Obsidian General Discussion Thread

[Roguey]

Besides Death Stranding, designers also commonly point to the 'Soulsborne' games when discussing novel ways of approaching encumbrance. This is because these games typically deviate from the norm by only counting the items you have equipped rather than the contents of your entire inventory. This way the games prioritize the choices that are the most compelling to make, such as what weapon or armor you want to equip, rather than whether you have room to carry whatever will be dropped next.

Dene Carter is the co-creator of Fable and is currently working on a retro, tile-based RPG called Moonring, that borrows this approach. For him, Bloodborne and Dark Souls are some of the few games that get encumbrance right.

Bloodborne doesn't use encumbrance at all. There are item stack limits though.

Was that one of those god challenges in PoE2?

https://www.pcinvasion.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/pillars-of-eternity-04.png "Don't restrict stash"

 

[Wunderbar]

I hate when devs create a customizable difficulty with a bunch of optional checkboxes.
Fucking commit to a set of difficulties and design the game around it, don't make me balance the level of challenge for you when i don't even know how your game works yet.

 

[Butter]

I hate when devs create a customizable difficulty with a bunch of optional checkbox.
Fucking commit to a set of difficulties and design the game around it, don't make me balance the level of challenge for you when i don't even know how your game works yet.

Best thing they can do is design the game around a particular difficulty, tell players what that difficulty is, and then provide a bunch of tools for people who want to fuck with it.

 

[Roguey]

I hate when devs create a customizable difficulty with a bunch of optional checkbox.
Fucking commit to a set of difficulties and design the game around it, don't make me balance the level of challenge for you when i don't even know how your game works yet.

Best thing they can do is design the game around a particular difficulty, tell players what that difficulty is, and then provide a bunch of tools for people who want to fuck with it.

You mean like https://pillarsofeternity.fandom.com/wiki/File:UI-Options-Game1.png

 

[Roguey]

I'm guessing Avowed development is not going well. From Glassdoor:

Overscoped projects, nepotism, living in the past
May 16, 2021 - Anonymous Employee

Pros

Skilled and hardworking team members who are mostly trying to do their best. Cool stuff from the smaller teams.

Cons

Vastly overscoped projects. Gaslighting when backpedaling on overscoped requests. Embarrassingly limited understanding of what makes a "AAA" game. Almost nonexistent understanding of modern sustainable production. The review titled "subsistence-level game development" is sadly still true. Much of the practices stem from a game dev philosophy of 20+ years ago and many leads and directors cling to ideals from that era. Upper management reacts at a glacial pace to team pleas for help.

Vastly overscoped projects.

So true.

Gaslighting when backpedaling on overscoped requests.

That's so Urquhart/Parker.

Embarrassingly limited understanding of what makes a "AAA" game.

Also true.

Much of the practices stem from a game dev philosophy of 20+ years ago and many leads and directors cling to ideals from that era.

That means you, 200k/year Sawyer.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

It’s like that thing Chris was talking about...

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Skilled and hardworking team members who are mostly trying to do their best. Cool stuff from the smaller teams.

why do they hire liars?

 

[Latelistener]

MS will have to do something about the management at some point. The sooner the better.

 

[Quillon]

Urquhart/Parker

seems like they don't want to be owners anymore


ba-dum-tss

 

[Ging_Sama]

Obsidian the new CDPR ?

 

[Wunderbar]

Obsidian were CDPR before it was cool.

 

[Nano]

Obsidian were CDPR before it was cool.

Except for the part about the leadership being good businessmen.

 

[Ol' Willy]

Much of the practices stem from a game dev philosophy of 20+ years ago and many leads and directors cling to ideals from that era.

This is not a bad thing at all

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Much of the practices stem from a game dev philosophy of 20+ years ago and many leads and directors cling to ideals from that era.

This is not a bad thing at all

Wasn't that the period when we weren't getting anything but shit from game devs by way of RPGs? Like, before the indie scene took off, and around the time Troika was on it's last legs?

Thats a bad thing.

Edit: It also shows an inability to change with the times. Standards and practices change, along with the ideals. Ideals from 20 years ago was Feargus thinking slam dunks meant consoles and prettier minigun graffix.

 

[Ol' Willy]

Wasn't that the period when we weren't getting anything but shit from game devs by way of RPGs?

2021 - 20+ = 2000-1992. Those were good years

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

Don't be daft. Industrial technologies improve massively in a 20 year period, especially in tech fields. Anyone who's played an OES game from the last ten years will tell you that they are not trying to design games the same way they did at Black Isle, or Looking Glass, or Origin, or Westwood, or whatever 90s sacred cow you want to pick; the complaint is alleging that they're trying to use the same pipelines (lack of automation, lack of editable and accessible design wikis, assumption that iteration > a clear high-level vision for the project, etc.) that companies did in the 90s, and based on everything I know about OES, that doesn't seem at all unlikely. That shit can sometimes work with a team of 25, but a team of 140? No fucking way.

 

[Cael]

Don't be daft. Industrial technologies improve massively in a 20 year period, especially in tech fields. Anyone who's played an OES game from the last ten years will tell you that they are not trying to design games the same way they did at Black Isle, or Looking Glass, or Origin, or Westwood, or whatever 90s sacred cow you want to pick; the complaint is alleging that they're trying to use the same pipelines (lack of automation, lack of editable and accessible design wikis, assumption that iteration > a clear high-level vision for the project, etc.) that companies did in the 90s, and based on everything I know about OES, that doesn't seem at all unlikely. That shit can sometimes work with a team of 25, but a team of 140? No fucking way.

It is not the technology but the philosophy.

"We create worlds." vs "FIFA CLXXXVIII"

 

[rusty_shackleford]

That shit can sometimes work with a team of 25, but a team of 140? No fucking way.

Solution:
Downsize.

I have seen nothing to suggest that larger teams create better video games.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Alienman]

That Microsoft money really coming into play.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

That shit can sometimes work with a team of 25, but a team of 140? No fucking way.

Solution:
Downsize.

I have seen nothing to suggest that larger teams create better video games.

I mean... sure? I agree?

OES would almost certainly make games more interesting to me if they were a smaller studio (the glassdoor review even notes that it's the small teams that everyone wants to be on), but Feargus is obviously not interested in that.


Also aren't you constantly singing the praises of FO76?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Also aren't you constantly singing the praises of FO76?

Wastelanders is better than anything Obsidian has produced since FNV.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

Also aren't you constantly singing the praises of FO76?

Wastelanders is better than anything Obsidian has produced since FNV.

I have no reason to disbelieve you, but it also wasn't made by a small team.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Also aren't you constantly singing the praises of FO76?

Wastelanders is better than anything Obsidian has produced since FNV.

I have no reason to disbelieve you, but it also wasn't made by a small team.

wastelanders team was substantially smaller than the team that made fo76 though

 

[Don Peste]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/xb...-pass-with-love.421826/page-107#post-65694248

I need to say that I'm a little bit confused with Jeff's statement that Avowed will not be ready for E3 as the info that I have is that "we'll have a trailer for our big game at E3" and "Avowed will be shown this year" and "game is in great shape, almost fully on schedule".

I didn't post it a week ago as you know how things can go crazy if you post anything.

Also, don't wanna speculate anything, as I know that Jeff has great record - it could be related to planning but game is in good shape and it will be shown this year. From the conversation I was convinced that it would be a gameplay trailer for E3. Now I'm pretty much confused.

Is Chris Parker still directing it?

He was the only director since beginning - now is co-directing, as team is now structured in same manner as TOW2 team. It's not like there was any major roadblocks with him, it's only to ensure better coordination within the team. Will the team have more changes to the core team up to the release? We'll see.