Spend the extra money on QA

[aVENGER]

Since the Kickstarter has now officially reached $3.5M I'd like to make a suggestion. Instead of introducing new stretch goals, how about devoting the extra money on Quality Assurance (QA).

 

In short, make sure that the game is polished at launch and doesn't require a bunch of patches to become playable. No offense meant to Obsidian, it's just that a project of this scope needs thorough testing.

[Michael_Galt]

Meh- it will be patched over time. Every RPG has had to have this happen to it, regardless of who developed it. You simply can't get thousands of playthroughs to identify all the bugs present until it's been released. "Save early, save often". I would rather have more content, since that is something that you can enjoy immediately. I mean, modders will doubtlessly contribute, but they aren't going to provide expansive mods quickly- there is a benefit to having professionals working on it- higher quality work in general. And since they said that they only plan on doing a big/substantial expansion, that means we can't expect little additions to the game from OE, so I would like as much as possible right out the gate.

[Dangermouth]

I understand that they intend to do 2 betas with 'us', so hope that lot'll iron out the bugs but yes definitely would be good to see a limited bug offering from someone, somewhen.

 

Edit. And isn't extra content coming in the expansion, anyway?

Edited October 16, 2012 by Dangermouth

[Adlantis]

Getting rid of bugs that were missed in the alphas and betas can only be a good thing IMO... A game that had to be patched together after release always leaves a bad aftertaste... (Mostly in the form of negative reviews)

[NerdBoner]

I fully support this!

 

BUG FREE IS THE WAY TO BE!

[lordgizka]

Well, first of all, all the early beta keys are going to essentially make us (well, not me, I'm not going to play the beta, what a silly thing to do) Obsidian's QA department, so that's basically free. And second, there is probably not going to be any "extra" money, by virtue of kickstarter/amazon fees (which are already easily 315000$ + whatever the failed transactions are going to be) and the costs of producing all the physical stuff everyone wants so much.

[Rabain]

There are thousands willing to beta test for free I'm sure, spend the extra money on team resources (programmers, designers etc) so that the likelihood of there being lots of bugs is extremely low to begin with.

[rjshae]

My guess is that X% of whatever they spend would go to QA, so it would scale with the income.

[Ieo]

There are thousands willing to beta test for free I'm sure, spend the extra money on team resources (programmers, designers etc) so that the likelihood of there being lots of bugs is extremely low to begin with.

 

"Beta test" does not equate with quality assurance. Software QA/QC is a complete process that includes beta testing as a step--reports must still be collected and organized and prioritized with redundancies removed and dependencies determined, then workload parceled out to devs by group or individual, then the time required to actually pin down the bug in source code and trying to fix it without breaking something else.

 

Obsidian wrote somewhere that they invested in better bug reporting back-end and such somewhere, so at least that part is probably set. I'm all for it, having spent a little time in a software QA setting myself. It's not just money, though--time can be a factor. We had to push out an enterprise release by two months to fix a single semi-major bug. But fixing stuff like this can/will make all the difference between a happy experience and a poor one.

 

Edit: (It's also possible that I'm misparsing your statement because it's early in the morning for me, but I read your post as meaning "free beta testers --> low bug rate anyway")

Edited October 16, 2012 by Ieo

[Malcador]

There are thousands willing to beta test for free I'm sure, spend the extra money on team resources (programmers, designers etc) so that the likelihood of there being lots of bugs is extremely low to begin with.

 

And you have faith these people will be actually decent playtesters ? I always thought they should have launched two projects, PE and the QA for PE.

[SinoSamba]

100% behind better Q&A. The game just grew a lot by reaching the 2nd big city stretch goal, so there will be no lack of content.

[evdk]

The poll question is a bit biased but I voted for QA anyways

[agewisdom]

Since this will be the one of the flagship product of the 'new' old school cRPGs, I'd prefer it to be as bug-free as possible. A great game with minimal bugs can only help to boost sales. It might even mark a revival of these type of games that we've all been clamoring for.

[Gyor]

This poll offends me because its a false choice, only a segment of the funds generated by a stretch goal go to the Stretch goal, the rest goes to polishing things and what not.

 

Secondly games go out buggy because publishers force developers to put it out before its ready.

 

The OP is manipulating people by generating a false perception so because they want fewer options.

 

Here's the thing, without the motivating force of stretch goals , fewer people will donate fewer people donating means less polish, not more. If you want more polish cool stretch goals are the way to go. Think about it.

[SinoSamba]

Regarding beta testing: I've been in a few games and did submit bug reports. But I'm also a fairly "well behaved" player, so it's not like I ran into a bug nobody else ever saw. If anything I probably found bugs everyone else did too. Without being a professional who knows what to look for, there is a chance beta testing will not flush out everything.

 

Also, even though I backed a tier that gives me access to the beta I will most likely not participate to avoid spoiling the story.

[nikolokolus]

In theory "Yes to QA," but honestly we have no idea how their budget is going to break out. So just saying that all that, so-called, "extra" money should go to QA seems to suggest that they weren't allocating funds for QA in the first place?

 

If they feel that extra money will make it easier to bug test and polish the game then I'm fine with that, if they feel that they can deliver a polished product without spending the extra money raised in the last day of the kickstarter then that's OK too.

 

Mostly though, I think we need to cool it with playing armchair COO for them.

Edited October 16, 2012 by nikolokolus

[Ieo]

This poll offends me because its a false choice, only a segment of the funds generated by a stretch goal go to the Stretch goal, the rest goes to polishing things and what not.

 

Secondly games go out buggy because publishers force developers to put it out before its ready.

 

The OP is manipulating people by generating a false perception so because they want fewer options.

 

Here's the thing, without the motivating force of stretch goals , fewer people will donate fewer people donating means less polish, not more. If you want more polish cool stretch goals are the way to go. Think about it.

 

What?

 

QA should never be part of a stretch goal, it should be fully expected in the base product. On top of that, don't talk as if there's risk in poor QA without a stretch goal for polish ("fewer people means less polish"?)--Project Eternity's kickstarter was already successful in 27 hours, and all the current funding on top is icing.

 

The view I take is that any extra time or money that Obsidian may need for further polishing should not be an issue at all, from the player standpoint.

[lolaldanee]

every penny earned from now on to polishing please

[Rabain]

He didn't mean a stretch goal for polish, he meant a stretch goal for anything would bring in more pledges and more pledges mean more cash and more cash means bigger budget which means more allocated to QA...and everything else.

 

No stretch goal means some people might decide not to pledge any more and we also get polls like this with people trying to allocate money they think is just going to be floating around with nothing to do.

[Death Machine Miyagi]

I know as a goal this isn't as exciting on its face as huge mega-cities and player strongholds. Yet, to be honest, there is nothing they could add at this point that would interest me more than a simple declaration that from now all funds will be used to ensure the product has the time and appropriate funding it needs to be released polished, balanced, and ready to play from start to finish without rampant bugs and CTDs the moment its out the door.

 

Perhaps they already have that money, as some suggest. If so, great. The extra money is just an insurance policy.

Edited October 16, 2012 by Death Machine Miyagi

[Jarmo]

Polish it until it shines and make sure there's plenty of extra polish left for after the game's released.

There'll be new bugs popping up a year after release and I'd like to see those fixed as well.

[avaz74]

I am a huge believer in Quality Assurance & Polish. Whatever happens, Obsidian is one of my favorite game developers (PST, IWD, IWD2, MoTB), but they clearly know they can do better here as they are equated with buggy games. I absolutely loved MoTB, but couldn't play SoZ because of the freaking loading screens (late at night I kept falling asleep ).

 

Obsidian's name is going to be defined by this game. No publisher's to blame, no timeframe to blame. Having worked with development teams and told quality couldn't improve, I have had first hand experience on our latest (and biggest project) that this is not true. Quality is culture driven and has to be baked in day 1, starting with development, tools, measurement, etc. it can be achieved, even within a limited timeframe.

 

Having said that, I am so excited about this game and can't wait for Obsidian to knock this out of the park!

[Michael_Galt]

Getting rid of bugs that were missed in the alphas and betas can only be a good thing IMO... A game that had to be patched together after release always leaves a bad aftertaste... (Mostly in the form of negative reviews)

 

Except that doesn't matter, in the sense that they don't need to make more sales, since the people who pledged will have it- meaning, while it would be nice for them to make extra revenue, their primary responsibility is to the people who supported the game. If no one besides us purchase it, it really doesn't matter. The purpose of this game isn't to get "raving reviews" and to be massively economically profitable. It is for them to get the money they need to be able to work on the type of game they want to make, and nominally, what we are interested in playing.

 

I just don't understand people's complaints about this, to be honest. I've never encountered any bug that really compromised my game. Have I had to reload an earlier save, or restart the game entirely? Sure. But have I had my computer overheat and break, or all my saves get wiped out/corrupted? Have I ever faced an inability to complete the main quest? No to all of those. I suppose that other people must have had those problems, but I think it's odd that I somehow managed to avoid that, having played RPGs since the mid-90s.

 

That doesn't mean I don't want them to release the game without having attempted to clear out any bugs, but if they are going to allocate serious money and time, I would rather have more text/companions/quests for sure.

Edited October 16, 2012 by Michael_Galt

[Meithan]

every penny earned from now on to polishing please

 

^ This. We got quite a lot of content already. Let's focus the extra income on making it a reality.

[rjshae]

Why isn't there a "Obsidian knows how to make games; let them decide the best way to allocate the money" option?