Obsidian and inXile acquired by Microsoft

[Luckmann]

He isn't arrogant now. He defends his ideas and whatnot, but frankly if someone is designing games I would hope they have the balls to defend their ideas.

The arrogance doesn't lie in "defending your ideas", it lies in disregarding the ideas and feedback of others and sticking to your guns despite being proven wrong or when people literally crunch the numbers for you, thinking you know better.

 

[TalesfromtheCrypt]

All you Sawyer haters start sounding like SJWs with your „he hurt muh feelings with his arrogance“. Bunch o’ precious snowflakes, aren’t you?

So the dude designed a game/combat system you don’t like, we get it. It’s time to move on.

 

[mondblut]

Hmm, his actions speak louder than words.
If he thought he created 3 average games in a row, why did he continue making more of the same?
He has no shame.

I think most of us can agree that from his credits list below, only FNV is an above-average game.

• Icewind Dale (2000), designer
• Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter (2001), designer
• Icewind Dale II (2002), lead designer
• Neverwinter Nights 2 (2006), lead designer
• Alpha Protocol (2010), designer
• Fallout: New Vegas (2010), director, lead designer
• Pillars of Eternity (2015), director, lead designer, writer
• Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire (2018), director, narrative designer

Out of this list, only Alpha Protocol is SHIT. And that is for gameplay/controls/QA reasons, they were on to something but they fucked it up because that is what Obsidian does. Fucking good ideas up with poor execution. That's their MO.

The rest of the list is made from very good games. Icewind fucking Dale is the best IE game. Best story, best art, best atmosphere, best combat, best gameplay. Icewind Dale II was good too but it was rushed and 2D at a time when NWN was released and everyone wanted 3D. Plus it was fucking hard 9 years before the Dark Souls/roguelike hysteria, if it had been released today everyone and their dog would hype it to kingdom come!

NWN2 was a really good game, bad at launch but now with powerful PCs we can enjoy the great treasure of content it contains with its expansions and fanmade campaigns... You can play fucking BG on the thing, and Pool of Radiance!

Fallout New Vegas was an excellent Fallout 3 sequel. One of the best games of the PS3 generation.

And the 2 POE games are really good spiritual successors to IE games.

If you don't like those games, what the fuck are you doing in RPGcodex? Those are great examples of CRPGs. Come on, admit it, you are a covert popamoler. The fact that you think only New Vegas is good (because it has First Person Shooter elements you enjoy) exposes you dude...

None of these have the "end turn" button. Ergo, all of them suck.

 

[hexer]

All you Sawyer haters start sounding like SJWs with your „he hurt muh feelings with his arrogance“. Bunch o’ precious snowflakes, aren’t you?

Not sure. I took a picture of me, what do you think...

So the dude game designed a game/combat system you don’t like, we get it. It’s time to move on.

It's far easier to put us on your Ignore list then to read and reply to each one of us.

 

[Quillon]

All you Sawyer haters start sounding like SJWs with your „he hurt muh feelings with his arrogance“. Bunch o’ precious snowflakes, aren’t you?

Not sure. I took a picture of me, what do you think...

Spoiler

You are beautiful!

 

[2house2fly]

The arrogance doesn't lie in "defending your ideas", it lies in disregarding the ideas and feedback of others and sticking to your guns despite being proven wrong or when people literally crunch the numbers for you, thinking you know better.

Here's some recent examples of Sawyer sticking to his guns and refusing to acknowledge any feedback or criticism:

Ukaizo was relatively small because we were responding to criticism that the end game of Pillars 1 (Twin Elms + Burial Isle + Sun in Shadow) was too long. It is as big in game as it was ever designed to be. Actually that’s not entirely true. There was a small period of time where the level where you speak to Eothas was not an actual level, but was planned to be a scripted interaction. That didn’t feel appropriate for the very last level of the game, so we added the final scene.

All that said, I think we over corrected and made Ukaizo too small.

I don’t know why you seem to believe I’m making these changes out of some personal frustration with how people play the game. Much like your (literally, from you) feedback about the lack of counters in the game caused me to pursue the keyword counter system, other players’ feedback made me re-examine DT, rest mechanics, Resolve/Might, and a bunch of other things.

I think it’s fair to characterize me as incompetent if you don’t think I’ve achieved what I set out to do, but I do think it’s unfair to characterize me as someone who designs things out of pettiness or maliciousness.

Additionally, this is the time to try these changes and get feedback. We can sit back and theorize and do nothing; shrug our shoulders at an obvious weak point in the current arrangement; or try a new idea in the beta while we still have time.

Almost every change we've made has been due to feedback on Pillars 1.

* People complained that the DR system felt "mushy" because it was a linear, sliding scale (it also didn't deal well with high damage values) and caused damage value bloat.

* People complained that most of the general Talents felt generic.

* People didn't get the Endurance/Health split.

* People either didn't understand the purpose behind the camping supplies system or understood it but burned up all of their per rest resources every encounter anyway.

* People didn't like the mushiness of the Interrupt/Concentration system and that Interrupts seemed relatively low impact.

* People were overwhelmed by the sheer number of priest and druid spells they got at every power level.

* People didn't like that there was an entire category of priest spells that existed just to counter Afflictions.

There's very little that we've changed that wasn't the result of player feedback. In all of these cases there was either a contentious group opposing the change, but we proceeded because we felt ultimately it would produce a more consistent experience for more players, or there was no serious contention that I/we ever saw.

I would say that the original Pillars review numbers were higher than the game merited, but it's true that it's the highest-rated (on Metacritic) Obsidian game. The user reviews on MC aren't far behind. It was for that reason that much of my focus on Deadfire was on refining (or so I thought) things that were heavily criticized on the original game. The press reviews of Deadfire generally said that the sequel was an improvement on the original in most, if not every, way -- which isn't reflected in the final review scores, but that's a common problem that was exacerbated by the original Pillars reviewing a bit higher than it should have. The user scores are lower, but we've worked hard to try to address recurring / common complaints as quickly as possible.

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

The arrogance doesn't lie in "defending your ideas", it lies in disregarding the ideas and feedback of others and sticking to your guns despite being proven wrong or when people literally crunch the numbers for you, thinking you know better.

Sawyer is not only arrogant, but wants to come across as a scholar using overcomplicated terms for simple stuff. Instead of talking about new bugs generated by previous fixes, he talks about regression rates, because this sounds more scientific. He wants everyone to be mesmerised by his “vast knowledge” of history by clumsily inserting historic themes inside cRPGs. He wants to explain why people have been playing cRPGs wrong since forever because they enjoy hard counters, broken builds and inequality in character design. He will reinvent D&D by himself because the fact that thousands of players tested these systems to exhaustion and in minute detail is irrelevant. He knows best. Yet he finds boot-licking fanboys shielding him from criticism. Suuuuure. Whatever.

 

[Fenix]

It's adopting the interests of game developers rather than gamers.

Nope, it was done in the interest of game developers.

This reminded me about couple of thought I have about unavoidable conflict of interests of game developers and gamers.
Dunno where to post them?

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

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

The hardcore RPG audience is very traditional,” said Sawyer at Reboot Develop this week, discussing the evolution of genres. ... Fans tend to skew towards the more hardcore cases and they tend to be fairly resistant to change. I don’t want to paint too broad of a stroke there but RPGs can be a lot more than we have done with them so far. There’s much more than we can do and its much more radical.

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

 

[Parabalus]

Sawyer was described best by someone as that guy who played Fighter in a D&D game and when he realized the class was shit, made Wizards as bad as the fighter to compensate.

The irony is that Wizards are the strongest classes in both PoE and Dumpsterfire.

 

[Parabalus]

In Deadfire yes, in PoE probably Cypher.

Nah, even before the Cypher class got prosperized Wizards were prob better, in 3.0 Cyphers are garbage and Wizards gods.

 

[hexer]

Spoiler

The arrogance doesn't lie in "defending your ideas", it lies in disregarding the ideas and feedback of others and sticking to your guns despite being proven wrong or when people literally crunch the numbers for you, thinking you know better.

Here's some recent examples of Sawyer sticking to his guns and refusing to acknowledge any feedback or criticism:

Ukaizo was relatively small because we were responding to criticism that the end game of Pillars 1 (Twin Elms + Burial Isle + Sun in Shadow) was too long. It is as big in game as it was ever designed to be. Actually that’s not entirely true. There was a small period of time where the level where you speak to Eothas was not an actual level, but was planned to be a scripted interaction. That didn’t feel appropriate for the very last level of the game, so we added the final scene.

All that said, I think we over corrected and made Ukaizo too small.

I don’t know why you seem to believe I’m making these changes out of some personal frustration with how people play the game. Much like your (literally, from you) feedback about the lack of counters in the game caused me to pursue the keyword counter system, other players’ feedback made me re-examine DT, rest mechanics, Resolve/Might, and a bunch of other things.

I think it’s fair to characterize me as incompetent if you don’t think I’ve achieved what I set out to do, but I do think it’s unfair to characterize me as someone who designs things out of pettiness or maliciousness.

Additionally, this is the time to try these changes and get feedback. We can sit back and theorize and do nothing; shrug our shoulders at an obvious weak point in the current arrangement; or try a new idea in the beta while we still have time.

Almost every change we've made has been due to feedback on Pillars 1.

* People complained that the DR system felt "mushy" because it was a linear, sliding scale (it also didn't deal well with high damage values) and caused damage value bloat.

* People complained that most of the general Talents felt generic.

* People didn't get the Endurance/Health split.

* People either didn't understand the purpose behind the camping supplies system or understood it but burned up all of their per rest resources every encounter anyway.

* People didn't like the mushiness of the Interrupt/Concentration system and that Interrupts seemed relatively low impact.

* People were overwhelmed by the sheer number of priest and druid spells they got at every power level.

* People didn't like that there was an entire category of priest spells that existed just to counter Afflictions.

There's very little that we've changed that wasn't the result of player feedback. In all of these cases there was either a contentious group opposing the change, but we proceeded because we felt ultimately it would produce a more consistent experience for more players, or there was no serious contention that I/we ever saw.

I would say that the original Pillars review numbers were higher than the game merited, but it's true that it's the highest-rated (on Metacritic) Obsidian game. The user reviews on MC aren't far behind. It was for that reason that much of my focus on Deadfire was on refining (or so I thought) things that were heavily criticized on the original game. The press reviews of Deadfire generally said that the sequel was an improvement on the original in most, if not every, way -- which isn't reflected in the final review scores, but that's a common problem that was exacerbated by the original Pillars reviewing a bit higher than it should have. The user scores are lower, but we've worked hard to try to address recurring / common complaints as quickly as possible.

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/

 

[CappenVarra]

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

The hardcore RPG audience is very traditional,” said Sawyer at Reboot Develop this week, discussing the evolution of genres. ... Fans tend to skew towards the more hardcore cases and they tend to be fairly resistant to change. I don’t want to paint too broad of a stroke there but RPGs can be a lot more than we have done with them so far. There’s much more than we can do and its much more radical.

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

now where have i heard this before...

No, that is not the point. The point, in case zealots want to ever accept it, is that your tastes are not the only tastes in the whole world. Really, I know this may be hard to believe, but if you like playing a turn-based game set in three counties of Utah in 2242, and you like miniguns but you don't like lasers, and you like the ratio of dialogue to combat to be about 4:1, and you like cars that look more like Buicks than Pontiacs, and you think 50s-style monsters are okay, but 50s-style aliens aren't, and you think that Max's jacket from Mad Max is okay but the football pad armor isn't, and you don't like when italics are used in dialogue but you do like it when boldface is used, and you want it to be longer than 100 hours but not longer than 120 hours, and like games to be non-linear but only to a point, and want big cities, but only two because four is too much BUT HEY NOT THAT ONE, and you like the desert but don't mind a little grass BUT HEY NOT THAT MUCH BECAUSE IT'S NOT FALLOUT... I am terribly, terribly sorry, because we are not going to make a game just for you.

We're not trying to make a game for everyone. Really, we aren't. But we're not making a game just for you and ten other angry guys with tastes that are narrower than a hallway in a camp of pygmy dwarves.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Hmm, his actions speak louder than words.
If he thought he created 3 average games in a row, why did he continue making more of the same?
He has no shame.

I think most of us can agree that from his credits list below, only FNV is an above-average game.

• Icewind Dale (2000), designer
• Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter (2001), designer
• Icewind Dale II (2002), lead designer
• Neverwinter Nights 2 (2006), lead designer
• Alpha Protocol (2010), designer
• Fallout: New Vegas (2010), director, lead designer
• Pillars of Eternity (2015), director, lead designer, writer
• Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire (2018), director, narrative designer

Out of this list, only Alpha Protocol is SHIT. And that is for gameplay/controls/QA reasons, they were on to something but they fucked it up because that is what Obsidian does. Fucking good ideas up with poor execution. That's their MO.

The rest of the list is made from very good games. Icewind fucking Dale is the best IE game. Best story, best art, best atmosphere, best combat, best gameplay. Icewind Dale II was good too but it was rushed and 2D at a time when NWN was released and everyone wanted 3D. Plus it was fucking hard 9 years before the Dark Souls/roguelike hysteria, if it had been released today everyone and their dog would hype it to kingdom come!

NWN2 was a really good game, bad at launch but now with powerful PCs we can enjoy the great treasure of content it contains with its expansions and fanmade campaigns... You can play fucking BG on the thing, and Pool of Radiance!

Fallout New Vegas was an excellent Fallout 3 sequel. One of the best games of the PS3 generation.

And the 2 POE games are really good spiritual successors to IE games.

If you don't like those games, what the fuck are you doing in RPGcodex? Those are great examples of CRPGs. Come on, admit it, you are a covert popamoler. The fact that you think only New Vegas is good (because it has First Person Shooter elements you enjoy) exposes you dude...

NWN2 was horrid, especially when it first released and was unplayable due to all the bugs & crashes. Funny that you mention AP being shit for QA reasons.
Even MOTB was held back by the atrocious engine. NWN2 came out in 2006, ToEE came out in 2003 — there was no excuse.

 

[pomenitul]

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.

 

[markec]

If you don't like those games, what the fuck are you doing in RPGcodex? Those are great examples of CRPGs. Come on, admit it, you are a covert popamoler. The fact that you think only New Vegas is good (because it has First Person Shooter elements you enjoy) exposes you dude...

I think you made a wrong turn somewhere, this aint RPGWatch this is RPG Codex, here everything sucks.

 

[PorkBarrellGuy]

Fallout New Vegas was an excellent Fallout 3 sequel.

What kind of fuckmothering retarded statement is this

TemplarGR drag your fucking ass back in here and explain this

 

[fantadomat]

I don't like Bethesda's FPS Fallout 3 engine but I love FNV's story and world.

I do like their engine,it is really easy to play around and the console is pretty easy to use. I haven't met a problem in their games that i couldn't fix with the console and some reading about. The bugs are half the fun of their game,they feel like part of Zachtronics Industries game.

 

[sser]

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.

 

[PorkBarrellGuy]

Nihil sub sole novum.

 

[ColonelTeacup]

Fallout New Vegas was an excellent Fallout 3 sequel.

What kind of fuckmothering retarded statement is this

TemplarGR drag your fucking ass back in here and explain this

Technically, he is correct. As it occurs after the events of Fallout 3, is using Bethesdas Gamebyro engine, was published by Bethesda, and is in the world of a Bethesda owned product. Fallout NV is a sequel to Fallout 3.

 

[PorkBarrellGuy]

Fallout New Vegas was an excellent Fallout 3 sequel.

What kind of fuckmothering retarded statement is this

TemplarGR drag your fucking ass back in here and explain this

Technically, he is correct. As it occurs after the events of Fallout 3, is using Bethesdas Gamebyro engine, was published by Bethesda, and is in the world of a Bethesda owned product. Fallout NV is a sequel to Fallout 3.

Technically he can kiss my hickory-smoked ass. There are no plotlines I can recall that start in FO3 and are continued or resolved in F:NV. The connection between them is purely that, technical.

 

[ColonelTeacup]

Fallout New Vegas was an excellent Fallout 3 sequel.

What kind of fuckmothering retarded statement is this

TemplarGR drag your fucking ass back in here and explain this

Technically, he is correct. As it occurs after the events of Fallout 3, is using Bethesdas Gamebyro engine, was published by Bethesda, and is in the world of a Bethesda owned product. Fallout NV is a sequel to Fallout 3.

Technically he can kiss my hickory-smoked ass. There are no plotlines I can recall that start in FO3 and are continued or resolved in F:NV. The connection between them is purely that, technical.

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

 

[PorkBarrellGuy]

Fallout New Vegas was an excellent Fallout 3 sequel.

What kind of fuckmothering retarded statement is this

TemplarGR drag your fucking ass back in here and explain this

Technically, he is correct. As it occurs after the events of Fallout 3, is using Bethesdas Gamebyro engine, was published by Bethesda, and is in the world of a Bethesda owned product. Fallout NV is a sequel to Fallout 3.

Technically he can kiss my hickory-smoked ass. There are no plotlines I can recall that start in FO3 and are continued or resolved in F:NV. The connection between them is purely that, technical.

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

Dear God in Heaven, don't remind me.

 

[ColonelTeacup]

Sorry.