Almost all negative Steam user reviews are due to bugs

[Mikeymoonshine]

I don't think anyone is against people being informed about bugs, a couple of people are just annoyed at a specific user because they keep claiming that there is some "general consensus" among players that deadfire is a subpar game and that all the positive reviews are from "fanboys" and don't count or whatever. This is quite obviously a rediculous claim to make and I can see why it's bothering some people but I would suggest they just try to ignore it.

 

That said I am as annoyed as everyone else is about these bugs because for me this makes the game unplayable. I feel like I am wasting my time with my current playthrough because I will just have to start again when they finally fix the bugs and who knows what the patch tomorrow will actually fix.

Edited May 14, 2018 by Mikeymoonshine

[Jayngo]

I think for me, I've forgotten so much of how my main PoE play through ended, that I didn't even notice Eder's story was bugged. All I really remember is that he didn't die in my play through. I don't remember the mayor thing or anything. I like Eder as a character, but I guess it didn't make that big of an impact, since I didn't remember much.

 

As much as I love story in these games, I guess I just like the general overall aspect of playing CRPGs. I'm still blazing ahead in my play through, only about 20 hours in. Right now, my biggest complaint is that the captain's quarters and pet farm seem to be bugged. I spent a lot of gold on those two items!

[Solostran]

There's plenty of things to fix, unfortunately. I'm OK with some of the bugs, mostly smaller things like not working item enchants, bugs in items description, typos and localization bugs, or even occasional crashes. But it's hard to accept bugged quest, issues with story integrity or problems in ending slides. Just from my first playthrough - 5 bugged quests, two of them making impossible to make alliance with two different factions (so you could say it's on a "game breaking" side of things), describing past events as something that hasn't happened yet to at least couple of NPCs (we're talking about main story here), and in ending slides I read about "cordial" farewell with one of companions which was anything but cordial. Things like these are breaking immersion heavily, to a point they can invalidate your entire playthrough and all decisions you made during the game. Not cool.

 

Does it make PoE 2 worse game than the first one? Not for me, as I see improvements in many areas in comparison to PoE 1, but I plan to complete the game multiple times anyway, and I expect several patches to be released, fixing both bugs and game balance. So I can wait, and I'm sure at some point Deadfire will really shine. But plenty of people will give up on game after few hours and will never give it another chance. And that's something that could be avoided.

[Horrorscope]

I've learned not to really trust Steam reviews or user Metacritic stuff. A lot of it is fanboys for one side or another fighting a war that makes no sense and using reviews to do it with.

 

The only reviews I actually consider are those from people with considerable play time in the game.

I seek and read them, being around the block enough, one should be able to read the room and figure where things are at and not get wrapped up in the emoitional. Would I be incorrect at this time to think PoE2 is a bit buggy and not tightly balanced, that some patches over the next couple months have a chance to fix? Because that is what I feel about the product currently. Reasonable?

[Fluffle]

There Sonic, in your face!

 

I dare you, call me fanboy again!

 

C'mon I know you want to. How long can you resist?

@Sonic, what you are doing is the very same thing that you accuse so called fanboys of. Just the exact opposite. Fanboys are immune to any kind of criticism of the thing that they are fanboy of. And you are immune to any kind of positive review of Pillars of Eternity 2 on this forum.

Just as a fanboy would dismiss all negative reviews. You are dismissing all positive ones.

Then it is no wonder actually how you can draw the conclusion that the majority of reviews is negative. Because you don't take the positive reviews into any account at all. You deny their existence just as a fanboy would deny the existence of any negative review.

You're not so different from me. Scary thought, isn't it?

Edited May 14, 2018 by Fluffle

[SonicMage117]

LOL! I love the pic, it's so cute :D

[Excalibur_2102]

 

My Steam review:

 

The first game is a much better, refined product.

 

Whole ship based system feels like a gimmick and ship to ship combat is just plain awful. The game has a less interesting story than the first game, and the start fails to grip player to the world and story.

 

Having most of the characters speak in english italian accent was a wierd decision, as well as inclusion of unknown words into the NPC text. Hovering over them shows their meaning, but it breaks to flow of dialogue.

 

Narrator is kinda annoying as well as the fact it's only present at some parts of the game. There are many uniteresting text heavy checks, much more than in the first game.

 

I hope the game gets better as I progress through the story,but so far I'd love it if I could play Pillars 1 with multiclassing and the graphics of the second one.

 

To take a quote out of RPS review:

 

A world where children are being born without souls, scarring generations, while warring factions of a terrifying god attempt to take control: great story, lots of impact. That was PoE1. A world where some giant is stamping somewhere else you can’t see, and there’s a trade war going on that endlessly suggests the complicity of the natives? Yeah, it’s not exactly gripping.

That seems to be the general consensus.

 

There are a few people that think Deadfire is better, most are content that it's a bit below.

 

 

 

Okay, I'm mainly a lurker on these forums but honestly, I just had to log in to say that some of your posts completely baffle me...

[topologista]

i feel like deadfire would have greatly benefited from an extra 1-2 weeks of bug-fixing. it's too bad the video game industry is so inflexible when it comes to deadlines.

[SonicMage117]

Okay, I'm mainly a lurker on these forums but honestly, I just had to log in to say that some of your posts completely baffle me...

It appears you and other members aren't reading the majority reviews like I am. It's really not as puzzling as you and others might think...

 

If the majority was saying different, I'd have no problem admitting to it. This isn't a "Nobody likes the game" sorta thing. I actually want Deadfire to succeed and to do that I'm going to be transparent and honest about what others experiences are with the game.

Edited May 14, 2018 by SonicMage117

[PangaeaACDC]

Okay, I'm mainly a lurker on these forums but honestly, I just had to log in to say that some of your posts completely baffle me...

 

 

That seems to be the general consensus.

[SonicMage117]

If being truthful about others experiences with the game's performance and current state is going to make me the bad guy, I have no issues with that. The negative reviews are what the devs treasure and read, unlike members here, they will take that constructive criticism as a positive note and use it to improve Deadfire, the dlc's and their upcoming game.

Edited May 14, 2018 by SonicMage117

[TheisEjsing]

If being truthful about others experiences with the game's performance and current state is going to make me the bad guy, I have no issues with that. The negative reviews are what the devs treasure and read, unlike members here, they will take that constructive criticism as a positive note and use it to improve Deadfire, the dlc's and their upcoming game.

Ofcourse Obsidian want constructive criticism, but that's really not what's going on here. You're being completely tunnelvisioned, and your claims are false. It's not debatable. The consensus on steam, and on metacritic is that 90% of the reviews are very to overwhelmingly positive. An unplayable bugfest as you describe would NEVER get such reviews. Noone is saying, that there isn't any bugs, but it's really a minor issue for the most part. You're grasping at straws to force your false narrative upon this forum, and it's getting so damn old. 

Edited May 14, 2018 by TheisEjsing

[master guardian]

 

If being truthful about others experiences with the game's performance and current state is going to make me the bad guy, I have no issues with that. The negative reviews are what the devs treasure and read, unlike members here, they will take that constructive criticism as a positive note and use it to improve Deadfire, the dlc's and their upcoming game.

Ofcourse Obsidian want constructive criticism, but that's really not what's going on here. You're being completely tunnelvisioned, and your claims are false. It's not debatable. The consensus on steam, and on metacritic is that 90% of the reviews are very to overwhelmingly positive. An unplayable bugfest as you describe would NEVER get such reviews. Noone is saying, that there isn't any bugs, but it's really a minor issue for the most part. You're grasping at straws to force your false narrative upon this forum, and it's getting so damn old.

things

 

I edited this for master guardian's choice of words. 

 

 

~ Gorgon

Edited May 14, 2018 by Gorgon

[SonicMage117]

 

If being truthful about others experiences with the game's performance and current state is going to make me the bad guy, I have no issues with that. The negative reviews are what the devs treasure and read, unlike members here, they will take that constructive criticism as a positive note and use it to improve Deadfire, the dlc's and their upcoming game.

Ofcourse Obsidian want constructive criticism, but that's really not what's going on here. You're being completely tunnelvisioned, and your claims are false. It's not debatable. The consensus on steam, and on metacritic is that 90% of the reviews are very to overwhelmingly positive. An unplayable bugfest as you describe would NEVER get such reviews. Noone is saying, that there isn't any bugs, but it's really a minor issue for the most part. You're grasping at straws to force your false narrative upon this forum, and it's getting so damn old.

No, you're changing/manipulating my words as usual, as others have done just because they don't like ir agree with what I'm saying and that's what's "getting so damn old".

 

If you actually read my comments, I never said the majority of the reviews for Deadfire are negative, I said they were positive from people who are either experiencing bugs or think the first game is better than the second. No clue why you and others think thid false when it's easily readable as well as public.

 

As for your last false claim, no, not at all true. Nier: Automata is one of the poorest optimized and bugged games on Steam and it has an 82% positive rating, after the patch was finally released I was able to enjoy the game at an unbelievable 30fps which warranted me to give it a positive position review. I won't even get into Bethesda games which have the same affect at launch. Point being, the bugs are so diverse that not everyone is affected the same way and even so, people are enjoying the game regardless.

[Sarakash]

My biggest issue time and time again with steam reviews that it´s completly binary. I am not a big fan of review scores in general, but steams system makes it even worse. GoG at least has a score rating (it´s currently at 4.5/5, in case you are wondering).

 

To be honest, the bugs are annoying. I can live with a CTD, some smaller issues like missing tooltip etc. but my playthrough came to a halt because of a story consitency bug. Furtunatly, I have an earlier save, but around 8 hours of progress are gone. If I am lucky it is getting fixed tomorrow, but who knows.

 

But I still enjoy the game very much, even with said bugs, it´s becoming one of my favorite CRPGs. I haven`t finished it yet, so I might change my opionion on that.

 

But, to be fair: A bugged release is not an Obsidian exclusive by any stretch of the imagination. I played Wasteland 2 on release and the second half of the game was a mess. Lot´s of quest related bugs, some gamestopping even. Same with Divinity Original sin 2, which was a mess even 2 month after release. Torment: Tides of Numenera was more polished, but it had it´s problems as well

 

Don´t get me wrong please. I donnot like gamestopping bugs or bugs where you have to rely on a rollback save. But he game is still far from unplayable.

 

TL; DR: The system steam uses to aggregate the average user score needs an update.

Edited May 14, 2018 by Sarakash

[yoyolll]

But, to be fair: A bugged release is not an Obsidian exclusive by any stretch of the imagination. I played Wasteland 2 on release and the second half of the game was a mess. Lot´s of quest related bugs, some gamestopping even. Same with Divinity Original sin 2, which was a mess even 2 month after release. Torment: Tides of Numenera was more polished, but it had it´s problems as well

 

I really don't like this attitude of "other games have buggy launches, so it's not that bad".  As a big fan of Obsidian, I'm no stranger to horribly buggy releases.  But I hope that they realize that this reputation is not a good one to have.  Especially now that they are pushing crowdfunding and pre-ordering so hard.  Deadfire is the first and last Obsidian game I will buy before the several months of patching that are always needed for each one of their games.  I know, I should've known better, but I loved PoE1 so much I couldn't resist.

[gkathellar]

 

But, to be fair: A bugged release is not an Obsidian exclusive by any stretch of the imagination. I played Wasteland 2 on release and the second half of the game was a mess. Lot´s of quest related bugs, some gamestopping even. Same with Divinity Original sin 2, which was a mess even 2 month after release. Torment: Tides of Numenera was more polished, but it had it´s problems as well

 

I really don't like this attitude of "other games have buggy launches, so it's not that bad". As a big fan of Obsidian, I'm no stranger to horribly buggy releases. But I hope that they realize that this reputation is not a good one to have. Especially now that they are pushing crowdfunding and pre-ordering so hard. Deadfire is the first and last Obsidian game I will buy before the several months of patching that are always needed for each one of their games. I know, I should've known better, but I loved PoE1 so much I couldn't resist.

It's not just an Obsidian thing - horrifically buggy releases is becoming the new normal at the Triple A level, so it's just sort of normalized. Me, I blame Skyrim's widespread popularity combined with the Ubisoft Game Mill. Obsidian was known for this in the past, yeah, but I think at this point it's just standard industry practice to have bad QA.

[master guardian]

Al the negative reviews i have read are due to the game being far to easy no the bugs

 

I havent noticed any bug apart from level scaling not working

[Mikeymoonshine]

 

If being truthful about others experiences with the game's performance and current state is going to make me the bad guy, I have no issues with that. The negative reviews are what the devs treasure and read, unlike members here, they will take that constructive criticism as a positive note and use it to improve Deadfire, the dlc's and their upcoming game.

Ofcourse Obsidian want constructive criticism, but that's really not what's going on here. You're being completely tunnelvisioned, and your claims are false. It's not debatable. The consensus on steam, and on metacritic is that 90% of the reviews are very to overwhelmingly positive. An unplayable bugfest as you describe would NEVER get such reviews. Noone is saying, that there isn't any bugs, but it's really a minor issue for the most part. You're grasping at straws to force your false narrative upon this forum, and it's getting so damn old. 

 

 

One thing to consider is how minor the issue is depends on who's playing. I haven't run into any broken quests yet so I can't speak to that but that is going to affect anyone but stuff like the save import feature and even whether or not the relationship system works properly is going to matter more to some people than others. Just from watching LPs and reviews I have noticed this game has attracted a lot of players who either didn't play the last game, didn't complete it or completed it but then kinda forgot about it or whatever. This game is prettier, more open, has full VO and the pacing is a bit faster so it is attracting people who may not have been as interested in the last game. Those people aren't really going to care or even notice the issues with the import, they will just pick a preset and go with it. Most profeshional critics will also be in the camp of not caring about the save imports.

 

Someone like me though it really bothers me when the game is flagging even minor choices i made wrong. I have two friends who are playing this game and neither of them have said anything about imports or bugs they are both really enjoying it.

[Sarakash]

 

But, to be fair: A bugged release is not an Obsidian exclusive by any stretch of the imagination. I played Wasteland 2 on release and the second half of the game was a mess. Lot´s of quest related bugs, some gamestopping even. Same with Divinity Original sin 2, which was a mess even 2 month after release. Torment: Tides of Numenera was more polished, but it had it´s problems as well

I really don't like this attitude of "other games have buggy launches, so it's not that bad".  As a big fan of Obsidian, I'm no stranger to horribly buggy releases.  But I hope that they realize that this reputation is not a good one to have.  Especially now that they are pushing crowdfunding and pre-ordering so hard.  Deadfire is the first and last Obsidian game I will buy before the several months of patching that are always needed for each one of their games.  I know, I should've known better, but I loved PoE1 so much I couldn't resist.

 

 

I am not ok with this either, nor was my intention to make excuses for this by basically saying "everyone is doing it, so it´s ok". All I wanted to do is setting matters into perspective. It´s just not a problem only Obsidian has (even if they earned this reputation in the past with games like Kotor 2 and F:NV in the past). And I have seen worse. Even my beloved Fallout 2 had at least one gamestopping bug when I first played it. Or Planscape: Torment on release, oh boy. It´s not a new problem and it´s a problem in the industry as a whole, especially since the age of digital releases. It´s much easier to release patches nowadays.

 

Your conclusion to not buy or play a game on release and wait for patches in order to get an unspoiled experience is a fair one to make. A friend of mine always waits with every game he is buying a few month for instance.

 

 

 

 

If being truthful about others experiences with the game's performance and current state is going to make me the bad guy, I have no issues with that. The negative reviews are what the devs treasure and read, unlike members here, they will take that constructive criticism as a positive note and use it to improve Deadfire, the dlc's and their upcoming game.

Ofcourse Obsidian want constructive criticism, but that's really not what's going on here. You're being completely tunnelvisioned, and your claims are false. It's not debatable. The consensus on steam, and on metacritic is that 90% of the reviews are very to overwhelmingly positive. An unplayable bugfest as you describe would NEVER get such reviews. Noone is saying, that there isn't any bugs, but it's really a minor issue for the most part. You're grasping at straws to force your false narrative upon this forum, and it's getting so damn old.

 

One thing to consider is how minor the issue is depends on who's playing. I haven't run into any broken quests yet so I can't speak to that but that is going to affect anyone but stuff like the save import feature and even whether or not the relationship system works properly is going to matter more to some people than others. Just from watching LPs and reviews I have noticed this game has attracted a lot of players who either didn't play the last game, didn't complete it or completed it but then kinda forgot about it or whatever. This game is prettier, more open, has full VO and the pacing is a bit faster so it is attracting people who may not have been as interested in the last game. Those people aren't really going to care or even notice the issues with the import, they will just pick a preset and go with it. Most profeshional critics will also be in the camp of not caring about the save imports.

 

Someone like me though it really bothers me when the game is flagging even minor choices i made wrong. I have two friends who are playing this game and neither of them have said anything about imports or bugs they are both really enjoying it.

 

I agree. Some people might not even run into any major issues. And people will react differently to a given issue in general. It´s highly subjectiv. For some it might break the deal, other might still be able to enjoy it. Both views and those in between are valid in my opinion. The more sever it is and the more people it´s affecting, the more people will complain of course.

 

However, regarding steam reviews, it´s an aggregated score which ultimatly only allows for a binary choice in the end.  Most people won´t even write a review. As I am posting this, around 12.000 people are playing, but only 1013 wrote a review. It´s only a very small sample size, so trying to draw an objectiv conclsion from this is bound to fail. It´s an indicator allright, but nothing more.

 

Some people might downvote it for bugs they experienced, other might have different reasons. Most of them are subjectiv complaints, some with merrit, some not. For instance, is PotD beeing to easy a problem for the majority of players ? I`d say only for those who like the particular challenge it has to offer. For everyone else, it is not. I am not arguing that this particual problem shouldn´t be adressed, in fact it should be but I doubt that the majority people who downvoted the game because of this will bother to change their review after the issue gets adressed and this dilutes the significane of the score.

 

You indicated in your opening post that you think the lack of QA might hurt Obsidian on the long run, which might be true although I personally doubt that. Drawing this conclusion from steam reviews however is blowing things out of proportion in my opinion, no offense.

 

Personally, I am not happy with the bug I ran into, heck me writing here instead of playing should be proof enough. But I still enjoy it overall and will most likely play more tomorrow.

 

 

Edited May 14, 2018 by Sarakash

[lordgizka]

There you go: https://steamcommunity.com/id/darthgizka/recommended/560130/. Likely got downvoted to hell. I got pretty pissed with the endgame, so I did a ramble. Also, I should use both factual and emotional narrative, and not what I did there...

[master guardian]

There you go: https://steamcommunity.com/id/darthgizka/recommended/560130/. Likely got downvoted to hell. I got pretty pissed with the endgame, so I did a ramble. Also, I should use both factual and emotional narrative, and not what I did there...

Even steam forums flooded with comments saying game is to easy

[Gorth]

Removed a few recent posts. Being negative is fine, how it is expressed does matter though. Less personal and more constructive please?

 

If people want to disagree with moderating calls, send a PM and keep the thread "clean"

[Sotnik]

Positive reviews were written by those who have not faced enough bugs YET. I am afraid the score will be dropping unless major efforts are made.

Edited May 15, 2018 by Sotnik

[Karkarov]

Well like I have said in many threads, I, too, am a fanboy of Obsidian and Pillars. Chances are - if you're an active member here, you're probably a fanboy. There are pros and cons to this.

I am not a fanboy.  I spend time here, and I love their games, but I will never hesitate to call a spade a spade.

 

That said, just like with Eternity 1, anyone saying this game is a bug ridden mess that is unplayable is talking out their rear. 

 

I have suffered 4 CTD's, they always happen in world map to city/dungeon map transitions so now I just save to be safe, hardly game breaking just kind of annoying.  Twice my manual saves inexplicably got deleted, good thing there are backup cloud saved I restored from.  Annoying, but not game breaking, also it was only my manual saves the autosaves were fine so even without the cloud all was not lost.  There are some import bugs, guess what?  All of them are fixed by the already available beta patch.  Annoying not game breaking.

 

I have encountered a bug playing Deadfire where my screen would lock up, the game would continue playing though.  I simply could not see anything happening as my screen was totally frozen.  It happened constantly too, it was game breaking and REALLY annoying.  Funny story though... it started after I updated to the newest Nvidia drivers for my graphics card, when I rolled back to the old drivers it went away.  So the only truly game breaking bug I have found, was with Nvidia's drivers, not Obsidians game.

 

This game is a massive improvement over Eternity 1, the graphics, more variety to BGM's, combat is smoother and more fun, tons less trash encounters, full VO, prompts for important words in dialog so you can see what everything is about without having to consult a wiki, the water color look works and is cool, the factions are INSANELY improved, you have an actual motivation his time (I am going crazy "maybe", I guess I should hunt that guy I saw?) versus (Eothas killed my citizens, destroyed my castle, and stole my soul, I am going to hunt him down and get my soul back and some answers!).

 

Seriously, it isn't a comparison.

 

So yes, the game is not bug free (my shock is palpable), but it is not broken and it is hella fun.

 

The one real flaw with the plot, is the same mistake Obsidian always makes.  To be fair it is a mistake Bethesda, Bioware, and just about everyone else making mostly open world RPG's does too.  Even the sacred cow of CD Projekt Red.

 

They created this clear threat, made it imminent, told you that you had to do something or the world was going to pot.  Then they immediately make it clear to you that there is no timer on this, and if you want to take two in game years to deal with it, all good.  Irenicus anyone?  He sure was in no hurry at that Elven town.  We were going to go insane in Eternity 1 at some point.... right?

Edited May 15, 2018 by Karkarov