3.03 patch. Where is it?

[Wagner235]

Obsidian finally release 3.03 patch.

Your vacation already finished.

Sad Frog.jpg

[Xaratas]

I know that through Steam I can use the Beta patch of 3.03.

 

Also, would I need to restart a new game when the final 3.03 is released?

No.

[Gs11]

Ok, let's say someone buy PoE with release of WM2  and 3.02 state of the game.

 

 

He's playing and  suddenly finding game breaking bug with stacking defence of enemies... 

 

And Obsidian spent  over at least 4 months  just for now, ok they're working on the final patch, but doesn't effort to fix and upload small  fix for mjaor bug.... just embarrassing and disrespectful approach to the client... good riddance for upcoming  games

[Fenixp]

Let's see, Steam user reviews... Let's search everything all the way back to march... Hmmm... Nope, no mention of major, game-breaking bugs making the game unplayable. Interesting. All right, I guess Metacritic it is... Oh, nah, the last user review mentioning any bugs is from 2015, and it says that the writer didn't find any. Oh I see, surely, since the bug is so severe and the game has several thousand concurrent players every day, internet'll be full of people complaining about it right? ... Oh, nah, it's ... It's really just these boards or a similar bug from last year.

 

Yeah, it's just embarassing and disrespectful of Obsidian to not release a fix for such major and progress-halting bug. A disgrace, truly.

[Jojobobo]

I said this elsewhere on the forums, but I thought I'd mention it in a General Discussion thread as not as many people will be looking in Technical Issues.

 

I link Obsidian's lack of support currently is not good enough. This is a crowd funded game, without backer support like mine it sounds like Obsidian would have gone into administration, and so it's beginning to feel like this is a big middle finger to the fan base who got them out of that hole. I know delegating more resources to the patching at this time won't make Obsidian any money, but I feel there is a defined obligation here - especially because of the crowd funding - that is being ignored.

 

It's also not like the fans are even demanding them to reinvent the wheel, they just want 1-year-and-change down the line to have a mostly bug free game (mostly bug free, IMO, meaning a game that lacks any bugs that can't be fixed with an easy reload and affect game balance) but that still hasn't been delivered.

 

It's pretty shoddy, in all honesty.

 

Let's see, Steam user reviews... Let's search everything all the way back to march... Hmmm... Nope, no mention of major, game-breaking bugs making the game unplayable. Interesting. All right, I guess Metacritic it is... Oh, nah, the last user review mentioning any bugs is from 2015, and it says that the writer didn't find any. Oh I see, surely, since the bug is so severe and the game has several thousand concurrent players every day, internet'll be full of people complaining about it right? ... Oh, nah, it's ... It's really just these boards or a similar bug from last year.

Yeah, it's just embarassing and disrespectful of Obsidian to not release a fix for such major and progress-halting bug. A disgrace, truly.

Any bug that affects player enjoyment is a problem, and the stacking bug is pretty game breaking to any person who wants to play the game as a normal person would - i.e. save when they like - and it is game-breaking quite often, no matter how many people are claiming it isn't (I mean, 110 Deflection Animats in Ondra's Gift - an early location laden with quests you'd want to save after - that's perfectly fun right?). I think Obsidian taking major delays over this is not something should be supported, in fact it does feel a bit like they've washed their hands of their hardcore fans who did reinvigorate their company by backing their game.

 

I for one am starting to reconsider my continued support of their games in the future. I backed this game, I shouldn't still have unpleasantness in the forms of bugs I have to pussyfoot around when I come to play it a year and more on. In fact, I took a long hiatus from v1 to v3 from this game purely so they could bug fix which is complete madness, and yet there's still issues. Why should I back something of theirs again if this is how they treat people who believed in them and wanted to take a chance on them?

Edited July 3, 2016 by Jojobobo

[Fenixp]

Obsidian has been regularly patching Pillars for nearly a year and a half now, and they weren't just bugfixes, even major mechanical overhauls based on player feedback. Keep in mind that usual support period for a game is a few months, half a year at best, and they're usually limited to bug fixes, so Pillars already got a lot more resources poured into its support than most other games would get and went far beyond the "call of duty" with redesigns.

 

At this point in time, we know for a fact that developers are working on another patch which should resolve majority of the remaining large issues players have run across, and all they need to do that is time - why not give it to them, let them work out the kinks with this patch, and then complain about them acting in a shoddy manner to their backers?

 

To me it seems like nearly 3 times as much time spent on supporting the game, not to mention energy spent on redesigning major parts of it, should be more than enough to assure backers that Obsidian cares about them - and surely, as a backer who helped Obsidian with creating a new major title, you'd not want them to run themselves into the ground again by making bad business decisions?

Edited July 3, 2016 by Fenixp

[Jojobobo]

Obsidian has been regularly patching Pillars for nearly a year and a half now, and they weren't just bugfixes, even major mechanical overhauls based on player feedback. Keep in mind that usual support period for a game is a few months, half a year at best, and they're usually limited to bug fixes, so Pillars already got a lot more resources poured into its support than most other games would get and went far beyond the "call of duty" with redesigns.

 

At this point in time, we know for a fact that developers are working on another patch which should resolve majority of the remaining large issues players have run across, and all they need to do that is time - why not give it to them, let them work out the kinks with this patch, and then complain about them acting in a shoddy manner to their backers?

 

To me it seems like nearly 3 times as much time spent on supporting the game, not to mention energy spent on redesigning major parts of it, should be more than enough to assure backers that Obsidian cares about them - and surely, as a backer who helped Obsidian with creating a new major title, you'd not want them to run themselves into the ground again by making bad business decisions?

I'm personally fine giving them more time, but I can perfectly see why people are annoyed. I mean why can't they stick 10 people on it for a couple of weeks, get it sorted, then keep the skeleton team? Probably even a couple of people would be good enough then, they'd just need one more minor bug fix patch and it'd be done. Seems like a fine business decision to me, a burst of effort on something that's been dogging them for ages and then little to no hassle with it from there on.

 

When a game releases that is this buggy, and it's still not sorted a year plus down the line, and attention has shifted way from the game to a detrimental extent - I think it's fine for people to be annoyed. And it isn't good enough; how buggy this game has been and how quickly they've sorted those bugs really has been crappy and I think their reputation will have been hindered for it in the long run.

 

It took some of the shine off what could have been extremely shiny, when with a little more care they could have maintained extremely shiny and really raised their profile; they're now a company that makes good rpgs, so long as would expect a lot of bugs - but they could have just been a company that makes good rpgs (or at least, buried that reputation that had existed before with this game, rather than thoroughly stoking the fire).

Edited July 3, 2016 by Jojobobo

[Karkarov]

I'm personally fine giving them more time, but I can perfectly see why people are annoyed. I mean why can't they stick 10 people on it for a couple of weeks, get it sorted, then keep the skeleton team?

Few problems with this statement. 

 

1:  We have absolutely no clue how complex fixing these issues will be or if other bugs that were caught and needed to be resolved were created by the fixes.

 

2: Those people you want to pull off don't come from no where.  They are working on some other project, a project maybe being funded by a company with strict deadlines that will pay Obsidian less money if they fail to meet those deadlines.... or maybe kill the project altogether.  Those people are working on something that will make the company money in the future, not a product that has reached the end of it's life cycle.  There comes a time where you have to make the smart business choice and invest your employees into something progressive.  We have no clue what taking people from other projects for this patch would cost but I am willing to bet someone at Obsidian does, they did the math, and the cost benefit analysis said it was a bad idea.

[Suen]

I'm personally fine giving them more time, but I can perfectly see why people are annoyed. I mean why can't they stick 10 people on it for a couple of weeks, get it sorted, then keep the skeleton team? Probably even a couple of people would be good enough then, they'd just need one more minor bug fix patch and it'd be done.

 

Money and time. Mostly money. 

Edited July 3, 2016 by Suen

[Sir Ray of Light]

FWIW: The stacking bug is the reason why I have postponed my second play-through (this time with WM1+2). I don’t really care about the specifics of the bug (whether it triggers on save or on load (or both) and whether it’s quicksave/quickload or normal save/load (or both)). I’ve read that it can be a bit of a problem and that the whole of Defiance Bay counts as one map or something. I don’t want to deal with the details, I’ve other stuff to play (e. g. D:OS), and I don’t really have much time anyway (not really playing D:OS, too). So, no big deal for me personally. I probably would have played PoE, but I can wait, and I prefer a good final patch.

 

But, generally speaking, I can’t judge how bad the bug (potentially) is, but issues like this need to be fixed. I can’t really see that there is a discussion. WM2 was released 4.5 months ago (PoE 15 months ago), and I have the impression that the game is currently in a state that is not considered to be 100 % playable (depending on a player’s style/usage of standard interface features). That is a bad situation, and I understand why people are upset about it. “It costs too much money to fix the game” doesn’t really count. Sorry guys. This is not a Free Software project. It’s okay to—within limits—have certain expectations. I really think the customers have been patient enough (*cough* novella *cough*).

Edited July 3, 2016 by Sir Ray of Light

[Jojobobo]

 

I'm personally fine giving them more time, but I can perfectly see why people are annoyed. I mean why can't they stick 10 people on it for a couple of weeks, get it sorted, then keep the skeleton team?

Few problems with this statement. 

 

1:  We have absolutely no clue how complex fixing these issues will be or if other bugs that were caught and needed to be resolved were created by the fixes.

 

2: Those people you want to pull off don't come from no where.  They are working on some other project, a project maybe being funded by a company with strict deadlines that will pay Obsidian less money if they fail to meet those deadlines.... or maybe kill the project altogether.  Those people are working on something that will make the company money in the future, not a product that has reached the end of it's life cycle.  There comes a time where you have to make the smart business choice and invest your employees into something progressive.  We have no clue what taking people from other projects for this patch would cost but I am willing to bet someone at Obsidian does, they did the math, and the cost benefit analysis said it was a bad idea.

 

I appreciate both those things, and I understand they would be working on another project, but they shouldn't have coded their game in a way that it had so many gaping bugs initially - and even if it does expend their resources they did make a commitment to people who likely saved their company from administration and gave them money in good faith. IMO, a "mostly bug free game" under the definition I stipulated above, isn't a lot to ask (I'd hope it was a bare minimum standard in this industry, but it sadly isn't) - and it should have been sorted a damn while ago, and if they needed to spend more resources then do it and retain some damn credibility. The bugs in this game, and the amount of restarts I've done because of them (in the region of 15+, at the very least), are not good.

 

On the whole money vs credibility issue, I thought Obsidian would be happy to waste some money in return for the people who gave them vital seed money to begin with to feel satisfied. Should we all be happy they don't care enough, and are fine moving onto the bigger and better things that our seed money facilitated rather than trying to make that base contented? I really don't think so.

Edited July 3, 2016 by Jojobobo

[YalanaTiren]

My biggest issue is the lack of communication. I don't need to know the dirty laundry, but I want something more tangible than "Soon". I'm not going to wait for a vague promise that so far hasn't been fulfilled.

[Fenixp]

But, generally speaking, I can’t judge how bad the bug (potentially) is, but issues like this need to be fixed. I can’t really see that there is a discussion. WM2 was released 4.5 months ago (PoE 15 months ago), and I have the impression that the game is currently in a state that is not considered to be 100 % playable (depending on a player’s style/usage of standard interface features). That is a bad situation, and I understand why people are upset about it. “It costs too much money to fix the game” doesn’t really count. Sorry guys. This is not a Free Software project. It’s okay to—within limits—have certain expectations. I really think the customers have been patient enough (*cough* novella *cough*).

That's completely true. Good news is that we know they have already fixed the bug, as can be seen in the beta version of the patch. Presumably all that remnants of Obsidian still working on PoE are doing is polishing the patch up so that they don't introduce more bugs with it.

 

On the whole money vs credibility issue, I thought Obsidian would be happy to waste some money in return for the people who gave them vital seed money to begin with to feel satisfied. Should we all be happy they don't care enough, and are fine moving onto the bigger and better things that our seed money facilitated rather than trying to make that base contented? I really don't think so.

Pillars of Eternity was released 26th March 2015. Right now it's 3rd July 2016. We know Obsidian is still working on patching the game given the fact they have released beta for patch 3.03. This means that they've been working on fixing and improving the game for more than 1 year and 3 months. Obsidian was happy to waste money in return for people who gave them vital seed money to begin. You're still trying to pass the company as one which did not go beyond what would have been expected of them if it were not a KS project when they very clearly did.

Edited July 3, 2016 by Fenixp

[Jojobobo]

On the whole money vs credibility issue, I thought Obsidian would be happy to waste some money in return for the people who gave them vital seed money to begin with to feel satisfied. Should we all be happy they don't care enough, and are fine moving onto the bigger and better things that our seed money facilitated rather than trying to make that base contented? I really don't think so.

Pillars of Eternity was released 26th March 2015. Right now it's 3rd July 2016. We know Obsidian is still working on patching the game given the fact they have released beta for patch 3.03. This means that they've been working on fixing and improving the game for more than 1 year and 3 months. Obsidian was happy to waste money in return for people who gave them vital seed money to begin. You're still trying to pass the company as one which did not go beyond what would have been expected of them if it were not a KS project when they very clearly did.

Diablo II was patched for ages without any incentive and with Blizzard forking out to keep the servers afloat. So I don't think Obsidian's relatively minimal effort deserves a standing ovation.

 

Are they better than other AAA+ companies, sometimes - yeah maybe, sure. Better than other kickstarter funded more-indie developers - no, because a lot of them are more grateful. Regardless of what the industry standard of giving a crap is, I did and do want a little more care for this game. I also think Obsidian markets themselves on being a game company for the gamers (i.e. you want IE games you hardcore fans, we got IE-style games!) so even beyond a kickstarter backing I feel like they have a greater obligation to customer service than other companies as their unique selling point. They aren't delivering.

Edited July 3, 2016 by Jojobobo

[Fenixp]

Yes, Diablo II was patched for ages. Blizzard is also basically like McSchrooge. Last time they opened valve on their money swimming pool it farted out an AAA movie. At any rate, all Obsidian ever had an obligation for was to bring their backers the product they were promised. You should have not backed the game if you have your own arbitrary set of rules which has not been agreed to anywhere. Rest assured that Obsidian is currently a company which consists of over 200 employees, entire budget Pillars of Eternity collected wouldn't be enough to run the company for even as much as 3 months, which is about 1/5th of the time they spent supporting Pillars of Eternity. And yes, over the course of a year, adding and changing the base game based on user input is only what the top, most user-oriented companies in the industry do. If that's not sufficient, problem is not with Obsidian, it's with your expectations.

[Cyseal]

Unity 4 is hard to work with when you're flushing the bugs out and had major issues. I think this is the core reason the team is struggling with.

Unity 5 is much smoother and PoE2 won't have major or critical bugs at all.

Edited July 3, 2016 by Cyseal

[Jojobobo]

You should have not backed the game if you have your own arbitrary set of rules which has not been agreed to anywhere.

What the hell are you talking about? Yes I expect a game I fund not to have major bugs in it, or even minor bugs in it, that are persistently annoying a year plus after release.

 

This isn't a minor set of rules, this is a goddamn minimum standard. Jesus, Skyrim delivered better on this front, and I would never clamour for it being the pinnacle of RPG games.

 

My god, me and my "arbitrary standards" of not wanting buggy games. Put me on the cross.

 

PS Blizzard might be like McScrooge now, but back then they gave a crap - case in point the example given.

Edited July 3, 2016 by Jojobobo

[Fenixp]

Skyrim of all games, really? Open world RPGs are buggy. That's not really an excuse, it's a sad reality of game development. Good news is that the only big bugs in Pillars we know of currently is the stacking bug and multiple proccing bug, which we also know are both getting fixed, so I'm still not entirely sure what are you complaining about - we know for a fact the remaining major bugs will get fixed and we know that Obsidian is still supporting the game. They might introduce brand new terrible bugs, so uh... Just let them work on working out kinks in the new patch as opposed to complaining about... Something.

 

As for Blizzard... It's fairly easy to care when you're not risking anything by doing so. Remember, Pillars is very likely what saved Obsidian from bankruptcy - they can't afford to get into a similar situation by making stupid business decisions again.

 

Edit: Look, all I'm saying is - hold your horses. When Obsidian releases the full version of the last patch and it's still filled with potentially game-breaking bugs, they feel free to yell, that's a point at which I'd consider it understandable. Right now tho, all you're really asked to do is to wait. That's not a lot of effort, all in all.

Edited July 4, 2016 by Fenixp

[Jojobobo]

Those bugs In Skyrim that you mentioned are extremely minor, nothing like which we are facing in Pillars currently or have every moment since its release. As you say, open world RPGs are more buggy, so if Skyrim could and did land with a less bug filled release it's crazy that games like Pillars didn't. And as I said, I am fine with waiting, but as everyone else has mentioned, it is taking ages - and I've mentioned all the reasons as to why that's a bit of a joke.

[Karkarov]

PS Blizzard might be like McScrooge now, but back then they gave a crap - case in point the example given.

Look I am going to be blunt.

 

I won't discuss my work here other than to say I deal in the realities of business on a daily basis.  Obsidian has put out two expansions (though technically it is just one), and invested a near year and a half of continued support for PoE.  It isn't an MMO.  It isn't even multiplayer. 

 

You are comparing the support offered by a company that is literally worth hundreds times more than Obsidian, with more cash flow on it's worst day than Obsidian had on it's best day, that was supporting a online action RPG, one that was making them money in continued sales and multiple xpacs.  It isn't even a remotely fair comparison.  It is actually a ludicrous one.  Why didn't you just compare them to Call of Duty Modern Warfare?  It would have been just as fair. 

 

Asking for a bug free game is a monumental ask whether you like it or not, it isn't "unreasonable" to ask for it but it isn't something any company has ever done on anything other than a console.  Even then it is extremely rare.  Wanting a bug free game is understandable and all game companies should try to get there.  Asking for a significant work force to patch a single player game, that only has 2 significant (but definitely not game breaking) bugs left, that is almost 1.5 years old, and is no longer making significant income... ?  That's pretty unreasonable.

[Jojobobo]

I'll be blunt, Diablo 2 Lord of Destruction released in 2001, World of Warcraft released in 2004. As far as I'm concerned, it was WoW that brought Blizzard serious bank, and yet the patching was very good on Diablo 2 up until that point regardless. So yes, the comparison is completely valid, and maybe you should have fact checked before you threw your opinion out there.

 

And no, a 10 man team for a week isn't the most ridiculous thing ever. I appreciate it's costly, but as Pillars fans are the very reason they aren't on the breadline in the first place some cost is fine.

[Darwinion]

I'm brand new to the game and new to the forums. I've researched the stacking bug and to be honest I would call it pretty game breaking. If I invest hours on a play through (as I always do on a first run) and then run into something like this then I will be pretty angry!

 

It might not *break* the game as such in that it can still be played. But if you have to lose loads of hours going back in your saves or carefully try and work round the bug (which as a newcomer would be extremely difficult) then that's when I would wave goodbye.

 

I'm awaiting the new patch as I just bought it on Steam sale. I know I could use beta but I've decided to wait it out while I play other stuff.

[Voodoo]

Those bugs In Skyrim that you mentioned are extremely minor, nothing like which we are facing in Pillars currently or have every moment since its release.

 

Actually, Skyrim still has game-breaking bugs in the main quest line (I faced one during the last playthrough, the only way to fix it was to forward the quest stage via console). Also, just look at the changelog for the Skyrim unofficial patch.

[Fenixp]

Those bugs In Skyrim that you mentioned are extremely minor, nothing like which we are facing in Pillars currently or have every moment since its release.

You're right, the real fun begins when you start browsing Skyrim's quest related bugs. Pretty much every quest chain has a way to break progress, sometimes without a reliable fix :-P

 

I'll be blunt, Diablo 2 Lord of Destruction released in 2001, World of Warcraft released in 2004. As far as I'm concerned, it was WoW that brought Blizzard serious bank, and yet the patching was very good on Diablo 2 up until that point regardless. So yes, the comparison is completely valid, and maybe you should have fact checked before you threw your opinion out there.

Ummm... Of course it wasn't WoW that brought Blizzard serious bank at first, Diablo I, II and StarCraft are still amongst the best selling PC games in history. Yes, to date. In 2016.

[Jojobobo]

 

Those bugs In Skyrim that you mentioned are extremely minor, nothing like which we are facing in Pillars currently or have every moment since its release.

 

Actually, Skyrim still has game-breaking bugs in the main quest line (I faced one during the last playthrough, the only way to fix it was to forward the quest stage via console). Also, just look at the changelog for the Skyrim unofficial patch.

 

Well maybe I'm extremely fortunate then, but on several 100 plus hour play-throughs I never found anything I would call a severe bug.

 

I'll be blunt, Diablo 2 Lord of Destruction released in 2001, World of Warcraft released in 2004. As far as I'm concerned, it was WoW that brought Blizzard serious bank, and yet the patching was very good on Diablo 2 up until that point regardless. So yes, the comparison is completely valid, and maybe you should have fact checked before you threw your opinion out there.

Ummm... Of course it wasn't WoW that brought Blizzard serious bank at first, Diablo I, II and StarCraft are still amongst the best selling PC games in history. Yes, to date. In 2016.

I'm sure they did make money, but as they whole company would have been developing WoW they definitely will have been wasting costly resources for the sake of keeping the player base happy.

 

I'm pretty bored about arguing this point to be honest, I'm not going to be convinced that their conduct here isn't poor and I wasn't looking to debate this issue in the first place - rather it was to let Obsidian know that they're beginning to lose respect from some of their fanbase. They chose to make a crowd funded game, they should be trying to keep that same crowd happy - and in my opinion as with many others who have posted here they're not to the extent they should be. If you are happy to sit on your thumbs and wait for ages until they finally release a patch, then good for you, but it's not good enough for me - at least not with the completely ridiculous delay we're looking at currently.