Development Info Second ToEE path details

[Anonymous]

the way you shoot your mouth off you sound like you're sucking someone's dick over at troika... or 10 years old

With that logic, you must be 10 and sucking dick.

 

[suibhne]

Huh? Once again, he's doing this on his free time. It was his choice. It's not his job to do so.He isn't getting paid to work on it.

As far Troika is concerned, TOEE is over. Heck, i agree with 'em.

Maybe you don't understand the basics of working on contract, Volourn. Maybe you don't realize that Troika, itself, is paid on contract; Troika doesn't have any independent income (unless they're holding bake sales or car washes without telling us). Maybe you should understand these things in order to be a part of this discussion.

Or maybe you're just so keen on bashing Troika at every possible turn that you refuse to see the continued involvement of Steve Moret, one of Troika's lead programmers, as representative of Troika's commitment to stabilizing and polishing one of their games.

And yes, I know you liked Arcanum, so let's not go there again.

 

[Volourn]

*yawn*

It has nothing to with bashing Troika. It has to do with the fact that Steve Moret is doing this on his own time. It's not Troika. It's one person who happens to work at Troika. He is not being paid for his time working on the patch. Period. Perhaps, if you weren't so in love with Mr. Cain; you'd realzie that Troika isn't perfect and theyd ropped the ball with the game and espicially the support. And, don't go whining about the contract as in their great wisdom they CHOSE to sign it. No one forced them to. At all.

You can like a company and still criticize them. i'llc riticze BIO for KOTOR's poor combat, inventiry, and control; but I still like them.

I'll criticize Troika for its poor handling of TOEE yet still like them. heck, after what was seen at E3; I'd actually be looking forward to Vampire if it wasn't for the lame FPS style combat as everything else seems pretty cool.

But, ah well, all in good fun.

 

[Shevek]

I do not quite understand why Volourn feels he must take every oppurtunity to find some fault or take some jab at Troika. "Troika didnt develop FO, they only helped." "Troika didnt do the patch, Moret did." Why all the semantics and hair splitting? I understand he may be miffed at the lack of respect Bioware gets around here but I don't think this is the best way to approach that issue.

 

[Anonymous]

Volourn probably has obessive compulsive disorder or something.

 

[HanoverF]

You know how a kid only tugs on the hair of a girl he likes? It's like that...

This doesn't hold true for people bashing Bioware btw, cause kids don't knock down little girls and kick them and deficate on them if they like them...


At least not on this side of the Canadian border

 

[taks]

the way you shoot your mouth off you sound like you're sucking someone's dick over at troika... or 10 years old

With that logic, you must be 10 and sucking dick.

oh yeah, that must be it. i immediately launch into attacks calling names kinda like you and sherrif do. quite obvious, ain't it. if you people had anything other than personal insults (note that my recent is after months of nothing but slurs from folks such as you and sherrif) instead, it'll be nothing but pointing out your obvious lack of intelligence and certain inabilitly to carry on any discussion in which your counterpart disagrees with you.

stupid does not know stupid.

taks

 

[taks]

Maybe you don't understand the basics of working on contract, Volourn. Maybe you don't realize that Troika, itself, is paid on contract; Troika doesn't have any independent income (unless they're holding bake sales or car washes without telling us). Maybe you should understand these things in order to be a part of this discussion.

do you? i do. i've worked on nearly 20 contracts to date in my career. bottom line, troika was PAID to finish a signed contract and they did not... volourn correctly points that out.

taks

 

[Voss]

They apparently finished to Atari's satisfaction... otherwise Atari wouldn't have signed off on the version that was released... or filed a lawsuit.

 

[Sheriff05]

the way you shoot your mouth off you sound like you're sucking someone's dick over at troika... or 10 years old

With that logic, you must be 10 and sucking dick.

oh yeah, that must be it. i immediately launch into attacks calling names kinda like you and sherrif do. quite obvious, ain't it. if you people had anything other than personal insults (note that my recent is after months of nothing but slurs from folks such as you and sherrif) instead, it'll be nothing but pointing out your obvious lack of intelligence and certain inabilitly to carry on any discussion in which your counterpart disagrees with you.

stupid does not know stupid.

taks

LOL!, give us break Taks, I can hear the violins playing now.
You bring it all on yourself by being an egotistical "know-it- all"
just keep making yourself feel better by telling yourself how stupid we are. :D

 

[Volourn]

Shevek: 1. Me pointing out that Troika didn't dev3lop FO isn't slagging off on them. It's slagging off on Troika fanboys. BIG difference.

2. I "slag" off Troika over TOEE because after playing Arcanum, knowing that some members of Troika helped make FO as great as it was, and the overhype they gave TOEE as the 'new" BG (and full tb too); I expected TOEE to be a much better game. Yet, people here still defend Troika as Gods. LOL

Voss: True, which is why Atari gets it share of the blame too. They surely aren't innocent in the mess either.

 

[suibhne]

do you? i do. i've worked on nearly 20 contracts to date in my career. bottom line, troika was PAID to finish a signed contract and they did not... volourn correctly points that out.

Again, not true. I'm guessing Troika's accounts were settled at the conclusion of that contract, and they weren't originally contracted for ongoing support - not even a single patch. If you're upset about that, take it up with Atari. Or if you happen to know that Atari held Troika in breach of contract and has refused to pay them, well, I'm sure we'd all be pleased as punch for you to break that pertikler story for the greater glory of the Codex.

I'm not saying Troika couldn't have done much better, and they've admitted this themselves in all of the post mortems which have been published. I assume you read Decker's recent post mortem, which was particularly revealing. But Atari could have done a hell of a lot better, on this and all of their other recent games. It's delusional to blame Troika for a buggy product, then refuse to give them any credit for the fact that one of their lead programmers is volunteering to work on a second and third patch, then praise Atari for devoting QA time to the patch - QA time which, incidentally, seems to be a pretty low priority for Atari, and which uses salaried employees who, considering Atari's lineup of forthcoming PC games, might not have much to do anyway.

And yes, you may not have made those claims explicitly in this forum - frankly, I don't care enough to try to reconstruct your arguments - but you have in the official Atari forums, and I'll call you on that bullshit here just as I did there.

 

[Volourn]

Why should Troika get credit for one guy doing soemthing on his own time? That's just silly.

 

[Shevek]

1. Do you feel David Gaider is a Troika fanboy? He felt that quibbling over the statement that "Troika made Fallout" was splitting hairs as well..

2. As I recall, they marketted ToEE as a "Classic Adventure" on the title's site and the devs focused on the adherance to the module and how encounters would be very similar to their original design. Cain spent alot of time talking about the deep TB combat, the well implemented rules, the multiple alignment support and the support for varied party configurations (the whole 'a bunch of bards can do it' thing). Maybe I am missing something here; if so, I apologize (I didn't read every ToEE interview, preview, etc before release). While I concur that the title fell short in some respects, the core claims made by the developer were realized. Besides, developers routinely hype their titles a bit beyond what they should. Bio did it with NWN's OC. Recently, the boards here have been ablaze over the overhyping of Black and White and the possible overhyping of Fable. DX:IW was certainly over hyped in my estimation. Honestly, compared to these titles, I think Troika's marketting for ToEE was very honest.

 

[suibhne]

Why should Troika get credit for one guy doing soemthing on his own time? That's just silly.

Not just one guy - Decker has also been involved with revising the game dialogue. So you have the Project Manager and the Lead Programmer both volunteering on the effort, which strikes me as significant. It apparently doesn't strike you that way.

But okay, Volourn, I'll bite: how many Troika programmers would have to volunteer their time in order for you to give Troika any credit, rather than perceiving the effort as merely the collocation of decisions made entirely by distinct individuals and totally unrepresentative of the small software development company in which they all work and which developed the original product?

Edit: That syntax was rather tortured, but hey, I think you can tell what I mean.

 

[Spazmo]

Let's not forget how active Huy Nguyen was in collecting a long list of bugs. I wouldn't be at all surprised if he's helping Steve Moret out.

 

[Volourn]

Shevek:

1. OMG Dave Gaider says soemthing so I must automatically agree. No. I think not. You should go talk to another BIO fanboy if you want a response. You lose.

2. True. they claimed all that. However, they also claimed the joinable npcs would be interesting and wouldn't just be filler. They also said the opening vigenttes would be more deep then some lame exuse to get differing parties to Homlett, they also said they would make the story more robust then the old module. All these thinsg weren't even close to fruitation. And, you can find these comments by them on both here and at Atari as they responded to me directly (most noteably is the opening vignette thing & the npcs which I rememebr vividly.

As far as BIO overhyping the O. You are right. And, they got their share of complaints, Even me - BIo fanboy i supposedly am - rated it only 75% and I very much was dissapointed it wasn't of BG2 calibre (if one were to liek BG2 in the first palce; otherwsie who different ball of wax) so it's not like they got away with overhyping it (due to great aprt on the stupid fans who helped a lot in the overhype of it). So, no, Troika didn't live up to their "promises".

Suibhne: Sorry, but it's just not the lack of numbers; but the fact theya re doing it off comapny time clock. theya re being for it. This is their own personal choice to do so. As indiviudals they get credit; but Troika as a company does not. Period.

 

[Transcendent One]

75% is only a poor score if you think 70% is average... which most games seem to think these days considering trash like Lionheart or PoR2 gets ratings in the 50-60% range.

And might I add they did a lot of hyping on AI too, how they are learning from their mistakes, etc. Seems like they still can't code spellcasters if it was to save their own lives and most monsters are dumb as hell too.

 

[suibhne]

Suibhne: Sorry, but it's just not the lack of numbers; but the fact theya re doing it off comapny time clock. theya re being for it. This is their own personal choice to do so. As indiviudals they get credit; but Troika as a company does not. Period.

Which then makes it Atari's fault, because Atari paid all of the bills for the ToEE contract and now declines to fund any further work. You can't have it both ways.

Well, I guess you can. There's one other set of alternatives: Troika could put all of its incoming funding into a pot and divvy it back up, among all personnel, so that Steve and Huy could be put back on ToEE bug-squashing and feature-adding - full-time. Or Troika could force all of its employees to contribute their paychecks or a portion thereof back into the same sort of pot. (This would have to be compulsory, however; if Troika employees did so voluntarily, they wouldn't get credit from you, Volourn.) The first method would probably put Troika in breach of its current contract(s), and the second option would probably violate federal labor laws. But hey, they might make you happy. :D

 

[EEVIAC]

All these thinsg weren't even close to fruitation.

Bertram was pretty close to fruitation.

 

[Rosh]

Bertram was pretty close to fruitation.

And the same appears to be with taks in this very thread.

I think I have a Boy George pic for those who used insipid gay jokes, dating back to V13, if an admin is interested. :twisted:

 

[Volourn]

Blah, blah... And LOL

 

[Spazmo]

I think Bertram--being the pirate dentist gay love interest--makes ToEE worthwhile all by himself. Think about it. A pirate dentist gay love interest. That is the single most potent combination of awesome things in the history of man. Alleged Troika bias aside, I seriously wish there were more pirate dentist gay love interests in games.

 

[Volourn]

It's as good a reason as any to like TOEE.

 

[Sol Invictus]

Volly:

Fruitation != fruition