Should POE's Final release have been called "Early Access?"

[Baladas]

"Anything is product that is produced by somebody, so forum posts, threads etc. are products. Did you know that your forum post are protected by copyrights because they are products in eyes of law, which is why forums EULA's must say that forum owner has right to do anything to your product that they want in their forums."

 

Erm, but it is not for sale as a product.

 

Show me any evidence that a Forum post is classified as a business product marketed for sale in the same way a video game or any other piece of marketed retail product.

 

There are different kinds of product. This posts is not a marketed, retailed, product for sale and neither is is promoted as such in any way. You are not my customer and I am not selling this "product" to you.

 

*Sheesh*

 

[Gromnir]

am seeing links and quotes from the genesis poster that bolster the general observations that games were, in the past, more stable at release.

 

...

 

okie dokie.  why did the genesis poster buy poe? the genesis poster has loads o' support showing how the industry has increasingly devolved insofar as day 1 stability is concerned.  is this something he/she learned yesterday?  he has provided zero support for the notion that poe is anymore buggy than games o' a similar size released in the last... +15 years.  so, knowing how ill-made is the games o' 2015, why buy?  is complete irrational to buy with an expectation that game will suffer from endemic bugs and then to complain that game were indeed buggy.

 

is a simple and obvious solution to the genesis poster's problem. poe were a kickstarter and we were a kickstarter backer.  we paid for poe years ago.  however, for any traditional commercial sale o' a game title, we wait 6 months (or more) before purchasing any title.  yeah, day 1 releases o' ALL game titles is unstable.  if one wishes to play a genuine stable title, the solution is obvious and easy and economically responsible: wait.  wait 6 months and the title in question will invariably be more stable and will likely be cheaper.  if enough people follow such advice, developers will indeed make game releases that is more stable as their day 1 profits will suffer.  

 

*shrug*

 

regardless, to knowing buy a newly released title, a title that is no more buggy than is typical or ordinary in the industry, and then to complain that yet another title is indeed buggy is... silly.  genesis poster is silly.

 

but hey, who doesn't want an al pacino moment?

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BofddwtPBPw

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

ps  we don't think the genesis poster's opinion is "totally rouge."  am s'posing one could make a link to marxist ideology... or cosmetics.  

[Baladas]

 

 

 

Sure, I am in the minority, but that does not invalidate my personal opinion based on mine, and others, experience.

 

 

What if I say that in my opinion it does, does that mean that your experiences were invalid then?

 

 

Opinions that aren't backed by facts are just meaningless things that don't have any validity in them. In my opinion. Yeah in my opinion this is the fact. IMO. So much my opinion that it is just the opinion.

 

No one else opinion ever invalidates anyone else's experiences.

 

Otherwise we would all be forced to have the same experience of everything.

 

"I like roller coasters, (opinion) they are fun and exiting and give me an adrenaline rush (experience)"

 

"I hate roller coasters (opinion) they make me throw up and are not fun (experience)"

 

One does not invalidate the other. 

 

"POE is buggy for me (experience) and the release we got should have been early access, or at least the game should have been properly beta tested before release. (opinion)"

 

"POE is bug free for me (experience) and I think it was a finely polished production and did not need further development before release. (opinion)"

 

Again, one does not invalidate the other.

[Tigranes]

 

I am happy you have your opinion.

 

 

 

 

It is not one I agree with and you are over analyzing my words and demanding unreasonable evidence to back up an opinion, an opinion shared by other people (see my links) that I do not feel I have to justify by "evidence."

 

I am not alone in my thinking and neither are you.

 

I might make this my new signature for my posts. 

 

http://www.tomsguide...news-19952.html

 

"No one likes to see something he or she hates in the mirror. But the cold, hard truth of the matter is that we, as gamers, have created an environment in which releasing a bug-free, big-budget game in a timely manner is almost impossible."

 

 

None of that is a problem, and I'm happy for us to discuss opinions. This is simply a different stance than your original one, which I disagreed with. 

 

It is quite obviously the case that buggy games are the norm in the industry and have been for decades. And yes, players' willingness to buy into the hobby, the corporatisation of the industry and its frenetic release cycles, the way in which every game 'reinvents the wheel' and engines were never really standardised to any high degree, etc. all contributed to this situation. 

 

If you want to argue that we should not have allowed the industry to become this way and we need to take a stand and push for less buggy games, OK. But that's got very little to do with POE and it is a general argument. And I think if we were to push for less buggy games, we need to be aware that there would be tradeoffs - e.g. for the same budget and resources we would have to expect less ambitious games. 

 

If you want to argue that POE is an unforgivably buggy case relative to other games within the current industry norm, that's again a different case - and there you would have no credibility. The history of CRPGs stands testament. Your rabbit hole on experience and opinion here is strange, because it is you that is arguing that POE should be marked early access - something that would affect everybody. So what exactly is the standard you're trying to use? Is there an objective case that POE is buggier than other CRPGs? No. Is there a case that POE should be marked early access to encourage the industry to be less buggy? Not really. Is there a case that the majority of people believe it should have been marked early access? No - as your own poll shows, you are overwhelmingly in the minority. 

 

Did you have a buggy experience with POE? That sucks. Complain. Should we always push devs to have less bugs? Yes, because bugs suck. Could you, based on your experience, have an opinion that POE is super buggy? Sure. That's about as far as it goes. You haven't produced any data or reasoning that could support the rest - so I'm not even sure what exactly your argument is.

 

[Baladas]

am seeing links and quotes from the genesis poster that bolster the general observations that games were, in the past, more stable at release.

 

...

 

okie dokie.  why did the genesis poster buy poe? the genesis poster has loads o' support showing how the industry has increasingly devolved insofar as day 1 stability is concerned.  is this something he/she learned yesterday?  he has provided zero support for the notion that poe is anymore buggy than games o' a similar size released in the last... +15 years.  so, knowing how ill-made is the games o' 2015, why buy?  is complete irrational to buy with an expectation that game will suffer from endemic bugs and then to complain that game were indeed buggy.

 

Because I read threads and reviews that initially expressed that the game was relatively bug free at launch.

 

Then after playing for some time people discovered some bugs that were missed because the full game was never beta tested, only the beta backer which was only a sample of the game, then more bugs were found, then some more and so on.....

 

So I compiled a bug list.

 

Then I made this post.

 

That is the story so far.

[abaris]

Sorry, the whole premise of not comparing POE to other titles is bugged - pun intended.

 

In my time, I have played some serious garbage when it first came out. Back in the days of hardcopies I usually put them on ebay as soon as possible. I've also played things, for lack of a better word, that cannot be described on this board without using some choice words, the forum software would instantly censor. With Skirim, on release, I could celebrate the return of the bluescreen of death for the first time in a decade. And I wasn't the only one, as posts on different boards showed. Not by a long chalk.

 

I've also played abysmal console ports, where the developers didn't feel the need to make them more playable on PC.

 

POE is none of these. It has it's flaws, but my definition of unfinished is certainly different.

[Elerond]

 

am seeing links and quotes from the genesis poster that bolster the general observations that games were, in the past, more stable at release.

 

...

 

okie dokie.  why did the genesis poster buy poe? the genesis poster has loads o' support showing how the industry has increasingly devolved insofar as day 1 stability is concerned.  is this something he/she learned yesterday?  he has provided zero support for the notion that poe is anymore buggy than games o' a similar size released in the last... +15 years.  so, knowing how ill-made is the games o' 2015, why buy?  is complete irrational to buy with an expectation that game will suffer from endemic bugs and then to complain that game were indeed buggy.

 

Because I read threads and reviews that initially expressed that the game was relatively bug free at launch.

 

 

Then you probably didn't read threads in PoE beta section of this forum. Because if you did then I don't know how you could had such notion that game is relatively bug free, except in context on comparing it to other Obsidian tittles in past, which most reviews did by claiming that game is not full of game breaking issues as Obsidian's past tittles.

 

But even though PoE was not bug free when it was released its release version was playable from start to finish on most machines out there, which is arguably same as relatively bug free especially on todays standards.

[Gromnir]

"Because I read threads and reviews that initially expressed that the game was relatively bug free at launch."

 

in spite o' your reading o' all the aforementioned links that show just what a low standard the industry has for day 1 stability?  five minutes looking at the PoE tech support board and patch updates woulda' given you a notion o' game stability. take some personal responsibility. your behavior was foolish and contributes to the ENDEMIC problem your links suggest exist.

 

and be specific.  generalities get you nowhere.  you can compile a bug list for bg2 as it exists today, 28 may 2015, and it will have hundreds o' bugs.  compiled a list tells us nothing.  how is poe more buggy or noteworthy buggy.

 

foolish and lacking any kinda specifics.  what response do you expect?

 

HA! Good Fun!

Edited May 28, 2015 by Gromnir

[Nakia]

 

People have had different EXPERIENCES but one EXPERIENCE does not invalidate another and vice versa.

Sorry, but that's how the internet works.

 

Meanwhile, back in reality, anyone with eyes and an internet connection can easily peruse the tech support section and see that there were many challenges across all platforms. People naturally want to jump to the defense of thing they like, even if it prevents them from seeing the forest for the trees.

 

Not sure I understand what you are saying.   Yes the developers have made a lot of changes, not only bug fixing but rebalancing and adding stuff.  They have also done it quickly and have respond quite well to bug reports.  Kudos to them.

 

My disagreement with  the OP is his insistence that PoE was broken and unplayable.  Perhaps I misunderstand him but to me a broken game is one I can not play or complete.  

 

Obviously my experience was very different from his.  My experience may not invalidate his but his experience does not invalidate mine.

 

Also when someone attacks something or someone I love my reaction is to defend.  I have made the effort to try and be polite.

 

For the record,  Gfted1, I am merely responding as one of the dissenting posters in this thread and not taking your post personally.

[Baladas]

"Did you have a buggy experience with POE? That sucks. Complain. Should we always push devs to have less bugs? Yes, because bugs suck. Could you, based on your experience, have an opinion that POE is super buggy? Sure. That's about as far as it goes. You haven't produced any data or reasoning that could support the rest - so I'm not even sure what exactly your argument is."

 

 

My argument is that the industry standard is wrong, in my opinion, and that POE being released as it is, is a symptom of the industry standard.

 

The "Early Access" argument is that the game was released unfinished anyway, in my opinion, in a state that would have been better described as early access, in my opinion, as I have played early access games that are more polished than POE. Such as Airmech and Srtife. Complexity is an issue, sure, but 1000's of bugs?

 

Also, why was the physical disk version released only at patch 1.04 if patch 1.01 was the finished version? Put 1.01 on the disk, its finished right?

 

The physical disk is the game people would have got "back in the old days" pre digital download. Thus 1.04 is more comparable to a finished product than 1.01, which was a beta test at least, in my opinion.

 

Therefore 1.01 should be considered "early access" or at least "beta" and 1.04, being the version on the physical disk, should be the "finished product", in my opinion.

[Elerond]

 

Also, why was the physical disk version released only at patch 1.04 if patch 1.01 was the finished version? Put 1.01 on the disk, its finished right?

 

 

I think you don't know what finished version means.

[Baladas]

"Because I read threads and reviews that initially expressed that the game was relatively bug free at launch."

 

in spite o' your reading o' all the aforementioned links that show just what a low standard the industry has for day 1 stability?  five minutes looking at the PoE tech support board and patch updates woulda' given you a notion o' game stability. take some personal responsibility. your behavior was foolish and contributes to the ENDEMIC problem your links suggest exist.

 

and be specific.  generalities get you nowhere.  you can compile a bug list for bg2 as it exists today, 28 may 2015, and it will have hundreds o' bugs.  compiled a list tells us nothing.  how is poe more buggy or noteworthy buggy.

 

foolish and lacking any kinda specifics.  what response do you expect?

 

HA! Good Fun!

This is ONE game I have brought on release in a LONG time, I usually dont, but this game triggered my Baldurs Gate nostalgia and I had high hopes becase over the net the actual release of the game was pipped as "relatively bug free". So I brought it at release, played it, experienced bugs, stopped playing it, read about more bugs, then decided to wait for a stable version.

 

In the meantime I have created this post and poll, (which is not a product for sale by the way, despite some other peoples opinion) for discussion, originally meant for POE specifically, but has now become about more than that.

 

Which is fine.

 

Oh, and please, no personal attacks (like this "your behavior was foolish")  on people. Not on me or on anyone. OK?

[Baladas]

 

 

Also, why was the physical disk version released only at patch 1.04 if patch 1.01 was the finished version? Put 1.01 on the disk, its finished right?

 

 

I think you don't know what finished version means.

 

According to Obsidian:

 

http://forums.obsidian.net/blog/7/entry-184-patch-notes-106-in-progress/

 

"The product was deemed a finished product because Obsidian considered it a finished product. It is really as simple as that."

 

I disagree.

 

Simple as that.

[Nakia]

 

am seeing links and quotes from the genesis poster that bolster the general observations that games were, in the past, more stable at release.

 

...

 

okie dokie.  why did the genesis poster buy poe? the genesis poster has loads o' support showing how the industry has increasingly devolved insofar as day 1 stability is concerned.  is this something he/she learned yesterday?  he has provided zero support for the notion that poe is anymore buggy than games o' a similar size released in the last... +15 years.  so, knowing how ill-made is the games o' 2015, why buy?  is complete irrational to buy with an expectation that game will suffer from endemic bugs and then to complain that game were indeed buggy.

 

Because I read threads and reviews that initially expressed that the game was relatively bug free at launch.

 

Then after playing for some time people discovered some bugs that were missed because the full game was never beta tested, only the beta backer which was only a sample of the game, then more bugs were found, then some more and so on.....

 

So I compiled a bug list.

 

Then I made this post.

 

That is the story so far.

 

What?  Obsidian has a group of !A people.  I have no idea how many but they tested the game and there were people assigned to play the game as their job.  

 

Badass, I am truly sorry you had such an awful time with the game.  I mean that but you do come across as trying to prove that your experience is some how the major one when as far as I can tell it is a small minority one.  That does happen and can actually benefit the devs when properly reported.  

Edited May 28, 2015 by Nakia

[Gromnir]

 

"Because I read threads and reviews that initially expressed that the game was relatively bug free at launch."

 

in spite o' your reading o' all the aforementioned links that show just what a low standard the industry has for day 1 stability?  five minutes looking at the PoE tech support board and patch updates woulda' given you a notion o' game stability. take some personal responsibility. your behavior was foolish and contributes to the ENDEMIC problem your links suggest exist.

 

and be specific.  generalities get you nowhere.  you can compile a bug list for bg2 as it exists today, 28 may 2015, and it will have hundreds o' bugs.  compiled a list tells us nothing.  how is poe more buggy or noteworthy buggy.

 

foolish and lacking any kinda specifics.  what response do you expect?

 

HA! Good Fun!

This is ONE game I have brought on release in a LONG time, I usually dont, but this game triggered my Baldurs Gate nostalgia and I had high hopes becase over the net the actual release of the game was pipped as "relatively bug free". So I brought it at release, played it, experienced bugs, stopped playing it, read about more bugs, then decided to wait for a stable version.

 

In the meantime I have created this post and poll, (which is not a product for sale by the way, despite some other peoples opinion) for discussion, originally meant for POE specifically, but has now become about more than that.

 

Which is fine.

 

Oh, and please, no personal attacks (like this "your behavior was foolish")  on people. Not on me or on anyone. OK?

 

your behaviour was foolish.  am not calling you a fool, but your actions were irrational and foolhardy.  you got how many links in this thread telling us 'bout the sorry state o' release stability o' games.  you is trying to convince folks just how woeful is the industry standards for stability.  nevertheless, you went ahead and bought a title w/i a short period of time following release?  how would you characterize such behaviour in light o' your criticisms and link history?

 

...

 

does your behavior, in light o' your posts, seem at all rational?  

 

http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/irrational

 

again, reading the tech support boards for five minutes woulda' clarified any misconceptions you mighta' had from reading... which reviews?  no specifics once again.

 

feel personally attacked?

 

HA!  Good Fun!

[Baladas]

 

 

am seeing links and quotes from the genesis poster that bolster the general observations that games were, in the past, more stable at release.

 

...

 

okie dokie.  why did the genesis poster buy poe? the genesis poster has loads o' support showing how the industry has increasingly devolved insofar as day 1 stability is concerned.  is this something he/she learned yesterday?  he has provided zero support for the notion that poe is anymore buggy than games o' a similar size released in the last... +15 years.  so, knowing how ill-made is the games o' 2015, why buy?  is complete irrational to buy with an expectation that game will suffer from endemic bugs and then to complain that game were indeed buggy.

 

Because I read threads and reviews that initially expressed that the game was relatively bug free at launch.

 

Then after playing for some time people discovered some bugs that were missed because the full game was never beta tested, only the beta backer which was only a sample of the game, then more bugs were found, then some more and so on.....

 

So I compiled a bug list.

 

Then I made this post.

 

That is the story so far.

 

What?  Obsidian has a group of !A people.  I have no idea how many but they tested the game and there were people assigned to play the game as their job.  

 

Badass, I am truly sorry you had such an awful time with the game.  I mean that but you do come across as trying to prove that your experience is some how the major one when as far as I can tell it is a small minority one.  That does happen and can actually benefit the devs when properly reported.  

 

I agree I am in the minority.

 

I am just vocally defending my position because some people seek to establish that it is not based on any real stance or shared with anyone else.

 

The 15% of people who think it should have been either in early access or longer in development have not said anything and that's fair enuff.

 

Does not mean that I will not speak my part.

 

And no, I do not think my experience is the major one. I just want to be clear where I stand and why is all.

[Gromnir]

http://www.polygon.com/2014/11/24/7277363/broken-video-games-are-the-new-norm-what-developers-need-to-do-to-fix

 

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=976550

 

http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/25huew/eli5_how_can_nintendo_release_relatively_bugfree/

 

http://conversation.which.co.uk/consumer-rights/video-game-publishers-bugs-broken-drm-piracy/

 

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

 

those is all your links... links that is showing us how broken is industry insofar as game stability is concerned.  you posted the links.  hey, you are preaching to the choir.  Gromnir doesn't buy new releases.  we recognized long ago how irrational it were to complain o' pervasive bugged games and to continue buying 'em on day 1.  fine. color us convinced.  even so, you claim that you were caught unawares by the state o' poe stability?

 

...

 

https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&es_th=1&ie=UTF-8#q=pillars%20of%20eternity%20bugs&es_th=1

 

http://forums.obsidian.net/forum/105-patch-beta-bugs-and-support/

 

you ignored the advice from your own links and did not bother to do any kinda due diligence. is on you.

 

regardless, poe don't seem to be more flawed than any recent title and given your bg "nostalgia," you should be aware o' just how buggy that title were at release... and totsc likely had as many bugs as bg.  so, enjoy the nostalgia?

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Bryy]

It's a personal attack to say you think someone is complaining?

Edited May 28, 2015 by Bryy

[Althernai]

This is ONE game I have brought on release in a LONG time, I usually dont, but this game triggered my Baldurs Gate nostalgia and I had high hopes becase over the net the actual release of the game was pipped as "relatively bug free". So I brought it at release, played it, experienced bugs, stopped playing it, read about more bugs, then decided to wait for a stable version.

But it was "relatively bug free", with the key word in this phrase being "relatively." Sure, it had (and still has) bugs, but given the complexity of the game and the fact that most of these bugs are not even noticeable for most people, it was in a pretty decent shape at release time (and is even better now). It seems to me that your quarrel is not so much with PoE, but with the industry standard of what constitutes finished. I partly agree with you there, but it is very strange to call PoE on it because it had more constraints that most games and managed to do better than them. It had a relatively small budget (so there's no money to do further development), it had obligations due to the Kickstarter (so they couldn't have done Early Access even if they wanted to without angering a lot of backers who were promised a DRM-free version and now had to either sign up for Steam or sit and wait while other people play) and it was promised to be long and have lots of choices (i.e. there are multiple ways to do many different things which makes any given playthrough effectively unique and impossible to test). Obsidian has also done a decent job at patching the most serious bugs quickly.

[kozzy]

Nope, the game is fantastic and imo in even better shape than Divinity Original Sin and Wasteland 2 where on release (Liked them both alot to).

 

Any big improvements that they want to make can be made for the expansion packs or updates to the game.

[Nakia]

Since the op, Badass l has opened the thread up to general discussion about games I am going to state my opinion on the state of modern games in general.

 

I agree that modern games are released in poor condition, CTDs, bugs, broken quests, misleading advertisement,  They lack any real story, many of them.  They rely on graphics to impress but make the games for consoles which means that PC users end up with less advanced graphics.  I don't know what the new consoles have to offer but a few years ago I understand their graphic quality was at least five years behind what a PC could offer.

 

There is one publisher that I will not buy from.  I know the loss of my purchase means nothing to them but it is all I can do besides tell other people not buy their games.

 

I backed Obsidian because I was sure that I would get at least a good story and I did.  I got a very complicated story which made me really think and raises interesting questions.  The pre-made companions are interesting.  The amount of minute detail is amazing.  For me the game was relatively bug free at launch.  I even like the combat, RTwP, although there are moments I do fine rather funny because of the enemy AI.   Sure there are things I feel could be improved but considering the small budget I am not going to nitpick.  I am looking forward to the expansion.

[abaris]

 

 

I agree that modern games are released in poor condition, CTDs, bugs, broken quests, misleading advertisement,  They lack any real story, many of them.  They rely on graphics to impress but make the games for consoles which means that PC users end up with less advanced graphics.  I don't know what the new consoles have to offer but a few years ago I understand their graphic quality was at least five years behind what a PC could offer.

 

 

I think you're comparing two different issues here. One is the ongoing consolization of games, aimed at a different and usually much younger target audience. That's where the hype and the shiny, shiny, shiny aspect comes in. In these cases, PC ports are the problem. They're done as an afterthought and to rake in as many PC players as possible without them being the originally intended audience.

 

The second issue are real bugs. And that, as you observed in a previous post, has much to do with advancing technologies. We've come a long way since the original IE games or gaming in general. It was much easier to design relatively bugfree games one or two decades ago, since there weren't quite as many parameters to work with.

[Varana]

My argument is that the industry standard is wrong, in my opinion, and that POE being released as it is, is a symptom of the industry standard.

 

Then you should have made your argument about that, and not about PoE being in a certain group of games in the current standard.

"Should PoE have been called Early Access" relies on what currently is Early Access, what currently is Finished, and what currently is seen as an acceptable state of release. If you want to take umbrage with that, say so.

While many might agree that the current standard is quite sad (although I think it's nostalgia to say that it has been much better at any time), you've basically derailed your own argument with that poll. "Early Access" is a specific thing within the current industry's way of working. It's not a generic term for "has too many bugs in my opinion". So in the end, what you've done in most of the thread, is trying to bring your thread back on the rails, after you've pushed it off them yourself for a click-baiting headline.

 

This post has been written in an "assume good faith" mentality, which might or might not be applicable.

[nipsen]

 

So why not early access?

 

..because it would have been too embarrassing to have press-releases that read something like..

 

"[head]HELP US, HELP YOU, HELP US.[/head]

 

[main]Unfortunately, we have a community and Q&A team that can't leave well alone, and who are unable to structure feedback that our programmers can actually implement. Leaving us with a game that is a bit of a patchwork, where serious bugs have been ignored, while less significant ones popped up where none existed. And where "balance" is reliant on manual tweaks from practical testing after the game releases. So since we have no means of any kind to test the game to that extent ourselves, we are as such now, after 2 years of development, declaring this game an early access game. And we ask the community to help us as much as they can to patch up our horrendously bad decisions at the tail end of the development process.[/main]

 

[end]Thank you - and good luck bug-hunting for free, now that we've suddenly discovered the actual value of the resources certain fans threw at us while expecting nothing in return earlier on. No hard feelings, right? Because the success of this game determines if another game like it is ever made again, you know! Not extorting you guys or anything, just saying like it is![/end]".

Edited May 29, 2015 by nipsen

[PrimeJunta]

It was fine, compared to the general state of the game industry.

 

The general state of the game industry is... not great.

 

I believe there are lots of things Obsidian could do to get better code quality from the ground up rather than relying on QA and, eventually, players to flush them out. I also believe this would make everything easier for them.

 

It's really hard though and takes a long time. We've managed it where I work though, even if it took a few years.