why can't obsidian have ONE clean release ?

[Ohioastro]

People with no tolerance for minor software glitches should not play newly released games.  Seriously,  If it bothers you that much, wait three months and they'll be largely dealt with.

 

And the glitches in this game are quite minor, at least for most players.

[khermann]

entitled whining.

 

It would be nice, though, if there were a conspicuous link or notification somewhere on the forum site that linked to the list of known major bugs and any player workarounds/things to avoid (like don't double-click inventory items)

 

Why game developers continue to think it's acceptable to relay critical gameplay information by forcing them to go hunting in bullsh*t, ancient phpbb boards for individual threads or the occasional round-up thread that may be stickied is lazy community management in this day and age.

 

if you accept the fact that you're going to ship a game with bugs, and that some of them are serious, you should position community services to make access to that information conspicuous and focused, not buried amid this horrible forum software. God i f'ing hate phpbb. Should have died in the early 2000s. 

 

and yes, I know this information is here , but it should be a specific callout by development and the site should draw people to this conspicuiously - this should be information Obsidian wants everyone to be aware of, not just another sticky post int he tech area that says "WARNING SPOILERS!!!"

 

It's so easy to do better for your community, but there are a lot of lazy and crappy habits int he industry, particularly QA and Communityengagement

 

 

EDIT; The post i linked to doesn't appear to address several issues folks have reported, such as the inventory and stat bugs. Why are these bugs not on some notification list?

Why are game developers so goddamn reluctant to publish suspected bugs commonly reported, but not yet verified, to give folks a heads up and ask for additional information? It really blows my mind.

 

@Obsidian : Do you have a place where we can go to review the list of known AND suspected bugs? I have heard and read on many threads, from many people, about inventory and stat problems, yet there is no place anyone can go to get coherent information on this feedback. You want us to crawl all over this forum to cobble together our own supposition because it's just not important to you to relay critical gameplay information about your software to the community. Forums are terrible ways to relay this kind of information and it is an insult that you would relegate serious bug issues to self-help in the community. I hate to say that this is sadly very typical developer community response, but it is shameful nonetheless.

 

That thread talks about issues QA is "working on" , if that's the case, I'd say you guys are several weeks behind your own release.

Edited April 1, 2015 by khermann

[morhilane]

I think it's more that POE's bugs are getting more attention so people are getting the impression it's more bugged than other games, it actually seems to be tied to Obsidian undeserved reputation for buggy games (Bethesda and Ubisoft have been releasing mess for years and nobody complains about it). Dragon Age Inquisition had class abilities that didn't work at release, yet outside of a few people on the official forums nobody seems to have noticed it and it didn't create hot topics on gaming website like POE is doing right now.

Edited April 1, 2015 by morhilane

[Dragosani]

You know I've been in alpha and beta tests for games and I take those tests seriously.  To test a game you really need to think outside the box and try everything and anything.  Hit odd keys with your inventory open.  Try spells while screens are open and it's paused.  Do odd things, check odd things but I've found that for everyone like me who takes it seriously you have 9 other people who just want to play the game.  That's the hard part.  A lot of these bugs should have been caught but it's not like release day where you have thousands and thousands of people who love to think outside the box that are playing the game.  In a test you probably have a few hundred people and out of those you might get 10 of them who work their butts off to find bugs while the other 190 people just want to play and don't give a crap.  At least that's been my experience.  What developers need is a dedicated community of testers who just test games for a living.  A community that they can count on and who actually care about making a game better and not just getting to play early and for free. 
Also from what I've read of their early testing it was all in random zones so that way people wouldn't experience the whole story and be burned out by release or give stuff away so when they logged on it was into random different zones and not from the beginning of the game to the end.  Maybe that's also why some weren't caught.

But I don't think the game is all that buggy myself.  It's got a few bad ones but so did The Witcher, hell it was damn near unplayable but they released the Extended Edition and created a perfect game out of it.  BGII had some nasty bugs too, still does lol.  NWN had some mean ones and fans are still fixing and improving the game.  Same with NWN II.  I think it's just the nature of the beast.  Most games are pretty buggy on release, especially these types of games with so much code and scripts to them.

Edited April 1, 2015 by Dragosani

[LuccA]

IMO, a bug doesn't need to be game-breaking to spoil your first impression of the game. I didn't find any major bug, but I give reason to people dealing with double click and stat stacking issues. It is quite huge for a release version, and even not being game-breaking it seems frustrating enough to turn people down on the game (and that should be a main concern for release! Not just avoid major game-breaking bugs)... =s

 

Although it's true that PoE may be above cRPG average in that regard. Personally, I'll just wait for the first patches to play the game for real. Even small bugs can be "game-breaking" for my perfeccionist cRPG lover inner child...

 

P.S.: A dumb question (not specifically PoE related): If cRPGs are always so buggy, why don't they extend development schedule for three more months or so, for additional QA and release a bug free game? 

Edited April 1, 2015 by LuccA

[ParaB]

27 hours played and not a single bug encountered.

 

I wished more games would be so "buggy" on release.

[navlasop]

There are no longer any games that ship bug free. There are degrees of bugginess

 

As someone mentioned earlier...Rome 2. Gah. That game single handely made me stop preordering games. I stil back games i like on kickstarter, but preordering "regular" games. No. I just cant trust the developers in general anymore after that fiasco.

 

There used to games that came bug free, in the old old days, since le internet wasnt really a big thing, and very few had access, so having to patch a game to make it playable would have made it tank.

 

As for the bugs in Pillars, i find them to be reasonably mild and quite acceptable. Except for the clothing bug. That one looked a bit painful if you got it.

[crabe]

Because money, maybe...

[Tigranes]

 

 

It would be nice, though, if there were a conspicuous link or notification somewhere on the forum site that linked to the list of known major bugs and any player workarounds/things to avoid (like don't double-click inventory items)

 

 

There are places that do this. We should, too, but nobody's volunteered so far and mods have been swamped just dealing with posts. We'll see if we can get on this. 

[Merina]

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".

You must be kidding. The game freezing completely at a loading screen is a game-breaking bug. The player will retry, the game will freeze again. The player won't run around within Raedric's Keep (or another place) in search of an exit that may still work.

[morhilane]

There are no longer any games that ship bug free. There are degrees of bugginess

...

 

There used to games that came bug free, in the old old days, since le internet wasnt really a big thing, and very few had access, so having to patch a game to make it playable would have made it tank.

 

Those games called bug free were not bug free. Even the first Super Mario Bros had bugs, some discovered decades after release.

[takamorisan]

I must be playing a different game, 67 hours in game and the only bug that annoyed me was the perma insect swarm debuff that is fixed after you get maimed status.

 

Also every game released need a patch, such is the nature of it.

[ProjectBG2Respawn]

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.

 

Raedric's keep bro, i almost been locked in it. Lucky i was to get out this bugged place.

[ProjectBG2Respawn]

I must be playing a different game, 67 hours in game and the only bug that annoyed me was the perma insect swarm debuff that is fixed after you get maimed status.

 

Also every game released need a patch, such is the nature of it.

 

Every game released needed a patch ? You born in 2005 ?

[Fighter]

41 hours. No bugs so far.

[Yenkins]

I am not counting on bug-free releases, not any more. Not possible with the Internet and instant patching. But, pretty please, just roll in with the patch already

 

 

Some of you did not experience any bugs? Well, good for you!

 

Meanwhile, some folks have their saves loaded literally at random: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/73857-missing-saves/

[Rosveen]

I think it's more that POE's bugs are getting more attention so people are getting the impression it's more bugged than other games, it actually seems to be tied to Obsidian undeserved reputation for buggy games (Bethesda and Ubisoft have been releasing mess for years and nobody complains about it). Dragon Age Inquisition had class abilities that didn't work at release, yet outside of a few people on the official forums nobody seems to have noticed it and it didn't create hot topics on gaming website like POE is doing right now.

Oh, we complain about Bethesda bugs. I guess we're just used to them because it's been this way at least since Daggerfall and we all know we'll just have to wait for the brilliant unofficial patch team to fix what Bethesda didn't. These bugs are far more gamebreaking than anything you can find in Pillars, too, save for the stat bug which if severe, completely breaks difficulty. Daggerfall's main quest broke. Morrowind has a skill which doesn't work to this day (Unarmored), Oblivion still has the Abomb, Skyrim still can bloat your saves to the point of unplayability.

 

Do you see now why I'm not bothered by Pillars?

Edited April 1, 2015 by Rosveen

[Rosveen]

Double post again. I hate posting on mobile.

Edited April 1, 2015 by Rosveen

[khermann]

Double post again. I hate posting on mobile.

 

It's not you, it's the horrible insistence that people still use phpbb. worst forum software on the market but hey it's free and 'stable' , like a turd is stable because it never goes anywhere, just keeps on being a turd. Cheers

[Zherot]

I want to play the game so bad, is there an ETA on a patch?

[draek]

There is a limit to how much you can test and how many systems you can test it on.

Personally i only had 1 game breaking bug which was resolved in a load from a previous save.

 

Only when the game goes into the wild to test it on every variation of systems and various combinations the masses decide will the bugs start showing their face.

[Ted Striker]

I haven't had any problems with the game. A "game breaking" bug is a bug that makes the game unplayable. Yet you say you're still playing and enjoying it? I don't understand. It sounds like you're bitching just to bitch.

[sparklecat]

Did people seriously start playing this game on release day expecting it'd be free of any significant bugs?

 

That there would be major bugs, that I might get hit with them, and that Obsidian would get to work on fixing them quickly were all things I took as given, what with the size and complexity of the game; it was inevitable, even if they'd spent years doing QA.  All have turned out to be the case, and consequently I'm pretty relaxed about having to put my game aside until my PC's stats are back to normal.

 

(Amusingly enough, the last game I played that was bug-free for me at release was New Vegas.)

[complexmath]

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 too bad that no one got a pre-release copy of this game to help test and submit feedback.  If they had, someone would have found these issues for sure!  Thanks, Obsidian!

[Gaunt_13]

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.

 This is just objectively WRONG. If someone had decided to do an "Ironman" playthrough, there are a multitude of bugs (mostly area transition and/or quest related) which stop ALL PROGRESS and require reverting to an earlier save. Ironman is part of the game and these are therefore game breaking.

 

And that is if you have the strictest definition of game breaking. I personally consider any bug which stops you from playing the game in an enjoyable manner (the reason why you play in the first place is for enjoyment) as game breaking. Examples of these include the stat-stacking bug, save/load times increasing from 30 secs up to a minute or longer even, never-ending plague of insects even on rest etc (this is actually game breaking), and many MANY more.

 

I have managed to revert to an earlier save losing about 5 hours of progress, but people playing iron man or not saving frequently have definitely had their game broken by bugs.

 

 

TO ANYONE THAT SAYS THEY ARE NOT AFFECTED BY BUGS:

 

I advise you to check your PC, and each of your companions' stats. If you have EVER loaded the game in an area where a companion was recruited (Gilded Vale, Magrans Fork, Caed Nua, etc etc) then your companions likely have higher stats than they should, as this bug affects everyone (take Eder to Gilded Vale and save/load while he has Defender on and you will see), even if its just 5 or 10 points of deflection or 1 or 2 INT. It's hard to notice unless it happens to an extreme, but you will still be affected by it.

Edited April 1, 2015 by Gaunt_13