I am shocked...

goldenguinea

...to learn that Beamdog is boasting about Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition having cross-platform multiplayer functionality when this feature doesn't work on your existing products. You might be able to get Touch Arcade, etc. to repost this stuff, but people who have already spent money on your products know better. As someone who got burned by buying two copies of Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition in December 2013, STILL can't play a cross-platform multiplayer game in September 2014 and has received NO support from Beamdog regarding this issue, I believe someone has their priorities mixed up. You're releasing new content when a prominently advertised feature of your existing content doesn't work and hasn't worked for at least nine months. Haven't you learned yet that it's much easier to retain existing customers than it is to acquire new ones?

meagloth

Ok.

Quartz

Yeah, I thought that was pretty shitty of them to brag on a promise they have failed to keep. I hope they will hold onto it better this time, but I'm not holding my breath.

CoM_Solaufein

Alexisisinneed

Oh my what a shocking revelation?! You could also say this was a very En-lighting post.
But with the puns out my system I just find it hard to sympathies with you as the few times I have tried multiplayer went well for me. There was that constant bug of the sprites of the other player characters who always look like they were attacking I didn't experience anything that ruin the experience for me. I found out from looking a threads like these various ones there are a mixture of people who had their whole game ruin by some form of bug and others like myself who have yet to encounter that. Another reason why I lack sympathy for you is because this post comes off as an attack and very unprofessional and as someone who has worked in customer service I know I feel very unmotivated to help someone who acts in that matter. Even though devs are falling behind on their promises and it's taking them a long time to make multiplayer bullet proof you got understand Beamdog is not a huge corporation that has hundreds of empoylee's and vast amount of resources, but their instead a small company with limited resources and thats why it takes forever for them to get things out like patches and what not. So I know that you're upset, but please have a little patience and faith that this problem will eventually get solved.

booinyoureyes

Eh, to be honest I'm not too fond of people raining on my parade since I am pumped for IWD. However, while I personally have had no experience with this feature, this does seem like a fair criticism. I'm surprised people are dismissing this guys concerns off-hand.

Hopefully they will figure it out for both BG:EE and IWD:EE. I would like to eventually be able to play the game with my brother and a friend of mine who wants to get it on his iPad, and it would be nice to know if this will work before I ask them to buy the game.

elminster

Patch 1.3.2053 came out a couple of days ago. Have you tried it with that? It may be that it hasn't yet made it to the ipad/mac store (there is an approval process for macs) but once its approved the game should be working on the same version for each platform (though BG2EE is a different story in that regard).

Grimo88

booinyoureyes said:

Eh, to be honest I'm not too fond of people raining on my parade since I am pumped for IWD. However, while I personally have had no experience with this feature, this does seem like a fair criticism. I'm surprised people are dismissing this guys concerns off-hand.

Hopefully they will figure it out for both BG:EE and IWD:EE. I would like to eventually be able to play the game with my brother and a friend of mine who wants to get it on his iPad, and it would be nice to know if this will work before I ask them to buy the game.

Criticism doesn't seem to be received well in these forums. People seem to find it very hard to separate themselves from the product emotionally (understandable, because they're amazing) but if we can't criticize, nothing will improve. And yes, I'm saying this with the knowledge that I've been an Overly Negative Nancy since the IWD EE was announced. This thread, however, is a more than fair concern.

cmk24

elminster said:

Patch 1.3.2053 came out a couple of days ago. Have you tried it with that? It may be that it hasn't yet made it to the ipad/mac store (there is an approval process for macs) but once its approved the game should be working on the same version for each platform (though BG2EE is a different story in that regard).

I agree with this. The 1.3.2053 patch addressed many of the bugs with multiplayer. You should give BG:EE one more try after updating to see if it works more smoothly now.

Schneidend

Wow, an actual criticism of an EE game. I think this might be a first. At least, it's the first I've seen.

But, I don't have any experience trying cross-platform multiplayer. Sounds like the new patch may have got it working, though? Pretty great news.

TrentOster

The announcement was two-part, I talked about how we had failed with the launches of the BG:EE and BGII:EE games by launching before we had solved some issues. Without the pressure of a third party, we were able to spend significant time and fix many bugs in the previous versions, with a hard push on fixing up multiplayer. We've re-prioritized around launching our games when they meet our quality requirement and not before. We have a 1.3 update for BGII in testing and when the bugs are gone we'll push that out to the various channels. IWD:EE will be based on the 1.3 Code as well. IWD:EE doesn't have a launch date as we are holding it until we are going to be proud to release it.

Best,
-Trent

Schneidend

Ohohoho, that's right! You guys acquired the rights to IWD outright, didn't you? I remember reading that, I think. So, no Bioware or WotC breathing down your neck, eh? That sounds, gah, uniquely liberating.

Lipshennan

Undoubtly they cant please everyone all of the time but beamdog have done an amazing thing in my eyes recindling the games from my youth an turning them into far superior games. Now I hear IWDEE Is being release an im well excited about this.
Long may it continue keep up the great work !!!!!

deltago

@‌goldenguinea

As elminster said have you tried it recently. I went and found the problem you posted in January and this message:

"The multiplayer session has been terminated. The program version numbers for the server and client programs do not match. Server program version: v1.2.2000 Client program version: v1.2.2031."

means the two versions of the game are not on the same patch. As stated, the issue revolves around the Apple App store having to approve of content being updated. Once Apple approves it and the patch is pushed through their store, you'll be able to play cross platform.

Fandraxx

Eliminster this Eliminster that give me a few months with out problems with atari and things could have gone better.

Seriously tho, people can't seem to understand that
1. Overhaul is a small team of people, their trying
2. Its not Overhauls or anyone who works there's fault that they had issues with atari. Patches and work got delayed, it happens, other companys have had it happen too, not just overhaul
3. Doing anything cross-platform is not easy it takes time.

The_New_Romance

Fandraxx said:

Eliminster this Eliminster that give me a few months with out problems with atari and things could have gone better.

Seriously tho, people can't seem to understand that
1. Overhaul is a small team of people, their trying
2. Its not Overhauls or anyone who works there's fault that they had issues with atari. Patches and work got delayed, it happens, other companys have had it happen too, not just overhaul
3. Doing anything cross-platform is not easy it takes time.

Of course, of course, but Beamdog take the money, and they take a lot of time. I'm not particularly mad at them, but I can understand that people who paid 20$ for a game they sort-of already had and then weren't even able to play properly are angry. The time needed to fix the game up only makes it worse.

You can always argue that people should play something else in between and come back when things are done (I know I took that route), or that bugs in a videogame shouldn't matter in times where the world is on the verge of a second Cold War or worse, but those arguments don't show much empathy.

To those three points you listed, one could well reply "If you can't handle the heat, stay out of the kitchen". If Beamdog isn't up to the task, they maybe shouldn't have undertaken this venture. I'm not saying I think along those lines, but your three points miss the point, I feel.

shawne

TrentOster said:

The announcement was two-part, I talked about how we had failed with the launches of the BG:EE and BGII:EE games by launching before we had solved some issues.

That would mean a lot more if you hadn't used the exact same line at last year's PAX before BG2:EE launched.

AstroBryGuy

Schneidend said:

Ohohoho, that's right! You guys acquired the rights to IWD outright, didn't you? I remember reading that, I think. So, no Bioware or WotC breathing down your neck, eh? That sounds, gah, uniquely liberating.

I doubt WotC is out of the picture. Even if Beamdog owns the code to IWD, WotC has the underlying rights to Icewind Dale (the setting), Forgotten Realms, D&D, etc.. Also, the logos are the bottoms of the icewinddale.com page are Hasbro (owners of WotC), WotC, and Beamdog.

I've gotten the impression, however, that WotC are very supportive of the EEs.

AstroBryGuy

shawne said:

TrentOster said:

The announcement was two-part, I talked about how we had failed with the launches of the BG:EE and BGII:EE games by launching before we had solved some issues.

That would mean a lot more if you hadn't used the exact same line at last year's PAX before BG2:EE launched.

Uh-oh, @shawne posted a Snooki meme. The forums have jumped the shark. ;-)

Heindrich

Schneidend said:

Wow, an actual criticism of an EE game. I think this might be a first. At least, it's the first I've seen.

Erm... there's actually an incredibly tolerant attitude to critical comments on this forum, and there are plenty of them around. Of course this is the BG EE forum, so the community can be expected to be generally positive about the games, but there has never been any policy to censor or discourage critical comments unless they cross clearly defined lines like personal attacks and/or trolling.

DreadKhan

Actually, it landed on the shark.

Its like jumping the shark but goes downhill very quickly. And with more bloody dismemberment.

Fandraxx

DreadKhan said:

Actually, it landed on the shark.

Its like jumping the shark but goes downhill very quickly. And with more bloody dismemberment.

@DreadKhan‌ Along with the dismemberment BOO WILL FINISH THEIR EYEBALLS ONCE AND FOR ALL.

Schneidend

Heindrich said:

Schneidend said:

Wow, an actual criticism of an EE game. I think this might be a first. At least, it's the first I've seen.

Erm... there's actually an incredibly tolerant attitude to critical comments on this forum, and there are plenty of them around. Of course this is the BG EE forum, so the community can be expected to be generally positive about the games, but there has never been any policy to censor or discourage critical comments unless they cross clearly defined lines like personal attacks and/or trolling.

I probably should have used the word "legitimate." This is the first grumpy post about EEs I've seen that actually had a good point. I wasn't implying any censorship or drowning out on the forums' part. Like you say, it's pretty tolerant, sometimes too tolerant of people who come in here with a bullet point list of baseless nonsense.

ryuken87

I agree with the OP. I paid good money for a game which still isn't really finished, and is worse (from what I want out of the game) than the version I was playing five years ago.

Gotural

If by cross-platform multiplayer you mean a Windows and a Mac, then I'm playing some cross-platform multiplayer with 2 friends since months with no problems at all.

kamuizin

Heindrich said:

Schneidend said:

Wow, an actual criticism of an EE game. I think this might be a first. At least, it's the first I've seen.

Erm... there's actually an incredibly tolerant attitude to critical comments on this forum, and there are plenty of them around. Of course this is the BG EE forum, so the community can be expected to be generally positive about the games, but there has never been any policy to censor or discourage critical comments unless they cross clearly defined lines like personal attacks and/or trolling.

From the devs and moderators, surelly. It's rare to see an post closed based on direct criticism.

From the community? You end becoming quickly an persona non grata in the forum. Sorry guys, it's the truth.

CrevsDaak

Gotural said:

If by cross-platform multiplayer you mean a Windows and a Mac, then I'm playing some cross-platform multiplayer with 2 friends since months with no problems at all.

Yeah, me too (played with @Quartz‌ a lot), but actually iPad and Androind weren't included there.

Schneidend

kamuizin said:

From the devs and moderators, surelly. It's rare to see an post closed based on direct criticism.

From the community? You end becoming quickly an persona non grata in the forum. Sorry guys, it's the truth.

I think that has more to do with how pretentious, self-entitled, and vitriolic some of the more vocal critics tend to be, than the side of the debate they're on.

kamuizin

Schneidend said:

kamuizin said:

From the devs and moderators, surelly. It's rare to see an post closed based on direct criticism.

From the community? You end becoming quickly an persona non grata in the forum. Sorry guys, it's the truth.

I think that has more to do with how pretentious, self-entitled, and vitriolic some of the more vocal critics tend to be, than the side of the debate they're on.

Most don't help themselfs, that's for surely. But even among the most coherent criticism post we see some small flames starting against the owner of the thread.

atcDave

kamuizin said:

Schneidend said:

kamuizin said:

From the devs and moderators, surelly. It's rare to see an post closed based on direct criticism.

From the community? You end becoming quickly an persona non grata in the forum. Sorry guys, it's the truth.

I think that has more to do with how pretentious, self-entitled, and vitriolic some of the more vocal critics tend to be, than the side of the debate they're on.

Most don't help themselfs, that's for surely. But even among the most coherent criticism post we see some small flames starting against the owner of the thread.

I think it all comes down to attitude and wording. Its not like tempers flare so much when specific bugs are being discussed. Especially when there's a clear desire to make things work, and an assumption of good faith on everyone's part.

Its when accusations are being made about the intent or competence of the writers; or when silly inflammatory words like "game breaking" are thrown around that folks get testy. Especially for those of us who have actually finished the game more than once. Even if there's still things we'd like to see improved on; we're clearly in a period of fine tuning, way past "game breaking".

mlnevese

Let me add my $0.02 about critcs from a moderator point of view.

As moderators we don't actually care if you're defending or criticizing the EEs, Beamdog or Overhaul. Of course, personally we may agree or disagree with you.

The few cases I saw people being banished they broke one or more of these rules:

- personal insults;
- repeated homophobic/racist comments;
- repeated software piracy apology, including posting links to pirated software;
- repeatedly breaking the PG 13 rules of the site, either by choice of words or themes, such as an user who wrote an apology to rape;
- repeatedly disregarding warnings;
- lack of respect to others.

If you break these rules you may expect to be banned, no matter if you're defending the company/product or attacking them. We try to keep the forum civil and are ready to enforce the rules when needed.

If you do not want to be banished just take a deep breath and write your post when you feel calmer and in control of your temper.