Any word on the next patch?
Eket
Member Posts: 69
It has been 2 months since the last patch. There are still plenty of bugs and performance(renderer) issues that have to be fixed... On the ipad i can't even finish that quest in the beginning where you have to get the scroll, and with no console to get around in...
Post edited by Aedan on
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After a couple of months delay on release, officially for more testing, and SEVEN patchs, the game now is working enough good but still a lot of stuff remain that make a customer not so happy about the purchase. Few examples:
- one of the very first quest is bugged (I know, there is a hotfix on the forum and I've used it to fix it, but I'm supposed to spend time to play the game not to fix it);
- the journal is barely usable, to scroll it and read it you have put your mouse pointer on the invisible scroolbar, some pixels width, that let you to scroll it and not to edit any entry. I can only guess how painfull it is to do it on a iPad;
- the quest/done quest entry sometimes don't show up (Xvart Raids done) or when are done show up again in quests list after some interaction with casual NPC (Basillus killed and money taken from temple and after talk to some commoner in Beregost it's again an open quest. The same behaviour for Guard Captain in Nashkel);
- when talking to a familiar (uninjured) that keep saying that is injured;
- stackable items (gems) sometimes lose quantity (Anyway why I can stack rings/necklacks in gem bag but I cannot stack them in normal inventory?)
Blue and gray post guys said that there will be a lot of fix in the next patch.. since 2 month ago. It's not time to have them? As a customer, I don't mind if there are bugs in a software (anyone perfect), but I would like to see them fixed regularly, every 1 or 2 weeks till needed, even few every time than to wait months for a possible big update. Because now seems that Devs forgot BG:EE to work on BG2:EE..
Soon it's not a good answer, end of April, in May, in June or even never is a good answer. Just to know.
It's just bad advertising, because now the best course of action for a customer is not to preorder, not to buy on release but to wait 4/6 month after release to buy a product tested by final users and patched close to a enjoyable playing session.
After the release, the patches came out every 1 or 2 weeks, at least showing that, even if there were some problems (more than enough to review your beta testing procedures anyvay), there were frequent visible improvements.
Pretty much sums it up, regarding the current issues left unfixed. As @PinkRose states it's not issues that ruins the joy of the game. Just had a all quest/all areas/all NPC's playthrough. Everything but the mentioned works as intented.
Which leaves me with a feeling that the few missing corrections - and they are few, would be quite easy to solve and fix.
So indeed why not just fix them on a whim, please the already happy customers, and go all in on BG:EE 2?
Sounds like a strategy worth pursuing.
Only thing that would prevent it, would be the fact that the issues mentioned indeed were hard or complex to fix.
I had no complaints and have played through EE several times, after a month or so break I decided to start a new game. Uploaded the new update and rolled my character and boom, quest broke.
http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/comment/268466/#Comment_268466
I expect BG2EE to be smoother because the engine is identical and has already been rebuilt & fiddled with.
It's not fair, the only week my wife is at her parent's place and I could play without interference.. no patch
Once you get decent scores in Hide in Shadows and more importantly Move Silently you cannot be attacked without a failed stealth roll after attacking something.
The major power is the ability to hide so quickly and while in view of enemies. The next thing... which is a bug, but as long as hiding works as it currently does is more of a convenience, is that your backstab multiplier is that of a normal thief...and not lower as the kit says. I didn't use shadowstep, but it is supposed to work in combat to give you a 7 second timestop effect to do non-offensive things (retreat, hide again, drink a potion, etc...) but it is broken and doesn't allow you to use it in combat currently, so it is basically useless.
1) New kits are broken
2) New journal system not detecting all questions initiated / completed / failed and clearing them
3) numerous quest problems as quoted above
4) stackable items / containers issues
5) spellbook spell icon art that very much needs to be updated, and the resources to do it are already IN TH GAME
6) a half-assed big screen mode. give us hybrid mode, dammit!
7) multiplayer match-making is STILL not implemented. This was promised to be in from the start!
Honestly, the worst part is the transparency. We're getting practically no information, and we don't know whats coming for us or when. Obviously the team over-promised, but they need to address it and at least comment on SOME deliverables and SOME time-line. This business over Atari going bankrupt might have put them in a bind, but they should be making a better effort to communicate with the fanbase. Tweats ain't cutting it @TrentOster
* Fix a bunch of bugs - right on schedule
* Do a bunch of QA - right on schedule
* Find a serious new bug - couple days before release
Now, you have three choices: ship with the bug, fix the bug and rush QA, or delay the release.
If you ship with the bug, people tell you that your QA is crap, and the devs hate users affected by the bug.
If you fix the bug, and the fix causes a new bug that isn't caught by the rushed QA, people tell you that your devs are idiots and your QA is crap.
If you delay the release, people tell you that you lied about the release date, that you should be working on the game instead of sitting on the beach sipping mai-tais
Where's the win in this scenario?
There are a bunch of people working very hard on the next update. Devs are working late into the night, and during the weekends. I get funny looks at my kid's gymnastics practice because I'm sitting there with my laptop coding/testing BG.
When is going to ship? Soon. We are very close.
Are we going to ship it with show stopping bugs? Not if we can help it.
Do we know how long it takes to fix/QA the bugs we haven't found yet? No.
Folks, we want to ship it too. Really. But we aren't going to do it before we think it is ready.
I preorder the game and I played it since release and QA was crap, no doubt about it. SEVEN patches in 5 months testify it. Or maybe QA did a good job and found all the bugs that were in release but you decided to go live anyvay after 2 month+ delay from original release date because you want to polish the game.. which option is worse?
I'm a software developer too, but for banks, and our process, KPI and success indicator are more strict and different from gaming industry. So maybe I'm pretending too much from you, but if you are working even at night and during week ends to fix a software that wasn't new, that worked enough fine in his original version plus mod and now, after some enhanced and new content, needs at least 8 patches to be fixed, there is something wrong in your company internal process. I'm working all the time on legacy software that banks don't want to dismiss and if adding some new feature I'll introduce so many new bug I'll be fired right away.
I will not complain if you give us a schedule for patch and after need to pospone it.. if you give clear reason like we did this, this and this but after we found this problem so we need a little more time,
I'm asking just for some more clear communication, what you did, what are you doing and what needs to be done. If some new problem arise fine, we know about it so take your time to fix it.
Since that time, Beamdog managment has grown their development and QA staff, both contract and permanent, and have committed themselves to improving the general quality of the software.
Right now I'm just struggling to reconcile your complaint that there have been too many patches, with the complaint that we aren't releasing the patches quickly enough.
Complain about too many patches was refered to questionable development or QA before release that Beamdog is working to fix, as you said, hiring new people.
Complain about not releasing patches enough faster was refered to the fact that after releasing a Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition "Beta" we are still waiting for Baldur's Gate: Enhance Edition "Release Candidate". In the meantime is too much asking to have a post a week from a DEV to say how the things are going?
Any post you see from someone with a blue background is a post from a developer; I haven't looked to make sure, but we do post somewhat frequently on the boards, and often times we offer some insight as to where things stand.
Any time you're working on a commercial product, however, you need to be careful of how much you reveal. I could say, for instance, that we have five new kits that are going into the next patch, which would make a lot of people happy--but then what happens if one or all of those kits ends up having a lot of bugs in it, and we decide not to include them yet?
We're working hard to make sure each patch includes enough to make it worthwhile with AppStore and Steam approval times. There are a lot of threads asking for information about the next patch, and we post in them when we have time.