Is 3.01 the FINAL version of the game?

[Rubeck]

See, I started playing this game shortly after it came out and even progressed quite a bit, but then ran into several game-breaking bugs, such as a temporary rogue buff permanently giving me skyhigh attack and negative defence, a ton of skills not working correctly, being locked out of some quests when I shouldn't have been, etc, etc. Sure, the patches came and fixed those, but often also changed the way a certain skill previously worked for balance reasons, which sucked as it meant I restarted my game twice as much: once for running into a game-breaking bug, then another time because in a later patch one of my skills was nerfed badly or a broken skill that I hadn't chosen before (due to being broken) was fixed and buffed to high heavens, making it ridiculously attractive.

 

So I decided to take a long break and wait until the game was more stable and the patches started to be just of minor things, like a few visual effects on spells not activating all the time, maybe a sound effect or two bugging out occasionally, etc. Then and only then I'd go back to play it (because it eventually got tiresome restarting the game all the time due to either another severe game-breaking bug or another skill that was nerfed/buffed with a newer patch).

 

But here we are, much later, and the update notes for version 3.01 don't inspire much confidence. According to the notes, the patches are still implementing significant balance changes, as well as fixing severe bugs, such as locking players in a certain location, accidental deletion of items, equipment accidentally granting buffs they shouldn't grant, etc. 

 

----------------------------------

 

So I ask: do you guys know if the game is now finally finished for good? Is 3.01 the final, ultimate version of Pillars, or at the very least the last one to alter balance and fix the really severe bugs? Or is it wise to wait another year or two to be safe? I will most likely only play this game to completion once, as it's enormous, so I really want to make it count and ONLY play the final, most polished version (it's not an MMO or online game, so the constant balance changes in particular are REALLY grating).

I've already bought the game + expansions a long time ago and don't mind waiting if necessary, so please give me an honest answer.

[Leferd]

There will be be at least one more additional patch, possibly more. What's beyond 3.02, I don't know.

[FlintlockJazz]

There will be further patching to fix bugs and balance tweaks, but 3.0 is the last big overhaul from my impression, and they will be moving onto the next game now. 

[house2fly]

The expansions and new features introduced by later patches threw up a few bugs themselves; ironically the game was at its most stable around mid-April or so. Think of the expansions as being like little new games that are being released, they're always bound to have bugs of their own. I'd expect the upcoming 3.02 patch to probably be the last one.

[AndreaColombo]

I hope they'll release at least one more patch after 3.02; the backlog is still rather large.

[Karkarov]

I think you are fine at this point.  There will be at least 1 more patch, maybe a second and third after that.  However they are just going to be bug fixes and slightly balance tweaks.  There won't be anymore major overhauls, mechanics changes, or new skills from here on out.

[Rubeck]

Thank you all for the information.

I'll wait a couple months more to see how it goes then. 

[MonkeyLungs]

If anything else is coming it probably won't be much.

 

Here's a snippet from an interview dated 4 March 2016:

MMORPG: What is next for Pillars of Eternity -- can gamers consider the game done or are there more expansions or even a sequel planned?

Josh: Pillars of Eternity is all wrapped up.  It's been a great experience, but we'd like to move on to a new project.  We'd love to make a sequel and have a ton of ideas for ways we can improve on Pillars, but that's a way off.

 

source: http://www.mmorpg.com/showFeature.cfm/feature/10633/page/2

[ojthesimpson]

I played a paladin at launch and had a lot of problems. I didnt beat the game even. 

Now I am playing a paladin and that class is very much improved. I have almost beat it and had a great run through the game with no bugs. 

I think eventually modders will get their hands on this game too. It'll be well taken care of for years I bet. 

[Luckmann]

I played a paladin at launch and had a lot of problems. I didnt beat the game even. 

 

Now I am playing a paladin and that class is very much improved. I have almost beat it and had a great run through the game with no bugs. 

 

I think eventually modders will get their hands on this game too. It'll be well taken care of for years I bet. 

 

Modders have had their hands on the game since release. This "mods will fix it" attitude prolific in the market needs to die. There's a ton of things mods simply cannot do, depending on a game, and PoE is horrific to work with from a modding perspective. It's a far cry from "It's not made for it, but it's pretty damn doable in some regards" nature of the IE games, and well into the territory of "Oh no, **** that."

[Karkarov]

Modders have had their hands on the game since release. This "mods will fix it" attitude prolific in the market needs to die. There's a ton of things mods simply cannot do, depending on a game, and PoE is horrific to work with from a modding perspective. It's a far cry from "It's not made for it, but it's pretty damn doable in some regards" nature of the IE games, and well into the territory of "Oh no, **** that."

Not sure it is quite as bad as you make it sound Luckmann, but the game definitely was not made to be modder friendly.  I do however totally agree about the "modders will fix that" mindset.  Going forward games are likely to be less and less mod friendly, not more.

[Ichthyic]

The expansions and new features introduced by later patches threw up a few bugs themselves; ironically the game was at its most stable around mid-April or so. Think of the expansions as being like little new games that are being released, they're always bound to have bugs of their own. I'd expect the upcoming 3.02 patch to probably be the last one.

You know, I got so bloody frustrated with all the little bugs, I stopped playing this game a long time ago (like, when it was at patch 1.04).

 

so, I finally come back, install both the expansion packs and the latest patch... and find it's got some of the SAME bugs as the version I played so long ago.

 

for example, the statistics database for each character has stopped updating, and the most powerful thing it says some of my characters have killed is ... a young wolf (same for all relevant combat statistics, btw).

 

but ho!  there are whole new bugs!

 

for example, I equipped Aloth with a small shield and a hatchet as a secondary weapon setup for when he gets inevitably surround by the foes that all move as fast as greased lighting now, and ignore everything BUT Aloth.

 

except whenever I do that, and he gets any damage, he ends up HITTING HIMSELF with his weapon... which continues even after combat ends unless I tell him to move.

 

now, I get "unskilled" with a weapon... but to continually hit yourself in the face with it?

 

seems a bit... odd.

 

so, BIG SIGH, it looks like yet again, I will be bashing my head on my desk trying to figure out what the latest workarounds are for the latest bugs.

 

 

 

[Ichthyic]

I played a paladin at launch and had a lot of problems. I didnt beat the game even. 

 

Now I am playing a paladin and that class is very much improved. I have almost beat it and had a great run through the game with no bugs. 

 

I think eventually modders will get their hands on this game too. It'll be well taken care of for years I bet. 

LOL

 

no.

 

this game has been out for a VERY long time... and the number of independent mods for it that have any significant game impacts are tiny.

 

way fewer in number and scope than I would have even expected.

 

I think this engine is a dead end myself; it's just too esoteric and too prone to odd little bugs.  and that's too bad, because I don't really see anyone else even trying to replace the RPG infinity engine other than Obsidian.

 

I think whoever coded this made a yuuuge mess of it. 

 

 

[gkathellar]

 

 

I played a paladin at launch and had a lot of problems. I didnt beat the game even.

 

Now I am playing a paladin and that class is very much improved. I have almost beat it and had a great run through the game with no bugs.

 

I think eventually modders will get their hands on this game too. It'll be well taken care of for years I bet.

LOL

 

no.

 

this game has been out for a VERY long time... and the number of independent mods for it that have any significant game impacts are tiny.

 

way fewer in number and scope than I would have even expected.

 

I think this engine is a dead end myself; it's just too esoteric and too prone to odd little bugs. and that's too bad, because I don't really see anyone else even trying to replace the RPG infinity engine other than Obsidian.

 

I think whoever coded this made a yuuuge mess of it.

 

Yes well.

[danielkx]

 

Modders have had their hands on the game since release. This "mods will fix it" attitude prolific in the market needs to die. There's a ton of things mods simply cannot do, depending on a game, and PoE is horrific to work with from a modding perspective. It's a far cry from "It's not made for it, but it's pretty damn doable in some regards" nature of the IE games, and well into the territory of "Oh no, **** that."

Not sure it is quite as bad as you make it sound Luckmann, but the game definitely was not made to be modder friendly.  I do however totally agree about the "modders will fix that" mindset.  Going forward games are likely to be less and less mod friendly, not more.

 

Switching to Unity 5 for the sequel would certainly make modding a whole lot easier/doable. 

[Ichthyic]

"Yes well."

As usual, you have found the best reply.

*bows*

 

Edited March 5, 2016 by Ichthyic

[Ymarsakar]

 

See, I started playing this game shortly after it came out and even progressed quite a bit, but then ran into several game-breaking bugs, such as a temporary rogue buff permanently giving me skyhigh attack and negative defence, a ton of skills not working correctly, being locked out of some quests when I shouldn't have been, etc, etc. Sure, the patches came and fixed those, but often also changed the way a certain skill previously worked for balance reasons, which sucked as it meant I restarted my game twice as much: once for running into a game-breaking bug, then another time because in a later patch one of my skills was nerfed badly or a broken skill that I hadn't chosen before (due to being broken) was fixed and buffed to high heavens, making it ridiculously attractive.

 

So I decided to take a long break and wait until the game was more stable and the patches started to be just of minor things, like a few visual effects on spells not activating all the time, maybe a sound effect or two bugging out occasionally, etc. Then and only then I'd go back to play it (because it eventually got tiresome restarting the game all the time due to either another severe game-breaking bug or another skill that was nerfed/buffed with a newer patch).

 

But here we are, much later, and the update notes for version 3.01 don't inspire much confidence. According to the notes, the patches are still implementing significant balance changes, as well as fixing severe bugs, such as locking players in a certain location, accidental deletion of items, equipment accidentally granting buffs they shouldn't grant, etc. 

 

----------------------------------

 

So I ask: do you guys know if the game is now finally finished for good? Is 3.01 the final, ultimate version of Pillars, or at the very least the last one to alter balance and fix the really severe bugs? Or is it wise to wait another year or two to be safe? I will most likely only play this game to completion once, as it's enormous, so I really want to make it count and ONLY play the final, most polished version (it's not an MMO or online game, so the constant balance changes in particular are REALLY grating).

 

I've already bought the game + expansions a long time ago and don't mind waiting if necessary, so please give me an honest answer.

 

 

The rogue thing was because reckless assault stacked every time you reloaded the game, due to being a modal active effect, but now save games remove active effects aggressively, checking for duplicates or suppressing active effects if they try to stack.

 

I started the game in 1.0 and finished it sometime later in 2.0 white march part 1. So to me, all the patches didn't really bother me. On the flipside even, it was better to experience the old content just so I could compare it to the new tactical difficulty. 

 

The balance changes have probably been finalized for most classes, they'll be working on POE2 I expect.

 

The number of things they have to fix are normally the extra stuff they added in for White March.

 

The modified Unity engine that Pillars is based on isn't easy to mod, because there is no externalized assets and files. CK2, custom built Clausewitz, is very easy to mod in comparison.

 

"I think this engine is a dead end myself; it's just too esoteric and too prone to odd little bugs. "

 

I disagree, the engine is workable. Any engine not designed for modding will be esoteric. Even BG2 had enormous bugs dealing with the tactical system, which the tactical mods constantly had to fix and rebalance because they changed even more things. This is what I call subjectively viewing something based on the outcome, and not on the actual details of the engine itself.

Edited March 5, 2016 by Ymarsakar

[Ichthyic]

 

The number of things they have to fix are normally the extra stuff they added in for White March.

 

 

uh.  no.  I am seeing bugs they supposedly FIXED in version 1.04 reappear in 3.01

 

as if they used a buggy previous version of the game to build the second expansion pack onto.

 

example:

 

in version 1.03, if you fully explored Durance's dialogue tree before resting in the wilderness with him 4 times, then it would break his questline and you would never get the first dream.

 

that bug is now back... I just had it happen to me.

 

so, no, not only do I not agree with you that the bugs are only related to the new content, the very WAY this engine works makes it so they fail to catch and repair PREVIOUS irritating bugs.

 

I'll just flat out say it... you thinking this engine will produce something not just as irritating with POE2 is pure wishful thinking.

 

it needs to be an entirely open modeled engine, using data references sheets that are easily editable by anyone.

 

why?

 

because with how terrible Obsidian is at catching minor bugs, it will indeed take the community to fix any product they release, and that means it has to be easily editable, END OF.

 

what's more, they have had to do tremendous amounts of tweaking to get the current engine to run without causing overheating, framerate drops, etc.

 

unity itself is a bad engine as a base, to then create another mess from it.

 

maybe Unity 5 will be better... but I highly, HIGHLY doubt it, given the past history.

 

so, you have both issues with internal mechanics, and with external data reference that bugger the direction this is going in.

 

without an entirely new engine, this series will die, I guarantee it.

 

 

 

 

[Infinitron]

Lots of talking out of ass ITT

[theBalthazar]

My feeling is that Obsidian must go at minima to 3.03.

 

After the version 3.02, it will remains certainly tons of bugs... (unfortunatly as always...)

 

I think the final version of the maturity go to a 3.03-3.04 ~.

Edited March 6, 2016 by theBalthazar

[house2fly]

How do you know any bugs will remain after 3.02? There isn't even any indication of when they're releasing that patch so I don't know how you can guess at what bugs won't be fixed in it.