why can't obsidian have ONE clean release ?

[atchoum44]

This game rocks. Seriously.

 

But despite being free from the oppression of the "Evil Publishers and their Dreadful Deadlines", this game has some unacceptable game breaking bugs.

 

I know that they will be fixed and that in a few weeks, the game will probably be ok. And compared to many broken AAA titles (hello Rome 2 Total war my good friend) this game is still in a better shape, quite playable (and again, awesome).

 

But still : some game breaking bugs here are pretty obvious and any careful game tester would have been able to check them : stats changing, loading time going up, items disappearing, black screens...

 

It's such a pity that this game will have lesser grades in the press because of this carelessness. And its such a pity that everyone has to say "well it's obsidian, what did you expect".

 

I'm no developer, I assume that bug checking and fixing is a tedious and hard challenge, but clearly, it would be a great improvement for your next titles to ensure better programming. 

 

Sorry If I made english mistakes, not fluent. 

 

 

[ednanf]

Here we go again...

 

Can't you post in another topic instead of creating a new one?

[barakav]

South park the stick of truth was bug free...

[atchoum44]

True, wonderful exception.

[pmonti80]

South park the stick of truth was bug free...

Must be the only one, because I don't remember another game done by obsidian with such a clean release, without problems and without cut features.

[ProjectBG2Respawn]

lol title

[Starwars]

Dungeon Siege 3 was also pretty bug-free.

 

While I would never excuse a developer for bugs (and there are some pretty nasty ones present in this game), I think it's just... pretty much impossible to deliver a largely bug-free experience while making a game of this size and complexity. There are just *so* many things that can go wrong. The IE games had plenty of problems as well, and the enhanced editions introduced a large amount of bugs yet again. Look at any hugely complex games (Crusader Kings 2 for a Paradox example, even though it's been out for a long time and actively patched) and they will often be very buggy

 

I think the truer test will be if they keep up the patching to fix problems and such after release.

[AfricanBootyShine]

what crpg has had a bug-free release.

[Jojobobo]

I've not found any of the bugs game breaking (I never suffered from the double click one for example), just more annoying. The game still has received a deserved 90 on metacritic which is really the benchmark of a decent game, maybe that will drop with further reviews but even with the few bugs I think the team can be proud of themselves.

 

Honestly I think they get a rough time with the crowd funding format, as now they have to answer to fans who believe they're entitled to have everything 100% perfect. Would it have been nice if they'd managed it? Sure. Are they the literal devil for not meeting the fans' sky high expectations? No, not really.

[Jimmious]

There are no game breaking bugs in PoE, at least in the way that I understand the term "game breaking" as in "I can't continue playing".
There are serious balancing/gameplay bugs though, that's true. I however did not face any of them.

[Vi.king]

I'm no developer, I assume that bug checking and fixing is a tedious and hard challenge, but clearly, it would be a great improvement for your next titles to ensure better programming.

 

you should have stopped thinking at exactly this point.

If you´ve never experienced testing and bugfixing in any bigger software, just stop. You have NO idea how hard it is. NO Software will EVER be bugfree. EVER!!

 

Remember the Ariane 5 spacerocket? It exploded 40 seconds after the start. Reason a bug in the software. Even in a multimillion project where security and quality has the HIGHEST priority there can be bugs. To get rid of almost all bugs so that everyone is happy (note will never happen) Obsidian would need at least another 4 million and another year or so production time.

 

Software is getting more and more complex, that means inevitably more bugs. While the bugs/per line of code statistically goes down the sheer amount of aditionally code means the total number of bugs stays at least the same or normally is much higher than before. Modern code quality tools do help a little bit but even those can not find everything.

[Sleazebag]

They made a deal with a demon prince and got good writing and interesting gameplay in return. But you know how these deals work, so every game they make now will mysteriously include strange bugs and glitches. 

 

I'd say that deal with Pazuzu was worth it. All hail Pazuzu.

[willdunz]

south park and DS3 are both clean bruh

[atchoum44]

For me it's really game breaking when you have a black screen each time you change zone and are forced to implement a mod to continue playing. And it's only one of them. The stacking of stats for exemple...

 

And as for expectations : I'm not saying I expect a 100% bug free release. There is a difference between a bunch of rather small annoying bugs, and game breaking nightmares that can screw a 20 hours game save. Again, I've also seen worse, even with AAA titles. 

It's true that for 4 millions dollars I guess with have a very big game, and probably some sacrifice was made over stability (I can just presume).

 

You're mentioning Crusader Kings 2 but I never had any game breaking bug with it. And Europa Universalis IV was very clean at release. Both are enormously huge games. So yes, releasing games in a better state is ideally possible. And Obsidian DOES have a reputation for game-breaking release (except the two mentionned previously, you are right)

Edited April 1, 2015 by atchoum44

[SeekDWay]

Obsidian is a naturally occurring volcanic glass formed as an extrusive igneous rock.

It is produced when felsic lava extruded from a volcano cools rapidly with minimum crystal growth. Obsidian is commonly found within the margins of rhyolitic lava flows known as obsidian flows, where the chemical composition (high silica content) induces a high viscosity and polymerization degree of the lava. The inhibition of atomic diffusion through this highly viscous and polymerized lava explains the lack of crystal growth. Obsidian is hard and brittle; it therefore fractures with very sharp edges, which were used in the past in cutting and piercing tools, and has been used experimentally as surgical scalpel blades.

[Vi.king]

You're mentioning Crusader Kings 2 but I never had any game breaking bug with it. And Europa Universalis IV was very clean at release. Both are enormously huge games. So yes, releasing games in a better state is ideally possible. And Obsidian DOES have a reputation for game-breaking release (except the two mentionned previously, you are right)

 

see? there´s the problem. For you Crusader Kings had no problems. For other it had.

For me and many others PoE has no Problems, for you it does.

 

Softwarebugs tend to be very strange. Sometimes they only occur on certain hardwares. For example a few years ago when I still played World of Warcraft I had a super strange bug where the game suddenly crashed at certain points in the gameworld. I wasnt the only one who experienced said bug but no real solution was known. Reinstalling did nothing. After completly formatting my harddrive reinstalling windows I couldn´t even install the game. The only thing helped was buying a new PC where it worked again.

[blindhamster]

fun fact, ive yet to have any of the game breaking bugs other people had...

 

i never double clicked items onto character, always dragged and dropped - purely because that was what i expected to do, i didnt even consider double clicking till i read about the bug.

id probably have run into the focus bug with a few items on my cipher, except i read about that before getting any of said items - i await a patch before equipping them.

i didnt have any issues in Raedrics hold, just an enjoyable RPG experience.

my load times are generally short (3-6 seconds on average), i do use an SSD for my games though.

 

what other major bugs are there? anyone mind listing them so i can check if i had them?

[Anelor]

Nowadays it seems a tedious habit to deliver bugged games. When RTW 2 was relesead it got so many bugs that only after a year of patching it partly recovered.

Personally in PoE i experienced only a couple of issues so far, regarding some broken Paladin and Rogue's talents features. But i am getting upset because as my adventure goes on, I feel quite insecure due to lot of bugs reported that keeps you from doing the most normal and simple things like save and load wherever you wish.

Edited April 1, 2015 by Anelor

[sean10mm]

What company consistently produces bug-free releases though?  Especially in RPGs where you have a ton of things interacting with each other?

 

Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor would literally kill your operating system on release.  It was a literal virus.  I don't think anything is going to top that.  

[Hybridsalmon]

Nowadays it seems a tedious habit to deliver bugged games. When RTW 2 was relesead it got so many bugs that only after a year of patching it partly recovered.

Personally in PoE i experienced only a couple of issues so far, regarding some broken Paladin and Rogue's talents features. But i am getting upset because as my adventure goes on, I feel quite insecure due to lot of bugs reported that keeps you from doing the most normal and simple things.

 

Shouldn't read the forums then (not critisism, just advice). If it really was a bugfest there would be tons more whining. I've only encountered 1 major bug (unable to complete a minor quest), and a couple of others that ceased when I reloaded a save. Also the loading bug, but I'm not too bothered by it because I check these forums in the meantime.

Edited April 1, 2015 by Hybridsalmon

[k1rage]

Bugs are sort of the norm for game releases these days

 

I blame the internet as it makes it so easy to patch things

 

Thats not to say that bugs are a new thing, I remebering geting mailed a 3.5" flopy disk with a patch on it because I contacted the company about bugs lol

 

but I feel that its worse these days, I have friends that wont buy games at release not because of bugs and the fact that everything seems to go on sale on steam rather rapidly lol

[Rosveen]

I haven't been affected by the stat bug, probably because I don't double click to equip items, I always drag and drop. It's one of the most bug-free releases I've experienced, my only problem are increasingly long saving times, but I don't see it as a major issue (unless it's some horrid bloat that's going to blow up my game at some point, then please do let me know. )

[Malcador]

Knew extra QA should have been a stretch goal. I guess the backer beta testers did a poor job as well.

[illathid]

Yeah, I have had a single bug in my whole play through so far.

 

This is probably one the most bug free video game releases in the past year.

[Tigranes]

Last buggy Obsidian game: 2010.

 

Last two Obsidian games before POE: universally praised as bug-free. 

 

POE compared to other CRPGs: pretty damn polished. It has no massive 'gamebreaking' bugs, that is, bugs that stop you doing the main quest or cause hard crashes in non-localised areas. 

 

People are complaining because they have an annoying bug right now, which is totally legit. Those bugs suck and should be squished ASAP. But there's little basis in the facts to say "buggy Obsidian, another buggy game". POE is rightfully recognised in reviews as very polished and not particularly buggy. 

 

Remember Fallout 3 with its giant exclamation marks floating on the ground and Fallout 3 / FNV scripting errors blocking the main quest? Or Morrowind with its "hey I"ll just crash anywhere, anytime, just for you"? Or Gothic 3? Bioware's been really good about getting rid of gamebreaking bugs, but every time a BIo game releases there are people who complain "omg how did this game ever get released". Cos, you know, every game has bugs, and if you're unlucky to be hit with one, you tend to imagine the whole Q&A department went to sleep or something. "Nowadays games are so bugged"? Sorry, games have been bugged since 1978. It sucks, but it's an objective reality about how complicated games are to make and how many different PCs exist.