Well I only spent 5 min in sp testing, but it's obvious the following obvious and basic bugs missed getting included in this "major" patch:
So besides concede and some balance item/creep tweeks, what did this so hyped patch actually do?? Ok Random Demigods as soon as you fix it. But I serously fail to see what is major in it. No wonder 1.1 patch thread was instantly locked.
Yeah, they also made North Korea fairly overpowered with their shortened cooldown. Bastards.
I think it's not the fact that people expected everything to be fixed, it's the fact that a certain number of key issues weren't addressed. Hopefully the majority of players can agree that the Heart of Life nerf (over-exagerrated) and the priests/angels nerf were some of the more minor things that needed initial attention. Pathing, Fire TB auto-attack while moving, and being bugged after a grasp from UB sometimes are just some examples of what would be considered a better fix.
Also, I'm not sure if it's intended, but buying a favour item does not get saved after a completed match. It's actually better since everyone had their favour wiped, but it just doesn't feel right.
For every issue that gets fixed, there is going to be people who complain that the issue they perceived as the most important wasn't fixed.
Glitches and bugs which effect a small number of the popullation - however vocal - are going to be lower on the list than items that effect everyone's game, such as the aforementioned Priests and Angels tweak and the HoL nerf. The repercussions of these changes is far more reaching, and improves the quality of a high number of people's games compared to the one-off and random glitches. They're annoying, but the game is still playable with them. Priests, as an upgrade, was seen as a bad thing - and the HoL had interesting side effects relating to the amount of XP and Gold that were attainable due to not needing to buy potions or head back to base so early in the game.
Accusing me of not understanding how things work while insisting that HoL and Priests/Angels are a fix...ffs THEY ARE BALANCE CHANGES. They require zero code change and therefore DO NOT REQUIRE code QA (And if you don't understand why balance changes like these don't require code change, don't even bother...). Additionaly, those balance changes, as was done here too, are done in a pendulum swing manner. A drastic change was udertaken for HoL and it's quite possible that if anyone cares it will be swung back a bit later, or other items will be created to fill in the ~4k gold spot. Yes, they need to evaluate the change and test it, but don't give me that shit about management meetings...
But that is not the point...the balance changes were done on some much needed things and sure are welcome. However, the patch contained mostly balance changes. One would expect that there is a programming team/person (usually separate from balance team/person) which worked on gameplay bugs that were evident and discussed since release. Just because there are zillion HoL threads does not mean gameplay bugs have not been discussed. And yes, THEY WERE posted in the appropriate forum.
That was my point - as the update contained almost no fixes to gameplay bugs, it is as if noone worked on these for the past two months. Speaking of usual way things are with patches - code is improved non-stop and gameplay bugs are fixed as soon as they are discovered and resources are available. Balance changes are done in lumps. Then BOTH balance changes and gameplay bug fixes are released in a patch. In this case, it seems to me that in 2 and a half months, no work was done on the gameplay bugs that were present for a long time.
I think compared with most other games that get released *cough*EA*cough* GPG are doing a pretty good job of addressing the bugs,error,balance fixes in this game. Blizzard I would consider do this sort of thing slightly better, but very few people have those sort of resources to update their games. If this was an EA game we would still be back at version 1.0
I approve of most of the balance adjustments, with the exception of heart of life. At 12k I cant see anyone buying it, so I think this one was overdone.
Overall though I have to say Kudos to the devs, both GPG and Stardock. Its just a shame that those bad reviews will live on.
Edit: This patch may be mainly balancing, but there have been a few patched before this that fixed some pretty fundamental stuff.
I don't think you quite grasp how the process works. Gas Powered Games most likely hasn't included the solutions to the glitches that have been reported for two reasons; the first being they, as yet, might not have found a working solution to the problem and would prefer to hold back a fix until it is confirmed to actually be a fix, the second being that the time required to design and implement the aforementioned fix exceeded the time they believed to be reasonable for the patch to be released. Instead of holding back the patch further, as many people have already complained about, they decided it's better to fix some problems rather than none at all and released the patch with as many items as possible. Being as, you so lovingly pointed out, these issues have been long standing, I think either reason is equally as likely to be the case here.I can promise you these glitches received attention upon discovery, however in order for them to be corrected they need to be able to reproduced at call, then the code responsible for all of the interactions needs to be isolated and disected and it's interactions need be correctly identified. Then, the code needs to be re-written with zero impact on other parts of the code to ensure, as best as possible, that this fix won't generate new problems once implemented. This can be a lengthy process depending on the depth of the issue at hand as the interactions between the segments of code can be beyond complex when dealing with A.I. routines.Gas Powered Games didn't leave out all of the glitch fixes because they couldn't be bothered dedicating resources to them, they did it for a reason. Just because that reason escapes your logic, and you can't see the cogs of the machine turning, doesn't mean that work hasn't been completed or resources haven't been used attempting to correct these issues. It's easy to be critical when you can't fathom the complexity of the task you're complaining hasn't been completed.
Love how with every patch they mention what's going to be in it, then people are like OMGSURPRISED when not everything under the sun isnt on the change notes and cry to high heaven. Retarded as.
All of the bugs I and others mentioned are very easy to reproduce and have been present for a very long time. In real life (as opposed to mystery land you seem to prefer) the process is as follows:
So we have one of the following:
1) These bugs have not been acknowledged as bugs yet - we need to post again to draw attention
2) No-one has been assigned to fix them - we need to post again to bump their priority
3) (this seems to be what you beleive) They lack the capacity to fix them - don't think there is much we can do here
For christ sake, we're not talking here about features that still need to be added or more demigods or what not. We're talking about friggin BUG FIXES.
If there was a patch coming out every other week fixing a couple of random bugs, such as the autoattack ones listed by IV, there would be less complaining. Unfortunately when it's 1 month or more between patches people start to wonder when most of the bugs in the core gameplay are actually going to go away.
If nothing else, the bug threads are telling the devs what needs to be fixed for the next patch, even if the tone of some of the posts is a little off in my opinion.
Actually I just found this thread:
[Bug] Fire mode Torch Bearer can't hit a target on the run.
And it even includes the needed solution - a small change in the Lua and adding the missing animation. It proposes using a different or no animation until the missing fire animation is added. It was posted 3 months ago.
Still isn't fixed.
[BUG] Capturing&losing enemy valor flag
Posted 4 months ago. Probably another small Lua bug. Not fixed!!!
do you want me to continue...???
I have to agree with Misfortune here. I checked out those links and I don't like ZehDon (sorry) for defending GPG so much.
I mean ffs they had the code in the thread! Copy/Paste too hard for GPG programmers?
Edit: Must have clicked post at the same time.
None of this doesn't change the fact that it wasn't fixed - meaning it's not as simple as it looks, or it's taking longer than expected. As I've mentioned before, just because you can't see the work being done, doesn't mean it isn't being done. If you'd like to argue that nothing is being done, that they're sitting at their desks in their offices laughing as their customers complain in anguish, then by all means argue. I doubt, highly doubt, that these issues that have been raised that long ago have been ignored. Neither of us can be proven wrong or right. But, by all means, continue. It really isn't going to expedite change.
With that attitude Demigod will go down the drain so by all means, stop!
I'm afraid I don't understand Somaz. You're saying the "wait and be paitent, and for the love of all that is holy stop filling the forum with numerous threads covering the same issues and doing so in a non-constructive manner" is going to destroy the game?
How about this; bump the old threads instead of making entirely new ones? Hell, if you're really that unhappy with the way things are being handled, take your concerns to Gas Powered Games directly and by-pass the Developers entirely.
at least the first three of those dot points have effected me and have annoyed me quite a lot. These are probably very easily fixed also.
i would like to see these fixed in the next patch, which is hopefully not too far away.
Yeah this has been annoying.
I'm afraid I'm with ZehDon here. As much as I too, am frustrated with the issues Misfortune pointed out, I understand the way things work behind the scenes and am therefore a lot more patient in my wait for them to be fixed.
Having Frogboy so active on the forums has apparently risen the expectations of the average Demigod forum member. We really cannot expect the devs to prowl the forums addressing every bug that's being brought up, nor can we expect them to reveal to us their entire work forecast. Stardock's transparency isn't to be taken for granted.
We have to remember that Demigod isn't the only project GPG has to juggle resources with. They're also working on at least Supreme Commander 2. Misfortune's illustration of the patching process is over-simplified. You'll have to factor in priorities and how the devs sets their priorities can well be different from what the community thinks they are. The priorities are there because resources must be used as efficiently as possible.
Misfortune's description of how a programmer can get fired after months of working on a bug is just strange to say the least. The responsibility of fixing that bug isn't going to be locked to a single programmer. Difficult bugs will be communicated and discussed and resources/priorities will be arranged to adapt to the problem. An especially difficult bug with high priority will probably see more than one programmer tackling it.
Any hypothetical issue that takes "months" to resolve would indicate a serious design flaw to begin with, and would be dealt with by the team appropriately. A programmer, especially one who has been with the team on a project of such a complexity, is an expensive asset to lose. It is highly unlikely that he can get fired just because he failed to resolve an issue within a pre-defined deadline.
dropping and picking up items give stats boost.
dropping and picking mana helmet gives you endless mana and well instituted dropping script on hp item gives you "immunity" for the amount of +hp.
It's not like Fire TB is SO frickin powerful that it can't afford to AA. Seriously.
New bug since 1.1: CRASH
Never happened before, now it's a crash fiesta.
ZehDon and SyDaemon - however the unfortunate truth is that many of this bugs have fairly simple solutions. It's not that I don't understand priorities - It is my opinion that bugs that affect gameplay balance in a mp focused game should be put on highest priority. And I think we need to let the devs know that these bugs are affecting gameplay. Letting GPG slide with not fixing bugs like these for 4+ months will not help either them or Demigod.
Ghost - I'm in exactly the same boat as you... a crashing, sinking boat...
A failboat.
I understand what you're saying. However, while it may appear simple to us, the entire pipeline for actually resolving the issue still takes time. It is as ZehDon mentioned, the devs would want to fix issues in the way which minimizes the risk of breaking anything else. In order to make sure this is so, thorough QA is always necessary. In any case, if the issues take time to resolve, it's most likely because it isn't simple.
Also, I've mentioned that our views on what should be high priority would well differ from those set by Stardock and GPG. I won't pretend to speak for them, but I imagine that devs would typically need to make a decision on priority based on resources available, perceived time taken to resolve and perceived impact on the game if resolution is delayed. There's no clear cut methodology to making such a decision and they're often tough calls to make.
In short, many of us won't see what they see on their plate so we really have to be patient and trust in their ability to deliver. They're steadily doing so already and if we feel otherwise, it's up to us to give them the proper civilised feedback.
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