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

[SonicMage117]

I quit games all the time over bugs. Iirc, the most recent being FO:NV where the dude in the dinosaur head was supposed to snipe somebody that I led into his killing field. It didn't work, I quit the game, and never pressed the "Start" button again. I cant imagine getting 100H deep into a game and something fails!

Skyrim for me... Every time I'd join a faction or try to complete a campaign, a quest breaking bug would happen. I got sick of it eventually and just gave it a negative review and uninstalled.

[algroth]

I think most of the time I don't really notice the kind of mechanics related bugs that the OP is listing (possibly because I never play in such a hardcore way that the I need to numbers to work specifically for me to win).  Most of the time when I hit game stopping bugs its because a quest didn't trigger properly (Fallouts/Elder Scrolls) or a quest item disappeared entirely from my inventory (Arcanum).

 

I notice combat/mechanical bugs sometimes and am annoyed by them but they never linger in my mind when it comes to evaluating the overall experience I had with a game. Heck, even the more narrative/quest-related bugs are annoyances that only last for so long provided the rest of the game is good enough, and in Pillars' case it most definitely was. I guess this is why I can never understand the people who I see downvoting games in Metacritic due to 'bugs' whilst admitting the rest is good, as clearly my enjoyment in games and so on is derived from that 'rest' instead. I get the same feeling with this thread/complaint, but then I don't expect everyone to enjoy games in the same manner I do either, and if it's a deal-breaker it's a deal-breaker. I do agree with injurai that this seems like a very flimsy justification for a refund though, akin to asking for your money back if you did not like a film you just watched (though to counter this argument I will also say that at least in this case one hasn't yet had access to the product they're paying for).

Edited January 19, 2018 by algroth

[Valmy]

I find it highly unlikely this post would get deleted by mods, however I will say that social media and games journalism doesn’t look kindly on censorship of criticism, so that’s something you should consider if you were thinking of taking that route.

 

 

I like the pre-emptive rage and threats and accusations at the thing that didn't happen.

 

Anyway fair enough dude. We all have our standards. I wish you good luck with any future company you support. 

 

 

I would say Skyrim for one. I know you're going to jump all over me, because has been know Skyrim as a buggy game, 

 

Oh for...how many pre-emptive accusations are you going to make in this thread? Anyway some sorts of bugs bother people and others don't. The bugs you listed I barely noticed but other games they would make me unlikely to play further. Just how it goes.

Edited January 19, 2018 by Valmy

[Valmy]

I think it kind of reflects the maturity of this series now after all these years. We have a game we are all very familiar with now. That is why there were fewer supporters for the second kickstarter. People now know exactly what they are donating towards rather than whatever dream game they want Obsidian to make and make a more informed decision.

[Jojobobo]

 

I find it highly unlikely this post would get deleted by mods, however I will say that social media and games journalism doesn’t look kindly on censorship of criticism, so that’s something you should consider if you were thinking of taking that route.

 

 

I like the pre-emptive rage and threats and accusations at the thing that didn't happen.

 

Anyway fair enough dude. We all have our standards. I wish you good luck with any future company you support. 

 

 

I would say Skyrim for one. I know you're going to jump all over me, because has been know Skyrim as a buggy game, 

 

Oh for...how many pre-emptive accusations are you going to make in this thread? Anyway some sorts of bugs bother people and others don't. The bugs you listed I barely noticed but other games they would make me unlikely to play further. Just how it goes.

Now, now, no need to be catty. Skyrim is often cited as a buggy game, and some devs do delete criticism. As I mentioned, I don't think Obsidian is one of those devs by a long shot, but it's safe to say this is not a normal length most people would go to in order to make a criticism. I was immediately reassured by a mod and thanked him for it, for me that's no shots fired.

 

I think it kind of reflects the maturity of this series now after all these years. We have a game we are all very familiar with now. That is why there were fewer supporters for the second kickstarter. People now know exactly what they are donating towards rather than whatever dream game they want Obsidian to make and make a more informed decision.

Well I thought I had a game I was familiar with, and then noticed another problematic bug for me. I would say you're probably correct though, most people probably knew what they wanted sooner than I realised and so they didn't back it in cases like mine, and I apologise for funding PoE 2 when I had these reservations in the first place. However, I was knocked a little sideways at finding another of these sorts of bugs in a "definitive" version of the game and that's what really gave me cold feet like I hadn't had before, so I did what I had to do.

[Gromnir]

got no problem with a person rage quitting over bugs.  lose confidence in a developer 'cause o' game stability or mechanics fails is reasonable.  this thread is a bit on extreme end o' the drama queen spectrum for Gromnir, but everybody is different.

 

however, am feeling the need to make one observation o' the ironic sort.  genesis poster obvious played poe for many hours.  got multiple potd runs and solo runs and whatnot.

 

...

 

lose confidence in the developer after seeming hundreds o' hours invested in their title? not just one, but multiple runs and plays o' poe to get to the point o' lost confidence? most o' the mechanics issues the genesis poster describes is old, so he has been playing, and seeming enjoying, a busted game for a long time.  he hasn't simple been playing but has been replaying poe for a long time. play a game so long and so many times and then lose confidence in the developer is a bit... weird.  lose confidence in a developer who obvious succeeded in bringing so much gaming enjoyment to him? weird.

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

ps is more than a few games we quit after 5, 10 or even 20 hours.  most games? find a crpg developer who can provide us hundreds o' hours o' gameplay and multiple runs o' their title is serious win in our book. am not a fan o' bugs and stability issues, which is why we never buy traditional titles 'til at least 6 months and a patch or two following release, but if we can get as much enjoyment outta a title as the genesis poster seeming got from poe, then am having a hard time seeing such a scenario as a bad thing.

Edited January 19, 2018 by Gromnir

[Jojobobo]

got no problem with a person rage quitting over bugs.  lose confidence in a developer 'cause o' game stability or mechanics fails is reasonable.  this thread is a bit on extreme end o' the drama queen spectrum for Gromnir, but everybody is different.

 

however, am feeling the need to make one observation o' the ironic sort.  genesis poster obvious played poe for many hours.  got multiple potd runs and solo runs and whatnot.

No actually one run where I completed the game, the solo Gunslinger Chanter, the rest were incomplete because of bugs for the aforementioned reasons (and so bad experiences when you say I should have been enjoying myself, a 100 hours of buggy bad experiences), because of Obsidian being indecisive on class mechanics and new patches changing the state of play (not necessarily a bad thing, but not exactly a good thing either for people expecting consistent play), or loads where I made a shoddy build and so it became untenable (which is my problem not theirs, but it's certainly exacerbated for reasons of restarting and subsequently playing the Gilded Vale a load of times when you don't want to). Sorry-not-sorry for being consistent and not just giving up when I first should have done on Pillars, ages ago - ironically I wanted to give Obsidian the benefit of the doubt.

 

There's nothing exactly inconsistent here that I've said (maybe I said playthroughs earlier when I should have made it clear it was one playthrough and many, many failed play attempts late game because of bugs - if I was unclear it's not at an attempt at deception, just a simple hammering away at a keyboard due to getting a lot of responses).

 

This a fan forum, and criticism of what I've done I would expect and encourage, but inevitably these things devolve into accusations of drama-whoring and that's where we're at now. My reasoning (I would hope) is reasonably clear, and I've said all I need to say.

 

To borrow from Gromnir, "HA! Good Fun!" Jojobobo out.

Edited January 19, 2018 by Jojobobo

[Gromnir]

There's nothing exactly inconsistent here that I've said (maybe I said playthroughs earlier when I should have made it clear it was one playthrough and many, many failed play attempts late game because of bugs - if I was unclear it's not at an attempt at deception, just a simple hammering away at a keyboard due to getting a lot of responses).

 

 

 

 

as we said, we got no problem with quitting bad games and buggy developments/developers. is a vast catalog o' games which Gromnir dumped after some indefinite period o' time.  5 hours. 10 hours. perhaps 20 hours. however, even with your recharacterization o' poe play experience to explain playthroughs, you got a complete play o' a long game plus multiple abbreviated runs totaling more than 100 hours.

 

plus how many years posting on poe forums... a game you is s'posed disappointed with.

 

plus posts such as the following:

 

https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/88940-is-potd-going-to-actually-be-tough-rant-on-the-games-balance/?p=1840548

 

so progress from non hard to solo is a bit different than implied earlier in this thread.  can also show all the poe build contributions you got from over multiple years on the poe boards. is more than a few such builds which speak o' playing quite deep into the game, so...

 

does seem you are wallowing in the drama a bit.  have our self quit games and developments and at most such stuff involve a post o' criticisms with nary a backwards glance, but as we noted earlier, everybody is different. will note you complain o' folks recognizing your drama strikes us as a bit dishonest but additional self indulgent. drama. 

 

+100 hours and years o' board contributions to a game you didn't get enjoyment from?  *chuckle* am lucky if we play one such title every few years. is the bleeding brass ring, not evidence o' fail.

 

are you really out?  fine,  Gromnir is definite done with this.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Nail]

All game I've played had bugs, more or less...

By my experience very few companies are ironing out bugs, most of them just make 3-5 patches and that's it.

If that's frustrating things - I just quit.

PoE has bugs and, probably, will always do, still the game is good.

I don't give up my hope waiting for a good product, hopefully there will be less bugs than in first game.

[Jojobobo]

are you really out?  fine,  Gromnir is definite done with this.

 

HA! Good Fun!

You've sufficiently lowered the tone to get me back in, so congrats on that. And yes, I'm really out.

 

Personally, though we've never butted heads as far as I know Gromnir, I've really always unappreciated your treatment of language and general rude temperament - which is surprising considering several non-native english language speakers around here probably a finer grasp of the english language than I do, and yet you are too lapse to capitalise sentences (which I think people do in any language, right?). Further, while you're too lapse to capitalise sentences, you of course need to chip in with your cutesy "'o"s rather than "o"s and "we"s rather than "I"s. If you're going to ruin grammar conventions one way, don't try and redeem yourself in a completely counterintuitive way and go for the apostrophe or weird queenly second-person plural.

 

Are you just here to mock everyone making appropriate use of the english language - native and non-native speakers? I'm really not sure.

 

But of course, "HA! Good Fun!" I'm sure this is enough to get this thread locked at this stage, and that's fine and moderators can go ahead (though even in contentious threads such as this it would be nice if you could try and stop the trolls), but it's nice to say publicly that I really don't like people like you Gromnir - I think you're a bit of a bully. Anyway, onto your more salient points...

 

 

There's nothing exactly inconsistent here that I've said (maybe I said playthroughs earlier when I should have made it clear it was one playthrough and many, many failed play attempts late game because of bugs - if I was unclear it's not at an attempt at deception, just a simple hammering away at a keyboard due to getting a lot of responses).

 

As I've said, I've got no problem with quitting bad games and buggy developments/developers. It is a vast catalog of games in which I have dumped after some indefinite period of time, 5 hours, 10 hours, perhaps 20 hours. However, even with your recharacterization [sic - I couldn't do anything with this] of PoE play experience to explain playthroughs, you've got to complete play of long [sic - length? Hell I don't know] games plus multiple abbreviated runs totaling [sic] more than 100 hours.

 

Plus how many years posting on poe forums... in a game you're  supposed to be disappointed with.

There I tried to correct all your grammar to my best extent to let non-english speakers into our conversation, no need to thank me.

 

You can enjoy plenty of things and not find them completely satisfying. I want to play games I find completely satisfying. I played Resident Evil 7 early last year and found in completely satisfying, and then came back and played the DLCs in December last year and found them completely satisfying too.

 

Just because someone does something, doesn't mean they can't be critical of the thing they did. People are married for 8 years and then get divorced, but I guess they were happy all those years - yeah-noooo.

 

 

Plus posts such as the following:

 

https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/88940-is-potd-going-to-actually-be-tough-rant-on-the-games-balance/?p=1840548

 

So to progress from non-hard to solo is a bit different than implied earlier in this thread. It can also show all the PoE build contributions you got from over multiple years on the PoE boards. It is more than a few such builds which speak of playing quite deep into the game, so...

Again, my grammar-correct in play (I mean, to the extent I could).

 

No, if you recognise if you notice in the quote you provided I was discussing past tense (but thanks for the very poor detective work). You know, when people talk about transitioning from one thing to another in the past tense, that really doesn't set a time frame. While I make it seem like a gradual transition in that thread, it's more not to embarrass a person by suggesting I launched into hard difficulty fast compared to them - rather than whatever you're trying to paint it as. Some people try to be polite, and some people are entirely aggressive on forums and tend to annoy and upset people, only one of us is each of those things Gromnir.

 

I'm really not following the unintelligibleness of your last point? I played a lot, so I have no right to critique the game? Isn't the opposite true, where people who have tried to dig deep into the game's difficulty have more of a right? I really don't get this. I suppose I should just shut my mouth because what I'm saying about a game isn't what you're saying about a game, I guess?

 

It does seem you are wallowing in the drama a bit? I have myself our quit games at most such stuff involve a post of criticisms with not a backwards glance, but as we noted earlier, everybody is different. Will note you complain about folks recognizing your drama strikes us as a bit dishonest but additional self indulgent. drama. 

Oh I wouldn't say I'm any more dishonest than someone who has to actively artifice everything that they type into a forum, rather than going off the cuff, but I would say we have very different opinions of honesty don't we Gromnir?

 

If you think this is dramatic, then how is a person supposed to openly criticise a game company's performance that they themselves have not found satisfactory? Personally I would say your opinion that I should just get an refund and do a single post, and then not respond when people try and question and potentially ridicule my reasoning as you have done, is very much backwards. People are allowed to question my reasons, and I am allowed to respond, that is not dramatic.

 

The drama is right here, and of your making, so thanks very much for weighing in with your unpleasant, rude, poorly articulated points as always Gromnir. Heaven forbid anyone who felt like doing the same as me, dare they face your wrath.

 

But, again, "HA! Good Fun!", whatever the hell that means.

Edited January 20, 2018 by Jojobobo

[Guest]

Christ

[bonarbill]

Edit: Nevermind

Edited January 20, 2018 by bonarbill

[Gizmo]

@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.
 

I have experienced game-stopping bugs so bad I had to use scripting to get pass them. Examples of games I can think of right off the bat: Skyrim, Might & Magic X, Wasteland 2 and Grimrock 1.

What was the bug in Grimrock?  There are bugs, but none that I've seen that prevented play, or required scripting. I'm just curious what it was.

I have encountered one game stopping bug in PoE. There is a special encounter with a wall of thorns, under the stronghold. The game lets you pass through it —but (as you find out later) only in one direction.  This means (as happened to me) that the party can unknowingly bypass a very difficult fight, and descend below (perhaps not even knowing that the other encounter exists).  Later on... two levels further below, my party was hopelessly outmatched, beaten to pulp, exhausted of abilities... and unable to heal.  (I have always thought that the camp fire recovery mechanic was absurd.)  There are no resources to allow any form of recovery. The party cannot rest anywhere; and there is no campfire equipment anywhere in these areas, not even from the friendly (neutral) NPCs.

So my party retreats for their life... and the only way out is through an impossible fight, where they all die by the first of many opponents; of which several of them can paralyze the whole party. My game stopped there last year sometime.  Other than that, I think the game is fantastic.
 

Edited January 20, 2018 by Gizmo

[SonicMage117]

It's fine with me if people wanna refund it, although I'm super passionate about the game, I understand that everyone has different tastes or different experiences than me. Also, most people won't admit that different pc's can have completely different reactions or counteractions to running a game, meaninf that a game that runs perfect on my pc can run horribly on another and such is the fact.

 

It's none of my business how anyone spends their money and vice versa. This is a great thread, seems to have brought about some controversial argument but... for the right reasons. I just want more walls of comments because I like to read and I think this is the perfect thread for an honest argument on both ends.

 

More and more people will see this thread and it's obvious that the OP has gotten even the most stubborn fanboy's noodles cookin. We're all fanboys here

[IndiraLightfoot]

@Gizmo: Grimrock was a perfect game for my Macbook then. I jumped on the hype train, like I always do, so it was early. I had played for a bit, reached some light pillars. Then, when I wanted to continue playing, the save or something got corrupt. I couldn't load. IIRC, it was fixed in a patch later.

Edited January 20, 2018 by IndiraLightfoot

[Jojobobo]

@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.

[Fenixp]

This is Obsidian we're talking here. Approached from the other side of the spectrum, Pillars of Eternity was probably the smoothest and most polished experience I've ever played by this particular developer, regardless of still having bugs in it. That's not really an excuse for Obsidian per se, more of a "What did you expect?" kind of remark - if anything, Obsidian has regained my trust in creating polished games in addition to great worlds and stories to explore with Pillars of Eternity, in spite of it still being buggy.

 

That being said, Obsidian should seriously think about allowing wider range of mod support for Deadfire - purely because bugs like these will be unavoidably removed by fanbase when development of the game is inevitably abandoned.

Edited January 20, 2018 by Fenixp

[Flouride]

I think it kind of reflects the maturity of this series now after all these years. We have a game we are all very familiar with now. That is why there were fewer supporters for the second kickstarter. People now know exactly what they are donating towards rather than whatever dream game they want Obsidian to make and make a more informed decision.

 

That is kinda black&white opinion about the whole Kickstarter thing. Back when Pillars 1 was Kickstarted, the Kickstarter frenzy was at it's peak or quite close to it as Torment of Numanuma did even better.

Since then a lot of Kickstarter projects have failed, they've been delievered in subpar condition or years late. It's not also a new thing or a trend that would sweep every damn gaming media with every bit of news they could get.

Changing platforms also cost them in number of people willing to pledge. Some didn't want to be dealing with Fig in any way due to Tim Schafer's precense due to some reason I can't remember now (Gamergate?).

Fig pledging didn't work in some backwards countries in Europe due to their credit card not working etc.

 

Number of reasons, not just the one you said.

[Boeroer]

Some people here will know I'm kind of addicted to PoE - so I never could quit, heh! There are lots of things I love about it.

 

But I can understand Jojobo's frustration a bit.

 

Although I never encountered severe bugs like crashing or game-stopping with PoE (besides the early one where you couldn't get out of Readrc's cellar) there were a lot of smaller game breakers in the beginning and also later on (think of Jolting Touch + Carnage = triple shocking Heart of Fury, stacking defenses of enemies after reload in WM I and so on).

 

While that alone wasn't really upsetting for me, what really p***ed me off a bit (besides the really bad documentation/explanation of game mechanics) was how even more bugs were introduced with patches that were supposed to fix things. That felt like one step forward, two steps back.

 

Only recently I did an ultimate run with a Fire Godlike Barbarian and was in ACT III when I encountered this: when Battle Forged was active and I used Second Whing then my own fire retaliation would hit me. Since the damage of Battle Forged starts lower than the healing of Second Whind but scales more steeply I couldn't notice until I was of high level where Battle Forged does a lot of damage while Second Whind only heals a bit (compared to said damage). That lead to my unexpected death and removal of my ToI save game. Others would have rage-quitted - but to be honest it was ok for me to be able to cancle that tedious run prematurely without just "giving up".

 

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...

 

Good thing is that PoE (like most games) is more a piece of art (than my prosaic business software stuff) and consists of a lot more than just the mechanics - and overall the game still provides a great experience for me. But still I can understand the frustration. 

Edited January 20, 2018 by Boeroer

[Flouride]

I would say Skyrim for one. I know you're going to jump all over me, because has been know Skyrim as a buggy game, but I would say in it's current iteration (Special Editions, what have you) you can play for hundreds of hours without experiencing a single mechanistic bug - at least in an unmodded game.

 

While Skyrim has had a much longer development cycle than Pillars and more years to iron out its bugs, it's now from my experience as a player mostly bug free. I'm sure you can still bring a wiki list of all its bugs, and go, "Look Jojobobo, look at all the bugs, you moron!" But that doesn't change the fact that in playing Pillars and playing Skyrim for comparable amounts of time, I've experienced a disproportionate amount of mechanistic bugs in Pillars over Skyrim.

 

I'd say it's also bad that the latest version of Pillars was branded as the "definitive version" (which to me sounds like it should be as bugfree as a Special Edition), and yet there's still a bug in it where a significant and powerful advantage got barred from a character I was playing. Further Skyrim I don't think was marketed as an intricately difficult game like Pillars was, so even if there was a bug that offered a mechanistic advantage/disadvantage (of which I can remember remarkably few in Skyrim) I purchased the games looking for different things in their offered experiences. I didn't expect complex difficulty in Skyrim, but I did in Pillars and that was how it was advertised to a degree, so mechanistic bugs are more galling in Pillars for me than they are in Skyrim (and as I said, there are far fewer mechanistic bugs to be found in the first place).

 

I think you might be the only person in history to claim that Skyrim is less buggy than Pillars. Yes, Pillars might have more mechanistics bugs in it, but the mechanics are also a lot more complex. Bugs of that nature are a lot easier to miss by Q&A and players, and might be hard to reproduce even when testing after someone reports one.

Looking at your bug list for Pillars those are the kinda bugs that most players will never even notice. Only a handful of completionist will even go sleep with the prostitutes of Salty Mast over and over and over again. Do you honestly think someone will find that bug with the somewhat limited resources they have for Q&A? With the limited resources they have, they have to prioritize what they can fix even after finding the bugs and fixing something might break something else they will find out much later on.

The scope of the game is huge when a playthrough can take up to 90 hours and that is why the game will never be completely bug free. It's just not possible to have Q&A play the game through that many times to fix everything on every possible PC setup there is. At some point they will have to stop supporting the game and fixing issues that maybe a handful of people even notice. It's just a fact of life.

 

Just because the newest edition is labeled as Definite Edition doesn't mean it will be completely bug free. I don't know what fantasy world you live in to even expect such thing. If anything your criticism about the Definite Edition name should be forwarded towards the publisher Paradox since it's the publisher who decides on such things.

 

I don't remember Pillars being marketed as something very difficult to beat or extremely complex and it sure as **** doesn't take much to be more complex than Skyrim. It was marketed as a old school roleplaying game similar to Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale and Torment which weren't all that complex either. Yes, it has options to beat the game on more diffucult settings but to say it was branded as such is an exeggaration.

[Flouride]

 

I understand the point of view.

 

Me too, personnally, I have the impression that each new patch added back pedaling, sometimes.

 

But this is not a triple A. If Obsidian knows how to organize, they will learn from their mistakes since POE1. Better organize for bug fixes, and to prevent old bugs from re-appearing. It's about the success of the game, partly.

 

An RPG like this brings a lot of problems for 2 reasons:

- Dialogue quests, with multiple branches.

- Numerals and still conditional numerical values. Which promotes the appearance of bugs.

 

With multiclass the problem is even worse.

But you have to trust Obsidian, they are supposed to better control their tools now.

 

And Pillars is the only heir to serious DnD games. Original Sin is somthing else. (Turn by turn)

 

 

It's not just organizing, a lot of it comes down to simple things called resources and time. These 100 hour long games are a complex beast to do Q&A on. Unfortunately for us, these games don't sell like Call of Duty which means there are limited resources available and eventually time will run out as well as they will have to ship the game. And when your game isn't a simple shooter, when you fix mechanical issue, it might create two more in a different place.

 

Naturally with Pillars 1 and it being their 1st game on Unity it created new problems for them and I'm sure they've dealt with plenty of those issues after working on Pillars 1, Tyranny and Deadfire for years now.

[Boeroer]

I don't know. Tons of bugs were reported in detail and some of the guys that reported them even gave detailed info on how to fix them (see Loren Tyr, MaxQuest et al. - because they decompiled the code and had a look into it) - and still they didn't get fixed.

 

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. 

 

On the other hand stuff got "fixed" that was totally uncalled for: like retaliation couldn't generate focus anymore all of a sudden (no patch notes on this) after I posted a cipher-retaliation build that was quite powerful (not game breaking though).

 

Envenomed Strike could be used in an AoE with Blast or Citzal's Spirit Lance or Rot Skulls. This was also removed secretly (no patch notes) after I posted some build ideas around it. Seems there were resources for those somewhat overpowered, but not game breaking or annoying things.

Edited January 20, 2018 by Boeroer

[Flouride]

 

Another point you raise is that, "Obsidian always hammer out bugs for months and even years to come." I don't see that as a plus, as a game shouldn't be riddled with significant bugs in the first place - like Pillars of Eternity or like Fallout: New Vegas - or if they are they should get most of them in one or two rounds of patching, which wasn't the case in PoE. If there's many unpleasant bugs in the game, for me they tend to outweigh its other positive features.

 

 

 

You do realize that Obsidian doesn't have unlimited budget to hammer down bugs? Most companies give up after the 1st patch and be done with it and move their resources elsewhere. We've had support on PoE for over a year which is amazing and yet you find that as something negative.

CRPG's will never ship bug free or will they be completely bug free after few patches. And I'm talking about crpg's that are 50-100h long and have actual mechanics in it that can and will go wrong from time to time. There's not a company that can Q&A that much on game. Even if you throw 1000 people on Q&A, they will not find everything that the few million people playing the game will find.

 

Bringing up Fallout: New Vegas especially shows you are quite naieve about the whole thing. Publisher always has the bigger role in Q&A, in this case it was Bethesda. Bethesda decides how much money they will throw at Q&A to get rid of the bugs, Bethesda decides on the release date (18 months on FNV is quite amazing, when everyother Gamebryo game is being made for 3-4 years). It's Bethesda's buggy engine that creates most of these problems in the 1st place. Not a single Gamebryo engine game has been bug free, even after several patches. Yet, you expect that from Obsidian at their 1st go with that engine.

[Heijoushin]

Okay, I didn't read all the text walls but...

 

This reminds me of the people who refund 5 dollar games on Steam after playing them for 2 hours. Sure, you're within your rights but... unless you're really strapped for cash, it seems like you're begrudging them a tiny monetary contribution despite enjoying their product. Sure, it's not 100% perfect, but some programmers out there poured their blood and sweat into making this game.

 

I'm not sure how to say this without coming across as rude but, if you're getting so worked up over a few bugs, I think you might have lost your sense of perspective somewhere along the way. 

Edited January 20, 2018 by Heijoushin

[Flouride]

I don't know. Tons of bugs were reported in detail and some of the guys that reported them even gave detailed info on how to fix them (see Loren Tyr, MaxQuest et al. - because they decompiled the code and had a look into it) - and still they didn't get fixed.

 

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 reasonalbe (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. 

 

On the other hand stuff got "fixed" that was totally uncalled for: like retaliation couldn't generate focus anymore all of a sudden (no patch notes on this) after I posted a cipher-retaliation build that was quite powerful (not game breaking though).

 

Envenomed Strike could be used in an AoE with Blast or Citzal's Spirit Lance or Rot Skulls. This was also removed secretly (no patch notes) after I posted some build ideas around it. Seems thare were resources for those somewhar overpowered, but not game breaking or annoying things.

 

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.