Supporting Existing Titles or Quick Money with Hastily Produced New Games?
SergeTroy
Member Posts: 86
I'm just curious. Baldur's Gate's patch timeline has been rather slow, to say the least, with new patches being released maybe once a year. Now, I understand there's a lot of different mechanics, it's a big game, and perhaps Beamdog is not really that big of a studio compared to, say, Bethesda Softworks or something. However ... Wasteland 2 is a very enjoyable game that has been out for 5 months, and in that time has had 5 patches with a 6th patch expected to come out in a few weeks, and an even larger Balance Overhaul Patch anticipated in a month or two after that. If Beamdog is not able to provide a new patch covering at least some of the more minor issues that have been noted for many months and which are listed in the known errors section, than you really have to wonder what kind of a game company Beamdog is? Are you supporting your existing games, or are you so busy putting out new ones that you can't provide quality support? Is it that you have too many platforms to cover with the games produced? Perhaps that was something that should have been considered in the production phase. The question comes down to: Where is the support for these games? Version 1.3 after the game has been out since 11/28/2012? Really?
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You also have to understand a project management philosophy. You get to choose two: Quality, Time or Cost. You can not have all three. After one of the patches, and listening to their consumer base, the company adopted a higher quality control in the release of their patches. The patches would be larger, cover more content and attempt to not introduce any new ill effects. The down side to this is that they'd take longer to come out.
So to answer your first question, they are a gaming company that understands the limitations of the engine they are working with and one that strives for perfection. The release of IWD:EE should showcase what this company strives for in its releases.
And they are not busily churning out new games as a cash grab. They are not even publicly working on any new title besides an assumed DLC for BG:EE.
Not to mention, the patch went live just a couple of weeks ago, with its own "The Road to v1.3" thread to allow consumers to see where they are in its development stage.
I also don't see what you need fixed direly to have another patch released. Is Polymorph Self that important to you?
And while, yes, Polymorph Self is the bug that caught my attention most, it is not the only one. I'm assuming as you spent some time looking at my profile you also took some time to look at the list of bugs in the List of Known Issues thread for BG:EE 1.3. And it's not been a couple of weeks ago, unless you're referring to v1.3 of BG2:EE, it's been a couple of months. I'm reasonably certain it was in late September, early October of last year that the BG:EE 1.3 patch came out. edit: It was actually 08/29/2014, if my Steam copy and the Steam network can be counted on for that.
Essentially, the complaint that I have is that as an Enhanced Edition of a nearly two decade old game, I'd expect there to be next to no bugs at all, and that is simply not the case. If I had a choice for my Enhanced Edition to have zero bugs and to function as expected but with zero new content, I'd vote that way, definitely. I do appreciate the new content and certainly allow that new customer's/supporters that were not part of the original base may prefer more options than was originally included with the title. I can also appreciate a BEVY of fixes being rolled out with each new patch. I as one customer would simply appreciate more patches with fewer fixes in each patch, but with less time between patches. And as far as goes the rule of two, for initial production that makes sense. I do not believe it does post release. It is my belief that Beamdog could do better and there are companies out there that show as much, hence my irritation.
BTW, obviously we disagree here but Kudos on delivery for your side. Even tone and pacing is something I very much need to work on myself, was in an accident a few years back and it pretty much wrecked a lot of things I take for granted. Looking at going into a technical field simply because I can barely deal with people at all for longer than 15 minutes.
Generally they never fixed any bugs but hid them or created other minor glitches like turning a party member into a wearwolf.
Most of the known issues listed for 1.3 are for new content and the list contains no A or B class bugs. Most have to do with the damnable journal.
I prefer smaller, quicker patches as well but that always led to complaints about why Issue X, which is more important to me not fixed from the community. I did not like having to wait so long for my BG2 patch, but I did understand where the company qas coming from and IWD shows what they can accomplish without external interference.
And "Cost, Quality, Time" applies to anything you do.
While the title suggests opinions on supporting existing titles or choosing "hastily produced new games" the OP concentrates on the problem of Beamdog's patch process and the current state of BGEE and BG2EE games.
Anyways though, as noted in many threads, working with a really old computer program is often more complicated than working with a new one.
If you'd want those tanks built faster, you'd either have to increase the cost (more labourers or research and development costs to find efficiencies) or change the quality (remove existing unneeded enhancements).
When you are looking at patching a video game, you can release quick little fixes that do not address all the issues at once to save time and give the perception that the game is still being supported properly. This is an unreliable method for infinity engine games due to its finicky nature as past patches demonstrated.
Or you can increase the cost of them by adding a pay to play module or micro transactions to the game. This would allow he team to hire more people to work on suppporting the game. But I doubt it would be supported by this community. MMOs and multiplayer games like hearthstone support it whole heartily.
That leaves you with quality and cheap support as opposed to more updated patches.
With the work on adventure Y being done, I am expecting a patch to be released prior to its launch date with a few more tweaks and added goodies to it. Not before as any changes introduced may undo work done on that project.
Regarding manufacture, you could again advance production while maintaining or even decreasing cost if you can find a better way to make the tank. This can be a cost in and of itself obviously, but the concept does exist. We make better cars now for cheaper and can do it much faster than we could 100 years ago, what I am saying and I suspect you agree, as you offered suggestions relating to it, is that the maintainence aspect of developing games is in need of an advancement to make it more economical.
DLC can work, but you need people willing to buy add ons, but I can see that working rather nicely, due to the ready availability of internet, allowing dissemination of add ons, patches, etc. The original solution, test the bejesus out of a game before releasing (good console games had very few bugs that I found, but I did not play that many smaller developer games on consoles. Later games progressively had more bugs, and bigger ones, but generally, I found computer games to be the worst for bugs) was prohibitatively expensive, and no developer is interested in that anymore it seems... but continuing to patch a game after it is reasonably playable (IE BG1 could be played vanilla, but there were bugs to be found) costs money that could be spent more profitably on the next game!
TLDR; DLC and the like seem like a solid way to keep developers investing in a game for longer. This could be an advancement, if it is done wisely, allowing both less buggy games with better support and better returns for companies that develop good products.
They finally decided that patching would follow a more strict quality assurance system. A new patch is now tested by in house testers, then released to all beta testers who have an NDA signed, then released as an open beta and finally made final if no major bug is detected after all these tests.
Personally I prefer the new system as it really shows results and avoid major game breaking bugs as the current know bugs list proves.
They are also adding new features to the game all the time, such as the new switch that controls how ranger/cleric spell list works, or the switch that allows you to turn off extra XP from higher difficulty in IWD currently being tested, and those have to be tested as well.
So if this shows how Beamdog supports their games you may be sure I like it. Better than some companies that release untested game breaking patches or never release any fix to their games at all...