Company News Is Troika Dead?

[Dhruin]

^And where is the $2-$3 million going to come from for a modest production?

 

[dagobach]

I rekon they should go the online route and ditch these filthy publishers. They have a fan base, just code and sell the product by shipping it and/or sell online.

why do you think they have always relied on publishers? They don't have the money to fund a game themselves. You have to make a product before you can sell it.

 

[xemous]

?

 

[Sol Invictus]

Edit for my previous post:

Chris Avellone = Chris Taylor (Not sure why I typed Avellone)

As for them being 'driven by passion rather than money', what a load. Everyone makes games for money. If you wanted to do it solely out of passion you'd be like Jeff Vogel who makes games on his own time.

They didn't fail in the industry because of their 'passion' they failed because of poor business plans and mismanaged projects. They allowed feature creep to enter their games and couldn't finish on time for the milestones, gave false completion estimates, etc.

 

[Dhruin]

Yep thats the problem. They need a wage. And publishers were a pain in the arse. Since when did a game need 2-3 million dollars to be worthwhile?

It doesn't, although that is a very small amount by today's commercial averages.

 

[xemous]

making games is hard work

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

They also needed Chris Avellone. He laid the concept out pretty well, designed the SPECIAL character system and so forth. I still don't know why Troika didn't go with a system similar to SPECIAL for Arcanum. It would have been perfect.

I think you mean Chris Taylor. He was the designer around for Fallout, not Chris Avellone.

The reason they didn't go with a SPECIAL like system for Arcanum, which would have been nice, is because Interplay was repeatedly suing them over Arcanum being too similar to Fallout in terms of style, play, and design. Using a system like SPECIAL in Arcanum would have sent even more homing lawyers over to Troika's offices.

I know you know about that, because I told you about that a while back.

 

[Sol Invictus]

I know. I said I mistyped.

Arcanum's system still sucked balls, though. They could have at least separated the point distribution.

 

[Avin]

they should have talked to steve jackson and used GURPS, which is where they copy the system from.

 

[Ekodas]

Edit for my previous post:

As for them being 'driven by passion rather than money', what a load. Everyone makes games for money. If you wanted to do it solely out of passion you'd be like Jeff Vogel who makes games on his own time.

Not really. I worked as QA tester for Ubi Soft for some time. Made a few friends there (designers and engineers mostly), and then made a few friends in small game companies. I saw people driven by passion, and I saw people driven by money. There's a difference. You should try to work for a game company or even a big publisher : it won't take long untill you make the difference.

If you want to make some money making video games you don't make PC-only games. As simple as that.

As for your Jeff Vogel reference, I would have agreed with you 15-18 years ago, when you could code a game in two months (one man's army : code/design/music etc). So yeah, I guess you could still make games that make the original Prince Of Persia look like a state of the art game, but not if you want to do the best game possible. Now try to code the core of a 3D engine in two months...

 

[Vault Dweller]

...but not if you want to do the best game possible.

Best game or best looking game? There is a difference.

 

[Sol Invictus]

Are you saying that Troika doesn't make games for money?

 

[Ekodas]

Are you saying that Troika doesn't make games for money?

I'm saying that Troika doesn't make games for money only. I told you why : it takes more than faith to make PC-only games. Troika did it. 3 times. And, worst (from a business perspective) : they did RPGs.

Making game is also an art. If you see this, you should also understand why some people are not making games for money only.

Best game or best looking game? There is a difference.

/nod.

I agree with you, but maybe not 100 %. I think too that you can have a great game with mediocre graphics ; and some games are just eye-candy but plainly suck.

But if you can make a good game with great graphics, that's excellent. I try to see the game as a whole : design/graphics/music/code : the best game would successfully take it all into account and make someting coherent and great.

Devs driven by passion often see the game as a whole : they want to produce the best game, and that include decent graphics (but it doesn't boils down to eye candy only). That is especially true for designers/graphist :Leonard Boyarsky for example since we're talking about Troika, or Michel Ancel - since I talked about Ubi soft.

Don't get me wrong, I have a lot of respect for designers who keep on making their own games with little to no money. But I'm quite sure they wouldn't mind to make also better-looking game, because it's also part of what makes a game enjoyable.

 

[Seven]

Are you saying that Troika doesn't make games for money?

Wow, that's a huge jump. People here were suggesting that one of Troika's aims was a passion for gaming and making games. You then said that they're only in it for the money.

So in answer to your previous question: No they're not in it solely for money. In answer to your present question (which is totally different, and just petty): of course any commercial organization needs money to survive, what do you think they're going to perpetuate themselves based on poprocks and cotton candy?

 

[Vault Dweller]

But if you can make a good game with great graphics, that's excellent. I try to see the game as a whole : design/graphics/music/code : the best game would succefully take it all into account and make someting coherent and great.

The problem with that, imo, is that time and resources are limited. You can't increase one aspect of a game without automatically decreasing another.

Todd Howard: "The game is shorter. Why? First, because "the enhanced graphics will require more time" while the development time and budget remained the same
...
So instead of doing many types of ranged combat, we decided to stick with bows and arrows -- but -- it's a grand implementation of bows and arrows. So we trade having several types of ranged combat done in an average way, and get bows done in a grand way."

 

[Sol Invictus]

I'm rather happy that they decided to go with a 'grand implementation' of bows and arrows instead of a shoddy one for the sake of implementing other ranged weaponry. Yeah, it's regrettable that there won't be any knowing knives or ninja stars, but bows have always been one of my favorite weapons and it's nice to know that they're getting a good bit of love this time around.

In my opinion, it was a decent trade-off.

 

[Ekodas]

The problem with that, imo, is that time and resources are limited. You can't increase one aspect of a game without automatically decreasing another. "

Aye, that's correct.

Devs got to choose how to allocate the 'technical ressources' (Am I going to use 70% of the CPU for graphic effects ? etc.). And they also got to decide how to allocate their time/money.

Finding a balance is extremely hard, but you have more chance to find it if designer/programers/artists work together toward the same goal and share the same passion. They'll have only one concern then : How to improve the gaming experience ?

Sometime cutting a game feature because you want to polish a zone make sense and improve the overall experience and immersion. Spending a lot of time to improve light/shadow effects can be critical (if you're making a stealth/infiltration games). But if you start cutting game features just to add 2 spell effects to the already existing spell effects, something is amiss.

Imho Beth is putting too much ressource in graphics with Oblivion. As you pointed out, since the time and resources are limited you'll have to make some choices : choosing systematically graphics over design is a mistake. We shall see!

 

[Volourn]

"""I'm saying that Troika doesn't make games for money only. I told you why : it takes more than faith to make PC-only games. Troika did it. 3 times. And, worst (from a business perspective) : they did RPGs."

Is this suppsoed to impress me? Afterall, BIO has done BG, BG2, and NWN for PC only. DA is also PC only.And, they're all role-playing games - even the 'Codex agrees. Not to mention the expansions for their PC only. In fact, BIO amde a fortune on their PC only games. Sorry, developing for PC only proves nothing and certainly doesn't prove one has faith. What a maroon.

It doesn't take faith to make PC games. Dumbass. PC games can be very successful. I mean, you haven't heard about the Sims or Diablo, huh? Retard.

As for them not 'doing it just for money'? Again, is this supposed to impress me? Most people who work or start in game devlopment aren't in i for the money. Afterall, I seiously, doubt that when BIo started making games, they actually thought they'd now 10 years later be where they are. They like games so they start making them. Heck, JE is soemthing that they supposedly had planned way back when.

They all have passion. But, they all want to make money becuase without money neither BIO or Troika can stay in business to continue their passion.. or pay their bills.

So, make exuses all youw ant; the bottom line is IF Troiak falls; it's thier own fault. Period.

 

[Avé]

If anyone would like to see what Nicolai's been up to since Excrement unbanned him, click here for what he has so nicely PM'ed me.
(Since you know Nicolai,you know what it's going to be.)

Good job copy/pasting every single one of my posts pertaining to the subject, Ave. Good job indeed. What do you hope to accomplish?

I achieved it.

Bloodlines has more bugs than most titles on the market. If you don't know what 'bugs' referred I to, why did you reply as you did?

How the fuck do you know this?

Do you have a line into the bug management software of every game?

Sure it was buggy, but why do you keep coming up with obviously farcical statements like that, which you can never prove?

Selective reasoning? You're denying a very obvious fact of Bloodlines. It is like saying the sun isn't hot and the sky isn't blue. It is a self-evident fact that Environmental Audio doesn't function in Bloodlines as it should. It results in an echo on Audigy systems and causes the memory leak to occur at an exponential rate.

Well I played it using an Audigy2 ZS and Soundstorm, it worked fine, so how am I denying a very obvious fact of Bloodlines?

That's a lame excuse and you know it. The fact that the hubs are filled with loading zones doesn't help that Bloodlines' takes a long time to load areas up.

No it's not a lame excuse, Bloodlines had inexcusably low system requirements, however many, many, many people and reviews have given adequate system specs out.

As I said, get a decent PC.

One game-stopping bug is one game-stopping bug too many. Period. Game-stopping bugs have NO place in ANY game whatsoever. I don't know how you can excuse such a serious issue.

How am I excusing it?

I said "It's pretty much the only one still there", when you made it sound as if their were dozens.

STOP READING WHAT YOU WANT TO SEE FFS.

I would also point out that this only happens if you reload to inside one specific place, and that these bugs are actually quite common in games, so singling out Bloodlines is quite funny.

So? Does this make the memory leak any less of a problem in Bloodlines just because there are 'a lot of games' with a similar problem? I've never experienced that bug in Sacred, either.

Ah, you never experienced it in Sacred, I never experienced it in Bloodlines, does that mean neither now suffer from it?

That shows Ascaron's dedication to the title.

It shows the game seemed to have vastly more obvious bugs then Bloodlines at launch, and is still generally as buggy.

The game's gone from bad to great since it was released. The item system is completely revamped, as are plenty of the skills.

The games gone from inexcusably shit to passable, nothing more.

The same cannot be said for Bloodlines,

The game's gone from great with a bug requiring an awkward workaround as well as misc other bugs, to just great with still a large number of bugs.

and yet you choose to denigrate Ascaron's work while putting Troika on a pedestal.

Where have I put Troika on a pedestal?

Anyone who disagrees with you, you immediately accuse of being some kind of insane fanboy - guess what, you're a fucking retard.

Sacred sold less copies than Bloodlines, but the developers continue to work on it. It's funny how that pans out.

Their's a reason it sold less copies, almost every single original review panned the game, they needed the patches to at least make some money, and it took a free "expansion" pack to actually make the game remotely playable.

It's been explained many times. I guess I'll have to explain again. Usually, when you reload the game while you are playing, you immediately attack the target in front of you.

Every time you load a game it swings, this is obvious from the start, and not some major fucking deal, DONT SAVE RIGHT IN FRONT OF SOMEONE.

Hahaha. Who the fuck are you kidding? What a crock of shit. Good luck playing a Dialogue character with no combat skills.

I did actually, the end was difficult but still not insanely difficult.

Ti4200 (AA AF disabled), 9600, 9800 XT, GeForce 6600GT. / Pentium 4 1.8, Pentium 4 2.8, AMD Athlon 64 2800+

Comparable performance on each.

As I said, what a load of bollocks.
Athlon XP 2500 // 1gb ram // Ti4400 1024*768 = playable, with about 30-40 seconds loadtimes on hubs

Athlon 64 3200 //1gb ram // 6800GT @ 1200*1024 = smooth for the whole game, with 15-20 second loadtimes.

Who the hell are you trying to kid with your fake stats?

Who's going to develop the patches if nobody's working in Troika's Bloodlines' division anymore? Think on that.

Who, according to you, PULLED THE FUNDING SO THEY HAVE NOBODY WORKING?

Yeah, Activision, think on that

Damn right it doesn't. No other game requires that insane amount of maintenance, so why the fuck should Bloodlines?

Bloodlines doesnt require that kind of maintenance, just have a decent pagefile and 1gb ram, and even on a 4 year old graphics card like a ti4400 it will run.

Fool.

Yeah, I gave Ave a dumbfuck rank, too, because he earned it when he tried to excuse all of Bloodlines' multitude of issues by saying 'every other game has bugs too!'.

Where did I say that?

Where exactly did I say "Bloodlines is fine because every game has bugs"?

Please quote me.

You said

"Bugs? Check."
As if having undefined bugs, was a reason to denigrate a company & a game.

I clarified it with

"no game has ever been launched without bugs, CHECK!"

Where did I say that applied to every bug?

You're a cretin, labelling people as dumbfucks because you cant actually even begin to refute anything they say.

If you're going to do it, at least come up with a reason that cant be dismissed so easily as a lie.



One last thing.

What have you done to have the right to

A) Label people as dumbfucks

B) Tell people to fuck off from the site

?

Seriously, who do you think you are?

You post news(wow!), you write mediocre reviews, and designed some basic graphics.


Saint has a right to act like that given his contribution to the community of fallout, troika & codex over the years, and a few others I can think of, but who the hell are you?

Just some jumped up hypocrite.

 

[Ekodas]

Is this suppsoed to impress me? Afterall, BIO has done BG, BG2, and NWN for PC only. DA is also PC only.And, they're all role-playing games - even the 'Codex agrees. Not to mention the expansions for their PC only. In fact, BIO amde a fortune on their PC only games. Sorry, developing for PC only proves nothing and certainly doesn't prove one has faith. What a maroon.

It doesn't take faith to make PC games. Dumbass. PC games can be very successful. I mean, you haven't heard about the Sims or Diablo, huh? Retard.

You could almost have a point. Problem is, I said in my previous post "nowadays" ; nowadays making PC-only games is risky. The key word is : nowadays.

BG was made in 1999. There was no X-Box at the time and the console available pretty much sucked from a technical standpoint.

Besides, it took a DnD licence to make the game successfull. Shattered Steel didn't sold well. BG sold well ; why ? Yeah sure, it was a good game. But you're sadly mistaken if you think that it only take a good game to be successfull.

BG= Dungeon and Dragon. More, it's using the Forgotten Realms setting, one of the most, if not the most popular setting of DnD. You can't overlook this fact.
I mean, you could meet Drizzt in game !!!!

Sims, Diablo, again we're talking about a time were SNES was the best console ever...

BG2 was the sequel of an already successfull game. It was a good game, but it just take common sense to understand why it wasn't 'risky' to make this one., and again there was no X-Box at the time (X-Box = 2001).

NWN wasn't a good game, don't know why you mention it. Besides, Bio almost went under because of this game (and note that BG and BGII did very well though). If anything, it proves that in 2002 (i.e as we're getting closer and closer to the current days) it IS risky to make PC-Only games.

As soon as the X-Box was out, Bioware had the wits to developp cross-platform. As for DA, you should know that they'll also publish Jade Empire. Bioware got the guts to make a PC-Only game, and they should get props for that. But they also have the wits to make a PC/X-Box game at the same time ; they're pragmatic.

So I'll repeat : nowadays it takes faith to develop PC-only games.

As for them not 'doing it just for money'? Again, is this supposed to impress me?

I'm not trying to impress anyone. Where did you get that weird idea from ?

Most people who work or start in game devlopment aren't in i for the money. Afterall, I seiously, doubt that when BIo started making games, they actually thought they'd now 10 years later be where they are. They like games so they start making them. Heck, JE is soemthing that they supposedly had planned way back when.

They all have passion. But, they all want to make money becuase without money neither BIO or Troika can stay in business to continue their passion.. or pay their bills.

That's my point exactly. They're not in this business solely for money. Read Seven's post, that exactly what I meant. We don't disagree here.

So, make exuses all youw ant; the bottom line is IF Troiak falls; it's thier own fault. Period.

Not excuses, facts. I told you just above why you can't hardly compare what Bio did in 1998 to what Toika did in 2000-2004.

IF, IF Troika falls, their lack of pramatism will be to blame. But as a gamer, I'm happy they made so little compromise and I thank them for their lack of pramatism.

 

[Sol Invictus]

If anyone would like to see what Nicolai's been up to since Excrement unbanned him, click here for what he has so nicely PM'ed me.
(Since you know Nicolai,you know what it's going to be.)

Welcome to the Codex.

I achieved it.

Stop taking English lessons from Uwe Boll. That made no sense.

Bloodlines has more bugs than most titles on the market. If you don't know what 'bugs' referred I to, why did you reply as you did?

How the fuck do you know this?

Do you have a line into the bug management software of every game?

Sure it was buggy, but why do you keep coming up with obviously farcical statements like that, which you can never prove?

Bloodlines is a bugger game than most AAA titles, and Troika has a bad reputation for developing buggy titles. That is why it stands out from the rest.

What's there to proof? The bug reports speak for themselves.

Well I played it using an Audigy2 ZS and Soundstorm, it worked fine, so how am I denying a very obvious fact of Bloodlines?

When every tech guide related to Bloodlines recommend disabling EAX due to performance issues, there is definitely something wrong:
http://www.forumplanet.com/planetvampir ... 1#17489129
http://www.forumplanet.com/planetvampir ... 1#17510365
http://www.forumplanet.com/planetvampir ... 2#17540274
http://www.forumplanet.com/planetvampir ... 1#17354358

Here's the exact problem: http://www.forumplanet.com/planetvampir ... 1#17272704

No it's not a lame excuse, Bloodlines had inexcusably low system requirements, however many, many, many people and reviews have given adequate system specs out.

As I said, get a decent PC.

I have more than a decent PC: Pentium 4 2.8c, 9800XT, 1.5gb RAM, 112gb*2 SATA. As I stated before, defragmenting my hard drive every few days and leaving 70% of my hard disk space free just to play Bloodlines isn't an acceptable requirement. No other game requires that amount of maintenance on the computer to run properly. Bloodlines is the only game that plays poorly because of it.

It is also unfair that I have to maintain a very small list of savegames because Bloodlines's performance is affected by the number of save games you have at one time.

How am I excusing it?

I said "It's pretty much the only one still there", when you made it sound as if their were dozens.

STOP READING WHAT YOU WANT TO SEE FFS.

I would also point out that this only happens if you reload to inside one specific place, and that these bugs are actually quite common in games, so singling out Bloodlines is quite funny.

You are trying to downplay the critical bugs in Bloodlines by saying they are 'common in games' Please cite some examples. Most games don't have critical game-stopping bugs, much less several of them, because they are unacceptable.

Ah, you never experienced it in Sacred, I never experienced it in Bloodlines, does that mean neither now suffer from it?

The problem occurs more commonly in Bloodlines than in Sacred, which is why people don't complain about Sacred's bugs as often as they do about Bloodlines.

It shows the game seemed to have vastly more obvious bugs then Bloodlines at launch, and is still generally as buggy.

What are you talking about? In addition to fixing the bugs, all of the patches have further enhanced the game with new features.

http://eng.sacred-game.com/changelog.ph ... ersion=280

The games gone from inexcusably shit to passable, nothing more.

That is just your unfounded opinion, and I'm afraid most people don't agree with that.
http://www.gamerankings.com/itemranking ... mid=915057

The game's gone from great with a bug requiring an awkward workaround as well as misc other bugs, to just great with still a large number of bugs.

The game's performance is still, however, unacceptable. The quality of the game, especially in regards to respawning monsters and a hackneyed ending, remain unchanged.

Where have I put Troika on a pedestal?

Everytime you open your mouth.

Anyone who disagrees with you, you immediately accuse of being some kind of insane fanboy - guess what, you're a fucking retard.

You can't handle the truth, so you insult me with remarks like 'fucking retard', as if it changes your status as a fanboy. You're still a fanboy, and it is quite evident from your posts.

Their's a reason it sold less copies, almost every single original review panned the game, they needed the patches to at least make some money, and it took a free "expansion" pack to actually make the game remotely playable.

Again, this is untrue. The Sacred free expansion was made available as completely optional download. If the game did as poorly as you say, it is doubtful that they would have found the budget for Sacred: Underworld, the game's upcoming true expansion pack.

http://sacred-game.com/index_start.php? ... ubsiteid=1

Every time you load a game it swings, this is obvious from the start, and not some major fucking deal, DONT SAVE RIGHT IN FRONT OF SOMEONE.

This is a horrible workaround, and Bloodlines is the only game I've ever played that even suffered from this kind of bug. It's clear that it is a memory leak. The game isn't properly flushing the cache when it loads a new game.

Athlon XP 2500 // 1gb ram // Ti4400 1024*768 = playable, with about 30-40 seconds loadtimes on hubs

Athlon 64 3200 //1gb ram // 6800GT @ 1200*1024 = smooth for the whole game, with 15-20 second loadtimes.

Who the hell are you trying to kid with your fake stats?

Your definition of 'smooth' might be 15fps. I'd like to see some FRAPS demos for you to use to back up your claims. The game plays nowhere as smoothly as Half Life 2, and it is widely understood that the game suffers from performance issues due to an early Source build.

Why do you deny this?

Who, according to you, PULLED THE FUNDING SO THEY HAVE NOBODY WORKING?

Yeah, Activision, think on that

What's your point? If Activision isn't funding the game any more, there ISN'T going to be another patch for Bloodlines no matter what you think.

Bloodlines doesnt require that kind of maintenance, just have a decent pagefile and 1gb ram, and even on a 4 year old graphics card like a ti4400 it will run.

Fool.

And defragmentation every few days. No thanks.

What have you done to have the right to

A) Label people as dumbfucks

B) Tell people to fuck off from the site

?

A) I'm an administrator. It's rather elementary, don't you think?

B) Freedom of Speech.

Seriously, who do you think you are?

I'm Ian "Exitium" Cheong. It's my name, don't wear it out.

You post news(wow!), you write mediocre reviews, and designed some basic graphics.

What do you do? What have you done for the RPG Codex besides post a bunch of mind-numbing rants about the people who run it?

Saint has a right to act like that given his contribution to the community of fallout, troika & codex over the years, and a few others I can think of, but who the hell are you?

I'm providing contributions to the RPG Codex community, in the form of news, reviews and editorials. I also designed the website. I'd like to know what you've done for the community to think that you deserve any kind of respect.

You can ask the same of anyone, by asking questions like "Who the hell are you?" and downplay every single one of their accomplishments as nothing more than child's play. However, I'd like to see you contribute even half of the things I, or Saint, or anyone else who works on the Codex has, for the Fallout community or the RPG Codex in general.

Good day to you, `Dumbfuck!!!

 

[asa]

Recap:

1) Troika does not suck as Rex suggests,

2) Rex's friend is stupid for believing his Geforce 4MX will play DX9 games,

3) Rex abuses his admin power on RPG Codex,

4) the rest of the staff are afraid of Rex,

5) In a few months Rex will be having conversations with himself on Codex as everyone else will have left.

 

[Sol Invictus]

Recap:

1) Troika does not suck as Rex suggests,

2) Rex's friend is stupid for believing his Geforce 4MX will play DX9 games,

3) Rex abuses his admin power on RPG Codex,

4) the rest of the staff are afraid of Rex,

5) In a few months Rex will be having conversations with himself on Codex as everyone else will have left.

You have four posts. Bow to the almighty newbie.

1) Newbies create statements of fact! This will not be questioned.

2) Get the details right: It's a Geforce 4 Ti4200. It also plays Half Life 2, which is backwards compatible with both DX8 and DX7.

Here's a detailed article on Shader fallbacks:
http://www.valve-erc.com/srcsdk/Materia ... backs.html

Some related threads:
http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/38292/
http://www.halflifesource.com/forums/sh ... nextnewest

You are an ignoramus for thinking otherwise. If you only did a little research you would know that the game runs on the Geforce 4 Ti4xxx series. I said nothing of MX, which also contrary to your opinion, will also run Half Life 2, albeit poorly. Half Life 2's source engine has DX7, DX8 and DX9 paths.

3) Says the ignorant newbie, who's only experience with the Codex is a single thread. If this were anywhere else, this thread would have already been locked and the participants expelled permanently from the website.

4) As if.

5) If you can't handle the opinions at the Codex, you can always leave.

 

[Nicolai]

Ortchel hacked my account and sent those horrible PMs

No, seriously.

 

[Volourn]

"BG was made in 1999. There was no X-Box at the time and the console available pretty much sucked from a technical standpoint."

It wasn't THAT long ago. PC games can be successful. To say they cna't is silly. Youa re telling me that ther ehave been no successful PC games in the alst few years? Atually, your comment about NWN later prove you have no idea what youa re talking about.


"Besides, it took a DnD licence to make the game successfull. Shattered Steel didn't sold well. BG sold well ; why ? Yeah sure, it was a good game. But you're sadly mistaken if you think that it only take a good game to be successfull."

SS sold well for what it was. Sure, it didn't sell hundreds of thousands of copies; but I don't think Interplay expected it to. Afterall, it was BIO's first game I do believe. BG sold well for many reasons. It being D&D was one of them. Afterall, D&D games do sell poorly. Look at all thae GB games that sold for crap as proof. Or POR2 after the first month.


"NWN wasn't a good game, don't know why you mention it. Besides, Bio almost went under because of this game (and note that BG and BGII did very well though). If anything, it proves that in 2002 (i.e as we're getting closer and closer to the current days) it IS risky to make PC-Only games."

NWN is a good game. However, that's besides the point as that is just our opinions. WTF? BIo didn't almost go udner because of NWN. Youd runk right? Where's the evidence? NWN sold over a million copies, had 2 exapnsions,a nd is still selling at a failry good clip consideirng it is a 2 + year old game. You obviously don't know what youa re talking about.


"Bioware got the guts to make a PC-Only game, and they should get props for that."

That's not guts. That's intelligence. Most of BIO's fans are PC gamers. Do you even pay attention?


"But they also have the wits to make a PC/X-Box game at the same time ; they're pragmatic."

No. That's not pragmatic. It's what BIo wants to do. BIO has been planning JE for YEARS. It being on x-box has nothing to do with pragamaticism. Afterall, if it was, it be on the PS2 where it would sell a lot more copies. Why would *anyone* make games for x-box if selling lots of copies were there goal when PS2 is more liekly to have you sell more copies? R00fles!


"So I'll repeat : nowadays it takes faith to develop PC-only games. "

False. False. False. And, you've given no proof. It has nothing to do with faith. Nothing.


"I'm not trying to impress anyone. Where did you get that weird idea from ?"

Youa re trying to make Troika out to be some type of Hero for us PC gamers. Theya rne't. Theya re just another game devloper trying to make money doing what they love. Nothing more; nothing less.


"They're not in this business solely for money."

Um. Theya re. Once it's a business; it's about money. You can be in business to make money; and still love what you to do. Once you start charging for your work; it's a business and it's about money. No matter how much you love it. Two seperate issues.


"Not excuses, facts. I told you just above why you can't hardly compare what Bio did in 1998 to what Toika did in 2000-2004."

Yes, i can. Heck, when BG was made; role-playing agmes were supposedly 'dead'. Espicially D&D games. Outside of Daiblo and FO to a far lesser degree 9success wise); rpgs were a non issue. This is no different nowadays. RPGs are what they've always been - a part of the market.


"IF, IF Troika falls, their lack of pramatism will be to blame. But as a gamer, I'm happy they made so little compromise and I thank them for their lack of pramatism."

No, if they fail; it's because they failed to deliver what we gamers as a whole wnated the way we wanted it. It's that simple. If their games weren't buggy, if their games had a decent story, if their games didn't didn't short circuit near the end; maybe more peopelw ould have bought it. And, oh btw, they *did* compromise. Don't fool yourself. Afterall, there's a reason why Arcanum had both tb and rt combat. :wink:

That is all. For now.