What's the point in beta patches if you don't fix the reported bugs?

[Jojobobo]

See title, I've sunk around 45 hours into my current solo PotD Fighter - just for the devs not to pay any attention to the Confident Aim bug in the beta and now I'm having to wait until the next patch for this Fighter to be unbugged, if there even is a next patch.

 

I mean you take almost an entire month to release the actual patch from the beta, a literal age releasing the beta from the previous patch (while ignoring people's demands for a hotfix to the stacking bug) - and now when you do release the patch you've introduced a brand new bug into it, which you needn't have done if you'd paid attention to the beta bug reporting! Isn't that the entire point of the beta patch, to rectify the new bugs you introduce in it, and then to patch them out before the alpha release?!

 

The irony is, I picked a Fighter as I felt confident a Fighter would not be bugged in future patches nor their mechanics further tweaked - what a complete idiot you've made of me Obsidian, thanks for that.

 

My question is, what the hell are the devs going to do about this? Or are they happy to continue to make a mockery out of their player base? I've literally never completed this game due to the original stacking bugs in v1.0x, now we're two versions later and I'm still getting this nonsense.

 

Where are your standards? For shame.

 

PS Yes I realise I could just respec, but I don't damn want to. It was never part of the original game, and I want the game to be as difficult as possible within the confines of PotD (as arguably you can just respec non-stop and tailor your character to each specific encounter, but where's the fun). So I'm not going to, and I really don't think I'm the only one who doesn't want to respec every minute of the damn day.

 

The respec mechanic is also just a load of bull, it's super cheap monetarily to respec you're entire character - and as money isn't hard to come by in undermines the process of player choice of traits through levelling. Even in Skyrim it was slightly better, as dragon souls were still worth slightly more a lot of the time than the ocean of money you also swim in that game too.

Edited July 12, 2016 by Jojobobo

[BALONEYPWNY]

My question is, what the hell are the devs going to do about this? Or are they happy to continue to make a mockery out of their player base? I've literally never completed this game due to the original stacking bugs in v1.0x, now we're two versions later and I'm still getting this nonsense.

 

 

 

I'm closing in on 400 hours logged and I too have never completed this game.  Same problems.

 

This is just sad on Obsidian's part.

[Karkarov]

Right because you complained about the confident aim bug non stop up to now, you never said anything about the "game breaking" bug caused by stat stacking on saves which got fixed.  Oh wait, you did.  Pages of it.  When you thank Obsidian for fixing the bug you claim made the game "100% unplayable" your complaints might carry a smidge of weight.  Until then it just sounds like someone intentionally gimping themselves complaining because gimping themselves makes the game hard.

Cold hard reality.  There are few, if any, games on pc that are actually bug free.  The only person taking a piss on Obsidian's fan base is you, by claiming your opinions are sane or in any way represent the majority of them.  This game is totally playable and any real major bug is quashed.  Oh god, one talent is still bugged, my character is so gimped!  Get over it and choose a different talent.

[Fenixp]

Major, function-changing bugs in a commercial software product are unacceptable. They have always been. And the fact that an Obsidian employee has given a user his word to look into a broken functionality and then seemingly didn't quite carry trough with it is ****ty, there's just no two ways about it. Additionally, the patch being in beta for a decent period of time and then rolling out with reported bugs is not cool at all.

 

That being said, in its current state, Pillars of Eternity is among the most polished and bug-free open-ended RPGs on market. That's an accomplishment for a company which is widely known for releasing extremely buggy games and cutting their support in slightly less buggy state. As far as I know, there are no more progress blocking bugs, be it some form of broken scripting in quests (hello, Skyrim) or mechanical issues making the game impossible to beat. And the game is by far the best balanced single-player cRPG I have ever played - balance is so good in fact that people complain furiously about potentially overpowered ability. Sure, random major issues will pop up here and there, an issue virtually impossible to resolve in PC market environment, but all in all, in its current state, players have to actively go looking for bugs in order to find them (even the confident aim bug won't be noticed by majority playing the game.) That's nearly as good as you can get in a non-subscription based software.

Edited July 13, 2016 by Fenixp

[Baladas]

Major, function-changing bugs in a commercial software product are unacceptable. They have always been. And the fact that an Obsidian employee has given a user his word to look into a broken functionality and then seemingly didn't quite carry trough with it is ****ty, there's just no two ways about it. Additionally, the patch being in beta for a decent period of time and then rolling out with reported bugs is not cool at all.

 

That being said, in its current state, Pillars of Eternity is among the most polished and bug-free open-ended RPGs on market. That's an accomplishment for a company which is widely known for releasing extremely buggy games and cutting their support in slightly less buggy state. As far as I know, there are no more progress blocking bugs, be it some form of broken scripting in quests (hello, Skyrim) or mechanical issues making the game impossible to beat. And the game is by far the best balanced single-player cRPG I have ever played - balance is so good in fact that people complain furiously about potentially overpowered ability. Sure, random major issues will pop up here and there, an issue virtually impossible to resolve in PC market environment, but all in all, in its current state, players have to actively go looking for bugs in order to find them (even the confident aim bug won't be noticed by majority playing the game.) That's nearly as good as you can get in a non-subscription based software.

I disagree.

 

Divinity Original Sin laughs at this mockery of a buggy mess, just look at the tech forums of this game:

 

https://forums.obsidian.net/forum/104-pillars-of-eternity-technical-support-spoiler-warning/

 

Unresolved bug after bug after bug.

Edited July 13, 2016 by Baladas

[Fenixp]

I disagree.

 

Divinity Original Sin laughs at this mockery of a buggy mess.

Well... If you consider crashing better than confident aim bug, then sure. Let's face it, there's no such thing as a bug-free cRPG which is also large enough.

[Baladas]

 

I disagree.

 

Divinity Original Sin laughs at this mockery of a buggy mess.

Well... If you consider crashing better than confident aim bug, then sure. Let's face it, there's no such thing as a bug-free cRPG which is also large enough.

 

That bug is easily avoidable. And it seems to be the only consistently prevailing one in that game. Compare the thread there to the one here. Clearly this game has more bugs, unless everyone posting in the tech forums is deluded and is not really experiencing the bugs they report.

 

This one:

 

https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/88124-game-breaking-bug-cannot-change-party-303/

 

https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/88127-bugbugs-change-party-and-brighthollow/

 

Is particularly bad, especially since this is the "last patch" wheras Larian seem to be intent upon continued updates, even if they are slow.

Edited July 13, 2016 by Baladas

[mishkoff]

 

 

I disagree.

 

Divinity Original Sin laughs at this mockery of a buggy mess.

Well... If you consider crashing better than confident aim bug, then sure. Let's face it, there's no such thing as a bug-free cRPG which is also large enough.

 

That bug is easily avoidable. And it seems to be the only consistently prevailing one in that game. Compare the thread there to the one here. Clearly this game has more bugs, unless everyone posting in the tech forums is deluded and is not really experiencing the bugs they report.

 

This one:

 

https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/88124-game-breaking-bug-cannot-change-party-303/

 

https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/88127-bugbugs-change-party-and-brighthollow/

 

Is particularly bad, especially since this is the "last patch" wheras Larian seem to be intent upon continued updates, even if they are slow.

 

If you go to bugs section and look for most recent report for confident aim, you'll see that sking replied there that this will be looked upon in next patch. So this is not the last patch.

[Jojobobo]

Right because you complained about the confident aim bug non stop up to now, you never said anything about the "game breaking" bug caused by stat stacking on saves which got fixed.  Oh wait, you did.  Pages of it.  When you thank Obsidian for fixing the bug you claim made the game "100% unplayable" your complaints might carry a smidge of weight.  Until then it just sounds like someone intentionally gimping themselves complaining because gimping themselves makes the game hard.

Right, because I want a game where they fix one crappy bug only to introduce another. I would never thank someone for doing a crummy job, if I acted this way at work I'd be sacked.

 

I don't care for your "cold hard reality" - there's now a class out there that has a significant ability permanently bugged. Limiting options like that is incredibly crap, and if nothing is done about it I will be boycotting their future releases and uninstalling the game - and spreading the word that others should do the same.

 

EDIT: I had to make the first part of this post fast, now I've got a bit more time...

 

The main unique selling point of the Fighter class from Obsidian was to be a consistent damage dealer, and the main way they achieved this was through the Confident Aim ability - giving graze to hit chance and upping minimum damage. So I guess people should be happy that they (a) didn't listen to the beta bug testers, (b) introduced this bug retrospectively, © have now compromised on a core concept of one of the classes and (d) seem like they're not going to do anything about it. This is on top of (e) taking an inordinate amount of time to fix important bugs in the first place.

 

Even though Confident Aim may not be important to everyone, the fact that they're still making these gaffs and it was pointed out to them in the beta is incredibly **** behaviour and to me is worthy of a boycott. If it hadn't of been mentioned in the beta, I wouldn't have been happy about it being there but I wouldn't have really cared because every company has to stop patching at some point - but they literally ignored the bug report and left it in the patch anyway, hence the topic title. You stack this up with what I've mentioned previously, that they should be even more accountable because this game is crowd-funded and we as fans dug them out of the gutter, then this behaviour becomes quite frankly disgraceful.

 

Also you say "take a different ability", if you've taken Disciplined Barrage there's literally not another decent ability - other than Confident Aim - for the level 3 slot. Defender is weak and situational and doesn't stack with other modals often, Knock Down provides the same buff to your accuracy as Barrage in the form of a debuff but has to roll against defenses, Guardian Stance is dramatically out-shined by what other classes have to offer. Confident Aim was the main ability, perhaps of the whole Fighter ability selection, that fitted with that concept of consistent damage dealing over the burst damage dealing of other classes - and now it's more or less gone as in taking the ability I may have just cracked open the console and given myself 10 more Might.

 

In terms of that I should be "thanking" them for fixing the stacking bug - first of all I'd never thank a company for rectifying a mistake that shouldn't have been present in the first place.

 

Secondly, imagine a situation where you're in a restaurant and you've just ordered a nice steaming bowl of mulligatawny soup. However you notice there's no coriander on top as advertised in the menu, and seeing as it's a fragrant soup you quite want that coriander. So you call the waiter over, and he makes his apologies, takes the soup away and - though he spends an inordinate amount of time doing so - he brings it back with the coriander on top.

 

However you now notice there's a dead fly floating in the soup, so you call the waiter over and mention it - to which he replies, "Sorry, kitchens now closed, forever!"

 

So, should I now thank him for the addition of that coriander that should have been there in the first place, even though there's a bobbing dead fly in the soup - and they took ages fetching the coriander? No, I don't think so, in fact I'm not so inclined to return to that restaurant again - especially seeing as I made a charitable donation for that restaurant to stay open in the first place.

 

Basically, what I'm trying to say is, our difficulties with the developers over patching should now be called SoupGate.

 

 

 

 

I disagree.

 

Divinity Original Sin laughs at this mockery of a buggy mess.

Well... If you consider crashing better than confident aim bug, then sure. Let's face it, there's no such thing as a bug-free cRPG which is also large enough.

 

That bug is easily avoidable. And it seems to be the only consistently prevailing one in that game. Compare the thread there to the one here. Clearly this game has more bugs, unless everyone posting in the tech forums is deluded and is not really experiencing the bugs they report.

 

This one:

 

https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/88124-game-breaking-bug-cannot-change-party-303/

 

https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/88127-bugbugs-change-party-and-brighthollow/

 

Is particularly bad, especially since this is the "last patch" wheras Larian seem to be intent upon continued updates, even if they are slow.

 

If you go to bugs section and look for most recent report for confident aim, you'll see that sking replied there that this will be looked upon in next patch. So this is not the last patch.

Well it would be nice for him or any other dev to confirm as much. My suspicion is SKing jumped the gun and said there could be another patch without confirming it with the higher ups first - which were convinced this should be the last patch.

Edited July 13, 2016 by Jojobobo

[Sannom]

Even though Confident Aim may not be important to everyone, the fact that they're still making these gaffs and it was pointed out to them in the beta is incredibly **** behaviour and to me is worthy of a boycott.

No. Warner Brothers releasing an objectively inferior and broken and bug-infested PC version of Arkham Knight is worthy of boycott. Same for that scam that was Aliens : Colonial Marines.

 

But this Confident Aim thing? It's only worthy of angry discussions between nerds on the internet.

[Fenixp]

In terms of that I should be "thanking" them for fixing the stacking bug - first of all I'd never thank a company for rectifying a mistake that shouldn't have been present in the first place.

Of course you should be thanking developers for fixing a product so that it works as advertised! You also need to use a clicker every time and give them a treat. It's called positive reinforcement. Next time you won't even need to click and give them a treat, you just say "There's a bug, Skippy!" and they'll make a patch!

[Dropman]

How is confident aim bugged? From bug section I found something about CA giving too much damage than it should, thus your fighter is stronger than it should be. Which I doubt is not worth of such debate...am I missing something?

[Jojobobo]

 

Even though Confident Aim may not be important to everyone, the fact that they're still making these gaffs and it was pointed out to them in the beta is incredibly **** behaviour and to me is worthy of a boycott.

No. Warner Brothers releasing an objectively inferior and broken and bug-infested PC version of Arkham Knight is worthy of boycott. Same for that scam that was Aliens : Colonial Marines.

 

But this Confident Aim thing? It's only worthy of angry discussions between nerds on the internet.

So I guess just because they're not as bad as some companies, that makes it all okay?

 

No, they literally ignored bugs reported to them from the fans in a process designed to remove bugs. There's no amount of people clamouring and saying that's okay that will make it okay. It's bad behaviour - just because it isn't as bad as what other people have done doesn't mean it's not still bad. And besides, we paid them to make the game, I don't know how many more times I have to say this but that should make them doubly conscientious when it comes to customer service.

 

And really, it's their cumulative bad behaviour that's the real issue here - not just any one event. With RPGs, I like to restart several times in order to get a feel for the mechanics - with Pillars I restarted 10 or so times because of that and all the bugs. Doing Gilded Vale that many times kills interest, and that's what I'm finding here - my interest is killed because every time I want to invest in this game something new and crap crops up from the devs not caring enough.

 

In this last instance, they have actively ignored the players. That's enough for me to be turned off a company, I guess I'll see if they do patch anything in but if they don't I'm leaving. The only reason I would ever buy one of their games again would be in the unfortunate event Paradox hires them to develop a WoD game, which as things are I really hope they don't do - but owning a crap load of PnP books and loving the last two games I'd still have to see what it was about.

 

How is confident aim bugged? From bug section I found something about CA giving too much damage than it should, thus your fighter is stronger than it should be. Which I doubt is not worth of such debate...am I missing something?

Because it's making my max 26 damage hatchet do around 60 on a common crit because of my (and Fighters in general) high Per. You don't see it on the tooltip, but when you look at the numbers you're dishing out its there.

 

As I said, if I'd have really wanted to get those numbers without any effort I have just used the console to add 10-15 Might - but I want to game with some challenge, shockingly

 

Going beyond that, as I keep saying it was both a mechanistically and conceptually important ability - the ability most dedicated to making them into consistent damage dealers which both their concept and mechanics were geared towards.

 

Again while this may not be a big deal to you, when you factor in their past behaviour the chances they've been given it stinks.

Edited July 13, 2016 by Jojobobo

[Rolor]

Rofl this thread. Especially the "omg 400 hours and could never finish the game once".

 

Overdramatic much?

Edited December 14, 2018 by Rolor

[house2fly]

The problem is getting emotionally involved in a commercial company. Don't donate because you want to dig your beloved Obsidian out of the gutter, donate because their game pitch was interesting. Getting emotionally invested leads to this situation where you're melting down and feeling betrayed over a bug which makes your character better in combat than he should be. Sure the minimalist attitude they've taken to patching since WM2 came out is a disappointment, but the big bugs have been squashed and if you play RPGs regularly the remaining ones should be well within your tolerance.

[Jojobobo]

I'm not emotionally involved over the issue, I just don't enjoy a company taking people for a bit of a ride. I've yet to see anyone defend them for ignoring beta bugs when they could have factored them into the patch, and while it's a tolerable issue I'm sick and tired of having to deal with all these "tolerable" annoyances that hinder my enjoyment of the game. You get too many issues that you should just tolerate, and it rapidly becomes intolerable. It didn't have to be like this, and it shouldn't have been.

 

I guess I just expected a higher standard coming from them in particular as a company, they're not a triple AAA so really they could have set a high bar for standards and raised themselves above the pack - particularly as this was crowd funded and they should be somewhat indebted to their fanbase. If they don't put another patch into development, and Loren Tyr has literally told them the code needed for a Confident Aim fix, then I won't be picking anything more of their stuff up unless they change their ways or unless they put out a WoD game - in which case my loyalty and interest in WoD products will win over.

 

There's just been too many instances where I've been enjoying the game, then a bug crops up that spoils that playthrough (or leaves it in stasis until the next patch) and it really sours the entire experience. Putting avoidable bugs into the game is just beyond stupid, and if a fan can figure out what seems to be a fix then what were the devs doing in the beta phase all this time?

[PIP-Clownboy]

I'm not emotionally involved over the issue, I just don't enjoy a company taking people for a bit of a ride. I've yet to see anyone defend them for ignoring beta bugs when they could have factored them into the patch, and while it's a tolerable issue I'm sick and tired of having to deal with all these "tolerable" annoyances that hinder my enjoyment of the game. You get too many issues that you should just tolerate, and it rapidly becomes intolerable. It didn't have to be like this, and it shouldn't have been.

 

I guess I just expected a higher standard coming from them in particular as a company, they're not a triple AAA so really they could have set a high bar for standards and raised themselves above the pack - particularly as this was crowd funded and they should be somewhat indebted to their fanbase. If they don't put another patch into development, and Loren Tyr has literally told them the code needed for a Confident Aim fix, then I won't be picking anything more of their stuff up unless they change their ways or unless they put out a WoD game - in which case my loyalty and interest in WoD products will win over.

 

There's just been too many instances where I've been enjoying the game, then a bug crops up that spoils that playthrough (or leaves it in stasis until the next patch) and it really sours the entire experience. Putting avoidable bugs into the game is just beyond stupid, and if a fan can figure out what seems to be a fix then what were the devs doing in the beta phase all this time?

 

Seek help. 

[Jojobobo]

Yeah hilarious, with that snappy remark you cut right to the heart of me.

 

I guess all of you standing in defense of Obsidian just love it when you tell a company there's a problem with one of their products and they literally ignore it when they could fix it. Strangely enough, I don't like it when I have to deal with a faulty product that a company has had years to perfect.

 

If you want to continue with your low expectations of customer service and let them play you all for idiots, then have at it, but personally I'd rather say something about it then roll over and expose my belly like all of you defending them. I don't care how "playable" the game is in its current state, I don't think a company should ever be big enough that its acceptable to ignore problems in its products especially when those problems are known quantities.

 

It's really much less about how "big" the bug is, and much more about how they've actively chosen to ignore it going from their beta patch to the release. It's disappointing they think it's okay to treat customers like this (most of whom can almost be considered borderline stakeholders seeing as we backed the game) to say the least.

 

At least they've now said they'll be patching the game. I guess I don't really mind if they do take a while with the next patch seeing as most of the work on the game now is done, but this whole beta patch stuff was still a mess.

Edited July 15, 2016 by Jojobobo

[Elric Galad]

Jojobobo,

I may not agree with all you say here, but you've been testing and pushing to make the final "major" bugs of this game corrected.

I just wanted to say thank you for this. (I guarantee there's no irony involved here.)

[Luzeryn]

That's the main reason I decided to ignore the betas, since they almost never fix anything people report so why bother.

 

Edit: I also don't understand why they keep rebalancing classes instead of fixing the damn game. Who is asking for those changes?

Edited July 14, 2016 by Luzeryn

[Elric Galad]

That's the main reason I decided to ignore the betas, since they almost never fix anything people report so why bother.

 

Edit: I also don't understand why they keep rebalancing classes instead of fixing the damn game. Who is asking for those changes?

Among other people, me.

And I really think it's good to balance class too.

In my own experience, I suffered more from balance issues than from bugs. That does not mean major bugs shouldn't be fixed but I personally think the game is in a pretty good shape now.

[MaxQuest]

Edit: I also don't understand why they keep [rebalancing classes] instead of fixing the damn game. Who is asking for [those changes]?

We | did.

 

Edit: Elric, you ninja ^^

Edited July 14, 2016 by MaxQuest

[Luzeryn]

 

That's the main reason I decided to ignore the betas, since they almost never fix anything people report so why bother.

 

Edit: I also don't understand why they keep rebalancing classes instead of fixing the damn game. Who is asking for those changes?

Among other people, me.

And I really think it's good to balance class too.

In my own experience, I suffered more from balance issues than from bugs. That does not mean major bugs shouldn't be fixed but I personally think the game is in a pretty good shape now.

 

 

I'd rather they would fix basic stuff that affects all classes to be honest, like drinking potions where the animation plays but most of the time you don't actually drink it, and if you get hit it just drops the action completely sometimes and have to try again.

 

I just don't see how stuff like that is less important than some small adjustments to one or two particular classes.

[Elric Galad]

Well, 3.03 balance changes are not exactly minor ^^

 

I pushed about "what I thought to be the right thing to push", but I don't pretend it should have been an objective priority.

 

You're right about potions, but as I don't use them a lot, I didn't see it as my "personal cause"...

[Fenixp]

As far as I'm concerned, class balance is a lot more important than fixing some minor bugs as balanced experience and knowledge that I can freely experiment with the system is what gives longevity to the game in my case.

 

I guess all of you standing in defense of Obsidian just love it when you tell a company there's a problem with one of their products and they literally ignore it when they could fix it. Strangely enough, I don't like it when I have to deal with a faulty product that a company has had years to perfect.

Well they fixed the reported issues with fixes in beta, but didn't introduce any new fixes. I'm pretty sure those are called "release candidates" and not "betas", but... Whatever. Edited July 14, 2016 by Fenixp