Refunded my Deadfire pledge, here's why...

[Gromnir]

 

@Jojobobo

Gromnir has remained staunchly in-character on this forum, for as long as I can remember.     One has but to read the name to imagine the entire post read out in a fantasy orc, or ogre's voice—and vernacular.   Consider how a post parodying Schwarzenegger would read with the accent spelled out phonetically.  You are taking it wrong; and in a manner akin to scoffing at Frank Drebin in The Naked Gun.

Well good play to him, but if someone is going to publicly call me out as what amounts to a liar with what is the most pathetic strawman I've ever seen (so much so that a stiff breeze could knock it over) just to get the final word in, what reaction does someone like that expect?

 

Consider me trolled, baited and my points weakened by proxy, which I think is what he was looking for anyway.

 

complete aside, as a point o' personal privelage:

 

more irony, though it seems more like hypocrisy.  in your mostly unresponsive laments, you kept telling us there were nothing wrong with criticising when we never suggested or implied such.  as somebody who has criticised obsidian, and a number o' other developers for decades, we sure as hell ain't suggesting criticism o' a developer after having played a game for X hours is verboten.  the majority o' our poe posts, following release, were criticism.  we sure never suggested in our posts, or even by our actions, a wrongness in criticising a game well and long played. we have criticised obsidian regarding poe and will continue to do so. never implied or stated otherwise.  nevertheless, you spent considerable effort knocking the stuffing outta that manakin, eh?

 

however, to lose confidence in a developer such that one need make a draft card burning kinda show o' their refund demand for deadfire is extreme weird from one such as jojo seeing as how the lack o' confidence comes regarding the sequel to a game you literal spent hundreds of hours playing, and possible similar time discussing.  how many posts alone does you got in the poe builds sections o' this board?   you played, and kept playing the known bugged and broken poe for years.  you made dozens (hundreds?) of posts regarding the rules minutiae o' poe in the builds section, and you did so for years. given just how much entertainment you seem to have squeezed outta poe, your lack o' confidence regarding the developer o' its sequel is just plain weird. at best such a public display o' angst is weird.

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

ps our response is limited to seeming reflexive straw man conjuring.  will not even touch the other fallacies or issues raised by jojo, but the peculiar need o' many violators o' straw man fallacy to themselves invoke the logic fallacy never fails to annoy us.  so go ahead and continue to rage, but accuse Gromnir o' straw man is worst kinda hypocrisy... or possible just more theatre.

Edited January 20, 2018 by Gromnir

[Boeroer]

While the fix itself might have not taken much time for Obsidian, testing it would have. Fix something and you break something. On a developer released patch you will have to test the **** out of it, before you can put it out. Modder doesn't have that legal/moral obligation.

 

At some point the Q&A team has to move on. I bet the developers would want to fix everything in the game, but it's a business decision. Those Q&A people are needed elsewhere and hiring bunch of new people to test it out might not do the trick.

 

It might come down to it being easier (especially to test the effects on the game as a whole) to remove things that aren't supposed to work in a OP way than to fix mechanics that bug in certain cases.

That would have been a valid point if they hadn't repeatedly fixed the "wrong" stuff at the same time. So there were enough resources to fix things, but they chose to patch slightly overpowered mechanics that were no bugs rather than fixing the real ones that annoyed people.

[Flouride]

 

That would have been a valid point if they hadn't repeatedly fixed the "wrong" stuff at the same time. So there were enough resources to fix things, but they chose to patch slightly overpowered mechanics that were no bugs rather than fixing the real ones that annoyed people.

 

 

You misunderstood me. "Fixing" something that isn't broken doesn't take time or effort as an example both of the OP combos/builds you mentioned. It isn't a bug, it's something they just didn't take into consideration so removing it doesn't have to involve much or any work and testing. Where as fixing some weird mechanical bug will take a lot of testing to see that it doesn't create problems elsewhere.

With the resources they have, they to prioritize what they patch and what they don't. Patching something that a mod has already fixed over something that modders haven't done, might be more worth their resources as well.

[Fenixp]

Since I'm a professional software developer myself (with business clients only) I consider this... I don't know... it just seems that the software development part and the testing is done in a messy way. I couldn't afford to do that...

Whenever I see a bug like that, I sigh loudly, unify all the copy-pasted code I find and then have a talk on architecture with the rest of the team

[Boeroer]

You misunderstood me. "Fixing" something that isn't broken doesn't take time or effort as an example both of the OP combos/builds you mentioned. It isn't a bug, it's something they just didn't take into consideration so removing it doesn't have to involve much or any work and testing. Where as fixing some weird mechanical bug will take a lot of testing to see that it doesn't create problems elsewhere.

Sorry, but that's nonsense (I would have used a softer term here if I only knew one ). Every change to code means that you have to test it afterwards. The code doesn't care if the thing you changed is an "oversight" or a "bug". Every change to code may entail some problems if not everything is seperated/decoupled very well from each other (which it seldomly is). So, for me (in my experience) it's not true to say that it takes more time to fix a bug than to fix a behavior that is overpowered. It totally depends on the individual code that causes the problem. Some bugs are ridiculously easy to fix, some oversights will cause you terrible headaches. For example I think that it was way trickier to fix the Envenomed-Strike-thing I mentioned above than several bugs that MaxQuests adressed in his mod.

 

Also there might be smooth transitions between "oversight" and "bug". For example: Scion of Flame and all the other elemental talents will not affect elemental spells that do damage over time. This could be considered an oversight or a bug. Depends how you look at it. But it's to the disadvantage of the player. Other oversights like retaliation generating focus are to the advantage of the player. Obsidian decided to "fix" the latter with high priority while leaving the first one in - although there was detailed explanation how to fix this. That's their decision and I'm ok with it. The bugs I'm talking about never broke the game for me. It just shows that there were resources to fix things.

 

With the resources they have, they to prioritize what they patch and what they don't. Patching something that a mod has already fixed over something that modders haven't done, might be more worth their resources as well.

You have a point there. That might be. They could have said something though. Edited January 20, 2018 by Boeroer

[Infinitron]

MaxQuest even put out a mod on his own where he fixed most of the remaining and most annoying mechanics bugs. He did this all by himself in his free time and it didn't take too much time - I mean MaxQuest is obviously a genius but I guess it would have been possible to do by Obsidian as well with the use of reasonable (low) resources. They could have taken his solution and pick the parts that would suit them - I'm sure MayxQuest would have agreed to that. 

 

 

This is what you really need. As with the Infinity Engine games, there probably won't be any choice but to rely on fan-made mods if you want to get rid of every last bug.

 

Perhaps somebody should register "www.xaurips3.net"?

Edited January 24, 2018 by Infinitron

[JerekKruger]

Surely you mean "www.xaurips3.com".

[GhostofAnakin]

I'm not going to condemn the OP for his/her choice, however, it's kind of weird that Skyrim is his/her example of a game that is NOT buggy.

 

I can't think of a RPG that didn't have sort of bugginess to them, whether minor or major.  So if one were to say they'll never buy a certain game developer's games while they release buggy content, then I guess that person should look into a different hobby other than video games.

[dragubaba]

Goddammit I hate the attention culture nowdays. "Look at me look at me I did this thing look at me!". Great, now keep it to yourself.

[Fenixp]

Goddammit I hate the attention culture nowdays. "Look at me look at me I did this thing look at me!". Great, now keep it to yourself.

Goddammit I hate the attention culture nowadays. "Look at me look at me I hate this thing look at me!". Great, now keep it to yourself.

[bonarbill]

Goddammit I hate the attention culture nowdays. "Look at me look at me I did this thing look at me!". Great, now keep it to yourself.

 

and it's pretty obvious he's trying to start drama.

[Boeroer]

Since he is - or was - a valuable, reasonable and kind member/contributor on the PoE subforum (especially the PoE Character Builds subforum) I doubt that.

Edited January 21, 2018 by Boeroer

[JerekKruger]

Since he is - or was - a valuable, reasonable and kind member/contributor on the PoE subforum (especially the PoE Character Builds subforum) I doubt that.

 

Agreed. This might not have been the wisest thread to start but I doubt Jojo was trying to start drama.

[Jojobobo]

I thought I'd come back to say I apologise to Gromnir for me being a ****, my personal thoughts or impressions of him have no place in this thread (or really ever being voiced in general). I think personally calling someone dishonest is a pretty large accusation, and one that people wouldn't make publicly outside of the internet very often (or maybe they would, I don't know), and one that shouldn't be made unless your entirely sure that it should be - and so it really pressed a button for me. That said it's not an excuse, I should have expressed my annoyance at his behaviour in an entirely different manner, and I'm sorry to him personally for getting out of hand.

 

I also wanted to address the claims of being "dramatic", seeing as it seems to be dominating the thread (though thank you Boeroer and JerekKruger for saying that is not the case).

 

If you think a company has preformed an unsatisfactory service, so much so that you want them they to be held more accountable for that problem, is there really a way of doing this without a public display? I could have written them a letter, or an email, but Obsidian could have easily ignored that - or seen it as a complete one off.

 

In taking a public stance, there's lots of things you can do - I could have made a blog post, I could have made some sort of YouTube video, I could have started widely circulating my thoughts about them through social media or post stuff like this on GoG forums or reddit. Of the public methods at my disposal I would say this was the least dramatic one I could have taken. If people think sharing an image of the email is "dramatic", I was simply offering proof that I'm not messing around and have done the thing that I said I've done.

 

If anyone has a suggestion of a means to make a company take a complaint very seriously in a less "dramatic" fashion I'm all ears (and if you really do have a good suggestion, then I'm happy to admit this wasn't the best possible way for me to go about raising this problem), but I couldn't think of anything else personally that I didn't think was in some ways even more dramatic. I'm also of the opinion that doing something publicly doesn't by its nature make it dramatic (or attention seeking, or when it boils down to it, other synonyms for the outdated concept of being unmanly and lacking reserve).

 

I'm also not entirely sure what people's issue with this whole topic are in general. I would say the outcomes are:

 

(1) Obsidian were already going to make less buggy games in the future anyway, so this topic was entirely pointless - probably the most likely thing going on here.

(2) Obsidian do become more worried about a backlash about buggy content, they take greater pains to put out less buggy games in the future, you as a fanbase get less buggy games.

(3) Obsidian ignore the problem and release a badly buggy game with long indecisive patch cycles, and now this thread is here more fans get annoyed about it as the problem is well documented and precedented, which eventually leads into outcome (2) anyway.

 

There's not really any way things don't get better (or remain as good as they were going to be in Deadfire anyway, if the devs had already learnt from past mistakes), so I'm not really sure why anyone is agitated by this thread.

 

Personally I want to be proved wrong and possibly come back to Obsidian at a later date, but if they don't change their ways and suffer some reputational damage as a result I'm fine with that too. I would say that Obsidian is my most favourite company creatively, but my least favourite company in terms of game implementation by still having gameplay altering bugs this far down the line (which is exacerbated by the fact I like their creative vision so much, regardless of how their bugginess compares to games of competitors), so I do hope they can change for the better.

 

Hopefully with this, everything has been neatly wrapped up. If you want to keep calling me dramatic, attention-seeking, dishonest and irrational, then so be it, but that isn't my intention at all.

Edited January 21, 2018 by Jojobobo

[IndiraLightfoot]

Once again, I have no qualms about your retracting your pledge.

As for the least public way, well that would have been the Deadfire forums, perhaps.

 

And regarding Gromnir, well let's just say that when I was newish to these forums, and debates about the PoE1 systems got heated, I got very angry with him. He really knew how to push your buttons, and he still does. It didn't matter much to me that he was in character, since that darn Gromnir is a clever bastard, and slightly off the wall as well. I had him on the ignore list, and a few others as well. Then I left the forums for a while, exhausted after the PoE1 beta bickering.

Here are the BG stats for Gromnir, BTW:

"Gromnir Il-Khan is a Lawful Neutral half-orc Bhaalspawn and is the leader of Saradush during Yaga-Shura's siege of the city. He had locked him and his best troops inside his castle, when the unwinnable siege of the city began.

Though he became insane and deluded and was executing people for no reason, his words against Melissan proved to be true, saying she was untrustworthy and plotting."

And Gromnir sure tries to be pretty neutral and lawful in many ways, and also ruthless, but without spoiling anything, I can really vouch for the guy behind his forum persona:

He seems to be thoroughly likable, intelligent, and he certainly writes his messages in an extremely sensible and amicable way, grammatically correct and all.

All in all, I've come to accept that IC Gromnir inhabits these forums like a fixture that seems to be one with the woodwork. Now, I can read his messages for what they are, but also try to read between the lines and catch the subtleties. He's a level 20 fighter, after all, with years of experience under his belt. My hat's off to him.

Edited January 21, 2018 by IndiraLightfoot

[SonicMage117]

Oh my.... oh dear.

 

This escalated quickly. I suspect this thread may be locked soon, due to crucial matter of opinion difference.

 

Edit: Catching up on walls of text, seems like the thread may not be locked after all

Edited January 21, 2018 by SonicMage117

[Boeroer]

Happens far too seldomly that people do work up the courage to apologize. Hats off!

[Achilles]

Since he is - or was - a valuable, reasonable and kind member/contributor on the PoE subforum (especially the PoE Character Builds subforum) I doubt that.

And yet somehow I've put 1300 hours into Pillars and never heard of him. I hope the door was kind to him on the way out.

[GhostofAnakin]

I have no issue with being critical of a company.  I just thought it was weird to be critical of Obsidian for something (bugs/glitches) well after release, to the point where they lose a customer over it, while holding another game/company (Skyrim) as the pinnacle of what Obsidian should strive for in terms of stability, when that game, and Bethesda in general, has their own issues with game-breaking bugs even years after release.

 

In other words, if you're going to boycott a company over buggy products after release, then video gaming probably isn't the best hobby for you.  Because I can't think of a single game I've played where I didn't come across at least one glitch, bug, crash, or technical issue that hurt the quality of one of my play throughs or caused me to have to re-start a play through altogether.

[Achilles]

I have no issue with being critical of a company.  I just thought it was weird to be critical of Obsidian for something (bugs/glitches) well after release, to the point where they lose a customer over it, while holding another game/company (Skyrim) as the pinnacle of what Obsidian should strive for in terms of stability, when that game, and Bethesda in general, has their own issues with game-breaking bugs even years after release.

 

In other words, if you're going to boycott a company over buggy products after release, then video gaming probably isn't the best hobby for you.  Because I can't think of a single game I've played where I didn't come across at least one glitch, bug, crash, or technical issue that hurt the quality of one of my play throughs or caused me to have to re-start a play through altogether.

Well said.

[Yosharian]

I don't agree that Pillars 1 is in a bad state right now, but I agree that it was in a bug-ridden state for far too long during the post-release period.  Even when the XP packs were being released there were hugely problematic bugs with certain classes/items that were still being fixed.

 

I think Obsi needs to step up their game with Pillars 2.

 

Not gonna refund my pledge, though.

[Boeroer]

 

Since he is - or was - a valuable, reasonable and kind member/contributor on the PoE subforum (especially the PoE Character Builds subforum) I doubt that.

And yet somehow I've put 1300 hours into Pillars and never heard of him. I hope the door was kind to him on the way out.

You haven't been active in the PoE subforum for quite some time. As some may know have been all the time without pause until today.

 

If you don't believe what I'm saying than be it and call me a liar. But he had the initial ideas of (and helped me develop) two builds and posted one finished/refined on his own as well as several provisional builds/build ideas. Before this profile picture he had one of a doll (Chucky or so) so maybe that's why you don't remember.

Edited January 22, 2018 by Boeroer

[Achilles]

 

 

Since he is - or was - a valuable, reasonable and kind member/contributor on the PoE subforum (especially the PoE Character Builds subforum) I doubt that.

And yet somehow I've put 1300 hours into Pillars and never heard of him. I hope the door was kind to him on the way out.

You haven't been active in the PoE subforum for quite some time. As some may know have been all the time without pause until today.

 

If you don't believe what I'm saying than be it and call me a liar. But he had the initial ideas of (and helped me develop) two builds and posted one finished/refined on his own as well as several provisional builds/build ideas. Before this profile picture he had one of a doll (Chucky or so) so maybe that's why you don't remember.

 

1) Difference between "active" and "around". 

2) I'm neither calling nor insinuating that you're a liar. Simply pointing out that the world will continue to exist without him, just like the game will get made without his $29 pledge. Maybe he'll feel more comfortable throwing that money into whatever blackhole EA or Bethesda is cooking up next. You know, one of those developers he still has "confidence" in.

[Boeroer]

Yes, maybe. That's for him to decide.

 

But I will miss him. One or two angry posts (still written in a civil manner) will not change that.

 

Edit:

Fun fact: played Skyrim a lot on PS3 back in the days and only encountered one single bug. Maybe luck.

Edited January 22, 2018 by Boeroer

[Achilles]

Good for you. I picked it up for PC the day it came out and got to survive all the bugs, then the patches to fix those bugs but introduced new ones (dragons flying backwards was the best). Then they just decided one day that they were going to stop supporting the game. Apparently that wasn't even enough to stop them from creating new ports years later (with no bug fixes). Because their publisher told them "no more patches"? Or maybe because they ran out of money? Or maybe because they just don't care very much about supporting their games (see the patch releases for Morrowind and Oblivion).

 

But they get Game of the Year while Obsidian gets the reputation for creating buggy games.

 

And your BFF reserves his rage-quit drama for an indie game that got made for 3 years of Todd Howard's salary. 

 

Seems *totally* legit.