Didn't realize I was paying to join late beta...

[Delicieuxz]

 

The gamebreaking bugs are too commonplace for that line of reasoning. It shows that Obsidian didn't invest enough effort into searching for them. Maybe Obsidian presumed that the backer beta feedback would have given them all the testing they needed - but that again would be a sign of a soft, unempowered business-sense, and lack of motivation to make certain what the quality / consistency of bug feedback they were getting from backers was.

 

Your definition for game breaking is maybe too wide, because game don't have that many actually game breaking bugs (bugs that prevent one to play or finish the game).

 

 

Game-breaking / experience-denying, it's a literal expression. And it's there not just for some people, but for many - and when other companies have similar-sized bugs, it's also a big deal. Having one is a significant flaw. Having multiple is an incompetence.

 

Players have one chance to experience PoE as new and unknown, and delivering to people a result that denies them the experience which they gave years of monetary, feedback, and word-of-mouth support to receive is a disservice.

 

 

My own experience has involved bugs, but I've found ways to work around them. But I know the value to people who wanted to have a PatD playthrough on their first run, and found it too easy and their experience spoiled due to an XP-increasing bug they didn't know about, and I empathize with them. I also recognize the difference that not encountering game-breaking and punishing bugs would have made for my own impression and experience. It's lost reputation, revenue, glory, company equity. It's suffering to see a company make moves which harm value that they seem to not have the sight to perceive.

Edited April 3, 2015 by Delicieuxz

[Elerond]

 

 

The gamebreaking bugs are too commonplace for that line of reasoning. It shows that Obsidian didn't invest enough effort into searching for them. Maybe Obsidian presumed that the backer beta feedback would have given them all the testing they needed - but that again would be a sign of a soft, unempowered business-sense, and lack of motivation to make certain what the quality / consistency of bug feedback they were getting from backers was.

 

Your definition for game breaking is maybe too wide, because game don't have that many actually game breaking bugs (bugs that prevent one to play or finish the game).

 

 

Game-breaking / experience-denying, it's a literal expression. And it's there not just for some people, but for many - and when other companies have similar-sized bugs, it's also a big deal. Having one is a significant flaw. Having multiple is an incompetence.

 

Players have one chance to experience PoE as new and unknown, and delivering to people a result that denies them the experience which they gave years of monetary, feedback, and word-of-mouth support to receive is a disservice.

 

 

My own experience has involved bugs, but I've found ways to work around them. But I know the value to people who wanted to have a PatD playthrough on their first run, and found it too easy and their experience spoiled due to an experience-increasing bug they didn't know about, and I empathize with them. I also recognize the difference that not encountering game-breaking and punishing bugs would have made for my own impression and experience. It's lost reputation, revenue, glory, company equity. It's suffering to see a company make moves which harm value that they seem to not have the sight to perceive.

 

 

I still don't agree your definition of game breaking bugs. I agree that exploitative bugs can hinder your experience with game, but I don't see such hindrance as game breaking. And I also I don't think that first experience is that important (which is why I play beta, alpha and even earlier versions of games) although I admit that if your first experience is poor you probably don't try game again. 

 

To me it is more important that Obsidian improves my experience for future playthroughs and that game can offer me more than initial playthrough. I would also note that game can be too easy for some even without bugs.

 

It may be lost reputation, revenue, glory and whatever, but it is also reality that they didn't had infinite budget and they had already run out of KS money. Meaning that they didn't have resources to ensure that game would be bug free, which is sad reality of game development and it also means that everything that they could had gained from delaying game more could also had meant that they would not had ability to release it ever.  Also taking longer to release the game would not had necessary meant that it would not had those bugs that it has now as their resource would had been still limited and their ability find exploits and such would had been still limited. Also Obsidian has also reputation with buggy games, so one more probably don't mean lot in long run.

 

But if you are person whom first experience with game is important you should always wait for some time (month, half-year year)  before you play the game and give developers time to fix issues that are found by players that don't have same need for perfect experience as you.

[Spivo]

I was under the assumption, that despite most of their games having bugs, commercially they've nearly all been a success?

 

And I still only see annoying bugs/features, have yet to see or hear about any game-breaking ones.

But again, game-breaking is a highly subjective term.

 

I stopped playing Elder Scrolls (Daggerfall I think), because at times a Lich, or similiar, would spawn in dungeons and often nuke me to death in a few seconds without me being able to target it. That was game-breaking to me, but not to others.

I later found out there was a patch fixing this, but by then I had come across Diablo and played that instead.

Still bought Morrowwind, and ended up never buying Diablo2.

Reason for that was that despite me finding the bug "game-breaking" in Elder Scrolls, I still found the system/world/etc etc... much more entertaining and refreshing, and I also knew they didn't ignore bugs, but worked to fix them so the first game having bugs didn't matter to me.

Edited April 3, 2015 by Spivo

[Molcho]

...

 

I never presumed anything of the sort. I do not and cannot know if the most glaring bugs were known to them prior to release. All I know is that there was not enough testing, for whatever reason.

If there were enough testing, they would have found the bugs and fixed them beforehand. Some bugs will of course be marked as "known shippable", but not the ones that completely stop progress or ruin characters/save files. Presuming they knew about those bug and didn't fix them would be pretty insulting, in my opionion.

 

As for the definiton of "gamebreaking": When it comes to QA, this is not subjective. If the player's progress in the game is hindered, that's a red flag and games will not get shipped if such a bug is known. Especially not, if there is another testing instance before release (e.g. if somebody wants to release on PS4, Sony will have their own QA before release and things will get delayed if such a bug is found). 

Edited April 3, 2015 by Molcho

[Schakar]

 

 

This is how releases for every game work, nothing non-trivial gets released without the need for patching.

Every Nintendo game did.

 

 

Yep, Nintendo in the 80's. The Nintendo that pissed off developers with their Q&A so much that all the third party developers left them. Those were the good days, I guess. 

 

Also, PC/Console.

 

There is no reason or excuse for BUGs!

 

When did you heared about a CPU, GPU, Mainboard or Car which had so many BUGs when released? And much more important: what would YOU do if you buy such a BUGed product?? Would you still be as forgiving as you are when it comes to software??

 

And NO, software isn't more complicate then any other product (that's an old lie!).

And NO, you don't need to invent everything new. All important routins are invented since late 1970. The only difference between a good MUD from 1970 and PoE 2015 is the visual output (graphic instead of text). Why should someone forgive BUGs in 2015 where the solutions come from 1970 ???? Big and fat NO reason to fogive !!

 

 

Your definition for game breaking is maybe too wide, because game don't have that many actually game breaking bugs (bugs that prevent one to play or finish the game).

One is to much allready! Like the "perma crash when loading new map" or "disapearing important key and can't open this important door".

BUGs which don't let you advance are gamebreakers ... and stuff like this should NEVER EVER happen! No reason to excuse them in any way! Not even as biggest fanboy!

Edited April 3, 2015 by Schakar

[View619]

 

Just 2 weeks of further bug-testing would have make for a greatly better release. And to have released with some of the kinds of bugs in PoE that are there hurts Obsidian revenue, not just in the immediate present, where loss could be tens of thousands of copies and more, but also from their future games. Word of mouth plays a big role, and now there are a lot of people who don't feel moved to give positive word of mouth, but maybe the opposite.

 

A delayed release could hurt Obsidian's revenue as well, especially when we seem to be in a time of CRPG resurgence. When releasing software saying "just two more weeks" is dangerous because you will never have a bug-free product on launch no matter how hard you try; just the larger group of players when compared to your beta testers and QA team will bring in new scenarios that you could not have thought of or possibly tested.

 

I agree that some of these bugs are serious, but saying that Obsidian should have delayed again to try and catch every issue while they have to consider competition, the cost to continue development and the financial state of their company (OE was planning on shutting down before POE) then it should be obvious as to why they released. If you're that hung up on buying buggy software, wait a few months before you purchase.

Edited April 3, 2015 by View619

[icedon]

 

 ..playing a late beta version....

 

 ..unacceptable state. ...

 

 ..which virtually every player is likely to encounter in the normal course of completing the game...

 

 ..I'm still enjoying much of what PoE has to offer,

 

Me too!

[View619]

Double post, please delete

Edited April 3, 2015 by View619

[KingNee]

My own definition of game breaking is more lax than that. If I'm 15 hours in and I'm finding the game boringly easy even though I'm playing on hard and I then find out that my overpowered-ness is caused by a bug from 8 hours ago... then yes, very much game breaking to me. 

 

Same deal if I play for 4 hours in a session before I notice that the locust bug left weird stats in my "active stats" overview. I had to reload an old save and replay a ton of stuff. Ruined the experience or at the very least took me right out of the game. 

 

Bugs like these can be found by anyone looking on their very first playthrough of the game. 10 people with differently configured computers, playing through the entire game, would have found these bugs. So I dunno wtf QA have been doing. Maybe there were thousands upon thousands of bugs and they narrowed it down to 200 and then collectively quit. Maybe Obsidian was implementing hacks right up until release so no one got to properly test the release version?

 

In any case, only Obsidian is to blame. 

[GordonHalfman]

I suppose the solution is to stop buying Obsidian games and simply wait patiently for Nintendo to make a game like PoE.

[ednanf]

When you go online, on a discussion forum, you are likely to find more people with problems.

 

I’m not saying that there are no bugs. There clearly are, otherwise we wouldn’t have that huge patch notes. However many here, including myself, never saw game breaking (real game breaking, because some people were saying that not being able to walk is game breaking...) bugs. The only thing *I* particularly experienced was somewhat frequent crashes that happen on MacBooks, and somedays they don’t happen. I’ve played 28h already.

 

I’m not that used to play games that are this complex, but I remember, for example, that when I played Skyrim, Fallout 3, and New Vegas they were incredibly bugged. Do that justify the state of this release? No, but if you are surprised by a few bugs (yes, a few, severe but a few) then you must be new in gaming.

[shibby191]

RPG games like this, Skyrim, etc. I never make a serious playthru until at least the first couple patches just to root out any game breaking bugs.  Sometimes they can't retroactively fix something major and thus you got to start over.   So far with PoE I've been pretty bug free but I've read of the 3 major ones and so kept myself from doing those.  So I've just been dinking around with builds, trying things out, getting used to the mechanics and such and in a couple more weeks I'll look at doing my first serious "play same character for 50+ hours" playthru.  I usually restart at least 3 times before settling in on a character build I like anyway.  I think I had 30 hours into Skyrim before I settled on my first serious playthru.  Just the nature of games like this, for me anyway.

 

Honestly for an Obsidian game I've felt this release has been pretty bug free.  

[Molcho]

When you go online, on a discussion forum, you are likely to find more people with problems.

 

I’m not saying that there are no bugs. There clearly are, otherwise we wouldn’t have that huge patch notes. However many here, including myself, never saw game breaking (real game breaking, because some people were saying that not being able to walk is game breaking...) bugs. The only thing *I* particularly experienced was somewhat frequent crashes that happen on MacBooks, and somedays they don’t happen. I’ve played 28h already.

 

I’m not that used to play games that are this complex, but I remember, for example, that when I played Skyrim, Fallout 3, and New Vegas they were incredibly bugged. Do that justify the state of this release? No, but if you are surprised by a few bugs (yes, a few, severe but a few) then you must be new in gamin

 

I don't want to sound rude, but  it doesn't matter what *You* personally never experienced. You might never have been to Nepal, but I can assure you it exists. People aren't surprised that there are bugs, but that there are bugs that outright stop/destroy the whole progress, that none of the testers found them and that some people are actively trying to deny/justify their existence.

Edited April 3, 2015 by Molcho

[Schakar]

I suppose the solution is to stop buying Obsidian games and simply wait patiently for Nintendo to make a game like PoE.

Much better solution would be to not be that short minded and set higher standarts.

 

A Computer Game is a product like every other product. If released with to many BUGs => 14 days to fix them, then money back.

 

Hell, you US guys sue everyone for everything. Even if someone is so STUPID (normal human brain above the IQ of a sandwich tells you: DO NOT DO IT) to put his dog in a microwave he sue the producer of the microwave and get's millions of $. Can't belive you are so damn forgiving when it comes to software .....

Edited April 3, 2015 by Schakar

[ednanf]

 

When you go online, on a discussion forum, you are likely to find more people with problems.

 

I’m not saying that there are no bugs. There clearly are, otherwise we wouldn’t have that huge patch notes. However many here, including myself, never saw game breaking (real game breaking, because some people were saying that not being able to walk is game breaking...) bugs. The only thing *I* particularly experienced was somewhat frequent crashes that happen on MacBooks, and somedays they don’t happen. I’ve played 28h already.

 

I’m not that used to play games that are this complex, but I remember, for example, that when I played Skyrim, Fallout 3, and New Vegas they were incredibly bugged. Do that justify the state of this release? No, but if you are surprised by a few bugs (yes, a few, severe but a few) then you must be new in gamin

 

I don't want to sound rude, but  it doesn't matter what *You* personally never experienced. You might never have been to Nepal, but I can assure you it exists. People aren't surprised that there are bugs, but that there are bugs that outright stop/destroy the whole progress, that none of the testers found them and that some people are actively trying to deny/justify their existence.

 

I don’t want to sound rude, but the first thing I did was to acknowledge their existence and also recognised their severity.

What I said was it is not surprise to see bugs in this kind of game. The other 3 games that I mentioned as exemple had grave bugs. Skyrim on PS3 was, for instance, condemned to be unplayable after around 60h because the save files would grow so big that it would render the game like a PowerPoint presentation.

 

Does that excuse the flaws in this game? Absolutely not. But the tentative patch notes are up, they are releasing every fix possible as soon as it is possible. There is absolutely no point in complaining, unless you are reporting a new bug.

Edited April 3, 2015 by ednanf

[nipsen]

"virtually every player is likely to encounter in the normal course of completing the game."

 

Clearly and objectively untrue, as the many many posters on this very forum will tell you. 

 

Are you seriously arguing that something that can be expected to eventually happen during gameplay - is actually a rare exception, if one person on this forum say they did not see it?

 

And that if someone on the forum insists it is an exception, then that it is an exception is also "clearly and objectively true"?

 

Did you really say that?

 

I don't know, Josh or Brandon, or whoever - I could put your staff through an emergency course in philosophy and ontology, for free, if you'd like.

 

If that's not actually needed, maybe they need a crash-course in manners. Because then the entire purpose of that post was to say that anyone noticing an obvious problem with the game should be ignored. Basically, "if you don't kiss my a**, then f' off".

 

Of course, that's how staff folks have dealt with everything so far, so I suppose I shouldn't be surprised.

[k1rage]

ive seen games release in much, much worse states, anyone remember fallout new Vegas, or the most recent Sim city, or Empire total war lol

 

compared to those this game is a clean as can be lol

[Yellow Rabbit]

I suppose the solution is to stop buying Obsidian games and simply wait patiently for Nintendo to make a game like PoE.

Which will never happen and therefore we will never have games like PoE. Is that what you want? (not sure if it was a joke/sarcasm, though. Feel free to clarify).

 

I don't know, maybe I've been made numb to this sort of things by playing Morrowind, Gothic 3 and the mess called DA:I on release, but I really don't feel like blaming Obsidian for the quality of their work. Modern games released when devs cannot afford to keep testing them anymore, not when they are truly ready, and there's nothing to be done about that. Bugs can be patched out, and Obsidian have worked pretty damn fast in this regard with PoE. So... yeah. Keep whining, that's fine enough way to spend time.

[Valmy]

Seems like all the major bugs all got squashed in a week to me so not too bad, and it seems they correct the problems retroactively so people will not have to restart. I have to say I never thought my weird psychological dislike of double-cliking would ever be a bonus.

[Molcho]

I don’t want to sound rude, but the first thing I did was to acknowledge their existence and also recognised their severity.

 

What I said was it is not surprise to see bugs in this kind of game. The other 3 games that I mentioned as exemple had grave bugs. Skyrim on PS3 was, for instance, condemned to be unplayable after around 60h because the save files would grow so big that it would render the game like a PowerPoint presentation.

 

Does that excuse the flaws in this game? Absolutely not. But the tentative patch notes are up, they are releasing every fix possible as soon as it is possible. There is absolutely no point in complaining, unless you are reporting a new bug.

 

 

1. You said that you and many other people never encountered any game breaking bugs, making a funny remark on the side about what some silly people consider game breaking. There is no point in saying that. The information is not relevant.

2. Just because other titles have bad releases, this doesn't mean that every developer can neglect QA as a result.

3. There is a point in complaining: Obsidian might do it better next time around

4. There is, indeed, no point in complaining about people who complain.

Edited April 3, 2015 by Molcho

[Valmy]

 

I suppose the solution is to stop buying Obsidian games and simply wait patiently for Nintendo to make a game like PoE.

Much better solution would be to not be that short minded and set higher standarts.

 

A Computer Game is a product like every other product. If released with to many BUGs => 14 days to fix them, then money back.

 

Hell, you US guys sue everyone for everything. Even if someone is so STUPID (normal human brain above the IQ of a sandwich tells you: DO NOT DO IT) to put his dog in a microwave he sue the producer of the microwave and get's millions of $. Can't belive you are so damn forgiving when it comes to software .....

 

 

I love people who don't know crap lecturing me about my country. Yes there are attorney's who make their bread doing petty lawsuits and yes they are a problem and yes there are horror stories. But this is hardly some cultural value we all participate in, this is a minority of jerks.

 

And the reason game software is not like every other product is because:

first it is just a game, my life and my business are not at stake here.

secondly they can easily get fixed later and thanks to auto-patching I often do not ever know there even was a bug. 

thirdly as consumers in this industry we know what can reasonably be expected and generally if you get a game at release there will be bugs. Software is hard.

 

Sucks there were bugs. I would have preferred there were not. Glad they seem to have gotten them fixed so quickly.

Edited April 3, 2015 by Valmy

[Amentep]

 

"virtually every player is likely to encounter in the normal course of completing the game."

 

Clearly and objectively untrue, as the many many posters on this very forum will tell you.

 

Are you seriously arguing that something that can be expected to eventually happen during gameplay - is actually a rare exception, if one person on this forum say they did not see it?

 

And that if someone on the forum insists it is an exception, then that it is an exception is also "clearly and objectively true"?

 

Did you really say that?

 

That's not how I'm reading it.  To me, he's saying that many posters have not encountered them (based on posts) and that therefore the conclusion that they are encountered by virtually every player was untrue.

 

If it was me, I'd argue that you should never use a self-selecting group of people who care enough to post on a message board to make statistical extrapolations to larger populations and/or draw definitive conclusions but that's possibly just me.  Some people encountered the bugs, some people haven't; beyond that I'd be wary of quantifying a universal experience.

 

Because then the entire purpose of that post was to say that anyone noticing an obvious problem with the game should be ignored. Basically, "if you don't kiss my a**, then f' off".

 

 

I believe the post was actually cautioning about trying to bolster ones argument by using hyperbolic statements, more than anything else. YMMV. 

Edited April 3, 2015 by Amentep

[Schakar]

ive seen games release in much, much worse states, anyone remember fallout new Vegas, or the most recent Sim city, or Empire total war lol

 

compared to those this game is a clean as can be lol

Nobody deny, that PoE is "relative" well released. That's why I am stil "relative" polite . Assassin's Creed, Elite Dangures and other debacel still in memory.

 

http://www.bild.de/spiele/spiele-news/computerspiele/gravierende-qualitaetsmaengel-der-herbst-der-spiele-desaster-assassins-creed-unity-driveclub-halo-38755204.bild.html

Yea, Bild (tabloid journalism, I know). But this articel hit's it pritty much and there should be harder laws against unfinished/broken software products where we, the paying custumers, get more power ... and ways to get our money back.

 

The biggest problems are:

a) law courts mostly have no damn clue about software/IT

b) the global problem (how to sue Ubisoft from the US/Australia or Microsoft from Europe?? Not even talking about companies in Rusia/Asia like Wargaming/Sony)

c) the cost for a singel person

Edited April 3, 2015 by Schakar

[Tigranes]

 

 

"virtually every player is likely to encounter in the normal course of completing the game."
 
Clearly and objectively untrue, as the many many posters on this very forum will tell you.

 
Are you seriously arguing that something that can be expected to eventually happen during gameplay - is actually a rare exception, if one person on this forum say they did not see it?
 
And that if someone on the forum insists it is an exception, then that it is an exception is also "clearly and objectively true"?
 
Did you really say that?

 

 

What's with the hugely hyperbolic extremes? "EITHER VIRTUALLY EVERYONE HAS IT OR YOU'RE SAYING NOBODY HAS IT". 

 

Fact: there are serious bugs affecting at least some people, let's use as example, the Raedric's Hold bug. (I know this, because I have to read most of this forum and I've read many posts from affected people.)

Fact: there are many people who are also saying the bug never affected them. (I know this, because, see above.)

Fact: the bugs affect some people, and not others. Nobody knows exactly how many.

Fact: to say "virtually every player is likely to encounter..." is clearly and objectively untrue, as I initially stated.

 

I mean, I'm not saying anything profound here. It just sounds like you're frustrated with bugs you experience (rightfully so), but then go off claiming something about the nature of game development and insisting you know what Obsidian should have done, and then getting more offended by what you think I said.

 

As I have said elsewhere, some bugs are there, and they do really suck for people who experience them, and there's every 'right' to complain about your experience and ask Obsidian to fix things ASAP. I don't see what is gained for you by making hyperbolic claims that aren't true and don't really pertain to your cause.

[sim01981]

I honestly can't see a problem, if Obsidian are releasing patches to fix these bugs. The game has been out for a week. A week! I agree that some of the bugs that people are encountering can be show-stoppers and the fact that I can't see my characters' cloaks (mac user) is irritating, but as far as I can tell, these things are being addressed, and quickly too (if they're fixed with the patch, anyway!).

 

As I see it, when you encounter a bug, check the technical support forum to see if it's been raised. If it has, great, post that you encountered it too. If not, start a thread and explain what happened. Isn't that how these things get fixed? Complaining on forums that you'll never buy a game from developer A or developer B ever again doesn't help anyone. Except to vent about how frustrating and terrible it is. First world problems, I suppose.