Don't give up just yet. I think you see too much negativity. To me, Trent has just reiterated that the 1.3 patch for BG:EE is nearly done and has told us some news - that BG2:EE for Android will follow that patch. This is good news. I didn't know when we would get it and thought BG2:EE for Android will be long after the patch for BG2:EE.
Also, I'd like to quote @Effiny and say that when Trent himself promises something is soon it won't take much time to be released. So, don't give up.
No matter how differently we look at Beamdog, I don't want you to give up, personally.
How massive is it?! Graphicall? LANGUAGES? More Gore Options?! Bugskiller?! I want to see what how long they ready are?
Dee said: Successful Tests: 0 / 721
Now Succesful Tests: ?/ 721
This "public beta" is kinda of a joke. The 1.2 BGEE patch beta worked because people were felt that BGEE patch was really needed at the time, but most importantly because Beamdog employees themselfs got really involved. Especially in the way of keeping the beta builds relatively close to their internal builds, and "blue presence" on the beta forums.
Not to mention that Beamdog themselfs don't seem to really know what the plan is this time. I doubt when this beta was originally launched in December that they planned to have it running still half a year later.
There is lot more demand for the BG2EE patch so I think that beta could be successful like the 1.2 beta was, but only if Beamdog actively supports the process.
Edit: Just to make clear though I still think that even this kinda of crowdsourcing the testing, before officially releasing the patches to everyone is still better than not doing it at all. It could be done lot better though as the 1.2 beta showed.
Edit2: Also they should use Steam's beta build functionality to allow bringing the massive amount of people who bought these games from there to the beta testing process.
Allow me to present one man's stance. I am personally discouraged by this "public" beta, considering:
1. The lack of public feedback. 0/721 springs to mind, as do the thereby hollow substitutes for concrete information that amount to multiple public placations, (in tweet and post form). 2. Public participation. To my knowledge, Mac users who purchased directly from Beamdog, hypothetically ensuring access to beta builds, still do not have access to this, whilst apparently, Mac App Store customers already have the released patch, as do Android customers—with the PC being the traditional and, in terms of revenue, likely primary platform, the latter two completely baffle me. This honestly does make me feel like they're prioritizing new business over customer satisfaction, and makes the following feel a bit insulting. 3. The published article extolling the "pioneering" effort by Beamdog/Overhaul to "include" users in the beta testing process. What is the point of bringing in unpaid volunteers only to unwittingly or arbitrarily shut them out of the process? How do they justify writing that piece, given the actions, or lack thereof, that have followed it? The entire Mishigas that is this beta testing fiasco strikes me as disorganized, opaque, and perhaps most worrisome, contradictory to itself.
Refute my points if possible, but please don't disregard them if you choose to argue with those of us who are unhappy with 7 months of the status quo. Plenty of us are justifiably dissatisfied.
Finally, I don't see the point of attacking fellow forumites. It's both disrespectful and counterproductive. Such tacks can easily lead to this thread degenerating into contrarians vs. apologists, which serves neither the developers nor their customers.
New Feature for Tablets: Trigger Icons Through the Magnifying Glass Tool (2499)
Tablet-users will notice something new when they press the Magnifying Glass tool: any object that can be interacted with now displays the action trigger icon for that object. This means that doors will display door icons and chests will display chest icons (or lock icons if they're locked); it also means that area exits (aside from world map transitions), information hot spots, and activity areas such as switches will all display the appropriate icons as well. No more guessing where the switch is in that room full of traps, and no more fumbling around for the exit when you're ready to leave the dungeon. Just tap on the icon, and away you go.
If you're on a desktop or laptop computer and you like the way that looks, you can enable it on your non-tablet game by adding the following line to your Baldur.ini file:
'Game Options', 'Show Triggers On Tab', '1',
Note that ground piles won't show this icon, in order to reduce screen clutter as much as possible.
@Dee and everyone else. Is there a way to have the PC version toggle this on or off without always holding the tab key just like the android version? I like that I can just push the button once per area, and it's very handy in battle to see how both party and monsters are hurting in real time.
@ZelgadisGW that, along with the several other antagonistic remarks you've made, was entirely uncalled for.
Please, everyone, let's keep this thread to talking about the beta. I realize that the beta hasn't been updated recently so there may not be a whole lot to say about it, but that does not give you license to start attacking each other. We have rules for a reason.
New Feature for Tablets: Trigger Icons Through the Magnifying Glass Tool (2499)
Tablet-users will notice something new when they press the Magnifying Glass tool: any object that can be interacted with now displays the action trigger icon for that object. This means that doors will display door icons and chests will display chest icons (or lock icons if they're locked); it also means that area exits (aside from world map transitions), information hot spots, and activity areas such as switches will all display the appropriate icons as well. No more guessing where the switch is in that room full of traps, and no more fumbling around for the exit when you're ready to leave the dungeon. Just tap on the icon, and away you go.
If you're on a desktop or laptop computer and you like the way that looks, you can enable it on your non-tablet game by adding the following line to your Baldur.ini file:
'Game Options', 'Show Triggers On Tab', '1',
Note that ground piles won't show this icon, in order to reduce screen clutter as much as possible.
@Dee and everyone else. Is there a way to have the PC version toggle this on or off without always holding the tab key just like the android version? I like that I can just push the button once per area, and it's very handy in battle to see how both party and monsters are hurting in real time.
At the moment, no. I agree it's a useful feature, though!
I'm very suprised why @Dee still didn't close this topic. The drama level reached over 9000 and is still rising.
You see this totally wrong whether positive or negative posts is still the topic of conversation the main thing Beamdog and its product. it is always good to be in conversation ;-)
@Dee Well, I'm sorry for that. If I'm not allowed to express how I fell about the direction certain community is taking they way I did, then I'll stop. One would say I could have done it in more polite way, but in reallity there is no polite way to express this with a good accuracy.
I can understand the frustrations people can have about something that they really care about. I know all about being completely dissatisfied with a video game. Don't ever mention these three words to me-Bethesda, Skyrim, Playstation. That was probably the most fed up and dissatisfied I've ever been, or will be with a video game/company. That scenario was more or less, flat out stealing. Though BGEE and BG2EE has its issues, they are far from unplayable. At least the game works... I think everyone should just calm down a bit. It's ok to be a little annoyed with the slow progress, but keep the unwarranted exaggerations at bay. It just makes people look silly IMO
I don't know anything for sure, of course, not being affiliated with Beamdog, but I'd guess the "problem" (which I personally feel is an overstatement for a $20 game, but...) is one of mostly-fixed costs (validation) vs. mostly-scalable costs (how many issues you decide to fix) vs. fixed-resources (devs and available community). Because video games are holistic in the sense that a change affecting an early part of the game can have branching ramifications on later parts of the game, release-quality validation really would be a large and fixed cost even if testing against a single configuration -- and there are lots of configurations to be tested, hence the betas and the time afterwards to close down the issues discovered in them. So, one alternative is to release fewer fixes at a time on a more rapid cadence -- but there's limited wins there if the fixed costs really are both fixed and large, especially if your resources for doing the fixing are limited.
For my two years on Xbox Live, we released patches on an extremely rapid cadence -- i.e., daily if not hourly. But our code was highly componentized and thus, each bit being a small independent service, trivial to verify whenever changes were made. And if we screwed up, it was highly likely to be in a non-subtle way, and we could release another patch pretty much instantaneously. By contrast, Visual Studio (on which I've spent a total of 18 years, including its antecedents) is a vastly more complicated and highly interdependent codebase, where validation is expensive (at least traditionally -- we've been making it easier recently) because memory usage HERE can affect performance OVER THERE and functionality OVER YONDER in odd ways -- and so, creating and vetting service packs took months (though again, we are moving faster now after much work and starting to leverage more componentized code like Roslyn).
I haven't seen the BG codebase, but from what I understand, it's easily as convoluted as my latter example used to be, but with far fewer resources and probably with even more interdependencies and possibly states of code. I totally sympathize with them (especially as a person who used to run the VS shiproom, and who had to maintain silence with the community in many cases rather than accidentally overpromise and underdeliver).
So let me ask anyone who hasn't gotten bored with my "apologia" yet -- if Beamdog increased the cadence of patches via less validation -- just as an example -- in order to get bits out faster, how would you react to that if it meant that things might not be as perfectly fixed as they might otherwise be? Would that be OK if you knew that the next patch was a mere four weeks away? Two weeks away? Assume that the faster the cadence, the less validation you get, and the more likely that some problem won't be root-cause fixed. (Frankly, I grapple with this question in my job every day -- it's an honest question I'm asking here.)
@shawne Don't give up just yet. I think you see too much negativity. To me, Trent has just reiterated that the 1.3 patch for BG:EE is nearly done and has told us some news - that BG2:EE for Android will follow that patch. This is good news. I didn't know when we would get it and thought BG2:EE for Android will be long after the patch for BG2:EE
You make it sound like a good thing. But I absolutitiously disagree. I was already angry and disappointed when Android BG1 was prioritized over a months-due BG2 patch. Then I was even angrier when the BG1 1.3 patch was prioritized over the BG2 patch since it is much more polished and has a lot less serious and partly game breaking bugs than BG2.
And now you're telling me that BG2 for android will again be prioritized over the patch which is now more than 6 months due with a horribly buggy new content?! We saw how long it takes to release a patch after the android version! Again months for people who have already paid (twice in my case) for BG2EE.
Say it with me: we don't want monster patches that take forever, we want quick fixes for the most glaring game-breaking bugs and low hanging fruits. I have made this point with elaborate reasoning several times.
I give up as well, some people here seem to think @TrentOster walks on water but to me he has no clue whatsoever on how to keep a fanbase that was absolutely incredible and motivated happy.
So let me ask anyone who hasn't gotten bored with my "apologia" yet -- if Beamdog increased the cadence of patches via less validation -- just as an example -- in order to get bits out faster, how would you react to that if it meant that things might not be as perfectly fixed as they might otherwise be? Would that be OK if you knew that the next patch was a mere four weeks away? Two weeks away? Assume that the faster the cadence, the less validation you get, and the more likely that some problem won't be root-cause fixed. (Frankly, I grapple with this question in my job every day -- it's an honest question I'm asking here.)
The problem is that in Beamdog's case both cadence and validation have been lacking because of other factors. Namely, BG1:EE for Android, BG2:EE for Android, and the 1.3 patch for BG1:EE on all other platforms. These are the ones that we know of—there might be other projects going on in the background. If they moved these three projects out of the way (assuming they hadn't made binding deals with the publisher in this respect) and delayed them just a bit, there would have been a lot more resources they could devote to BG2:EE patching and QA to ensure that customers who have already purchased the game don't get left with a largely flawed product.
And yes, with all resources on hand bugfixing would have been much faster. The betas are there for a reason. You take 5 or so of the most offending issues, you fix them (that's the easy part), then update your beta builds with the fixes. In a week or so of devoted internal testing as well as public feedback, you can be fairly sure that the fixes worked. Then you push the update to the stable platforms and move on to the next batch of issues. There is no need to develop new features while this is going on, or if you absolutely have to, you don't push those volatile features in the bugfixing phase. Developing new features and other releases while one of your recent releases is in a less-than-desirable condition is bad practice.
Once again, the only reason Beamdog are receiving the feedback they do from a significant portion of their community is because they have taken six months—and counting—to push sorely needed bugfixes. That's not "taking long", it's not even "late", we have passed those marks about three months ago. There is only so much a devoted and supportive community can take before starting to turn sour.
I was already angry and disappointed when Android BG1 was prioritized over a months-due BG2 patch. Then I was even angrier when the BG1 1.3 patch was prioritized over the BG2 patch since it is much more polished and has a lot less serious and partly game breaking bugs than BG2.
And now you're telling me that BG2 for android will again be prioritized over the patch which is now more than 6 months due with a horribly buggy new content?! We saw how long it takes to release a patch after the android version! Again months for people who have already paid (twice in my case) for BG2EE.
This is only a guess, but I think Beamdog is contractually obligated to release BG2:EE for Android before a certain date. Or if not by a certain date, than within a given time frame of the other platforms. I don't think the Android version is something they can shelf for much longer without running into a breach of contract. But again, I have no idea what Beamdog's contract looks like, so this is all speculation.
please close the forum, shut down Beamdog and sell the rights on Baldurs Gate to another company. Doenst matter what company, will getting better anyway.
One thing for everyone to remember is that BGEE was launched 1.5 years ago, and BD are still providing support for it when many companies abandon their games months after the launch. I think for a game you only had to pay 20 euros for that is very impressive!
People would be a little more impressed if 2 months hadn't gone by with no actual progress reported. There was no point in making a public beta thread with milestones if none are ever reached and we're all left clueless as to what actually needs any testing, if anything.
The silence in regard to what the hell is happening is maddening. Delays and bugs can be dealt with if anyone actually bothers to tell us what's holding it up. Checking this thread every day to see that still no one's bothered to communicate why 1.3 isn't here, what it all entails and what the future plans are is getting rather pathetic.
please close the forum, shut down Beamdog and sell the rights on Baldurs Gate to another company. Doenst matter what company, will getting better anyway.
stop being so melodramatic. The game works fine. I have been playing 60+ plus and encountered zero problems .
One thing for everyone to remember is that BGEE was launched 1.5 years ago, and BD are still providing support for it when many companies abandon their games months after the launch. I think for a game you only had to pay 20 euros for that is very impressive!
uuh thats a joke or ? yes its cost not so much, yes Beamdog patch that game right after that "long" time.... But i have not pay money for a beta game ... have you this ? is it for you not a problem give your money for a beta game and wait a long time to use it with all feature ? not realy or .... sorry.... if people write that make me angry.
Comments
Don't give up just yet. I think you see too much negativity. To me, Trent has just reiterated that the 1.3 patch for BG:EE is nearly done and has told us some news - that BG2:EE for Android will follow that patch. This is good news. I didn't know when we would get it and thought BG2:EE for Android will be long after the patch for BG2:EE.
Also, I'd like to quote @Effiny and say that when Trent himself promises something is soon it won't take much time to be released. So, don't give up.
No matter how differently we look at Beamdog, I don't want you to give up, personally.
Come on..
How massive is it?! Graphicall? LANGUAGES? More Gore Options?! Bugskiller?! I want to see what how long they ready are?
Dee said: Successful Tests: 0 / 721
Now Succesful Tests: ?/ 721
Not to mention that Beamdog themselfs don't seem to really know what the plan is this time. I doubt when this beta was originally launched in December that they planned to have it running still half a year later.
There is lot more demand for the BG2EE patch so I think that beta could be successful like the 1.2 beta was, but only if Beamdog actively supports the process.
Edit: Just to make clear though I still think that even this kinda of crowdsourcing the testing, before officially releasing the patches to everyone is still better than not doing it at all. It could be done lot better though as the 1.2 beta showed.
Edit2: Also they should use Steam's beta build functionality to allow bringing the massive amount of people who bought these games from there to the beta testing process.
I am personally discouraged by this "public" beta, considering:
1. The lack of public feedback. 0/721 springs to mind, as do the thereby hollow substitutes for concrete information that amount to multiple public placations, (in tweet and post form).
2. Public participation. To my knowledge, Mac users who purchased directly from Beamdog, hypothetically ensuring access to beta builds, still do not have access to this, whilst apparently, Mac App Store customers already have the released patch, as do Android customers—with the PC being the traditional and, in terms of revenue, likely primary platform, the latter two completely baffle me. This honestly does make me feel like they're prioritizing new business over customer satisfaction, and makes the following feel a bit insulting.
3. The published article extolling the "pioneering" effort by Beamdog/Overhaul to "include" users in the beta testing process. What is the point of bringing in unpaid volunteers only to unwittingly or arbitrarily shut them out of the process? How do they justify writing that piece, given the actions, or lack thereof, that have followed it?
The entire Mishigas that is this beta testing fiasco strikes me as disorganized, opaque, and perhaps most worrisome, contradictory to itself.
Refute my points if possible, but please don't disregard them if you choose to argue with those of us who are unhappy with 7 months of the status quo. Plenty of us are justifiably dissatisfied.
Finally, I don't see the point of attacking fellow forumites. It's both disrespectful and counterproductive. Such tacks can easily lead to this thread degenerating into contrarians vs. apologists, which serves neither the developers nor their customers.
Well, everyone is free in expressing an opinion, so as long the Site Rules are obeyed, it can and should go on.
The most important thing this thread is a source of news regarding BG:EE and BG2:EE.
Please, everyone, let's keep this thread to talking about the beta. I realize that the beta hasn't been updated recently so there may not be a whole lot to say about it, but that does not give you license to start attacking each other. We have rules for a reason.
At the moment, no. I agree it's a useful feature, though!
Well, I'm sorry for that. If I'm not allowed to express how I fell about the direction certain community is taking they way I did, then I'll stop. One would say I could have done it in more polite way, but in reallity there is no polite way to express this with a good accuracy.
For my two years on Xbox Live, we released patches on an extremely rapid cadence -- i.e., daily if not hourly. But our code was highly componentized and thus, each bit being a small independent service, trivial to verify whenever changes were made. And if we screwed up, it was highly likely to be in a non-subtle way, and we could release another patch pretty much instantaneously. By contrast, Visual Studio (on which I've spent a total of 18 years, including its antecedents) is a vastly more complicated and highly interdependent codebase, where validation is expensive (at least traditionally -- we've been making it easier recently) because memory usage HERE can affect performance OVER THERE and functionality OVER YONDER in odd ways -- and so, creating and vetting service packs took months (though again, we are moving faster now after much work and starting to leverage more componentized code like Roslyn).
I haven't seen the BG codebase, but from what I understand, it's easily as convoluted as my latter example used to be, but with far fewer resources and probably with even more interdependencies and possibly states of code. I totally sympathize with them (especially as a person who used to run the VS shiproom, and who had to maintain silence with the community in many cases rather than accidentally overpromise and underdeliver).
So let me ask anyone who hasn't gotten bored with my "apologia" yet -- if Beamdog increased the cadence of patches via less validation -- just as an example -- in order to get bits out faster, how would you react to that if it meant that things might not be as perfectly fixed as they might otherwise be? Would that be OK if you knew that the next patch was a mere four weeks away? Two weeks away? Assume that the faster the cadence, the less validation you get, and the more likely that some problem won't be root-cause fixed. (Frankly, I grapple with this question in my job every day -- it's an honest question I'm asking here.)
And now you're telling me that BG2 for android will again be prioritized over the patch which is now more than 6 months due with a horribly buggy new content?! We saw how long it takes to release a patch after the android version! Again months for people who have already paid (twice in my case) for BG2EE.
Say it with me: we don't want monster patches that take forever, we want quick fixes for the most glaring game-breaking bugs and low hanging fruits. I have made this point with elaborate reasoning several times.
I give up as well, some people here seem to think @TrentOster walks on water but to me he has no clue whatsoever on how to keep a fanbase that was absolutely incredible and motivated happy.
And yes, with all resources on hand bugfixing would have been much faster. The betas are there for a reason. You take 5 or so of the most offending issues, you fix them (that's the easy part), then update your beta builds with the fixes. In a week or so of devoted internal testing as well as public feedback, you can be fairly sure that the fixes worked. Then you push the update to the stable platforms and move on to the next batch of issues. There is no need to develop new features while this is going on, or if you absolutely have to, you don't push those volatile features in the bugfixing phase. Developing new features and other releases while one of your recent releases is in a less-than-desirable condition is bad practice.
Once again, the only reason Beamdog are receiving the feedback they do from a significant portion of their community is because they have taken six months—and counting—to push sorely needed bugfixes. That's not "taking long", it's not even "late", we have passed those marks about three months ago. There is only so much a devoted and supportive community can take before starting to turn sour.
Doenst matter what company, will getting better anyway.
Get in my way, I'll shoot you down with my arrows of positivity!
The silence in regard to what the hell is happening is maddening. Delays and bugs can be dealt with if anyone actually bothers to tell us what's holding it up. Checking this thread every day to see that still no one's bothered to communicate why 1.3 isn't here, what it all entails and what the future plans are is getting rather pathetic.