WTF is wrong with Obsidian?

[Luj1]

I think worst thing I've come across so far was the fact that you have to subscribe to nexus for over 50bucks just to be able to download the IE modding tool! I need it to fix a game breaking bug. Has anyone else had this same frustration?

 

you can download for free from nexus

[ktchong]

So... is Pillars of Eternity very buggy?

 

I thought they finally moved away from releasing buggy products after Dungeon Siege III and South Park.  Apparently not.

Edited April 23, 2015 by ktchong

[Flouride]

So... idiots are taking over?

I thought idiots were finally eradicated from this world. Apparently not.

[Yellow Rabbit]

I thought idiots were finally eradicated from this world. Apparently not.

You'll need to eradicate around 90% of humanity to achieve that. Good luck.

[Humanoid]

Assuming no breeding pairs survive.

[ktchong]

I was asking an honest question.  I have not played Pillars of Eternity, or even followed its development, release or reviews.  I've been busy and haven't had any time for gaming in the past couple months or so. So I have no idea what the situation is.

 

I read the topic and first message of this thread.  I assumed the original poster was unhappy with Pillars of Eternity because the game is buggy.  I know about Obsidian's history, (i.e., Black Isle and Troika,) and how their past releases had always been plagued with bugs and glitches upon released, and how their games have taken dedicated fans many, many years and even decades to fix with "unofficial patches".  However, I read that Obsidian finally cleaned up their act with Dungeon Siege III and South Park: The Stick of Truth, which I have played and know are relatively stable games with surprisingly few bugs.  So I thought, at last, Obsidian's buggy days are in the past.

 

I really have no idea what is going on with Pillars of Eternity, so I asked an honest question: is it really buggy and glitchy?  Like how Fallout, Vampires Bloodline, etc. etc., their older games used to be?  Has Obsidian reverted to their old habit?  What's going on?

Edited April 23, 2015 by ktchong

[Yellow Rabbit]

I really have no idea what is going on with Pillars of Eternity, so I asked an honest question: is it really buggy and glitchy?  Like how Fallout, Vampires Bloodline, etc. etc., their older games used to be?  Has Obsidian reverted to their old habit?  What's going on?

Pillars of Eternity on release had exactly four bugs which could have been called game breaking with certain stretch of imagination, and they only occured with about 50% of players (hardware/os dependant, I guess). Aside from that, there was a honest bunch of minor but annoying bugs. For cRPG of this magnitude I'd call it relatively clean release, and two patches since then cleaned up almost all the mess anyway.

 

As for OP, he has very foggy idea of what he's talking about, so Flouride's post could be applied to him just as well. Maybe it is.

Edited April 23, 2015 by Yellow Rabbit

[Flouride]

Vampire Bloodlines wasn't made by Obsidian. It was made by Troika.

[Luj1]

 What's going on?

 

 Its a watered-down, bastardized isometric RPG not worth playing for more than a week (for nostalgia purposes only). And yeah its buggy as hell.

[Hurlshort]

 

 What's going on?

 

 Its a watered-down, bastardized isometric RPG not worth playing for more than a week (for nostalgia purposes only). And yeah its buggy as hell.

 

 

Or it's a deep and engaging isometric RPG set in a fantastically realized world with a wonderful story, that will give you about 50+ hours of enjoyment.  Your mileage may vary.  

[Tigranes]

'Buggy as hell' would mean every CRPG in the last 25 years was at least 'buggy as hell', possibly buggy as several hells collapsed into a giant vortex of helldom. 

 

Every game has the 20 people who sit on the forums complaining for weeks about how this is the 'worst/buggiest game evar' because they got some bugs.

[Gfted1]

Every game has people who sit on the forums for weeks handwaving how bugs are "minor / didn't happen to them / are part of the territory / must be due to user error", because they didn't experience those bugs (or read the tech support forum ). As usual, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

[Elerond]

'Buggy as hell' would mean every CRPG in the last 25 years was at least 'buggy as hell', possibly buggy as several hells collapsed into a giant vortex of helldom. 

 

Every game has the 20 people who sit on the forums complaining for weeks about how this is the 'worst/buggiest game evar' because they got some bugs.

 

Compared to games like DA:O and Fallout 3 that constantly crash and DA:O's wonderful slowing bug when you played it over 3/4 hours was also very wonderful thing. And in Fallout 3 I especially enjoyed dropping in dark void in even floor. So on and so forth. PoE has have quite minor bugs, which of course don't necessary help those who encountered worst of them.

Edited April 23, 2015 by Elerond

[Amentep]

To be fair, bugs are a part of the territory. I haven't played a computer game since the C64 days that didn't have some kind of bugs.

[Hurlshort]

It seems like they've been fairly active in patching and trying to fix bugs, so I don't really hold it against them.

[Malcador]

I had expected them to have about 3 or 4 emergency patches out by now.

[Luj1]

Some game breaking bugs are still not fixed after 30 days.

 

But its important that limericks who have 0% impact on gameplay are instantly changed because some tranny got butthurt and cried to Josh

[Flouride]

So there's your reason for all the butthurt. Good to know.

[Luj1]

uh no... there's even better joke in the game now..... im butthurt coz 2 game breaking bugs still not fixxed

[Amentep]

All they had to do with the memorial was review submission, type it in file, press "save" and double checking final results.  I'm sure they totally could have solved 5-6 critical bugs in that time.  Such a waste of their resources...

[Flouride]

All they had to do with the memorial was review submission, type it in file, press "save" and double checking final results.  I'm sure they totally could have solved 5-6 critical bugs in that time.  Such a waste of their resources...

 

Indeed. I bet they went on a two month holiday right after fixing that issue, since it took so much effort to change it.

[BAdler]

I know that most of you know this, but I will reiterate...

 

Making games is hard. Making complex RPGs is even harder. Take it from a person that has worked on a few different styles of games, these sprawling RPGs are insanely complex in comparison. Systems are weaved into a bunch of other systems and even the tiniest change can cause a wave of instability throughout the game.

 

The thing that lots of people forget is that a game is a special piece of software. What I mean is that we can plan out a game completely - all of the design, art, programming, audio, etc. - and it can be executed perfectly... and the game may still be horrible. Proper planning and designing are essential in making great games, but it won't get you there alone. Lots of our ideas sound great on paper, but in practice they fall flat. Making great games require myriad adjustments and changes.

 

Sometimes these changes are minor and don't require adjustments to a previously implemented system. Those are the best kind of changes. Other times you need to make sweeping changes to a system that have long term, rippling repercussions. We try to avoid those types of changes, but sometimes it is the only way to make something fun. As a real world example, there were some classes in PoE that went through some pretty drastic changes from their original designs. This happened because, once we started using the classes in an actual game environment, we found they weren't as fun or useful as we wanted. We could have left the original designs in place (and maybe it would have given us a more polished experience), but it might have made a game that wasn't as fun.

 

All of this isn't to say that the project's management team is without blame. Far from it. None of these decisions are made in a vacuum and for every planned feature we change, we should be taking it out of something else - either a time buffer or another feature (or, if you are lucky, you can get more budget/time). That means if we want to revamp one of our classes, the responsible thing to do would be to see how much it will cost (in resources and time) to implement these changes and pull that from something else. It is a constant push and pull and I will be the first to admit that I can always do better in this department.

 

Overall, I was very pleased with what we accomplished on the limited budget and resources. Nowadays games of this size have budgets anywhere from three to ten times what our team was working with.

 

The important thing is to take the lessons learned from PoE and move it forward into our future projects. Much easier said than done, though.

[HoonDing]

All games out there are an unplayable buggy mess, except for the ones I like.

[majestic]

All they had to do with the memorial was review submission, type it in file, press "save" and double checking final results.  I'm sure they totally could have solved 5-6 critical bugs in that time.  Such a waste of their resources...

 

Not to mention the completely inane assumption that the person who worked on changing the limerick would have worked on fixing some other bug instead. Next on the list are any complaints about Obsidian already working on the expansion instead of "fixing them annoying bugs!!!11oneone fix you'Re gaem1111" as if those working on new content would be the same people currently working on the patch(es).

 

Because, well, it's still 1990 and games are made by three people. Yeah. Sounds about right.

[ilhdr]

The only problem of obsidian is the apparently lack of any kind of mid-long term plans.