Troika Games - Gone But Not Forgotten

you said:

Better how ?

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Check my previous post

The problem is that they are gone for a very good reason, they were awful programmers. It's easy to remember these games fondly with nostalgia goggles on and Vampire Bloodlines is still one of my favorite games of all time, but all of these games released in an awful state with many game breaking bugs. The Temple of Elemental Evil was just flat out a bad game in my opinion, Arcanum was a great idea, but much of it was poorly executed, and Vampire was such a mess at release it's still being fixed by the basically required fan patch. We saw some of these problem trickle over into Obsidian and almost sink them a couple times. All the great ideas in the world don't mean anything if you don't have the means to realize them. I have to say though that I would love to see what a company like Obsidian or Bethesda could do with the rights to Arcanum.

Loveblanket said:

The problem is that they are gone for a very good reason, they were awful programmers. It's easy to remember these games fondly with nostalgia goggles on and Vampire Bloodlines is still one of my favorite games of all time, but all of these games released in an awful state with many game breaking bugs. The Temple of Elemental Evil was just flat out a bad game in my opinion, Arcanum was a great idea, but much of it was poorly executed, and Vampire was such a mess at release it's still being fixed by the basically required fan patch. We saw some of these problem trickle over into Obsidian and almost sink them a couple times. All the great ideas in the world don't mean anything if you don't have the means to realize them. I have to say though that I would love to see what a company like Obsidian or Bethesda could do with the rights to Arcanum.

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This statement is pure ignorance. Go read a bit about Troika and watch some of their interviews where they talk about these game.

ToEE=KotC. Two of my favorites. I would be hard pressed to pick one over the other. They are fantastic.

Archangel said:

This statement is pure ignorance. Go read a bit about Troika and watch some of their interviews where they talk about these game.

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He was actually pretty spot on with that assessment. He's not saying they're bad games, he's just saying they were in a bad condition when they were released, and I don't see how anyone could deny that.

I don't think Troika were necessarily bad programmers, but everything else he said was accurate.

JDR13 said:

He was actually pretty spot on with that assessment. He's not saying they're bad games, he's just saying they were in a bad condition when they were released, and I don't see how anyone could deny that.

I don't think Troika were necessarily bad programmers, but everything else he said was accurate.

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That is not what was ignorant about it. What was ignorant is calling them bad programmers and blaming them solely for the state the game were released in when it is well recorded they had problems with publishers fucking them over and even not letting them fix the game for months (VtB).

Archangel said:

That is not what was ignorant about it. What was ignorant is calling them bad programmers and blaming them solely for the state the game were released in when it is well recorded they had problems with publishers fucking them over and even not letting them fix the game for months (VtB).

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Then maybe you should have been a little more specific instead of quoting his entire paragraph.

The Troika fandom is one that confuses/irritates me quite a bit. Three games, all completely different, all utterly riddled with all kinds of problems.

ToEE was the one closest to my kind of game. Really enjoyed the combat *system* but literally barely anything else.

Arcanum is something that just doesn't appeal to me, either the setting or systems.

Vampire is something I don't really class as RPG as I imagine it, to me it's more in the vein of Dues Ex or Thief. Not carbon copy, but ballpark if you like X you'll probably like X, etc etc. Just not my bag of game.

So, to me, it's all a lot of over-hype and I don't really know why some people are so desperate to keep these games patched and repatched as all-time classics. I don't deny them the right, I, personally, just don't get it. None of them would ever be close to my personal top 20 games of my life even in perfect condition.

It kind-of reminds me of people who keep recutting Balderunner in ever more perfect iterations. I thought the original was just an ok movie and don't really see the dedication to keep tinkering with it.

JDR13 said:

He was actually pretty spot on with that assessment. He's not saying they're bad games, he's just saying they were in a bad condition when they were released, and I don't see how anyone could deny that.

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I played Arcanum and ToEE the day they were released and never ran into any major problems in either one. There you go, someone denies it.

Didn't really get deep into Bloodlines until many months after it came out though, so I won't claim to have a clue on that one.

These days I don't generally play any game at all until months after it's released, mainly for DLC/expansion reasons, but it also avoids these bugginess issues too. It's a strategy that I'd highly recommend to anyone who is sensitive to, or prone to over-reaction about, on-release issues.

Stingray said:

I played Arcanum and ToEE the day they were released and never ran into any major problems in either one. There you go, someone denies it.

Didn't really get deep into Bloodlines until many months after it came out though, so I won't claim to have a clue on that one.

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I also know people who claim they played Gothic 3 from day 1 without any issues. Perhaps they did, but that doesn't change the fact that it was in terrible condition when it was released.

Fair enough, only reporting my personal experience...