Obsidian General Discussion Thread

[Iznaliu]

Whatever, feel free to deny the universally established fact that their programmers were understaffed on this project, as always.

It's not like Obsidian was running out of money, was it?

 

[AN4RCHID]

Compared to say, Wasteland 2, POE1 was not buggy in the least, even at launch.

The Bugsidian reputation was fairly earned back in the day, but come on, their recent output hasn't been particularly buggy.

Also, I doubt if having a reputation for launch-day bugs among bitchy PC gamers has any significant effect on sales and consequently their reputation within the industry. F:NV sold better than F3 iirc.

 

[LESS T_T]

"Creative Director" at Obsidian, heh. I guess that means Boyarsky took some of MCA's roles.

 

[Perkel]

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1343498

Armored Warfare just got axed apparently.

 

[Prime Junta]

FIXING BUGS FOR 1+ YEARS. That's most likely 400-500+ bugs. Think this through.

For comparison, here's a list of known BG2:EE bugs.

 

[Sensuki]

Beamdog. Need I say more.

 

[Excidium II]

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1343498

Armored Warfare just got axed apparently.

lol MCA trying to make Obsidian seem doomed. They just moved development to russia since the game is done.

 

[HoboForEternity]

Maybe he wants to

 

[Perkel]

lol MCA trying to make Obsidian seem doomed. They just moved development to russia since the game is done.[/QUOTE]


Dude below seems to not agree with you. Also wasn't AW like what most of Obsidianities were working on ? IF they don't have another big scale project then again they will do layoffs.

Preface
As a select few of you may already know, I've been a design consultant for Obsidian Entertainment/My.com since the beginning of Early Access (was around for the alpha tests too). Needless to say, I've been invested in this game more than just monetarily. I met a lot of wonderful people along the way– my clan mates (KEVIN started out as a group of us design consultants, with Obeyrist, Kilo, and Illusionalsgcty - my officers - helping just as much if not more), those I met later on (XDMR, Urallfish, other EU friends), and of course the Obsidian/My.com guys (Thank you Rich, Josh, and Michael for all you did- your passion for the game was just incredible, and I truly believe that we could have had an amazingly successful game without MailRU being in the way). I hope to keep my ties with most of them, and for those who are without a job, I wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors.

So, why am I writing this?

I'm writing this because I think everyone who stuck around, everyone who held out waiting for the game to be popular, deserves to know what happened. I'm not an actual developer, so I will be missing a few things. I've had more than enough people from both Obsidian and My.com vent to me their grievances about nearly everything development-wise. I also don't care about the NDA I never actually signed (I don't think anyone was aware of that), I know my AW account will likely be nuked and the only thing that makes me said is the history that will go away with it.

Who To Blame
I've read a lot of misinformation that I couldn't respond to over who was to blame for the game dying. The reality is everyone: MailRU, My.com, and Obsidian, some (MRG) more than others.

Obsidian (OEI): Obsidian failed to grab MailRU by the balls early on and say something along the lines of "We're the developers, we've been in this industry longer than you could ever hope to be." Now, I'm not saying that that's what they should have done. MailRU pays good, Obsidian needed money badly. Standing up to them could have meant their contract was pulled early on. With Felix (Nakoomba) joining Obsidian, he was actually able to do that. It was, however, too late.

My.com (My): Despite what people think, My.com had very little to do with the failure of the game because they really didn't have any control over the game. In fact, all you can really blame them for is shitty events and server crashes. I suppose they could have advertised a broken game and gotten us nowhere.

MailRU Group (MRG): Ah, here it is. The big one. How did I not see this coming, I played ArcheAge– I knew what they were capable of, and Obey reminded me numerous times of it. The rest of this post will be about how they ran this game into the ground because they simply lack the vision to see past the Russian market. They thrive on incomplete features and shitty knock off mechanics.

What Went Wrong
In order to understand everything that's happened, we need a history of Armored Warfare's development. It all started out with MailRU submitting bids to multiple companies to see who would be able to develop a tank game for them. Obsidian, short on cash and in need of a new challenge, took them up on it. They developed this magnificent plan for Armored Warfare– what could have been is not at all what we have today. In fact, I'm not even sure if you would have been able to call it a World of Tanks competitor as the games only had tanks in common.

So, what happened to that? It's simple. MailRU said they wanted none of that, and they tasked Obsidian with making a "World of Tanks clone." Yes, it was supposed to be as close to World of Tanks as they could get with modern tanks and without getting their asses sued off by Wargaming. Just look at the "Limited Technical Alpha" they had. It was clear to everyone that it was a World of Tanks clone and the backlash from it convinced MailRU that being basically a Chinese knock-off wasn't going to cut it. So, they let Obsidian have a little more freedom- not much, it still had to feel like World of Tanks, but it didn't have to be World of Tanks. This, right here, is where you can say Armored Warfare died. The day MailRU made it clear (privately clear, this was never public knowledge) that they only wanted a cut of the massive amounts of money Wargaming was raking in with World of Tanks.

It was more than that, however. MailRU never seemed to realize that they should have tailored the game towards the NA/EU markets. Going the WoT route when their NA population was already really poor was never going to work out, and given how much money the NA market spends you'd think that developing for them (and, by extension, EU) would be the priority. They weren't, and MailRU chose Russia as the only market they cared about, to no ones surprise. This meant that instead of taking the time to have polished, well thought out features we got rushed, half baked features. Why? The Russians loved it. The terrible, terrible base system that was envisioned to be so much more was because MailRU was fine with the preview version that was introduced in Early Access, and decided it would be the final version.

My group and I wrote up 60 page documents (5 in total I believe) on this game detailing every little thing that needed tweaked, removed, or added. From our feedback documents alone we could have practically made our own tank game. We began feeling ignored as much of our feedback wasn't bearing fruit in game, and that was when Obsidian finally cracked- they let us know that MailRU didn't want it, they were happy with the shit state the game was in. In fact, MailRU wasn't even aware of our existence (and they weren't very happy about it afterwards- we aren't Russian, after all).

Where We Are Now
I'll clarify briefly since I've seen a lot of confusion- MailRU canceled Obsidian's contract, Obsidian didn't quit. They wanted to continue developing the game as far as I can tell.

At the beginning of the month, there were massive layoffs at My.com– one of which being Josh Morris (Jinxx71), the only person I would say was truly sane there (aside from the CMs, of course– you've been amazing, Freitag). He shared the same vision as Obsidian and in the end was let go for disagreeing with MailRU one too many times (note: I don't know if this is the actual reason, I just know that he had made a lot of enemies at MailRU over time). They were replaced by people from MailRU itself. What we have come to know My.com as is no longer My.com, but rather a puppet of MailRU headed by Yuri Maslikov, the person quoted in the news post.

MailRU had already had a much larger development team than Obsidian was willing to admit (or even knew about). In fact, this whole time they have been working on Armored Warfare for Xbox One and PS4 (I'm going to get a lot of shit for mentioning its existence). I imagine that will be their main focus, and they might even release the game on Steam (the Steamworks framework has been in place for quite some time now, Obsidian has wanted very badly to put the game on Steam since the early access days). Ultimately, I don't see the game going anywhere. MailRU is very shortsighted and their world view ends at the CIS regions borders.

Conclusion
My interest in this game from the very start was due to Obsidian. The first time I heard of it, I thought it was just a Chinese knockoff. When I heard Obsidian Entertainment was developing it, I signed up for the alpha immediately. With Obsidian out of the picture, I see no future for this game. My only hope is that Wargaming can learn from the many good things that this game got right and also see the many things this game got wrong. I'll be waiting to see what game Wargaming Seattle announces in the future (hint: It's not WoT 2.0 anymore).

 

[Infinitron]

"Creative Director" at Obsidian, heh. I guess that means Boyarsky took some of MCA's roles.

Or maybe the video is wrong and he's just the Creative Director of his own project.

 

[LESS T_T]

Or maybe the video is wrong and he's just the Creative Director of his own project.

I don't think anyone other than MCA was named Creative Director at Obsidian. Also it seems they don't use X Director title in a project basis other than Game Director (and we know Tim Cain is Game Director of the secret C/B project).

Well, we may get to know for sure when a video of Boyarsky's talk is out or Anthony tells us.

 

[Prime Junta]

Beamdog. Need I say more.

Here's a list of BG2 bugs fixed in the community fixpack. And here's a list of known bugs that aren't in it.

 

[Infinitron]

Or maybe the video is wrong and he's just the Creative Director of his own project.

I don't think anyone other than MCA was named Creative Director at Obsidian. Also it seems they don't use X Director title in a project basis other than Game Director (and we know Tim Cain is Game Director of the secret C/B project).

Well, we may get to know for sure when a video of Boyarsky's talk is out or Anthony tells us.

I hope Anthony's all right. I knew Obsidian were going to phase out involvement with Armored Warfare and move onto other projects, but it's possible that it happened sooner than they anticipated.

 

[Flou]

I hope Anthony's all right. I knew Obsidian were going to phase out involvement with Armored Warfare and move onto other projects, but it's possible that it happened sooner than they anticipated.

It was definately sooner than they anticipated, they just posted "Long Road Ahead" update last week or few weeks ago on aw.my.com which of course was taken down last week which had their bigger plan for the game explained. I was looking forward to their storyline campaign etc. that they were going to implement into the game.

The guy who started that Reddit thread commented that the lay-offs weren't severe and that most of the people were reshuffled to other projects. I would love to hear from Anthony Davis or Brandon Adler though. Seeing how big that team was it still could mean a lot of people were let go

 

[Luckmann]

Compared to say, Wasteland 2, POE1 was not buggy in the least, even at launch.

The Bugsidian reputation was fairly earned back in the day, but come on, their recent output hasn't been particularly buggy.

Also, I doubt if having a reputation for launch-day bugs among bitchy PC gamers has any significant effect on sales and consequently their reputation within the industry. F:NV sold better than F3 iirc.

I really hate to say it, but I have to agree. Whereas many of Obsidian's earlier games were straight-up unfinished and extremely buggy (KotOR2, MotB and AP all stand out in this regard, but it's also true for FONV, just less noticeable in terms of blatantly unfinished), their latter stuff can still be called "unfinished" or "unpolished" to a degree, but the buggyness and the unfinished parts are more evenly spread out over the entire game - as opposed to, for example, KotOR2, MotB and AP, all who were basically just straight-up missing the endings and had something hastily thrown together, or FONV, where basically all the Caesar's Legion content had to be scrapped.

So they've definitely improved in the development and planning department. Too bad their narratively destructive compulsive tendencies towards ridiculous levels of verisimilitude-breaking "inclusiveness" and "diversity" (which we all know is just code for "less white people") have only gotten worse, and I believe there's only one cure for that.

 

[Sizzle]

as opposed to, for example, KotOR2, MotB and AP, all who were basically just straight-up missing the endings and had something hastily thrown together

Why is MoTB on that list - it didn't have any missing endings.

 

[Sannom]

How are AP and MotB on that list? Neither of those missed an ending.

But then again, neo-nazi filth telling us lies and living in an alternate reality isn't exactly news. Especially nowadays.

 

[EnthalpyFlow]

How are AP and MotB on that list? Neither of those missed an ending.

But then again, neo-nazi filth telling us lies and living in an alternate reality isn't exactly news. Especially nowadays.

:mrpresident:

 

[Luckmann]

Why is MoTB on that list - it didn't have any missing endings.

How are AP and MotB on that list? Neither of those missed an ending.

I'm not sure if the two of you are serious, retarded, or if I'm being bamboozled. MotB's ending was insanely rushed together and unfinished, much like KotOR2:s. I forgot to mention NWN2, though. Oh god that was such a shitfest. MotB was at least good, though, and didn't suffer from the insane buggyness that NWN2 did. But was the ending sudden and hastily thrown together? Absolutely.

But then again, neo-nazi filth telling us lies and living in an alternate reality isn't exactly news. Especially nowadays.

There's nothing "neo" about my "nazism", your reactionary gaylord.

 

[Volrath]

What was rushed with MotB's ending? You're not one of those faggots who threw a hissyfit when they realised they couldn't break down the wall right?

 

[Sizzle]

Why is MoTB on that list - it didn't have any missing endings.

How are AP and MotB on that list? Neither of those missed an ending.

I'm not sure if the two of you are serious, retarded, or if I'm being bamboozled. MotB's ending was insanely rushed together and unfinished, much like KotOR2:s. I forgot to mention NWN2, though. Oh god that was such a shitfest. MotB was at least good, though, and didn't suffer from the insane buggyness that NWN2 did. But was the ending sudden and hastily thrown together? Absolutely.

Let me repeat - there was nothing missing in MoTB's ending. Either you're confusing it with something else, or you're just making shit up.

 

[Infinitron]

FYI, I've learned that Anthony Davis has not been fired.

There have been layoffs, but they haven't exactly been unexpected.

 

[2house2fly]

Why is MoTB on that list - it didn't have any missing endings.

How are AP and MotB on that list? Neither of those missed an ending.

I'm not sure if the two of you are serious, retarded, or if I'm being bamboozled. MotB's ending was insanely rushed together and unfinished, much like KotOR2:s. I forgot to mention NWN2, though. Oh god that was such a shitfest. MotB was at least good, though, and didn't suffer from the insane buggyness that NWN2 did. But was the ending sudden and hastily thrown together? Absolutely.

Let me repeat - there was nothing missing in MoTB's ending. Either you're confusing it with something else, or you're just making shit up.

And while Alpha Protocol could have had more to the ending and there was obviously stuff cut (you can only ever kill Darcy, making Albatross hate you and luring him to AP to kill you does nothing, there's a small selection of people to ride off with in the boat at the end) it was hardly "missing the ending".

 

[Flou]

FYI, I've learned that Anthony Davis has not been fired.

There have been layoffs, but they haven't exactly been unexpected.

Good news then. I stalked through LinkedIn and managed only to find their AW community manager, statistics guy and bunch of Q&A people that were let go. I believe they had about 202 or 205 people on LinkedIn earlier, now it's 194

 

[Luckmann]

What was rushed with MotB's ending?

Everything. From the second you walked through the portal, everything takes a massive dive downwards, from the writing to the scenery to the go A-B-C-End on-rails progression. Essentially a whole act was cut out.

You're not one of those faggots who threw a hissyfit when they realised they couldn't break down the wall right?

Until you mentioned the wall just right now, I had completely forgotten it was even a thing.

Let me repeat - there was nothing missing in MoTB's ending. Either you're confusing it with something else, or you're just making shit up.

No need to make shit up. Play through the game again and don't be retarded about it. It's quite obvious that it was all extremely hastily wrapped up, much like the KotOR2 ending. Stepping through the portal (or whatever the fuck it was called, my memory is fuzzy) is very much like landing on Malachor V, although not quite as short (they still managed to force in the bare-bones).

And while Alpha Protocol could have had more to the ending and there was obviously stuff cut (you can only ever kill Darcy, making Albatross hate you and luring him to AP to kill you does nothing, there's a small selection of people to ride off with in the boat at the end) it was hardly "missing the ending".

Depends a bit on your choices in the game. I don't remember the people involved or the exact progression I had, but the whole thing was a mess, and I remember thinking that a lot of it made absolutely no fucking sense. I learned later (when I had finished the game) that it was ever-so-slightly better in some other cases. Either way, though, it was very obviously haphazardly thrown together - even worse than MotB, but not as bad as KotOR2.

I think AP was the last game Obsidian made (that I've played) that was shit in that regard, though. I genuinely liked AP in most regards, I was sad to see Sega pull out. I would've loved to see a sequel.