Elder Scrolls Did Bethesda fuck Obsidian or not?

[DragoFireheart]

You would choose to play nice with the pimp too, if he bought your child and raped it.

No, I'd get a shotgun and blow his fucking head off.

 

[Ninjerk]

I think this metaphor has become stretched far beyond its usefulness.

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

You would choose to play nice with the pimp too, if he bought your child and raped it.

No, I'd get a shotgun and blow his fucking head off.

See street whores in 3rd worldia don't have access to firearms like that. its the choices available and how you play them. Can Obsidian engineer a bankruptcy of Zenimax and take its child back? I don't think so.

 

[DragoFireheart]

Can Obsidian engineer a bankruptcy of Zenimax and take its child back?

Now that's a Kickstarter I could get behind.

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

Can Obsidian engineer a bankruptcy of Zenimax and take its child back?

Now that's a Kickstarter I could get behind.

No arguments there bro.

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

I think this metaphor has become stretched far beyond its usefulness.

 

[Rake]

Was KSer an option in that era?

Irrelevant. The people at Obsidian, on a glance, seem like decent people. Their upper management should not be putting them through such crap out of desperation. Such desperation only encourages the bad behavior of big publishers. If it's that bad they shouldn't give in to such demands and either explore other avenues or get out of the industry.

See, the thing is that if they choose to "leave the industry", AKA reducing the company to the five owners and maybe one or two programers and go mobile, they would have to fire 100 people. They don't want to do that.
And did you listen to the last Feargy's talk in that Russian panel? They will move away from the AAA console market (not completely, but they don't want to be depended on it any more). So they will focus more on F2P,
mobile, developing parts of other games like they do with that MMO, and kickstarter projects.
Beyond KS, the other ones aren't a significant incline for us, even if they make sense from a buisness perspective.

 

[DragoFireheart]

Was KSer an option in that era?

Irrelevant. The people at Obsidian, on a glance, seem like decent people. Their upper management should not be putting them through such crap out of desperation. Such desperation only encourages the bad behavior of big publishers. If it's that bad they shouldn't give in to such demands and either explore other avenues or get out of the industry.

See, the thing is that if they choose to "leave the industry", AKA reducing the company to the five owners and maybe one or two programers and go mobile, they would have to fire 100 people. They don't want to do that.
And did you listen to the last Feargy's talk in that Russian panel? They will move away from the AAA console market (not completely, but they don't want to be depended on it any more). So they will focus more on F2P,
mobile, developing parts of other games like they do with that MMO, and kickstarter projects.
Beyond KS, the other ones aren't a significant incline for us, even if they make sense from a buisness perspective.

And that's ok. It sounds like they learned their lesson.

 

[set]

The lesson is: good RPGs cost too much to make. If you're going to produce games on the console, you need to have fast-paced guns, tiny hallways, and multiplayer. It takes time and money to craft a huge open world and QA test it all, let alone give every character a voice (because god forbid we have our players read).

Even though Pokemon sells 10+ million copies every generation, no publisher is going to give you the money necessary to deliver a mainstream RPG, because publishers don't believe they can be successful. You can try to convince them by saying, "Look at WoW." But then you get a game like Kingdoms of Amalur at the end of development, which nobody has any interest in.

Middle-ground mid-budget console titles don't exist anymore. I mean, it doens't make much sense. Why would you gamble $5-20 million on a mid-budget game and maybe get 30 to 40 million back when you could put in 300 million and get 1 billion back. GTAV villifies the awful practices EA and Activision have been conducting for the last half a decade - there is a great deal of money to be made if you're willing to throw everything in one focus grouped basket with a big enough name behind it.

And even if you develop a decent RPG, even if you beat the odds and make Fallout New Vegas, you have profits tied to nebulous things like 'metacritic aggregations' (directly or indirectly) which result from genderconfused twenty-something tubs of lard who can't even program a VCR right, let alone figure out how to critique a game twenty hours before release. If you don't have left over cash to bribe these people, you're going to end up with a worse score than 85.

 

[gromit]

The lesson is: good RPGs cost too much to make.

I think this is "true" due to the rarity of engines that support Ruleset X or just a flexible, designer-centric interface for implementing them a la Onyx. Or ask Dgaider, whose opinions may have changed, but was famously quoted here as implying flexible, C&C gameplay requires him to branch his entire script for every "real" choice.

I'd argue an "acceptable" RPG can be a lot cheaper to make these days -- ironically the market is a lot more tolerant of repeated elements (ideally mixed and matched for variety) whereas these days the single-player portion of an FPS usually winds up as one long chain of scripts and unique assets. (Somebody please tell the publishers nobody cares about CoD SP?)

 

[Xor]

I don't think it's an issue of cost as much as an issue of effort. It's just easier to focus on graphics and presentation than it is to design a reactive world with a branching story.

 

[hiver]

Good RPGs do not cost too much to make.

Larp action-adventure simulators and action RPGs of AAA scope cost too much to make for middle or lower indie devs.
Since they rely on superficial things the most.
But that doesnt have anything to do with good RPGs.

- yeah spelling... -

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

Good RPGs do not cost too much too make.

Larp action-adventure simulatorors and action RPGs of AAA scope cost too much to make for middle or lower indie devs.
Since they rely on superficial things the most.
But that doesnt have anything to do with good RPGs.

Yep. Look at KotC. Though Pierre's prosper-esque fits about BotS is another thing...

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

Its better than Vogels most recent shit.

Infinitron on one hand you argue catering to non combat role playing requires different games. And a 1 1man DnD combat sim requires reactivity and CnC to be a good RPG?

You bitch about mondblutian love of story lite dungeon crawlers and then insist on reactivity for every good rpg?

My point was Pierre managed a solid TB DnD 3.5e combat RPG alone. It wasn't that expensive. But do you consider KotC a good RPG? O4 you go anti mondblutian demanding rpgs have cnc/reactivity

If a few talented writer/designer/programmer could make a cnc reactive rpg if their focus was on that. (Age of Decadence data would be helpful)

Good RPGs do not need the most expensive parts of AAA game development.

 

[Infinitron]

Oh, crap, you were replying to hiver. IGNORE LIST FOLLIES

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

No, i was replying to you Infinitron , you deleted your post.
I believe it was something close to

"Ohh but KotC doesn't have CnC and branching"

 

[Infinitron]

No, i was replying to you Infinitron , you deleted your post.
I believe it was something close to

"Ohh but KotC doesn't have CnC and branching"

Good RPGs do not cost too much too make.

Larp action-adventure simulatorors and action RPGs of AAA scope cost too much to make for middle or lower indie devs.
Since they rely on superficial things the most.
But that doesnt have anything to do with good RPGs.

Yep. Look at KotC. Though Pierre's prosper-esque fits about BotS is another thing...

Look at who I'm ignoring and try to understand what just happened.

 

[hiver]

you failed the save?

huehue

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

No, i was replying to you Infinitron , you deleted your post.
I believe it was something close to

"Ohh but KotC doesn't have CnC and branching"

Good RPGs do not cost too much too make.

Larp action-adventure simulatorors and action RPGs of AAA scope cost too much to make for middle or lower indie devs.
Since they rely on superficial things the most.
But that doesnt have anything to do with good RPGs.

Yep. Look at KotC. Though Pierre's prosper-esque fits about BotS is another thing...

Look at who I'm ignoring and try to understand what just happened.

Sorry Bro, didn't see it.

Bbut why would you ignore hiver? his posts are amusing, cause a lot of butthurt and he makes sense more often than Roguey.

 

[J1M]

I think this metaphor has become stretched far beyond its usefulness.

Like Obsidian. By Bethesda. Thread over.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

I don't think it's an issue of cost as much as an issue of effort. It's just easier to focus on graphics and presentation than it is to design a reactive world with a branching story.

It's an issue of profit forecasts, nothing else.

 

[set]

I still stand my point good RPGs cost too much to make. Yes, pnp shit is 'cheap' to publish and design, but I was talking about video game RPGs, more specifically in the vein of a narrative-based cRPG, not a game where all the mechanics can be codefied with a pencil, or a smash shit and run forward game like Diablo.

If you want an open world, you need to build it. Yes, you could write algorithims to generate it, but generated worlds don't work too well, because you can't generate a coherent narrative yet (probably not ever, given how impossible natural language is to parse). So, you need to employ countless level designers to hand-build everything in your world. Then you need to debug it, to make sure you can't fall through the floor.

Then you need to design coherent game mechanics that do the following:

--Are easy to pick up (because the average consumer, even of RPGs, isn't too bright)
*Lots of GUI shit that displays relevant data at all times as well as rules that are easy to look up if you're lost (DA:O failed miserably at this)
--Are hard to master (because a good RPG should be highly replayable?):
*Player characters need to have branching paths of development, be it in their attribute scores and skills or simply in narrative growth
*Areas need to have multiple etrances/exits so that our game isn't one long railroad or hallway
*Scaling difficulty that is sensible and accounts for players increasing in mastery as well as the openness of the world that allows non-linear progression
*Actual AI, not finite state machines where the only states are 'attack' and 'idle'
--Allow players to have coherent choices
*Skills, abilities, and choices you make compete against each other so that they aren't easy decisions to make
*A narrative which is adaptive yet easy to program, designers don't need to manage giant nests of if statements

And I'm sure, much much more.

To build all of this requires a competent team, and god forbid, time.

It's significantly easier to make ten multiplayer shoeboxes and give some players some pewpewpew and shove in a flashy static 4 hour single player tutorial.

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

You sir, need to play Geneforge 5 and Avadon. Both are essentially made on a similar budget by jeff vogel. One is good wrt exploration and CnC. The other is Bioware level shit.

 

[set]

I tried Avadon The Black Fortress, I'm assuming /that/ was BioWare-level tripe? I tried really hard to like it, but couldn't get past the stuff after the first dungeon.

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

Yep. Now play geneforge.