Witcher 2 Again

[Gorth]

Using patch notes as a metric for bugginess is particularly bad too, as by that metric the two least buggy Obsidian games are... Alpha Protocol and Kotor 2.

I still don't understand why people think AP was buggy. Some questionable design decisions, sure, but buggy (yes, I know some people had mouse problems)?

 

Kotor2 on the other hand couldn't be saved by anything short of a remake

 

Personally rather unexcited about patches for TW2, as I've yet to bother picking up the game again and finish the prologue I started. It's almost as boring as the Dragon Age 2 demo

[Maria Caliban]

I liked the Mako, though the planets were about as interesting as Oblivion's randomly generated dungeons.

 

The boss fights in DXHR and the Witcher 2 both suffer because they feel so different than the normal gameplay. I'd prefer it if they were optional content.

 

I like patches, especially large ones. 80% of the time, I'm finished with the game by the time a patch hits however.

 

The Witcher 2's combat wasn't fun for me. I don't get how people who hate button mashing disliked DA2 but thought TW2 was deep combat.

 

If TW2 comes to XBox, that's cool. More money for the developer, and I liked the game enough that I'd like them to put out another one.

 

I still don't understand why people think AP was buggy. Some questionable design decisions, sure, but buggy (yes, I know some people had mouse problems)?

 

A few times while going down ladders, I fell through the floor and ended in this dark space under the world. I also had a few CTD and sometimes when I loaded a saved game, it broke stealth.

 

That said, it was playable most of the time.

Edited September 29, 2011 by Maria Caliban

[Orogun01]

I still don't understand why people think AP was buggy. Some questionable design decisions, sure, but buggy (yes, I know some people had mouse problems)?

 

Kotor2 on the other hand couldn't be saved by anything short of a remake

 

Personally rather unexcited about patches for TW2, as I've yet to bother picking up the game again and finish the prologue I started. It's almost as boring as the Dragon Age 2 demo

Because they have a broad definition of bugs, maybe.

 

Aside from the texture loading times, and clunky controls I didn't encounter that many bugs.

[Zoraptor]

I don't think AP has many outright bugs either, and I'd agree that it really depends on what your threshold is between clunkiness/ glitchiness and bugs. I like AP a lot but I'd certainly have sympathy with anyone describing aspects of it (eg the floaty PC hacking controls) as at least clunky. The general perception however is that it's a buggy mess.

 

In any case the illustration was of the silliness of bug fixing as a metric. I can't imagine anyone would argue that K2 or AP could not have been improved significantly by the kind of treatment TW2 has and is receiving, were it available to them.

[Hell Kitty]

I just find it funny that you'd complain about twisting points when you basically tried to point out that consistently supporting a game post-release is evil.

 

Eh, I thought the point was more that when Dev A releases a patch it's proof of how terrible they are for releasing a buggy game, but when Dev B does it it's proof of how awesome they are for supporting a game.

 

It's like when devs release DLC so tiny it's just an unlock code for content that's already on the disk, which of course means players are entitled to it. Keep that content off the disc and instead make users download it, costing them bandwidth, and it's all good. Why? Because gamers are idiots.

[Malcador]

Never actually seen anyone use the patch notes alone though and do that. Though, maybe I need to read more forums.

[Nepenthe]

Your 'argument' is a case study in self defined victory, because whatever they do you can claim they're wrong to. Charge for any xbox improvements? Bad! Don't make them available? Bad! Make them available for free? Badbadbad! Pay attention to feedback? Bad! Don't pay attention to feedback? Bad!

I think I've managed to find the point that I'm obviously not getting across at all (based on your post here and WUE's blatant strawman above). I'm NOT ****ING SAYING THEY ARE BAD! It's not a binary choice between God's Angels and, well, "bad". All I'm saying is that I don't think this "support" to be so wonderful, a golden standard for gaming companies to achieve given the circumstances. Now I understand that stances other than this game/studio/publisher sucks/is the best ever are uncommon on the Internet, they do still exist!

 

As an aside, huggles to Hell Kitty for getting the rest of it, even if I disagree with the binary example in this case, the theory is more or less what I'm (probably always) going on about

[WorstUsernameEver]

All I'm saying is that I don't think this "support" to be so wonderful, a golden standard for gaming companies to achieve given the circumstances. Now I understand that stances other than this game/studio/publisher sucks/is the best ever are uncommon on the Internet, they do still exist!

 

Sorry but that's backpedaling at its worst and a far cry from saying that they sold the game in beta to PC players. But uh, I'm a strawman, so I guess that noticing you're not making any sense is pointless, and I guess I'll stop discussing with you from now on since you waited for someone to come and rescue your poorly conceived arguments.

[Nepenthe]

All I'm saying is that I don't think this "support" to be so wonderful, a golden standard for gaming companies to achieve given the circumstances. Now I understand that stances other than this game/studio/publisher sucks/is the best ever are uncommon on the Internet, they do still exist!

 

Sorry but that's backpedaling at its worst and a far cry from saying that they sold the game in beta to PC players. But uh, I'm a strawman, so I guess that noticing you're not making any sense is pointless, and I guess I'll stop discussing with you from now on since you waited for someone to come and rescue your poorly conceived arguments.

I'm rereading my original post, and it's in perfect alignment with what I'm talking about, the perceptions of the fans and how CDProjekt manages them very well. The over-fixation on an expression I used ("betatesting") is what got this thing off-target along the way. English is my third language and I don't work in the programming industry - occasional lapses of vocabulary should be accepted.

 

p.s. I might not make sense, but your approach is like 101 of poor argumentation techniques. False dichotomies, strawmanning and now ad hominem attacks. I am disappoint!

 

Edit: for clarification, since this is a very common internet fallacy. "Strawmanning" is turning another person's argument into a caricature, so you can dismiss it easily. People aren't strawmen.

Edited September 30, 2011 by Nepenthe

[Malcador]

You could also look up what a beta and beta-testing entails

 

Anyway, it's nothing to get joyfully excited about, but nothing wrong with people being pleased with support of a game or for the company to keep on fixing issues or adjusting things due to feedback. Blizzard's good for that, for example. And it is a good standard to have, providing fixes and what not (it's what I do all day, woo!)

 

Crafty Poles indeed. First the GOG prank, and now this

 

Ah, much nicer when I have coffee.

Edited September 30, 2011 by Malcador

[Nepenthe]

You could also look up what a beta and beta-testing entails

Here's what wikipedia says:

 

Beta testing comes after alpha testing and can be considered a form of external user acceptance testing. Versions of the software, known as beta versions, are released to a limited audience outside of the programming team. The software is released to groups of people so that further testing can ensure the product has few faults or bugs. Sometimes, beta versions are made available to the open public to increase the feedback field to a maximal number of future users.

 

Hmm, external user acceptance testing...

[Malcador]

Yes, but then any game we play we can take as beta testing. In terms of their cycle, it's not a beta (largely didn't play like one in my experience either), unless CDPR is undertaking some really byzantine scheme involving one project actually being a stage of another and is also charging their UAT users, heh. Still maintain no one's flakking them for this, is because there's nothing there.

 

Then again, if it's ideas/concepts they're "beta"'ing, well I guess, that could work. But every developer does that with a release, no ?

 

Has anyone played with the new patch by the way ? Granted I think everyone here who played it was done with it after beating it, so probably a 'no', hehe.

Edited September 30, 2011 by Malcador

[Zoraptor]

Your 'argument' is a case study in self defined victory, because whatever they do you can claim they're wrong to. Charge for any xbox improvements? Bad! Don't make them available? Bad! Make them available for free? Badbadbad! Pay attention to feedback? Bad! Don't pay attention to feedback? Bad!

I think I've managed to find the point that I'm obviously not getting across at all (based on your post here and WUE's blatant strawman above). I'm NOT ****ING SAYING THEY ARE BAD! It's not a binary choice between God's Angels and, well, "bad". All I'm saying is that I don't think this "support" to be so wonderful, a golden standard for gaming companies to achieve given the circumstances. Now I understand that stances other than this game/studio/publisher sucks/is the best ever are uncommon on the Internet, they do still exist!

OK, I'm happy to accept that's what you meant (and I always think I come across more aggressively than I intend anyway). To elucidate a bit better though, the problem is not so much whether you are antagonistic or neutral to their approach, it's more a question of what they realistically can do differently and whether it could even theoretically be done better. Seems to me that they have the three basic options I listed: only bug fix the PC version with zero additional content, charge for any improvements from xbox development or combine the two without the charge- assuming they wouldn't just abandon the PC version wholesale, of course. Given those options I think that it is clear that the best one for their customers is the one they have picked. And you really cannot ask for much more short of them... converting themselves to neutrinos and going back to May? So it's not just a question of whether any option is good in an absolute sense, just a question of which is best in the circumstances

 

The PR thing is completely true, of course, they are in general very good with it and know how to massage opinion rather well. They're going to have all PC dlc free, awesome, but it just means that anything significant will be classed as an expansion pack (look PC gamers! we do proper old school expansions rather than nickel and dime you, aren't we awesome!) and charged for, of course. I expect that sort of thing from everyone though, it's just that CDPR generally has enough good will and has not mucked people around enough for most people to not object to it.

[Nepenthe]

Your 'argument' is a case study in self defined victory, because whatever they do you can claim they're wrong to. Charge for any xbox improvements? Bad! Don't make them available? Bad! Make them available for free? Badbadbad! Pay attention to feedback? Bad! Don't pay attention to feedback? Bad!

I think I've managed to find the point that I'm obviously not getting across at all (based on your post here and WUE's blatant strawman above). I'm NOT ****ING SAYING THEY ARE BAD! It's not a binary choice between God's Angels and, well, "bad". All I'm saying is that I don't think this "support" to be so wonderful, a golden standard for gaming companies to achieve given the circumstances. Now I understand that stances other than this game/studio/publisher sucks/is the best ever are uncommon on the Internet, they do still exist!

OK, I'm happy to accept that's what you meant (and I always think I come across more aggressively than I intend anyway). To elucidate a bit better though, the problem is not so much whether you are antagonistic or neutral to their approach, it's more a question of what they realistically can do differently and whether it could even theoretically be done better. Seems to me that they have the three basic options I listed: only bug fix the PC version with zero additional content, charge for any improvements from xbox development or combine the two without the charge- assuming they wouldn't just abandon the PC version wholesale, of course. Given those options I think that it is clear that the best one for their customers is the one they have picked. And you really cannot ask for much more short of them... converting themselves to neutrinos and going back to May? So it's not just a question of whether any option is good in an absolute sense, just a question of which is best in the circumstances

 

The PR thing is completely true, of course, they are in general very good with it and know how to massage opinion rather well. They're going to have all PC dlc free, awesome, but it just means that anything significant will be classed as an expansion pack (look PC gamers! we do proper old school expansions rather than nickel and dime you, aren't we awesome!) and charged for, of course. I expect that sort of thing from everyone though, it's just that CDPR generally has enough good will and has not mucked people around enough for most people to not object to it.

Good points.

[Chippy]

Hi

 

Thought I'd add a brief oppinion of the witcher 2:

 

I know I sound like a narcissistic gamer here - but I can't stand dying unfairly. I died in the tutorial because I was trying to dodge the golem and see what damage my pre-laid traps did and learned that once knocked over, 200% damage from multiple enemies will kill you quick. It recommended I play on hard (I didn't).

 

I died somewhere else because I clicked on a ladder instead of a character next to it and the game instantly killed me because of the events that were occuring at the time (it did make sense, but targetting items is as difficult as auto target in combat).

 

And I died because I was sneaking somewhere and was unable to walk past a rope (turned out it was the right way) and tried to go the other way and suffered another instant scripted death.

 

The game has got quite a few problems, but it does more or less draw you into the story - and the above frustations do a pretty good job of drawing me out of it. It seems the gamer is expected to be pinpoint perfect, but the game itself is allowed to be innacurate.

 

I'm just gonna rush to the end for the sake of the story and get back to New Vegas.

[Gorth]

but it does more or less draw you into the story

Not always

 

Never made it past the prologue. It was all action and nothing interesting going on. Dead Island is more fun, because you expect it to be all action and little else. With Witcher 2 I expected something different.

[Chippy]

but it does more or less draw you into the story

Not always

 

Never made it past the prologue. It was all action and nothing interesting going on. Dead Island is more fun, because you expect it to be all action and little else. With Witcher 2 I expected something different.

 

 

...Very true... that summarizes it right there really. I was also hoping for a witcher 1 type game - slight denial I suppose. Engaging the gamer was a moment in new vegas where I chose not to steal La Longue Carabine from corporal sterling, and later read that he could have died in his trip across the wastelands if I had.

 

Don't think I will get any of those moments here, and what it has instead is poor.