Patch 3.07.1318 Is Now Live!

[Cerebro83]

I don't think there's ill means behind this - Pillars 1 is just not that important anymore. As Obsidian is working full force on Deadfire, I presume there's not much time and manpower to spare for these problems. The Deadfire Pack was a really nice gesture and I very much appreciate it for that; but it also was - and still is - a bit of a buggy mess and the game (in my view anyhow) got somewhat worse after it.

 

It's a bit of a shame not to leave on a high note, but that's how it seems right now. Well, I guess some short comment about this matter would be nice, so people don't need to wonder if support for the game is officially dropped or temporarily on ice, because of Deadfire. My personal solution is this: I'll keep my precious install files for 3.06 and just ignore everything that came after it, until maybe we get a fix some day...

[Kerozevok]

 

With photoshop (or similar software), it's easy to correct this bug, but unfortunately, the game is not "modder friendly".

[Messier-31]

So... it's been 7 days since my post, and 8 days since  Cerebro83's post, and... total silence from Obsidian!? This is the first time I've ever used the forum, and I was wondering if ignoring their supporters/fanbase is how Obsidian usually handle problems, and in general deal with their customers, if any kind of problems arise?

 

I find your lack of patience disturbing.

 

"God stays long, but strikes at last"

[Jojobobo]

If I'm honest, I can't see the graphical difference to between the two screenshots. Maybe that's just me.

[AndreaColombo]

I opened both and switched back and forth; backgrounds look blurry in the later versions of the game.

[Jojobobo]

So a rather large bug I've noticed is that Rogue damage modifiers no longer seem to stack (see bug thread here) - unless I've calculated something fundamentally wrong, but I don't see how I could have.

 

Is this intentional or not? If it is intentional, it makes Rogues pretty useless compared to other classes, as they're both hard to keep alive and not really doing damage high enough to be worth it. I would say it would cap a Rogue's damage in the 200-250 damage range if you're lucky, and there's already builds on the forum that can put out 200 damage per single round of Retaliation effects - making the Rogue's claim to "highest single target damage" originally stated by the devs very questionable. Further, I'm sure Wizards can do more damage with AoE spells than this with decent Might, or at least very similar.

 

It's also an unusual design decision, as it effectively gives Rogue's a load of mutually exclusive benefits - whereas most players wouldn't expect to be taking abilities and for them to not function with one another.

 

If it's not intentional, it's another fundamental class mechanic that isn't working as intended. As such, I'd say it needs a fix. These abilities have been in the game since its release over 2 and a half years ago, I don't think I need to tell any devs that it looks really bad to leave them in a state where they're not functioning properly - when they're supposed to be conceptually central to the Rogue class.

 

EDIT: I was wrong and I apologise for being misleading. MaxQuest clears things up here. I had no idea Rogues were so terribly in terms of their speciality - damage - which is why I thought there much be a bug.

Edited January 15, 2018 by Jojobobo

[Glaciaruz]

 

So... it's been 7 days since my post, and 8 days since  Cerebro83's post, and... total silence from Obsidian!? This is the first time I've ever used the forum, and I was wondering if ignoring their supporters/fanbase is how Obsidian usually handle problems, and in general deal with their customers, if any kind of problems arise?

 

I find your lack of patience disturbing.

 

"God stays long, but strikes at last"

 

 

You're goddamn right!

 

"God forgives... I don't!"

 

I opened both and switched back and forth; backgrounds look blurry in the later versions of the game.

 

Precisely! It looks like they used the gaussian blur effect from Photoshop on the backgrounds, which completely destroys the depth and detail of the fantastic artwork, and the sharpness of the character models combined with the blurriness of the background irritates and confuses my eyes, and breaks the immersion for me.

Unfortunately I can't rollback to version 3.06 on steam, but found this potential solution in the forum, but have anyone tried this with any luck?

https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/92999-community-bug-fixes/?p=1921632

[Cerebro83]

I did play a while with 3.07 in combination with the AssemblySharp.dll from 3.06 + IE Mod. If I recall correctly, there was one (maybe two – I’m not sure) file(s) I had to switch from 3.07 back to 3.06 because of minor UI errors / wrong descriptions in the menu. But the game itself ran without problems and I didn’t notice anything gamebreaking. If the blurriness really bothers you, I’d give it a try. Back up the files you change out, though!

[Jojobobo]

Another extremely annoying bug has cropped up. With Salty Mast prostitutes, if you have high Con and Dex (18 in each I've heard), you can convince them to come over to Caed Nua and hire them - whereupon they'll disappear from the Salty Mast and appear at your stronghold.

 

However, they no longer provide boons, robbing you of some of the best buffs in the game.

 

I now have Lyrinia at my Caed Nua, and lack a save before convincing her to come to Caed Nua, because heaven forbid I don't save before every minor decision in game in anticipation that it's going to provide some sort of bug (though I guess maybe I should do - maybe we should all keep around 30 saves on the off chance there's another extremely inconveniencing bug in the two and half year old game). This has now permanently gimped an Act III character I've put 27+ hours into, as the point of the build is high single target damage while maintaining some bulk and now I will never be able to achieve either the Might or Con scores that I could have done before.

 

You've turned what should have been a fun easter egg into a slap around the face for your fans. Please fix this, either a hotfix or you know fixing a load of the other issues - such as the male sprites for the new pirate outfits looking rubbish - that you've kindly neglected to bother with. If not I'll get a refund for Deadfire and encourage others to do so - I'm fundamentally sick and tired of sinking so much of my leisure time into something so half-assed.

 

EDIT: Just to put this another way, if a character had Bruised Ribs all the time (-4 Con) and you couldn't get rid of it people would be really annoyed about it ("WTF, a permanent injury??", etc.). I have a Dex of 20, so I was using these boons all the time, because they were free. As such, I now have a permanent -2 Might, -2 Con all the time. It's essentially made my character permanently injured, or close enough to that there's really a minimal difference.

Edited January 17, 2018 by Jojobobo

[house2fly]

I guess it really would have been complicated to fix the pirate outfits. Oh well, it's only annoying when the character is behind an object or the outfit is being worn by a male.

[Rubeck]

About a year ago, this is what I asked you guys (no obsidian employee replied, only other posters). Apparently I had very good reason to ask that. I STILL want to know when the FINAL version of this goddamn game is finally going to be released. 

Normally I don't mind when a developer patches an older game. Heck, it's usually a good thing: they're either patching out MINOR bugs (because the big, nasty ones are tipically gone by the time a game is "older" when the developer's name isn't Obsidian) or delivering quality of life improvements! With YOU at Obsidian, however, it's a VERY different story. Every single goddamn time you people put out a patch, it either:

a) Creates a new, usually significant, bug in interactions that were previously working fine (really bad, but it's ALMOST forgivable) or
b) Completely overhaul major systems (3.0 and 2.0) or
c) If not completely overhaul, just willy nilly decide to perform small "balance passes" that serve only to nerf a particular build or item combination that wasn't even that egregious of a problem anyway. See this gem from 3.06: "dropped the Unlabored Blade 'Firebug' proc from 3 to 10%". Great, now the Unlabored Blade went from "useful in particular fire-based builds with Scion of Flame" to "basically useless to everyone, as you'll almost never see its proc". Usually those balance passes are neither necessary nor desired by any player, ever.

I understand situation a). It's certainly amateurish but at least those are honest mistakes.

I am, however, infuriated by situation b). After the game was officially out of Early Access and released onto steam, there SHOULDN'T have been any major reworks. It's not an MMO, it's a single player game. Even if the reworks were accompanied by expansions, it's still TERRIBLE that basic things like the way Athletics worked were revamped. How is a normal, average player coming back to the game from the 2.x days supposed to know that Athletics no longer prevents fatigue from travelling? Hell, in one of the early maps, TO THIS DAY, your character still utters a line to the beat of "The more I keep going, the more likely that I'll need to sleep", which heavily implies that travelling still causes fatigue, just causing even more confusion. I'm not even arguing here that the old Athletics was better, it's a matter of "legal certainty" so to speak: players should have the expectation that, if they return to the same SINGLE PLAYER game 2 or 3 years down the line, it'll still be mostly the same game (minus a few bugs at best) and their old knowledge will still apply. Not so in Pillars.

Situation c) similarly makes my blood boil, maybe even more so than b). At least in b) there was a poor excuse ("tweaking things to fit with the new expansions"). This type of situation, though, has no excuse and no reason to exist. Again: this is not an MMO, it's not even multiplayer at all. Balance is important to a certain degree, but if people discover fun, slightly overpowered builds, let them keep it. If you're building a character around the Unlabored Blade, you should be able to have an effective character, not a useless gimp - especially given how late in the game you get the weapon and how laborious it is to unlock it fully. I just restarted playing this game (not sure I'll continue, to be honest, these patch notes have left me sad) and was planning on building Sagani around the Stormcaller bow right now. It's not even the most powerful ranger build I could give her according to most posters, but I find the idea of having her proc mini Returning Storms frequently a fun one. Which guarantee do I have that the Returning Storm chance isn't going to be dropped to 8, 5, 3 or even 0% tomorrow and, thus, render the Heart of The Storm talent that I gave her useless? None whatsoever. Maybe Stormcaller will have an entirely different proc, maybe it'll randomly make its wielder grab their crotch mid-fight and yell "hoo-hah", maybe it'll just shock your own character, maybe it'll cause you to explode, there's just NO WAY TO KNOW. Sure, there are always respecs, but those take all the fun out of the game. 

------

Let me use a legal concept as an analogy: "legal certainty", at least in civil law systems, is a principle according to which citizens can safely expect that the government and its officials won't just change laws out of the blue or behave unexpectedly. This means that what is legal today very likely will still remain legal tomorrow, at least in broad strokes: you won't suddenly wake up to find out the possesion of chocolate biscuits is punishable by death, for instance.

Most single-player games end up implicitly following a gaming version of this principle, which allows you to pick up a game you've played three years ago and still find a use for that old knowledge,  because - at best - only a few bugs were fixed. Maaaybe if the developers were feeling particularly cheeky, they may have had the audacity to implement a slight UI tweak or add one or two items that improve quality of life. This is good.

Here's what happens with Pillars, on the other hand, during a similar time span:

 

ATTEMPT 01 --> Playing the game at release (close to it anyway). Man, I'm pumped! The story seems dope, the worldbuilding is excellent, the writing is superb! Wait, why is my rogue getting one-shotted AND one-shotting everything? Oh... oh no, he has a gazillion accuracy and negative deflection (causing him to crit and be critted all the time) because developers couldn't handle a temporary buff/debuff from his modal ability. They applied the buff/debuff like a normal, permanent increase/decrease to his Accuracy stat (which is a surprisingly AMATEUR mistake to make, why the hell is the total even being stored there?).  Welp, that playthrough is bust. Let's wait a few weeks for a fix, sometimes launch can be a bit rocky (surely by then it'll be stable).

ATTEMPT 02 --> Weeks pass, and now that previous bug is fixed! But just to be safe, let's go with a different class this time, it was either a Paladin or a Barbarian or something (can't even remember anymore). First thing I discover is that one of his skills - obviously one that I picked - is somewhat bugged and doesn't work properly (lol, so much for playing it "safe"). The problem was discovered, as usual, after having chosen the character and played through quite a bit of the game. Excitement level going down again, but I immediately try a new run (not as pumped anymore, though).

 

ATTEMPT 03 --> Let's try this again with the same class, avoiding the bugged skill this time. Cool, no problems there anymore... but now I accidentally lock myself out of a main quest. Great. By this point, the only thing I can think of for a long time is "**** this game, it's not worth it". 

 

ATTEMPT 04 --> With the release of the White March pt. 1, my excitement went back up, but now I was weary and wary. What if the game is still unstable? What if it still has bugs? What if the new patches are still creating NEW BUGS? Well, all of that was happening. Basic stuff was STILL being fixed, new bugs STILL being introduced, a bunch of **** had recently changed A LOT. This is when I had made that first post at the top, and with good reason. Waited a few weeks after that post, then played a little bit of the game, rushing to The White March content, but, even though I was digging the world, the characters and the content, it still pissed me off that a patch came out with this line: "Mourning Gloves no longer give permanent buffs". I wasn't pissed because they fixed that bug, I was pissed that at this point in the game's life, they were STILL PUTTING OUT THE SAME KIND OF BUGS THAT HAPPENED BACK IN 1.x. This is EXACTLY the same bug that my very first Rogue character had (permanent buffs/debuffs being permanently applied), the only difference is that now it was applied to an item rather than an ability. Guys, this is EXTREMELY SLOPPY, it's a freaking basic programming mistake that even second-level CS students would be ashamed to make. Quit the game for about a year.

ATTEMPT 05 --> Just this week, decided to ONCE AGAIN try and brave this game. Spent literally days researching all the changes from 3.04 to now, and a few from 2.x to now that I had missed (like the Athletics change, I had not noticed it changed during attempt 4). Scoured the web to try and find up-to-date info on builds, skills, etc, which is by the way almost impossible: the game changes so much so fast that its wikis are never up-to-date, player guides ditto, even forum threads can't be trusted because a lot of them go back 1 or 2 years ago. I hadn't bothered reading the Deadfire patch updates (3.07 and 3.07.13etc), because, well... it's just a couple of new items to promote the sequel. They couldn't possibly have introduced new bugs, right? RIGHT??? Oh, wait, let me guess...  Patch 3.07.1318: "Fixed an issue with the Company Captain's Cap confusing party members when they cast a buff/heal spell". They fixed a bug introduced in the patch 3.07, which brought only four new items. And, again, the bug is EXTREMELY BASIC **** THAT SHOULD NOT HAVE GOTTEN PAST EVEN A MONKEY.  Yes, I *am* being rude. This **** is EMBARASSINGLY basic programming. Do you test the items/abilities AT ALL before shoving them out the door???

You know why I nag on you people? Because somehow, despite all your ****ty code, you have superb worldbuilding, story, ambience and characters. I *WANT* to like this game, goddamn it, but it's just too much of a ****show with bugs, random balance changes and post-release overhauls. Maybe I should come back to Pillars two years from now? Five? Ten? Fifty-seven? Maybe by then you'll have stopped messing around with it and the community will finally be able to know exactly how the game works, exactly which skills and items are bugged and which are not, exactly how powerful each weapon/armor is. Maybe then we'll no longer have these constant surprises, with patches fixing one thing and breaking another while simultaneously randomly nerfing/buffing items.

See you in a couple of years. Hope you finish your game (Pillars 1, that is) by then, because I *actually* want to play it. The sequel (which I *also* want to play) I won't touch until at least 10 years from now, because previous experience has taught me that "release date" means something closer to "open beta" for you guys. 

[Messier-31]

You know why I nag on you people? Because somehow, despite all your ****ty code, you have superb worldbuilding, story, ambience and characters. I *WANT* to like this game, goddamn it, but it's just too much of a ****show with bugs, random balance changes and post-release overhauls. Maybe I should come back to Pillars two years from now? Five? Ten? Fifty-seven? Maybe by then you'll have stopped messing around with it and the community will finally be able to know exactly how the game works, exactly which skills and items are bugged and which are not, exactly how powerful each weapon/armor is. Maybe then we'll no longer have these constant surprises, with patches fixing one thing and breaking another while simultaneously randomly nerfing/buffing items.

 

If you're having such a hard time, have you considered a lower difficulty level?

[Boeroer]

He's not saying he's having a hard time because the game is too difficult - he's saying that he's having a hard time because some values/mechanics are constantly changing, things get secretly nerfed and that every patch introduced new bugs.

 

Everything he said is correct. While I don't support the tone - the points he makes are valid. Overhauls of game mechanics and balancing passes are totally fine with me (even if it hit my builds more than once). Gives me more motivation to play the game again. However -  the part "introducing new bugs with every patch" really bothers me. 

 

If I (as a self employed software engineer) delivered such weak QA to my customers (mainly industry) I would get grilled - and rightfully so.

 

And I say that despite being addicted to PoE.

Edited March 16, 2018 by Boeroer

[Rubeck]

 

You know why I nag on you people? Because somehow, despite all your ****ty code, you have superb worldbuilding, story, ambience and characters. I *WANT* to like this game, goddamn it, but it's just too much of a ****show with bugs, random balance changes and post-release overhauls. Maybe I should come back to Pillars two years from now? Five? Ten? Fifty-seven? Maybe by then you'll have stopped messing around with it and the community will finally be able to know exactly how the game works, exactly which skills and items are bugged and which are not, exactly how powerful each weapon/armor is. Maybe then we'll no longer have these constant surprises, with patches fixing one thing and breaking another while simultaneously randomly nerfing/buffing items.

 

If you're having such a hard time, have you considered a lower difficulty level?

 

 

Oh, the "git gud scrub" argument. 

 

Read Boeroer's post, he explained the way I feel perfectly. I agree with him 100%, even the part about my tone (yes, I *AM* being rude to Obsidian, on purpose, because this kind of QA is beyond unacceptable). And, by the way, not all of the bugs that annoyed me were strictly harmful to my character.

 

The very first bug, the one where my rogue basically achieved 100% crit rate (due to sky high accuracy) at the cost of being himself critted 100% of the time (due to abysmally low deflection)? Once I learned that's what was happening, he basically made a lot of bosses trivial. I just had to wear paper towels on the rogue (for extra speed, it's not like he could tank the damage even with plate with this bug), lure them with Éder, wait a bit, then insta-gib the bosses in a few hits, before they had the time to switch targets. 

 

But that WAS NOT the point. I *could* keep playing the game with that bugged character, probably even be better at it than with a "normal", non-bugged rogue, but it wouldn't be satisfying. He wouldn't be overpowered because I learned the rules and applied them effectively, he would be overpowered because of bugs, and that's not fulfilling.

 

The other time where I rolled a different character and got locked out of a main quest due to a bug? Yeah, it doesn't matter if I turned it down from hard to easy, the quest would still be bugged and I'd still be unable to move on with the game. Difficulty had literally nothing to do with it, the only way forward was backwards: load a save from 10 hours ago and redo the quest.

 

I spend a lot of time reading up on the game every single time I decide to come back because I want to know how exactly the mechanics, damage of abilities and items' properties work and these things change EVERY SINGLE TIME I COME BACK TO THE GAME. The main source of fun in these types of RPGs - for me at least, and certainly to a lot of likeminded munchkin players - is to learn a ruleset and then apply that knowledge to develop the main character and story companions in the most optimized way possible (regardless of whether or not being optimal is even necessary).  It's a pain in the ass to do that when some of the ruleset doesn't even work properly due to bugs and the rest of it is vulnerable to random balance changes or just straight up overhauls all the time. This is acceptable in an MMO, not a single player game. 

See, I *can* play it and beat it - even on hard, never tried or wanted to try PoTD - without fully understanding the rules of the game and just "winging it". But doing so entirely defeats the purpose of even playing it. It's like playing Street Fighter by button mashing rather than learning the combos: it's a "strategy" that "works", as in you can beat the campaign mode and some random newbies with it, but you don't get the achievement of actually mastering the underlying system. 

 

Don't even know why I bother with these posts. Arguing with other customers leads nowhere and it's not like the devs or QA even read this ****. Wish they did, though, because it's coming from a customer who actually sees MASSIVE potential in the game being held back by very basic, but critical, programming mistakes. As I said: the worldbuing, characters, writing and ambience are superb. Obsidian just needs decent QA - not perfect, just DECENT like most midlevel devs - and to learn how to avoid constantly shifting their game's ruleset. Do that and Pillars would go from "frustrating mess" to not just "passable" or "good", but rather "masterpiece".

 

Heck, forget other developers. Even Obsidian's own less important, less passionate projects like Dungeon Siege 3 and the freaking South Park games seem to have 10x better QA than their flagship, passion project title.

[Messier-31]

Oh, the "git gud scrub" argument. 

Read Boeroer's post, he explained the way I feel perfectly.

 

Oh, the "hurr durr" argument.

 

See Boeroer's post, my like there indicates I have read it already.

[house2fly]

There hasn't been a patch since January and they haven't said anything about doing another one even though some of the DLC items are still bugged, so at this point I think you can consider the game complete

[Glaciaruz]

Hi Obsidian.

Congratulations with the release, and great reviews, of Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire. I assume that you guys have been in crunch mode for a long time now, and probably need to take a well deserved break, and your focus is probably to fix some of the launch bugs of POEII, but is it possible that you guys can at least find the time to finally fix the "blurry background" bug in Pillars of Eternity that came with the newest patches? It's been a while since I, and some other of your supporters, posted about the issue, and to no response whatsoever, so can you guys at least acknowledge that there's a problem with the blurry background, and tell us if it's going to be fixed or not? If it isn't, which I would find hard to believe, can you guys at least give the Steam users the possibility of a rollback to version 3.06 through the Steam Betas function? I really want to play through the game again in all of its beautiful - and sharp! - glory before I start with Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire, so please find it within yourself to show us fans the kind gesture of fixing the remaining bugs, or at least the blurry background bug, and leave this masterpiece on a high note instead of in this current state. It would be greatly appreciated.

Best regards

Glaciaruz