Obsidian General Discussion Thread

[RK47]

It was also pretty apparent to me that the gaming media is slightly bias against Obsidian, marking down New Vegas for being buggy when it really wasn't at release.

I can't remember any major quests bugs or anything, but New Vegas had MAJOR performance issues and was practically unplayable out of the box. It was only half-assed playable if you spent the time to edit the .ini files.

Even now, my recently purchased New Vegas still starts with mouth smoothing enabled. Why do I have to go to the internet, google this stuff, and edit my own .ini files myself? It adds nothing to the game.

 

[Sensuki]

If the Project Eternity cursor has mouse lag, I will fight to the high heavens for a proper cursor

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

I can't remember any major quests bugs or anything, but New Vegas had MAJOR performance issues and was practically unplayable out of the box. It was only half-assed playable if you spent the time to edit the .ini files.

Major performance issues were noticed only in a couple of places (Nipton was one of them). Otherwise (apart from some obvious bugs like collision detection failure which resulted in falling into the ground) the game was pretty much playable. Even more playable than Bloodlines after 1.2 patch.

 

[Morgoth]

At 120 employees I'm sure their burn rate can't be far off (or in excess of) 1 million USD per month, they would need to do a lot of kickstarters to last until Eternity is finished.

Except the kickstarter money is solely reserved for the 15 man team for Eternity, and not for grabs for the entire company.

 

[Destroid]

At 120 employees I'm sure their burn rate can't be far off (or in excess of) 1 million USD per month, they would need to do a lot of kickstarters to last until Eternity is finished.

Except the kickstarter money is solely reserved for the 15 man team for Eternity, and not for grabs for the entire company.

That's kind of the point isn't it? They need vastly more money to sustain their size, money that crowdfunding is unlikely to deliver. Perhaps they could sustain that size once they have a few crowdfunded (or internally funded) releases going producing a revenue stream, and at a much higher than usual royalty rate.

 

[Average Manatee]

It was also pretty apparent to me that the gaming media is slightly bias against Obsidian, marking down New Vegas for being buggy when it really wasn't at release.

I can't remember any major quests bugs or anything, but New Vegas had MAJOR performance issues and was practically unplayable out of the box. It was only half-assed playable if you spent the time to edit the .ini files.

Even now, my recently purchased New Vegas still starts with mouth smoothing enabled. Why do I have to go to the internet, google this stuff, and edit my own .ini files myself? It adds nothing to the game.

That's not a game bug, just a (shitty) design decision. And I doubt the capacity of most reviewers to know what mouse smoothing is. The majority probably use a controller.

The problem is quotes like these:

Fallout: New Vegas is perhaps the most bug-ridden game in recent memory

REALLY? The only possible interpretation of this is that the reviewer has Alzheimer's.

Fallout: New Vegas is buggy as hell; where's the outrage?

This is a journalist deciding there should be a problem where everyone else has decided there isn't one and trying to get page visits by creating a problem himself. Almost like the media crucifying Zimmerman and manufacturing evidence against him in order to make news up for themselves

Both of these front page google results for "new vegas bugs". Search for "fallout 3 bugs" and you'll see nothing similar, even though fallout 3 was far, FAR more buggy on Day 1 release.

 

[J_C]

I played New Vegas on PC Day 1, and I only encountered a few bugs, none of them game breaking. Retarded journalists only played the console versions, which were a mess, I admit.

 

[Roguey]

NV had major problems on release but they were fixed with patches. Bethesda shouldn't have moved the release date up.

did they? I've never heard about that before, just that Bethesda skimped on QA.

http://www.ripten.com/2012/03/27/br...l-publisher-treatment-and-having-fun-again/3/

BF: Because they are afraid to talk, because they’ll never get another contract if they do. That’s why. You cannot believe… it’s awful. It’s really bad. You should try to dig in and get some stories out there. Look at the most recent one with those poor guys at Obsidian. They did Fallout: New Vegas, the ship date got moved up and, who does the QA on a project? The publisher is always in charge of QA. When a project goes out buggy, it’s not the developer. The developer never says, “I refuse to fix the bug,” or, “I don’t know how.” They never do that. It’s the publisher that does the QA, so if a product goes out buggy, it’s not the developer’s fault. So, (Fallout: New Vegas) goes out buggy and they didn’t do the QA, their ship date got moved up and they missed their metacritic rating by one point. Did they get a bonus? No. Do you think that’s fair? I tried to get some of my publisher friends, who I used to make a lot of money for, to donate. Do you think they donated? No. Their employees did.

Also, New Vegas is certainly a lot better after patches but I'd hesitate to describe it as "fixed".

The major problems were fixed. Things like constant stuttering on certain nvidia cards and the robots in Vault 11 being tagged as part of House's faction so killing them results in making all the securitrons on the Strip hostile.
http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout:_New_Vegas_patch_1.1.0

Patch 1.01 is stated to fix around 300+ quest and script errors/bugs as follows. According to Senior Producer Jason Bergman, Bethesda didn't provide a list of included fixes and changes because a complete change list would be the size of a novel.

This was a day 2 patch, imagine if Bethesda hadn't moved the release date up on 'em.

 

[Vicar]

Secondly, I don't think Bethesda really screwed Obsidian over. My understanding was that they missed the metacritic score they needed to get a bonus by one point. That speaks more to how fucked it is to use metacritic as a metric for quality than anything else. Bethesda isn't the only publisher to use metacritic, as far as I'm aware it's an industry standard practice. It was also pretty apparent to me that the gaming media is slightly bias against Obsidian, marking down New Vegas for being buggy when it really wasn't at release. At the very least, not moreso than any given Bethesda game. That's a whole other issue though.

Well...Looks like you're wrong

 

[TwinkieGorilla]

I hate to fucking weigh in when I don't fucking really feel like it but goddammit, I didn't have shit for problems from Day 1 regarding N:V beyond that mini-issue about 4-5 hours in post-release with auto-saves.

 

[St. Toxic]

BTW Obsidian has never actually worked with EA

Then how do you explain Jade Empire?

 

[Sensuki]

That's BioWare ?

 

[Infinitron]

That's BioWare ?

He's joking. See the recent Video Game Sophistry news post.

(Also Microsoft published JE, not EA)

 

[DragoFireheart]

That's kind of the point isn't it? They need vastly more money to sustain their size, money that crowdfunding is unlikely to deliver. Perhaps they could sustain that size once they have a few crowdfunded (or internally funded) releases going producing a revenue stream, and at a much higher than usual royalty rate.

So essentially the success of Obsidian is somewhat determined by how many CoD players buy their games.

 

[Duraframe300]

 

[Trash]

marking down New Vegas for being buggy when it really wasn't at release.

Even my resident Dutch mag jumped on that bandwagon AND made a whole editorial months later where they once again used it as an example of buggy to the point of being nearly unplayable. I seriously don't get it. Game ran perfectly fine for me and had way lesser bugs than Fallout 3 which everyone fellated. WTF?

I played New Vegas on PC Day 1, and I only encountered a few bugs, none of them game breaking. Retarded journalists only played the console versions, which were a mess, I admit.

Perhaps it was this then.

 

[Wizfall]

Never had problems with FNV and Fallout 3.
Almost never had any issue, except very minor ones with Fallout 1 or Fallout 2 too despite playing all those games on release.
Amazed me latter i read hundred/thousands of bug was corrected.
I must be blessed.
The only game that i can remember being barely playable for me was ToEE, this one was buggy as hell.
Oups Daggerfall too, was impossible to finish the game.

 

[Infinitron]

Anything interesting here?

 

[Duraframe300]

Anything interesting here?

If you're not interested in game development, not so much. Other than that it can reassure you that Obsidian gets sheduling and budgeting right.

 

[Niggles]

Hooray! this is really good news

 

[Gurkog]

NV ran worse for me after the patches. Before that it worked beatufiully, but had some quest bugs that I encountered. One of which broke the NCR quest chain, and thus forcing me to go with a different faction in the end.

 

[slackerwizrd]

That's kind of the point isn't it? They need vastly more money to sustain their size, money that crowdfunding is unlikely to deliver. Perhaps they could sustain that size once they have a few crowdfunded (or internally funded) releases going producing a revenue stream, and at a much higher than usual royalty rate.

You're suspecting they're avoiding their budgets to hire more people for no reason? I suppose if they're running behind on SP or their other non-disclosed projects, this could be the case. However, I think the fact that a big project hasn't been disclosed. Welcome to the World of Software Development - ramp up for big projects and then ramp back down if no new projects come up in the future.

 

[Destroid]

slackerwizrd If their projects were internally generated they wouldn't have that issue (if they plan correctly at least). They would also have a much easier time holding onto talented developers, I don't think any of these guys actually like having to periodically lay off staff.

 

[slackerwizrd]

You're being highly speculative that future campaigns will be funded one way or another. Whether the project is funded by publisher, KS, or internally, it doesn't matter. If there's no new projects to move the current staff onto, then the staff gets laid off. This isn't anything unique to software developers - it's just meeting schedule and cost of your current projects without too much overhead. As stated, no one likes to lay off their staff, but it happens. It's business.

 

[Duraframe300]

You're being highly speculative that future campaigns will be funded one way or another. Whether the project is funded by publisher, KS, or internally, it doesn't matter. If there's no new projects to move the current staff onto, then the staff gets laid off. This isn't anything unique to software developers - it's just meeting schedule and cost of your current projects without too much overhead. As stated, no one likes to lay off their staff, but it happens. It's business.

Obsidian activly tries to avoid it though. We know at least of one occasion (pre-2012 march layoffs) where the owners of the company (Chris Parker, Chris Jones, Darren Moanahan, Feargus Urquhart and Chris Avellone) activly didn't pay themselves for over half a year to keep people on. (Apart from hires that are meant to be contract work of course and are advertised as such)

If they play their cards right with Eternity and South Park this should be possible. It's clear that they got a lot more attractive for publishers in the last year, even more so if Eternity sells well.

Related (to the topic): Another victim of the march 2012 layoffs, Dini McMurry, was hired back. She was a world builder on Fallout: New Vegas and created, among other things, Camp Searchlight. (Also worked on all the DLC's)