why can't obsidian have ONE clean release ?

[Katarack21]

Even an 8-bit Windows 3.1 game made using windows icons and the default color palate, by one guy over the course of a week in 1989 (Castle of the Winds), still had bugs in it. You cannot make a bug-free game, period.

That being said, I've encounted exactly one bug and I'm 80 hours into this game. It's looking like a win to me.

[Ohioastro]

Even an 8-bit Windows 3.1 game made using windows icons and the default color palate, by one guy over the course of a week in 1989 (Castle of the Winds), still had bugs in it. You cannot make a bug-free game, period.

 

That being said, I've encounted exactly one bug and I'm 80 hours into this game. It's looking like a win to me.

 

It's amusing to me that there are people posting here who refuse to believe that others aren't having these awful terrible problems.  I see this in every newly released game; my basic conclusion is that there are people who would just plain be happier if they bought games a few months after release.  Because I can tell the difference between software that just doesn't work (which is my definition of "broken"), software that crashes for a lot of people a lot of the time (hello Fallout New Vegas!), and software like PoE that's basically very stable, with a couple of minor glitches that will be forgotten in a couple of weeks.

 

I think that the people who scream and yell about bugs are the ones without perspective.  If you see a bug, report it as clearly as you can so that it can get fixed.  Games where a lot of people have problems are games where the forums light up like a Christmas tree.  The fact that this forum *isn't* doing that is a pretty clear sign that the bugs aren't nearly as big of a deal as people are claiming in this thread.

[Katarack21]

 

Even an 8-bit Windows 3.1 game made using windows icons and the default color palate, by one guy over the course of a week in 1989 (Castle of the Winds), still had bugs in it. You cannot make a bug-free game, period.

 

That being said, I've encounted exactly one bug and I'm 80 hours into this game. It's looking like a win to me.

 

It's amusing to me that there are people posting here who refuse to believe that others aren't having these awful terrible problems.  I see this in every newly released game; my basic conclusion is that there are people who would just plain be happier if they bought games a few months after release.  Because I can tell the difference between software that just doesn't work (which is my definition of "broken"), software that crashes for a lot of people a lot of the time (hello Fallout New Vegas!), and software like PoE that's basically very stable, with a couple of minor glitches that will be forgotten in a couple of weeks.

 

I think that the people who scream and yell about bugs are the ones without perspective.  If you see a bug, report it as clearly as you can so that it can get fixed.  Games where a lot of people have problems are games where the forums light up like a Christmas tree.  The fact that this forum *isn't* doing that is a pretty clear sign that the bugs aren't nearly as big of a deal as people are claiming in this thread.

 

Oh, bugs are a real thing. That's true; however, only a small percentage of people are being effected by them. Their are 77k+ backers with a copy and the untold thousands sold to others. Go and look at the technical report forum again and tell me how many people are saying the game can't play. That it literally is broken and cannot be finished.

 

Perspective is important--and part of that is realizing that for most people playing it the game is fine. It's not "broken" in any real sense. This isn't KOTOR 2 or VtM:B, where the game is literally unworkable for anybody and has to be patched six times before it'll function at all. This is a normal game release where a small portion of the players encounter a major bug of some sort, and the dev team is working on patches for those bugs. That's it.

[Slish]

If I hadn't read the forums I wouldn't have known there are bugs.

I'm 50 hours in now, and have encountered ONE bug. (I couldnt loot some corpses, after restarting the game (didnt even have to reload) I could continue normally).

 

I LOVE THIS GAME SO MUCH. I want to thank Obsidian for this nice release.

And I'm sure most bugs will be fixed very soon in a patch for those people that have bugs

Edited April 1, 2015 by Slish

[Voqar]

Reality happens?  Extremely large and comlex code projects are going to have bugs or support issues.

 

I'm a coder so I can sympathize and since they didn't do early access (big mistake IMO since it can be very valuable for 'testing') a lot of bugs didn't get caught (more people pounding the game would've found more stuff ealier).

 

However, even though bugs are going to happen, how you deal with them and communicate is more of the factor for me.

 

I feel like the lack of communication from Obsidian is pretty sad, and the fact that there hasn't been a patch to at least handle the more brutal bugs, is also pretty sad.

 

Steam is pretty amazing for patching and I'd imagine most players have the game thru Steam so failing to address the more nasty bugs day of release or day after to me is amost unheard of in this day and age.

[Katarack21]

Reality happens?  Extremely large and comlex code projects are going to have bugs or support issues.

 

I'm a coder so I can sympathize and since they didn't do early access (big mistake IMO since it can be very valuable for 'testing') a lot of bugs didn't get caught (more people pounding the game would've found more stuff ealier).

 

However, even though bugs are going to happen, how you deal with them and communicate is more of the factor for me.

 

I feel like the lack of communication from Obsidian is pretty sad, and the fact that there hasn't been a patch to at least handle the more brutal bugs, is also pretty sad.

 

Steam is pretty amazing for patching and I'd imagine most players have the game thru Steam so failing to address the more nasty bugs day of release or day after to me is amost unheard of in this day and age.

It's only been out for six days, and the developers are apparently expecting to release a patch this week to both fix the biggest bugs and change some gameplay balance issues. I think that's pretty good, really.

[Lord Wafflebum]

 

Reality happens?  Extremely large and comlex code projects are going to have bugs or support issues.

 

I'm a coder so I can sympathize and since they didn't do early access (big mistake IMO since it can be very valuable for 'testing') a lot of bugs didn't get caught (more people pounding the game would've found more stuff ealier).

 

However, even though bugs are going to happen, how you deal with them and communicate is more of the factor for me.

 

I feel like the lack of communication from Obsidian is pretty sad, and the fact that there hasn't been a patch to at least handle the more brutal bugs, is also pretty sad.

 

Steam is pretty amazing for patching and I'd imagine most players have the game thru Steam so failing to address the more nasty bugs day of release or day after to me is amost unheard of in this day and age.

It's only been out for six days, and the developers are apparently expecting to release a patch this week to both fix the biggest bugs and change some gameplay balance issues. I think that's pretty good, really.

 

If we learned anything from the beta, it's to add 1.5 weeks to their expected release 

[Daemonjax]

While there's a lot of things that can go wrong and I agree it's not easy to release a bug-free game, it is both possible and achievable to release a game where a number of serious bugs won't be found within the first week after release. Seriously.

 

This isn't a problem with just Obsidian.  It's become industry standard to release too early.  Maybe the excitement gets to them?  Internal pressure of hitting a pre-decided release date?  Are paid testers aware of bugs that are spotted easily, but just don't care?  Maybe they're given instructions to specifically look for certain kinds of bugs? No idea.

 

If the game's great, the bugs are forgiven, but never forgotten.  Then it lands on modders' shoulders to fix the problems... which can take years.

Edited April 1, 2015 by Daemonjax

[complexmath]

While there's a lot of things that can go wrong and I agree it's not easy to release a bug-free game, it is both possible and achievable to release a game where a number of serious bugs won't be found within the first week after release. Seriously.

 

Yep.  And sorting this out is a tricky process.  Like for the "double clicking to equip break stuff, but dragging to equip doesn't" issue, a dev would have to notify QA that the code paths for those two "equip the thing" flows is different and so they should be tested separately.  And the "stats increase every time I save in the same area as a character I recruited" issue, someone would have to have thought to explicitly test save/reload in a relevant area, and to look for stat changes as an indication of failure.

 

Regarding crashes and such, it's much the same.  Development points out the most likely trouble spots for focus testing, and QA also does their own coverage tests to find issues according to whatever criteria they've set.  So there's some reliance on effective communication between development and QA, and then a *ton* of reliance on QA being superhuman monsters able to iterate at near relativistic speeds, because automated testing of games is difficult to impossible.

 

The other thing that can be done which might have caught some of these issues is unit testing.  There, you actually could test save/reload a million times in every area in the game.  Someone still has to code those tests though, which can be tremendously time consuming, and implementing them within Unity might be tricky as well (don't know anything about the engine).  Ultimately, it's a cost/benefit issue.  And we're talking about a kickstarted game.

 

Regarding development in general, someone mentioned earlier that the quality of software has declined.  I think the opposite is true.  Software development is still a very new field.  New to the point that, unlike other engineering practices, there is no established way to do anything yet.  We're still solidly in the "blacksmithing" era of software development, where this is all still much closer to art than science.  Someday there will be agreed upon development practices, standards requirements, and automated validation tools, but that still seems pretty far off.  For now, every team is learning new lessons on every project and continually refining their practices to produce better, more reliable software for the same effort invested.

 

First project maybe everyone ends up in "crunch mode" for six months and have spouses threatening to walk out because they're never home and the product released is still barely functional.  By the fourth or fifth, people are working relatively normal hours and the final product is also far better than that first project they spent six times the effort on.  And the following one will be better still.  Onwards and upwards.

[76prophet]

The double-click bug?*  That should have never happened in the first place, much less made it into the released product.  This was a (software) design/planning/architecture failure.  Don't excuse it, don't defend it.  

 

^ That. This is the one that I have a (rather small) problem with. That one is just laughable, in my less than apologetic opinion. However, I won't claim my objection/perception of this one is rational; it probably isn't. I'm not that arrogant.  

 

The double click is just basic every day mental model-ingrained user interface mechanics. Even worse, this effects of the bug are clearly visible in the user interface. It's difficult to comprehend how this slipped through QA. Maybe I just live in some mystical idyllic realm where developers actually look at their user interfaces before unleashing their product (to the fans that supported them).   

 

/facepalm. I feel sort of embarrassed for Obsidian.

 

Do I regret my purchase of this product? Nope. It's great, I really like it.

 

Will I continue to support Obsidian in future? Yep. They consistently try to make the games I want to play. 

 

Do I think they dropped the QA ball with PoE? Absolutely. Don't see how anybody could say otherwise.

 

Should they catch a little flack for that? Yep.

 

Is this all a big deal? Nope, not even a little bit. It'll get patched. Meh. Whatevers.  

[Darkpriest]

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.  

 

well it was showing to you what would it be if you'd be in Myth Drannor :D

[Katarack21]

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.  

I bought that ****ing game in a brick-and-mortar store and it killed my operating system straight up.

 

Worst. Release. Ever.

[Bryy]

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.  

A different genre but within the topic: The Movies would literally turn your monitor off upon launching the game, and you would need to restart your rig in order to fix it. The reason? They had never tested their video compression that came bundled in the game on a machine with external video editing software. So their game about making movies quite literally had a seizure if your computer had software on it to make movies. 

Edited April 2, 2015 by Bryy

[complexmath]

Funny.  My worst game experience ever was Counterstrike.  The install had problems and when I uninstalled it it wiped out my entire games directory (CS was installed in a subfolder beneath that).  I had a BG2 save literally right before the final boss encounter too.  To this day, I've never played Counterstrike because of that.

[Plazmid]

I don't know where to start in listing games I've played with major issues.

 

The funniest ones came from Daggerfall. I kept hitting clipping issues in the generated dungeons. I would consistently have this infinite falling effect after walking through a wall. That did ruin the game experience to the point where I just stopped playing. However, I still laugh about it. I wish I could have videotaped it.

 

But, I do have a different approach than many people. I test for a living. I expect problems, so I'm not surprised when I find them. And for those of you who are being highly critical of the beta testing, did you ask yourself if perhaps the QA team DID find the issue? They just weren't fixed... yet.. give it time.

 

And no, I'm not absolving Obsidian from responsibility to fully test and support a game. Have a look at the Credits sometime, they had a large QA team. Both internal and with Paradox. The truth is that there is such a large variety of PCs out there, and extreme differences in how people play. You are bound to hit issues. And yes, your issues are real. And have a really negative impact on your enjoyment of the game. And in some cases make the game unplayable to you. I think we all get that, because I think we can all relate to times in which we hit major issues that not everyone was hitting, but it ruined our experience with the game.

 

Remember it takes time to fix problems. If you think this is easy, download the the source code from an open-source game out there and see if you can make heads and tails of the code. 1000s and 1000s of lines of code. Go for it, start with http://ufoai.org/ and download the source version. Use notepadd++ to go through the code. Or VI, or any text editor. It's not easy.

 

From what I've seen, Obsidian is watching these boards and are trying to address the issues.

[Benedictous]

I can't believe that people are referencing Dungeon Siege 3 in the same context as PoE.  DS3 is one of the worst games I have ever had the misfortune of playing. It was just terrible in every way.

[mrmonocle]

 

I'm no developer....  better programming. 

 

How did YOU measure their level of programming?

 

All the bugs I've encountered so far go beyond standard assertion tests. From a programmer's perspective there are no problems at all. The game runs stable, doesn't crush, and when it does hang, the reason is not in the programming.

 

This release is waaaaaays cleaner than Fallout: New Vegas vanilla ever dreamed to be.

[WDeranged]

Compared to pretty much every classic RPG this game has less bugs on first release, it's quite impressive if you ask me.  Hopefully the more serious issues will be patched this week and everyone can get on with their virtual lives.

[Bryy]

I can't believe that people are referencing Dungeon Siege 3 in the same context as PoE.  DS3 is one of the worst games I have ever had the misfortune of playing. It was just terrible in every way.

Calm down there, bud. We're discussing bugs in the context of the other games, and that is one of the other games.

[Orchomene]

I remember playing Fallout 3 and having this issue where near the "city in the boat" (don't rember the name), my game would crash. Always. This was a game stopping bug, at least for the main story.

Yet, people never think Bethesda = bugs

When Obsidian releases a game it's always the same "this game is crawling with bugs". Sure, easy. Every game has bugs. A lot.

So, I won't say this game has no bugs. But I have yet to experience a game stopping one and I'm on my second ply through.

 

Btw, software proof testing can be quite heavy. One of my former colleagues went developing for military nuclear submarines sonars. One year of development. 6 years of testing. That's what you need if you want 100% efficiency. Of course, if you only want 99% efficiency, you can do only one tenth of the testing.

[WDeranged]

I remember playing Fallout 3 and having this issue where near the "city in the boat" (don't rember the name), my game would crash. Always. This was a game stopping bug, at least for the main story.

Yet, people never think Bethesda = bugs

When Obsidian releases a game it's always the same "this game is crawling with bugs". Sure, easy. Every game has bugs. A lot.

So, I won't say this game has no bugs. But I have yet to experience a game stopping one and I'm on my second ply through.

 

Btw, software proof testing can be quite heavy. One of my former colleagues went developing for military nuclear submarines sonars. One year of development. 6 years of testing. That's what you need if you want 100% efficiency. Of course, if you only want 99% efficiency, you can do only one tenth of the testing.

 

Oh I definitely think bugs when I think Bugthesda, just out of interest were you running an unofficial patch at the time? 

 

*edit*

 

I ask because the only version that was available for a long time had a 100% crash issue outside Rivet City.

Edited April 2, 2015 by WDeranged

[C2B]

I can't believe that people are referencing Dungeon Siege 3 in the same context as PoE.  DS3 is one of the worst games I have ever had the misfortune of playing. It was just terrible in every way.

 

It was fun (imo)

 

So, no

[Cirian]

 

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.

 

And yet this doesn't happen to all.  My loading screen has never frozen and I cruised through Raedric's keep with no issues.  I don't doubt that people had these issues but it isn't universal.

[Cirian]

 

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?

 

Daggerfall might have been the must buggy game I have played in the past 2 decades, but man was it a great game.  My friends who got into gaming with Morrowind/Skyrim have no idea how good the series was, but oh well I'm old lol.

[Cirian]

Ya know, there are WAYYYY too many people giving Obsidian the benefit of the doubt around here. If even ONE of these SERIOUS bugs were in a Bioware game, there would be a forum chock full of hate, how ea doesn't care and they just want money and blah blah blah. Dragon Age Inquisition had far less critical bugs, and people were going bonkers. Threatening to sue. But no, It's Obsidian guys, let's just give them a pass because....because.

 

The reason there isn't tons more whining is because people don't like to criticize smaller company's. Could you imagine how you would all react if this were a Blizzard game? Holy crap.

 

THIS GAME IS A BUGGY MESS AND THAT IS THAT. I LOOOOOOOOOOVE this game. I do it's great, but there is no way you can defend this game's technical issues.

 

Aloth just disappears on me guys. HE's JUST  GONE. I travel and he leaves my party and I can't recruit him back. THAT'S HUGE. I also have like, three different stat bugs. It's RIDICULOUS.

 

Just because some of you are playing some magical super happy bug free game, doesn't mean you can tell people who are having issues to "calm down" and "obsidian is working hard" and have that magically make the boatloads of glitches go away.

 

The game IS a bugfest. I hate to say it but it is.

I take it you didn't try SWTOR at launch.  I like Bioware, but compared to SWTOR, Pillars is a masterpiece of stable gaming.