Company News Troika Closes Its Doors

[Fez]

You've got to love the Codex. A six (now seven) page news thread about Troika closing and most of it is spent arguing about game mechanics in a handful of semi-connected discussions.

 

[Sol Invictus]

The Codex encourages free discourse. Any other forum wouldn't have so much going on because of stringent rules like, "nothing off topic".

 

[merry andrew]

I think Icewind Dale II is a pretty good game.

 

[Fez]

The Codex encourages free discourse. Any other forum wouldn't have so much going on because of stringent rules like, "nothing off topic".

One of the reasons I like this place.

Has anyone bothered to look and see if the "sale" is on yet? I was hoping someone would have by now.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Auto levelling enemies can leave the world feeling dull and flat. BG 2 had it at some points, but it kept it rare, not as the norm, and it worked for me. If it is only specially placed enemies that are set levels then I forsee problems. Feel free to make an awesome game and prove me wrong though. I'd be happy.

It's probably better to scale the critters with the world around them rather than scale the critters with the level. If a player shows up at a small farming community late in the game, it wouldn't make much sense if that community or the problem with that community had been scaled to the level of the player.

It would make sense if the level 1 or 2 farmers asked the level 30 player to take out the kobolds that were sapping their grainary, but it would be just plain silly for a community of level 30 farmers to ask the level 30 player to fend off the dragons that have been attacking their grainary.

I agree it'll make the world flat and dull, but it also has the possibility of making situations just plain goofy.

 

[Jinxed]

Before that I was playing Gothic 2. Killed a few armies of orcs that an army of paladins couldn't handle, slew some dragons, you know, the usual

Did you take all the orcs at once? The problem with the paladins is that they are stupid and probably bound by orders to guard the fortress hence not taking the risk of a full scale attack. Paladins aren't exactly assasins and that's the way you need to play in order to kill the orcs. The Dragons in Gothic 2 always posed a threat no matter what level. A couple of well placed hits and it's reload time. Guess what, npcs don't have a load save game button.

At the end of the game I could kill an orc with one hit, but when I first got there I had to hit them around 5 times. Taking that army out twice was at least a day of gaming time.

 

[Scalpel]

It is so sad to see Troika go. I am one of those avid DnD fans and have been re-playing ToEE. The mechanics and graphics engine of this game are outstanding. I had more fun playing it than NWN purely based on player customisation and had a ball with modding equipment. It is a great shame to see such creative talent go to waste.

Troika, I *enjoyed* playing your games - they were masterpieces in their own right particularly ToEE. It is with this that I encourage you to not let go of the dream you had, since your dream shines through in your work.

 

[Pegultagol]

In a perfect world, Troika would be in the position of Bioware, not hounded or be limited by the publisher's whims, maybe publishing titles cross platform with multiple projects on hand to satisfaction of everyone. In the real world, Troika is gone, in the way of Black Isle and Ion Storm.

This is very sad, but the talents at Troika would work elsewhere to provide further input into the creation of other RPGs, or so I hope.

 

[Fez]

It's probably better to scale the critters with the world around them rather than scale the critters with the level. If a player shows up at a small farming community late in the game, it wouldn't make much sense if that community or the problem with that community had been scaled to the level of the player.

It would make sense if the level 1 or 2 farmers asked the level 30 player to take out the kobolds that were sapping their grainary, but it would be just plain silly for a community of level 30 farmers to ask the level 30 player to fend off the dragons that have been attacking their grainary.

I agree it'll make the world flat and dull, but it also has the possibility of making situations just plain goofy.

Urgh, yes I've seen that in too many RPGs already. The "chosen one" is weaker than every guard and average villager or barely equal and yet they think that only you can stop the monster from the deep. It always grates and spoils the game a bit.

I liked the way the encounters were handled in FO, you could encounter high level enemies in dangerous zones and weaker in the tame areas at any time, it had a more natural shepherding effect on the player and it meant you were not on a non stop level mill going from rats to super mutants with no deviations. You could also have fun beating on the weaker creatures or have a run at a challange early on if you are skilled or lucky. The auto-levelling seems like an attempt at a shortcut in good design, but it is no substitute.

Another problem with auto-levelling is what if the player is not very good? I can imagine him getting stuck and then he might spend ages trying to level to get strong enough to pass it, only to find out he is fucked because all (or the vast majority) of the enemies levelled with him and now he faces higher level enemies with new abilities and he has the same crappy equipment and player skills. At least in other games if the going got too tough you could take a break and level a bit.

When the enemies level with you, you also lose the feeling of progress as you gain power, making you feel you are running on the spot. There's a game I played a while ago that is at the edge of my memory when I think of this, but it was bad.

 

[DemonKing]

Always a shame to see a CRPG developer go down...but frankly Troika had 3 chances to produce the monster-hit game that they needed to get really established and each time they produced a decent, though seriously flawed game.

It's a shame, because I thought they were improving with each title - but in the end their odd mix of AAA elements with amateur elements brought about their undoing.

Eg:

Arcanum: Great story/original setting ---> horrible graphics/combat

TOEE: Great graphics/combat engine ---> horrible design/voice acting/stability

Vampire BL: Great graphics/Voice acting ---> horrible combat/patchy design & stability

Also, they seemed to have serious trouble dealing with publishers given that each of their games had a different publisher and each time it seems the publisher never seemed to want to work with them again.

 

[Fez]

The worst for me is that they obviously have talent, and enough of it to make an excellent game, maybe a new benchmark. You can see elements of it in each game, but they slipped up each time. Instincts point to bad management, as the skills were there. If this is the end then we'll never see what that dream game they had in mind will be.

Maybe Bioware will buy up or hire what is left. At least they have shown they are savvy when it comes to the financial and marketing side.

 

[bryce777]

The worst for me is that they obviously have talent, and enough of it to make an excellent game, maybe a new benchmark. You can see elements of it in each game, but they slipped up each time. Instincts point to bad management, as the skills were there. If this is the end then we'll never see what that dream game they had in mind will be.

Maybe Bioware will buy up or hire what is left. At least they have shown they are savvy when it comes to the financial and marketing side.

I dont think it is bad management, just lack of funds.

It takes a lot of effort to get a game going. If they had been able to release arcanum with the graphics seen in toee, then we would be playing the million copy smash hit arcanum 2 right now. That is just fantasy, though; actually getting money to spend 5 years developing a game engine *cough* infinity engine*cough* is not something that is going to be seen by a startup any time soon.

 

[DemonKing]

If they had been able to release arcanum with the graphics seen in toee, then we would be playing the million copy smash hit arcanum 2 right now.

I doubt Arcanum would have sold well if the graphics were better. The combat engine was seriously flawed and the setting was too "out there" for the mainstream.

 

[Pegultagol]

Maybe they should have narrowed their focus at what they are doing and not try to please everyone. In Arcanum, real time combat could have been scrapped and the resources spent in doing that AND the multiplayer component could've gone into the artwork or interface refinement, or ease of use, etc. In ToEE, I cannot say the specifics since I've not played it, but they should have gone with their own IP (post-apocalyptic) with their new engine to showcase it to Fallout fans who were very anxious with the troubles at Interplay. In Bloodlines, they should have used their engine with talking heads similar to those seen in Fallout and just do what they do best and are just familiar with.

But I realize that they needed funds, and the input from the publishers did not allow to exercise their design choices fully. I guess there was just no market potential for the type of RPG that they hoped to make, the sign of the times.

 

[Hajo]

Most contriibutors here seem to assume that Troika is closing down because of financial troubles. Maybe there are other reasons, and we just don't know them?

 

[Digit]

Well, this is pretty shit right here. Ion Storm is gone, Troika is gone. It really makes me mad that EA, a company built on churning out mass market crap, cramming their shitty licenses and franchises down our throats are thriving, yet the ones who try to innovate and give it their all, are those that fail. Is this the future we have to look forward too? One of movie/video game tie ins, endless expansion packs and no unique IPs?

Ok I was pissed at Ion Storm for Deus Ex 2, not mad enough to want them vanquished tho, and Troika provided alot of entertainment despite their games misgivings, and Arcanum was really fun.

Well I hope they rise from the ashes, I wish them all the best.

Digit

 

[Ellester]

Most contriibutors here seem to assume that Troika is closing down because of financial troubles. Maybe there are other reasons, and we just don't know them?

I’m assuming this.

Troika is closing down because they have no deal with a publisher, which means no new funding. They still will get royalties from their previous titles and I’m sure the Vampire royalties have just started flowing in. Tim and co. fired the staff so they could still make a decent penny off of Vampire. Not a lot, but enough to keep them comfortable. If Troika continues without a publisher then Tim and co would have to use these royalties to pay salaries/renting office space/paying for heath insurance, etc… The royalties would run out pretty fast, and then they would be broke. If they fold now they can still make a profit, but just no more games.

 

[Sol Invictus]

Most contriibutors here seem to assume that Troika is closing down because of financial troubles. Maybe there are other reasons, and we just don't know them?

No, financial difficulty really is the reason. They couldn't find a publisher to sign a new contract with to develop a new game for. Activision cut ties off with them for possible financial reasons as well: it's going through its own financial difficulties at the moment. Other than that, Activision might just not have liked the results of Bloodlines.

 

[Reklar]

How did Activision get into a poor financial situation when it's the publisher for the Total War series, amongst other successful titles?

-Reklar
(a Fallout/RPG fan)

 

[AlanC9]

But what is more important is how everything accomplished in optional areas was not forced down your throat, made to feel like an important *must do* quest, like other Bioware titles. Instead, your party took initiative, went off the beaten path having to do more work, and in the end was rewarded with l00t and marginal exp well earned.

If by "going off the beaten path" you mean "wandering into the shroud to see what the area designers had put in for them to kill and loot," then yeah, I guess that's true. I thought the lack of motivation to go into the non-plot areas was a problem. I'm allergic to metagaming. (Exceptions: Ulcaster, Firewine Bridge and environs, Bassileus).

The funny thing about scaling is that it's generally used to do the opposite of what Gromnir said it should be used for. Random encounters tend to scale, not bosses. If anything, this makes game balance worse than not scaling the encounters. Bio's especially bad at this -- the HotU endboss battle was a mess.

 

[Sol Invictus]

How did Activision get into a poor financial situation when it's the publisher for the Total War series, amongst other successful titles?

-Reklar
(a Fallout/RPG fan)

That I don't know. I haven't been following the Activision situation, so I don't know. It's possible that they just cut their ties off with Troika for whatever non-financial reasons.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

it seems the publisher never seemed to want to work with them again.

You have that backwards.

That I don't know. I haven't been following the Activision situation, so I don't know. It's possible that they just cut their ties off with Troika for whatever non-financial reasons.

If the lay offs started in November, which is when Bloodlines was released, I kind of wonder if Activision didn't give them the shaft on paying for the last build of the game. I know there were rumors going around about Activision not paying them near the end of the development. It seems kind of strange that they'd have to start laying people off the same month a game was released even if they didn't have a new contract.

 

[Jinxed]

I'll sum it up in three words:

This really sucks.

The graphics in arcanum were not bad at all at the time, some really great artwork. The only shitty part about them were those enlarged monsters that used the same sprites as the smaller ones and thus looked like utter crap.

 

[DemonKing]

it seems the publisher never seemed to want to work with them again.

You have that backwards.

You sure about that? Being a successful indie developer (*cough* Bio *cough*) seems to depend somewhat on developing good relationships with publishers (of course developing AAA titles helps too). I see no evidence that Troika had a good - or even equitable - relationship with any of their publishers.

Now you could claim that 3 different publishers all decided to shaft little old Troika, but really the common factor here is Tim and co. Frankly I believe the closure has to go down at least partly to bad management.

 

[RGE]

It seems kind of strange that they'd have to start laying people off the same month a game was released even if they didn't have a new contract.

If it's true that game developing is done in a staggered fashion, I imagine that a lot of people wouldn't have anything left to do once the game is finished. And if the company doesn't already have a new project with new funding, it seems like a fiscally sound plan to lay off people as soon as they don't have anything to do. Looking a few months into the future doesn't always require a magic 8-ball, and I wouldn't want to pay talented people to come to work just to do nothing, or to do something that I'd be pretty sure would never be finished due to lack of resources along the line.

But I'm still waiting for the official statement. None of these latest postings have had any clues to what the four people who are still employed are up to. Maybe they'll sit around and quietly build that post-apocalyptic game while waiting for Bethesda's FO3 to once again open up the market for the genre? If Bloodlines paid off the company could very well have enough resources to keep four guys afloat for a while. Hibernation. Cryogenetics. Very post-apocalyptic. Maybe they'll emerge from their vault when the time is right?

And while I liked Arcanum, the graphics were real bad in some ways. The people in particular had a tendency to look bland and boring, almost completely lacking the character of the ones in Fallout. But graphics was never the main point for me.