Marceror

To some extent I think it is what it is. A lot of people on these forums are really put off by the fact that I feel that the disappearing loot bug should have been grounds to delay the beta, and that I'm being vocal about that. But it's simply how I feel, even if I can appreciate that others disagree. My personal life and career requires me to be very vocal about my opinions, and while that works well in that context, sometimes it can rub people the wrong way. Sometimes it even rubs my wife the wrong way. At the moment it's rubbing a lot of strangers on an internet forum the wrong way. What's a guy to do...? But as Osvir correctly discerned, I have absolutely the best of intentions. I want a great PoE, and I don't want to see this game's reputation become tarnished by what I deem as hasty decisions. I think once the disappearing equipment bug is fixed, people will find me much more agreeable, LOL! I mean, I haven't had this sort of clash with people on the inXile boards, even though we have some heated debates over there. But personally I feel that inXile delivered a more solid game from the start, so it was much easier to jump in and start testing the game. At any rate, I appreciate your candid comments.

I haven't played a wizard as my main character. I'm just talking about the BB Wizard. He keeps losing his grimoire. I guess I could create a second wizard and give the grimoire to BB Wizard. Seems like a waste of money to have to do that though. Maybe I will play around with some additional options tomorrow night, if I don't get home too late.

That's your problem right there. This isn't gaming. It's participating in game development as an early playtester. If you don't enjoy that, then stop doing it and take your drama/whining elsewhere. And yes, I will take your suggestion of not participating in this thread, or indeed interacting with you in general, unless and until you lose that entitled it's-all-about-me-and-my-precious-free-time attitude. I usually do enjoy it. Fix the disappearing items and I'll be in a much better position to. I'd like to at least have my wizard able to participate. Can't really play test a wizard when they can't cast spells, now can you? There's that word "entitled" again. Oh, how people love it around here. At any rate, I'm not sharing my opinions just because of "my" precious time (and yes, my time is extremely precious to me, as my most limited resource), it's on behalf anyone who feels similarly to me. If it was just about "my" precious time, I assure you that I would not have spent so much of it on these forums to raise issues/concerns. Anyhow, take care then.

What I wrote on the codex. Because many people are praising Divinity: OS today, yet don't realize the process it went through before getting to the stage it is in today. Just a reminder. I didn't play this one during early access. I own it, but have only been able to clock in around 4 hours so far. Not enough free time I guess, and generally I have been enjoying WL2 more. I'm seriously considering manufacturing a serious injury so I can get some extended time off work! Too many great RPGs in 2014!

Once again, beta test. Go to the Bug Forum to discuss bugs. Ah, but this is not a discussion of bugs in this case. It's the discussion of the process of making decisions. In this case, a decision that was not in the best interests of Obsidian, it's backers/fans or the game. Does OE really want the world to see the let's plays going up on Youtube, only to end on the 2nd or 3rd video with a declaration that "sorry, the game's just unplayable". Because that's just one of the unfortunate outcomes of their decision. Unfortunate. Well. You wanted to know how video games were made. Presumably. Because you paid for the beta and watched the updates. So don't get pissed off when how games are made does not line up with your vision of how they are made. So, um, are you intentionally missing my points? Because that seems to be becoming a bit of habit.

I'm sorry, but you just failed reading comprehension 101.

Technically it was a car simile, not a metaphor, but whatever. But yeah, I guess this really comes down to perspective. Your analogy is not "better" in my opinion, but it's very telling about where you're coming from. Very educational for me, actually. This is not at all how I see it. But my opinion is not inferior to yours just as yours is not inferior to mine. In WL2 and other betas/early access games that I've played, I've always rolled with the punches. Perhaps I've just gotten supremely unlucky in my experience with the PoE beta, because in 3 games I've NEVER been able to cast a single wizard spell. The grimoire always goes poof before the first battle. And well, third time's the charm as they say. After the third time of seeing my wizard and cleric lose their gear, I concluded that the beta was released prematurely. Maybe it worked out differently for you, or the idea of having a useless wizard didn't really bother you. It did me, and it would be far better in my opinion to have that issue resolved before I go through the game. Maybe my time is a lot more limited than yours, and so if I'm going to spend it gaming, I need just need the stability cranked up a few notches higher than you do. I know it's not that you're more excited about the game than I am, because, well, I don't think that's possible. I've been waiting for this game for a LONG time, and if it is properly completed and polished, I believe it will become my new all time fav., at long last supplanting the BG series. I'm sure there's all kinds of psychological stuff playing into this, but at the end of the day, I see this the way I see it, and you see it the way you see it. I'm not offended or put out that we see if differently, and neither should you be. Anyhow, I'm not going to ask you to give it a rest. And similarly, I have no intentions of doing so either. If this thread troubles you, than I encourage you to do yourself a favor and stop reading it. Oh, and for what it's worth, I do appreciate that your slogging through this broken beta and providing bug reports. We will all benefit from that. Perhaps I'll be able to join you again after the next patch!

Semantics. It's the beta of a game. So the title most definitely is NOT a LIE!

It must be awesome to have so much free time that even when someone knowingly wastes it you don't care. Once again, I get that there will be bugs in a beta, but a known game breaker that gets released anyway? It's like if I loan a friend my car, and it breaks down after he gets a few miles away. He calls me to tell that my car broke down and I reply, oh yeah I knew that was going to happen. I need to take it in for repairs. What? Then why in the world did you loan it to me??

Once again, beta test. Go to the Bug Forum to discuss bugs. Ah, but this is not a discussion of bugs in this case. It's the discussion of the process of making decisions. In this case, a decision that was not in the best interests of Obsidian, it's backers/fans or the game. Does OE really want the world to see the let's plays going up on Youtube, only to end on the 2nd or 3rd video with a declaration that "sorry, the game's just unplayable". Because that's just one of the unfortunate outcomes of their decision. Unfortunate.

It would be one thing if OE didn't know that they were releasing the beta in a near unplayable state and beta testers happened to discover a nasty bug. But that's not what happened. OE knew well about this bug, and opted not to fix it prior to release, "allowing" their fans to "discover" it thousands and thousands of times. Think about the amount of their fans' times they were okay with wasting. Maybe unforgivable is a bit harsh, but this definitely rubs me the wrong way. If you know you have a game breaking bug, fix it, then release to your fans. Not the other way around.

Not trying to add fuel to the fire here, but I was challenged by a fellow forumite to be more specific in my concerns, and so I want to take the time to do that. So I am sharing a few of my key concerns, and this is by no means an exhaustive list. Incidentally, I have played the Wasteland 2 beta at length, and to me the experience of this beta starting out is far below where WL2 was – and the Wasteland 2 beta has lasted for 9 months vs. the 4 planned for PoE. So I’m concerned that we won’t be able to achieve the level of quality we want and expect for PoE in the next 4 months, which I understand to be a fairly rigid timeframe due to budget constraints. I sincerely hope that OE will take a similar tact to inXile, and find creative ways to increase development time if it is needed. Steam Early Access brought in a lot of extra money for WL2, and in fact inXile is spending around 2x their Kickstarter budget to develop WL2 ($6M USD vs. $3M). Personally, I feel that Obsidian released the backer beta prematurely. There are bugs that are unforgiveable in my estimation, so this suggests to me that they may be a little too focused on deadlines over quality. I don’t know really what’s going on behind the scenes, but I write this post to implore OE NOT to let this game fail. There’s TOO MUCH riding on it, we've been waiting too long (some 15 years by my tell), and the game just has way too much potential to be allowed to be anything but amazing! So with that out of the way, here are my top 5 issues: Disappearing Items – For me, this bug is a showstopper, and I’m truly befuddled as to why OE would release the backer beta in full knowledge that bug exists (as seen in one of the Gamecom streams, and admitted by OE on the forums a couple of hours after the beta was released). Maybe I’m just unlucky, but my equipment has disappeared EVERY TIME I’ve tried to play the demo. I have never cast a wizard spell, because my wizard never has his grimoire by the time I get to the first combat. Since equipment is key in a game like this, having characters essentially rendered useless is not acceptable in my opinion, not even in a beta. There is a certain level of readiness that should be delivered even in a beta, and for me, this bug is far below that level. I’m not playing the beta further until this is resolved, because I simply don’t feel that I can properly experience the beta and provide feedback until a certain stability level is reached. Combat – Based on the very short amount of combat I’ve been able to experience, my feeling is that this game would work far, far better with turn based combat. In its current iteration combat feels rather chaotic. This is in part due to the fact that classes tend to have a lot of selectable skills/abilities. If the game was turn based, the process of selecting and using different tactics and abilities would be more uniform and elegant. With RtwP (which I have loved in the IE games by the way), I just feel like the combat is getting away from me. I’m sure some of this is my learning curve, but my feeling is that the combat in the game is in need of A LOT of refinement. Combat Difficulty – I generally love a challenging game, and have played such IE mods in the past as Improved Anvil, Tactics, etc. But I feel that the current difficulty curve is too high for the sort of game this is. I have done fine on easy, but normal is a bit over the top in my opinion. That said, I suspect that part of the reason for this is our crappy starting equipment. We start at level 5, and my suspicion is that had we played the full release game from the beginning, at the point we reach the beta content we would likely have much better gear. Gear is king in games like this, and with our fairly paltry starting gear, we are at a disadvantage. So it may well be that part of the problem is how the beta drops fresh characters into mid-game content. Pathfinding: Pathfinding can be a real problem in combat, in particular. Characters often get bunched up, and it can totally create unnatural advantages or disadvantages if either the player or the AI can’t reach their enemies. So this results in a lot of extra micro to move each character individually in order to work around. The Game Content – I admit that I haven’t gotten to see much of the beta content, because the disappearing gear bug has pretty much stopped me in my tracks. But what I have seen feels hollow in a lot of ways. If I go into a building and talk to someone, unless they’re associated with a quest, they really don’t have much to say. So in some regards the personality of the game is still lacking, and personality is a critical part of a game like this. Again, I realize it’s still early beta, but I worry that 4 months isn’t enough time to address such issues not only in the beta, but in the other 145 odd maps that we still haven’t seen, on top of dealing with the mechanical issues that are present in the beta, and the assuredly large number of mechanical issues with systems we haven’t seen yet (e.g. the Stronghold, the Endless Levels of Od Nua, etc.). It could be that I'm off base, and Obsidian will have this all nailed by December, but my instincts tell me that we are going to need more time, and that a December release will prove slightly disastrous. I'd love to be wrong though.

I hope Josh, Adam, Feargus and team can also do voices!

So, thus far, since getting the beta I've been playing as an overworked IT manager. This is because bugs like disappearing gear have resulted in me stepping back from the beta, and I'm now playing my much less exciting backup class.

Achievements are already in. Achievements doesn't count as anti-social annoyances, ehrm, I mean "social features", unless there is an option to automatically broadcast the achievement on to social media. So you mean like, if you kill the Ogre in the backer beta, all of your connections on Facebook and Twitter get to know about it? That would be truly e-VIL.

Thanks for clarifying, for half a second I had some hope that I could work around this by playing in ironman mode. But no such luck. Will continue waiting for this issue to be rectified before trying the backer beta demo.

You always get at least one guy who can't keep his disappointment out of a positive only thread. I'll tell you. At least, this sounds like a fully sarcastic post. Sorry if I got that wrong.

Good thing I always play beta with Trial of Iron on I guess <_< And are you experiencing the issue?

I think that's what you call backhanded praise!

Yep, chanters. I would gladly try one out if my party's damn equipment would stop disappearing! Grrr! As a side note, your party's gear is pretty much essential in a game like this. You can go from zero to hero, and back, based on your gear, or lack thereof. I'm betting that in the final game the BB area will be much easier than it is currently, not because Obsidian will need to balance it back, but because you'll arrive at this part of the game with far better gear (preferably of the non-disappearing variety).

A Human Dual Class Berserker 13/Mage X, dual wielding Celestial Fury and Crom Faeyr, grandmaster in katanas and warhammers, mastery in TWF. Can I get an amen?

Wizards are one of the strongest classes in the game right now. Have you tried opening the spell bar by clicking the character portrait of the wizard and selecting a spell from one of the level categories? I can't cast any spells with my wizard in the beta. When I click his portrait I see some buttons like "I" "II" "III" referring I suppose to different spell levels, but when I select any of these, the selection menu becomes empty, there's nothing to see. Most likely your spell book disappeared. You can't cast wizard spells without it. I've started the beta 3 times and have yet to be able to cast a wizard spell.

Wondering why the known issues list doesn't mention this one.

Sucks. Sorry to hear that man. I hope you get some support soon.

Well known bug. http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/66832-disappearing-gear/