Troika Eulogy

[Odin]

Greatatlantic informed us of a new article on Gamespy about Troika and it's demise, here's a bit from the article:<blockquote>For once I'm not going to heap the blame mostly on publishers. Mark this down on your calendars, kids, because as you well know I am typically much more forgiving of developers than publishers. In this instance, though, the publishers are only part of the problem, and perhaps not even a major part.

Quite simply, Troika was never able to capitalize on its talent because of a lack of quality control. </blockquote>It's a hefty read, so read it and post your thoughts?
Link: Troika Eulogy

 

[st0lve]

I wonder why its like that really, since if its the publishers that are pushing the game devs. to work hard and fast than ofcourse there will be bugs and errors. And small game devs. have to get to their milestones in time if they want to stay alive, so I guess that is what Troika did.

But its a shame anyway that Troika died.

 

[Claw]

Funny how he worked on UT2k4, which had some serious bugs itself. The screenshots folder setting still isn't working, I believe.

Why the heck are the replies to his article about KOTOR2 at the end of this article? Doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense to me. I couldn't find a link to that article either. How convenient.
Additionally Gheyspy showed its ghey side and a blank page when I tried to reach this column through their menu. That probably means you'll have to post a link to his next article so I can see the replies to this one.

 

[Montez]

One point that I disagree with him on is that they had reasonable development times. Considering that they made their own engine for one game, almost completely revamped and rebuilt it for the second, and had to pretty much redo an unfinished FPS engine into an RPG engine for the third, 2 years per game seems pretty short.

Second: Am I the only person in the world to get bugs and crashes to desktop in other games? I mean, people make it out like Troika is the only developer in the world to have anything wrong with their releases. The unfinished/unbalanced part I can understand - a developer should be held accountable and taken to task for that. But bugs? Offhand, I can't think of any game I've played on the PC besides GTA3 and GTAC that didn't have bugs on release, or even after patches. Although ToEE was pretty bad, Arcanum and Bloodlines were no more and no less buggy than any other game I've ever installed. Do I have some magical computer or something? Someone please explain why Troika gets singled out for this, because it really doesn't make much sense to me.

 

[greatatlantic]

The last two pages were dedicated to reader responses from last week's article, which criticized the massive number of bugs and ruinous ending in KotOR II, and blamed it on the publisher for not giving the developer a reasonable timetable. If I ever find a direct link I'll post it here.

Montez, I really agree with you. I do have a modern machine, though. But the bugs in Bloodlines were no greater than the ones in a lot of other games. Especially for an RPG. I think people with older machines had a lot of trouble running the game, but that has a log more to do with performance than it being buggy.

 

[Volourn]

Huh? BL had lots of bugs. And, no, it was not because of old computers. My computer is not old - not even close - and bugs were up the wazoo. And, the frame rate was simply horrid. In fact, even though I like BL; if I were to go by bugs; BL is likely buggier than TOEE ever was...

KOTOR2, and other games (do* have bugs; but not at that level.


"blamed it on the publisher for not giving the developer a reasonable timetable."

Those people are fanboys and fangirls.

 

[greatatlantic]

"blamed it on the publisher for not giving the developer a reasonable timetable."

Those people are fanboys and fangirls.

No, not people, person. Last week's article was written by one person who is in the industry and expressing his opinion. One a lot of people through out agree with.

 

[Volourn]

Those are the ones who I was referring to...

 

[Briosafreak]

"blamed it on the publisher for not giving the developer a reasonable timetable."

Those people are fanboys and fangirls.

No, not people, person. Last week's article was written by one person who is in the industry and expressing his opinion. One a lot of people through out agree with.

greatatlantic don`t respond to trolls, that´s all he is, just leave him to his trollish nature and idiotic posts please.

 

[Death_Claw]

Montez, I really agree with you. I do have a modern machine, though. But the bugs in Bloodlines were no greater than the ones in a lot of other games. Especially for an RPG. I think people with older machines had a lot of trouble running the game, but that has a log more to do with performance than it being buggy.

I have to disagree, the only game I played in the last few years that had more problems with serious bugs than Vampire was Chronicles of Riddick. And even it works perfectly in some systems and the same can't be said about Vampire since some major bugs occur no matter what kind of specs you have or what you did before the game...

 

[Le Jedi Fou]

The crash during the Society of Leopold mission is one of the most serious bug I've encountered in all games I've bought.

Only two other games were worst : Requiem (quake 2 engine), which wouldn't install with 2 CD-rom devices. I had to wait for the patch to install it.
And Outcast with recent version of DirectX/Windows, which doesn't install too.

Those are/were game blocking bugs, and they should not make it into the release version of the game.

Apart from the crash in Bloodlines, the game isn't so much buggy. Nothing worse than in Fallout 2 or KotOR 2.

 

[greatatlantic]

Yeah, I didn't experience the Society of Leopold crash. I think it was a minority thing, but a significant minority. The only thing that really kicked me was not getting paid for food critic quest. I did get occasional CTDs when playing for three or more hours, but I always took it as a sign it was time to get off anyways.

 

[MurkyShadow]

I was following the news of the last days, sad days indeed. I've not that much time to write something down, cause of work to do.
But I have experienced games, were bugs brought me far closer to a Kill Frenzy than games from Troika.

I played through Arcanum, and it worked quiet well.

There was some an other game, with crashes to desktop, where I was close to rip the cd to pieces, or games, that killed my recent savegame, the next one was naturally months older.

Maybe I've played too many games in the past,
that I don't find the bugs more shocking, than in other titles.

Hell, when there was a bug in a C-64 game,
than you had a reason to get angry,
bugfixes? ha!

 

[Montez]

And even it works perfectly in some systems and the same can't be said about Vampire since some major bugs occur no matter what kind of specs you have or what you did before the game...

Not true. The only bug I had with Vampire was the control lockup - never had the Society of Leopold crash or anything else either. There are a significant amount of people who had no issues at all.

 

[Murdoch]

Not true. The only bug I had with Vampire was the control lockup - never had the Society of Leopold crash or anything else either. There are a significant amount of people who had no issues at all.

I agree. I never had any bug issues. My issues are only with the graphics and hardware requirements. I have a P4 w/HT and PCI express graphic card and areas still slow down, on medium graphic settings. Troika just doesn't seem to optimize their games at all, which seems like a pretty basic thing to do.

Of course I've also heard/read elsewhere people complain its not the number of bugs that's higher in Troika products but relative ease by which they could have been avoided with cleaner code and such. Of course they could have been talking out of their ass, but I don't think so.

 

[SimpleMinded]

Quality control has been a big talk lately... does anyone know WHY troika has had the terrible number of bugs? If it's not the publisher's fault, why have they let it slip game after game? I would think after the first or second time it happened they would take the necessary steps to stop it.

Though again with Montez and Murdoch, I experienced no more bugs in Vampire than in other games I have. The only problem I had was that my computer was being spastic about letting me install the games but I think I had messed up something with my computer so it was entirely my fault.

As for the article... the screenshots seem to be in a total mix up... while talking about Troika on the front page, they have a photo of what I'm assuming is KOTOR 2. Then on the fourth page with KOTOR 2 they have a photo of bloodlines, though I'm not sure which area it is :-\. I'll have to play again.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

Accoridng to Loen, ToEE was Troika's highest selling game.

ToEE had a major number of bugs and a variety of "feature problems". Including:

• Start the game with the wrong character and the game crashes.
• Drink the wrong potion and the game crashes.
• Serious slowdowns in areas of the temple.
• Lack of coherent storyline.
• It was a short game (I even finished it accidentally on my first run through because I said no to taking a pillar).

That's a whole lot of people finding out about "Troika Games" who may have missed Arcanum. That's a whole lot of people experiencing serious bugs. That's a whole lot of people who start to associate Troika with bugs.

The problem may not be so much that the bugs existed, it's the fact that we're even having this conversation at all. When a game's major talking point is the bugs, it hurts a lot more than it helps. Not all publicity is good, especially when it starts to ruin a reputation.

The major game ending crash in Bloodlines' Society of Leopold along with the "10 minute load times" was just enough to cement that reputation. Couple that with RPGs typically being a niche market and it becomes a case of straws and camels' backs.

 

[Le Jedi Fou]

The problem may not be so much that the bugs existed, it's the fact that we're even having this conversation at all. When a game's major talking point is the bugs, it hurts a lot more than it helps. Not all publicity is good, especially when it starts to ruin a reputation.

Usually, when I talk about Arcanum, I'm saying it's my favourite game ever (better than Fallout, but that's just my opinion).

And when I talk about Vampire Bloodlines, I'm saying it's my favourite RPG of 2004. I'm talking about the great dialogues, the hilarious quest involving the two old chinese men, and things like that.

I never talk about the bugs. I'm talking about it here because that's what the thread is about. If some people will associate Troika with bugs rather than great RPGs, maybe that's because they don't consider their games as excellent, but rather good or average. And while you usually don't care about bugs when you're playing an awesome game, you tend on seeing them when you're bored.

That's the same with movies. Some people will think that Matrix Reloaded is one the best movie ever, other will notice the poor dialogues writing, the bad acting, the flaws in the cg fx, etc...

The bugs are not dedicated to Troika, but rather RPGs and MMORPGs. With (almost) every new game in those categories, we see people complaining about bugs. Daggerfall, Morrowind, Arx Fatalis, Fallout 1 & 2, Arcanum, ToEE, Vampire Bloodlines, The Fall, Knights of the Old Republic II. Asheron's call 2, Star Wars Galaxies, Anarchy Online, Ryzom, Dark Age of Camelot, Everquest 2, Neocron, Shadowbane.
For each of those games, we can find hundred of players complaining about the bugs. I even know someone who said "I'm not considering Fallout 2 as a classic, because my savegame was corrupted. I didn't finish it."

But we're all playing the same game. Of course some people will experience more bugs than others, that's just a matter of luck. But that's the same game. How can you explain that some players will say "Wow, Vampire Bloodlines was so cool, I was in the mood from the begining and until the end" while other will say "This game would have been okay if it wasn't filled with bugs" ?
I think the bugs talking is just an excuse.

PS: I haven't talked about ToEE because I didn't like it at all. Didn't like the setting, the dialogues, the boring quests, and most of all the D&D system.

 

[Roshambo]

Finally, it again comes to the point where art and technical issues should be divided, again. Yes, along comes an oldtimer who has to remind the journalist kids and industry chimps that great gameplay existed long before shiny graphics and despite much graphical importance at all, and should exist again. There is enough slop out there that is generic enough to run on any POS computer cabable to allow any drooling moron to log on and post that they like elf tits and the game is teh bestest because of that. Of course, it doesn't hurt to do a little side pandering to that crowd ever so often, but it shouldn't be the highlight of the game.

Artistic merit should have place again in this industry, yet the media tend to applaud and suck off those who can shit out more binary shiny turds. I can understand the marketing mentality that creates this kind of belief that to get more than popular, they must become pure Lowest Common Denominator.

They call them "crack whores" in D.C.