#7517 [TOB] iPAD: Force field in Yaga Sura's lair not dropping in spite of quest xp being awarded.
Skaffen
Member Posts: 709
Observed behaviour: force field blocking the stairs to level 2 is not dropping in spite of having all four wardstones and quest xp for removing the field being awarded.
Expected behaviour: open the bloody door!
Needless to say: this is a gamebreaking bug!
@CrevsDaak Can't upload a game now, going to work and writing this from my ipad but here's a screenshot:
Edit 10.2.2014: @MacHurto has posted a workaround further down - you need to keep clicking, some parts of the stairs will let you pass while the rest gives the errir message. It's still a serious bug though.
Expected behaviour: open the bloody door!
Needless to say: this is a gamebreaking bug!
@CrevsDaak Can't upload a game now, going to work and writing this from my ipad but here's a screenshot:
Edit 10.2.2014: @MacHurto has posted a workaround further down - you need to keep clicking, some parts of the stairs will let you pass while the rest gives the errir message. It's still a serious bug though.
Post edited by Illydth on
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Comments
I've used Mind flayer form+Time Stop to kill him, but it's game breaking because technically he'll still being invincible.
@Illydth?
I can upload a save game later if needed, it's heavy edited but I did not touch the variables.
@Skaffen can you upload your saved game? I'll think I'm able to fix this.
No idea about others. @atcDave you are a regular ipad player - did you finish ToB without encountering it?
That save's edits are PC only (all abilities set to 25, still I just got destroyed by Abazigal, I've underestimated him), I'll got to that point again in my SoA solo run done in 3 days, amazing PG and insane exploit of Easy difficulty...
Hope it helps
The bad news is it only looks like the first 3 steps or so is what's affected. If you click up at the "room exit" area, you'll ALWAYS get past it...it only took me about 4 seconds of tapping to get around this.
Given that this thread exists and has a work around (i.e. Just tap up farther) this is a "B" bug at best.
That said, I'll go ahead and get one opened on this.
7517 Created for this issue.
With CrevsDaak and me two quite experienced players were completely stumped here. Yes, if you're good at googling you find the workaround now but I sure hope that's not the gaming experience you want to provide to your customers.
My comment was simply that it was unfortunate that I couldn't the bug at an "A" level, given the reports I've heard on this thread and the fact (as you put it) that even EXPERIENCED players are getting this issue and seeing it as a game breaking bug.
I've got a post in the workarounds thread and we've got a "B" level bug open for it which is now tagged into the consolidated report. Not much else I can do to help this thing along, but we're all open to suggestions!
But please don't get me started on how important (or not) you take bugs - no patch since November speaks quite loudly on that. Maybe you even fix them internally, but unless you release patches that's academic... Obviously cash flow from a new release is even more important.
@Skaffen: Let me try to help you a bit with your frustration. This may frustrate you more or less, but what I'm telling you is as close to the truth as I can see it from my vantage point, take it or leave it as you will. And I apologize for the dissertation here...TealDear (TL;DR) is my nickname among most of my friends.
Beamdog is a pretty small shop of developers. And by small, I mean really small. If you know anything about corporate development, most shops staff upwards of 50 people on any one given project...a recent article I read about LucasArts (their game development studio) noted 100+ developers / project was not a-typical.
I can tell you that the folks working on BG:EE and BG2:EE are anywhere from 1/5th to 1/10th of that. Maybe more maybe less (as Gate pointed out, I don't work for Beamdog, i'm an unpaid dude that happened to have some experience with game testing and I guess didn't make as much of an ass of myself as I thought I had since they asked me to test for them and offered me the ability to moderate the forums), but the general staff of paid developers on this project is pretty small.
You may believe that the dudes in the hot seats (Trent and his entire crew) are simply only worried about taking your money and leaving you high and dry with the support. If it means anything to you from a guy who spends a LOT of his free time trying help you all, mostly out of the goodness of his heart, the folks working on the development side of this thing care as much or more about this project and product as you do. They WANT this right, and they're working toward making it so. EVERYONE you see on these boards (from the community people like Gate70, CrevsDaak, and Tresset to the Moderators like Myself and Troodon80 to the community reps and Developers...all the blue posts you see...) wants this game to shine. We all want the best for this thing because to a person, this game and this community means something to all of us.
This isn't about revenue streams or some corporate muckity muck sitting in his leather office chair looking at the books yelling "MORE MONEY! MORE MONEY!" The developers are actively at work, and have been for a couple years now, to bring this awesome set of games to as many people as possible. They've brought in forum moderators, beta testers, and a slew of volunteers from throughout the community to do what they can to turn out the best product they can to the rest of this community. A lot of people have put in a lot of work to try to make this the best it can possibly be. It's not there yet. No one working with this believes it's there...but it will be, and, in a relative sense, not too long from now. There's a huge number of threads where people out there have said "it'll never get fixed!"
And they've been wrong. Every Time.
The problem is the resources and the work load. When I worked at a development company several years ago, I used to piss off my management regularly when I said "9 women cannot have 1 baby in 1 month, it doesn't work that way."
If you have 10 developers on staff (pulling a not so far off number out of the air here) and it took 10 developers to turn out the windows version of the game, how many do you think it took to turn out the iPad version? 5? How many will it then take to turn out the Android version? 2? Obviously the vast majority of the resources are having to move to each new platform, each new bug fix/patch, each new hurdle as the next hurdle gets jumped.
Right now, the development staff is focusing on an Android release. And think about that a second, those poor Android folks don't even HAVE a game to play at the moment...they've had to be patient for over 2 years now. That doesn't mean there isn't work going on for BG:EE PC or BG:EE iPad or BG:EE Mac or BG2:EE PC...(you see where I'm going with this)...
It just means that small development shops have to tackle large problems one at a time till all the problems get tackled.
When I'm getting PM replies at 4:00am from Blues on bug reports I'm writing, when I'm up all night for a maintenance window and checking on bug threads watching the same blue poster(s) posting info to threads ALL NIGHT and continuing well into the next day, it becomes pretty obvious that the problem isn't a lack of care. Parse through the bug report forums for a few minutes and count the number of blue and grey posts you see involved in the threads. Then go to EA's Forums, or Blizzard's forums. If you can even FIND a bug reporting/help forum, see how many developers and staff post to them?
Lack of care isn't the issue here.
That leads me to "too much work, not enough hands". I guess you could try to blame Trent for that...not enough staff to make this work. But you did like that $20 price tag ($10 if you bought it on Apple's App Store) for a game that originally shipped at over $50 when it first released right? There, too, Beamdog has their hands pretty tied. Most of us here would tell you this game is well worth twice what we're paying for it...knowing how many hours of content are in the game and the quality of the game play...but newer players are going to look at the "dated" graphics and laugh if you ask them to pay more than what they are now.
That leaves Beamdog pretty backed up against a wall. Not enough money to hire separated development staff to release everything and follow everything all at one time, and not enough staff to turn everything out on a quick turnaround schedule. Everyone's going to get their day. A patch for BG2:EE will come out, just like a patch for the iPad version of BG:EE came out just like several patches for the Windows and Mac versions came out.
The good news is that all the issues you see reported in the consolidated thread are getting fixed across the board in all versions as they are getting fixed. With every bug report, with every verification and every post the game, all of them, gets a little better.
It's going to take a while to get all of this sorted out. But it'll happen. Till then, there are several of us here doing our best to help.
Preliminary remark: I don't doubt for a second the intentions of Beamdog or Trent and don't equate them with EA or other Evil Empires on a get rich quick scheme - otherwise I wouldn't be here active in this forum also spending a considerable amount of my time helping others. I also certainly don't want to belittle the paid and unpaid efforts.
Where opinions differ is the means on how to get the best game out there and build a lasting base and sustainable business.
I work for a global enterprise where a core philosophy left by our founder is "Rather loose money than trust". And while I work for a multi-billion company, I lead a smallish team that needs to support existing products, develop new ones in a tough market environment, grow and be self-sustaining etc - I know the difficulties of juggling limited resources - send an engineer to fix the breakdown or have him work on the A+ important prototype? My daily bread, and I choose the customer first approach almost every time! Because without happy customers there won't be anyone to buy the prototype when it's done.
My wife used to head QA and customer support in a small software startup (who incidentally also had a very active forum with volunteer support etc). So I can definetely relate (and had actually some time ago tried to build the business case for Beamdog based on some of Trents remarks on break even points, estimates for staff size & salaries etc...).
And with all that I am still deeply convinced that Beamdog is doing the wrong thing and setting the wrong priorities. I am not saying that all bugs need to be weeded out and we need the be all - end all of all patches. Months ago I had argued for faster release cycles with incremental patches that tackle the low hanging fruits. But the current situation for me as a paying customer (Who bought 4 versions of the game from them so far) is not really acceptable.
I think the much better course of action would have been to bring at least all versions of BG2 on one common level and not the 3 we have now (if Apple App store is still behind which it was last I checked - and before people argue that's Apple's fault you can't convince me that with some effort it wouldn't be possible to push the patched version out 3-4 months after it was given to them for release. It's just too low on the priority list to bother following up with Apple).
Minimum would have been to bring PC and Mac to ipad level - this was actually hinted at last year in December before the ipad release got delayed in the app store and done similarly for BG1. Even better would have been another quick patch cycle for some of the glaring and hopefully easy to fix things (Watcher's Keep, Hexxat Romance, Vorpal Circus bug on ipad, ...).
The core group here can handle console - but in 2013 you can't expect that of Average Joe customers any more and esp ipad doesn't even have that. And the app store reviews show it, last time I checked BG1 ipad had 2.5 stars. If you look at reviews, app store comments etc - the glaring bugs are the main criticism. This is not the way to build a sustainable business.
Yes, resources are limited, but that makes it even more important to focus and get things on a stable level before tackling new, much bigger issues while leaving a lot of stuff undone - or probably even done but just not bundled and released. The ipad version is on a higher patch level than PC and Mac after all.
I am pretty sure with 1-2 weeks of focused work all 3 platforms could have been lifted on a mostly stable and common level that would have satisfied a lot of people, removed some of the most gamebraking things and given peace on that front to attack the next big project. Because if i see the progress in "Road to Android" this is a long journey ahead of us and all the time people are having problems with the existing game. Not just here in the forum but just imagine how many more people (&paying customers) never bother to register here to post and just give up! It's not the 90s any more where buying a game is an investment and you tough it out - nowadays if something doesn't work you just move on to the next app with 5 star rating and BG doesn't deserve that fate.
Yes, it wouldn't have solved all problems and yes there'd still be complaints and many more bugs to fix later. But especially the issues with the new content which many people are paying for should be fixed first before going to the next big thing which will introduce even more problems and complexity. Build from a (mostly) stable base and don't have too many open points and fronts at the same time. But the philosophy seems to be for the big "mega patches" instead of the by now industry standard sprint cycles of 2-3 weeks.
So in summary - yes, everyone is working and motivations are good - but I think the work is done under wrong priorities.