All you had to do is to make a seperate button to download a 1.3 version. Not in a downgrade/upgrade sense. Complete download. It's not rocket science.
Wow, it sounds like you have a really firm grasp on the technical issues involved in distributing software. But have you considered what color this button would be?
@Dee No offense, because afaik you are just the community manager and a spokesperson, or to to say it more bluntly, you are doing the propaganda:
That is a nonsense explanation. All you had to do is to make a seperate button to download a 1.3 version. Not in a downgrade/upgrade sense. Complete download. It's not rocket science.
(I also have a hardtime believing, that if you guys at beamdog are capable of using the steam version selection, you couldn't make it work on your own launcher. Since after all it's you the devs, who are responsible for how and which files have to be altered by down/upgrading.)
And I see no compelling reason, why SoD by absolutely all means would need the 2.0 gui
Now, in each occasion about 50k people alone on youtube watched the german gamestar review and following talk about the SoD expansion. And ofc those are just a fraction of potential customers. That should tell you smth about the potential you guys completely wasted. It is really no suprise, that the common advice for german players is to either completely ignore your products or at best get them at 50%/75% discount at a steam sale.
Two things:
First, don't say "no offense" and then insult me. You want Beamdog to respond, try a little less acid.
Second, I said SoD requires the v2.0 code. The UI is part of that code. It's a small part of it, but it is part of it.
That's all you're going to get from me. If you want more of a response than that, try a different tack.
Apparently going back to 1.3 is impossible without re-creating SOD from scratch, since SOD needs 2.0 to function. So, the concrete thing that would actually make some people happy here would be:
Offer an additional option that would tweak SOD's GUI to be more like 1.3 GUI.
@semiticgod said: Offer an additional option that would tweak SOD's GUI to be more like 1.3 GUI.
Yes, this option is what I am hoping for.
I would especially like to be able to revert the text box back to the 1.3 version. Honestly, the new one is downright painful for me to try and use. As I understand it, from reading posts that Pecca has made concerning his efforts in modding it in it’s current state, something needs to be addressed in the hard coding of the UI in order to fix it. I really don’t know what that may be.
I've said this before, but I will say it again; I've been playing these games since '99 and I have had thousands and thousands of play throughs for bg1 and bg2, and even then, I rarely if ever modded my games, I have always had fun with the vanilla games for all those years
then beamdog came and and started enhancing things, and I've been having mixed feelings about what they have been doing, it sometimes feels like they will take 3 steps forward, but then they take 2 and 1/2 steps backwards to make up for it, I don't know why that is, but sometimes that just seems to happen
now I believe it was 2010 when they started getting involved with the bg series ( or was it 2012? don't remember) and at first it was very very rocky, but we have all travelled the roller coaster ride that beamdog has put us on and I do believe they are getting better at what they are doing
now fast forwarding a bit, for me, the 2.0 patch was just terrible, the UI was outrageously ugly and I was thinking what madness is this? but luckily beamdog heard of that and started fixing things right away, and now we are at 2.3, and 2.3 made it a lot better, I still find the character sheet a little bizarre ( because I love my old school character sheet) but I can accept what it is now, and its still quite functional so I can live with it
and then siege of dragonspear came out, and I thought originally; naw, im not into this add on stuff, it detracks to far away from the game I love, so for awhile I went no where near it, but then, I was watching my friend play with the SoD game installed on his BG game, and couldn't believe how sexy it looked, I have to really admit, I just love how the SoD UI looks, it actually looks quite amazing, and even though im a silly purist, I was quite impressed with how it looked, so basically just because of that, that is the only reason why I bought SoD
and then I started playing my bg game with SoD, and everything was fine and dandy except for a couple of things, that really REALLY aggravate me quite a bit, and it feels more like the thing I said before where beamdog takes 3 steps forward and the 2 steps backwards for some bizarre reason
so here are a couple concerns I have about the new UI:
first off, the inventory screen, every time I pick up an item, go to place it somewhere or just do inventory management, why is there this bizarre lag in doing so? in 1.3 I could have 16 unidentified long swords +1 in my mage's back pack right click then press enter and identify them all within a matter of seconds, then I could grab my bag of holding from char1 bring it over to my mage, swap it with one of the swords, and start piling the swords in the bag, and again, I could fill 16 long swords +1 into my bag of holding in a matter of seconds ( easily less than 10) but now, there are two problems; #1, for some outrageously bizarre reason, the "enter" key does not exit out of item descriptions any more, why oh why, has that been implemented? why make it more hassle to identify multiple items now? but luckily at least the ESC key works, so I can live with that, but what I cant live with is this whacky lag that just drives me bananas, again above example 16 long swords +1 in my inventory, and now it basically takes me a full minute to place them all into a bag of holding, I don't know why the inventory management has been crippled like this, the way on how it worked before was beautiful so why add this whack lag every time I pick up and item and then go to drop it down, its quite frustrating, another example to help elaborate on this is, if you play the vanilla games or 1.3 if I click on an item in the inventory and then drop it down ( on one of the inventory tiles) it does so instantly, in fact if I mash click on that item, I will pick it up and drop as fast as im clicking, but with the 2.3 UI if I mash click that item, it picks it up, and then lags about a second before I drop it down again, I find this mind boggling as to why they did this, I almost don't even want to play the game because of this very UI update,
inventory management is already a hassle as some people have said ( although I find it to be okay with my perfected OCD organized system that I have in place) but now that there is silly lag in the inventory screen, it almost wants to give me an aneurysm every time I have to deal with it, and it really make the inventory management more of a pain in the behind
now at the same time, there are other things I don't like about the update, but no what, I can live with them, I can adapt to change, but the things that I find very hard to adapt to is "fixing things that aren't broken" changes are hard to swallow, again the inventory lag is just madness,
and because of things like this, this is why I keep the 1.3 versions on my laptop, to me 1.3 had it almost perfect, so I will never get rid of them, while my PC on the other hand is the beamdog guinea pig for better or for worse, but usually I like to think its for better, I would say that if the inventory acted like it did in 1.3 then I would have no serious complaints about 2.3, even though 2.3 does look sexalicious and for the most part handles quite well, it still needs to be user friendly, and 2.3 isn't quite perfect yet when it comes to that regard
For my part I would just like to say this is not fair to condemn the issue as merely "nostalgia".
personally 1.3 (and 1.4 for IWD) ui is what entirely constitutes my gameplay experience and flow with IE games. Knowing instantly where the buttons, prompts, spells, hotkeys and general info is what allows me to play the game in a way that provides my very fun. I can not and will not spend another dozen years trying to maim my reflexes and basically relearn all of a 20 year old game. The new bugs and graphical glitches only hardened my decision further.
Imagine if blizzard decided to update and change starcraft 1's UI today for the "greater good". The resulting backlash would be earth shattering and with reason.
Thankfully I run steam and can pick the version I like but unfortunately I have to force myself to ignore SoD whenever I roll a trilogy run (regrettably).
So, solutions. I would suggest that if or when a proper UI mod is made, have it be officially included and supported. A "reversion" is definitely impossible so we can settle for the next best thing I suppose.
I would suggest that if or when a proper UI mod is made, have it be officially included and supported.
That's not how mods work. Mods are made by players (generally) who learn to use the modding tools that are there. Mods will NEVER be officially included or supported, nor should they be. What you're asking for is essentially akin to asking that an app made by a company other than Apple be included in all iPhones, even though Apple didn't buy the app.
We can call it "community content" if you prefer. Plenty of such fixes were officially put in EE as I'm sure you're aware.
Yeah, except those were actual fixes made by Beamdog, not the mods. The "community content" mods you refer to were fixing issues that the original Bioware code had. The fixes Beamdog made were actual changes to the BG code. They didn't just shove mods in there and call it good. They can't. That'd cause their legal department to have a fit.
Actually, I believe that some of the fixes created by modders over the years were included in the EE editions. With the modders permissions, of course. Perhaps I am mistaken, but I believe that is what I read. If I’m wrong, perhaps a Dev could comment about this.
The Fixpack was included, with CamDawg's permission. 1PP was also included, with Erephine's permission.
I don't think there were any others that were included, but I could be mistaken. If they were used, we had permission from the mod's author(s).
Also, as of v2.0, most (if not all) of the features from ToBEx are matched in the engine. I say matched instead of integrated, because ToBEx wasn't something that we could just roll into the code; we had to implement each of its features separately.
personally 1.3 (and 1.4 for IWD) ui is what entirely constitutes my gameplay experience and flow with IE games. Knowing instantly where the buttons, prompts, spellsand, hotkeys and general info is what allows me to play the game in a way that provides my very fun. I can not and will not spend another dozen years trying to maim my reflexes and basically relearn all of a 20 year old game.
I don't understand. The 1.3 UI hasn't been around for anything like a dozen years.
It's pretty much 1:1 with bioware's, is what I meant. Excuse the poor wording.
to be fair I don't want to invest much effort in this argument since it's the "losing side" and that it would just be plain stupid from a development point of view. But I wouldn't be browsing forums if I didn't enjoy the occasional rant
@SirBatince Here is my final rant, hope you enjoy it
Wow, just wow...you chose to insulted, by what part exactly? You are doing the PR job here, so what? Ofc all your statements have to be taken with a grain of salt, because of that.
And since this thought seems not have crossed your mind: maybe, just maybe, I have to draw from limited english skills, so if I say „no offense“ I do it, because I know very well, that else the following part might be misunderstood and I tried to ease tensions in advance? Did it ever occur to you, that when someone is highly critical of smth it's because they really care about it? No, you chose to be offended and ignore all the other points made, because it's so much easier.
Well, I am insulted how you treat loyal customers and fans of the series, who bought from BD directly, because we actually wanted to support you guys and didn't wait for the steam sale. But it turns out, that not only you get better money/reward ratio but also best version control, if you did exactly that.
I think it's insulting to not provide owners of a physical copy any possibility to update.
If you would simlply provide patches as a seperate download, it would also mean that the user has version control in his hands. It would easily fix the issue, if people prefer to play 1.3. with the beamdog version and owners of a physical copy would benefit as well.
For me it's insulting to publish a game only in english, even though it was advertised to contain several different languages in text and audio. And then deliver the rest almost a year after release (BG:EE) (yes I preordered that thing way over a year before it's release)
It's insulting to do an UI overhaul, with a result so bad, that your released product already in vanilla relies on modders work. Still it contains functionality flaws, like the not functioning ESC/Enter buttons and the lag. Not even talking about aesthetics/flavor.
What value does a „Beamdog“ response have, if it's so easy to see that response is flawed. Just say „no, we will not do that“ instead of the usual PR talk. It's only „believable“ for some time, after that it's insulting.
So since we are now both insulted and my good sophist chums here will cherrypick smth to have a good round of laughing, mocking and shrugging (just look at what they do with what @SirBatince said, even though it was so obv what he wanted to express; just pathetic, I don't know why you felt the need to excuse yourself)... ...I'll watch the video from the queen complaining about rude chinese people. Oh, so rude. Oh, so very rude.
No offense, because afaik you are just the community manager and a spokesperson, or to to say it more bluntly, you are doing the propaganda:
That is a nonsense explanation.
The part that I perceived to be an insult was twofold:
A - You accused me of "doing the propaganda". And you're correct, I neglected to account for the possibility that the language barrier might be part of that. But you must understand that, at least in English-speaking countries, the word 'propaganda' has negative associations. If you did not intend those associations, then I misunderstood. But.
B - You call my explanation nonsense. This, too, may be the result of the language barrier. At face value, it reads like a judgment of fact. But all I said was that the lack of "version selection" in the Beamdog client is because of technical issues. It was a vague explanation, sure, but I definitely wouldn't call it nonsense.
So, yeah, if you can reasonably say that you didn't intend those statements to be biting or insulting, then my bad. In my defense, you do a pretty darn good job of articulating yourself in your posts; it's not immediately obvious that English isn't your first language from reading what you write.
I don't know what else to tell you. If you think I'm here to spread Beamdog propaganda, nothing I say is going to make you feel better about the situation that we're already working on. What do you want me to say?
No, no, no--there's no need to tear each other apart. I've been seeing that a lot here, and it's unnecessary. You can dislike the results of a game update without flaying the developers alive. You can love what the developers are doing without mauling anyone who disagrees.
I mean, come on; everything that @KampfKaninchen said is totally fair. Everything in that post above is just as frustrating to us as it is to you. As the official "Guy who read through all the survey responses about the UI before v2.0 was released," believe me, I hear you.
If you're frustrated, be frustrated. All I'm saying is, be respectful about it. We're all of us human beings (except the modrons) on this site. Everyone here deserves to be treated like it.
It's insulting to do an UI overhaul, with a result so bad, that your released product already in vanilla relies on modders work. Still it contains functionality flaws, like the not functioning ESC/Enter buttons and the lag. Not even talking about aesthetics/flavor.
Yeah, except it's actually a more modern UI with better ease of use. But hey, I guess that's bad...
That's very diplomatic, @Dee, but I don't 100% agree. I do agree that we shouldn't tear each other apart, of course, but I actually thought my last comment was pretty mild. If I am mauling anyone, though, it's not because I love what the developers are doing. I mean, I do love the games, but as you've said yourself, the 2.0 UI came out half-baked. Critiquing it doesn't bother me at all.
What consistently bothers me is the level of entitlement and sensitivity that tends to accompany "fandom." Like, people genuinely feel that something has been taken from them because Beamdog made a game that isn't backward-compatible. That doesn't make sense to me, and neither does feeling insulted by any real or imagined shortcomings of a video game. People seem to draw on their technical ignorance to conclude that all those shortcomings must be intentional or grossly negligent, and therefore moral sins. I think that is wildly unfair.
Anyway, I'll try to be more polite. I know people sometimes conflate the attitudes of Beamdog employees with the attitudes of Beamdog forum members, and I don't want to implicate you in my crankiness about this issue.
@subtledoctor said: My suggestion to Beamdog is that there is really a simple solution here. You guys made a customizable UI... use it!! Make a few different UI "presets" and ship them with 2.4. Give players some choices, that are easier to implement for laymen than delving into long text documents full of unreadable code that, if edited improperly, could break things in the game.
Honestly you guys have painted yourselves into a corner here. If your new customizable UI is so easy to customize, then you should be able to easily create a few customized versions of it for players.
The 1.3 patch was great. I'd love to see it come back, or at least an option to download the patch manually + a non patched main game.
I don't understand this, and I suspect most people saying it don't understand what they are saying.
The 2.0 patch is 100% an improvement over the 1.3 engine. The only area in which it may said to be a simple change, rather than a strict improvement, is in the look and feel - the visual UI.
BUT: they have made the UI customizable!! Stop and think about that for a second. You want to make it look more like 1.3? You can.
What about all the people who didn't like the1.3 UI? Should they all continue to suffer? They have made it so that we can all more satisfied. That, I suggest, is a strict improvement. (OTOH, I'll be the first to say that doing this in a way that resists modding with the long-established modding tools is a crime against logic and nature.)
But back to the point: all you people complaining about the patch are really complaining about the new UI stylings, which is different. This whole conversation would be more productive if people were a bit more precise in their complaints.
My suggestion to Beamdog is that there is really a simple solution here. You guys made a customizable UI... use it!! Make a few different UI "presets" and ship them with 2.4. Give players some choices, that are easier to implement for laymen than delving into long text documents full of unreadable code that, if edited improperly, could break things in the game.
Honestly you guys have painted yourselves into a corner here. If your new customizable UI is so easy to customize, then you should be able to easily create a few customized versions of it for players.
All I said was to make the 1.3 patch optional. I didn't say Beamdog should remove 2.0 for anyone. If you love the 2.0 patch, it really won't do you any harm if I get to play the game with the 1.3 patch, does it?
These are the issues I have (personal opinion of course) with the 2.0 patch.
The character sprites sucks hard after 2.0.
The new character "sheets" stink.
The spellbook and the journal is a mess.
The A.I for the companions (when they join) is always set to some advanced script, which makes them waste a spell as soon as they join them.
I thought if you disable "Sprite Outlines" and enable "Nearest Neighbor Scaling" in the graphics settings, the character sprites look exactly as they did in 1.3?
Haven't experienced this. Did you try it only with 2.0, or with the latest bugfix release?
PS: The 2.x UI allows fast switching between dual-wielding two weapons, and wielding a two-handed weapon. I think this long overdue quality-of-life feature alone, far outweighs any unfortunate default settings or similar minor gripes...
I thought if you disable "Sprite Outlines" and enable "Nearest Neighbor Scaling" in the graphics settings, the character sprites look exactly as they did in 1.3?
Haven't experienced this. Did you try it only with 2.0, or with the latest bugfix release?
PS: The 2.x UI allows fast switching between dual-wielding two weapons, and wielding a two-handed weapon. I think this long overdue quality-of-life feature alone, far outweighs any unfortunate default settings or similar minor gripes...
The cartoony sprites can be disabled, yes. But they don't end up looking like they did in 1.3. They are way more pixelated now.
The dual-wielding switching is, of course, a very nice addition.
Comments
Every FTP server is capable of delevering you two completely different sets of software.
First, don't say "no offense" and then insult me. You want Beamdog to respond, try a little less acid.
Second, I said SoD requires the v2.0 code. The UI is part of that code. It's a small part of it, but it is part of it.
That's all you're going to get from me. If you want more of a response than that, try a different tack.
Offer an additional option that would tweak SOD's GUI to be more like 1.3 GUI.
If Beamdog did so, would that solve the problem?
Offer an additional option that would tweak SOD's GUI to be more like 1.3 GUI.
Yes, this option is what I am hoping for.
I would especially like to be able to revert the text box back to the 1.3 version. Honestly, the new one is downright painful for me to try and use. As I understand it, from reading posts that Pecca has made concerning his efforts in modding it in it’s current state, something needs to be addressed in the hard coding of the UI in order to fix it. I really don’t know what that may be.
then beamdog came and and started enhancing things, and I've been having mixed feelings about what they have been doing, it sometimes feels like they will take 3 steps forward, but then they take 2 and 1/2 steps backwards to make up for it, I don't know why that is, but sometimes that just seems to happen
now I believe it was 2010 when they started getting involved with the bg series ( or was it 2012? don't remember) and at first it was very very rocky, but we have all travelled the roller coaster ride that beamdog has put us on and I do believe they are getting better at what they are doing
now fast forwarding a bit, for me, the 2.0 patch was just terrible, the UI was outrageously ugly and I was thinking what madness is this? but luckily beamdog heard of that and started fixing things right away, and now we are at 2.3, and 2.3 made it a lot better, I still find the character sheet a little bizarre ( because I love my old school character sheet) but I can accept what it is now, and its still quite functional so I can live with it
and then siege of dragonspear came out, and I thought originally; naw, im not into this add on stuff, it detracks to far away from the game I love, so for awhile I went no where near it, but then, I was watching my friend play with the SoD game installed on his BG game, and couldn't believe how sexy it looked, I have to really admit, I just love how the SoD UI looks, it actually looks quite amazing, and even though im a silly purist, I was quite impressed with how it looked, so basically just because of that, that is the only reason why I bought SoD
and then I started playing my bg game with SoD, and everything was fine and dandy except for a couple of things, that really REALLY aggravate me quite a bit, and it feels more like the thing I said before where beamdog takes 3 steps forward and the 2 steps backwards for some bizarre reason
so here are a couple concerns I have about the new UI:
first off, the inventory screen, every time I pick up an item, go to place it somewhere or just do inventory management, why is there this bizarre lag in doing so? in 1.3 I could have 16 unidentified long swords +1 in my mage's back pack right click then press enter and identify them all within a matter of seconds, then I could grab my bag of holding from char1 bring it over to my mage, swap it with one of the swords, and start piling the swords in the bag, and again, I could fill 16 long swords +1 into my bag of holding in a matter of seconds ( easily less than 10) but now, there are two problems; #1, for some outrageously bizarre reason, the "enter" key does not exit out of item descriptions any more, why oh why, has that been implemented? why make it more hassle to identify multiple items now? but luckily at least the ESC key works, so I can live with that, but what I cant live with is this whacky lag that just drives me bananas, again above example 16 long swords +1 in my inventory, and now it basically takes me a full minute to place them all into a bag of holding, I don't know why the inventory management has been crippled like this, the way on how it worked before was beautiful so why add this whack lag every time I pick up and item and then go to drop it down, its quite frustrating, another example to help elaborate on this is, if you play the vanilla games or 1.3 if I click on an item in the inventory and then drop it down ( on one of the inventory tiles) it does so instantly, in fact if I mash click on that item, I will pick it up and drop as fast as im clicking, but with the 2.3 UI if I mash click that item, it picks it up, and then lags about a second before I drop it down again, I find this mind boggling as to why they did this, I almost don't even want to play the game because of this very UI update,
inventory management is already a hassle as some people have said ( although I find it to be okay with my perfected OCD organized system that I have in place) but now that there is silly lag in the inventory screen, it almost wants to give me an aneurysm every time I have to deal with it, and it really make the inventory management more of a pain in the behind
now at the same time, there are other things I don't like about the update, but no what, I can live with them, I can adapt to change, but the things that I find very hard to adapt to is "fixing things that aren't broken" changes are hard to swallow, again the inventory lag is just madness,
and because of things like this, this is why I keep the 1.3 versions on my laptop, to me 1.3 had it almost perfect, so I will never get rid of them, while my PC on the other hand is the beamdog guinea pig for better or for worse, but usually I like to think its for better, I would say that if the inventory acted like it did in 1.3 then I would have no serious complaints about 2.3, even though 2.3 does look sexalicious and for the most part handles quite well, it still needs to be user friendly, and 2.3 isn't quite perfect yet when it comes to that regard
personally 1.3 (and 1.4 for IWD) ui is what entirely constitutes my gameplay experience and flow with IE games. Knowing instantly where the buttons, prompts, spells, hotkeys and general info is what allows me to play the game in a way that provides my very fun. I can not and will not spend another dozen years trying to maim my reflexes and basically relearn all of a 20 year old game. The new bugs and graphical glitches only hardened my decision further.
Imagine if blizzard decided to update and change starcraft 1's UI today for the "greater good". The resulting backlash would be earth shattering and with reason.
Thankfully I run steam and can pick the version I like but unfortunately I have to force myself to ignore SoD whenever I roll a trilogy run (regrettably).
So, solutions. I would suggest that if or when a proper UI mod is made, have it be officially included and supported. A "reversion" is definitely impossible so we can settle for the next best thing I suppose.
They didn't just shove mods in there and call it good. They can't. That'd cause their legal department to have a fit.
I don't think there were any others that were included, but I could be mistaken. If they were used, we had permission from the mod's author(s).
Also, as of v2.0, most (if not all) of the features from ToBEx are matched in the engine. I say matched instead of integrated, because ToBEx wasn't something that we could just roll into the code; we had to implement each of its features separately.
to be fair I don't want to invest much effort in this argument since it's the "losing side" and that it would just be plain stupid from a development point of view. But I wouldn't be browsing forums if I didn't enjoy the occasional rant
Wow, just wow...you chose to insulted, by what part exactly? You are doing the PR job here, so what? Ofc all your statements have to be taken with a grain of salt, because of that.
And since this thought seems not have crossed your mind: maybe, just maybe, I have to draw from limited english skills, so if I say „no offense“ I do it, because I know very well, that else the following part might be misunderstood and I tried to ease tensions in advance?
Did it ever occur to you, that when someone is highly critical of smth it's because they really care about it?
No, you chose to be offended and ignore all the other points made, because it's so much easier.
Well, I am insulted how you treat loyal customers and fans of the series, who bought from BD directly, because we actually wanted to support you guys and didn't wait for the steam sale.
But it turns out, that not only you get better money/reward ratio but also best version control, if you did exactly that.
I think it's insulting to not provide owners of a physical copy any possibility to update.
If you would simlply provide patches as a seperate download, it would also mean that the user has version control in his hands. It would easily fix the issue, if people prefer to play 1.3. with the beamdog version and owners of a physical copy would benefit as well.
For me it's insulting to publish a game only in english, even though it was advertised to contain several different languages in text and audio. And then deliver the rest almost a year after release (BG:EE)
(yes I preordered that thing way over a year before it's release)
It's insulting to get told that you're planning to include the 15year old soundsets for BG2:EE almost 2 years ago and then, in a more recent feature request, Trent Oster asks what soundset we are talking about. Interesting planning.
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/37949/10731-all-german-sounds-should-play-when-the-language-is-set-to-german
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/59791/the-german-dub-we-are-still-waiting
It's insulting to do an UI overhaul, with a result so bad, that your released product already in vanilla relies on modders work. Still it contains functionality flaws, like the not functioning ESC/Enter buttons and the lag. Not even talking about aesthetics/flavor.
What value does a „Beamdog“ response have, if it's so easy to see that response is flawed.
Just say „no, we will not do that“ instead of the usual PR talk. It's only „believable“ for some time, after that it's insulting.
So since we are now both insulted and my good sophist chums here will cherrypick smth to have a good round of laughing, mocking and shrugging (just look at what they do with what @SirBatince said, even though it was so obv what he wanted to express; just pathetic, I don't know why you felt the need to excuse yourself)...
...I'll watch the video from the queen complaining about rude chinese people. Oh, so rude. Oh, so very rude.
Here is what you said: The part that I perceived to be an insult was twofold:
A - You accused me of "doing the propaganda". And you're correct, I neglected to account for the possibility that the language barrier might be part of that. But you must understand that, at least in English-speaking countries, the word 'propaganda' has negative associations. If you did not intend those associations, then I misunderstood. But.
B - You call my explanation nonsense. This, too, may be the result of the language barrier. At face value, it reads like a judgment of fact. But all I said was that the lack of "version selection" in the Beamdog client is because of technical issues. It was a vague explanation, sure, but I definitely wouldn't call it nonsense.
So, yeah, if you can reasonably say that you didn't intend those statements to be biting or insulting, then my bad. In my defense, you do a pretty darn good job of articulating yourself in your posts; it's not immediately obvious that English isn't your first language from reading what you write.
I don't know what else to tell you. If you think I'm here to spread Beamdog propaganda, nothing I say is going to make you feel better about the situation that we're already working on. What do you want me to say?
I mean, come on; everything that @KampfKaninchen said is totally fair. Everything in that post above is just as frustrating to us as it is to you. As the official "Guy who read through all the survey responses about the UI before v2.0 was released," believe me, I hear you.
If you're frustrated, be frustrated. All I'm saying is, be respectful about it. We're all of us human beings (except the modrons) on this site. Everyone here deserves to be treated like it.
What consistently bothers me is the level of entitlement and sensitivity that tends to accompany "fandom." Like, people genuinely feel that something has been taken from them because Beamdog made a game that isn't backward-compatible. That doesn't make sense to me, and neither does feeling insulted by any real or imagined shortcomings of a video game. People seem to draw on their technical ignorance to conclude that all those shortcomings must be intentional or grossly negligent, and therefore moral sins. I think that is wildly unfair.
Anyway, I'll try to be more polite. I know people sometimes conflate the attitudes of Beamdog employees with the attitudes of Beamdog forum members, and I don't want to implicate you in my crankiness about this issue.
As others have said, though, it is most likely not doable.
My suggestion to Beamdog is that there is really a simple solution here. You guys made a customizable UI... use it!! Make a few different UI "presets" and ship them with 2.4. Give players some choices, that are easier to implement for laymen than delving into long text documents full of unreadable code that, if edited improperly, could break things in the game.
Honestly you guys have painted yourselves into a corner here. If your new customizable UI is so easy to customize, then you should be able to easily create a few customized versions of it for players.
Yes please!
These are the issues I have (personal opinion of course) with the 2.0 patch.
The character sprites sucks hard after 2.0.
The new character "sheets" stink.
The spellbook and the journal is a mess.
The A.I for the companions (when they join) is always set to some advanced script, which makes them waste a spell as soon as they join them.
The inventory screen lags for some reason.
And it kinda grows on you...
However, they are now moddable enough to allow mods to fix them, like @Pecca's Dragonspear UI++ mod does. Haven't experienced this.
Did you try it only with 2.0, or with the latest bugfix release?
PS: The 2.x UI allows fast switching between dual-wielding two weapons, and wielding a two-handed weapon. I think this long overdue quality-of-life feature alone, far outweighs any unfortunate default settings or similar minor gripes...
The dual-wielding switching is, of course, a very nice addition.