BugsVendor2

Dear Nortalud, Yes, the game is in beta state at best. There is plenty game breaking, unacceptable bugs. This product should not have been released. It is broken. Have a look at this topic in the tech support section subforum I started yesterday and you will find out you are not the only one who assumes that when you buy something it should work. It doesn't make any sense does it? These days you buy software so it can stay on your hard drive for 3 moths before it matures. http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/74745-i-feel-offended-do-you/ I also got attacked there by the same crowd. Let me retort with simplest possible logic to all the people saying all this nonsense: First line: "Well, I won't repeat myself about how bugs and game development work." Who cares ? Do you have to know what car mechanics do in a garage so that you can buy their service ? All you care as a customer is if your car works after they fixed it. I don't care how things are made. What I care about is when I buy something I expect it to work. ELEMENTARY LOGIC. Most people experience one bug or another as it is impossible to play it bug free in its current state. You want to tell me you didn't load the game one time in Gilded Vale ? This isn't a few little glitch we are talking about here. It is full of game breaking bugs that prevent me and many others from enjoying a product I paid for. The whole outrage is about the fact that they knew what state the game was in and decided to go for rightfully hated, largely popular ship now worry about it later policy. So much for PC Master Race. I like the game and I like Obsidian but it simply baffles my mind how such major bugs could have been shipped. I'm not one of the mouth-breathers who thinks that Obsidian should chain themselves to their workstations releasing hotfixes every 6 hours, but that doesn't mean I can't be critical of them either. Sure, you can and should be critical of bugs. They suck. I just try to have perspective, comparing them to other PC CRPGs to understand what actually might have happened and what can be expected. I suppose if some people thought they're comparable to Super Mario Bros, or that bugs only happen if devs don't work hard or if Q&A falls asleep, etc., then they'd be very angry. So we are critical of bugs. What is even more important I am critical of releasing unfinished products. It's a nightmare that this is somehow socially acceptable. It should not be and the developers have to know about it. Comparing it to other games doesn't make any sense. I buy something I expect it is in a working state. There is a few small bugs that are platform related but most of the bugs are not. Stacking bug or Raedic's Hold or doubleclicking are logical problems somewhere in the code and it has nothing to do with the fact that they develop for many platforms. This is so wrong that current expectation of any game on release is basically a beta. I don't want to be a part of beta, especially when I am not even aware of it. I think it is still important to support companies that are making RPG's. There are so few of them. We should be encouraging them to do better next time with promises of continued support. What have they done well and what could they do better? promises not to pay full price for the next game will not encourage them to make a next game. It will encourage them to make sure the damn thing works before they release it. Paying full price for something that doesn't work sends a different message. It says "Whatever **** you produce we will take it and pay for it". Guess what is better for us customers in the long run if we want decent rpgs. It is not the point of the discussion. I have no doubt that this game will be in very much enjoyable state in a few months. The issue here is that yet again a company releases unfinished, rushed, broken game. They could have said that game is in open beta for a few months after the release. The didn't. They advertise it as a completed product. We expect it to work; is it too much ? No. How about if they think that the game is in terrible state they should wait for the release until it is at least free of game breaking stuff. It is disrespectful to the customers to sell broken products and pretend they are not. If you don't experience any issues and you are the lucky guy, good for you. But people let's be reasonable we have every right to complain.

I'm afraid you missed the point of this discussion. They all work and put energy into their product because it will bring them money and they most likely enjoy doing it as well. Good for them. What more should I do? paying the money as a customer is not good enough according to you? Should I send them a letter? Should I beta test it? What is enough for a customer to do? They advertise the game as a finished product and yet it is not. Someone made the decision to ship the game knowing full well it's bugged, unbalanced, having a backlog of things yet to publish and I am protesting about it. There were more options to go for. They could have announced open beta for a period of time. Your op says you're offended because a stacking bug made the game more easy than it was designed to be. And you're offended as a result? If I buy a ticket to a horror movie, am I entitled to be offended if it wasn't scary enough, or if it was too scary? There's no guarantee you'll be entertained, or your personal measure of what is 'difficult enough' will be satisfied. Having personally solo'd Baldur's gate trilogy, etc., I don't know how you can claim this game isn't more difficult than those classics were. Regardless, offended? Pick a new word. Is it really offensive to you? If so, you're too easily offended. Even as is, game is better than most other rpg's, and the writing is outstanding. I think paying money does entitle one to expect a working product, so the bugs as to performance/quest breaking etc., I think are of a more serious nature. But offended because the game was easier than you thought it should be on your first play through? Again, give me a break. Last, if you think people get into the game development industry to make money, re-think that. Your don't get it do you ? It works like this. They know game is unfinished and buggy. They release it anyway and pretend it is finished so that people spend $. I buy it. I play it. I beta test for them unwillingly. I find this offensive. If buy a bike I want to ride it NOW. Not in 2 weeks not in 3 months now. I know there is a lot good things about this game but this topic is not about it. It is about simple honesty in game industry these days.

I absolutely hate this type of argument. It doesn't, and shouldn't, matter how much blood, sweat and tears someone put into a game. What matters is if it works. Otherwise I could start using the same argument for the architect who drew up a building that ultimately ended up collapsing because of structural mistakes. "But he worked hard! We should still appreciate the effort he put into it!". Not really. Also, you act as if "just putting down the money for the product" is somehow something completely inconsequential. As if those of us who may not have that much money and chose to buy this game knowing it would probably be the only one we could buy for an entire month can have that same cavalier approach to spending cash that you seemingly have. That is kind of disrespectful. Not everyone who experiences a bug, even a severe one, will post about it. Some may choose to play on, some may read the forums and see that others have already addressed the issue and wait, some may simply wait for a patch without making a complaint and so on. Obviously you have no way of knowing how many people out of those who bought it that experience problems. With the activity we do see here and with the number of people who report the same issues, it's probably a fair bet that these bugs plague a lot of copies of the game. No, but you do get a general idea of the ratio and proportion. This is statistics, man; it's a known and quantifiable percentage and extrapolation. I played VtM:B, KOTOR 2, Pools of Radiance, etc. I know a bad launch when I see one; I know a game that is truly unfinished, that does. Not. Work. This is not that. This is not anything like KOTOR 2, where the game was released with major chunks of coding literally incomplete. This isn't VtM:B, where they released an alpha product and then went bankrupt (and included 100% fail full-stop bugs). It's not even comparable. Flat out wrong. There will be much less forum posts than people experiencing bugs just like there is always way more views than posts. There is no point in saying what already have been said. Stacking bug is common. Everyone can potentially experience it if he / she loads at wrong location. Most people don't notice it because they are playing a game rather than checking stats every 5 minutes. It is also clearly game breaking nobody can deny it. Your another argument is "just because there were bigger screw ups we should accept this one with a happy face". How about no?

I'm afraid you missed the point of this discussion. They all work and put energy into their product because it will bring them money and they most likely enjoy doing it as well. Good for them. What more should I do? paying the money as a customer is not good enough according to you? Should I send them a letter? Should I beta test it? What is enough for a customer to do? They advertise the game as a finished product and yet it is not. Someone made the decision to ship the game knowing full well it's bugged, unbalanced, having a backlog of things yet to publish and I am protesting about it. There were more options to go for. They could have announced open beta for a period of time.

So they put the patch notes on and I still am just as offended because it only proves my point. Lets have a look shall we ? https://forums.obsidian.net/blog/7/entry-179-patch-notes-103/ Does this look to you like they have been completely taken by surprise ? Like they thought that the game was done and perfect and now they are such poor little things working over hours especially for us customers. Or does it look like they had a huge back log of things to include post release ? Tips to glossary? You had time to write strings in the middle of this rush to fix the game ? new ICONS FOR ITEMS ? How did that happen ? Did you just spend your lunch breaks drawing and you decided to include it since you were shipping a patch anyway? really guys ? you claim you have no life because of patching and UNEXPECTED issues but you have time for new features ? You also had time to analyse feedback and data to improve the balance of the game in detail. Isn't that sweet. Just for us customers. Seriously just have a look for yourself it goes on and on. This is not an at hoc unexpected bug fix that should never have happened. This is a marketing decision to ship first and work on it later. And I feel like the outrage is justified. Before any of you fan boys will say that I am clearly out of my mind hating the patch please note I am criticising policy of releasing INTENTIONALLY unfinished product. It's good they at least patch it for now instead of grabbing the money and run.