Jojobobo

Good to hear you're not giving up on the game entirely, hopefully the stuff with ignoring things in the beta patch can be put to bed soon.

Yeah hilarious, with that snappy remark you cut right to the heart of me. I guess all of you standing in defense of Obsidian just love it when you tell a company there's a problem with one of their products and they literally ignore it when they could fix it. Strangely enough, I don't like it when I have to deal with a faulty product that a company has had years to perfect. If you want to continue with your low expectations of customer service and let them play you all for idiots, then have at it, but personally I'd rather say something about it then roll over and expose my belly like all of you defending them. I don't care how "playable" the game is in its current state, I don't think a company should ever be big enough that its acceptable to ignore problems in its products especially when those problems are known quantities. It's really much less about how "big" the bug is, and much more about how they've actively chosen to ignore it going from their beta patch to the release. It's disappointing they think it's okay to treat customers like this (most of whom can almost be considered borderline stakeholders seeing as we backed the game) to say the least. At least they've now said they'll be patching the game. I guess I don't really mind if they do take a while with the next patch seeing as most of the work on the game now is done, but this whole beta patch stuff was still a mess.

I'm not emotionally involved over the issue, I just don't enjoy a company taking people for a bit of a ride. I've yet to see anyone defend them for ignoring beta bugs when they could have factored them into the patch, and while it's a tolerable issue I'm sick and tired of having to deal with all these "tolerable" annoyances that hinder my enjoyment of the game. You get too many issues that you should just tolerate, and it rapidly becomes intolerable. It didn't have to be like this, and it shouldn't have been. I guess I just expected a higher standard coming from them in particular as a company, they're not a triple AAA so really they could have set a high bar for standards and raised themselves above the pack - particularly as this was crowd funded and they should be somewhat indebted to their fanbase. If they don't put another patch into development, and Loren Tyr has literally told them the code needed for a Confident Aim fix, then I won't be picking anything more of their stuff up unless they change their ways or unless they put out a WoD game - in which case my loyalty and interest in WoD products will win over. There's just been too many instances where I've been enjoying the game, then a bug crops up that spoils that playthrough (or leaves it in stasis until the next patch) and it really sours the entire experience. Putting avoidable bugs into the game is just beyond stupid, and if a fan can figure out what seems to be a fix then what were the devs doing in the beta phase all this time?

I'm not saying the game is broken, but it is a significant bug. To actively ignore player feedback in the process designed for players to give feedback so they can fix issues is not on.

No. Warner Brothers releasing an objectively inferior and broken and bug-infested PC version of Arkham Knight is worthy of boycott. Same for that scam that was Aliens : Colonial Marines. But this Confident Aim thing? It's only worthy of angry discussions between nerds on the internet. So I guess just because they're not as bad as some companies, that makes it all okay? No, they literally ignored bugs reported to them from the fans in a process designed to remove bugs. There's no amount of people clamouring and saying that's okay that will make it okay. It's bad behaviour - just because it isn't as bad as what other people have done doesn't mean it's not still bad. And besides, we paid them to make the game, I don't know how many more times I have to say this but that should make them doubly conscientious when it comes to customer service. And really, it's their cumulative bad behaviour that's the real issue here - not just any one event. With RPGs, I like to restart several times in order to get a feel for the mechanics - with Pillars I restarted 10 or so times because of that and all the bugs. Doing Gilded Vale that many times kills interest, and that's what I'm finding here - my interest is killed because every time I want to invest in this game something new and crap crops up from the devs not caring enough. In this last instance, they have actively ignored the players. That's enough for me to be turned off a company, I guess I'll see if they do patch anything in but if they don't I'm leaving. The only reason I would ever buy one of their games again would be in the unfortunate event Paradox hires them to develop a WoD game, which as things are I really hope they don't do - but owning a crap load of PnP books and loving the last two games I'd still have to see what it was about. Because it's making my max 26 damage hatchet do around 60 on a common crit because of my (and Fighters in general) high Per. You don't see it on the tooltip, but when you look at the numbers you're dishing out its there. As I said, if I'd have really wanted to get those numbers without any effort I have just used the console to add 10-15 Might - but I want to game with some challenge, shockingly Going beyond that, as I keep saying it was both a mechanistically and conceptually important ability - the ability most dedicated to making them into consistent damage dealers which both their concept and mechanics were geared towards. Again while this may not be a big deal to you, when you factor in their past behaviour the chances they've been given it stinks.

Right, because I want a game where they fix one crappy bug only to introduce another. I would never thank someone for doing a crummy job, if I acted this way at work I'd be sacked. I don't care for your "cold hard reality" - there's now a class out there that has a significant ability permanently bugged. Limiting options like that is incredibly crap, and if nothing is done about it I will be boycotting their future releases and uninstalling the game - and spreading the word that others should do the same. EDIT: I had to make the first part of this post fast, now I've got a bit more time... The main unique selling point of the Fighter class from Obsidian was to be a consistent damage dealer, and the main way they achieved this was through the Confident Aim ability - giving graze to hit chance and upping minimum damage. So I guess people should be happy that they (a) didn't listen to the beta bug testers, (b) introduced this bug retrospectively, © have now compromised on a core concept of one of the classes and (d) seem like they're not going to do anything about it. This is on top of (e) taking an inordinate amount of time to fix important bugs in the first place. Even though Confident Aim may not be important to everyone, the fact that they're still making these gaffs and it was pointed out to them in the beta is incredibly **** behaviour and to me is worthy of a boycott. If it hadn't of been mentioned in the beta, I wouldn't have been happy about it being there but I wouldn't have really cared because every company has to stop patching at some point - but they literally ignored the bug report and left it in the patch anyway, hence the topic title. You stack this up with what I've mentioned previously, that they should be even more accountable because this game is crowd-funded and we as fans dug them out of the gutter, then this behaviour becomes quite frankly disgraceful. Also you say "take a different ability", if you've taken Disciplined Barrage there's literally not another decent ability - other than Confident Aim - for the level 3 slot. Defender is weak and situational and doesn't stack with other modals often, Knock Down provides the same buff to your accuracy as Barrage in the form of a debuff but has to roll against defenses, Guardian Stance is dramatically out-shined by what other classes have to offer. Confident Aim was the main ability, perhaps of the whole Fighter ability selection, that fitted with that concept of consistent damage dealing over the burst damage dealing of other classes - and now it's more or less gone as in taking the ability I may have just cracked open the console and given myself 10 more Might. In terms of that I should be "thanking" them for fixing the stacking bug - first of all I'd never thank a company for rectifying a mistake that shouldn't have been present in the first place. Secondly, imagine a situation where you're in a restaurant and you've just ordered a nice steaming bowl of mulligatawny soup. However you notice there's no coriander on top as advertised in the menu, and seeing as it's a fragrant soup you quite want that coriander. So you call the waiter over, and he makes his apologies, takes the soup away and - though he spends an inordinate amount of time doing so - he brings it back with the coriander on top. However you now notice there's a dead fly floating in the soup, so you call the waiter over and mention it - to which he replies, "Sorry, kitchens now closed, forever!" So, should I now thank him for the addition of that coriander that should have been there in the first place, even though there's a bobbing dead fly in the soup - and they took ages fetching the coriander? No, I don't think so, in fact I'm not so inclined to return to that restaurant again - especially seeing as I made a charitable donation for that restaurant to stay open in the first place. Basically, what I'm trying to say is, our difficulties with the developers over patching should now be called SoupGate. Well... If you consider crashing better than confident aim bug, then sure. Let's face it, there's no such thing as a bug-free cRPG which is also large enough. That bug is easily avoidable. And it seems to be the only consistently prevailing one in that game. Compare the thread there to the one here. Clearly this game has more bugs, unless everyone posting in the tech forums is deluded and is not really experiencing the bugs they report. This one: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/88124-game-breaking-bug-cannot-change-party-303/ https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/88127-bugbugs-change-party-and-brighthollow/ Is particularly bad, especially since this is the "last patch" wheras Larian seem to be intent upon continued updates, even if they are slow. If you go to bugs section and look for most recent report for confident aim, you'll see that sking replied there that this will be looked upon in next patch. So this is not the last patch. Well it would be nice for him or any other dev to confirm as much. My suspicion is SKing jumped the gun and said there could be another patch without confirming it with the higher ups first - which were convinced this should be the last patch.

Looks like there's additional game-breaking bugs introduced in 3.03 here. While it could be the player doing something dumb, seeing as he says he's already put 100+ hours in I highly doubt that. But let's ignore the game-breaking bugs, and watch Eder dancing on PoE's grave.

I tweeted back: https://twitter.com/jessisjessw/status/752965822230958081 I'll try and get on that tomorrow, I don't think my ability to post rational non-rage filled questions is working well right now.

In reference to the Confidence Aim bug post this patch: Bull**** much? I guess we should now all consider Fighters a broken class, or just never take one of their standard abilities? That's what everyone wants in a game right, a broken class?? It's also nice when a dev blatantly lies to you, and then tells you he "has your back". Can a dev say unequivocally if this is the last patch on this forum? You know, so I can respec my fighter and avoid Confident Aim before the bug sets in - obviously the ideal solution I was looking for. That just damn sucks for a solo Fighter anyway, because there's nothing else useful to a solo Fighter (or any Fighter) in the 1-3 abilities bracket: having taken Disciplined Barrage which is awesome, for level 3 Knock Down is crap in comparison - basically the same buff to your accuracy as Barrage as a debuff but rolling on their defenses and having a shorter duration. Again Defender in level 3 is practically useless and doesn't work with Savage Attack which is great with the Fighter's high accuracy, and Guardian is made for party play. Literally the best slot there even not solo is Confident Aim by a country mile, but I guess none of us should ever take Confident Aim ever again??

"Credit" to them, when there were things like Heart of Fury which people beta bug reported as per still being per rest (or rather, you can use it once and never again) they factored that into the patch - you know, a massive bug in something they were hoping to deliver on which they'd put out there fundamentally flawed. In other words, they delivered on the bare minimum they were hoping to (which they wouldn't have needed to make additional fixes for from beta to alpha if the coding had been solid enough to begin with) but then didn't address seemingly any other bugs they'd introduced in that process for this patch. They deserve a standing ovation.

Yeah, practically a whole month sooner while all of us were suffering with the stacking bug. This is bull****.

Ha, remember when I said this and the devs didn't care. Wasn't that funny?

Well this was in the beta bug reporting, so why wasn't this fixed in the first place? In fact, I mentioned it separately in the announcements of the beta update to give it extra coverage, and you devs still ignored it. I guess I'll have to wait another three months to continue with a character I sank around 45 hours solo and on PotD. Cheers, all this was greatly appreciated. But thanks for "having our backs".

I've posted a thread about the Confident Aim bug in general discussion, I'm really not happy about it. Thanks Obsidian for wasting around 45 hours of my time playing a solo PotD Fighter by not acknowledging bug reports made in your beta patch, really it's first rate customer service. Isn't that the entire point of beta patching? Why jerk us around for a whole month when you've just ignored important bugs in the beta in the first place?

See title, I've sunk around 45 hours into my current solo PotD Fighter - just for the devs not to pay any attention to the Confident Aim bug in the beta and now I'm having to wait until the next patch for this Fighter to be unbugged, if there even is a next patch. I mean you take almost an entire month to release the actual patch from the beta, a literal age releasing the beta from the previous patch (while ignoring people's demands for a hotfix to the stacking bug) - and now when you do release the patch you've introduced a brand new bug into it, which you needn't have done if you'd paid attention to the beta bug reporting! Isn't that the entire point of the beta patch, to rectify the new bugs you introduce in it, and then to patch them out before the alpha release?! The irony is, I picked a Fighter as I felt confident a Fighter would not be bugged in future patches nor their mechanics further tweaked - what a complete idiot you've made of me Obsidian, thanks for that. My question is, what the hell are the devs going to do about this? Or are they happy to continue to make a mockery out of their player base? I've literally never completed this game due to the original stacking bugs in v1.0x, now we're two versions later and I'm still getting this nonsense. Where are your standards? For shame. PS Yes I realise I could just respec, but I don't damn want to. It was never part of the original game, and I want the game to be as difficult as possible within the confines of PotD (as arguably you can just respec non-stop and tailor your character to each specific encounter, but where's the fun). So I'm not going to, and I really don't think I'm the only one who doesn't want to respec every minute of the damn day. The respec mechanic is also just a load of bull, it's super cheap monetarily to respec you're entire character - and as money isn't hard to come by in undermines the process of player choice of traits through levelling. Even in Skyrim it was slightly better, as dragon souls were still worth slightly more a lot of the time than the ocean of money you also swim in that game too.

So I have a question, apparently on GoG for macs they don't do the update patches (e.g. 3.02 -> 3.03) requiring fresh downloads for both the main game and the expansions (don't worry Windows and Linux players, for some reason they do the update patches for you - just not for macs ). From this, do I need to uninstall and reinstall the game or will the installers overwrite the relevant files in the first place?

It is indeed up apparently on GoG.

When they first visit and you solve their dilemma you can't make them leave - however also they don't impact your security or prestige during this period. On subsequent visits you can pay off the bad visitors as per normal.

Well I'm glad someone feels sorry for us.

I'd upgrade your weapons and armor yourself early game if you want them enchanted, other than that the smith in Gilded Vale sells some nifty unique items (do his quest for a discount) and later in act 1 you can go to another village which has a decent stock of interesting items (though some people head straight to Defiance Bay and trigger act 2 first). Given that you're capped at level 16 with the expansions, character development tends to be a slow process which takes time. This trend is also reflected in your item choices, so as Tigranes said don't expect cool items to be dropping all the time.

Early game the 3.02 stacking bug doesn't figure into gameplay too much, so I think you might be fine (just watch out for Animat defence stacking in Ondra's Gift - take them out early - and don't save often in the presence of Sly Cyrdel. Also use a bit of caution around Raedric's Keep). Hopefully, by the time you're getting to the later game stages where the stacking bug becomes a problem 3.03 will land so you won't have to suffer for it. Two days ago one of the devs said it would go live soon, so on the bright side I think you only need to expect a further 3-4 month wait

I think, after 3.03, I'm really looking forward to playing a Barb. With the above average Intelligence and the (soon to be) zero recovery Frightening/Terrifying Shouts/Yells, in conjunction with Speaker to the Reckless and their high Int because of Carnage - you're almost looking at a base 25 deflection class. I like solo, so in playing a Barb I'm currently considering not even taking Frenzy because of the Deflection debuff (please don't hang me), but I think their natural relative +deflection benefits will do the job if I want to go tanky. Then you factor in their monstrous endurance and health, and some natural healing capabilities - I think on the whole they're an extremely competent class in the new patch. I think they'll be my priority when it hits, I was originally hoping to work a retaliate Rogue (which was working 3.02) buuutt with their new defensive capabilities which my original build did not have space for yet would definitely want and with Boeroer's Monkserlasher build which is a veritable Retaliation prince, I want to put a lot of thought into it to it before rounding it off. But the Barb on the other hand, after my current fighter, I'm expecting to be exceptionally easy - and it's not like my current Fighter feels like a hard mode solo PotD.

I think the ellipsis is recovery where you're waiting to take an action, like if you switch weapons you'll notice it. No clue about the other two, never really noticed them.

Are you dead set on sword and board? I'm finding the fighter build I posted here to be working well, it's two weapons (hence decent DPS) but at least one is a hatchet so you get that decent defensive deflection buff too (the combo of Hearth Harvest and Vile Loner's Lance is pretty decent for a huge portion of the game, and once 3.03 hits you could use Captain Vicillo's Anger with Vile Loner's Lance for -10 accuracy -11 defenses against your melee target - I think they'll stack but I haven't tested it yet. Or you can use the Reghar Konnek for the speed enchant). I'm currently level 12 solo in WM part I (I haven't even finished Act 2 yet) and it's working out pretty nicely. No real need for potions or anything, I'm finding even without Durgan enchants or Gauntlets of Swift Action I'm attacking pretty fast already. A big draw to the build is that it's easy enough to slap on Boots of Speed and kite tougher fights too with Persistence, giving the build a lot of versatility. The accuracy is also huge, so any spell scrolls you use hit pretty damn hard. Other than that, if you are set on sword and board, your current weapon picks seem like a good idea (Bittercut and a shield). I wouldn't get too het up about completely minimising recovery, you should be attacking fairly fast anyway to not have to worry about potions, frenzy and the like.

Personally, I've found the ogres on the path to the floor 4 stairwell easy enough to kite using Aru-Brekr. Once you reach floor 4, the kiting becomes so much easier with Persistence on the matron when you return. Other than that, I fully endorse Boeroer's route through the game. Going PotD solo currently, I'm coincidentally doing the same path already.