the fans at all. That's really really dumb.

 

[Lurker King]

Yeah, and PoE was supposed to have mage-duels and hard counters, and it doesn't, even though the "developer speaks with the community, etc etc". So... .

I’m not talking about speaking with your community, but about understanding their preferences and your product. PoE is a perfect example of the same autism that I'm critcizing, the difference being that they still managed to deliver other features such as trash mobs, RtwP, bunch of spells, classes, etc. But the game is still lackluster in comparison to BG2, and this reflected on sales.

And I disagree about 1d-characters. I think they were deep.

Again, it doesn’t matter whether you think they are deep or not. It matters whether they are liked or not by this audience.

And I don't think the dimensionality of graphics is relevant.

I’m sure that a 3D BG clone would be viewed as an abomination by most fans. Again, you don’t need to demand the kind of rigour you have in math.

Everybody has their own opinions about everything. The only thing absolute is that all post-2004 games are shit and we'll never see good ones again.

You can't state that we’ll never see good games again if nothing is objective, it's an incoherence.

 

[Sizzle]

There's a big difference between PS:T and T:ToN's combat. PS:T's combat is bad, but mercifully quickly over. T:ToN's is simply terrible - painfully slow, buggier than an anthill and mind-numbingly boring.

I only had two big fights in TTON (AI robots and underground things) and I thought it was ok if you could speed up animations. And it's actually possible to mod it in very easily, so in my view, the combat is easy to fix.

Did you only play the beginning of the game, or...? Because I'm betting you'd change your mind about what you said if you played the Castoff village (or whatever it's called) mandatory fight. The problems of T:ToN's combat go way beyond simply combat speed.

Yeah, and PoE was supposed to have mage-duels and hard counters

It doesn't have mage duels in the BG2 sense, but, as of TWM, it does have some good fights against archmages, and hard counters.

The only thing absolute is that all post-2004 games are shit and we'll never see good ones again.

Wow, that's... edgy even by Codex standards

Also completely untrue, but, hey, everybody's entitled to their own opinions :D

 

[Lurker King]

All you're saying is that taking community feedback to an extreme is bad and pandering to players is bad.

The problem is that they don't understand their audience's preferences, because they don't understand the game they were supposed to make. They wouldn't be able to fix this even if they pandered to players. They needed to know this right from the begining in order to establish their core design principles. They didn't and the game is a chore.

 

[Iznaliu]

Yeah, and PoE was supposed to have mage-duels and hard counters

Proof for this statement, please?

 

[FeelTheRads]

Yeah, and PoE was supposed to have mage-duels and hard counters

Proof for this statement, please?

Spiritual successor to the IE games.

Which turned out to be "it's 2d and isometric therefore IE!!!"

 

[Iznaliu]

But the game is still lackluster in comparison to BG2, and this reflected on sales.

BG2 was a mainstream game of its time. PoE wasn't really. After a certain point., quality has nothing to do with sales.

Which turned out to be "it's 2d and isometric therefore IE!!!"

Different parts of the IE games are important to different people.

 

[FeelTheRads]

2D and isometric is not exclusive to the IE games.

 

[Sizzle]

Another unrelated topic deteriorates into PoE bashing/defending.

Just speaks to T:ToN's quality and staying power, really :D

 

[Infinitron]

Commonly seen question on the Codex: "This Kickstarter game isn't what I expected it to be! If the developers were listening to the community, then how come they didn't add the stuff I want???"

Commonly seen answer #1: Devs were incompetent and simply failed to reproduce the desired experience.
Commonly seen answer #2: Devs weren't actually listening to the community and were clueless about what it wanted.

Answer most likely to be the truth: Differing priorities.

 

[Lurker King]

BG2 was a mainstream game of its time. PoE wasn't really. After a certain point., quality has nothing to do with sales.

BG2 was a game bought by fans of AD&D. Hardly mainstream.

Different parts of the IE games are important to different people.

And all you need is to gather some of the more salient features to please most of them.

 

[pippin]

BG1 and 2 were mainstream as fuck, dude. In fact, those games were the first ones where the dnd product started to reach outside the dnd public.