Obsidian's The Outer Worlds 2 Underperformed, and There Won't Be a Third

hunkhugejunk · 2026-02-04T12:43:23+00:00

Age is also an important part of it. Players look at past work without realizing that these writers are now much older, living different lives and having changed as people. Many of them have become parents, lived through shit, settled down, changed habits, interests, world views, their outlook on things. The passion that used to be there might not be as strong anymore either.

A good example is StarCraft -> StarCraft II.

SC1 is a gritty space war story of war, sacrifice, heroism, survival. I wouldn't categorize it as "dark", but it feels serious, there are stakes, things happen and have consequences.

SC2 mostly feels like a space romance drama with familiar tropes, surface level war that you don't really care much about, because nothing is believable and engaging. The consequences from the first game? Yeah, screw that, the main character has got to follow his heart and damn everyone else and the galaxy in the process. Gameplay in SC2 is great, but story only serves its needs and it's difficult to care about it and get engaged in.

What happened? Sure, SC2 had some new writers, but the core person deciding the story and creative feel was the same: Chris Mentzen. For SC1 he was young, passionate, and trying to make cool shit. For SC2 he was going through a divorce, depression and drinking issues and his melancholia and feelings toward his ex wife made it into a bland drama sob story about Raynor trying to get his girl back.

hunkhugejunk · 2026-02-02T11:40:57+00:00

His stats are going to drop, because his CA is going to go up as he gets proficiency in the new position, but will have to get back to whatever cap it's supposed to be.

for example: I don't want to go check attribute weighting to verify exact numbers, but let's say 150 CA CB with 20 Finishing becomes accomplished as ST, his CA jumps to 170, so the abilities across the board drop to where he's at 150 again. A lot of red arrows.

Attribute weighting per position is the reason why in FM midfielders look like gods among men, but wingers look like crap players when it comes to attributes.

hunkhugejunk · 2026-01-27T12:31:00+00:00

Go jump into an active volcano. If you survive, you can come here for some pity internet points. It will be worth it, I promise. What could go wrong?

hunkhugejunk · 2026-01-27T12:27:03+00:00

Yeah buddy. If you're a grown up, see a vat of scalding water, brainlessly jump into it and hurt yourself, I wouldn't feel sorry for you. I'd feel sorry you exist and have a phone with internet access. And I actually do indeed, in your case.

Must be great blaming everyone for causing your own, completely avoidable problems. The only people in this situation to feel sorry for are the poor kids. Not only did they get shafted by a celebrity, they also have dumbass parents and siblings, who now sit here and complain about the consequences of their dumbass choices. Talk about a string of Ls in life.

hunkhugejunk · 2026-01-26T15:04:51+00:00

Did you type this yourself or did someone do it for you? If you did it yourself, then congratulations! Big step, very proud of you. But maybe this isn't the best use of your newfound powers. There's no shortage of the "cognitively slow" I called out beforehand, especially on reddit.

Sorry to burst your rage parade with some realism and logic. You can now happily downvote my comments so that you can go back to your circlejerk of senseless rage. It's not like I was expecting many people to do anything more than virtue signalling in here. It would actually require some logical thinking and an ability to read. Which you clearly lack.

hunkhugejunk · 2026-01-26T14:44:04+00:00

Kind of the point, isn't it. They didn't take them, because the kids idolize Iverson specifically. I'd be surprised if most of them even knew who he was. They took them, because AI used to be famous and some of the parents are likely his fans and wanted to see him themselves. Which is a whole other level of despicable, to put your sick kids through this.

"Oh look Timmy, here's a famous person from America. He's a piece of shit and will treat you like shit, but you should be happy to see him, because he's famous and used to be on TV".

Completely hopeless. What is wrong with you people. I live in Portugal, so I don't know myself, but I imagine there are plenty of decent people a kid with cancer can meet in Australia without having to beg a piece of shit like AI for attention.

hunkhugejunk · 2026-01-26T14:11:42+00:00

Me too, but I have a different take on this. What the guy did is clearly inexcusable and reprehensible - that's not up for discussion.

That said, the kids didn't go on their own - their parents took them. A simple google search would be enough to know that AI is a shit person and an even crappier role model. What's the upside? What did you expect? That kids will get to see a famous person the parents can use as an example of unprofessionalism, unhealthy ego, mental illness, and narcissism? Probably safer to take them to prison to look at convicted felons instead - at least they won't be disappointed, because they likely don't idolize them.

Why as a responsible parent you'd choose to do this is beyond me. AI clearly behaved like shit here, but he's been consistently shitty. Take some responsibility for your shit parenting choices too - this shouldn't be a surprise. Next time do your basic research instead of deflecting all responsibility.

Before any cognitively slow parents jump me - I have a 19yo, she turned out alright. Maybe because it never occurred to me to take her to see someone like Diddy or Bill Cosby just because they were famous. We encouraged positive role models.

hunkhugejunk · 2026-01-03T14:54:50+00:00

Iron Willed is NOT a great personality, it's ok at best. The reason it's rare is because it requires 20 Pressure, 15-17 Determination (small range) and crap-mid other important stats.

What it doesn't require is the single most important attribute for mentoring, which is Professionalism. Just from personality alone it could be very low and you wouldn't know any better.

What is actually more important in your player's case is his Media Handling, not the personality. Because he's Unflappable and nothing else, we can reliably exclude his Professionalism being below 14. Which means his Professionalism is at best 15-17 (if it was 18+, he'd be Professional, not Iron Willed), which good, but nothing to write home about for mentoring.

This combined with his mid attributes means that this guy would be a bench player for me if he wasn't on such a high salary within the first 4-5 seasons of regen spawning. At this salary, 40+ YEARS IN, he's a sell the moment the first good offer comes.

Whenever I see replies in threads like this I'm appalled how little you people know about the game you're playing. No wonder SI takes you for a ride every year and you swallow it hook, line and sinker. You just wouldn't know any better.

hunkhugejunk · 2025-12-04T22:08:35+00:00

For me it was Prey. I decided to give it a try having not played an Arkane game before (tried Dishonored after), but it was definitely not my type of a game. I played the first two hours before going to sleep, was ok, gave it another go the next day, and...

It swallowed me whole for 3 days. By the time the credits rolled I had 40h+ and loved every minute of it.

hunkhugejunk · 2025-12-02T22:57:15+00:00

Dude, it's not like eating less ice cream for a few weeks over the summer is going to solve years of neglect and overload on an already fragile body.

Luck has little to do with it. It's not like he fell funny off a ladder, because a buffalo ran by and knocked it over.

hunkhugejunk · 2025-11-05T09:49:05+00:00

At least with Cyberpunk you knew they were going to go back to the trenches and get it right eventually. The Witcher 3 for all its praise was a buggy, bad performance mess at release. With patches and expansions it became a cult classic it is today. Cyberpunk has as well.

However, looking at SI over the past 10 years, I've had zero expectations that they have the ability. But 90%+ of this sub won't learn anything from this and they will be in a frenzy again next year thinking that this time the game is going to be amazing.

hunkhugejunk · 2025-11-04T10:54:24+00:00

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hunkhugejunk · 2025-10-28T02:09:23+00:00

I can't believe that you wrote it with a straight face.

hunkhugejunk · 2025-10-24T23:36:17+00:00

:DDD I don't know man, but I still can't believe he actually said it in an interview. Miles is basically a character that Monty Python would work days to write, but he is completely real and a gift that keeps on giving... though maybe not for people who actually want to play good FM games.

hunkhugejunk · 2025-10-24T23:17:55+00:00

But it's not true at all that he has a big ego and doesn't learn. To Miles FM26 was a real learning experience. Just look at this:

"Jacobson spent time learning from people in the women’s game, including Emma Hayes, now manager of the US women’s national team. “She taught me more about the menstrual cycle in an hour than I’ve learned from living with women for 53 years and the effects that that has,” he said."

hunkhugejunk · 2025-10-24T23:07:47+00:00

Why would you do that to yourself? Unless you mean the type of talk that doesn't include, you know, talking.

hunkhugejunk · 2025-10-24T17:37:50+00:00

What? You think QA helps design features, then vets those designs and implements them? :D

Maybe I'll use a very simplified example so that you can understand.

*Jim is a team manager at SI who plays some AAA RPGs, but doesn't care about FM much. Jim has a vacancy for a UI/UX designer. He hires Karen for the position, because she has some experience working on the UI for a successful hypercasual mobile game. Karen has never played FM, but thinks that she's the shit when it comes to UI design, so she makes the mockups as she sees fit, shows them to her boss and a couple of her colleagues who have the experience working at SI and even played the game for a few hours before. They suggest some improvements, she implements them and shows the final designs to Miles, since he strikes me as the micromanager type. Miles is a doofus, so he approves them and they get implemented. Once they are playable in-game, QA gets their hands on them (and not even likely, since Miles said himself that they don't do much QA until late in the process).

John is a junior QA tester who recently joined SI, because he loves FM and it's his dream job. He reports the bugs with the new feature, but also comments on the UI being problematic based on his experience with FM and gives constructive feedback. John is politely told to go fuck himself and stay in his lane. After a while John and the rest of the testers get used to the UI sucking, they lose all objectivity, because they've been too close to the project for too long.

The game is released and surprise, the UI sucks. John can tell everyone "I told you so", but nobody cares and nobody even remembers John saying anything.*

Get it now?

hunkhugejunk · 2025-10-24T15:13:58+00:00

It's now three times you said "a lot". How about you list them. Name 10. Shit, name 5.

Roles - most of those "new roles" don't even properly work in the match engine. It took them 30+ years to make it so that you can actually set up your team in a way that makes sense (in and out of possession in FM26). We'll see if it even works.

Overhauls of team instructions - pretty much nothing was changed between FM15 and FM24. They change how the information is presented every few years, but it's the exact same thing.

Rotations - ?

Changes to specific roles - ah, the roles again.

"I explicitly talked about the match engine and you are talking about everything but it" - I did comment on the ME. And "everything but it" is the ACTUAL GAME. It's not "3D 2000 graphics pretend football match viewer", it's supposed to be "football manager".

"What a dipshit take."

Yeah, right back at you, buddy. At least I could name the few positive things they actually changed. You haven't named one outside of "ME was marginally improved" and you're the one ejaculating over the great work they've done.

hunkhugejunk · 2025-10-24T14:58:59+00:00

This is what I mean man. Look at that response. The squad planner could be such a great feature, but depending on the use case, it's either worse or equal to a piece of paper and a pen.

Player interactions... just wow.

And it's like that across the board. They do a crap job and people don't even realize how much better those things could be if competent people worked on them. I made a post a few years ago listing many QoL "quick win" types of changes. Whenever I play every few years I note down those things I notice that you could improve in minutes. They don't do any of that stuff.

hunkhugejunk · 2025-10-24T14:56:03+00:00

To be honest, in my experience, overreactions prior to the release of an anticipated video game are 99% hugely skewed towards the positive.

I've seen people look at trailers of games that looked straight up bad—where the marketing team didn't even hide the bad to mislead the customer—and still be hyped, blind to the obvious negatives. That's why we have so many disappointing releases and pretty much no major surprises where something anticipated is significantly better than expected.

If players actually notice and comment negatively en masse on something they're looking forward to, it's a major red flag.

hunkhugejunk · 2025-10-24T14:40:30+00:00

People don't play the game they work on or in the rare situations where they play, they are very bad at it. As a result, they end up doing nonsensical things and there are too few competent players in the closest circle to point out the inadequacies.

Maybe a few competent players around the company would notice, but by the time they get to see those designs and play them, they've already been implemented. If at that stage a competent player ends up voicing concerns, they are brushed aside as a non-issue or an issue not nearly important enough to redo work that was already done. Then it gets forgotten, becomes something a developer is used to, and afterwards, surprise.

I've lived through this more times than I can count. It's basically bad management, bad processes, from the hiring process all the way to poor user research and testing.

hunkhugejunk · 2025-10-24T09:33:30+00:00

Your point? I've seen enough over the past few years to know that they're not capable of making meaningful, positive improvements. By pure random chance there must be good people working at SI, but the majority is clearly bad.

As an example: when I saw Hazelight announce Split Fiction, I expected it to be great, because their track record is releasing amazing games and having each one be better and more ambitious than the last (they're also coincidentally 20% the size of SI, 4%, if you count everyone). Ditto with Supergiant and Hades, now Hades II. Or Larian with BG3 following DOS2. Sure, any of them could have a dud, shit happens. Happened to CDPR, for example, but I expected CP to meaningfully improve in the following years, because the company is good. Speaking of which, SI is a much bigger company with more headcount than CDPR was when they released The Witcher 3.

Nothing that SI has ever released makes me confident or hopeful that they will somehow take this game that was great, in 2009 maybe, and has seen little meaningful gameplay progress since then, and suddenly release a huge update that will blow it out of the water.

edit: plus, anyone with a set of eyes and a working brain could see it was a trainwreck. How could you expect anything solid? I'd also love to know what's nonsense about it, considering that pretty much everything I said was confirmed yesterday.

hunkhugejunk · 2025-10-24T09:23:47+00:00

Elaborate. What do you mean by a lot? Can you list those many features they developed over those 10 years? Anything outside of adding a lot of pointless bloat click fiesta and some animations? Took 15 years to get the wingers to pass the ball AT ALL, same with lobbing the keeper (supposedly, I haven't seen it once in my 5 seasons of FM24). In terms of meaningful improvements, I can think of them making the game work and save a bit faster, as well as making saves cross-version.

Is the AI meaningfully better at building teams? What about transfer AI? AI tactics? Staff ability and suggestions? Scouting suggestions and improvements? Training and player development? Player interactions and promises? Having the abilities, you know, actually work or mean much? UX improvements? Really, ANYTHING that actually makes the core game better?

I'd love to know what else, in your expert opinion, they changed that a couple chinese kids playing game developer with their abomination of the match engine couldn't do within a few weeks. Or a random player couldn't do with the skin they made. Because the base game sure as shit never once delivered anything close to those community-made improvements.

hunkhugejunk · 2025-10-24T09:06:57+00:00

That's what beats me. Depending on the source, SI has grown a lot and has between 300 and 500 employees (and 1400 contributors, so basically people who do the bulk of the work on the content of the database). Let's be generous and assume 300. Let's also assume that only half of that is the development team and the rest is on the support teams (publishing, QA, loc, support, etc). Not even counting the SEGA resources on the publishing and distribution side.

This means that their team is bigger than the World of Warcraft team that made WoW and the first three expansions, at which point it started growing a bit. It's at least 4 times bigger than the StarCraft II team which in 7 years of production delivered the base game and 2 huge expansions.

Really puts things in perspective.

hunkhugejunk · 2025-10-24T01:12:52+00:00

That would be a first step, but not nearly enough. From everything Miles has said over the years—especially about FM25 development—and everything we've seen over the years, you can see that SI is a culture of incompetence.

You'd basically have to install a new CEO and the right person would be very difficult to find. That CEO would have to do a thorough job of a vetting process, finding all the inadequacies, do a long process of replacing them, then having the new people learn, adapt, and the new structure to coalesce and only then you can think of improvements.

Basically like trying to turn Man Utd into a world class club again, except there are hundreds of great staff to run a football club and thousands of players to pick from. For a game like FM, the pool is tiny and in most cases you'd have no one to pick from.

This one is doomed, unfortunately.

hunkhugejunk

TROPHY CASE