Obsidian and inXile acquired by Microsoft

[2house2fly]

Let's not forget that he blamed traditional cRPG players for holding the genre back.



cRPGs are bad and unimaginative because of grognards!!!!!

There are people all over the place complaining about POE2's pirate setting, saying "it didn't need to have a boat and jungle tribes" and blaming it for the game bombing. People complained from day one that POE1 wasn't D&D. Literally, that it didn't use the D&D ruleset.

Except from Ukaizo shrinkage, others seem like microissues™.
What about the big ones such as those from this review?
Haven't noticed any significant changes there.
https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.p...illars-of-eternity-very-minor-spoilers.98295/

So he's arrogant because he didn't solicit feedback specifically from that RPGcodex thread?

 

[Fenix]

Fallout 3 and 4 are canon. As is Fallout 76.

"Canon" is what orginal creators did and said, not those clowns with money, rights, copyrights, etc.

 

[thesheeep]

90% of the time, when I read a new post on this forum it feels like a rehash of older posts. I think I might have brain damage. Please help.

No brain damage.
I'm afraid it is a psychological condition: You are a masochist. Like the rest of us.

 

[Cael]

90% of the time, when I read a new post on this forum it feels like a rehash of older posts. I think I might have brain damage. Please help.

No brain damage.
I'm afraid it is a psychological condition: You are a masochist. Like the rest of us.

*sends thesheeep to New Zealand* Now you know what being a masochist really means, bud.

 

[thesheeep]

90% of the time, when I read a new post on this forum it feels like a rehash of older posts. I think I might have brain damage. Please help.

No brain damage.
I'm afraid it is a psychological condition: You are a masochist. Like the rest of us.

*sends thesheeep to New Zealand* Now you know what being a masochist really means, bud.

I'd go there eventually, anyway.
Wanna see the nature and eat all the nommos! What? My life goal is "eat all the things".

 

[Cael]

90% of the time, when I read a new post on this forum it feels like a rehash of older posts. I think I might have brain damage. Please help.

No brain damage.
I'm afraid it is a psychological condition: You are a masochist. Like the rest of us.

*sends thesheeep to New Zealand* Now you know what being a masochist really means, bud.

I'd go there eventually, anyway.
Wanna see the nature and eat all the nommos! What? My life goal is "eat all the things".

A sheep willingly offering itself to New Zealand... Poos! Where are you? :D

 

[Flou]

This thread by Roguey (who became a fanboy because of Sawyer's "justified" arrogance) has many examples, and those are only from the period between PoE's KS and launch. His actions have shown arrogance as well. After PoE, Brandon Adler (PoE's Lead Producer) recommended that Sawyer shouldn't do any writing in the sequel, and MCA agreed with him. Sawyer not only ignored him but also doubled down, and became PoE2's Lead Narrative Designer. The result speaks for itself.

Co-Lead Narrative Designer with Carrie Patel. But honestly, if they don't see Patel yet ready to lead alone who else is there at Obsidian to do it? (Patel's 2nd game btw.)

Fenstermaker was busy playing daddy to his newborn kid, also a freelancer.
Scokel was pretty much a junior narrative designer and working on his 1st game as a writer.
Kirsch his 2nd game.
Dollarhyde got hired during Deadfire. Her 1st game.
Veras her 2nd game.
Starks? The Codex would be fuming if she got the position. Also her 2nd game.
Rest of the writers were working on Indiana, not that there were many.

It's stupid to blame Josh alone for this, when it is the circumstances that most likely put him in that position to begin with.

 

[Life of the Party]

No brain damage.
I'm afraid it is a psychological condition: You are a masochist. Like the rest of us.

Guess what? I got a fever and the only prescription is more definitions of RPG.

 

[Zakhad]

Is anyone going to talk about just how cute Josh is in that new Obsidian video!? (He looks like an older jughead and that cuffed sleeve tee with the tattoos is such a lewk!!!)

You are either the best current poster on here, or the worst. I can't decide.

 

[hexer]

So he's arrogant because he didn't solicit feedback specifically from that RPGcodex thread?

That's just one .. Darth Roxor's negative review has 100 pages of comments. https://rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=9867
Why ignore criticism / free advice from people obsessed with RPGs?
Are these the results he finds desirable?

https://www.dsogaming.com/news/pill...d-110k-copies-worldwide-until-september-2018/

 

[Nano]

This thread by Roguey (who became a fanboy because of Sawyer's "justified" arrogance) has many examples, and those are only from the period between PoE's KS and launch. His actions have shown arrogance as well. After PoE, Brandon Adler (PoE's Lead Producer) recommended that Sawyer shouldn't do any writing in the sequel, and MCA agreed with him. Sawyer not only ignored him but also doubled down, and became PoE2's Lead Narrative Designer. The result speaks for itself.

Co-Lead Narrative Designer with Carrie Patel. But honestly, if they don't see Patel yet ready to lead alone who else is there at Obsidian to do it? (Patel's 2nd game btw.)

Fenstermaker was busy playing daddy to his newborn kid, also a freelancer.
Scokel was pretty much a junior narrative designer and working on his 1st game as a writer.
Kirsch his 2nd game.
Dollarhyde got hired during Deadfire. Her 1st game.
Veras her 2nd game.
Starks? The Codex would be fuming if she got the position. Also her 2nd game.
Rest of the writers were working on Indiana, not that there were many.

It's stupid to blame Josh alone for this, when it is the circumstances that most likely put him in that position to begin with.

Hiring a new lead writer is an option, you know.

 

[The Great ThunThun*]

One important piece of suggestion I would have made to Obsidian is to not focus too much on mechanics. I am personally a gameplay guy, but I understand that Obsidian's real strength is storytelling and quest design. They should have doubled down on it and simply borrowed some pre testee mechanic.

 

[Funposter]

but their storytelling in pillars bored everyone to tears

 

[Parabalus]

Who wrote White March I & II anyway? Same people as base PoE, without Chris?

 

[Background Character]

But what about me?

 

[Mark Richard]

90% of the time, when I read a new post on this forum it feels like a rehash of older posts. I think I might have brain damage. Please help.

i'm trying to reach 100 percent so interacting with anyone here becomes completely unnecessary.

 

[Don Peste]

I agree with what has been said above. Look again at those Josh quotes I posted. They "overcompensated" with simple companion quests. This kind of reasoning gets me crazy. People are taking Eder's quest out of context a bit. If that quest was being given by a generic NPC #532, criticism would be valid. But Eder is a returning companion and everyone's favorite bro.

I wish Eder's quest also was a continuation of the quest from the first game. The guy meets Eothas face to face and he doesn't ask him about Woden? He even meets Eothas as Waidwen and misses a huge opportunity there.

Also, the only writer worth his salt on PoE was Avellone, who created two companions that embodied the setting's main issues. Sad that the way Obsidian parcels their writing and design lead to Avellone having only dialogue and dumps to work with, rather than things to do / quests.

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

One important piece of suggestion I would have made to Obsidian is to not focus too much on mechanics. I am personally a gameplay guy, but I understand that Obsidian's real strength is storytelling and quest design. They should have doubled down on it and simply borrowed some pretest mechanic.

Your suggestion is bizarre. The real strength of Obsidian was quest design in how many games exactly? F:NV, MotB and KOTOR2. These are three games in 15 years of existence. How many people left Obsidian since them? Is Avellone still there? How about John Gonzalez or George Ziets? They are all gone. Do you think that Carrie Patel has the same talent of these two? I don't think so.

Besides, if PoE2 is any indication, the only thing they would achieve by focusing even more on storytelling and quest design would be more turgid walls of text, underwhelming quests, more cringeworthy romances, annoying voice acting, and a even worse combat system, if that is even imaginable. That's considering that the game was supposed to be inspired in BG2, which is not a heavy C&C game.

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

There are people all over the place complaining about POE2's pirate setting, saying "it didn't need to have a boat and jungle tribes” and blaming it for the game bombing. People complained from day one that POE1 wasn't D&D. Literally, that it didn't use the D&D ruleset.

Do you know what is really holding the genre back? Pretentious developers who want to come across as authorities, but have no solid grasp of its canon or never even played most of its classics. The result is bad combat systems, shitty mechanics and awful quest design. THAT’S WHAT IS HOLDING THE GENRE BACK!

The notion that we have to innovate is all nice and dandy as long as you can deliver the basics. If you can't do the basics right, you have no right to innovate anything. Besides, real innovation is not adding new things for the sake of being new, but adding something of value. That's not common because it is hard, not because people are traditional. Let's take the pirates theme for instance. That's an innovation? The ship mechanics is obviously based in games such as Nantucket. You also have pirates in BG and BG2, so it's not that innovative. So the real reason why people didn't like the pirates theme was PoE2’s developers approach, not the theme per se. The complains about D&D were more than justified if you consider that Sawyer was at the same time stealing the system and making it worse with his own approach. Once again, it’s not about changes themselves, but the train of thought that inspires those changes.

So he's arrogant because he didn't solicit feedback specifically from that RPGcodex thread?

No, he is arrogant because:

• he thinks that being a Obsidian's developer makes him a spokesman of what is good and bad in cRPGs;

• he is dismissive of players that played and analysed these games to death, including players that have more gameplay experience and knowledge than him, being on the Codex or not; never mind that these players remained faithful to Obsidian when nobody cared about them, which also makes him ungrateful;

• he is openly dismissive about many classics of the genre, which is indicative of his superficial mindset and sets a bad example for other developers;

The truth is that cRPG “experts” like Sawyer once enjoyed cRPGs, but now they are stuck doing these games and despise them, just as they despise their own audience. This is bad enough. If they behave like spokesman of the genre, you add insult to injury.

 

[Lhynn]

They should have fired him on the spot and hired Sensuki and Bester

Hired Jick Magger as writing lead.

Also asfasdf as PR spokesmen.

Betatested by RK47

 

[The Great ThunThun*]

One important piece of suggestion I would have made to Obsidian is to not focus too much on mechanics. I am personally a gameplay guy, but I understand that Obsidian's real strength is storytelling and quest design. They should have doubled down on it and simply borrowed some pretest mechanic.

Your suggestion is bizarre. The real strength of Obsidian was quest design in how many games exactly? F:NV, MotB and KOTOR2. These are three games in 15 years of existence. How many people left Obsidian since them? Is Avellone still there? How about John Gonzalez or George Ziets? They are all gone. Do you think that Carrie Patel has the same talent of these two? I don't think so.

Besides, if PoE2 is any indication, the only thing they would achieve by focusing even more on storytelling and quest design would be more turgid walls of text, underwhelming quests, more cringeworthy romances, annoying voice acting, and a even worse combat system, if that is even imaginable. That's considering that the game was supposed to be inspired in BG2, which is not a heavy C&C game.

I would most certainly count Alpha Protocol here too, but I guess some people do not like it. All these games have very interesting characters/arcs and storytelling. None of them has a great mechanic that is innovative, outside of the meta stuff like spirit meter of MoTB or Force linkup in KotOR.

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

I would most certainly count Alpha Protocol here too, but I guess some people do not like it. All these games have very interesting characters/arcs and storytelling. None of them has a great mechanic that is innovative, outside of the meta stuff like spirit meter of MoTB or Force linkup in KotOR.

I love C&C, but the moment to moment gameplay in this game is so terrible that I didn't finish the game. It could be a cool C&C game, but they ruined it.

 

[Jimmious]

Are there no rumors yet of any new Obsidian game coming now with Microsoft moneys?

 

[Roguey]

Another example of classic Josh arrogance https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/sawyer-and-toee-troika-bis-and-bio.2282/

14 months for IWD.
Way to ignore resources used on the project, chief. IWD had a significantly smaller and less experienced team than ToEE did. No lead designer, no lead programmer, no lead artist. Over half of the people working on it had less than a year of professional experience.

And before you even say it, your opinion "as a gamer" doesn't matter in this comparison because this involves only game developers and publishers. If the IWD team of slobbering morons could produce a mediocre game with someone else's engine in 14 months, surely the people at Troika could make a terrific game using their own engine in 18 months, right? It certainly makes sense on paper.

In operation? Ha. Anytime someone tells me that the rules as implemented in the Infinity Engine were "simplistic", I want to have the IE combat loop code in liquid format so I can drown the critic in it.
So explain to me what's wrong with the analysis. The smaller and less experienced IWD team, using someone else's engine, makes a mediocre game in 14 months. What logical reason can you give that a larger, more experienced ToEE team, using their own engine, cannot make a great game in 18 months?

(I'd agree with him except Troika was constrained by having to adapt a lousy module, though the lousy module choice was theirs, as was the dull dialogue)

Co-Lead Narrative Designer with Carrie Patel. But honestly, if they don't see Patel yet ready to lead alone who else is there at Obsidian to do it? (Patel's 2nd game btw.)

According to Chris, it started out solely as Josh and Patel was promoted to co-lead sometime mid-development

(for example, Carrie wasn't listed as a lead until what felt like late in development, and if so, it sucks to be saddled with story decisions you didn't decide - that happened to me on Alpha Protocol, but I tried to roll with it)

Hiring a new lead writer is an option, you know.

Obsidian's received a lot of criticism on glassdoor for not promoting from within (and also for not promoting women but ehhhhhhhhhhh). A decision like that wouldn't be ideal. Furthermore, Chris has faith in her abilities https://twitter.com/ChrisAvellone/status/973664127120887808

Should have just let her have it. I doubt it'd be significantly worse than what we ended up with.

Who wrote White March I & II anyway? Same people as base PoE, without Chris?

Fensty with an assist from Patel.

 

[AwesomeButton]

What Josh says in the presumably arrogant post is being completely misunderstood. Hilariously misunderstood. I wouldn't believe it possible.

He is using ToEE's development cycle and end result to attack the previous poster's method of drawing conclusions. Not attacking ToEE or Tim Cain, but the opposite. He even explains that further below in the linked thread.