Obsidian General Discussion Thread

[Sizzle]

Obsidian needs to stand up for themselves if they want to be successful. They have a stellar reputation; every RPG made by Obsidian has a cult following and every RPG fan on Reddit/SomethingAwful wishes that the sequel to their franchise be made by Obsidian. They need to leverage that and use their reputation to give them enough time to make truly great games; almost every Obsidian game to date has been rushed and has came out worse for it.

I'm skeptical that they really have a stellar reputation. I mean, a few years ago when Feargus Urquhart did an RPS interview they literally asked him to apologise for making buggy games.

They address their buggy reputation in almost every interview they (meaning - Feargus, Sawyer, Avellone in the past, etc.) give.

Though that is turning around - none of their games since Dungeon Siege III have been all that particularly bug-ridden.

 

[Sentinel]

Obsidian needs to stand up for themselves if they want to be successful. They have a stellar reputation; every RPG made by Obsidian has a cult following and every RPG fan on Reddit/SomethingAwful wishes that the sequel to their franchise be made by Obsidian. They need to leverage that and use their reputation to give them enough time to make truly great games; almost every Obsidian game to date has been rushed and has came out worse for it.

I'm skeptical that they really have a stellar reputation. I mean, a few years ago when Feargus Urquhart did an RPS interview they literally asked him to apologise for making buggy games.

They address their buggy reputation in almost every interview they (meaning - Feargus, Sawyer, Avellone in the past, etc.) give.

Though that is turning around - none of their games since Dungeon Siege III have been all that particularly bug-ridden.

*cough* Pillars of Eternity *cough*

 

[Sizzle]

Obsidian needs to stand up for themselves if they want to be successful. They have a stellar reputation; every RPG made by Obsidian has a cult following and every RPG fan on Reddit/SomethingAwful wishes that the sequel to their franchise be made by Obsidian. They need to leverage that and use their reputation to give them enough time to make truly great games; almost every Obsidian game to date has been rushed and has came out worse for it.

I'm skeptical that they really have a stellar reputation. I mean, a few years ago when Feargus Urquhart did an RPS interview they literally asked him to apologise for making buggy games.

They address their buggy reputation in almost every interview they (meaning - Feargus, Sawyer, Avellone in the past, etc.) give.

Though that is turning around - none of their games since Dungeon Siege III have been all that particularly bug-ridden.

*cough* Pillars of Eternity *cough*

What was so buggy about it? At launch it had, what, one major bug (Raedric's Hold)? Sure, some problems persisted until the first expansion pack, but compared to it, BG2 was much buggier when it first came out.

 

[Sentinel]

Obsidian needs to stand up for themselves if they want to be successful. They have a stellar reputation; every RPG made by Obsidian has a cult following and every RPG fan on Reddit/SomethingAwful wishes that the sequel to their franchise be made by Obsidian. They need to leverage that and use their reputation to give them enough time to make truly great games; almost every Obsidian game to date has been rushed and has came out worse for it.

I'm skeptical that they really have a stellar reputation. I mean, a few years ago when Feargus Urquhart did an RPS interview they literally asked him to apologise for making buggy games.

They address their buggy reputation in almost every interview they (meaning - Feargus, Sawyer, Avellone in the past, etc.) give.

Though that is turning around - none of their games since Dungeon Siege III have been all that particularly bug-ridden.

*cough* Pillars of Eternity *cough*

What was so buggy about it? At launch it had, what, one major bug (Raedric's Hold)? Sure, some problems persisted until the first expansion pack, but compared to it, BG2 was much buggier when it first came out.

Stat stacking bugs (pretty fucking serious ones), and crashes on Raedric's Hold that stopped people from doing the quest.

 

[2house2fly]

My favourite one was going to the sanitarium, then leaving and asking a city guard how to find the sanitarium, which would render the quest "the man who waits" impossible to complete. The Man Who Waits is part of the main quest, so if you hit that bug you couldn't finish the game.

Still, I don't know if Pillars is that much worse than Bioware's KOTOR, in which the wookie character cloned himself four or five times, one of which overwrote the R2 droid, and the ending didn't play.

 

[santino27]

Nobody is saying there weren't bugs in POE; there were. But for whatever reason, that game doesn't get tarred with the 'OMG Obsidian so buggy' brush like earlier games did. Thankfully. Frankly every RPG I've played in the past 5-10 years has had bugs, and I think Obsidian has been a bit unfairly dinged for theirs whereas other developers (*cough* *cough* bethesda) got a free pass from the gaming press.

 

[Sizzle]

Stat stacking bugs (pretty fucking serious ones), and crashes on Raedric's Hold that stopped people from doing the quest.

Like I said, some stacking issues persisted well until the final patches, but Raedric's Hold was an optional area, and that bug didn't replicate for everyone.

My favourite one was going to the sanitarium, then leaving and asking a city guard how to find the sanitarium, which would render the quest "the man who waits" impossible to complete. The Man Who Waits is part of the main quest, so if you hit that bug you couldn't finish the game.

Wouldn't even know of that bug if I hadn't read about it on the Codex A serious issue, yes, but I don't think many players had it happen to them, sounds pretty specific to get

Still, I don't know if Pillars is that much worse than Bioware's KOTOR, in which the wookie character cloned himself four or five times, one of which overwrote the R2 droid, and the ending didn't play.

None of this is BG2 level - the infamous "X appears to be busy" bug, broken triggers, etc. It took the modding community years to finally patch all of that out.

And yes, I know that BG2 is a much bigger game than PoE, but PoE is mechanically more complex, and most of its bugs had to do with that.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

Post by Obsidian's AW community manager confirms layoffs:

Most likely only fired white males.

 

[Roguey]

Big day one patches and noticeable bugs on release in non-role playing AAA games has likely given Obsidian some leeway when it comes to expectations.

 

[Deleted member 7219]

It is of course sad that some people have lost their jobs at Obsidian. I hope they do not have too much trouble finding other work, or can come back to Obsidian and work on other projects in the near future.

However, I think it is a good thing for Obsidian as a whole. I am hoping now that Obsidian can get back to what it is best at - delivering excellent RPGs. I don't think they should take contracts like Armored Warfare again. They probably did it at the time because the company almost went broke, but now they have Fig to fall back on if they need emergency funds.

 

[Prime Junta]

Post by Obsidian's AW community manager confirms layoffs:

Most likely only fired white males.

Come to think of it, how many bisexual women of colour d'y'all reckon worked on a Russian tank game to start with?

Spoiler

OTOH there's this, that's about two out of three

 

[Sentinel]

Stat stacking bugs (pretty fucking serious ones), and crashes on Raedric's Hold that stopped people from doing the quest.

Like I said, some stacking issues persisted well until the final patches, but Raedric's Hold was an optional area, and that bug didn't replicate for everyone.

My favourite one was going to the sanitarium, then leaving and asking a city guard how to find the sanitarium, which would render the quest "the man who waits" impossible to complete. The Man Who Waits is part of the main quest, so if you hit that bug you couldn't finish the game.

Wouldn't even know of that bug if I hadn't read about it on the Codex A serious issue, yes, but I don't think many players had it happen to them, sounds pretty specific to get

Still, I don't know if Pillars is that much worse than Bioware's KOTOR, in which the wookie character cloned himself four or five times, one of which overwrote the R2 droid, and the ending didn't play.

None of this is BG2 level - the infamous "X appears to be busy" bug, broken triggers, etc. It took the modding community years to finally patch all of that out.

And yes, I know that BG2 is a much bigger game than PoE, but PoE is mechanically more complex, and most of its bugs had to do with that.

Alright, so "it doesn't count if I didn't notice it". Gotcha.
Well then, I never noticed any of those mentioned bugs in BG2. So there you go.

 

[Sizzle]

Stat stacking bugs (pretty fucking serious ones), and crashes on Raedric's Hold that stopped people from doing the quest.

Like I said, some stacking issues persisted well until the final patches, but Raedric's Hold was an optional area, and that bug didn't replicate for everyone.

My favourite one was going to the sanitarium, then leaving and asking a city guard how to find the sanitarium, which would render the quest "the man who waits" impossible to complete. The Man Who Waits is part of the main quest, so if you hit that bug you couldn't finish the game.

Wouldn't even know of that bug if I hadn't read about it on the Codex A serious issue, yes, but I don't think many players had it happen to them, sounds pretty specific to get

Still, I don't know if Pillars is that much worse than Bioware's KOTOR, in which the wookie character cloned himself four or five times, one of which overwrote the R2 droid, and the ending didn't play.

None of this is BG2 level - the infamous "X appears to be busy" bug, broken triggers, etc. It took the modding community years to finally patch all of that out.

And yes, I know that BG2 is a much bigger game than PoE, but PoE is mechanically more complex, and most of its bugs had to do with that.

Alright, so "it doesn't count if I didn't notice it". Gotcha.
Well then, I never noticed any of those mentioned bugs in BG2. So there you go.

Alright, so - at launch there was one CTD bug associated with an optional area, and one game-breaking bug you could trigger only through a very, very specific set of actions that most players would never do or get. Happy now?

 

[Sentinel]

Stat stacking bugs (pretty fucking serious ones), and crashes on Raedric's Hold that stopped people from doing the quest.

Like I said, some stacking issues persisted well until the final patches, but Raedric's Hold was an optional area, and that bug didn't replicate for everyone.

My favourite one was going to the sanitarium, then leaving and asking a city guard how to find the sanitarium, which would render the quest "the man who waits" impossible to complete. The Man Who Waits is part of the main quest, so if you hit that bug you couldn't finish the game.

Wouldn't even know of that bug if I hadn't read about it on the Codex A serious issue, yes, but I don't think many players had it happen to them, sounds pretty specific to get

Still, I don't know if Pillars is that much worse than Bioware's KOTOR, in which the wookie character cloned himself four or five times, one of which overwrote the R2 droid, and the ending didn't play.

None of this is BG2 level - the infamous "X appears to be busy" bug, broken triggers, etc. It took the modding community years to finally patch all of that out.

And yes, I know that BG2 is a much bigger game than PoE, but PoE is mechanically more complex, and most of its bugs had to do with that.

Alright, so "it doesn't count if I didn't notice it". Gotcha.
Well then, I never noticed any of those mentioned bugs in BG2. So there you go.

Alright, so - at launch there was one CTD bug associated with an optional area, and one game-breaking bug you could trigger only through a very, very specific set of actions that most players would never do or get. Happy now?

And the stat stacking bug that completely ruined the already shit combat for a lot of people.
But if you wanted to seriously talk about bugs and not just defend Obsidian, you wouldn't even bring up the "most people didn't experience it so it doesn't count", since it's all anecdotal evidence, and thus irrelevant. The bugs were there. People did see them. People did complain. The bugs were serious, they halted progress, they crashed the client, and they fucked up the already gay combat.

The only reason Obsidian doesn't have the "bug-ridden software" stamped on their foreheads anymore is because every release since 2014 has been a piece of shit in terms of optimization and CTDs. They basically managed to match Obsidian's feats, sadly. When everyone delivers buggy as fuck products that barely function day one, no one is going to point at Obsidian anymore.

 

[Flou]

Alright, so "it doesn't count if I didn't notice it". Gotcha.
Well then, I never noticed any of those mentioned bugs in BG2. So there you go.

Actually, yes. When it comes down to it, if the hordes of players and gaming sites don't pick up on bugs they do not exist in a way that they would tarnish the company's reputation. While they are in the game, people won't be whining and moaning and going Bugsidian this and that.

This is exactly why BioWare doesn't have a reputation of buggy games, even though their games are as buggy as Obsidian's.

 

[a bear named spigot]

Alright, so - at launch there was one CTD bug associated with an optional area, and one game-breaking bug you could trigger only through a very, very specific set of actions that most players would never do or get. Happy now?

another uncommon one that I had was where one or more of your characters started moving incredibly slowly, like 10 minutes just to move across one screen. killed my playthrough for weeks waiting for a fix.

 

[Sizzle]

And the stat stacking bug that completely ruined the already shit combat for a lot of people.
But if you wanted to seriously talk about bugs and not just defend Obsidian, you wouldn't even bring up the "most people didn't experience it so it doesn't count", since it's all anecdotal evidence, and thus irrelevant. The bugs were there. People did see them. People did complain. The bugs were serious, they halted progress, they crashed the client, and they fucked up the already gay combat.

The only reason Obsidian doesn't have the "bug-ridden software" stamped on their foreheads anymore is because every release since 2014 has been a piece of shit in terms of optimization and CTDs. They basically managed to match Obsidian's feats, sadly. When everyone delivers buggy as fuck products that barely function day one, no one is going to point at Obsidian anymore.

I acknowledged the stacking bugs.

And I wasn't arguing that it was bug-free, but that it wasn't that buggy at release, and that the one game-breaking bug you had to be really unlucky to get does not constitute it being somehow unplayable.

So yeah, compared to most of their older games - KoTOR2 and Alpha Protocol, for example - they are getting better at releasing games with fewer bugs.

 

[2house2fly]

Wouldn't even know of that bug if I hadn't read about it on the Codex A serious issue, yes, but I don't think many players had it happen to them, sounds pretty specific to get

it probably was pretty rare, and I only got it because I was mindlessly clicking dialogue. Still had to put my second playthrough on hold until it was fixed but hey, they did fix it!

 

[2house2fly]

So yeah, compared to most of their older games - KoTOR2 and Alpha Protocol, for example - they are getting better at releasing games with fewer bugs.

I never really had a problem with bugs in Alpha Protocol, but then I've only played the Xbox version and by all accounts the PC port was pretty shoddy

 

[Sannom]

Alpha Protocol had one big "bug" that was experienced by pretty much everybody : the game freezing up for a few seconds while the enemies in the next section of the level were loaded up. It was painfully obvious if you had the talent that made arrows appear of the head of enemies when you didn't see them, as the screen went from free of arrows to full of arrows after the freeze.

 

[Roguey]

With AP you also had to load from the save menu instead of directly from the escape menu, otherwise enemies wouldn't spawn.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

Alright, so - at launch there was one CTD bug associated with an optional area

You're a funny guy. They've been fixing bugs for over a year after release and then admitted that some bugs will have to remain, as they can't work on the game forever.

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

 

[Latelistener]

With AP you also had to load from the save menu instead of directly from the escape menu, otherwise enemies wouldn't spawn.

IIRC it will happen only if you edit the config file to fix that bug:

Alpha Protocol had one big "bug" that was experienced by pretty much everybody : the game freezing up for a few seconds while the enemies in the next section of the level were loaded up. It was painfully obvious if you had the talent that made arrows appear of the head of enemies when you didn't see them, as the screen went from free of arrows to full of arrows after the freeze.

 

[Sizzle]

Alright, so - at launch there was one CTD bug associated with an optional area

You're a funny guy. They've been fixing bugs for over a year after release and then admitted that some bugs will have to remain, as they can't work on the game forever.

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

Bugs in a complex, +70h RPG? Wow, you're right, there really is no other explanation for it - they must be incompetent. I mean, every other game that size and scope was released in perfect condition.

And the nerve of them, daring to fix bugs more than a year after it was released, the cheeky fuckers, I really hope that's not a business model other companies will follow - give it a patch or two to fix those major bugs and leave it alone, autistic modders will fix the rest.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

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