My dog chew toy (aka: box) arrived today!

[speeder]

My Kickstarterted box finally arrived today.

 

It looks like a dog chew toy, it is smashed up, and with tears on the box paper and shrinkwrap (that I don't removed yet so I can take photos later).

 

I am already frustated with the game bugs at launch, the bizarre game design decisions, and now this... I paid 65 USD + 15 USD for shipping, you know how much that is in my country? 80 USD in my country is a week wage, for someone to buy POE in my country they would have to not eat, not pay rent, not pay electricity and whatnot for a entire week to afford it.

 

Please, be considerate to people hard earned money.

 

This is the first time I buy a boxed game with my own money, and the second time I buy a game for more than 30 USD (the first time was Witcher 2), if this is the service you offer, I will just pirate your games and buy them when they are 5 USD on gog.com, 1.5 USD for gog.com, and then 3.5 USD is what I think your work is worth.

[LaSpeakeasi]

I understand your frustration. I'm not from here but am living in Asia myself. I frequently order things online from the US and Europe and sometimes the shipping company's service is just... not ideal.

 

If you spent your hard-earned money on something you clearly have so much passion for, you obviously deserve a copy up to your satisfaction.

 

I don't think the devs are at fault here though. They aren't typically in charge of shipping and handling themselves. You may try to email customer service and see if they could do anything?

 

If I ordered something off Amazon and it came torn and damaged, I can usually have it replaced without much hassle. But if it came with Kickstarter I'm not aware of any channel to replace it. I hope someone at Obsidian sees this and help you sort it out.

Edited August 15, 2015 by LaSpeakeasi

[Cantousent]

I am not an Obsidian employee and I do not speak for it in any way. I am a volunteer moderator in this forum and I'm pushing through (approving) the posts here, including critical ones. It is valuable feedback for Obsidian to hear from customers.

 

I not a blind apologist for Obsidian, but I think... Paradox? handled the distribution. So hopefully some of these issues can be resolved between them and, as LaSpeakeasi says, even shipping companies in different regions. I would also say that I would contact customer service if there's a problem. They might not be able to help, but they might be.

 

As for my Sharp friend, I will say that Obsidian has faced some heat for various decisions before, some with which I entirely agree and some that irked me as well. They don't get a free pass.

 

I'll make a deal: if no one goes psycho and or nerd rage crazy, the thread can stay open and you can vent some of the frustration you have with things. This forum has always been good about allowing folks to complain about... well... just about everything, Obsidian included. Don't go crazy, don't get nasty, and please, be gentle with one another. You can bash Obsidian or the devs/publishers within reason, but you can't bash each other at all! :Cant's cheerful smile icon:

[speeder]

thanks moderator

 

And for the others, I will explain why I am unhappy with Obsidian:

 

Point 1. the game itself, disappointed me in many ways, I really wanted to like it, and I had a blast at first, but the problems are too much, the bugs (that seemly will be mostly fixed as 2.0 gets up), and VERY questionable design decisions (I made other threads about them).

 

Point 2. The problem is not of the shipping company service, the shipping package itself arrived without damage, the problem is that the game packaging was poorly designed, it is just a very, very cheap box, easily damaged, and Obsidian don't asked Paradox to make better ways to ship it, for example they could have put some packing filler in the package, this would have shielded the flimsy box without adding much weight, also they could have shipped it inside a stronger corrugated box, and so on.

 

 

when I was a kid, I got gifted a couple games in boxes (still a rare thing, games are a luxury in my country), the boxes frequently had the paper (like Obsidian box has) but also a corrugated box INSIDE the outer box to give structure, I remember that some boxes were really sturdy, I remember dropping a box like I described (made of paper + corrugated box internally) on my feet in a store, and the thing was heavy and it hurt a lot, a flimsy paper box shipped inside some equally flimsy plastic is OBVIOUS it will not endure any trip at all, even if you shipped it by motorcycle from one city to the next over, any bumps in the asphalt would dent the box with impacts.

 

If Obsidian choose to make more profit by making thin boxes, they should have used some money to make better packing, if they wanted to save on packing, they should have designed a sturdy box.

 

And this is not just nostalgia, or pulling things out of my ass, or anger because my box looks like a dog chewed it, I went to a design university (I am not sure why, I prefer to code), and I learned this on the first semester, it was mandatory to learn in the first six months about packaging, I even had to make the packaging of a random product beside a game (I made a package for a "special edition" safety razor).

 

I know Paradox handled the shipping, but I also know that the decisions with most weight on how (****ty) the game arrived here, were made by Obsidian, not Paradox, and not the shipping company (by the way: the shipping company itself warns on its website that they DON'T pay damages on products that got damaged because of poor choice of packing, and I am very sure that if I filed a complaint they would laugh at my face, it is clear as a clean glass pane that shipping such flimsy box inside a plastic bag is very bad idea).

 

3. I paid 15 USD for the box tier, expecting a decent box and decent manual, the box and manual delivered are no way worth that extra 15, I hoped that by paying 15 I would have encouraged devs to make good box and manual art, something that I consider a sort of lost art, since many companies don't bother with it anymore, I remember some games amazing me with thick manuals filled with cool concept art, and box art that looked exciting and amazing, PoE box is very disappointing, it has only the logo on it (iti s a nice-ish logo though), and is made of crap material, it is not the box that makes you excited to unpack it and keep it stored properly. I now feel that paying that extra 15 was not worth it.

 

Pic I found on the internet of some guy selling his old games, notice the big paper boxes also have a corrugated-board remove-able internal box: http://i.imgur.com/QIbSV5G.jpg

 

For example of great manual in the art sense is the Final Fantasy X-2, when I was at university a friend somehow bought a legal copy (one of the reasons of rampant piracy in some places is finding a legal copy to buy in first place), and then he went to show everyone, some people were almost orgasming while looking at the manual, it had some thick paper that is hard to tear, entirely coloured, perfect printing (ie: no misaligned printing heads), and awesome art all over it, with little bits of concept art here and there.

[LaSpeakeasi]

For point 1, I'm sorry to tell you that if 2.0 beta is any indication, no it's still very buggy.

 

When it comes to quality of a game, it's hard (if not impossible) not to disappoint anyone in no way. I for one enjoyed it (when it's working). It didn't disappoint me at all. Granted I didn't back it and probably wasn't expecting as much as some of its most vocal critics and fans. I was just glad to be able to play a CRPG again.

 

But when it comes to bugs. There's just no arguing nor excuses. I know Obsidian isn't a big company with a ton of resource (and there are bigger companies that put out even buggier products these days), so I waited 3 months to start playing the game, thinking they will have sufficient time to sort out the game to a functional level. But alas, I encountered a few game-breaking bugs and I ended up putting it on hold again.

 

I give Obsidian an A+ for the effort. But the execution? Well.

[Excalibur_2102]

Just for a heads up, I got the collectors edition, it came damaged so I contacted obsidian who put me in contact with someone at paradox.   They sent me another one, no questions asked.

 

Most kickstarters ive backed have had poor and dissapointing physical goods.  I just put it down to underestimating the cost to produce and ship all the goods and then realising they need more for the game itself.  Id rather the company use the money for the game, but if youre dissapointed with the game itself as well then I guess it stings even more.

[LuccA]

My regular boxed copy arrived in a very poor condition, wrapped in a single bubble wrap and a plastic bag. I posted some pics in another thread. It is just ridiculous! I emailed Paradox and they told me that their logistics partner, Shipwire, probably made a mistake, since they specifically asked for the box to be packed in a cardboard box, for protection.

 

Anyway, they said they would send a replacement, now with a cardboard package. The replacement arrived a few days ago, with the same plastic bag package of the first! It's insane!! The total lack of organization!... They would say it was probably a mistake from Shipwire again... By chance, the second box was in a better shape (still a few damages), and I just can't bother to ask for a third one.

 

I still can't state anything about the game itself, because I haven't played it. I'll probably wait until the second part of the expansion is done and patched to have my first playthrough with the best version of the game possible. Lucky I'm patient with those things. Still plenty of games I wanna play until then (and not much free time). But maybe I'm doing that so I can avoid being so upset about the game as I was about the way the kickstarter was held, from beggining to end.

[samm]

Fwiiw, my collector's box, sturdy by itself, was packaged well and arrived in good condition. The same is true for the even bigger and sturdier collector's box for a second kickstarter game. However the regular cardboard box of a third game I had backed on kickstarter arrived in pretty bad shape.

Conclusion: Well... it's hit and miss with those long distance shipping items. If at all possible in your country, I'd even advice to get boxes at local retailers, but I know that a) in most non-European countries such retailers hardly exist anymore, b) the boxes they sell contain discs or keys for almost always Steam (or battle.net, or Ubi-thingie) platform based games, where the physical copy itself is not worth a thing because it's bound to some download platform anyway.

[Mygaffer]

While shippers do damage goods occassionaly most of the time if goods are packaged properly no damage will come to them. I have shipped hundreds of items from the company I used to work for, I can't remember one time we heard of any damage to the items inside.

 

As far as bugs go I guess have been lucky to not encounter many. I really love Pillars of Eternity and can't wait for The White March.