Obsidian General Discussion Thread

[Immortal]

Feargus says there was a period, during PoE's development "about six months in" when "things were not going well, areas looked like crap, the engine was running super poorly". Relearning how to do an IE-style game was harder than they anticipated. It sounds like it was kind of dramatic.

Feargus says "he had to learn what an SJW is" during the Firedorn crisis, haha

He doesn't seem to regret the purple backer NPCs, though. Only the gravestones.

Source?

 

[Volrath]

Feargus says they have 95 people working on Armored Warfare. Holy crap, that's most of the company

So only 10 people worked on PoE? Why do i even ask,that's a lot of people for such a failure..

No. You can just look at the credits, you know http://pillarsofeternity.gamepedia.com/Developers

Obsidian has around 160 people these days, according to Duraframe.

Keep in mind number of people who worked on a game is different from number of people working on the game at once. Being a large company Obsidian had some freedom in moving people in and out of the project, I doubt the team size was ever more than 25.

I thought there was a 2014 Feargus quote where he put the total size of OE around 160? Regardless, your point is valid. They shuffle people around and teams aren't static.

Which explains why PoE turned out to be such a jarbled mess. That's the worst fucking thing you can do to a project.

 

[tuluse]

Which explains why PoE turned out to be such a jarbled mess. That's the worst fucking thing you can do to a project.

This is how all Black Isle games were made. Except maybe IWD2 when they didn't have anything else to work on.

 

[Athelas]

Which explains why PoE turned out to be such a jarbled mess. That's the worst fucking thing you can do to a project.

Chris Avellone worked on Fallout 2 and Planescape: Torment simultaneously.

 

[Volrath]

Which explains why PoE turned out to be such a jarbled mess. That's the worst fucking thing you can do to a project.

This is how all Black Isle games were made. Except maybe IWD2 when they didn't have anything else to work on.

How would you explain the obvious lack of focus surrounding PoE then?

 

[Volrath]

Which explains why PoE turned out to be such a jarbled mess. That's the worst fucking thing you can do to a project.

Chris Avellone worked on Fallout 2 and Planescape: Torment simultaneously.

And it nearly drove him insane.

 

[Jaesun]

Was "Fantasy Mass Effect" an actual pitch/game Obsidian did with Microsoft?

 

[Athelas]

Was "Fantasy Mass Effect" an actual pitch/game Obsidian did with Microsoft?

Can't say I've ever heard of it. Though after Kickstarting a clone of Bioware's succesful fantasy RPG, there's a good chance they'll Kickstart a clone of Bioware's succesful sci-fi RPG.

Which explains why PoE turned out to be such a jarbled mess. That's the worst fucking thing you can do to a project.

Chris Avellone worked on Fallout 2 and Planescape: Torment simultaneously.

And it nearly drove him insane.

That doesn't contradict anything I said, nor does it strengthen your argument.

 

[tuluse]

How would you explain the obvious lack of focus surrounding PoE then?

I don't see a lack of focus personally.

I do see trying too much to pander to expectations instead of being bolder.

 

[Roguey]

This is how all Black Isle games were made. Except maybe IWD2 when they didn't have anything else to work on.

That's one too. Josh was the lead designer of The Black Hound, then IWD2's lead quit because he thought it was going to be a disaster, so he had to put his lead duties on hold to take over, then went back to the Hound when they had a few months to go till release.

Matrix management's common in the game industry, I know Bioware uses it too.

 

[Athelas]

Slighty after 10:00 Feargus talks about their approach towards 'letting people go'.

 

[Jaesun]

Obsidian ‏@Obsidian 6h6 hours ago
12 years ago today, Obsidian was founded! Thank you to all of our fans who have made the past 12 years possible and here's to many more!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY OBSIDIAN!

 

[Volrath]

Bankruptcy when? Duraframe300

 

[Apexeon]

95 people to make a tank game no one cares about?

World of tanks is pretty huge.

World of Tanks reaches 1.1M concurrent players, still nowhere close to League of Legends.

With a 160 team (huge burn rate) they want to get in on the gravy.

Abrams premium tank for $50. Watch that gravy come in. Making a Rpg is hard yakka but slapping together a M1A3 premium tank $50 package deal is easy ( No AI, no story, no scripting, no rpg stuff). Also main stream people will hand over $50 to drive a M1A3.

Bait you into the FTP model and dangle the premium tank (which would take 6 months to grind) for a crispy 50 for instant Oooooo raaaaa.
Its heaven for the money men and it works.

Also the mighty jingles who does WOT on youtube.

394,910 subscribers • 135,909,635 views
Joined 11 Feb 2011

He plugs Armoured Warfare. Videos can pull in over 200K views.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guFe1QmlOnc

110,758 views

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDY0w3CnjAM

244,697 views

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aq0zPehVJGA

236,104 views.

As for people not caring that's my department making some crazy crpg game with a party of 8.

Good news is MCA doesn't like making stories about tanks!

oooooo raaaaa.

 

[Infinitron]

According to this article, Obsidian now has "close to 200" employees: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...ited-about-new-south-park-game-it-isnt-making

 

[Athelas]

That's news? I was more interested in:

"Armored Warfare [tank MMO] is looking great, hitting more than 15K simultaneous people playing it last week; [the Pillars of] Eternity [Expansion] has a ton of cool new things; and we'll have a couple of fun things to announce in the next few months."

Well, I'm not sure about the 'fun' thing, but from the wording it seems they're working on a few other things (not pertaining to PoE or Armored Warfare) they're about to announce.

 

[Drax]

Avellone's secret proj... wait, no... I don't really care then...

 

[Zed]

200 employees? Holy moley.

The second the russian f2p market games tank, they're gonna have a huge turning of employees.

 

[Roguey]

JES can still take a break from balancing PoE's system to slam GURPS

like cyberpunk 2020 characters, GURPS characters can be designed to be vulnerable to everything and incompetent at everything or to kill at least one party member a round if they win initiative (they will)

Like take The Adventures of Baron Munchausen where one person tells a story about how he invaded a Nazi dinosaur breeding facility, set a bomb, and escaped with a stolen jetpack before it went off. And the next guy tells a story about how he flew to the moon by pulling on his bootstraps. Why would you need a jetpack when you can just flagrantly ignore gravity?

Take the antithesis of that, a set of expectations grounded in the physical capabilities of normal humans. But you still have things like Nazis, dinosaurs, jetpacks, and going to the moon. That's GURPS.

if those physical capabilities were modeled by people who often don't understand how reality works or how to simulate it, sure.

 

[Ninjerk]

Oh boy, he's a physicist, too.

 

[Infinitron]

You're a good man, Tim Cain:

But who is Obsidian's Lucy Van Pelt?

 

[Infinitron]

Duraframe300 Do you have any clue exactly since when Obsidian have had a "secret project"? Or at least an upper and lower bound?

 

[Athelas]

I do not like bald Tim Cain.

But who is Obsidian's Lucy Van Pelt?

 

[Duraframe300]

Duraframe300 Do you have any clue exactly since when Obsidian have had a "secret project"? Or at least an upper and lower bound?

February 2014 (Though that doesn't mean much. Not an indication on when production exactly started as seen with AW)

https://www.linkedin.com/pub/brian-heins/1/298/159

 

[Bubbles]

In positive news, selling at 33% off has catapulted PoE to 8th place on the Steam charts, slightly ahead of Banished and Stick of Truth.