Thank you Beamdog! Awesome indeed
Evv
Member Posts: 17
I would like to say a BIG thank you! Thanks for the awesome overhaul of my all time favorite game. Such good memories are flooding around when I play BG2EE. It's simply fantastic. I do, however, would like to say a couple of things to you at Beamdog. Don't let all the negative comments affect you. They are either just plain dumb people who don't appreciate the work you have been doing here. If they don't like what they're playing fine? Go back to the old BG2 with mods then. And people who say 25$ is too much? Jesus man what a bunch of whiny kids! 25$ for a chance to play this fantastic RPG ?!
I would gladly have paid 100$.. Yes 100$ for this.
Back to the game:
I feel, as I am older now compared to when I was a young teenager, I get a lot more out of the time by now. I understand and see things from a different perspective now and it's simply fantastic. The depth in this game/universe.. Wow!
A thing I would like to see:
Patches faster etc a big.. Yes BIG DLC content package? You got my trust. And ps... Hurry with those patches for us at the steam client!
To sum it up:
THANK YOU Beamdog for such a wonderful overhaul. Sitting with tears in my eyes enjoying my gameplay.
Thanks.
Best regards. Evv / Andreas Nielsen
I would gladly have paid 100$.. Yes 100$ for this.
Back to the game:
I feel, as I am older now compared to when I was a young teenager, I get a lot more out of the time by now. I understand and see things from a different perspective now and it's simply fantastic. The depth in this game/universe.. Wow!
A thing I would like to see:
Patches faster etc a big.. Yes BIG DLC content package? You got my trust. And ps... Hurry with those patches for us at the steam client!
To sum it up:
THANK YOU Beamdog for such a wonderful overhaul. Sitting with tears in my eyes enjoying my gameplay.
Thanks.
Best regards. Evv / Andreas Nielsen
2
Comments
Personally, while I like enhanced editions and respect Overhaul's efforts in making them, I can't help but feel they should have done a better job with both games in terms of polishing and bugfixing prior to release. BG1EE still has serious bugs over a year after release. BG2EE has a number of serious bugs at release which should never have made it this far.
Another 6 months (at least) in development for each game OR an honest "early access" stamp on both releases would make me a lot more thankful and appreciative of Overhaul's work. As it stands, I'll be wary in the future of pre-ordering their products.
That said @prophet1 does have some points. Not every person on these forums with a bad opinion of the game or even of the developers is an idiot. I've read some pretty scathing comments from people who, unfortunately or not, really have made very excellent points.
The trick to posting bad opinions has always been to disagree with the content, not the person, be careful of hyperbole, and describe the logic behind the issues you have...not just "This game SUXORS, Beamdog you can't code!"
On the flip side @prophet1 let me note something to you: Are you still seeing problems with BG:EE after the 1.2 patch? You're aware that they DID a full early access for that patch right? With the 10s of closed beta testers and the 10's to 100's more early access...bugs still got through.
I said it in another thread but I'll repeat it here.
Lets say you want to test ONLY the class quests in BG2, Chapter 2 (That seems like a pretty limited set of testing right?)
So there's something between 10 - 15 class quests in the chapter. So to do good testing, each class quest has to be tested with both an "in class" character and an "out of class" character to ensure the BASIC quest functions properly. So that's 20 - 30 testing scenarios. However, this is no where close to a thorough test...to verify that there isn't a problem with the cleric that doesn't show up on the mage, you really need to test each class quest with every class. Technically, you should probably test with every KIT as well, but you can argue that a thief is a thief when it comes to game content. There's what? 10 - 12 classes? So that's now 200 - 360 testing scenarios to test all of the major class quest content in chapter 2.
BUT WAIT! Each quest has somewhere around 5 - 10 steps each, and at each step generally there are multiple choices and/or multiple dialog options...each of those need to be tested to ensure branch quality...so if you decide to go down one dialog path than another it all works properly. Lets say that half the steps have 3 branches and/or different dialog options...that's another 9 branches you have to test in each of the 200 - 360 scenarios you have: You now have 1800 - 3240 test cases to verify for a thorough test.
But, see, that doesn't take into account the edge tests. "What happens if instead of getting that key from the dialog like I should I steal it." or "What happens if I just bypass this entire quest section and kill this NPC instead?" Those edge cases generally require specific skills which typically sets up yet another full playthrough of the quest.
All said and done, 15 quests in a single chapter can produce upwards of a few thousand+ testing scenarios to FULLY and PROPERLY test the quest. And that's just 15 quests in one chapter of the game.
Testing every dialog option and quest branch for every quest in the game by multiple people (after all, one person may miss something, so you REALLY need a couple people to test the same content to catch something someone else may miss) 10s to 100s of thousands of testing scenarios and at LEAST thousands of man hours of time.
And this is just CONTENT testing. It has NOTHING to do with engine testing, hardware testing, min/max spec testing, etc.
"No one does that kind of testing! You're exaggerating!" you say. And you're right, it would be completely impossible under ANY Deadline to test, report and fix all the bugs in all the 100's of thousands of testing scenarios. That's why bugs creep through. That's why you get save/load bugs and Multi-Class bugs and missing character bugs.
You CANNOT test it all. Even with an open beta stuff will still get through. And the moment you add different operating system versions and even entirely different PLATFORMS into the mix...you have about as much hope of catching all the bugs as you would plugging the leak of a broken dam with bubblegum.
I feel as you do: I'd love to see less bugs in the released version. The difference between us is I actually SAW the inner workings of the release of BG2...and I can tell you that personally I spent something like 80 - 90 hours over a 4 week time period doing nothing but testing various pieces of this software...and I know the other testers did the same thing. That's several hundred to even several thousand man hours of testing spent on this program in just that small window of time.
I'm not sure what more you expected.
In the years since I played BG the first time as a teenager I've installed it a couple of times to sit down and play it, but I've always stopped because I simply couldn't stand the ginormeous UI on my 24" wide screen along with a 400x600 (or whatever it was) resolution.
The guys at Overhaul have made the game playable again on modern computers without your eyes starting to bleed. They've done a very good job with improving the UI and polishing the graphics of two games that are more than a decade old (!). BG1 and especially BG2 are such solid games and have so much depth, that by themselves they stand up to the test of time very well. I've only started the story lines of Hexxa and Neera so far, but I'd already say that they're worthy additions, and I like that their dialogue is written with a sense of humour. Any bug fixes coming along for the ride just makes me happier.
I'll reserve some judgement for my playthrough with two friends on the new multiplayer beta module. If it stays stable I'll be a happy camper.