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

 

 

 

 

[Anelor]

Video Games are full of bugs, ok I got it. However as a buyer I don't care to hear justifications about the difficulty of realize a good product. Nowadays, in video games world, the truth is that you buy a product different from what is supposed to be. It is advertised as something close to a complete product, making you to believe that is ready and enjoyable at all, so rising your expectations, and instead when is out we get a beta-like game. A kind of deception, that's how I consider this advertising.

 

Does the game need one foocking year of patching? Ok, I accept this. Unacceptable is the current state of alleged final product, and above all the delusive expecations fed by propaganda.  

Edited April 8, 2015 by Anelor

[LatisARG]

Geez.. some ppl need to relax.

[Guest BugsVendor]

Geez.. some ppl need to relax.

 

For the most part this is a civilized discussion on what is OK in the gaming industry.

 

You have nothing intelligent to add ?

Edited April 8, 2015 by BugsVendor

[Alexey Kryshen]

So you've never programmed stuff with major bugs in it in 10 years?

 

I sorely doubt that.

 

Programmed ? Of course! Released ? Never, except exactly one. For just a couple of reasons:

1. Spend a lot of time to make perfect architecture
2. Defensive coding
3. Competent QA team

Good architecture leave no places for most stupid "bugs", defensive coding style & techniques forced across team by team lead(s) with apropriate monitoring (code review, etc.) leave no places for pesky "bugs". In most cases defensive coding allows to detect these "bugs" at first run after they are was introduced (in simplest cases via the appropriate assertions and invariants checks across the code). I personaly not even count these as a bugs because it mostly never even reach the QA team and detected by programmer himself during write-run-check cycles. For me bugs are the errors which are detected by QA team (or, the worst case - by user) and which are really not obvious errors in code. It hard to believe but my team never released any "game-braking" bugs. Actually we never released any major bugs, thanks to 3 points I have mentioned above (well, it is also because quality of the products was a priority for our company)

 

I have only one relatevely serious bug released in my practice. It was threads synchronization bug. It reveal itself once in a 2-3 month (for a QA machine run in 24/7 mode, just to say), so it was really tough beast. It was never fixed because whole subsystem were refactored and rewritten (not due to the bug but for other purposes).

 

So, PoE situation is not normal under any circumstances. It is not normal to have first-day patch, it is not normal to have tons of obvious bugs detected by users in fisrt 3 days after product release. I would say it is unacceptable, especially for bugs in game mechanic, which are essential for such game types. Does we complain about the annoing but harmless UI bugs ? No! We complain about broken abilities which could be detected by QA team before release, we complain about broken combat math which could be perfectly self-tested by set of good unit-tests or via other techniques. So we complain agains the things which never should occur for released product.

 

I hope you get my point now.

[Hassat Hunter]

Well, if you only had 1 release in those 10 years no wonder you never had that much users finding the big bugs all of you missed. And no, I don't believe the one product that was released had no major bugs either.

You even admitted it yourself you had a serious bug, which couldn't even be fixed! And then you expect other programmers to do just do this with the snap of a hand?

 

You know what 10 years of game development gets you? Duke Nukem Forever.

 

It is not normal to have first-day patch

Every single game has it in these days. Cause delaying releases cost money and there's no point for the team to fiddle-thumb between gold and release.

 

It is not normal to have tons of obvious bugs detected by users in fisrt 3 days after product release.

Except in today's game market... it really is. If people can play at all these first days that is. Remember the many always-online games which just crashed and burned till more than a week?

 

I would say it is unacceptable, especially for bugs in game mechanic, which are essential for such game types.

Sadly, money doesn't grow on trees, already delaying it 3 months used up a lot of funds, and the perfect QA is only attainable if you got excess money like Blizzard. Other developers don't have the luxury of having excessive exceeding funds to survive long delays just for polishing. That's simply reality. Call reality unacceptable doesn't change the laws of commerce and capitalism.

 

We complain about broken abilities which could be detected by QA team before release, we complain about broken combat math which could be perfectly self-tested by set of good unit-tests or via other techniques. So we complain agains the things which never should occur for released product.

If I've got a dollar for each time people mentioned something would be "obvious during QA" during their complaint I would be a rich man. If I only got the dollar if they spoke the thruth, I would be a very poor man.

 

There's a funny thing called "strange things can happen"... fix problem A, and suddenly new B, C and D appear. Connection? There doesn't appear to be any, but it's happening none-the-less. Even if one were to test all fixes, something entirely unrelated seemingly can just butcher itself. Having modded the Oddessey engine game The Sith Lords only made that so much more apparent. Not always could the "WHY?" be answered.

It's simply impossible to do this with a controlled team and catch absolutely everything a million+ crowd could experience. If you think otherwise, I doubt you're a professional programmer.

[gh0stwizard]

I did not red an every post, this is my 2 cents:

• Obsidian is not AAA gamedev studio. And never been such. That's why kickstarter's company for PoE was started.
• A time is awesome thing. If you will start playing in PoE 1-2 years later, you will find it a very solid product.
• Great games were made with a soul. Many of them still have a lof of bugs. Do I need to remember? Fallout 1/2, Arcanum, VtMB and so on... PoE, IMHO, is one of such games.

Stop whining and just wait a bit for a couple of patches!

 

--

 

I am understand bakers, but they should unsterstand too that kickstarter program means two things: a short development time and a great content. Are you expected from Obsidian that they are magicians or wizards? PoE is a huge and interesting game, you got what you paid. Be realists, you did not pay for an ideal game. And be a bit patient.

[christian.weinz]

Many voices say that we should be more patient instead of complaining. Patience is not the problem at all. I could have waited a couple of months more until the release. The problem is that the release wasn't worth the version number 1.0.

[Plazmid]

 

So you've never programmed stuff with major bugs in it in 10 years?

 

I sorely doubt that.

 

Programmed ? Of course! Released ? Never, except exactly one. For just a couple of reasons:

1. Spend a lot of time to make perfect architecture
2. Defensive coding
3. Competent QA team

Good architecture leave no places for most stupid "bugs", defensive coding style & techniques forced across team by team lead(s) with apropriate monitoring (code review, etc.) leave no places for pesky "bugs". In most cases defensive coding allows to detect these "bugs" at first run after they are was introduced (in simplest cases via the appropriate assertions and invariants checks across the code). I personaly not even count these as a bugs because it mostly never even reach the QA team and detected by programmer himself during write-run-check cycles. For me bugs are the errors which are detected by QA team (or, the worst case - by user) and which are really not obvious errors in code. It hard to believe but my team never released any "game-braking" bugs. Actually we never released any major bugs, thanks to 3 points I have mentioned above (well, it is also because quality of the products was a priority for our company)

 

I have only one relatevely serious bug released in my practice. It was threads synchronization bug. It reveal itself once in a 2-3 month (for a QA machine run in 24/7 mode, just to say), so it was really tough beast. It was never fixed because whole subsystem were refactored and rewritten (not due to the bug but for other purposes).

 

So, PoE situation is not normal under any circumstances. It is not normal to have first-day patch, it is not normal to have tons of obvious bugs detected by users in fisrt 3 days after product release. I would say it is unacceptable, especially for bugs in game mechanic, which are essential for such game types. Does we complain about the annoing but harmless UI bugs ? No! We complain about broken abilities which could be detected by QA team before release, we complain about broken combat math which could be perfectly self-tested by set of good unit-tests or via other techniques. So we complain agains the things which never should occur for released product.

 

I hope you get my point now.

 

Hey Alex,

 

What was the name of the game your company released, if you can tell us? At least describe it Like the core system (Epic's Unreal engine, Gamebryo, etc.) and the target platform (PC, Xbox, etc.) What was the size of the dev and QA team, and what was your ballpark budget?

[geobio]

A bit offended by the false promise that PoE would be a BG spiritual successor, on this I feel pretty bad because of the loose of freedom and all the limitations mechanics, + many simple features that were in BG are inexistent here.

 

For the rest, I hope Obsidian will learn to polish there game in a better way than this one.

[gh0stwizard]

Many voices say that we should be more patient instead of complaining. Patience is not the problem at all. I could have waited a couple of months more until the release. The problem is that the release wasn't worth the version number 1.0.

No one tells you be a tester. My examples: I had waited about a half+ year for Skyrim. I had waited about 1 year for Witcher and W2 each. I had waited patches for FNV regularly. There are plenty ways to relax, just find something else instead PoE if you could not play. Or you may continue create posts how the game is bad, this is also some type of time wasting

[Katarack21]

 

 

 

 

It doesn't really matter what you say. The majority of players experienced a fairly smooth gameplay with only minor issues; this is why the forums weren't flooded with tens of thousands of people saying the game doesn't work.

*looks at the literal flood of posts in this forum about all the bugs, game breaking and otherwise, and triple that on the steam forum...*

 

uh, anyone ever tell you you have a very special view on reality before?

 

if not, let me be the first.

 

 

 

Do you see 20 or 30 thousand people posting in here about how the game doesn't work? I don't. It's *nothing* like the experience with actually unfinished, buggy, failed launches. If you were there for the VtM:B launch, you'd know the difference.

 

do you ever see 20 thousand people posting independent posts on a game forum... ever?

 

gee, I wonder why that is...

 

 

 

I saw thousands and thousands of posts about ToEE uninstalling peoples hard drives. That's a thing. I saw the entire industry collectively spasm with rage as peoples Windows were uninstalled from buggy incomplete gates. I've seen games that failed to launch, games that were released with features locked so they could sell them later as DLC. I've seen games sold in brick-and-mortar stores where the last 1/4th of the game literally wasn't there--it just dead ended.

 

Does this game have bugs? Yes. And for some people who play the game, some of those bugs are game-breaking. But the level of outrage being expressed would be fitting only if the game were far worse than it is. Any game of this complexity will have bugs upon release--this game has no more and no less then any large-scale game made on an unfamiliar engine by a major developer. The people who made it are working *hard* at fixing all the bugs they can find. There's another patch due this week, and another one after that already being worked on.

 

Obsidian isn't attacking you. Obsidian isn't using your, or deliberately screwing you. Quite the opposite--they are all hard at work doing what they can to make this game better.

[Alexey Kryshen]

Well, if you only had 1 release in those 10 years no wonder you never had that much users finding the big bugs all of you missed. And no, I don't believe the one product that was released had no major bugs either.

You even admitted it yourself you had a serious bug, which couldn't even be fixed! And then you expect other programmers to do just do this with the snap of a hand?

 

You know what 10 years of game development gets you? Duke Nukem Forever.

 

It is not normal to have first-day patch

Every single game has it in these days. Cause delaying releases cost money and there's no point for the team to fiddle-thumb between gold and release.

 

It is not normal to have tons of obvious bugs detected by users in fisrt 3 days after product release.

Except in today's game market... it really is. If people can play at all these first days that is. Remember the many always-online games which just crashed and burned till more than a week?

 

I would say it is unacceptable, especially for bugs in game mechanic, which are essential for such game types.

Sadly, money doesn't grow on trees, already delaying it 3 months used up a lot of funds, and the perfect QA is only attainable if you got excess money like Blizzard. Other developers don't have the luxury of having excessive exceeding funds to survive long delays just for polishing. That's simply reality. Call reality unacceptable doesn't change the laws of commerce and capitalism.

 

We complain about broken abilities which could be detected by QA team before release, we complain about broken combat math which could be perfectly self-tested by set of good unit-tests or via other techniques. So we complain agains the things which never should occur for released product.

If I've got a dollar for each time people mentioned something would be "obvious during QA" during their complaint I would be a rich man. If I only got the dollar if they spoke the thruth, I would be a very poor man.

 

There's a funny thing called "strange things can happen"... fix problem A, and suddenly new B, C and D appear. Connection? There doesn't appear to be any, but it's happening none-the-less. Even if one were to test all fixes, something entirely unrelated seemingly can just butcher itself. Having modded the Oddessey engine game The Sith Lords only made that so much more apparent. Not always could the "WHY?" be answered.

It's simply impossible to do this with a controlled team and catch absolutely everything a million+ crowd could experience. If you think otherwise, I doubt you're a professional programmer.

 

Why to be so offensive ? If you've never seen reliable programs, it does not mean they do not exist, right ? Moreover, you deliberately distorted the meaning of my words in favor of the position you are defending, which is not good. The Poe was implemented very badly, why not recognize this obvious fact and do not attack people who simply stating this fact. When you buy broken car you have the way to compensate this. When you buy broken software you have no way to compensate this. In a case of PoE Obsidian could just stop fixing the endless bugs in the game and we all will end up with useless piece of data on HDD, money will be just throw away. This is why it is absolutelly necessery to force software developers to provide reliable software at release date. Please note that I am the developer himself, so I said it not because I am angry user.

 

You are right about the delayed project & related cost of it, but for PoE in this case it would be far more fair in respect to players to release under the Early Access terms. Obsidian would take the money to finish the development and users would be not offended by false promising. Isn't ? I think most of us here would agreed that PoE in current state is most suitable for Early Access than for Production Release ?

Edited April 9, 2015 by Alexey Kryshen

[Stahlbart]

  

Next time you buy anything that doesn't work don't complain. Rotten food at supermarket? Don't go and complain. Ordered a new mobile and it's broken? Don't complain, you just do it to vent. It doesn't help, people will still buy phones even if some of them are broken.

 

[..]

 

Buy broken products till the end of your life with a happy face.

 

Some of you should really read that and think about it.

 

So I'm selling a broken product and say: "yea, but I had no time to make it "perfect", so just pay me and don't complain! I'll fix that. Later. Someday. Maybe. Look, I work hard and everybody says I'm a nice guy. And the thing is kinda working, isn't it? And it'll be good, once it's done. Plus: everybody does that, so what?"

 

With the attitude I've seen from some users in this thread It's no wonder the gaming industry is getting away with this kind of behaviour.

 

Why defend this? Are some of you such fanboys? That's.... irritating, to say the least. I like this game alot, too. That makes it even sadder to stumble upon bugs everyday.

 

It is obviously a problem of the whole industry (which I honestly didn't really recognize), but with people like in this thread, that just accept the fact they buy an unfinished product, that doesn't change.

 

Like I already said, it's sad.

Especially for a crowd-funded game.

 

So go and buy stuff, put it on the shelf, browse the internet and try to figure out when you can finally enjoy it.

I'm not going to do that.

I put my hopes in things like Kickstarter. To give developers the opportunity to realize the product they want to create, giving them time (and money) to do so. But obvisously that doesn't change or revolutionize anything.

Like anybody cares what I do. But when there's more people, maybe... just maybe something changes.

Going back to buying GOTYs, with all the addons released for a small price seems to be the way. At least for me.

 

Things change. That's the way of life, eh?

[Alexey Kryshen]

 

 

So you've never programmed stuff with major bugs in it in 10 years?

 

I sorely doubt that.

 

Programmed ? Of course! Released ? Never, except exactly one. For just a couple of reasons:

1. Spend a lot of time to make perfect architecture
2. Defensive coding
3. Competent QA team

Good architecture leave no places for most stupid "bugs", defensive coding style & techniques forced across team by team lead(s) with apropriate monitoring (code review, etc.) leave no places for pesky "bugs". In most cases defensive coding allows to detect these "bugs" at first run after they are was introduced (in simplest cases via the appropriate assertions and invariants checks across the code). I personaly not even count these as a bugs because it mostly never even reach the QA team and detected by programmer himself during write-run-check cycles. For me bugs are the errors which are detected by QA team (or, the worst case - by user) and which are really not obvious errors in code. It hard to believe but my team never released any "game-braking" bugs. Actually we never released any major bugs, thanks to 3 points I have mentioned above (well, it is also because quality of the products was a priority for our company)

 

I have only one relatevely serious bug released in my practice. It was threads synchronization bug. It reveal itself once in a 2-3 month (for a QA machine run in 24/7 mode, just to say), so it was really tough beast. It was never fixed because whole subsystem were refactored and rewritten (not due to the bug but for other purposes).

 

So, PoE situation is not normal under any circumstances. It is not normal to have first-day patch, it is not normal to have tons of obvious bugs detected by users in fisrt 3 days after product release. I would say it is unacceptable, especially for bugs in game mechanic, which are essential for such game types. Does we complain about the annoing but harmless UI bugs ? No! We complain about broken abilities which could be detected by QA team before release, we complain about broken combat math which could be perfectly self-tested by set of good unit-tests or via other techniques. So we complain agains the things which never should occur for released product.

 

I hope you get my point now.

 

Hey Alex,

 

What was the name of the game your company released, if you can tell us? At least describe it Like the core system (Epic's Unreal engine, Gamebryo, etc.) and the target platform (PC, Xbox, etc.) What was the size of the dev and QA team, and what was your ballpark budget?

 

 

I would prefer not to disclose such information. I hope you will not be offended.

[Plazmid]

Hey Alex,

 

What was the name of the game your company released, if you can tell us? At least describe it Like the core system (Epic's Unreal engine, Gamebryo, etc.) and the target platform (PC, Xbox, etc.) What was the size of the dev and QA team, and what was your ballpark budget?

 

 

I would prefer not to disclose such information. I hope you will not be offended.

 

Nope, not offended at all. Just curious.

Cheers

[Alexey Kryshen]

 

It is obviously a problem of the whole industry (which I honestly didn't really recognize), but with people like in this thread, that just accept the fact they buy an unfinished product, that doesn't change.

 

 

You are absolutelly right. And I said that not as user, but as developer.

[Hassat Hunter]

Why to be so offensive ? If you've never seen reliable programs, it does not mean they do not exist, right ? Moreover, you deliberately distorted the meaning of my words in favor of the position you are defending, which is not good. The Poe was implemented very badly, why not recognize this obvious fact and do not attack people who simply stating this fact. When you buy broken car you have the way to compensate this. When you buy broken software you have no way to compensate this. In a case of PoE Obsidian could just stop fixing the endless bugs in the game and we all will end up with useless piece of data on HDD, money will be just throw away. This is why it is absolutelly necessery to force software developers to provide reliable software at release date. Please note that I am the developer himself, so I said it not because I am angry user.

 

You are right about the delayed project & related cost of it, but for PoE in this case it would be far more fair in respect to players to release under the Early Access terms. Obsidian would take the money to finish the development and users would be not offended by false promising. Isn't ? I think most of us here would agreed that PoE in current state is most suitable for Early Access than for Production Release ?

 

I'm not being offensive. Or hostile. I'm just a realist. And stable doesn't mean bugfree. PoE is stable too, it never CTD'ed on me. I know you probably mean a different kind of stable, but there's no bugless piece of softwere. Ever.

Even the most tested stuff, like automobiles mentioned elsewhere, can something slip past the net. If you talk to yourself this is not the case, you're just fooling yourself.

 

I'm just saying that there have been many games, less complex than PoE, who released worse. And where given complete slack. Think every single Bethesda game. But no, Obsidian leaves 1 in, and the crusade starts. Why would they even bother making complex games if the players just smack you down for it, I sometimes wonder. But then, game designing is a personal own little hell.

 

Feel free to poke at Microsoft and tell them to only release Windows 10 when absolutely zero pre-release fixes are necessary. They will laugh in your face, since that basically means releasing never at all. But do tell me about any software that never gets updates. My browser? Constant. Flash? Constant. Windows? Constant. And they all could decide to quit any times. Sure would be hell to use a PC if one's thoughts work so.

 

Yeah, I heard "Developer" but 10 year and 1 release doesn't exactly fill me with you having much actual world-experience. Unless you expect QA to work 10 years on a game before release that's been made in 1.5 years...

 

It wouldn't fit under EA since it's not an unfinished game. EA is meant for when more actual FEATURES are to be added later on, not for releasing full games that aren't patched yet. If EA is going to encompass those we might aswell just throw the entire system out of Steam in the first place.

[Guest BugsVendor]

I did not red an every post, this is my 2 cents:

• Obsidian is not AAA gamedev studio. And never been such. That's why kickstarter's company for PoE was started.
• A time is awesome thing. If you will start playing in PoE 1-2 years later, you will find it a very solid product.
• Great games were made with a soul. Many of them still have a lof of bugs. Do I need to remember? Fallout 1/2, Arcanum, VtMB and so on... PoE, IMHO, is one of such games.

Stop whining and just wait a bit for a couple of patches!

 

--

 

I am understand bakers, but they should unsterstand too that kickstarter program means two things: a short development time and a great content. Are you expected from Obsidian that they are magicians or wizards? PoE is a huge and interesting game, you got what you paid. Be realists, you did not pay for an ideal game. And be a bit patient.

 

Lets analyse this in detail because a lot of people here seem to share your views.

 

Your first point 100% wrong, every single bit of it.

 

Obsidian is not AAA gamedev studio - was this mentioned somewhere? Did that say in the game description? No it didn't.

 

So what is it that you assume? Should every costumer go and make one month research of old articles and reviews and old forums posts to determine whether the company is "AAA" or not?

 

So what if yo don't do that research.  Let's say you are 10 years old little derp and your mother buys you this game. It doesn't work so she goes and complain and everyone can then use your magical argument : DIDN'T YOU KNOW THAT OBSIDIAN IS NOT AN 'AAA' DEVELOPER ? HAHAHA... YOU SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER. It is completely stupid. Your are a gamer and you know all the news and everything so you assume this is general knowledge but it is not. There is no excuse for shipping a broken product.

 

That's why kickstarter's company for PoE was started.  The kick starter campaign was started because the company was running low on money . Nothing wrong with that ofc.

 

However, do you people always hear about the poor developers squished like flies by the big and terrible publishers that always make the worse decisions? It is always the publisher's fault that games are buggy and they don't contain everything the devs intended and on and on. We all know this crap.

 

Guess what? Obsidian gets founded by the public and all the issues are still there. If this would be a scientific experiment I would conclude that absence of the publisher doesn't influence the game quality outcome.

 

It seems to me talking about gaming industry in general that this publisher - devs "war" is a good cop bad cop sweet little deal. They can sell crap for good money and nobody gets to be blamed. Publisher is that financial dude that doesn't know much about games so we can't blame them rationally. And the devs, the sweet saints they did all they could but it was not enough...

 

So just to conclude this point. They released a bugged, broken game without a publisher that is always the reason. Interesting.

 

To your 2nd point:

 

• A time is awesome thing. If you will start playing in PoE 1-2 years later, you will find it a very solid product.d

I bet that's the truth but what does it imply? Because we are fans and supporters and we bought the product after release we are unwilling beta testers so that later and some unknown point in time someone can come and enjoy the game without bugs? And we do it for free, yet they, a commercial company will enjoy the fruits of our labour for years to come!

 

Just look what the German supporters are doing for the translation of the game. There is a topic with like 500 posts and basicly the whole community is translating the game for obsidian for free. Uhm ? If you are a German player and it says on the box that game was translated into your language shouldn't you expect the translation to, like, be there? Is it too much?

 

3rd point.

 

• Great games were made with a soul. Many of them still have a lof of bugs. Do I need to remember? Fallout 1/2, Arcanum, VtMB and so on... PoE, IMHO, is one of such games.

How about one time we get a game that is made with a soul and works. Are those criteria too mutually exclusive? It's not like there was a publisher this time to blame it on...

 

Stop whining and just wait a bit for a couple of patches!

 

I probably sound like a broken record but here I go again.

 

If you buy a laptop and it doesn't work. Don't be angry just send it back to them with a happy face. Wait 2 weeks, even thou it is paid in full for you product. It comes again. It doesn't work again. But it is fine, just send it over again. Stop whining! We will send you a working one, you know, eventually.

 

I am understand bakers, but they should unsterstand too that kickstarter program means two things: a short development time and a great content. Are you expected from Obsidian that they are magicians or wizards? PoE is a huge and interesting game, you got what you paid. Be realists, you did not pay for an ideal game. And be a bit patient.

 

What kick starer has to do with short development I don't know. Someone explain to me please?

 

As to the "great content" it is there. It's just that I can't enjoy it so what good is it?

 

I don't expect them to be magicians or wizard, I expect them to be programmers and designers. They are not 5 years old. They know they professions and it is a shame that they sell broken products.

 

I did not get the game I expected because I am one of those weird trouble makers that expect A WORKING PRODUCT if I buy something.

 

As to being patient:

 

Many voices say that we should be more patient instead of complaining. Patience is not the problem at all. I could have waited a couple of months more until the release. The problem is that the release wasn't worth the version number 1.0.

 

This +1.

 

 

Many voices say that we should be more patient instead of complaining. Patience is not the problem at all. I could have waited a couple of months more until the release. The problem is that the release wasn't worth the version number 1.0.

No one tells you be a tester. My examples: I had waited about a half+ year for Skyrim. I had waited about 1 year for Witcher and W2 each. I had waited patches for FNV regularly. There are plenty ways to relax, just find something else instead PoE if you could not play. Or you may continue create posts how the game is bad, this is also some type of time wasting

 

 

No one tells me to be a tester?  They deliberately misinform please by selling it as a complete product when it is in beta state.

 

You have waited, you are such a smart one aren't you. When you buy a car next time and it won't start, it is because you could have waited a 1,5 years before someone in the garage will get around to it and fix it. You should have known better.

 

I just wanted to end this lengthy post by coming back to the whole publisher kick starter thing.

 

All these people that say they were running out of money please note that they gathered almost 4 times as much as they originally intended.

 

So I guess if they only gathered the original goal the game would have never been made?

[Kai]

OP I just... While you may have some points, claiming that you are offended basically makes me want to throw up in my mouth and automatically disagree with everything you say. Claiming you are offended sort of makes you take up a position of a helpless victim who've been victimized by a heinous crime, crying out for help while making a sharp line in the sand where the only 2 options are to agree or disagree with you. Which I absolutely despise since the truth/answer is usually somewhere in the middle. Claiming to be offended is a great way to annoy the hell out of a lot of people who might otherwise be inclined to agree with you. Disappointed? Fine. Angry? Fine. Annoyed? Fine. Offended? No, just no.

 

Also, games are very different from cars or computers (or a movie) as far as what to expect from initial performance, they are an entirely different kind of craftmanship and usually they are not perfected in the beginning. I simply don't expect any game to perform to 100% with zero bugs at release while I do expect my new computer with 1 day on the market to do. I don't expect a new operating system (like win10) to perform perfectly since bugs in software are far more common than in hardware.

 

Starting PoE with these expectations in my mind, I haven't been disappointed at all (played the game the day after it was released), though I also kept an eye on the bugs forum here between sessions to see which possible game breaking bugs that might appear. Had none of them so I guess I was lucky. But I do expect a lot more from a game that's been on the market for a year or so since again, this seems to be the norm for the vast majority of games.

 

Also, Shadows of Revan in The Old Republic MMO was the latest game (or expansion) I played on release day and it was a complete cluster**** as far as game breaking bugs, awful performance and using early access for bug testing, not to mention costing those who played it early a ton of in game credits ingame no refunds. Compared to that PoE was wonderfully smooth but I also realize by expectations for new releases might be VERY low as well.

[Guest BugsVendor]

Also, games are very different from cars or computers (or a movie) as far as what to expect from initial performance, they are an entirely different kind of craftmanship and usually they are not perfected in the beginning. I simply don't expect any game to perform to 100% with zero bugs at release while I do expect my new computer with 1 day on the market to do. I don't expect a new operating system (like win10) to perform perfectly since bugs in software are far more common than in hardware.

 

I don't blame you for not reading the entire lengthy thread but it was already established that non of us critiquing this release minds minor bugs.

 

I don't know what is your profession / experience but there is a lot of products that we consume in daily life that are more complex than computer games. Yet standards that consumers demand are extremely high. For computer games there seem to be no standards at all. You can literally release a broken product and people will defend it to death on the forums I really don't understand that at all. Software development is not rocket science.

 

There is also a lot of children around here that don't understand at all that this is business. Don't get me wrong there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. But when I see that 500 post long forum on repairing German translation do you know what I think? Next time those poor souls will get even worse translation. Because why spend money on a feature that not only nobody minds when broken but also will get repaired and have a "Proper German Translation Mod" on line. They contribute to someone else's product. In my times, and I am not that old, moding was about adding new content on top of the game to have some more fun. Not fixing it. 

[gh0stwizard]

Obsidian is not AAA gamedev studio - was this mentioned somewhere? Did that say in the game description? No it didn't.

 

So what is it that you assume? Should every costumer go and make one month research of old articles and reviews and old forums posts to determine whether the company is "AAA" or not?

 

So what if yo don't do that research.  Let's say you are 10 years old little derp and your mother buys you this game. It doesn't work so she goes and complain and everyone can then use your magical argument : DIDN'T YOU KNOW THAT OBSIDIAN IS NOT AN 'AAA' DEVELOPER ? HAHAHA... YOU SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER. It is completely stupid. Your are a gamer and you know all the news and everything so you assume this is general knowledge but it is not. There is no excuse for shipping a broken product.

A good costumer should know everything about a product before he decided to buy it. Are not you know that? What I can say about upcoming Witcher 3? I will not buy it until there is will be "Director's Cut" version. Because I know by myself that CD Projekt Red are unable to create well optimized games in day when a game released. Yes, their games are buggy-less, but they are not an optimized well. Did you read complains of people with topest hardware about why their W/W2 is running too bad? I have not a topest hardware, but I know that almost every current game is able to running well with mid-settings.

 

2 cents about AAA titles. AAA title is came from Japan, specifically, it's a Sony's standard. The Sony's standards claims that a single company is able to publish only up to 5 games per year. Such games should be well tested and almost bugs free. Sony will check itself if you try to publish a buggy game and if needed your company will be penalized with some sort of measures to prevent such things in a future. AAA gamestudio is a studio which publish a lot of games for Sony Playstation per year. Do I need to continue?

 

That's why kickstarter's company for PoE was started.  The kick starter campaign was started because the company was running low on money . Nothing wrong with that ofc.

 

However, do you people always hear about the poor developers squished like flies by the big and terrible publishers that always make the worse decisions? It is always the publisher's fault that games are buggy and they don't contain everything the devs intended and on and on. We all know this crap.

 

Guess what? Obsidian gets founded by the public and all the issues are still there. If this would be a scientific experiment I would conclude that absence of the publisher doesn't influence the game quality outcome.

 

It seems to me talking about gaming industry in general that this publisher - devs "war" is a good cop bad cop sweet little deal. They can sell crap for good money and nobody gets to be blamed. Publisher is that financial dude that doesn't know much about games so we can't blame them rationally. And the devs, the sweet saints they did all they could but it was not enough...

 

So just to conclude this point. They released a bugged, broken game without a publisher that is always the reason. Interesting.

PoE was published by Paradox Interactive not by Obsidian itself. FYI, Paradox Interactive have $140 mio revenue (wikipedia, 2011). It is in 35 times more than Obsidian has collected due a kickstarter program. You may blame Paradox Interactive for bugs in PoE. You will be right, because no one here is know how much money invested by Paradox Interactive into a PoE's development.

 

Anything else you said is your personal complains. You are wearing a pink glasses where everything in a world is perfect. You had pointed about a broken laptop. I have one of such: Alienware M11x (1 revision). It was broken by design. Thousands of replacements were made only because one detail was badly designed. And what was changed for me? Nothing. Because no one able to create such good laptops. And later I bought M11x 3rd revision, almost an ideal gamer's laptop, it is also good for a work . All you have said that you are whining when there is a chance to whining.

 

Our disscussion has no correct speaker. There are some who are more or less patient. I am a very patient. I am recommend you be a same. Who will able to create a true BG successor? Of course, it will be Obsidian. I heard that they bought D&D license, so there is high chance that PoE 2 will using D&D mechanics

[Ceranai]

dont feed the troll...

[Guest BugsVendor]

 

Obsidian is not AAA gamedev studio - was this mentioned somewhere? Did that say in the game description? No it didn't.

 

So what is it that you assume? Should every costumer go and make one month research of old articles and reviews and old forums posts to determine whether the company is "AAA" or not?

 

So what if yo don't do that research.  Let's say you are 10 years old little derp and your mother buys you this game. It doesn't work so she goes and complain and everyone can then use your magical argument : DIDN'T YOU KNOW THAT OBSIDIAN IS NOT AN 'AAA' DEVELOPER ? HAHAHA... YOU SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER. It is completely stupid. Your are a gamer and you know all the news and everything so you assume this is general knowledge but it is not. There is no excuse for shipping a broken product.

A good costumer should know everything about a product before he decided to buy it. Are not you know that? What I can say about upcoming Witcher 3? I will not buy it until there is will be "Director's Cut" version. Because I know by myself that CD Projekt Red are unable to create well optimized games in day when a game released. Yes, their games are buggy-less, but they are not an optimized well. Did you read complains of people with topest hardware about why their W/W2 is running too bad? I have not a topest hardware, but I know that almost every current game is able to running well with mid-settings.

 

2 cents about AAA titles. AAA title is came from Japan, specifically, it's a Sony's standard. The Sony's standards claims that a single company is able to publish only up to 5 games per year. Such games should be well tested and almost bugs free. Sony will check itself if you try to publish a buggy game and if needed your company will be penalized with some sort of measures to prevent such things in a future. AAA gamestudio is a studio which publish a lot of games for Sony Playstation per year. Do I need to continue?

 

 

A good consumer you made me laugh . So there are bad and good consumers. Good ones know what products to buy and bad ones don't. And it is bad consumers flout if they buy a broken product!

 

I would love to observe how you would react spending a few thousand dollars on some broken product and being told it's your fault that you bought it because you are a bad consumer :D:D

 

Thanks for making me smile