The end of the line!

[Borissimo]

Woof! After hitting a showstopper in story mode, I figured I'd try quest mode. Then I hit a showstopper there. Clearly, the game hates me. This was all on iPad Air with pass & play and permadeath off.

 

Sit down, children, and ye shall hear two heartwrenching tales of the end of Papa Boris ...

 

Story Mode

 

I beat Burnt Offerings and bought Skinsaw Murders. Playing 2.1, Kyra and Merisiel had closed 3 of the 4 locations and were wrapping up in Habe's Sanitorium. Kyra encountered a Standard Bearer (on possibly an extra exploration ... I can't remember ... clearly, I'm bad at QA ) and rolled a 6 to acquire the card. However, after the card went into her hand, there was no way to proceed with the turn. Buttons could be pushed, menus accessed, cards looked at, etc, but there was no way to end the turn (or to play cards for extra explores). Quitting the game or killing the app and reloading takes me back to the beginning of the check, but pass or fail, the game is frozen at that point. Thus ends the journey of Kyra and Merisiel!

 

Quest Mode

 

This one is a real trip through bizarro land. I beat one level on normal difficulty, hit level 2 on both Kyra and Merisiel (gaining no rewards for this -- should I have gotten something?), and began another level on normal. Merisiel started on the Junk Beach and Kyra started on the ... crap, I can't remember what it's called, but it's the one where you can recharge a card to auto-acquire allies. One of the other two locations was the Farmhouse; the other I can't remember.

 

Things go haywire instantly on M's first turn. The screen is greyed out and she can't do anything. There's a blue "complete action" button even though there's no start-of-turn action. Pressing the button does nothing. "Give card" is available even though M and K are at different locations. I push random buttons and suddenly the "close location?" dialogue comes up. Selecting "yes" brings up the "when closing" action, which is to defeat a poison trap. I discard thieves tools and am not given the option to recharge them, but the poison trap goes away. But now there's 1 card left in the location deck and I can take actions. I hit the location deck. The last card is ... poison trap! And NOW I get the option to recharge Thieves' Tools from the previous check. I fail the recharge roll and check against the current poison trap proceeds. I succeed and roll d6 for items, per the Junk Beach's "when closing" effect. However, after rolling a 1, I get no item and the location deck goes back to being 10 cards. Blessings deck has clouded over at some point and is showing 0. I hit end turn, draw cards, and the screen stays locked on Merisiel. I can switch between M and K and look at cards and access menus, but no actions can be performed. Killing the app or quitting the game and logging back in takes me to the point where the end turn button needs to be hit, and when it is, the same problem happens.

 

Also, when I access Quest Mode from the main menu, it takes me back to the game in progress, which of course is stuck. Thus, I can't actually play Quest Mode at all anymore!

 

I imagine this would be very upsetting to encounter as a player when the game is live. Perhaps it would be possible to add a "break" feature of some kind, so that if the game gets stuck in an abnormal state, the player can at least cut the scenario and retain the use of his characters? As it stands, I don't mind losing M & K for quest mode, since they'd only beaten 1 scenario each, but the save file I lost in story mode had legendary difficulty unlocked all the way through AD1, which is a sad thing to lose.

[Mrmojorisin]

I really hope that these and all the other issues being reported are fixed by release date. Reading these beta topic has me kind of worried about the overall stability of this game at this point.

[Borissimo]

It has been years since the last time I was as anxious for a game to be released as I am now for Pathfinder Adventures, but even in my state of utter hysteria, I'd still rather wait an extra week or two and play the game bug-free than get it on release day and lose my progress to a bug, if those are the options. Of course, my main hope is that those are not the options and Obsidian "simply" pulls off a clean release on the 29th.

[Eldicor]

Count me in the group eyeing things warily, but I feel much better about it than I did at the start of beta because of the quick progress seen from build 1 to build 2 of the beta. Almost everything brought up by testers before the release of build 2 was addressed, fixed, and improved in build 2. I am hopeful to see at least one more cycle of build release + testing before the official release, and I will be neither disappointed nor surprised if things need to be bumped back a week or two.

 

The PACG fanatics will come to this whenever it's ready -- it's the reception from casual PACG players or those who haven't played before that is more variable. Progress resetting issues or show-stoppers will likely turn that group off and away real quick, possibly never to return.

[Hannibal_PJV]

The quest is WIP? So it may be left out From the final game if it does not get ready.

 

But the story mode should be at least allmost stable, but that is why there is this beta stage to clear up them.

The XCom2 still have bugs and The game was released 2 months ago...

There is old saying:"Are you in hurry or do we use Computer?"

;-)

 

Edit: I did mix up terms.

Edited March 20, 2016 by Hannibal_PJV

[Eldicor]

I'm not sure what you mean by 'normal mode' Hannibal. There will be 2 modes -- Story and Quest. Story mode duplicates the physical PACG Rise of the Runelords game, then adds 2 additional difficulty levels and the option to get chesta for new and interesting cards to be used in the box. Quest mode is even more 'roguelike' -- locations, villains, and henchmen are randomly moxed, and character progression is done on an XP system to earn feats rather than them being awarded in particular scenarios in the story.

 

And yes, there are bugs being reported in both modes on build 2, but as I said above practically everything brought up before the release of build 2 was addressed in build 2, so there is a good track record of bug squashing so far.

[Hannibal_PJV]

Duhhh... Did mean story mode as normal and quest mode as WIP...

Sorry for confusion.

 

Yep, the build 2 is much better. not sure though that the game will be "ready" at 29th, but it will be ready to be published. There is still work to be done as The end of the line! Post says.

It requires at least some kind of "Go back X saves" option or some other way of fixing the corrupted save file. Going to level 5 and having to start everything From the very Beginning would be... Well not so fun.

 

But things Are looking guite good, there still is time left and bug fixing will happen after the release also.

Edited March 20, 2016 by Hannibal_PJV

[Jeftidastl]

I had an extremely similar thing happen in my quest mode, if not the exact same thing. First scenario went fine, second immediately goes fubar. Happened with a party of four without M or K so it is probably not character dependent.

Edited March 21, 2016 by Jeftidastl

[Sylvanta]

Woof! After hitting a showstopper in story mode, I figured I'd try quest mode. Then I hit a showstopper there. Clearly, the game hates me. This was all on iPad Air with pass & play and permadeath off.

 

Sit down, children, and ye shall hear two heartwrenching tales of the end of Papa Boris ...

 

Story Mode

 

I beat Burnt Offerings and bought Skinsaw Murders. Playing 2.1, Kyra and Merisiel had closed 3 of the 4 locations and were wrapping up in Habe's Sanitorium. Kyra encountered a Standard Bearer (on possibly an extra exploration ... I can't remember ... clearly, I'm bad at QA ) and rolled a 6 to acquire the card. However, after the card went into her hand, there was no way to proceed with the turn. Buttons could be pushed, menus accessed, cards looked at, etc, but there was no way to end the turn (or to play cards for extra explores). Quitting the game or killing the app and reloading takes me back to the beginning of the check, but pass or fail, the game is frozen at that point. Thus ends the journey of Kyra and Merisiel!

 

Quest Mode

 

This one is a real trip through bizarro land. I beat one level on normal difficulty, hit level 2 on both Kyra and Merisiel (gaining no rewards for this -- should I have gotten something?), and began another level on normal. Merisiel started on the Junk Beach and Kyra started on the ... crap, I can't remember what it's called, but it's the one where you can recharge a card to auto-acquire allies. One of the other two locations was the Farmhouse; the other I can't remember.

 

Things go haywire instantly on M's first turn. The screen is greyed out and she can't do anything. There's a blue "complete action" button even though there's no start-of-turn action. Pressing the button does nothing. "Give card" is available even though M and K are at different locations. I push random buttons and suddenly the "close location?" dialogue comes up. Selecting "yes" brings up the "when closing" action, which is to defeat a poison trap. I discard thieves tools and am not given the option to recharge them, but the poison trap goes away. But now there's 1 card left in the location deck and I can take actions. I hit the location deck. The last card is ... poison trap! And NOW I get the option to recharge Thieves' Tools from the previous check. I fail the recharge roll and check against the current poison trap proceeds. I succeed and roll d6 for items, per the Junk Beach's "when closing" effect. However, after rolling a 1, I get no item and the location deck goes back to being 10 cards. Blessings deck has clouded over at some point and is showing 0. I hit end turn, draw cards, and the screen stays locked on Merisiel. I can switch between M and K and look at cards and access menus, but no actions can be performed. Killing the app or quitting the game and logging back in takes me to the point where the end turn button needs to be hit, and when it is, the same problem happens.

 

Also, when I access Quest Mode from the main menu, it takes me back to the game in progress, which of course is stuck. Thus, I can't actually play Quest Mode at all anymore!

 

I imagine this would be very upsetting to encounter as a player when the game is live. Perhaps it would be possible to add a "break" feature of some kind, so that if the game gets stuck in an abnormal state, the player can at least cut the scenario and retain the use of his characters? As it stands, I don't mind losing M & K for quest mode, since they'd only beaten 1 scenario each, but the save file I lost in story mode had legendary difficulty unlocked all the way through AD1, which is a sad thing to lose.

 

Story Mode: The complexity of this game results in a lot of strange bugs like that.  They unfortunately tend to be terribly specific about the cards encountered prior to the issue occurring (or powers in play... or interrupts [i'm looking at YOU, Ezren. ], etc).  That being said... we'll look into it!  I do wish you all had access to one of our debug features that would help point out where the game got confused.  Alas.

 

Quest Mode: Any chance you remember the scenario power?  Also, I like the suggestion.  I am not a fan of the progression breaks that still exist in the game, and we definately don't want you guys losing saves - I'd much rather have a failsafe way to retain saves in case there's an issue once released (Because, realistically, try as we might we won't catch all bugs, especially on a team of our size).  I shall throw forth the proposal.

 

Also: Difficulty unlocking in story mode being tied to a party is a bug that will be resolved before launch.   It should be tied to the account.

 

I had an extremely similar thing happen in my quest mode, if not the exact same thing. First scenario went fine, second immediately goes fubar. Happened with a party of four without M or K so it is probably not character dependent.

 

Quest mode is a very, very new feature and is still WIP.  I'm not surprised there are issues - that being said, it's good to know some of these now so we can put in suggestions to help prevent having to restart should the save go wonky once the feature is released.

[Borissimo]

This experience has given me an even greater appreciation for what QA people do. Alas, I don't remember the scenario power when my quest mode failed.