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NeoSeeker posted:Why can't people just admit troika didn't know how to make video games? Look, you've been singing this song since October. We get it. RagnarokAngel posted:Why can't you admit valve did a lovely thing one time? This conversation never goes anywhere, though, so why not just agree to disagree? Seriously, all this went down years ago and it doesn't matter anymore. Bloodlines is a very good, if deeply flawed, game and who's fault it is that it ended up that way isn't really important enough to get into yet another argument about it, is it?
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Dec 9, 2014 22:43
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Because it's not an argument? Just change the thread subtitle to "Troika is the reason this game bombed, you're not hallucinating" But then again if valve had took on the release it would have been considered vaporware by now and released sometime in the next decade. NeoSeeker fucked around with this message at 23:29 on Dec 9, 2014 |
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Dec 9, 2014 23:11
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NeoSeeker posted:Because it's not an argument?
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Dec 10, 2014 05:18
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All Valve did was ask that the game wasn't released before Half-Life 2 and it sure as hell wasn't Activision who said to Troika "Use an alpha build of Source to make this game". This was something Troika decided for themselves and the blame falls squarely on them. And while I like the game, I actually side with Activision on the whole thing. Here was a game developer who were notorious for releasing niche, ultra buggy and flawed RPGs, who decided to make the game on an engine that wasn't even finished yet, who had been given enough time and money to make the game in the first place. I'm honestly surprised they let Troika finish the game in the state it was in, nevermind can the project entirely. Troika isn't the holy grail of developers a lot of people think of them as. All three of their games, technical bugs and issues aside, had severe problems with the game design in certain areas that just couldn't be fixed unless you go back to the drawing board and start again. That's why you've got technology being utterly useless in Arcanum, the beginning of Temple of Elemental Evil taking forever to actually start on top of usually glitching out that most people give up before they reach the titular Temple and why the sewer level exists in Bloodlines. It's amazing that Fallout 1 didn't have too many glaring issues with its design in retrospect. The whole postgame launch where Troika pointed fingers at everybody but themselves just seems like a failure to admit that they didn't do the best job they could have done with the game.
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Dec 10, 2014 08:27
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Mr. Fortitude posted:All Valve did was ask that the game wasn't released before Half-Life 2 …and deny them an updated version of the engine they had licensed, contrary to previous deals — an update that would have made significant difference on the release quality of the game. So yes, the blame falls squarely on Valve on that one.
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Dec 10, 2014 08:37
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Guys, can we go back to discussing banging dead chicks with schizophrenia using your non-functional penis?
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Dec 10, 2014 08:53
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SweetBro posted:Guys, can we go back to discussing banging dead chicks with schizophrenia using your non-functional penis? Janette's intro conversation has only gotten more annoying to me over time. I cannot rush through it fast enough these days. Really I just kind of wish I could start new games after the warehouse, even though I'd miss the hospital, beach house and meeting Kilpatrick. Even the ocean house hotel feels long, but maybe that's because I like to play along with the scares.
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Dec 10, 2014 09:09
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Tippis posted:…and deny them an updated version of the engine they had licensed, contrary to previous deals — an update that would have made significant difference on the release quality of the game. So yes, the blame falls squarely on Valve on that one. No, because Troika should have had the business sense to make sure the Source engine would be permitted to receive updates from Valve in the original contract.
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Dec 10, 2014 13:37
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I like Obsidian, they did an interview recently which was such a load of "not our fault" bullshit. "Well, Kotor2 was poo poo because I mean, we asked for more time and they said, but we failed to get it in writing see...totally not our fault" and "People say that our games are buggy messes, but they also say they've played it through to completion like four times, so I don't see what the problem is?" 
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Dec 10, 2014 13:46
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LordPants posted:I like Obsidian, they did an interview recently which was such a load of "not our fault" bullshit. Didn't Kotor 2 have like 40% of its original development time abruptly taken away by the publisher, forcing Obsidian to scramble to complete it in way too little time?
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Dec 10, 2014 13:54
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Mr. Fortitude posted:No, because Troika should have had the business sense to make sure the Source engine would be permitted to receive updates from Valve in the original contract. Willingly and actively screwing over a licensee of their engine does not in any way absolve Valve. Quite the opposite. So yes, the blame still falls squarely on Valve on that one.
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Dec 10, 2014 14:00
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LordPants posted:I like Obsidian, they did an interview recently which was such a load of "not our fault" bullshit. Man, I like Obsidian and Troika games but their fanbases are rabid and blind to the point it's kind of like arguing with a brick wall sometimes. Tippis posted:Willingly and actively screwing over a licensee of their engine does not in any way absolve Valve. Quite the opposite. So yes, the blame still falls squarely on Valve on that one. It's a business. Valve could have went "yeah sure go ahead even though it wasn't in the original contract" out of goodwill but they didn't and had no reason to, because at the time Source was hot poo poo and Valve wanted the inner workings to be super secret. Remember how pissed Valve were when an early build of Half-Life 2 leaked about a year and a half early? They had every right to be protective of their assets and engine. Troika should have had the foresight to include a clause in the original contract that would let them update to newer versions of Source. They didn't. Troika was never good at the business side of things. Even Tim Cain has admitted that Troika being inexperienced with the business stuff affected their end products.
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Dec 10, 2014 14:08
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NeoSeeker posted:In other words if the engine was so lovely why did they use it in the end. Either way who is to blame when they're making the final decisions. I'm starting to get the impression some people think someone coerced someone else with lethal force to release this game one way or another. I bailed from a programming track in 2003, so not speaking from authority here (hardly even tinkered with modding since 2004). But at the time VtM:B was made, Source was (imo) the best choice for a complex physics-inclusive action engine with advanced personal facial+expressive rendering capability. It sucks that Troika were stuck with a beta engine, but I'm ignorantly assuming that Valve got extra-cagey after their 2003 Source leak, or that Activision wasn't putting VtM:B super-high in their priorities. For whatever criticisms you can cast at the game, I'd say they nailed the face-to-face aspects of interaction better than any other action game (not being a serious gamer and not having played any since ~2010ish). If you aren't aiming for photorealism, the game still looks good today with the fan patches.
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Dec 10, 2014 14:12
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Mr. Fortitude posted:It's a business. Valve could have went "yeah sure go ahead even though it wasn't in the original contract" out of goodwill but they didn't and had no reason to, because at the time Source was hot poo poo and Valve wanted the inner workings to be super secret. Remember how pissed Valve were when an early build of Half-Life 2 leaked about a year and a half early? They had every right to be protective of their assets and engine. In fact, if anything, it just shows how Valve was equally bad at the business side, since they thought it was a good idea to ensure that they'd gett less license money.
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Dec 10, 2014 14:14
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Pope Guilty posted:Didn't Kotor 2 have like 40% of its original development time abruptly taken away by the publisher, forcing Obsidian to scramble to complete it in way too little time? No that's the thing, they said "hey, can we have more time" the publisher said yes but they "didn't get it in writing" so the publisher "forced them" to publish it.
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Dec 10, 2014 15:07
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LordPants posted:No that's the thing, they said "hey, can we have more time" the publisher said yes but they "didn't get it in writing" so the publisher "forced them" to publish it. Citation needed
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Dec 10, 2014 15:16
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SweetBro posted:Guys, can we go back to discussing banging dead chicks with schizophrenia using your non-functional penis? P. sure that if you can focus your vamp blood to regrow a severed limb or knit a shattered bone you could focus all your vamp blood into a hot, throbbing boner. Mr. Fortitude posted:Man, I like Obsidian and Troika games but their fanbases are rabid and blind to the point it's kind of like arguing with a brick wall sometimes. But Obsidian and Troika have been *long* out of business, so arguing that fans complaining that their ~10 year old games are buggy messes while patching them and playing through them 4 times is pretty valid. lite_sleepr fucked around with this message at 15:24 on Dec 10, 2014 |
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Dec 10, 2014 15:21
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Gyshall posted:Citation needed quote:Urquhart was perfectly fine with that decision, and he changed the project's schedule to reflect that new 2005 release date. But he forgot the cardinal rule of dealing with executives: make sure everything's in writing. http://kotaku.com/5968952/the-knigh...ying-games-ever edit: it just bugs me because like Troika I really think there is something to alot of their games it's just there is often so much bs around them. double edit: Has project eternity or whatever finally turned it around or is it still more BS? algebra testes fucked around with this message at 15:31 on Dec 10, 2014 |
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Dec 10, 2014 15:26
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PRESIDENT GOKU posted:P. sure that if you can focus your vamp blood to regrow a severed limb or knit a shattered bone you could focus all your vamp blood into a hot, throbbing boner. Obsidian isn't out of business, they're still going. The creative minds of Troika like Tim Cain has also been absorbed into Obsidian as well so they still exist in some form. I do generally buy Obsidian games that come out and really enjoy them, it's just that some people get weirdly defensive about them if you point out flaws that can't be excused with the publisher messing things up, because you don't think they're completely perfect, flawless masterpieces.
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Dec 10, 2014 15:30
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PRESIDENT GOKU posted:P. sure that if you can focus your vamp blood to regrow a severed limb or knit a shattered bone you could focus all your vamp blood into a hot, throbbing boner. Thanks to the magic of wasting uncounted hours of my life, I can tell you that you can spent a point of blood (equals to about a pint, actually) to make your skin flush, raise your body temp a bit, and make your dead body better at remembering to breathe and blink on its own for a short while. You can also spend a point of blood to, uh, make your genitals work like they should.
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Dec 10, 2014 15:54
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You know, going back and playing this game, and others from the era and earlier, I'm saddened at how much modern games spoon feed us. Arrows pointing the way to destinations, if not full-on glowing breadcrumb trails, quest markers highlighted on the map, stupid detailed quest logs with fluff text followed by 4th-wall-breaking explicit instructions, and so on.
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Dec 10, 2014 16:08
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Pope Guilty posted:Thanks to the magic of wasting uncounted hours of my life, I can tell you that you can spent a point of blood (equals to about a pint, actually) to make your skin flush, raise your body temp a bit, and make your dead body better at remembering to breathe and blink on its own for a short while. You can also spend a point of blood to, uh, make your genitals work like they should. This is referred to as 'the blush of life.' It also prevents you from instantly vomiting up ingested food, though you do need to vomit it up later. And suddenly I'm reminded of one of the official WW fiction anthologies, and not the actual porn one, where a woman hooks up with an Aztec era vampire, and identifies him as a vampire after they bang, while she's on her period. 
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Dec 10, 2014 16:11
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Pope Guilty posted:Thanks to the magic of wasting uncounted hours of my life, I can tell you that you can spent a point of blood (equals to about a pint, actually) to make your skin flush, raise your body temp a bit, and make your dead body better at remembering to breathe and blink on its own for a short while. You can also spend a point of blood to, uh, make your genitals work like they should. I forget if it was a comic book or movie, but I clearly remember a vampire thanking a kine who said he didn't mind if the vampire stopped spending blood to give color to his face and breath clouds while being out in the cold. Vampires can burn blood to do p much anything.
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Dec 10, 2014 18:37
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Pope Guilty posted:Thanks to the magic of wasting uncounted hours of my life, I can tell you that you can spent a point of blood (equals to about a pint, actually) to make your skin flush, raise your body temp a bit, and make your dead body better at remembering to breathe and blink on its own for a short while. You can also spend a point of blood to, uh, make your genitals work like they should. Jennet said your cock don't work, and I feel like she would know better than anyone the functionality status of vamp cocks.
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Dec 12, 2014 03:26
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SweetBro posted:Jennet said your cock don't work, and I feel like she would know better than anyone the functionality status of vamp cocks. It works in the sense of mechanically yes you can force things to function, but vampires get nothing physical out of sex- those desires and urges have been redirected in feeding and the Kiss.
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Dec 12, 2014 03:36
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SweetBro posted:Jennet said your cock don't work, and I feel like she would know better than anyone the functionality status of vamp cocks. That was originally the rule in the tabletop game, but White Wolf was basically founded on the principle of spending company money on weird fetish drawings and strange pornography so you can probably guess how long it lasted until that was retconned or just casually ignored.
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Dec 12, 2014 03:40
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Pope Guilty posted:It works in the sense of mechanically yes you can force things to function, but vampires get nothing physical out of sex- those desires and urges have been redirected in feeding and the Kiss. Don't call it 'the kiss.' This isn't Anne Rice.
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Dec 12, 2014 04:02
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PRESIDENT GOKU posted:Don't call it 'the kiss.' This isn't Anne Rice. That's the formal name for it in V:tM.
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Dec 12, 2014 04:08
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I thought it was called "the embrace"?
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Dec 12, 2014 04:16
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Pope Guilty posted:That's the formal name for it in V:tM. Pretty sure it's not. I guess the kiss is just feeding, while the embrace is turning kine to kindred.
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Dec 12, 2014 04:21
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Republican Vampire posted:That was originally the rule in the tabletop game, but White Wolf was basically founded on the principle of spending company money on weird fetish drawings and strange pornography so you can probably guess how long it lasted until that was retconned or just casually ignored. When what edition was it actually retconned?
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Dec 12, 2014 04:31
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PRESIDENT GOKU posted:Pretty sure it's not. I guess the kiss is just feeding, while the embrace is turning kine to kindred. Specifically, the Kiss is the intense ecstasy that holds somebody bitten by a vampire in place and keeps them from resisting once the fangs are in. There's a hidden subculture in the WoD of "blood dolls", human beings who enjoy (and in some cases are addicted to) the Kiss and allow themselves to be fed on, which is up there with shooting heroin in terms of risky behavior. Rice's term for what Masquerade calls the embrace was "the dark trick", if memory serves.
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Dec 12, 2014 04:34
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Pope Guilty posted:Rice's term for what Masquerade calls the embrace was "the dark trick", if memory serves. wow that's really gay
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Dec 12, 2014 04:58
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PRESIDENT GOKU posted:wow that's really gay You should know better than to use terminology like that. Especially when you're complaining about Zexia in another thread using similar language. For shame, Jorts. For shame. Also, no more discussion about which company hosed which, otherwise I'm locking the thread because honestly, at this point in time who gives a poo poo. Troika is dead and buried, and this gem is all we've got left of their legacy... well, and some lovely D&D game, but who cares about that.
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Dec 12, 2014 05:55
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SweetBro posted:When what edition was it actually retconned? I'm actually not sure because I'm pretty sure that most of the sex was in the interstitial prose and the novels, which I didn't bother with because it's mostly straight people having boring romance novel sex and I'm gay as butt heck. I actually think it was one of those things like Cammy Malks where they were never actually consistent. I do know that they decided to just have vampire boners in the game from the git-go when they rebooted it as Requiem tho, and they had a rule where like every Requiem clanbook had to have at least one really off putting erotic story in it that'd be about rape or eating someone's period for witch powers or something. PRESIDENT GOKU posted:Don't call it 'the kiss.' This isn't Anne Rice. Isn't that supposed to be a running theme? I know Requiem plays it up more but the idea is that the Camarilla makes up all these fancy, florid words to disguise how bestial and predatory and rapey they are. Vampires are basically undead PUAs.
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Dec 12, 2014 06:47
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I glanced a bit at this thread, and people were complaining about how Proteon has that long transformation time on it that makes it worthless. I don't know if one of the fan patches put this in, but if you activate a power that is already activated, it doesn't refresh it, it extends it. So if an ability lasts of 30 seconds, and you mash it ten times, it lasts 300 seconds. And you can do this while feeding. It made both Proteon and Fortitude a lot more effective when I played.
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Dec 12, 2014 12:44
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Fuzz posted:You should know better than to use terminology like that. Especially when you're complaining about Zexia in another thread using similar language. OK. You're right.
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Dec 12, 2014 13:51
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Republican Vampire posted:Isn't that supposed to be a running theme? I know Requiem plays it up more but the idea is that the Camarilla makes up all these fancy, florid words to disguise how bestial and predatory and rapey they are. Yeah, Requiem really plays this up. But it has a pretty interesting reason behind it. Vampires are all in denial about being horrible bastards, for the most part. And if they're not in denial then they're usually sociopathic monsters that are bordering on becoming hunt-feed-sleep-repeat killing machines that need to be put down. The rare actually decent one that resists the negative parts of their existence inevitably gets taken advantage of (or killed more often than not) because their entire little society is dysfunctional as poo poo. And this is before you factor in that every biological part of their existence is basically built to drive them to batshit monstrosity too. The flowery words are basically just a mask the Invictus came up with to try and hide how much of a monster they all are. Hell, the Invictus book even states the whole Camarilla-esque politics thing they're all about is really just a way to try and pretend they're not horrifying predators as they get older and forget what it means to be human. After all, they've spent the last few centuries pretending to be hoity toity aristocrats. To the point where even an actual aristocrat would be confused at all their social mores. And would an aristocrat be a blood hungry animal? I think not. Good day, sir!  This is why the Carthians and Ordo Dracul rule. Want to and pretend you're actually not a vampire? Go do some mad science on yourself. Want to drop the flowery language and be more realistic about your situation? Usher in a viva la undead revolution. Usually by bashing in some Anne Rice loving Invictus skulls.  People poo poo on Requiem, but man it has a lot more subtlety than OWoD Vampire ever did. Even the little stuff like the flowery Anne Rice words tend to have a rather detailed bit of reasoning behind it. Archonex fucked around with this message at 23:50 on Dec 12, 2014 |
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Dec 12, 2014 14:04
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Tiler Kiwi posted:I glanced a bit at this thread, and people were complaining about how Proteon has that long transformation time on it that makes it worthless. It's more that Protean is a trap because the attack animations are super slow and the third hit has a tendency to make you clip past your target if they're too close to you, so you swing wide and miss. Sure it does aggravated damage, but there's a melee weapon that does the same thing later on in the game and it also does way more damage and has an attack animation that's like twice as fast. Aggravated damage is sorta stupid and pointless against most enemies anyway since all it does is slow down health regeneration and the vast majority of enemies in the game don't have regen... oddly enough, I think the only ones that do are the SWAT guys in the Ventrue tower, and I'm not even sure if they do. So yeah, Protean is actually a trap, especially when you consider that Animalism is the single most powerful discipline in the game when it comes to raw damage output. The only benefits to it are that it looks cool and it uses Brawl, so if you stack Brawl with Fortitude you can just grab people and feed on them while attacks bounce off you... in fact, you will have to resort to that often later on because otherwise you'll just get blown away. Have fun fighting Ming Xiao with that combo, though! 
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Dec 12, 2014 15:05
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Aggravated damage is handy because the only thing that resists Agg is Fortitude. Also, the working title codename for Requiem second edition was "Sexmurder".
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Dec 12, 2014 15:07
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