Obsidian General Discussion Thread

[Roguey]

Looks like Obsidian's and Paradox' partnership lasted just PoE and Tyranny, I wonder if Tyranny's development was troubled.

I don't know about development, but the post-release period was certainly not "troubled" by anyone buying the thing

It did okay. Nearly 300,000 in a year when something like Planescape Torment took years to sell 400,000 and Icewind Dale two for about the same? Respectable given the numbers, but not the Baldur's Gate/Pillars of Eternity hit they really wanted.

 

[Sentinel]

Looks like Obsidian's and Paradox' partnership lasted just PoE and Tyranny, I wonder if Tyranny's development was troubled.

I don't know about development, but the post-release period was certainly not "troubled" by anyone buying the thing

It did okay. Nearly 300,000 in a year when something like Planescape Torment took years to sell 400,000 and Icewind Dale two for about the same? Respectable given the numbers, but not the Baldur's Gate/Pillars of Eternity hit they really wanted.

Planescape Torment & Icewind Dale did not have the exposure & easiness of access Steam provides. Not to mention the size of the potential audience.

 

[Cross]

Looks like Obsidian's and Paradox' partnership lasted just PoE and Tyranny, I wonder if Tyranny's development was troubled.

I don't know about development, but the post-release period was certainly not "troubled" by anyone buying the thing

It did okay. Nearly 300,000 in a year when something like Planescape Torment took years to sell 400,000 and Icewind Dale two for about the same?

Great argument. As we all know, Black Isle went on to great success and longevity.

Despite inheriting so much from PoE, Tyranny had a sizeable development team and might have taken as long as 2 years and 9 months to develop (https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/65178-brian-heins-new-project-director-at-obsidian/). It can't have been cheap to make.

 

[Fairfax]

Looks like Obsidian's and Paradox' partnership lasted just PoE and Tyranny, I wonder if Tyranny's development was troubled.

I don't know about development, but the post-release period was certainly not "troubled" by anyone buying the thing

It did okay. Nearly 300,000 in a year when something like Planescape Torment took years to sell 400,000 and Icewind Dale two for about the same? Respectable given the numbers, but not the Baldur's Gate/Pillars of Eternity hit they really wanted.

Planescape Torment & Icewind Dale did not have the exposure & easiness of access Steam provides. Not to mention the size of the potential audience.

Roguey knows, but he dismisses that stuff. He believes quite strongly that PS:T sold poorly and any game that tries to be similar is doomed to commercial failure. Including IWD in the comparison makes it even more Sawyer-y.

 

[undecaf]

Tyranny felt like half rushed attempt at quickly monetizing the PoE success rather than a ”passion project”. It was a case of too similiar too soon. Or at least that’s how I viewed it, and why I didn’t buy it.

I still think that it could’ve done better with a different setting than a magical when-ever-ancient-inspired.

 

[Urthor]

Tyranny felt like Obsidian's attempt to make a RTWP game that was "different" to the Baldur's gate roots and it actually had good systems that Were Different And Unique to be fair. If they didn't put ridiculous health bars on the enemies and completely ruin the BG2 formula by having no crowd control or complex combat it would have been a good game

 

[santino27]

Tyranny felt like half rushed attempt at quickly monetizing the PoE success rather than a ”passion project”. It was a case of too similiar too soon. Or at least that’s how I viewed it, and why I didn’t buy it.

I still think that it could’ve done better with a different setting than a magical when-ever-ancient-inspired.

As someone who actually played it, it didn't feel too similar at all (setting was very different, magic was different, premise was different, even the . It just wasn't very well finished, and a lot of the things that WERE different felt half-baked.

Still an okay enough game for a play-through, imo, as long as you didn't poke too hard to see what was behind the curtaim, mechanics-wise.

 

[undecaf]

Tyranny felt like half rushed attempt at quickly monetizing the PoE success rather than a ”passion project”. It was a case of too similiar too soon. Or at least that’s how I viewed it, and why I didn’t buy it.

I still think that it could’ve done better with a different setting than a magical when-ever-ancient-inspired.

As someone who actually played it, it didn't feel too similar at all (setting was very different, magic was different, premise was different, even the . It just wasn't very well finished, and a lot of the things that WERE different felt half-baked.

Still an okay enough game for a play-through, imo, as long as you didn't poke too hard to see what was behind the curtaim, mechanics-wise.

There’s certainly differences, but the mental image that came of it when it was marketed, was ”PoE’s tryhard little brother; more of the same in an all around smaller, less ambitious and less inspired package”.

I’ll probably give it a shot at some point, but not right now. I currently can’t get into this kind of fantasy.

 

[Kem0sabe]

Paradox is not very interested in shit they can't exploit with countless dlc.

They will soon realize this and go back to only publishing their in house nickel and dime games.

 

[Infinitron]

Despite inheriting so much from PoE, Tyranny had a sizeable development team and might have taken as long as 2 years and 9 months to develop (https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/65178-brian-heins-new-project-director-at-obsidian/). It can't have been cheap to make.

Probably not quite: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...-expansion-thread.111973/page-79#post-5062185

 

[yes plz]

I'd say Tyranny's biggest problem is easily that it needed at least another year of development. There's so much obviously cut and rushed content in it that I'm surprised it was nearly as well received as it ended up being. Sith Lords felt more complete than Tyranny did before Bastard's Wound.

 

[Sizzle]

Looking forward to whenever they inevitably confirm that companion quests, an expected feature, were planned and cut, and this was the best mess they could leave behind to salvage them.

And then we had them with the DLC.

Even worse - we only got a few of them :D

I was actually surprised that Siri, the character who, after Barik and Verse, needed a personal quest the most, ended up getting nothing.

 

[Jarpie]

For people in here, such as Roguey and Infinitron, how would you have marketed Tyranny? I didn't really follow the marketing, but did they even use the "Make difficult choices and shit!" gimmick in the marketing?

 

[Cross]

Despite inheriting so much from PoE, Tyranny had a sizeable development team and might have taken as long as 2 years and 9 months to develop (https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/65178-brian-heins-new-project-director-at-obsidian/). It can't have been cheap to make.

Probably not quite: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...-expansion-thread.111973/page-79#post-5062185

The devs in this stream (Constant Gaw and Dini McMurry, level designers) say development on the game lasted just two years. That's shorter than the time Brian Heins was project director - it must have run on a skeleton crew for most of 2014.

Most of 2014? If development took two years, then it would have only started in november 2014. Unless you're saying that development of the game began earlier in 2014, but only went in full gear around november 2014.

 

[Roguey]

Planescape Torment & Icewind Dale did not have the exposure & easiness of access Steam provides. Not to mention the size of the potential audience.

Looking at the sales of the most successful modern crpgs (D:OS series, PoE), the potential audience for these things hasn't grown since the 90s.

Great argument. As we all know, Black Isle went on to great success and longevity.

Despite inheriting so much from PoE, Tyranny had a sizeable development team and might have taken as long as 2 years and 9 months to develop (https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/65178-brian-heins-new-project-director-at-obsidian/). It can't have been cheap to make.

Just looking at the thing, I can tell it was (relatively) cheap to make. Paradox also confirmed that they didn't lose money on it back in May of last year, six months after release. http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...w-expectations-dlc-still-in-the-works.115226/

Additionally, Black Isle was always profitable. It was Interplay's other messes that weren't. BIS wasn't profitable enough to save them.

Roguey knows, but he dismisses that stuff. He believes quite strongly that PS:T sold poorly and any game that tries to be similar is doomed to commercial failure. Including IWD in the comparison makes it even more Sawyer-y.

? That quote from Scott Warner makes it clear that Torment made a profit, just not much of one. Sawyer said that the IWDs had a very high return on investment even if they weren't as profitable as the BGs http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/54251-fallout-new-vegas/page-2#entry1014711

But yeah, that wasn't good enough. These companies want Baldur's Gate numbers, they just don't watch to pay BG budgets to get them.

 

[Harg Harfardarssen]

Looks like Obsidian's and Paradox' partnership lasted just PoE and Tyranny, I wonder if Tyranny's development was troubled.

I don't know about development, but the post-release period was certainly not "troubled" by anyone buying the thing

It did okay. Nearly 300,000 in a year when something like Planescape Torment took years to sell 400,000 and Icewind Dale two for about the same?

Great argument. As we all know, Black Isle went on to great success and longevity.

Despite inheriting so much from PoE, Tyranny had a sizeable development team and might have taken as long as 2 years and 9 months to develop (https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/65178-brian-heins-new-project-director-at-obsidian/). It can't have been cheap to make.

I thought Black Isle's problem was that it was tied to a crashing and burning Interplay, not that they were losing money on their own. IIRC Icewind Dale was pushed out really quick b/c Interplay needed revenue due to losses in other divisions/units.

 

[Sannom]

I was actually surprised that Siri, the character who, after Barik and Verse, needed a personal quest the most, ended up getting nothing.

She actually got a little something. She can find notes left by Cairn which allows her to loosen her headdress a little. Ebb can also transform her staff into an artifact under some conditions.

 

[Fairfax]

Looking at the sales of the most successful modern crpgs (D:OS series, PoE), the potential audience for these things hasn't grown since the 90s.

None of them are as good or use the D&D license, and the most popular one (D:OS) is turn-based, which limits its audience far more than RtwP.

? That quote from Scott Warner makes it clear that Torment made a profit, just not much of one. Sawyer said that the IWDs had a very high return on investment even if they weren't as profitable as the BGs http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/54251-fallout-new-vegas/page-2#entry1014711

But yeah, that wasn't good enough. These companies want Baldur's Gate numbers, they just don't watch to pay BG budgets to get them.

I guess it was poorly worded. I meant your comment reminded me of Sawyer's feelings on how PST and IWD sold and were received.

 

[Sizzle]

I was actually surprised that Siri, the character who, after Barik and Verse, needed a personal quest the most, ended up getting nothing.

She actually got a little something. She can find notes left by Cairn which allows her to loosen her headdress a little. Ebb can also transform her staff into an artifact under some conditions.

Did not know that. Thanks!

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Lolwut. I think you got that backwards. New X-coms have made TB mainstream again. Meanwhile, Josh needed to add laughable story mode, and that still wasn't enough, so he went amd reworked the entire system from the ground up because modern gamurs couldn't deal with RTwP.

 

[Fairfax]

Lolwut. I think you got that backwards. New X-coms have made TB mainstream again. Meanwhile, Josh needed to add laughable story mode, and that still wasn't enough, so he went amd reworked the entire system from the ground up because modern gamurs couldn't deal with RTwP.

XCOM doesn't even come close to the success of the big RT/RTwP RPGs, and it's also a different genre. TB does fine in JRPGs, which have a very different audience for the most part, but western TB RPGs are still far from being mainstream hits.

As for PoE, using RTwP and not having a story mode at launch would be pretty far down the list of reasons why it wasn't a hit.

 

[Kem0sabe]

TB has the added benefit of being easier to port to consoles, which might mean more sales, while rtwp is a fucking nightmare to play on a controller, as the shit port of PoE proves.

Rtwp is inherently inferior in all regards as a combat system, you either go full action or full tb.

Thing is, we are still to get a good tb combat crpg in recent years, the divinity games had terrible combat, wasteland was shit, shadowrun was too simple to be interesting as it was designed to work on mobiles first.

 

[Quillon]

XCOM doesn't even come close to the success of the big RT/RTwP RPGs, and it's also a different genre. TB does fine in JRPGs, which have a very different audience for the most part, but western TB RPGs are still far from being mainstream hits.

As for PoE, using RTwP and not having a story mode at launch would be pretty far down the list of reasons why it wasn't a hit.

RTwP and RT/action are not in the same bag. Last RTwP mainstream hit was DAO, since then all big hits were RT and now TB with DOS2. Its RT>TB>RTwP for mainstream, nowadays.

 

[Roguey]

None of them are as good or use the D&D license, and the most popular one (D:OS) is turn-based, which limits its audience far more than RtwP.

So if Pathfinder: Kingmaker comes out and isn't shovelware, it'll meet your criteria?

TB has the added benefit of being easier to port to consoles, which might mean more sales, while rtwp is a fucking nightmare to play on a controller, as the shit port of PoE proves.

? PoE's port was well-received.

 

[Kem0sabe]

By all accounts it did is a pain in the ass to control, runs poorly and didn't do so great sales wise.