Obsidian why am I forced to test your BETA patches?

[fmj]

So Obsidian-

 

I purchased your game in March on Steam, waited for 2.0 patch to balance and play a stable game (6 months later). I am NOT signed on to your betas via the Steam options. So wtf is up with being forced to test your untested BETA patches? I play offline, when I went online today the game began auto-patching. When I clicked on "view news" to find out what was being dl'd you provided absolutely no information on the beta-patch. Your last communication on Steams game page is from Aug 28th selling your DLC, your last patch communique is from Sept 5th on the forums regarding the 2.0 patch.

 

I am well aware that the beta 2.01 patch broke the game for many players. Why would you force untested BETA patches on your consumers? Now on to 2.02 beta with who knows what problems. 

 

You have lost a customer. It's clear your communication (or lack of) is poor, I'd say unacceptable. Is Obsidian so clueless that you believe this to be acceptable? Fortunately for your company and business you do not have a retail space where consumers can see you face to face to communicate and request refunds for a product and business practices that are clueless and broken. Obviously you do not care about your consumers other than getting their money...your customer service and communication to them is abysmal.

 

Please fix your f'ing auto BETA patching system. I will now uninstall your game, hopefully (maybe) wait for a stable patch where I can actually play and get some value out of the game that I purchased 6 months ago and have still not played. Please spend some time properly communicating wtf is going on to your customers (like ON Steam) rather than just focusing on selling your next product. You've lost my business for any future products you release.

 

Obsidian, give yourselves a company wide pat on your backs for a job poorly done and my money in your pocket!

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

[Tigranes]

If you don't have beta enabled on Steam you shouldn't be getting the beta patches. It's likely a Steam problem (since 2.02 Beta certainly hasn't been rolled out for everybody), but hopefully a dev can look at addressing the bug. 

[fmj]

I am opted out on betas.

 

Now I see the confusion, to my point...is it so difficult for Obsidian to communicate via steams forums what is going on with patches?

 

Last pinned update from Obsidian is about 2.0 patch being released. There is absolutely NO communication from them on either the pinned forums OR the store page regarding a patch 2.01 OR beta 2.02. I can't even get info on whatever the heck is being dl'd at 1+gb from Steam.

 

What sort of communication is this from Obsidian?

 

There are numerous reported bugs from 2.01 breaking games. A company quick to take money and non-existant on communicating patches released...whatever, I'm done wasting my time on this. Frustrating to say the least. Okay with you if I download a gb+ worth of stuff on your computer without telling you ANYTHING about what it is or responding to it breaking your game?

[Derek M]

Hi there,

 

If you have been playing in offline mode for a while you could have missed a patch that we have pushed live. Can you please check what the version number of your build is on the main menu? It will be at the bottom left hand corner of the screen. I have verified the live public version of the game and can guarantee you that the 2.02 patch has not been pushed out to the live branch. If your version number is off from what live should be, and you have somehow accidentally opted in to the beta branch you can easily opt out again by right clicking on the title in your steam library, going to the betas tab and in the drop down menu selecting "NONE - Opt out of all beta programs." Doing so will redownload the live branch of the game if you are not on the correct build.

 

Thanks and have a nice day.

[Oralaina]

I was going to point out something similar, Derek M.  I play in offline mode almost exclusively, but I do connect once a week to let steam update if it needs to.  I do this while my MMO is offline for maintenance - which was this morning.  Steam found nothing there today.  Last week there was a small steam update for the steam client itself.  Neither had anything to do with THIS game.

[fmj]

Ok, thanks for your responses. I was obviously pretty confused and most irate about just what was being dl'd.

 

It was patch 2.01 which I thought was still in beta, but apparently not. Due to the number of game breaking bugs being reported due to 2.01, I was reluctant to DL it as I'm playing a druid, have waited 6 months for patch 2.0 to be released, and did not want to risk my playthrough being stalled/ruined. Word is that 2.01 was pushed out (knowing there were game breaking bugs contained in it) because the dlc was unplayable.

 

Basic communication does matter, basic respect towards your consumers does matter. The store page and forums and "view news" button on Steam make no mention (zero zip nada) anywhere about the 2.01 patch even being released. I saw no response from any Obsidian employee acknowledging the game breaking 2.01 bugs introduced with that patch. Nor is there any official mention about 2.02 beta being accessible via steam. This creates a lot of unnecessary confusion for your consumers when suddenly a 1+gb dl begins. I would have taken other precautions to NOT dl 2.01 if I knew, until a more stable patch was released. 

 

At this point, 6 months post release, I have been able to play very little of your game due to waiting for balance and bug issues to be handled and resolved. Kudos on continuing to support your game. With that said...its also painfully clear that these patches are being released because there are major problems both needing to be resolved and being created with the new patches. Obsidians communication has certainly been piss poor to its customers on Steam which only adds to the frustration and is entirely avoidable on your end. I do hope this is addressed down the road.

 

I've uninstalled the game and may or may not come back to it in the future when things are resolved. Nor will I be purchasing anything from Obsidian in the near future. Please consider letting your peeps (customers) know wtf is going on with your patches and communicating that clearly to your customers, we care and would like to be treated with the same respect. Both our time and your time is valuable. For now I'll chalk it up to a bad meal and move on.

[sapientNode]

Firstly this is a steam issue and a common one.

I loathe the Centralized framework our games have taken to. We used to be able to go the Developers website find the patch and the update notes.

Now we have to wait for a third party client or system to push a patch live.

Steam I suppose has its perks.

 

On the side of Obsidian and I am not all fanboying this at all but having to navigate 3 or more different distribution methods must be ridiculous.

And who knows if Steam will push messages through their system if Obsidian asked them to. Obsidian likely has very little control once Steam gains control.

And if you have Steam you know you have to manually do a lot to put things in offline mode and to disable automatic patches and updates.

 

I would love to go back to a day where I can just get the bloody patch from the dev website and not have to login to a completely different system just to access the patch.

And as you have found information is not that forthcoming. It is hard enough to get direct acknowledgement when their was just one distribution method now there is 3 of them.

 

I do agree that more communication would help but then again it could not help. More focus on things tends to bring out people who just want to yell and scream.

 

Bottom line though Steam is updating your game not Obsidian. Yes Obsidian made deals with Steam to distribute the game but they are not running the servers or the service.

Did I mention I pretty much loathe Steam!! Mostly for what it has done to our access and control over our games. Thank goodness there is GoG.