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

[Loren Tyr]

 

It's really not. Unless you think any of the +X% damage talents is "meh", then your standards for "meh" are just vastly different I suppose.

Just a very fast and dirty response.  You are forgetting the key factor.  It is a Fighter talent.  It only converts grazes to hits, not hits to crits, and the Fighter is one of the highest accuracy characters in the game so already grazes less often than most melee characters to begin with.  Is it a dps increase, sure, but it is hardly make or break or this huge must have talent.  The fact that in one patch it didn't work period and many players didn't even notice is telling.

 

 

I'm not forgetting anything. Part of your argument was that if implemented correctly, it is rather a "meh" talent, I was merely outlining why it isn't. Even without the graze to hit conversion it'd still be on par with many of the +X% damage talents, I'd say. Moreover, because it is technically an ability rather than a talent there isn't actually that wide a selection when it becomes available. As alternatives you have the two defensive modals, and the remaining one of Knock Down and Disciplined Barrage. So I'd say there are plenty of reasons why you would normally be wanting to take Confident Aim.

 

On the flip side, in its current bugged state it is seriously overpowered, but this isn't readily apparent from the description or the combat log. You'd have to notice that your fighter is doing an unusually high amount of damage, more than it technically should or could be doing. And even then it isn't evident that Confident Aim is the cause. As far as I can tell I was the first one to report this issue (at least in relation to Confident Aim), though I can hardly have been the only one affected by it. Plenty more people must have been and still must be running around doing way too much damage with their fighter. 

[kanisatha]

Not directly pertaining to the OP's point, which I totally agree with, but relatedly ...

 

Over at Beamdog on their games forum they have a link to a page that has a roadmap for the patching being worked on for all their Enhanced Edition games, in which every issue being worked on for the next patch is listed and issues are checked off the list as progress is made towards completing the patch. The issues lists for previous patches are also retained for the record. I wish Obsidian (and other developers as well) would provide a similar level of transparency to their fans with respect to their game patching process. Obsidian's "Update Notes" are always incomplete, and even at that often not fully updated from the beta release version to the final patch version.

[Karkarov]

Not directly pertaining to the OP's point, which I totally agree with, but relatedly ...

 

Over at Beamdog on their games forum they have a link to a page that has a roadmap for the patching being worked on for all their Enhanced Edition games, in which every issue being worked on for the next patch is listed and issues are checked off the list as progress is made towards completing the patch. The issues lists for previous patches are also retained for the record. I wish Obsidian (and other developers as well) would provide a similar level of transparency to their fans with respect to their game patching process. Obsidian's "Update Notes" are always incomplete, and even at that often not fully updated from the beta release version to the final patch version.

And beamdog is working on developing how many new games, on how many different engines, and how many of their games were made by someone else and were already mostly bug free?  What's that?  No new games, all existing ones on the same engine, and every game they made was made by someone else and started mostly bug free?  Hmm.

 

Apple meet orange.

[Fenixp]

And beamdog is working on developing how many new games, on how many different engines, and how many of their games were made by someone else and were already mostly bug free?  What's that?  No new games, all existing ones on the same engine, and every game they made was made by someone else and started mostly bug free?  Hmm.

 

Apple meet orange.

Then again, Beamdog has like 30 employees in total as opposed to Obsidian's 200+.

[Tigranes]

Then again, Beamdog has made crap products for its entire history. *shrug* Not that it matters. People like to think they have all the information and they can compare simple things and draw firm conclusions (this company must be lazy! this other one must hate its customers!), but they're just elephanting it up in the dark all the way.

 

That said, I can totally agree that it would be nice if it became an industry standard to have clear patch roadmaps. Nobody needs to know "x issue will be fixed for sure next Monday", since that's not how reality works, but just to have scheduled regular communications.

[PIP-Clownboy]

Beamdog has introduced way more game breaking bugs (save destroying even) in BG1/2EE that still haven't been fixed. Laughable to even compare to Pillars which is mostly stable at this point. 

[kanisatha]

 

And beamdog is working on developing how many new games, on how many different engines, and how many of their games were made by someone else and were already mostly bug free?  What's that?  No new games, all existing ones on the same engine, and every game they made was made by someone else and started mostly bug free?  Hmm.

 

Apple meet orange.

Then again, Beamdog has like 30 employees in total as opposed to Obsidian's 200+.

 

Exactly! At no point in my post was I comparing one to the other. All I was doing was merely pointing out an example of a system I believe to be a nice system, which Obsidian and others could potentially follow if they wished.

[kanisatha]

Beamdog has introduced way more game breaking bugs (save destroying even) in BG1/2EE that still haven't been fixed. Laughable to even compare to Pillars which is mostly stable at this point. 

You're certainly welcome to your personal opinion, whereas for me the Beamdog EEs are all running beautifully and are perfectly stable with no problems while PoE continues to have several problems that I consider to be unacceptable.

[Grape_You_In_The_Mouth]

Reading the first page of this thread make me wonder how anyone could possibly be so hurt about this issue, other than immaturity.  Obsidian doesn't have time or money to fix every bug, and other games have bugs, too---end of story.  That's it.  That's all there is to it.  The beta patches aren't for fixing every problem we notice.  It allowed them to make sure the new version of bugfixes didn't crash everyone's game and destroy their items and saves.  Oh, and we can respec characters but "dammit you don't want to."  Well hey, if it's impossible for someone to pretend like one ability doesn't exist, out of the hundred or more that do exist, I wouldn't call that person reasonable.

[Loren Tyr]

Maybe you lack imagination then, because there are entirely reasonable arguments for being annoyed about it. Obviously the bug itself it is not game breaking, but it is still quite a bad bug. Sure, if you know about it you can easily avoid it, reducing it to a manageable nuisance. But plenty of people won't know about it, will take Confident Aim for their fighter, and end up with a very overpowered character. So it's not just a matter of pretending an ability doesn't exist. 

 

More generally, I'd say that although a patch cannot be expected to fix everything, we can at least expect a reasonable effort to avoid introducing new bugs. This one was reported during the beta but never acknowledged; the patch was pushed out of beta a couple of weeks later seemingly without any further changes (raising the question, why the wait?), introducing an additional fairly bad bug for non-WM players in the process. And as it turns out, the bug itself is relatively easy to track down and consists of a single incorrect character of code, so it's not as if fixing it would be such an arduous affair. 

 

But sure, being annoyed at buggy patches and poor communication... cannot possibly be anything other than immaturity 

[Jojobobo]

Reading the first page of this thread make me wonder how anyone could possibly be so hurt about this issue, other than immaturity.  Obsidian doesn't have time or money to fix every bug, and other games have bugs, too---end of story.  That's it.  That's all there is to it.  The beta patches aren't for fixing every problem we notice.  It allowed them to make sure the new version of bugfixes didn't crash everyone's game and destroy their items and saves.  Oh, and we can respec characters but "dammit you don't want to."  Well hey, if it's impossible for someone to pretend like one ability doesn't exist, out of the hundred or more that do exist, I wouldn't call that person reasonable.

I'm getting pretty tired at people aiming insults at me here, which I haven't reciprocated as they are completely needless. Loren Tyr pretty much covered everything in the above post, and I really don't have anything more to say that I haven't said already so I'm not going to bother.

 

I do however enjoy lessons in maturity from someone called Grape_You_In_The_Mouth.

[kanisatha]

I'm getting pretty tired at people aiming insults at me here, which I haven't reciprocated as they are completely needless. Loren Tyr pretty much covered everything in the above post, and I really don't have anything more to say that I haven't said already so I'm not going to bother.

I as well. Insults, ad hominem attacks and strawmen are the 'go to' strategies of people with no real argument of their own.

[Karkarov]

Maybe if your complaint wasn't "One talent is bugged and I refuse to do any of the various means of simply avoiding that talent" people might take you more seriously.  If you wanted to walk on the left side of the road but the sidewalk was being dug up by a construction worker would you still walk on that side?  Would you take a moment to complain at the worker for doing his job as you go by?  Or would you simply cross to the right side of the road?

As for how this bug is a "minor annoyance" uh no, it isn't.  You simply don't pick the talent.  You're done, you have absolutely one hundred percent avoided the bug permanently.  If you already took it you can get a respec and boom, you have avoided the bug permanently.  People who don't realize there is a bug?  Who cares?  If you don't know it is there then you don't know it is happening and as a result has no effect on your experience.  It is the ol Tree falls in the woods gag, yeah, it happened, but since no one knows or cares it doesn't actually matter.

[AndreaColombo]

As for how this bug is a "minor annoyance" uh no, it isn't.  You simply don't pick the talent.  You're done, you have absolutely one hundred percent avoided the bug permanently.

 

Sorry, mate, that's a very poor argument.

 

Being unable to pick an ability I want because it doesn't work as advertised is at the very least a minor annoyance. It becomes major if we factor in the matter of principle: This bug was introduced by 3.03, reported at least two weeks before the patch's release, and was duly ignored. Loren Tyr even went ahead and found where in the code the problem was, then suggested a fix—still ignored.

 

Because the patch that was released was exactly the same as the beta from a month before, the value added of withholding the patch for another month was zero. 3.03 as a whole was very poorly handled.

 

Sure, I can avoid picking that ability. By the same token, I can avoid playing the game altogether and will certainly not run into any bugs—but that's still not a very good argument.

[Jojobobo]

As I said, the other abilities in that slot aren't very good - if it was a later option where there are plenty of other alternatives then it would be better but it's not and there isn't.

 

Maybe if your complaint wasn't "One talent is bugged and I refuse to do any of the various means of simply avoiding that talent" people might take you more seriously.  If you wanted to walk on the left side of the road but the sidewalk was being dug up by a construction worker would you still walk on that side?  Would you take a moment to complain at the worker for doing his job as you go by?  Or would you simply cross to the right side of the road?

I literally don't know what you're talking about here - that's exactly what I am doing. I'm playing a different class while they fix the problem, which amounts to the same thing as the alternatives you suggested (and it fits more with the metaphor than anything you suggested) and means I don't have to compromise that particular character.

 

I don't know how many times I have to say this - it's annoying when new bugs are introduced when opportunity to rectify them was there and they were informed about it. You're honestly saying that, regardless or how big or small the bug in question is, that isn't at least a little irritating or stupid?

 

Yes it's a small bug, but it's those persistent small bugs (sometimes not so small) and the laissez-faire attitude towards them that I find bothersome. This game should have been a slam dunk favourite of mine, but instead I've had to persevere with it because of these problems rather than just sink in and enjoy it like a should have done. Obsidian have made it an effort to enjoy this game, because these small irritations crop up - in my mind - much too frequently.

 

It's like if you had a 1000 page book, but one of the pages was torn out, and it's out of print so you can't get another copy easily. Is one page ripped out a huge problem? No of course it isn't. Is is annoying? I'd say so, yes. I guess if you're the kind of person who can easily ignore something like that, than that's the fundamental difference between us. However the difference is, in this case it would be that the publisher hadn't actually bothered to print on one of the pages.

Edited July 24, 2016 by Jojobobo

[achaye]

If you wanted to walk on the left side of the road but the sidewalk was being dug up by a construction worker would you still walk on that side?  Would you take a moment to complain at the worker for doing his job as you go by?  Or would you simply cross to the right side of the road?

 

That's a horrible analogy that you have there.

 

If I see a construction worker there, literally it means that something is getting done, and that I can reasonably expect the sidewalk to get fixed. Real-life experiences have confirmed as much. Additionally, I can ASK the construction worker what's going on, and what the ETA is on the sidewalk's completion.

 

Your analogy would be sufficiently less horrible as follows:

 

You wanted to walk on the left side of the road, but the sidewalk is dug up. There's no construction worker around, nor any signs of work progress. Peeved, you go to the other side of the street.

 

Two weeks later, the sidewalk is still dug up, and no construction worker is around, nor are any signs posted. None of the neighbors have been given any notifications or updates either. With a defeated sigh, you acknowledge the uncertain fate of this left sidewalk, and proceed to cross the street.

 

Fin.

[Loren Tyr]

People who don't realize there is a bug?  Who cares?  If you don't know it is there then you don't know it is happening and as a result has no effect on your experience.  It is the ol Tree falls in the woods gag, yeah, it happened, but since no one knows or cares it doesn't actually matter.

 

Except it does affect their experience, because it makes their fighter vastly more powerful than it's supposed to be and the game becomes unbalanced in terms of general difficulty and in the relative performance of different classes/characters. Your argument is a bit like saying it doesn't matter if someone has paralyzing halitosis as long as he himself doesn't know about it. His ignorance won't change the fact that it is liable to affect his social experience. 

[Fenixp]

As for how this bug is a "minor annoyance" uh no, it isn't.  You simply don't pick the talent.

Oh cool, when a client contacts us about a bug in software, I'll totally tell him something along these lines. "We made the whole software for you that you paid for and you're obsessing over a minority like print button not working? Man, just write the information on a piece of paper, it'S all there on your screen! In fact, you can take a picture of your screen with your camera and print that! Uuu, and there's print screen button!"

[Thunker]

Will there be a 3.04 ? There is still bugs !

[Karkarov]

You guys do actually understand they have said 3.03 is not the final patch.... right?

[Loren Tyr]

Where? Because as I recall they only retracted the earlier statement that it would be the final patch. That hardly constitutes a clear confirmation that there will be another one. So although there might be a 3.04, we hardly have any clear indication that there actually will be. Let alone any information on what would be in it or what the time frame on it would be. And considering that they seemingly didn't do anything at all on 3.03 in the last couple of weeks that was in beta either, I'm hardly filled with a warm glow of confidence that there actually will be any further updates. And given their poor recent track record in terms of communication I don't see that changing anytime soon. Which is unfortunate, because I expect that if they did do a better job (and had done to begin with during the 3.03 beta) of communicating, they likely could (and could have) elicit a clear contribution of (some of) the forum members here to that process. 

Edited July 25, 2016 by Loren Tyr

[PangaeaACDC]

I'm sure Obsidian have some kind of proper bug tracking system internally, but here is one for Warzone 2100, to show what it might look like: http://developer.wz2100.net/report/14

(Although this is a public project, run by 'normal' users, I just did a search and am a little disheartened to see that bugs I reported 2 years ago are still not fixed)

 

I hope this isn't stirring the pot too much, because we all want to have as bug free game as possible. But before the recent patch was out, people were adamant it should be released asap. Then it's out, new bugs pop up (this almost always happens btw), and again there is heavy criticism. Okay, things could probably have been handled better, both internally with the beta process and externally with communications, but it also looks a bit like a lose-lose situation. Criticised for not getting out the patch sooner, and then criticised when it came out. Most likely they were working on testing for bugs in the period before it was released, to try to make sure bug fixes actually worked, and to pick up on "domino effects", ie new bugs popping up due to changes in code.

 

That said, hopefully a new patch comes out, that solves some of the remaining bugs, without introducing new ones. Although there is an easy workaround for the Fighter bug (glad I read about it here so I didn't pick that ability), it's not ideal, and it should be fixed. Same with the other bugs that have been reported.

[Jojobobo]

I don't think a bit of hassle to encourage them to release their patch sooner really would have effected their ability to not factor in new bugs into the game or fix some during the beta, especially when as Loren Tyr pointed out the Fighter bug is one line of code. I think this point would have been more valid if the gap between 3.02 and 3.03 hadn't been so long (I could get that the player base coming off as douchey if they were whining after say a single month) but it had four months almost to the day that they took between those patches.

 

When you wait that long, and then the patch they release isn't to standard and they were pre-warned in the beta it wasn't to standard, it is a little rich. I'm mostly okay with waiting again for the next patch, but really if they'd sorted the Fighter bug in the last patch when they were told about it there wouldn't have even needed to be another patch - the other bugs, while a little irritating, aren't of much consequence (the Carnage bash bug for example, though that doesn't mean it still shouldn't be fixed). They really shot themselves in the foot by ignoring the feedback they asked for, as now they're having to put in even more work into a game they seemingly wanted to be done with by now.

Edited July 25, 2016 by Jojobobo

[Baladas]

Where? Because as I recall they only retracted the earlier statement that it would be the final patch. That hardly constitutes a clear confirmation that there will be another one. So although there might be a 3.04, we hardly have any clear indication that there actually will be. Let alone any information on what would be in it or what the time frame on it would be. And considering that they seemingly didn't do anything at all on 3.03 in the last couple of weeks that was in beta either, I'm hardly filled with a warm glow of confidence that there actually will be any further updates. And given their poor recent track record in terms of communication I don't see that changing anytime soon. Which is unfortunate, because I expect that if they did do a better job (and had done to begin with during the 3.03 beta) of communicating, they likely could (and could have) elicit a clear contribution of (some of) the forum members here to that process. 

Right, and they still have not edited or removed this tweet:

 

"ICYMI while trying to track down an Abra, the new (and last) patch for #POE is now out on GOG and Steam! #EderDance

"

https://twitter.com/hashtag/EderDance?src=hash&lang=en

[Thunker]

You guys do actually understand they have said 3.03 is not the final patch.... right?

 

I heard the opposite... So the 3.03 is not the final ?