The Rise and Fall of Troika on the Escapist

[mortiz]

Good read.

Troika had 11 credited programmers working on Bloodlines at one time or an other so there are really no excuses for the bugs. You could forgive them if Bloodlines was their first project and they were perhaps caught unawares by Activisions turn of face reguarding getting it out of the door, but Bloodlines was their third game after Arcanum and TOEE so I have no idea what they were on. They should have known what to expect from their publisher. Either they simply didn't have the experience in their programming team (something that should have been remedied after Arcanum) or they didn't have enough programmers actually active on the project during the crunch, something that comes down to bad management.

I think maybe it comes down to that "the three" while great game designers and makers probably didn't have the ability to run a company and make games at the same time, therefore there were a multitude of errors with concern to management of resources.

 

[Gnidrologist]

As for the topic, the incidental "I don't see no bugs" thing is funny. I played Arcanum without a patch first time through, couldn't get a ship because I didn't have high enough gamble, the dealer was broken (bug) and the pirate was broken too (bug). There's a game-ender for ya.

If this "I don't see no bugs" remark is geared towards me, than I have to remind that I didn't say VB is perfectly fine, it's just that I didn't find it that PARTICULARY buggy compared to many other buggy games.

Fallout 1 was relatively bugless

Says you. Seems I really have differtent experience, than most people with a more than one game. As far as I remember, Fallout was one of the games where bugs really irritate me, because they were more damaging than in other games. Like corruption of savegames and crashing to desktop once too often, which was never the case in Bloodlines, only sewere bug being the game stopper, that's been mentioned.
Never the less, I still find it probably the greatest PC game I've ever played (I mean Fallout), so my standarts in this area must be absolutely shitty.

 

[Brother None]

Says you. Seems I really have differtent experience, than most people with a more than one game. As far as I remember, Fallout was one of the games where bugs really irritate me, because they were more damaging than in other games.

Look, we've been through this already, individual experience are no way to measure bugginess of the game. Generally for PC games they've been indexed and fixed and it is generally known how many of those bugs are fatal and which are frequent or infrequent.

Yes, you're right, perception is reality. For instance, Oblivion's bugginess has been for the most part ignored by reviewers while the criticism on Gothic 3's buginess went as far as to actually invent bugs to go with the game that were never actually proven to exist. Yes, you're also right that there were many factors that added to Troika's relative lack of success, but you're wrong if you don't think buginess is one of them.

You're also wrong if you think the whole bug-paradigm is so off as to claim that the Troika games are relatively bugfree. Look, documentation of bugs relies on more than your personal experience. You went through them without seeing bugs? That's great, but it doesn't affect anyone except you. The rest of us have had personal experience with game-ending or desktopcrashing bugs. Nor is it a problem Troika ever denied.

There are standards as to when a game is fit for release and there are many ways to look at bugs as a part of that. One thing is for sure, though, if you take an average of buginess in cRPG pc game released in the late 90's and early naughties, then games like Fallout and Baldur's Gate are released relatively bugfree, whereas games like Fallout 2 and all Troika games have a relatively large number of annoying bugs, hence their label unfinished.

 

[zioburosky13]

There is a reason why Troika's games are so buggy because they have to balance the choice and consequence gameplay. I read it somewhere from a former Troika developer from rpgcodex, I think....

what? you're making no sense...

Link

"Regular game idea:

What the player experiences: You were told that the wealthy owner of the Inn can help you find the buried treasure. You walk into a bar. The bartender greets you with a fine "Hello Stranger! Come and enjoy a pint of ale on the house!" You will notice that you when you click on anyone else in the room you get a generic "good day sir", you certainly can't attack anyone, and if the game let you fire off an explosive spell, it wouldn't do any damage in room and no one would notice that anything had happened. You talk to the inn keeper and he says if you give him 10 gold, he'll give you the map to the secret treasure! So you do.

What the developers were thinking: Well, this has to be this way, right? I mean, the bartender has knowledge that keeps the quest moving along so we can't kill him. And what if we attacked someone else in the corner of the bar? We couldn't have that because it would look strange if the people just sat there! And I mean, c'mon, if you can kill this guy, wouldn't that mean you can kill the others too? Oh plus, our publisher informed us yesterday that we have to take out all the kids in the game because we can't sell the game in Germany if it has kid killing. Yeah..... killing people in a friendly town is out of the question.


Troika game:

What the player experiences: You walk into a bar. The bartender greets you with a fine "Hello Stranger! Come and enjoy a pint of ale on the house!" At this point, you shoot an arrow through his neck.... he drops dead, the bar maid and most of the patrons freak out and run for the door... You laugh maniacally until you notice some guy in the corner (who happens to be the bartenders' brother in law enjoying a pint himself) unsheathing his vorpal sword and coming after you with bloody vengeance in his eyes... You kill him too and take his sword. You search the inn and find a key underneath a bottle of whiskey behind the bar. The key opens a lockbox upstairs in his room where you find a map.

What Troika was thinking: Hey, what if I want to shoot the bartender? Yeah, I hate those stereo-typical jolly fat bartender guys. It'll be more trouble, but we'll make sure you can get the map some how. For the people in the room, we'll have them check against your faction and skills, if you attack anyone, they will determine if they are scared, hostile, or unmoved by your actions. If they are scared they'll run, hostile they'll attack, and unmoved they will just sit there drinking a beer while all hell breaks loose. Yeah, we should put at least on guy in the bar who's tough as nails. The tough quiet dude who calmly drinks his beer... The guy you DO NOT want to mess with. Yeah, and if you kill anyone in this inn, the cops in town will attack you on sight. The more neutral shopkeepers will still sell to you, but they will jack the prices up because even they think you are a cold blooded killer.


Now, the Troika way is much more difficult to implement. All RPG fans will notice that Troika games are often times buggy. The Troika way is much harder to test because of all of the possibilities within the game and the level. When the game is near completion and you need another few months to make sure it's tight and bug free, the publisher will rarely give you the time or money to make it happen. Many times, Publishers underestimate how difficult it is to test a game this open ended and they don't give you proper testing resources. This was the case for Arcanum and Temple for sure.

V:T Bloodline is hammered by its bugs. In fact I think it probaly is the most buggyest Troika game. Sluggish perfomance on my rig (mostly outdoor scene and my rig has 3xthe recommand requirement of it).

3x recommended, you say? that's 3.6ghz P4 or 3.6ghz AXP (doesnt exist, so let's assume overclocked), 1.5 Gb of RAM and a vidcard with 192mb of vidram (doesnt exist, it'll be 256mb then).
and you say you had trouble with that rig? i kinda doubt that... i ran it on high qual settings on a 2.53Ghz P4b (non-HT), 1gb RAM and a 9800pro 128mb (later a 6800GT 256mb).

Okie I lied not 3x. But 2x. I tried the game with the latest fan-patch and still have sluggish framerate in outdoor scene (10-26 fps). Still will give it another shot once I have my new rig.