Obsidian, why isn't there any hotfix yet?

[Jazou]

Dear Obsidian,

 

first at all I want to clarify that I respect your hard work and you guys did really create a great game.

This thread is not determined to be a troll or whining thread - instead I want to ask a genuine question:

 

Why isn't there any hotfix yet?

 

I did already ask this question inside the stat stacking bug thread but as I think that my posts probably

weren't read by devs, I wanted to separate this question in an own thread. 

 

Please Obsidian, don't do the mistake to wait for delivering one big update that fixed as many bugs as

possible. Instead please deliver a hotfix as soon as possible so that at least some bugs (or even only one)

get fixed in short time. We don't demand an all-in-one fix for "everything" - just sharing what is already done

would be amazing. Every day there are more players getting into troubles and I'm sure some of the reasons

are already eliminiated and are just waiting for other fixes to provide all of them together within the announced

patch. I have the feeling that the patch got already a bit delayed because you want to fix as many bugs as

possible within this week. But in some situations it's better to satisfy the crowd step by step instead of waiting

to make everyone happy at once. 

 

 

Please note: This is not a rhetorical question - I really would appreciate an honest answer. What are the reasons

to put many fixes within one update instead of providing small hotfixes to the community when there are that kind

of critical/game breaking bugs? Or didn't you fix at least one of them yet? (I wouldn't blame you for that either!)

I just would love to hear an official statement - please give us more info about the actual state.

 

 

Best,

A fan of your work

Edited April 2, 2015 by Jazou

[Pavlov_]

Have patience. They already said that patch is coming sometime this week.

[ShadowTiger]

If you have been reading the threads carefully like I have... you would have noticed that one of the mods stated that 1.3 is already finalized and going through testing before they ship it out. Obviously there is no point releasing a patch if it makes things worse (see GTA 5 fiasco: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2015-has-rockstar-really-downgraded-gta-5 ) so they have to keep testing and fixing issues until it is ready.

 

I understand your impatience but as a game developer myself I hope that you guys realize that they are working as hard as they can to fix things as soon as possible. They have probably had 20 meetings since launch about what is going into the next patch, what is highest priority, etc etc. There is someone whose job it is to make sure this is done as efficiently as possbile... the producer. I am sure he is doing a great job and probably exhausted from wresting with this very issue all day long.

 

I want to play the game more myself, and I am waiting for a patch to proceed. I am just as eager as you to see some progress being made.

If I were you I would focus on positivity to encourage the devs like "This game is so awesome, I can't wait for the patch!!!" Nothing we say or do can make it come faster, but we can at least make them feel good whenever they have a few minutes to relax and read the forums.

 

P.S. If any devs do read the technical support forums for "relaxation" I think you need some help

 

Edited April 2, 2015 by ShadowTiger

[DocDoomII]

Hotfixes are, usually, small patches done in a rush, outside of normal development/testing cycles.

 

I'd prefer having a patch that solves more problems, and passed quality assurance.

Hopefully with better results than the game itself.

[Wild Card]

I`d prefer a patch that fixes the game breaking stuff (for me at least) like stat gain or lose problems items messing up characters and so on. Though id like the patch to be released yesterday i wouldn`t want them to rush it fixing half of the issues only and creating twice as many...as it was the case with some games !

So you guys go ahead and do what you do best ( make the game epic)

[yasheira]

Ditto. I am sure it's cookin' as fast as possible. The game is still very playable at least from my experience. There are some major bugs but they don't interfere almost at all if you save your game regulary.

Thumbs up on a great game. Can't wait for the xpacs. 

 

[manveru1986]

The question is, why so many bugs went into final version?

[Wild Card]

Racing towards the deadline...pressure as it approached said deadline...the game being pretty expansive so more things that could go wrong...maybe a lil bit of dev and beta tester exhaustion after a long development cycle/ backer beta. Any number and combination of the above, probably more reasons that i can`t think of right now.

[Messier-31]

If I were you I would focus on positivity to encourage the devs like "This game is so awesome, I can't wait for the patch!!!"

 

"This game is so awesome, I can't wait for the patch!!!

 

[RottenBrain]

The question is, why so many bugs went into final version?

Define "many".  A PC game is bound to have bugs upon release, much of it due to the fact that you have to account for different hardware and OS configurations. Are the current bugs "game-breaking" in the true sense of the word, as is the case with a lot of games nowadays? Not by a long shot.

[DocDoomII]

 

The question is, why so many bugs went into final version?

Define "many".  A PC game is bound to have bugs upon release, much of it due to the fact that you have to account for different hardware and OS configurations. Are the current bugs "game-breaking" in the true sense of the word, as is the case with a lot of games nowadays? Not by a long shot.

 

Some people should take a look at the patch notes for the unofficial patches of Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 3 and New Vegas 

Those have literally more bugs than lines of code.

Edited April 2, 2015 by DocDoomII

[Zwiebelchen]

 

The question is, why so many bugs went into final version?

Define "many".  A PC game is bound to have bugs upon release, much of it due to the fact that you have to account for different hardware and OS configurations. Are the current bugs "game-breaking" in the true sense of the word, as is the case with a lot of games nowadays? Not by a long shot.

 

 

Also, we don't know the internal reasons for those bugs. Sometimes two seemingly unrelated bugs share the same internal reason.

 

On several projects I've worked on so far, some of the most gamebreaking bugs were caused by simple coding errors. Forgetting about a temporary variable change for testing purposes (this is especially frustrating, as this usually breaks stuff that was working before, so you obviously don't bugtest this feature again), wrong variable indexing (incrementing an array variable starting with 1 instead of 0 or the opposite), use of ">" instead of ">=", etc. ...

Often, you look over your code and simply can not find anything wrong and when you finally notice what you did wrong, you just want to slam your head into a wall repeatedly.

Edited April 2, 2015 by Zwiebelchen

[pepe]

If I were you I would focus on positivity to encourage the devs like "This game is so awesome, I can't wait for the patch!!!" Nothing we say or do can make it come faster, but we can at least make them feel good whenever they have a few minutes to relax and read the forums.

 

 

 

Not all players have been brainwashed. Pay money, cant play for week and then be happy and nice.

 

Where is the patch/fix ???????????????????? One week and they can't produce a fix for so simple bug like duplication stat.

[Emptiness]

Please note: This is not a rhetorical question - I really would appreciate an honest answer. What are the reasons

to put many fixes within one update instead of providing small hotfixes to the community when there are that kind

of critical/game breaking bugs? Or didn't you fix at least one of them yet? (I wouldn't blame you for that either!)

I just would love to hear an official statement - please give us more info about the actual state.

 

Releasing fixes without testing them will inevitably introduce new bugs.  Testing a fix adequately is a very labor-intensive process.  Testing multiple fixes at once is, generally speaking, not much more labor intensive than testing a single fix.  Because of this, it is more efficient to bundle multiple bug fixes into a single patch than it is to release multiple patches each of which fixes one bug.

 

For example, imagine they have 10 bugs to fix.  Then imagine that creating a fix takes 2 days and testing a fix takes 5 days.  If they make one patch for all 10 bugs it takes them (10 x 2) + 5 = 25 days to fix those 10 bugs.  If they put out 10 separate fixes then it takes them 10 x (2 + 5) = 70 days to fix all 10 bugs.  Yes, the first two bug fixes would come sooner (one on day 12 and one on day 24), but the other eight bugs will be around longer and the process of fixing them all will take an extra 45 days.  Obviously these specific numbers are totally made up, but they illustrate something that is real.

Edited April 2, 2015 by Emptiness

[manveru1986]

 

The question is, why so many bugs went into final version?

Define "many".  A PC game is bound to have bugs upon release, much of it due to the fact that you have to account for different hardware and OS configurations. Are the current bugs "game-breaking" in the true sense of the word, as is the case with a lot of games nowadays? Not by a long shot.

 

By many, I understand, that I cannot play anymore, because I can't travel from one destination to another and I cannot save my game, because it makes it crash.

And also there are this problems with buffs, cloaks not displayed, etc etc. 

[falchen]

I am a fan of obsisian and pillars but let's not kid ourselves, these bugs are not minor. I do consider ability loss on equipment switching, save bloating, persistant buffs/debufs and the game crashing gamebreaking, won't touch the game again untill these are fixed.

[El Zoido]

The bugs are pretty annoying and some of them potentially game-breaking.

Still, patches can take time if they are supposed to work right, especially with complex games.

 

And since I got the game on GOG, I've personally given up my hopes of getting the patch before the Easter holidays. GOG unfortunately takes ages until they release patches (I don't blame Obsidian for this).

[Hellmoob]

As someone who works as a software testing co-ordinator (insurance, not videogame) the turnaround time they're giving us for this patch is actually pretty excellent.

 

Also, bugs always make it through testing. Sometimes they happen to be horrible, horrible bugs. Fact of life.

[Katarack21]

I am a fan of obsisian and pillars but let's not kid ourselves, these bugs are not minor. I do consider ability loss on equipment switching, save bloating, persistant buffs/debufs and the game crashing gamebreaking, won't touch the game again untill these are fixed.

That's legit, I guess, but those bugs only happen for a percentage of people. They're not universal. I'm over 80 hours into PoE and I've yet to experience any of them. And the racial ability loss is hardly game breaking--the racial powers are pretty minor and make virtually no difference in actual playing.

[RottenBrain]

 

 

The question is, why so many bugs went into final version?

Define "many".  A PC game is bound to have bugs upon release, much of it due to the fact that you have to account for different hardware and OS configurations. Are the current bugs "game-breaking" in the true sense of the word, as is the case with a lot of games nowadays? Not by a long shot.

 

By many, I understand, that I cannot play anymore, because I can't travel from one destination to another and I cannot save my game, because it makes it crash.

And also there are this problems with buffs, cloaks not displayed, etc etc. 

 

Are you using a 32bit version of Windows by any chance? How much RAM do you have?

 

Regarding the "other problems" that you mentioned - your character model not displaying an equipped cloak is hardly game breaking.

I'm not saying that it's not frustrating - everybody has a different threshold for annoyances, however, I think everybody should take a step back, take a deep breath and dial back the drama a bit.

[manveru1986]

 

 

 

The question is, why so many bugs went into final version?

 

Define "many".  A PC game is bound to have bugs upon release, much of it due to the fact that you have to account for different hardware and OS configurations. Are the current bugs "game-breaking" in the true sense of the word, as is the case with a lot of games nowadays? Not by a long shot.

By many, I understand, that I cannot play anymore, because I can't travel from one destination to another and I cannot save my game, because it makes it crash.

And also there are this problems with buffs, cloaks not displayed, etc etc.

Are you using a 32bit version of Windows by any chance? How much RAM do you have?

 

Regarding the "other problems" that you mentioned - your character model not displaying an equipped cloak is hardly game breaking.

I'm not saying that it's not frustrating - everybody has a different threshold for annoyances, however, I think everybody should take a step back, take a deep breath and dial back the drama a bit.

MacBook Air, 8gigs of ram, core i7.

Crashing during save and transitioning between location is game breaking.

[Malaclypse]

It's a game true to the spirit of the infinity engine games - which were also full of bugs upon release. 

 

They adhered to tradition more closely than they should have...

[Jazou]

 

Please note: This is not a rhetorical question - I really would appreciate an honest answer. What are the reasons

to put many fixes within one update instead of providing small hotfixes to the community when there are that kind

of critical/game breaking bugs? Or didn't you fix at least one of them yet? (I wouldn't blame you for that either!)

I just would love to hear an official statement - please give us more info about the actual state.

 

Releasing fixes without testing them will inevitably introduce new bugs.  Testing a fix adequately is a very labor-intensive process.  Testing multiple fixes at once is, generally speaking, not much more labor intensive than testing a single fix.  Because of this, it is more efficient to bundle multiple bug fixes into a single patch than it is to release multiple patches each of which fixes one bug.

 

For example, imagine they have 10 bugs to fix.  Then imagine that creating a fix takes 2 days and testing a fix takes 5 days.  If they make one patch for all 10 bugs it takes them (10 x 2) + 5 = 25 days to fix those 10 bugs.  If they put out 10 separate fixes then it takes them 10 x (2 + 5) = 70 days to fix all 10 bugs.  Yes, the first two bug fixes would come sooner (one on day 12 and one on day 24), but the other eight bugs will be around longer and the process of fixing them all will take an extra 45 days.  Obviously these specific numbers are totally made up, but they illustrate something that is real.

 

 

If you're going to fix a specific bug, the first step is to identify those use-cases where the bug occurs.

Based on the found use-cases you build proper test-cases which will serve as an indicator for the targeted bug.

If the test-cases have any kind of intersection with test-cases from other bugs, than of course they will be tested

together, but often there isn't any intersection and than you wouldn't get any benefit by testing them at one go.

So, normally that kind of separated bugs (without intersection in test-cases) are tested in separate sessions and

mostly right after implementing the probable fix.

 

That's why I was thinking that there could be already some verified fixes on the developers computers which are

just hold back because Obsidian don't want to bring an update where people will scream "B-b-but my issue isn't fixed with this update!"

I got the feeling that some fixes are hold back to release a super extensive 1.03 patch so almost no one could

complain about.

 

I know that releasing pre-patches/hotfixes is a bit of extra effort. But you have always to ask if this effort is worth

the benefit that some customers could get from it.

 

 

PS: I'm a developer by myself and this is how we handle it in our company. But it's just a small one for individual industry software, so I don't

want to pit myself against game-developers. It's just why I thought that there indeed could be already a small hotfix for at least one serious bug.

[Smorensky]

I read a lot of posts about various bugs both major and minor and I even reported a few (mostly minor, tooltip issues and some skills not working properly in combat etc.). Just as everyone else, I am eager to see a patch that resolves most of the reported issues, but in all honesty I would rather wait for Obsidian to release a proper patch than get a quick hot-fix.

 

As many ppl said, a rushed hot-fix can do more harm than good, so I vote we give ppl at Obsidian the time they need to fix these issues so we can all get back to enjoying this game. Besides, if this game wasn't good, most ppl wouldn't even care to post in these threads but would instead be running around screaming for their money back

[Blightor]

I had to stop playing too.

 

Just feels really bad looking at my character sheet going 'Is this right?'.  I dont want to cheapen the experience, so I feel pretty down that I can't play.

 

I've re-rolled a few times, but after a few other little bugs and such it has just begun to tarnish the whole experience.  Which is a bit sad.

 

So have stopped, and I am hopeful that once the patch comes out I can get that same motivation to play through to where I am again - because I really enjoyed things before the bugs started to impact.

[mgoetze]

They have probably had 20 meetings

Well that explains it! Stop having meetings and start coding, guys!