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| Thread: Limbic is gone - what will happen now? |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 · «PREV / NEXT» |
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted October 07, 2016 08:31 PM |
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That doesn't mean much. Are you a freelancer, are you working for a company, how is your position in the pecking order, what projects do you work on...
Do you feel your job is creative?
Talking about Limbic as a game designer means, that LIMBIC employs guys who do the work - say OakWarior responsible for the AI, but it's not Ubisoft who is responsible for that, and it's not Ubisoft who controls that.
Example: when I played H7 yesterday I noticed - not for the first time - that there are differently sized battlefields; 12x10 and 18x10.
Now, we had that in H5, but it was canned, because it was deemed not to balance with ranged power and stuff.
But that's actually not why I bring this up. What I registered was AI behaviour: the AI learnedly waits first turn - great, if you have a high-init fast unit -, and then, turn two it immediately moves - directly in easy reach of your shooters dealing full damage. With small bfs they would find a target for attack. With large they just move into their death.
Now, who's to fault?
Answer: Limbic. The AI designer(s) failed to recognize that there are different bf sizes; the designers failed to recognize that features make sense only when the AI can handle them (less may be more). I hope you see the communication peoblem here.
The M&M franchise has been a big one. It WAS a big chance for Limbic - I'd estimate a potential 3 quarters of a million sales, if everything had worked. No matter the consitions, there would be something in the bag - a successful product, and that's something to build upon.
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Dies_Irae
Supreme Hero
with the perfect plan
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posted October 07, 2016 08:34 PM |
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verriker said:
Dies_Irae said:
If that really is the end of support/updates for H7, then wow...praise to those who saw it coming from the very day it all began.
cheers buddy lol
don't feel bad though mate, you shouldn't be ashamed over the failings of Ubilimb, there was much bravery in hoping for the best against the odds too, whether it was a predictable outcome or not lol
Do me a favor and start a church, for you truly are my prophet  .
And I still have that barely touched Collector's Edition standing on my desk... . I'm too Dutch to ditch something I paid that much moneys for. I will one day play it like it's the last thing I'll ever do. Mark my words.
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Gryphs
Supreme Hero
The Clever Title
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posted October 07, 2016 08:37 PM |
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I will carve it on your tombstone.
Here lies Marblethrone
He will play H7 soon.
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"Don't resist the force. Redirect it. Water over rock."-blizzardboy
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EnergyZ
Legendary Hero
President of MM Wiki
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posted October 07, 2016 08:40 PM |
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Dies_Irae said:
verriker said:
Dies_Irae said:
If that really is the end of support/updates for H7, then wow...praise to those who saw it coming from the very day it all began.
cheers buddy lol
don't feel bad though mate, you shouldn't be ashamed over the failings of Ubilimb, there was much bravery in hoping for the best against the odds too, whether it was a predictable outcome or not lol
Do me a favor and start a church, for you truly are my prophet .
verriker's witnesses. (VW.) Nice.
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Galaad
Hero of Order
Li mort as morz, li vif as vis
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posted October 07, 2016 08:47 PM |
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Good riddance, Limbic jumped on their high horses and turned a deaf ear while they had the VIP group to help, at the very least the game design could have been salvaged, but still wouldn't be playable because of swarm of bugs.
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dredknight
Honorable
Supreme Hero
disrupting the moding industry
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posted October 07, 2016 09:55 PM |
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JollyJoker said:
That doesn't mean much. Are you a freelancer, are you working for a company, how is your position in the pecking order, what projects do you work on...
Do you feel your job is creative?
JollyJoker I have been working in different areas of the IT sector.
I've been:
- technical support (like Ubisoft technical support but for corporate softwares networking and monitoring).
- Integrator (Some people refer them as tailors) - integrating custom solutions at customer premises. Leveraging risks etc..
- System Administrator - corporate virtualization (Server, Desktop, OS) and monitoring development.
Basically the things I do now started as hobbies and later evolved into the latest thing I started working full time. The possibility of making the things per my vision is why I initially started doing them. Later I just found I have the knack for it. So yes there is quite the creativity. Though I would say that there can be creativity almost in any job you do, it is a matter of personality and not the type of job you do.
Regarding the Ubi vs Limbic thing, my suggestion was more abstract. I didn't say it was Ubi fault. Actually I was more talking from pure experience that I got from the few places I work and from observation of friends or colleagues in other companies or just following the game industry and correlating statistics.
Actually we dont know who's fault it is but there are really a lot of variables to consider if this is to be unfold. I will give one example.
You say some Orc guy is the main troublemaker for the poor AI in heroes 7. Do you know how hard it is to make an AI? I never made one but having one of the best heroes AIs made by a Quantum Physicist, got to mean something isnt it ?
So UBI/Limbic are facing the task of building an AI for the H7. But do they have the people? It is not so easy to dig down a good AI developer, especially when the budget is low.
Even sometimes when you have the money the market can be "out of stock". There is a lot of games made those days and there is a constant demand of people working for the industry.
I don't know what are the numbers for the game industry but I come from a small country called Bulgaria and the shortage of IT engineers here is 40 000 people. The same number for the European union equals to one million people.
So we have a market where there is a high demand and low supply. The high demand of jobs is actually good payed jobs (after initial trial ofcourse) because you know that once you proved yourself you can get a good deal of money. So there will be people filling the gap trying to make the bucks and eventually fail. This is good news for Ubisoft who has the policy of paying small while demanding a lot. For us the customers it means low quality products.
I don't crave for any viability this is pure speculation on some statistics with a pinch of thoughts of mine  .
Anyway, for those who want straight answers this guy explains what really happened in less than 5 minutes.
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Join our official discord channel | NCF Utility Beta
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olorin
Adventuring Hero
tophatchild.blogspot.com
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posted October 07, 2016 10:06 PM |
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted October 07, 2016 10:33 PM |
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dredknight said:
You say some Orc guy is the main troublemaker for the poor AI in heroes 7. Do you know how hard it is to make an AI? I never made one but having one of the best heroes AIs made by a Quantum Physicist, got to mean something isnt it ?
So UBI/Limbic are facing the task of building an AI for the H7. But do they have the people? It is not so easy to dig down a good AI developer, especially when the budget is low.
Good example, actually. For one thing, Quantomas has offered his help a couple of times - a guy who has a lot of experience.
For another, you should know when you design a game, that you can afford to have a weak AI when you cater for an MP community first and foremost (which means you need balance), but if not that you need an AI, so this is basically about defining goals and allocating resources accordingly. Plainly spoken, it doesn't make sense to design all kinds of nifty features when your game is mostly SP and you don't have an AI to handle them.
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Momo
Promising
Famous Hero
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posted October 07, 2016 10:49 PM |
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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted October 07, 2016 10:50 PM |
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verriker
Honorable
Legendary Hero
We don't need another 'eroes
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posted October 07, 2016 11:04 PM |
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Edited by verriker at 23:06, 07 Oct 2016.
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Momo said:
Why oh why silly comedy cannot be recommended for a QP?
no worries it can and was lol
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NimoStar
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Modding the Unmoddable
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posted October 08, 2016 01:49 AM |
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Edited by NimoStar at 02:02, 08 Oct 2016.
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Quote:
Still, NWC as a developer was responsible and did well, publisher or not
There is no comparison here.
NWC had full creative direction of the games...
Furthermore they were making the same games over and over for years, AKA they had practically decades of experience with doing them.
Even then, when the pressure from the publisher mounted, they produced subpar content for their standards (see last years, H4 and the unfinished and scrapped H5)
So, if anything, the NWC story means we can and should blame the publisher.
Also, if you see the details and read the comments from game specialists, you will see that Black Hole went banrupt because they exceeded their contract in order to get a full more year working for the game.
Furthermore according to their version, the delay was compounded because Ubisoft M&M did NOT send their part of the stuff (lore, story, art, demands) on time ever.
So they did try to make a good game to build upon, even while in the contract it was stated (as was common) that they would get no part in the sales "unless they exceeded two million", which is an absurd number.
So while I didn't get to play the last two games, I can safely say I know a thing or two about IT and business...
and I will tell you this: These developers HAD to take the deal they were offered - even if it was in very bad terms for them (demands with no guarantees) because it's the only thing to keep them afloat. They cannot afford to pass on it.
And big publishers know this. Thus they include ridiculous demands and penalties, while they themselves have almost none and keep complete control over the title... and don't even pay very much relative to the bucks they have and make.
If you were offered two million euros to develop a game, would you reject them? So how can we blame the devs? Even if they are bad, they didn't necessarily choose to be bad - they could have worked to their full capabilities and it would never be enough since they didn't have the experience, the time, the control, etc. over the creation.
(Also, if you think a third party closed-source engine built originallt for generic FPS counts as "tried and true" for a custom unique turn-based strategy legacy game... you simply don't know what you are talking about or how programming works)
If the devs are incapable, it's because the publisher chose an incapable dev - probably because it was cheaper and they get a greater power imbalance (I suspect this is the reason they ditched Nival too - they felt them too "strong").
So, while Ubisoft gets what they think are "good" deals (cheap labor for them, no strings attached, can blame others for their failure) , we, the game, and the franchise, get a raw deal - and eventually it ends in doom.
And this is how I imagine the gameplay experience.
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted October 08, 2016 08:58 AM |
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NimoStar said:
So while I didn't get to play the last two games, I can safely say I know a thing or two about IT and business...
and I will tell you this: These developers HAD to take the deal they were offered - even if it was in very bad terms for them (demands with no guarantees) because it's the only thing to keep them afloat. They cannot afford to pass on it.
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You may know a thing or two, but it looks like you have no idea about the specifics and you assue a lot, but you didn't exactly research for facts. Black Hole has been a 7-people company of friends who got backing by Andy Vajny /half of the Vajna/Kassar partnership) to develop their first game in 2004 that got published by EA (a WC3 clone).
This worked so well, they were hired by Namco Bandal to do Mark of Chaos plus Expansion plus Xbox port.
When Ubisoft got in touch with them for H6 ... well. When you have a company your responsibility is to sign deals only that you know you can keep. I was involved in H6 localization and VIP program, and I was in Budapest when the game got introduced to the international press end of February of 2011. The game was scheduled for release in May, initially, but the game was a mess in February. Important parts had been outsourced, for example, the UI, and by Black Hole, not Ubisoft, and the people who had done the UI had done an inadequate job: you cannot have 11 pages that you have to go through when you level up a hero, for example, that is against everything the game should be.
The main problem and the reason for the delay was that BH couldn't deliver a full working game. If Ubisoft had been responsible for the delays, you can bet your ass, things have worked differently, because in this case BH had filed the lawsuit because of that. You simply don't disappear as a company, if another company repeatedly doesn't keep their part.
As I was working on loca at the time I can tell you things were different. Ubisoft had told them (bot couldn't order them) to hire someone who'd look after the integration of game texts and their localizations, but they didn't do that (to save money, obviously). Now, as you may know or not, gaming industry works in batches. One batch may involve, for example, the final names for all town and on-map buildings - which of course have "working names", that is, the strings are named, and you have a provisonal name in. If something is changed/finalized it gets integrated. In this case the finalized texts were sent to Budapest - and Black Hole did NOT integrate them, so when the files came back for the next batch, what seemed to be "finalized" wasn't.
That created a lot of havoc, but the main problem was, that BH took a long time until they finally managed to patch the full game together.
Mind you, Ubisoft went out of budget as well due to the delays, and what they did was, they threw another game to the lions, that is, published it in an unfinished state, for accordingly devastating reviews, to free additional budget for additional costs.
Of course, a lot of the budget was wasted with overly optimistic - early - promotion circus on Ubisoft's side.
Black Hole had to hire extensively for the game, and making a halfway correct estimation of how many people you have to hire for how long and what you can outsource to whom is obviously a decisive part of your own budget plannings and whether you'll be able to do it or not. I've been involved in all M&M game developments and a couple more, and there have been good and bad ones. CoH, for example, done by Capybara, was exemplary; totally organized, everything on schedule, a very thorough bug hunting/squishing routine, early tests, great. DoC was also a pleasure, as long as things were in Canada.
H6 was really chaotic.
Considering that the scope of H6 didn't exceed that of H5, in the end Black Hole simply couldn't handle it, and as a consequence they are out of business.
Many businesses disappear because they put more on their plate than they can eat. If you earn SOME money with a working idea/model, going bigger to earn MORE money often doesn't work, and the reason for that is, that going bigger means, you need more people, people you don't know and people you cannot really assess.
That may have gone wrong with BH as well. The initial 7 may have been working quite well, but of course they had to hire. If I'm not wrong, they had around 50 people working in their offices at the time, plus the outsourced stuff, and estimations ho many mandays something will take are often complete fantasy. For that hiring they will have relied on local talent, and that may have been lacking.
Bottom line is, BH was a very chaotic affair.
EDIT: In case I didn't make myself clear enough, from what I've senn, I think that Black Hole failed because they were not organized enough for a project of this magnitude. Which is basically the difference between good and bad development of software in general.
To give you an example: H6 was developed on their own engine, that is basically what you can call a powerful editor. Considering that they would have to hire a lot of people who would have to work with this tool, a thorough documentation or manual about it would not only have seemed a good idea to save valuable time later, it would also have served later as a manual for use of the editor.
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Aionb
Known Hero
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posted October 08, 2016 10:08 AM |
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Galaad
Hero of Order
Li mort as morz, li vif as vis
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posted October 08, 2016 12:06 PM |
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Both Ubi and Limbic are to blame, are we really discussing this?
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GenyaArikado
Bad-mannered
Supreme Hero
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posted October 08, 2016 03:47 PM |
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Jolly isnt saying the opposite, just explaining why Limbic has a big share of the blame as well and people are misunderstanding it as him saying "UBISOFT DINDU N-THING WRUNNG"
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NimoStar
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Modding the Unmoddable
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posted October 09, 2016 02:28 AM |
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Edited by NimoStar at 02:38, 09 Oct 2016.
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Quote:
If Ubisoft had been responsible for the delays, you can bet your ass, things have worked differently, because in this case BH had filed the lawsuit because of that. You simply don't disappear as a company, if another company repeatedly doesn't keep their part.
That is not how contracts work. If there was no contract that specified a penalty or responsibility for Ubi, you cannot sue them.
And the Black Hole Employee (as identified by Erwin as legit) said that was exactly the case.
So, you think companies don't dissapear because their partners screw up? That is incredibly naive.
Quote:
Black Hole has been a 7-people company of friends
Quote:
Important parts had been outsourced, for example, the UI, and by Black Hole, not Ubisoft, and the people who had done the UI had done an inadequate job: you cannot have 11 pages that you have to go through when you level up a hero, for example, that is against everything the game should be.
So, you say you expect six people to make all the art, assets, UI, and AI for a full sprawling three layered game (town screens, combat screen, adventure map), to deliver it in time, and not outsource anything?
That is completely unrealistic, the H3 game is much bigger and more complex than that.
I never said Blck Hiole or Limbic were adequate companies up to the task.
But the task of getting an adequate company was for Ubisoft, not themselves.
You cannot compare a company the size of Black Hole with one like Nival. Furthermore, team erwin said themselves that they ditched Nival just because "they coudn't agree with them on a vision for Heroes VI" ... AKA, they wanted weaker developers whom they could treat as toadies instead of people able to plan and think on their own. All evidence posts to it. Even developers coming to this forum (for Heroes VII too) said there were "hard caps" because of the "Ashan lore" on everything they do, and that they had to "consult" the Erwin team before even taking trivial decisions about gameplay and design... for example they coudn't change anything because it would "affect the campaign".
Also, remember Ubisoft wanted to make Heroes V an RTS, and only Nival stopped them.
I am not satying VBlack Hole and Limbic were competent enough programmers, etc. to make full, working Heroes games.
I am saying, precisely because they WERE NOT, it is unreasonable to expect from them something above their own capacities.
Could they have ever delivered a bug-free Heroes games? No, it was beyond their scope. If Ubisoft expected them to outsource anyways but also expects to retain total, real-time control over the product through the main developer, this creates a broken chain of command and of information, where the parts cannot work correctly together.
(also, Unreal Engine 3 is far from being "bug-free" even for it's intended purposes. I have played "Goat Simulator", a game made almost entirely to exploit the many bugs that appear, of which there were many, and even they had to fix the game-crashing ones. To me it is obvious the Heroes games need dedicated engines, because they have potentially many unique game mechanics which aren't generic to all games, and yet basic features could break the assumptions of prebuilt engines for other purposes.)
So...
What do you expect not good enough developers to do, fire themselves and find a replacement?
Ubi is the publisher, Ubi puts the money and decides where it goes and doesn't, Ubi directs the developers, Ubi has the whole upper echelons of game designs... and those people freely admitted they didn't know what they were doing. Yet they were in charge. How can one expect it not to end badly? No developer can fix that. And even less for an underbudgeted game like H7.
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bitmaid
Adventuring Hero
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posted October 09, 2016 05:01 PM |
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1. The franchise is not and never will be sold to China. It's licensed to make snowty mobile games & prolly MMO that will make $$$$$$$.
2. If you think Vivendi will be ANY better than Ubisoft, do a simple Google search to see what "games" they have published (and shiver). If a takeover happens it will doom ALL, 100% of Ubisoft's IP.
3. Can somebody shed some light on the rumors of disbandment if they are privy to such info? Who left? Who's left? What went down? This seems all kind of sudden...
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Kayna
Supreme Hero
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posted October 09, 2016 05:06 PM |
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MMO? MMORPG? Ubisoft MMORPG? Ubisoft never dared dip their toes in the MMO genre. They're too scared of the workload and stability required to pull a MMO.
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verriker
Honorable
Legendary Hero
We don't need another 'eroes
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posted October 09, 2016 07:12 PM |
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bitmaid said:
If you think Vivendi will be ANY better than Ubisoft, do a simple Google search to see what "games" they have published (and shiver).
actually I dunno what your simple Google search is turning up but be aware Vivendi were responsible for publishing Warcraft, Starcraft, Diablo, Call of Duty, Skylanders, Guitar Hero, Prototype, and Tony Hawk among others, right such unsuccessful garbage lol
granted that they also published a lot of complete worthless ****, but we're on a Heroes forum here, are we really going to sit to delude ourselves that Ubisoft's track record is better than theirs lol
bitmaid said:
If a takeover happens it will doom ALL, 100% of Ubisoft's IP.
please take care not to just regurgitate the Guillemot scaremongering you hear though, bear in mind Gullemot and his lackeys have their own selfish agenda in peddling that narrative,
the truth is nobody actually knows what Vivendi takeover will cause, however much like basketball this is a game of two halves lol
the one half is what happens to Heroes, which is the point relevant to us at the forum, and the likely answer is we will get a very honest and direct response from them,
either they will snow the Might and Magic series out like we've never seen before (which is frankly the only way they can profit off it after Ubisoft has already smashed its brains in), without lying to us or leading us on by pretending to care about past titles, thus enabling us to stop caring about its future, or they'll cancel it and leave it in the vault forever, never to be tarnished further lol
if Ubisoft retains Might and Magic, either it will similarly stay in the vault forever, or Erwin will just bide his time and eventually convince them to dredge it up and try to peddle more ****** Ashan-based crap, thus tarnishing it further lol
the other half is what will change to all their other successful IP, and I will tell you that the likely answer is absolutely nothing,
either Vivendi will change them for the better, or Vivendi will continue to annualize them and keep pushing out the same old reskinned, rushed, bug-filled open world garbage again and again, or Ubisoft will continue to annualize them and keep pushing out the same old reskinned, rushed, bug-filled open world garbage again and again lol
Ubisoft really doesn't have the moral high ground as things stand dude lol
in my opinion the likely outcomes are clearly and logically in our favour should Vivendi succeed, thus salut Vivendi lol
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. It's a pity I can understand the guy, otherwise it'd be the best explanation I'd ever watched about this Ubi-mess.
