I feel offended do you?

[Guest BugsVendor]

Dear Obsidian,

 

Being a huge fan of titles like Baldur's Gate I took Path of the Damned difficulty simply so this wonderful experience would last as long as possible. I wanted to be forced to eat consumables and search for items that help with certain enemies and experience the game in it's full potential rather than just run through the game on normal without any serious challenge. The game still seemed too easy... Boring...

 

There is only one initial playthrough of the game and now that I am close towards the end I realised mine is ruined. I did a quick bug search and sure enough my Eder is overpowered due to stacking bug and the game is too easy. I also experienced other bugs like the Raedric Castle problem.

 

They way I see it yet again I was sold a car without a wheel. It is that simple. Yet another product in the gaming industry that is unfinished, rushed, clearly broken.

 

If this would be any other industry we would never hear the end of it. Just imagine calling help line of some company saying "You sold me a coffee machine that gives tea" and hearing "This is a known issue".

 

Do you know who buys these game right after the release or even pre order ? Your most dedicated fans. The new normal is to poke us in the eyes with a stick and turn us into slave testers.

 

I feel offended obsidian. The experience I bought from you is broken. You send a clear and loud message:

 

"DO NOT PRE ORDER" & "DO NOT BUY RIGHT AFTER RELEASE"

 

Regards,

 

exFan

 

 

 

 

[Katarack21]

 

or if the bugs were unusually bad compared to other RPGs

 

 

They are. Permanent debuffs, bloated stats that remove any challenge, inventory disappearing (including critical items), broken stronghold, broken ranger class. These are not minor annoyances.

 

How's this. No save game corruptions, no crashes, no stat issues, no missing companions, no missing abilities, no triggered abilities staying present, no bugs that are noticeable in any way or that have any affect of any sort on any kind of gameplay. I'm going to play this game from beginning to end, out of the box, with absolutely zero problems or tribulations while doing so.

 

Good for you. I believe you if you say you're not experiencing these bugs, but the rest of us are. And it's perfectly fine that we're pissed about it.

 

Yes, it is. It's not fine to go around trash talking about how the game is broken and Obsidian is terrible. For the vast majority of users it works just fine with few to no problems. That's a functional piece of software.

[madPav3L]

Why is it so hard for people to understand that games of this magnitude take time, and tens of thousands of different machines and players to explore every bug possible. It's not realistically doable in beta. There will ALWAYS be bugs on release. Man up, grow up, and be patient until the game reaches a properly-playable-bug free-state. Or, play the game, support it, report bugs, and know that a brighter future is coming from your and others' support. Both for the company who made the game, and for the game itself.

It is not hard to understand but a LOT of the bugs are very simple and easy to spot I think and still they are not fixed and please don't tell me that ppl have missed it in the beta. For example, Rogue Reckless Assault Modal ability, you cannot turn it off, somebody said that it was reported in beta and still it is not fixed... that is the sad thing.

[pedroantonio]

 

What's mature and rational about defending someone who treats you with disrespect? Obsidian (and many, many other devs) obviously hold a certain amount of disregard towards their own customers by essentially making them unpaid beta testers for their products, rather than actually polishing them before release (or, at minimum, warning people that the product in question is buggy).

I don't feel disrespected by Obsidian in the slightest. I'm studying computer programming myself and I know that managing complexity is the main problem in software development, and complexity leads to bugs, some amount of which are always unavoidable. There's no QA team that can find bugs more efficiently than thousands of people using your software at the same time; that's the reason why there're always undetected bugs on release, because budget is limited in every project and only a certain amount of that budget goes to QA.

 

There's no perfect software. All software endures a period of maintaining after release, it's common and normal. They are working in a patch, it will be released, and everybody will forget the "ofenses" in less than a month, as it always happens. There are more important things in life than waiting for a videogame patch.

[DocDoomII]

So they put the patch notes on and I still am just as offended because it only proves my point. 

 

[snip]

The thing is, some of the big issues are actually fairly nasty and time intensive to fix and test (especially ones that involve fixing people's save games retroactively), and we have a number of other people on the team who are able to fix other issues.

 

Also, there was probably about a week of other fixes included in this patch that were done after we locked down our 1.02 initial launch build. We didn't work up until it shipped on things - we have a lockdown process that we go through, and then the rest of the team keeps checking in fixes so those also got incorporated into 1.03. There are already a few things fixed for our 1.04 patch, but it's not safe to dump them all in without at least a few days' testing.

[madPav3L]

 

What do you get out of defending a half finished product that thousands of players are unwillingly beta testing?

I get the pleasure of knowing I'm mature and rational enough to wait a couple of weeks for some patches.

 

Then they should be more mature and rational and wait with releasing a unfinished game and test it more... or release it as Early Access or beta not as Full Release.

I would't buy it if I knew that there is so many bugs and quite critical to gameplay. Compared to DO:S release this is a disaster.

[DocDoomII]

That's why people should start buying on day one less frequently.

It would start sending out a message.

 

In general, not on this case alone.

[bobthe]

If your first playthrough is very important to you, it is best to wait a couple months and play the game after it's been patched.

 

This absolutely, without question, should not need to be the case. I understand that it's reality much of the time but that does not excuse the situation.

[Troy4747]

This is why internet posts/forums tend be terrible.  I highly doubt you'd say such a rant to any of the developers if you met them in person.  Put yourselves in their shoes. You worked on a project for years, and now because of a few (admittedly frustrating bugs), you have some fan who did nothing more than put some of his money down say he's offended and crap all over the years of work, energy, and creativity you and all your co-workers/friends put into this product...all for his benefit.  

 

I understand being disappointed. Having waited so long for a sequel to the fallout/bg/icewind dale/torment classics, which I consider this game to be, it's frustrating that the gameplay experience in the first week has been sullied by bugs and performance issues.  But just as I played those games countless times, I'll replay this game too. They're working on a patch, and have plans for further patches (turn based mode in 1.10).  

 

So some disappointment/frustration about having to wait a bit more to get a more bugfree experience, sure. But offended? Give me a break.

[Katarack21]

 

 

What do you get out of defending a half finished product that thousands of players are unwillingly beta testing?

I get the pleasure of knowing I'm mature and rational enough to wait a couple of weeks for some patches.

 

Then they should be more mature and rational and wait with releasing a unfinished game and test it more... or release it as Early Access or beta not as Full Release.

I would't buy it if I knew that there is so many bugs and quite critical to gameplay. Compared to DO:S release this is a disaster.

 

There are *STILL* game-ending crash bugs being regularly reported in the D:OS forums. When it was released, it was a mess.

[Jojobobo]

I don't really feel like people should be excusing Obsidian - are there bad bugs? Yes they certainly are. Is it enough to feel badly aggrieved about? Yes and no. No as in the bugs aren't the end of the world, yes because they had such a huge development time and a literal crap tonne of beta testers - and they could have pushed the development time back as much as they wanted.

 

For me, I like to play on hard difficulty and now all my characters have uber stats. That's a pretty big problem. I've already restarted a load of times to find a character I feel in synch with and now I've sunk about 4 hours into the game and my save is completely borked, all the mechanics are screwed. No - this is not a good thing. And no - it's not really acceptable bearing in mind the crowd funding format and the fact they could have pushed the release back to accommodate.

 

A concept I've heard of before is how much is a person's time worth? The example I heard of is consulting experts in their chosen field - who can earn hundreds of dollars or pounds just for an hour of their time consulting, that's how much an hour of their time is valued. If you equate people's time to money or any other kind of value, Obsidian have wasted that when they could have pushed back release - across maybe millions of people that's a pretty huge deal.

 

And maybe people are fine playing the game through with uber stats, but when the game was supposed to hark back to tricky and challenging gameplay that runs completely counter to it.

 

Overall, I'm pretty annoyed and I can see why other people would be to. Doing the standard thing of an RPG player and trialling several characters and restarting is normal, having then to restart again through no fault of my own is not cool. Maybe they'll be able to fix the crapped up saves but I'm not so sure. They really should have done better or pushed the release back if they weren't ready.

[sparklecat]

Obsidian, you can afford to push back the release of the game for months on end to find a few more bugs, not counting the ones that simply would never show up in your testing process, right?  Cool.

 

Jojobobo, the patch will fix saves affected by that bug.

[Los Wackos]

 

 

or if the bugs were unusually bad compared to other RPGs

 

 

They are. Permanent debuffs, bloated stats that remove any challenge, inventory disappearing (including critical items), broken stronghold, broken ranger class. These are not minor annoyances.

 

How's this. No save game corruptions, no crashes, no stat issues, no missing companions, no missing abilities, no triggered abilities staying present, no bugs that are noticeable in any way or that have any affect of any sort on any kind of gameplay. I'm going to play this game from beginning to end, out of the box, with absolutely zero problems or tribulations while doing so.

 

Good for you. I believe you if you say you're not experiencing these bugs, but the rest of us are. And it's perfectly fine that we're pissed about it.

 

Yes, it is. It's not fine to go around trash talking about how the game is broken and Obsidian is terrible. For the vast majority of users it works just fine with few to no problems. That's a functional piece of software.

 

Judging by the activity in this subforum and the tons of people who flood to it to report various bugs, I somehow doubt that. But even then, the fact that it causes a sizable amount of players problems is enough to warrant frustration and anger. It's perfectly justified.

 

At the end of the day, it's hard to know just how huge a portion of the buyers that are experiencing problems. It could be that people on this particular forum are a loud and noisy minority (which doesn't change that the anger is still justified), but it could also be that many, many people have problems but some choose not to post because there are already countless threads.

 

So far I've seen a lot of people complain, including many on other forums as well.

 

 

 

What's mature and rational about defending someone who treats you with disrespect? Obsidian (and many, many other devs) obviously hold a certain amount of disregard towards their own customers by essentially making them unpaid beta testers for their products, rather than actually polishing them before release (or, at minimum, warning people that the product in question is buggy).

I don't feel disrespected by Obsidian in the slightest. I'm studying computer programming myself and I know that managing complexity is the main problem in software development, and complexity leads to bugs, some amount of which are always unavoidable. There's no QA team that can find bugs more efficiently than thousands of people using your software at the same time; that's the reason why there're always undetected bugs on release, because budget is limited in every project and only a certain amount of that budget goes to QA.

 

There's no perfect software. All software endures a period of maintaining after release, it's common and normal. They are working in a patch, it will be released, and everybody will forget the "ofenses" in less than a month, as it always happens. There are more important things in life than waiting for a videogame patch.

 

Well, I can't really argue with your experience as a programmer seeing as I have no such experience myself. But I've played plenty of games that were much better optimized and playable at launch than this game. The multitude of serious bugs and the number of people who experience them makes me think all of this isn't just down to 'standard issues that plague every game', but insufficient testing. Otherwise every new game would be plagued by bugs that almost makes them unplayable - at least for a sizable amount of the people who bought it - but this isn't always the case. I believe this is a matter of poor business practices (releasing a buggy game knowing there will be no consequences and the players will help fix the issues) more than anything else. But I'll admit that I don't know this for sure.

 

As for that last part, yes, there are more important things. But so what? If I buy a product now I want to be able to use it now, not in a month. The fact that you think I care too much and "should just wait" is unrelated to the discussion and seems like a passive aggressive attempt at an insult.

[BugsVendor2]

This is why internet posts/forums tend be terrible.  I highly doubt you'd say such a rant to any of the developers if you met them in person.  Put yourselves in their shoes. You worked on a project for years, and now because of a few (admittedly frustrating bugs), you have some fan who did nothing more than put some of his money down say he's offended and crap all over the years of work, energy, and creativity you and all your co-workers/friends put into this product...all for his benefit.  

 

I understand being disappointed. Having waited so long for a sequel to the fallout/bg/icewind dale/torment classics, which I consider this game to be, it's frustrating that the gameplay experience in the first week has been sullied by bugs and performance issues.  But just as I played those games countless times, I'll replay this game too. They're working on a patch, and have plans for further patches (turn based mode in 1.10).  

 

So some disappointment/frustration about having to wait a bit more to get a more bugfree experience, sure. But offended? Give me a break.

 

I'm afraid you missed the point of this discussion.

 

They all work and put energy into their product because it will bring them money and they most likely enjoy doing it as well. Good for them.

 

you have some fan who did nothing more than put some of his money down

 

 

What more should I do? paying the money as a customer is not good enough according to you? Should I send them a letter? Should I beta test it? What is enough for a customer to do?

 

They advertise the game as a finished product and yet it is not. Someone made the decision to ship the game knowing full well it's bugged, unbalanced, having a backlog of things yet to publish and I am protesting about it.

 

There were more options to go for. They could have announced open beta for a period of time.

[Katarack21]

There's 77K+ backers with a copy and untold tens of thousands sold beyond that. There's, what, maybe a few hundred to a thousand at most posting here with serious problems? Certainly nowhere near the number of posts neccesary to hit even five percent of the first 77K+ copies (which would be over 3,500 people posting in here with bugs).

[waltc]

 

Gee I don't want to know what other things in your daily life offend you, must be really stressful getting offended all the damn time.

 

He has a point though. You can say whatever you want its your opinion but some people really value their first playthrough.

And since most players who just play the game don't notice the stat increase bug, they just keep wondering hmm this game is pretty easy.

Just like the OP, now he is near the end until realizing it, and it ruined his experience.

 

So yeh...

 

 

 

I don't think it's much of a point, though...  Everybody knows that with the huge assortment of PC hardware and software running with Windows today,  games when first released are going to require some level of bug fixing/refinement.  If Obsidian took a year longer with the game they couldn't guarantee it would be bug-free on day #1, because it isn't possible for them to have a useful number of beta testers before shipping--popular games today can sell a million copies the first week, or better.  Some things simply can't be done any better, or any faster, until *after* a game ships.  We may not like that, but that's reality for you.

 

So if that reality bothers you then it's simply best if you wait a couple of months before you buy. RIght? Everybody knows that.  OTOH, if you have open eyes and cannot control yourself and want the game as fast as you can lay your grubby little hands on it--then you should be fine because you *know* what to expect.  No surprises if there are some bugs at first--especially, if you are so impatient you have to race through to the end ASAP.  Maybe the OP is new to computer gaming and is unaware of these things, and if so I can understand his angst.  But if he's been around computer gaming any length of time he should know better--and consider this a valuable lesson learned in any event.  The following things are almost always true:

 

1) The longer you wait to buy a game after it ships the fewer bugs it will have because much will have been fixed.

2)  The longer you wait to buy a game after it ships the cheaper it will be as the price usually drops to stimulate demand.

 

I cannot think of a time when the above facts were not evident in the computer-gaming realm...

[Los Wackos]

This is why internet posts/forums tend be terrible.  I highly doubt you'd say such a rant to any of the developers if you met them in person.  Put yourselves in their shoes. You worked on a project for years, and now because of a few (admittedly frustrating bugs), you have some fan who did nothing more than put some of his money down say he's offended and crap all over the years of work, energy, and creativity you and all your co-workers/friends put into this product...all for his benefit.  

 

I understand being disappointed. Having waited so long for a sequel to the fallout/bg/icewind dale/torment classics, which I consider this game to be, it's frustrating that the gameplay experience in the first week has been sullied by bugs and performance issues.  But just as I played those games countless times, I'll replay this game too. They're working on a patch, and have plans for further patches (turn based mode in 1.10).  

 

So some disappointment/frustration about having to wait a bit more to get a more bugfree experience, sure. But offended? Give me a break.

 

I absolutely hate this type of argument. It doesn't, and shouldn't, matter how much blood, sweat and tears someone put into a game. What matters is if it works. Otherwise I could start using the same argument for the architect who drew up a building that ultimately ended up collapsing because of structural mistakes. "But he worked hard! We should still appreciate the effort he put into it!". Not really.

 

Also, you act as if "just putting down the money for the product" is somehow something completely inconsequential. As if those of us who may not have that much money and chose to buy this game knowing it would probably be the only one we could buy for an entire month can have that same cavalier approach to spending cash that you seemingly have. That is kind of disrespectful.

 

There's 77K+ backers with a copy and untold tens of thousands sold beyond that. There's, what, maybe a few hundred to a thousand at most posting here with serious problems? Certainly nowhere near the number of posts neccesary to hit even five percent of the first 77K+ copies (which would be over 3,500 people posting in here with bugs).

 

 

Not everyone who experiences a bug, even a severe one, will post about it. Some may choose to play on, some may read the forums and see that others have already addressed the issue and wait, some may simply wait for a patch without making a complaint and so on. Obviously you have no way of knowing how many people out of those who bought it that experience problems.

 

With the activity we do see here and with the number of people who report the same issues, it's probably a fair bet that these bugs plague a lot of copies of the game.

[ShadowTiger]

Here is what google turned up on the first page of results relating to this type of issue:

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/people-buy-broken-games,news-19952.html

http://www.cheatsheet.com/technology/the-future-of-video-games-is-buggy.html/?a=viewall

http://criticallysane.com/question-of-the-week-if-games-are-so-buggy-at-launch-why-do-we-keep-buying-them/

http://www.gamesradar.com/will-games-always-have-buggy-releases/

http://www.techspot.com/news/47040-weekend-open-forum-why-are-pc-games-so-buggy-these-days.html

 

Notice that there is basically one major article per year on this issue since 2009.
 

Obsidian has a track record of games that were buggy on release. Example:
http://kotaku.com/5968952/the-knights-of-new-vegas-how-obsidian-survived-countless-catastrophes-and-made-some-of-the-coolest-role-playing-games-ever

 

I am not saying anyone is wrong for feeling the way they do, or that we should just blindly accept bugs without complaining. I do think that if you haven't figured it out already, it is a bad idea to buy a video game on day 1. Especially Open World RPGs. That doesn't make it right... but you have to face reality. This stuff happens, and they only way to avoid it, is to wait for a week or two and make sure you want to buy the game.

 

I am a kickstarter backer. I knew this could possibly happen, but I am fine to give my money because I know eventually the game will be worth every cent (personally, way more than that). I have been waiting 2 years to play this game, even longer for a spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate. I can wait another week. Patience is a virtue!

 

Edited April 2, 2015 by ShadowTiger

[Katarack21]

 

This is why internet posts/forums tend be terrible.  I highly doubt you'd say such a rant to any of the developers if you met them in person.  Put yourselves in their shoes. You worked on a project for years, and now because of a few (admittedly frustrating bugs), you have some fan who did nothing more than put some of his money down say he's offended and crap all over the years of work, energy, and creativity you and all your co-workers/friends put into this product...all for his benefit.  

 

I understand being disappointed. Having waited so long for a sequel to the fallout/bg/icewind dale/torment classics, which I consider this game to be, it's frustrating that the gameplay experience in the first week has been sullied by bugs and performance issues.  But just as I played those games countless times, I'll replay this game too. They're working on a patch, and have plans for further patches (turn based mode in 1.10).  

 

So some disappointment/frustration about having to wait a bit more to get a more bugfree experience, sure. But offended? Give me a break.

 

I absolutely hate this type of argument. It doesn't, and shouldn't, matter how much blood, sweat and tears someone put into a game. What matters is if it works. Otherwise I could start using the same argument for the architect who drew up a building that ultimately ended up collapsing because of structural mistakes. "But he worked hard! We should still appreciate the effort he put into it!". Not really.

 

Also, you act as if "just putting down the money for the product" is somehow something completely inconsequential. As if those of us who may not have that much money and chose to buy this game knowing it would probably be the only one we could buy for an entire month can have that same cavalier approach to spending cash that you seemingly have. That is kind of disrespectful.

 

There's 77K+ backers with a copy and untold tens of thousands sold beyond that. There's, what, maybe a few hundred to a thousand at most posting here with serious problems? Certainly nowhere near the number of posts neccesary to hit even five percent of the first 77K+ copies (which would be over 3,500 people posting in here with bugs).

 

 

Not everyone who experiences a bug, even a severe one, will post about it. Some may choose to play on, some may read the forums and see that others have already addressed the issue and wait, some may simply wait for a patch without making a complaint and so on. Obviously you have no way of knowing how many people out of those who bought it that experience problems.

 

With the activity we do see here and with the number of people who report the same issues, it's probably a fair bet that these bugs plague a lot of copies of the game.

 

No, but you do get a general idea of the ratio and proportion. This is statistics, man; it's a known and quantifiable percentage and extrapolation. I played VtM:B, KOTOR 2, Pools of Radiance, etc. I know a bad launch when I see one; I know a game that is truly unfinished, that does. Not. Work.

 

This is not that. This is not anything like KOTOR 2, where the game was released with major chunks of coding literally incomplete. This isn't VtM:B, where they released an alpha product and then went bankrupt (and included 100% fail full-stop bugs). It's not even comparable.

[BugsVendor2]

 

 

This is why internet posts/forums tend be terrible.  I highly doubt you'd say such a rant to any of the developers if you met them in person.  Put yourselves in their shoes. You worked on a project for years, and now because of a few (admittedly frustrating bugs), you have some fan who did nothing more than put some of his money down say he's offended and crap all over the years of work, energy, and creativity you and all your co-workers/friends put into this product...all for his benefit.  

 

I understand being disappointed. Having waited so long for a sequel to the fallout/bg/icewind dale/torment classics, which I consider this game to be, it's frustrating that the gameplay experience in the first week has been sullied by bugs and performance issues.  But just as I played those games countless times, I'll replay this game too. They're working on a patch, and have plans for further patches (turn based mode in 1.10).  

 

So some disappointment/frustration about having to wait a bit more to get a more bugfree experience, sure. But offended? Give me a break.

 

I absolutely hate this type of argument. It doesn't, and shouldn't, matter how much blood, sweat and tears someone put into a game. What matters is if it works. Otherwise I could start using the same argument for the architect who drew up a building that ultimately ended up collapsing because of structural mistakes. "But he worked hard! We should still appreciate the effort he put into it!". Not really.

 

Also, you act as if "just putting down the money for the product" is somehow something completely inconsequential. As if those of us who may not have that much money and chose to buy this game knowing it would probably be the only one we could buy for an entire month can have that same cavalier approach to spending cash that you seemingly have. That is kind of disrespectful.

 

There's 77K+ backers with a copy and untold tens of thousands sold beyond that. There's, what, maybe a few hundred to a thousand at most posting here with serious problems? Certainly nowhere near the number of posts neccesary to hit even five percent of the first 77K+ copies (which would be over 3,500 people posting in here with bugs).

 

 

Not everyone who experiences a bug, even a severe one, will post about it. Some may choose to play on, some may read the forums and see that others have already addressed the issue and wait, some may simply wait for a patch without making a complaint and so on. Obviously you have no way of knowing how many people out of those who bought it that experience problems.

 

With the activity we do see here and with the number of people who report the same issues, it's probably a fair bet that these bugs plague a lot of copies of the game.

 

No, but you do get a general idea of the ratio and proportion. This is statistics, man; it's a known and quantifiable percentage and extrapolation. I played VtM:B, KOTOR 2, Pools of Radiance, etc. I know a bad launch when I see one; I know a game that is truly unfinished, that does. Not. Work.

 

This is not that. This is not anything like KOTOR 2, where the game was released with major chunks of coding literally incomplete. This isn't VtM:B, where they released an alpha product and then went bankrupt (and included 100% fail full-stop bugs). It's not even comparable.

 

 

Flat out wrong.

 

There will be much less forum posts than people experiencing bugs just like there is always way more views than posts. There is no point in saying what already have been said. 

 

Stacking bug is common. Everyone can potentially experience it if he / she loads at wrong location. Most people don't notice it because they are playing a game rather than checking stats every 5 minutes. It is also clearly game breaking nobody can deny it.

 

Your another argument is "just because there were bigger screw ups we should accept this one with a happy face".

 

How about no? 

[Troy4747]

 

This is why internet posts/forums tend be terrible.  I highly doubt you'd say such a rant to any of the developers if you met them in person.  Put yourselves in their shoes. You worked on a project for years, and now because of a few (admittedly frustrating bugs), you have some fan who did nothing more than put some of his money down say he's offended and crap all over the years of work, energy, and creativity you and all your co-workers/friends put into this product...all for his benefit.  

 

I understand being disappointed. Having waited so long for a sequel to the fallout/bg/icewind dale/torment classics, which I consider this game to be, it's frustrating that the gameplay experience in the first week has been sullied by bugs and performance issues.  But just as I played those games countless times, I'll replay this game too. They're working on a patch, and have plans for further patches (turn based mode in 1.10).  

 

So some disappointment/frustration about having to wait a bit more to get a more bugfree experience, sure. But offended? Give me a break.

 

I'm afraid you missed the point of this discussion.

 

They all work and put energy into their product because it will bring them money and they most likely enjoy doing it as well. Good for them.

 

you have some fan who did nothing more than put some of his money down

 

 

What more should I do? paying the money as a customer is not good enough according to you? Should I send them a letter? Should I beta test it? What is enough for a customer to do?

 

They advertise the game as a finished product and yet it is not. Someone made the decision to ship the game knowing full well it's bugged, unbalanced, having a backlog of things yet to publish and I am protesting about it.

 

There were more options to go for. They could have announced open beta for a period of time.

 

 

 

Your op says you're offended because a stacking bug made the game more easy than it was designed to be.  And you're offended as a result?  If I buy a ticket to a horror movie, am I entitled to be offended if it wasn't scary enough, or if it was too scary? There's no guarantee you'll be entertained, or your personal measure of what is 'difficult enough' will be satisfied.  Having personally solo'd Baldur's gate trilogy, etc., I don't know how you can claim this game isn't more difficult than those classics were. Regardless, offended? Pick a new word. Is it really offensive to you? If so, you're too easily offended.  Even as is, game is better than most other rpg's, and the writing is outstanding.

 

I think paying money does entitle one to expect a working product, so the bugs as to performance/quest breaking etc., I think are of a more serious nature.  But offended because the game was easier than you thought it should be on your first play through? Again, give me a break.

 

Last, if you think people get into the game development industry to make money, re-think that. 

Edited April 2, 2015 by Troy4747

[BugsVendor2]

 

 

This is why internet posts/forums tend be terrible.  I highly doubt you'd say such a rant to any of the developers if you met them in person.  Put yourselves in their shoes. You worked on a project for years, and now because of a few (admittedly frustrating bugs), you have some fan who did nothing more than put some of his money down say he's offended and crap all over the years of work, energy, and creativity you and all your co-workers/friends put into this product...all for his benefit.  

 

I understand being disappointed. Having waited so long for a sequel to the fallout/bg/icewind dale/torment classics, which I consider this game to be, it's frustrating that the gameplay experience in the first week has been sullied by bugs and performance issues.  But just as I played those games countless times, I'll replay this game too. They're working on a patch, and have plans for further patches (turn based mode in 1.10).  

 

So some disappointment/frustration about having to wait a bit more to get a more bugfree experience, sure. But offended? Give me a break.

 

I'm afraid you missed the point of this discussion.

 

They all work and put energy into their product because it will bring them money and they most likely enjoy doing it as well. Good for them.

 

you have some fan who did nothing more than put some of his money down

 

 

What more should I do? paying the money as a customer is not good enough according to you? Should I send them a letter? Should I beta test it? What is enough for a customer to do?

 

They advertise the game as a finished product and yet it is not. Someone made the decision to ship the game knowing full well it's bugged, unbalanced, having a backlog of things yet to publish and I am protesting about it.

 

There were more options to go for. They could have announced open beta for a period of time.

 

 

 

Your op says you're offended because a stacking bug made the game more easy than it was designed to be.  And you're offended as a result?  If I buy a ticket to a horror movie, am I entitled to be offended if it wasn't scary enough, or if it was too scary? There's no guarantee you'll be entertained, or your personal measure of what is 'difficult enough' will be satisfied.  Having personally solo'd Baldur's gate trilogy, etc., I don't know how you can claim this game isn't more difficult than those classics were. Regardless, offended? Pick a new word. Is it really offensive to you? If so, you're too easily offended.  Even as is, game is better than most other rpg's, and the writing is outstanding.

 

I think paying money does entitle one to expect a working product, so the bugs as to performance/quest breaking etc., I think are of a more serious nature.  But offended because the game was easier than you thought it should be on your first play through? Again, give me a break.

 

Last, if you think people get into the game development industry to make money, re-think that. 

 

 

Your don't get it do you ?

 

It works like this. They know game is unfinished and buggy. They release it anyway and pretend it is finished so that people spend $. I buy it. I play it. I beta test for them unwillingly.

 

I find this offensive.

 

If buy a bike I want to ride it NOW. Not in 2 weeks not in 3 months now.

 

I know there is a lot good things about this game but this topic is not about it. It is about simple honesty in game industry these days.

[Yonjuro]

....

Does this look to you like they have been completely taken by surprise ? Like they thought that the game was done and perfect and now they are such poor little things working over hours especially for us customers.

 

....

really guys ? you claim you have no life because of patching and UNEXPECTED issues but you have time for new features ? 

 

......

 

You also had time to analyse feedback and data to improve the balance of the game in detail. Isn't that sweet. Just for us customers.

 

Seriously just have a look for yourself it goes on and on.

 

This is not an at hoc unexpected bug fix that should never have happened. This is a marketing decision to ship first and work on it later. And I feel like the outrage is justified.

 

Before any of you fan boys will say that I am clearly out of my mind hating the patch please note I am criticising policy of releasing INTENTIONALLY unfinished product.

 

It's good they at least patch it for now instead of grabbing the money and run.

 

   In a software project like this, you have a large team. When a bug is reported there are people who know the particular subsystems that cause the bug and they are the people who will fix it. The people looking at balance issues or writing glossary entries are different people. If they didn't put those things into the patch, it doesn't mean that the patch would happen faster. If the latter group of people worked on the bugs, the patch also wouldn't happen faster because the people who know the subsystems would have to help them instead of fixing the problems.

 

 The developers can't fix a bug that the QA testers never saw. I have seen two bugs in my game, the chanter traps bug and the Raedric's Hold bug. The other bugs that have been game breaking for you didn't happen to me at all. If I was a QA tester for Obsidian, I would not have reported those bugs because I never saw them. 

 

 Seriously, take a deep breath and think. It wasn't some nefarious plot to make off with your money; it was due to problems that didn't happen during testing. If bugs are going to raise your blood pressure, you really should wait for a few patches before you buy a game. You will live a happier life that way. 

Edited April 2, 2015 by Yonjuro

[Yonjuro]

 

 

What do you get out of defending a half finished product that thousands of players are unwillingly beta testing?

I get the pleasure of knowing I'm mature and rational enough to wait a couple of weeks for some patches.

 

What's mature and rational about defending someone who treats you with disrespect? Obsidian (and many, many other devs) obviously hold a certain amount of disregard towards their own customers by essentially making them unpaid beta testers for their products, rather than actually polishing them before release (or, at minimum, warning people that the product in question is buggy).

 

 Yes, there are bugs. No, nobody is treating you disrespectfully. You are looking at the situation and imagining something that isn't happening. Nobody is sitting around at Obsidian counting your money and laughing at you. I know that you think they are, but they aren't. The sooner you realize that, the sooner you can stop being offended at something that hasn't happened

 

 

...

Good for you. I believe you if you say you're not experiencing these bugs, but the rest of us are. And it's perfectly fine that we're pissed about it.

 

  So, you think that these bugs happened to the in-house testers and they ignored them and released the game anyway because they wished to treat you disrespectfully even though you have evidence that there are people in this thread who have played the game and not been affected by the bugs?

 

 Does that still sound rational when you actually say that out loud and include all of the information that you know now?

[Emerwyn]

OPRageKid has no clue about how game development works.

 

I'll explain it to you, in a way that you may come close to understanding it, maybe.

 

 

 

Imagine that your car stops running. It's an engine problem, and getting the new engine and installing it will take about a week. So the car will spend a week in the garage, unfortunately. However, while it's in the garage, the oil guy changes the oil, the tires guy puts better tires, and the paint guy fixes a couple of scratches on the sides, and even adds some cool details to it. 

 

Finally, the engine guys are done with the engine, and it's all installed. Now you go all mad "what the hell dude, instead of fixing my engine asap you stopped to paint the scratches and change the tires?!!!?!?!!oneSHIFT"

 

So that's what you're doing here.

 

See, not every developer can deal with every kind of problem. So while the developer in charge of  X bug is dealing with that, some other is taking the time to actually keep moving the game forward in another field. Even if every damn developer worked AT ONCE on one absolute priority game-breaking bug, progress wouldn't be much faster, if at all, because generally it's one person that must edit the game version and write down the code, otherwise the different people manipulating the code would just step on each other's toes and end up messing up.

 

Anyway, pretty clear from your post count that you're just a troll that probably downloaded the game from a torrent, so if you're not happy, go away. The people who value the game and invested on it seem, in their majority, quite fine with how Obsidian is handling it.

[Smorensky]

There will always be minor and major bugs on release. It is inevitable, since as many ppl posted, bugs and problems with PC games vary wildley from one machine to the next. Some bugs are consistent on all systems, while others are unique to some components. Not to mention that BETA TESTING does not involve 100.000 ppl but rather, a fraction of that number, so accounting for every instability during a beta test is impossible.

 

As for "good old times" when games "were released when they were done and not a moment too soon", I am confused... Was that before or after computers were invented?

 

Because no matter how much I love some old games, they were as bugy as most games of today... (ok slightly less bugy). Anyone who played Fallout 1/2 knows how painfully bugy both games were... Baldur's Gate series? A ton of bugs, some of which were never actually fixed unless you downloaded all official updates, then the unofficial comunity patch and finally a specific mod... Gothic 1? Buged as hell, Gothic 2, even worse, Gothic 3, a disaster at release day. Sacred 1? The game infamous for it's "wasser" console cheat, needed to progress the main quest. VTM: Bloodlines? Where you had to use a teleport cheat code to progress the story, and most skills were broken. Starcraft 1? Where ppl demonstrated new bugs during official tournaments?

 

Were those games bad? Hell no!!! I loved every second of them and I still play them from time to time when I get nostalgic. The only difference was the gaming comunity was much smaller back then, not to mention a lot more civilized... Most ppl back then were content to play their games and occasionally post on forums if they encounterd some rather gamebreaking bug to ask for a workaround untill the patch comes out. Today I find ppl on forums posting questions such as "where can I check my skills" because they didn't even bother to look for them in game. Posts about bugs where ppl scream "why no one mentioned this" even if a post about the issue is staring them in the face, but they didn't bother reading through it because it was 2 pages long?

 

Bottom line is: STOP WHINING! If you can't wait for 24h for a patch to come out do something more productive with your time than flame all accross the forums about "being dissapointed, offended and emotionally hurt". IF YOU LIKE THE GAME play it anyway and help devs pinpoint and solve all the issues. And if you feel like "I didn't pay to be a beta tester" GO DO SMETHING ELSE UNTIL THE PATCH IS OUT!!!

 

Ok rant over, back to playing...