Development Info NWN 1.65 patch released

[Saint_Proverbius]

Screw it. Everybody buys the excuses Troika puts out about their lack of support. I'm not.

The big difference between Troika and BioWare is that BioWare self produces their games. They foot the bill for the majority of the cost of developing the title. As such, they get a greater degree of freedom in what they can do with the game before and after release, and they also get a larger cut of the profit from the title.

 

[Sol Invictus]

Whatever Troika's reasons are, Saint, it's obvious they don't push the publishers hard enough for releasing the patches so it's no surprise if people don't find them particularly sincere. I've seen smaller companies that do. It's like they have no damn clout.

 

[Volourn]

"The big difference between Troika and BioWare is that BioWare self produces their games. They foot the bill for the majority of the cost of developing the title. As such, they get a greater degree of freedom in what they can do with the game before and after release, and they also get a larger cut of the profit from the title."

Troika is running out of exuses. They have now released 3 games. It took Bioware 4 games (counting their two earlier games) and 2 blockbusters in BG1&BG2 to start doing things their way. Even enough that they were able to sue Interplay and literally take the rights to NWN away from interplay and give them over to Atari. That says a lot.

Perhaps, Troika should stop sticking their fingers up their butt and laying everything on to the publisher and actually do most of it themselves. Troika won't even pay for a message baord of all things. R00fles!

As for BIO. They are awesome. Their games are awesome. Their support is awesome. Anyone who disagrees are morons. Muahaha!

 

[AlanC9]

What people seem to be forgeting about is the fact that Bioware recently started that Bioware Online Store for their premium modules. I'm sure there were some issues that came up with that release, so they are essentially putting out a patch to support their online store customers. As for the fixes with regard to the toolset, I bet there were some issues that Bioware had when creating the new premium modules and they fixed them as they made the modules and released those fixes with the patch.

Not really the case. Most of the 1.65 bugfixes are either for longstanding ones, or fixes to stuff introduced in the previous patch. It's great that Bio supports stuff, sure, but how come it took years to stop invisible characters from making attacks of opportunity?

 

[Volourn]

"It's great that Bio supports stuff, sure, but how come it took years to stop invisible characters from making attacks of opportunity?"

The script was as invisible as the characters? :D

 

[Stark]

Perhaps, Troika should stop sticking their fingers up their butt and laying everything on to the publisher and actually do most of it themselves.

I agree. as a customer we do not care the excuses Troika has, no matter how valid. Having paid for the product we expect support and a relatively bug free software, and Troika games are generally buggy, and consistently unpolished.

Troika won't even pay for a message baord of all things. R00fles!

yeah. they're rather cheapskate. but if they have a message board there would be alot less posts in codex here. quite a number of regulars are fans of Troika afterall. also, i can imagine it getting swamped with complains/bitching abt bugs everytime a product is released. they're better off without a message board.

(abt Bio) Their games are awesome. Their support is awesome.

their games sucks, and generally lack of depth. I always get a feeling i'm playing some interactive adventure game when playing their games.

to their credit their support is awesome and it's generally polished. a thumbs up to them. their commitment to customer support and active engagement with fans is also awesome.

 

[jiujitsu]

As for BIO. They are awesome. Their games are awesome. Their support is awesome.

NWN sucks.

Anyone who disagrees are morons.

I think you mean: All who disagree are morons. Or: Anyone who disagrees is a moron.

 

[Mendoza]

What people seem to be forgeting about is the fact that Bioware recently started that Bioware Online Store for their premium modules. I'm sure there were some issues that came up with that release, so they are essentially putting out a patch to support their online store customers. As for the fixes with regard to the toolset, I bet there were some issues that Bioware had when creating the new premium modules and they fixed them as they made the modules and released those fixes with the patch.

Not really the case. Most of the 1.65 bugfixes are either for longstanding ones, or fixes to stuff introduced in the previous patch. It's great that Bio supports stuff, sure, but how come it took years to stop invisible characters from making attacks of opportunity?

'Years' isn't quite fair, since the game has had significant changes since it was first released, particularly because of HotU (although that was almost a year ago now). But given the complexity of the game, with the DM client and the toolset, not to mention the huge number of feats etc in the game, it's hardly surprising it required a lot of patching. Whilst the most recent patches are obviously geared towards setting up their premium module download system, you can hardly accuse them of not supporting the product well. They've released patches at a fairly steady rate over the last 2 1/2 years, and have often added new content, such as extra creatures and new skyboxes. And this is ignoring non patch stuff they've provided for free, like the original Witchers Wake.

I can't think of a game that's been as well supported as NWN anyway.

 

[Sol Invictus]

I can't think of a game that's been as well supported as NWN anyway.

Arcanum.

 

[HanoverF]

NWN in smell-o-vision? The whole thing allready smells like ass....

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Whatever Troika's reasons are, Saint, it's obvious they don't push the publishers hard enough for releasing the patches so it's no surprise if people don't find them particularly sincere. I've seen smaller companies that do. It's like they have no damn clout.

There is no push. The publishers have all the power in a situation like that. If the publisher says they're not going to release a patch, you can't just release one. Otherwise, they sue the shit out of you. That's why Troika, unless they want to continue on the same shame spiral they've been following over the last several releases, needs to either ask for less money so the publishers don't put as many stipulations on the product, or they need to self produce their games like BioWare does.

I'm not saying anything new here. I've been saying the same thing about Troika for months. I would say you're incredibly ignorant on the subject, but that's nothing new either.

 

[suibhne]

There is no push. The publishers have all the power in a situation like that. If the publisher says they're not going to release a patch, you can't just release one. Otherwise, they sue the shit out of you. That's why Troika, unless they want to continue on the same shame spiral they've been following over the last several releases, needs to either ask for less money so the publishers don't put as many stipulations on the product, or they need to self produce their games like BioWare does.

It's also possible that Troika could do a better job of internally managing their projects. Troika's last two products smack of "big thinkers" trying to pull double-duty as detail-oriented managers, though I obviously have no idea if this is accurate.

Another alternative would be for Troika to develop more in-house QA capability and integrate that more holistically into their dev cycle. This wouldn't require them to produce their own games entirely; there might be some sort of possible medium. But it's unarguably true that typical publishers will never choose to commit enough QA resources to adequately test any relatively large and open-ended RPG, so Troika either needs to find another genre or figure out how to pick up some of that slack itself. Sure, it sucks, but it's the current reality.

 

[AlanC9]

'Years' isn't quite fair, since the game has had significant changes since it was first released, particularly because of HotU (although that was almost a year ago now). But given the complexity of the game, with the DM client and the toolset, not to mention the huge number of feats etc in the game, it's hardly surprising it required a lot of patching. Whilst the most recent patches are obviously geared towards setting up their premium module download system, you can hardly accuse them of not supporting the product well. They've released patches at a fairly steady rate over the last 2 1/2 years, and have often added new content, such as extra creatures and new skyboxes. And this is ignoring non patch stuff they've provided for free, like the original Witchers Wake.

I can't think of a game that's been as well supported as NWN anyway.

Yeah, I was sounding a little more negative than I intended to.

Spend enough time with the Bio scripts and you realize the project was really out-of-control for a while -- the original scripts are a pile of undocumented spaghetti code (didn't Dilbert call that the Holy Grail of technology?). Many of the core systems were thrown out and reorganized in the first expansion -- the weird part is that Bio outsourced this to Floodgate instead of doing it themselves, and now Floodgate isn't around anymore. And since they keep adding functionality in the patches, the bug lists go up as well as down.

Example: when HotU shipped, they added in a way to read local variables from a creature to govern its behavior, so you wouldn't need a custom AI script. This function had an arithmetic error, so the values returned weren't the ones expected. Someone who didn't really understand that function rejiggered the default values so the AI worked adequately, though not correctly. But when the arithmetic error was corrected in 1.64, the new default values wrecked the AI for several classes of creatures. Everything should be working fine in 1.65.

So yeah, I think Bio has good support.

 

[Sol Invictus]

I'm not saying anything new here. I've been saying the same thing about Troika for months. I would say you're incredibly ignorant on the subject, but that's nothing new either.

You give them too much leeway, Saint. Troika should care more about what their customers think of their products instead of leaving all the QA up to irresponsible publishers. It's a proven fact that QA for RPGs is a lot more intensive than QA for any other game, so it's rather incredulous that Troika would leave the QA process to their publishers instead of taking a more affirmative stance in dealing with the problems internally. How difficult is it to test your dialogue script to see if it works correctly? It's not like Bloodlines or TOEE had a billion lines of scripted dialogue. The fact that Bloodlines' intro doesn't even execute properly shows how careless they are.

I understand if their publisher doesn't want to pay them to make a patch, or even allow them to release one. At least, that's what they claimed about Atari. Atari on the other hand responded, saying that they would QA any patches for free provided that Troika made them. Granted, they probably wouldn't pay them for it, but it looks like Troika doesn't even bother to ensure that their games sell well. Their games would surely be more popular if they offered more support. That they don't even have their own message board or tech forum speaks volumes about their attitude towards customer service.

Troika seems to take a 'hands-free' approach in regards to the titles they develop. Once it's gold, they leave the responsibility of patching up the game (complete with mistakes that were their own) to the publisher. It's hardly fair to the end-user.

Honestly, how hard is it for them to do a little internal QA? They wouldn't even need to hire their own QA team - just having the level designers test drive the new builds would help a lot. Sure, it's unfair to them that they have to pick up the slack when the publisher should be handling QA, but as suibhne pointed out, it's the reality of the situation. Nobody is going to want to buy their games if they are all buggy and 'glitchy' and generally unpolished. Developing a reputation for producing polished games would be good for Troika in the long run.

 

[Mendoza]

Spend enough time with the Bio scripts and you realize the project was really out-of-control for a while -- the original scripts are a pile of undocumented spaghetti code (didn't Dilbert call that the Holy Grail of technology?). Many of the core systems were thrown out and reorganized in the first expansion -- the weird part is that Bio outsourced this to Floodgate instead of doing it themselves, and now Floodgate isn't around anymore. And since they keep adding functionality in the patches, the bug lists go up as well as down.

Example: when HotU shipped, they added in a way to read local variables from a creature to govern its behavior, so you wouldn't need a custom AI script. This function had an arithmetic error, so the values returned weren't the ones expected. Someone who didn't really understand that function rejiggered the default values so the AI worked adequately, though not correctly. But when the arithmetic error was corrected in 1.64, the new default values wrecked the AI for several classes of creatures. Everything should be working fine in 1.65.

So yeah, I think Bio has good support.

Yeah, I'm not sure how many of the bugs in NWN are down to the complexity of the program, and how much is down to bad coding. But KotOR, which is much simpler, doesn't seem to have had any real problems, and the ones it did were fixed quickly in only a few patches. Whilst I'm sure they learnt a lot in the NWN experience, which then helped with KotOR, I imagine most of the problems were due to getting bogged down by the scope of the project.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

You give them too much leeway, Saint.

No, I'm not. You said Troika should push the publishers to support the products more. That's not going to happen because Troika has no leverage on the subject at all. The publishers own every aspect of the game if they produce it and can support it if they'd like, but Troika can't release a patch on their own, period. They can't push the publisher to support the game because the publishers have all the power on the subject, since the publisher owns it outright. They can decide for whatever reason whether or not a patch gets released.

Now, had you said that Troika have an internal QA instead of saying Troika should "push the publishers", I might have agreed with you. Then again, if they self produce a game, they'll have to have an internal QA as well.

 

[Volourn]

"No, I'm not. You said Troika should push the publishers to support the products more. That's not going to happen because Troika has no leverage on the subject at all. The publishers own every aspect of the game if they produce it and can support it if they'd like, but Troika can't release a patch on their own, period. They can't push the publisher to support the game because the publishers have all the power on the subject, since the publisher owns it outright. They can decide for whatever reason whether or not a patch gets released."

Bioware seemed to be able to do it even with interplay. They pushed Interplay so much that they broke down. It's amazing how stuff like that occurs when the owners of the company make it happen. Espicially since, unlike Bioware, Troika had a head start in the game (and epsicially RPG) industry since at least one of the Troikian owners hadover a decade of RPG development.

The only exuse for Troikian games being so poorly crafted is Troikian incompetence. Period. Stop making exuses for them.

3 different publishers. Same mangled result (game quality notwithstanding). I dunno of another developer that has accomplished that feat without taking the blame for it. Troika should be no different except her eon the Codex where people will say anything to white wash Troika's screw ups.

 

[dojoteef]

Bioware seemed to be able to do it even with interplay. They pushed Interplay so much that they broke down.

Well you see what happened to Interplay. Any publisher that breaks down because the developer wants something done probably isn't a very astute publisher. Publishers tend to make decisions based on expected earnings rather than intangibles such as getting the developers off their backs. Anyway I doubt Troika wants to displease their publishers considering that's how they get funding for their games.

I agree with Saint on this one; I believe Troika is at fault, just not in the manner Exitium claims. I say that Troika mismanages their projects, probably because they don't have dedicated project managers, instead they have the artisitc and programming leads managing the projects. Troika has to know by now how much work a given person can do in a given amount of time and should budget their games accordingly. True the games might be shorter or have less depth, but the games would definitely be in a more playable state. The only reason I keep buying the games is that they tend to be very good if you can get past the bugs.

 

[Volourn]

"Well you see what happened to Interplay. Any publisher that breaks down because the developer wants something done probably isn't a very astute publisher. Publishers tend to make decisions based on expected earnings rather than intangibles such as getting the developers off their backs. Anyway I doubt Troika wants to displease their publishers considering that's how they get funding for their games."

Interplay is pretty much no more now because they forgot what made them successful to start with. It wasn't BIO pushing them that made them fail; that was just one sign that Interplay no longer 'got it'.


My point here is that any company worth its mark should be able to speak up for themselves and their products. BIO won't allow publishers to make all the important decisions like Troika seems so and it shows. Only the devloper truly knows how much QA a game really needs. Also, remember, up to NWN; BIO had only worked with one publisher and that was Interplay even with their pre BG games which were dark horse successes yet they still 'went to the wall'.

Just look at NWN. Suck or not; it's being patched because BIO says it is being patched. period.

Perhaps, Troika should be intelligent when signing contracts.

 

[Spazmo]

Playing nice with BioWare and publishing NWN would probably have kept Interplay afloat for quite a long time, actually. It was the console projects that sunk the company.

 

[Sol Invictus]

It was god's gift to Interplay that they had the luck to have Bioware under their wing for so long. Yes, Bioware probably screwed them with the NWN delays, but nowhere as much as Interplay screwed itself for focusing its development direction towards console and action-oriented titles.

 

[jiujitsu]

Well, consoles are where the big money is these days. It was a risk and they failed. That's business!

 

[Sol Invictus]

That is stupidity. They had a good thing going but ditched it for a gamble.