Stat bonus modifiers can erroneously be applied multiple times allowing stats to grow beyond intended values

[pi2repsion]

When I reached character level 5 I observed that Eder had considerably larger defensive stats than he was supposed to given his level, attributes, and equipment. I cannot say exactly when it happened as I do not save to separate save slots that often, but looking back through my saves, the following saves are the last from before this happened and the first from after it happened.

 

I am running the game on Windows.

 

Saves at dropbox due to forum attachment limit:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/t5sgetpefdousrr/Eder_unexplained_stat_increase.rar?dl=0

 

 

The save before the discrepancy occurs is from temple of Eothan with about half of the first level cleared. Eder is level 4 and when stripped of all gear and buffs, his defenses are 36/53/31/39 - exactly what one would expect given his level and attributes.

 

The save after is from the Black Meadow, two days later. Eder is still level 4, but now when stripped of all gear and buffs, his defenses are 58/63/48/51 and he has also gained +1 perception and +1 resolve (which are responsible for 2 of the reflex and will increases).

 

The total unexplained increase is thus 20/10/15/10, +1 per, +1 res.

 

It is obvious to suspect a bug with respects to stacking stat bonuses that fails to get cleared, as that is a much too common bug in CRPGs, and the suspicion is supported by the stat-bonus gear Eder has been wearing during this time is Fulvano's Amulet (+5 reflex) and Minor Ring of Deflection (+5 deflection) as well, after finding it in the temple, Pilgrim's Lasting Vigil (+1 per, +1 res).

 

The observed discrepancy is thus a perfect match with the stats of Defender mode (with Wary Defender) and the three named items being added once and not cleared when they should be, so it seems very likely that the discrepancy happened at some time after the Pilgrim's Lasting Vigil helmet was picked up and equipped. That still leaves a considerable gap from that point of time in the temple to the Black Marsh save, but it is the closest I can narrow down the gap given the saves on hand.

 

 

...He does make an awesome tank, though, running around at level 5 with 96/73/65/63 defenses when defender mode is activated and he is wearing his equipment, but it is trivializing content.

[sanpats]

IE Mod can help using console without losing Steam achievement.  http://rien-ici.com/iemod/console

 

However, like itsame said, there is no command to edit secondary stats like endurance and deflection.

 

I would gladly edit save file myself if somebody know how.

 

[sanpats]

I noticed that even I edit main stats using console, there will still be some error. Eder should have base Perception 10, but I have to use console to give him 7 in order for him to have 10 Per. It seem the faulty bonus still stuck inside the data. This should make it easy for Dev to retroactively fix this.

[gingerjordan]

Awesome,

 

Thanks for the feedback, saves, outputs, and all that stuff. I think we nailed down the steps and I've added the issue to the database and we will work towards a fix for an upcoming update. Until then avoid save loads on Companions home maps.

 

Keep up the good work citizens

 

And what about people who cant continue their games because of boosted stats?  Avoiding saving in companion areas is not going to sort out already broken characters.

 

Do the devs realise that the game is totally unbalanced and probably is for most people that are playing?

 

For a game based on stats and character development this reply from the devs is a joke.  The game is broken.

[Aramintai]

I thought something was off when I saw Hiravias sporting 26 INT, lol. Yea, this is buggy

[Red7]

yeah damn..game is broken here too, int at 35, 1350 health and so on

[sanpats]

Programming wise, I think it is not difficult to fix retroactively. From what I observed, the base value is unaffected, but the bonus (different variable) got saved, and reapplied atop when loaded. So just clearing the bonus should fix it. The reason why it is only happen on recruiting map, if I have to guess, is that when loading a recruiting map, the game have to destroy the original companion object on the map and loaded the in-party clone, some how there must be an error in the process. May be loading equipped save data as nude data and reapplied the equipment bonus again.

[Ferrante]

 

 

Looks like obsidian is just living up to their reputation... still love you folks though!

 

Is there an ETA for a patch?

You should repost this over at the Unofficial Skyrim Patch site. Those guys are still releasing updates every month or so even though Skyrim's been out for almost 4 years. Oh, and it got GOTY.

 

...love how everyone EXCEPT Obsidian gets a pass...

 

Bethesda didn't get a pass on that either.  Much less so, from what I remember.

 

 

Nah, As Achilles said, they got GOTY and they bought millions of copies of a full of bugs and bad designed game. In fact, I got it 6 months after the release and still I was my first week tweaking the damned thing just to pass the start menu. I cursed 18 hours because of the crappy design and then I had a game breaking bug which made me left the game forever. And still, you don't read too often stuff like "Looks like BETHESDA is just living up to their reputation".

[El Zoido]

 

And still, you don't read too often stuff like "Looks like BETHESDA is just living up to their reputation".

 

 

Maybe I'm frequenting different sites then, but Bethesda is definitely known for releasing extremely buggy games.

They do get less flak from the press, though.

[Zwiebelchen]

 

Maybe I'm frequenting different sites then, but Bethesda is definitely known for releasing extremely buggy games.

They do get less flak from the press, though.

 

 

Tbh, I haven't read a lot of reviews yet that complain about bugs in PoE either.

 

... modern games are known for a low standard in bugtesting. Reviewers have kind of resigned over this and have given up on downrating buggy games.

Edited March 31, 2015 by Zwiebelchen

[Beige]

Is there any way a character's base attributes change other than a bug? And what are the formulas to calculate the defenses, health, etc a character should have? Just trying to fix my chars as best as possible.

[Jazou]

PLEASE PROVIDE A HOTFIX FOR THIS ONE.

 

 

Dont make the mistake to wait for delivering one big update (1.03) to fix as many bugs as possible.

Instead please deliver hotfixes as soon as possible so that at least some bugs (or even only one) get fixed in short time.

 

Please. It's a really great game but especially this increasing stats bug is totally gamebreaking.

I don't think that anyone won't save e.g. in Gilded Vale. So probably every PoE gamer is affected by this bug which destroys the gameplay totally.

[zephiris]

The only ones who (might) not be affected by this bug are Mac users.

I've talked with a few on the steam discussion thread where I provided the necessary reproduction steps and they told me that they could not reproduce.

I don't have a Mac so I can't tell if they made a mistake or not.

 

Any Mac user can confirm if this bug also contains the Mac version?

 

p.s. @Jazou

 

I understand what you mean, but I think doing the hotfixes for just one fix might end up taking more time then bundling patches.

We waited many years for the game to be released, I think we can wait a few days longer for the patch.

I would hate it though if this particular bug would still be unsolved in 1.03, but I don't want to jump conclusions at this moment.

 

 

 

 

Maybe I'm frequenting different sites then, but Bethesda is definitely known for releasing extremely buggy games.

They do get less flak from the press, though.

 

 

Tbh, I haven't read a lot of reviews yet that complain about bugs in PoE either.

 

... modern games are known for a low standard in bugtesting. Reviewers have kind of resigned over this and have given up on downrating buggy games.

 

 

I noticed too. But this particular bug for example is hard to notice. I did however see many people complain about how easy the game is on hard difficulty.

I think many of those complainers were unaware of this particular bug in the thread. Hence I think everyone should know about these bugs so not to draw false conclusions or ruin your first playthrough experience.

Edited March 31, 2015 by zephiris

[pi2repsion]

There are always people that can't quite seem to understand any game will have bugs on release simply because some of the players will do things no one ever foresaw when doing QA.

And then you get bugs like this, which is caused by saving and loading a game, something that everybody will be doing on a frequent basis unless they are playing Ironman.

 

...You don't even have to go to the main menu, as I reconstructed it in my second post. As was later pointed out, merely quicksaving and then quickloading in a zone where a companion was recruited will do the trick where that companion is concerned. Which is why so many players are affected by the bug, because it is something that will happen for just about everybody in the course of normal playing, though being unfamiliar with the stat system of PoE the players might not notice it going on for some time.

 

Anybody paying attention to the stats will notice, however. It is hard not to notice when an attribute score starts increasing mysteriously or the defense stats skyrocket.

 

And you get bugs like the "double-click to equip if you already have something equipped (or casting a spell that makes you equip a magic weapon when you already have something equipped) wipes actives", which, let's face it, doesn't exactly fall into the category of "nobody ever foresaw players taking such actions!" Double-clicking to equip is the normal way to equip items for most players as it is the one that involves the least effort.

 

There's a difference between giving QA a pass for things that happen rarely or in border cases and giving QA a pass for things that happen frequently for people performing actions that are part of normal gameplay such as saving, loading, and equipping items.

 

 

For whatever reason QA dropped the ball on these issues and, as Obsidian is a responsible company, they will now be addressed. It annoys me, because I thought that both Obsidian and Paradox had gotten over most of their bad reputations for releasing products with obvious bugs, but it certainly isn't a deal-breaker.

 

But please don't try passing off such fundamental bugs as something that one really shouldn't expect QA to catch. :D

Edited March 31, 2015 by pi2repsion

[ISC]

Awesome,

 

Thanks for the feedback, saves, outputs, and all that stuff. I think we nailed down the steps and I've added the issue to the database and we will work towards a fix for an upcoming update. Until then avoid save loads on Companions home maps.

 

Keep up the good work citizens

 

Wait a second, just to be clear on "save loads" - do we know (i.e. have reason to believe) that it is loading that is the issue, not saving itself? I was worried about autosaves for a while!

[Adventurer]

Here is one more for the unintended stats and bonuses list i kept my stag defenses permanently after using spiritshift

Edited March 31, 2015 by Adventurer

[Jazou]

p.s. @Jazou

 

I understand what you mean, but I think doing the hotfixes for just one fix might end up taking more time then bundling patches.

We waited many years for the game to be released, I think we can wait a few days longer for the patch.

I would hate it though if this particular bug would still be unsolved in 1.03, but I don't want to jump conclusions at this moment.

 

 

The problem is that there occured so many bugs right now that I don't think it will all be fixed within a few days. 

I think if they've already fixed some of them, it would be better if they would release them now/soon.

 

Every day there are many new players who start their game and will suffer from this bug. This will decrease the fun while playing massively. (or destroy it completely)

And this will worsen the general impression of PoE for many customers too. Me - personally - would be upset if I would ruin my savegame/life time while the fix for this

problem is probably already on Obsidian's developer computers. I don't think that rolling out hotfixes will increase the general fixing time that much that it isn't worth

the benefit for thousands of current players.

[DocDoomII]

 

 

I think you could implement that pretty easily. Just load up whatever stats the companion is supposed to have and reset him at the appropriate level. I mean code-wise it shouldn't be hard with a silly workaround.

 

Maybe reset talents/skills as well while they're at it.

This does seem like something that could be fixed retroactively: they know what the default values should be for NPCs (and PCs?), and they can just force the game to re-run calculations for things like Deflection.

 

In theory.

 

It should be easy enough for NPCs, yeah, but I was thinking about how they'd fix it for PCs; they know the maximum stat points we can reach and obviously they can drop us back down to legal levels for each attribute, but depending on how it's fixed a) there's a potential problem if multiple stats have been affected with how much to decrease each, and b) that might make it impossible to cheat in higher stats later, not sure.

 

Not that I really know anything about their code, of course.

 

It's easy. "Scrap" the character stat "progression" making it so it looks like it has just been created, but keep the amount of XP.

[LordCrash]

PLEASE PROVIDE A HOTFIX FOR THIS ONE.

 

 

Dont make the mistake to wait for delivering one big update (1.03) to fix as many bugs as possible.

Instead please deliver hotfixes as soon as possible so that at least some bugs (or even only one) get fixed in short time.

 

Please. It's a really great game but especially this increasing stats bug is totally gamebreaking.

I don't think that anyone won't save e.g. in Gilded Vale. So probably every PoE gamer is affected by this bug which destroys the gameplay totally.

 

They already announced that update 1.03 will probably be released this week. And maybe they just need a few more hours or days to really make sure that their fix doesn't create different problems? It doesn't benefit anybody if they release a rushed hotfix that even causes more problems than it solves. Pe patient (yeah, I know, it's hard) and let them do their job, QA included. They know the problem and they work on it. There is nothing else they can do at this very moment than trying to deliver the best possible solution.

Edited March 31, 2015 by LordCrash

[sanpats]

As a programmer, I know that the RPG this complex gotta have some bug. But the scope of this bug is surely make one wonder how can it pass internal testing.

Edited March 31, 2015 by sanpats

[LordCrash]

As a programmer, I know that the RPG this complex gotta have some bug. But the scope of this bug is surely make one wonder how can it pass internal testing.

 

Edit: post for wrong thread.

 

 

------

Edited March 31, 2015 by LordCrash

[sanpats]

 

 

As a programmer, I know that the RPG this complex gotta have some bug. But the scope of this bug is surely make one wonder how can it pass internal testing.

Maybe QA just used drag and drop? Honestly, I haven't used double click in the inventory in my whole 25 hours of time with the game yet. I just naturally use drag and drop. Maybe the same is true for the majority of the QA testers. Or maybe a fix for another bug/issue quite late in development and shortly before release caused this problem without anybody realizing it on time. Stuff like that can happen. It's of course sad and disappointing for those who are affected but it happens.

This thread isn't about double click bug. Read again

[LordCrash]

 

 

As a programmer, I know that the RPG this complex gotta have some bug. But the scope of this bug is surely make one wonder how can it pass internal testing.

Maybe QA just used drag and drop? Honestly, I haven't used double click in the inventory in my whole 25 hours of time with the game yet. I just naturally use drag and drop. Maybe the same is true for the majority of the QA testers. Or maybe a fix for another bug/issue quite late in development and shortly before release caused this problem without anybody realizing it on time. Stuff like that can happen. It's of course sad and disappointing for those who are affected but it happens.

This thread isn't about double click bug. Read again

 

 

Damn, confused the threads, sorry.

[Zwiebelchen]

As a programmer, I know that the RPG this complex gotta have some bug. But the scope of this bug is surely make one wonder how can it pass internal testing.

 

You overestimate the number of internal beta testers of gaming companies. The team for PoE, especially, wasn't that big considering the very low (compared to AAA games) budget of the game. Considering there were only about roughly one dozen people working on PoE, it's a safe bet that the QA betatesting group consisted of not more than 4 people. It's very likely that they all used drag and drop OR just never loaded in Gilded Vale or Caed Nua (saving alone isn't enough for this bug to happen).

 

Obviously, one would think that it's very likely you will encounter this bug - but this isn't actually true. The bug doesn't happen if, for example, you save inside a house. It also doesn't happen if you don't have the specific characters in your group. For example, saving in Caed Nua is perfectly fine if you don't have Kana in your group. The bug in Gilded Vale would never happen for someone who only plays with custom NPCs or if you just blaze through the content to get as much info out of your playing time (this is how bugtesters work... they don't have time to go into detail at every location).

Edited March 31, 2015 by Zwiebelchen

[sparklecat]

RPGs are the worst culprits by far.   A smarter version of myself would wait until a few patch-cycles have gone through before purchasing.

 

I should really know better by now but my impulse control was never that great. (IRL Willpower is a 5 )

 

Yep; I'm a bit unhappy that I ended up affected by a bug that means I have to put the game down until it's fixed, but I'm not annoyed or blaming Obsidian.  It's an immensely complex and reactive RPG that looks likely to be 100+ hours and was released on Thursday; I'd have been amazed if there weren't any major bugs, and the fact that we're getting reports on maybe a half-dozen at most that I'd consider makes it reasonable to stop playing is something I find pretty impressive at this point.

 

I think they did a damn good job, both with the state the game was in on release and with their response, given that they're already in the testing stage for at least two of those bug fixes and I had a QA guy PM me Sunday evening to chase up my savegame for a bug I reported.

[gingerjordan]

It's very likely that they all used drag and drop OR just never loaded in Gilded Vale or Caed Nua (saving alone isn't enough for this bug to happen).

 

 

If this is the case...they are not very good testers.  Testers should be testing all possible uses of software.

 

The fact is that they missed major bugs that they should of caught....lets just hope they fix the issues fast and correctly