The latest patch that came yesterday broke the game in several places, we all know that by now. There are complains here and in other forums. But not a word from the devs.

I checked the member list and only one admin have been active the past days and (s)he hasn't addressed the many posts about the latest patch at all!

I know (hope!) you all are probably hard at work on a hotfix but five minutes to scribble down a post here in the forum about it would be very much appreciated. Then people would know and don't have to speculate and those who takes this game breaking bug very seriously can perhaps calm down.

After all, communication between a company and their customers is key, that's a no-brainier.

It is currently 8:30am in Belgium. I haven't addressed any posts about the patch in the forum, because the bugs are obviously bugs and will hopefully be fixed quickly. I wasn't involved with the design change with resistances, so can not comment about that (I don't know anything about that that isn't public knowledge), but will certainly bring up some of the (presumably unanticipated) consequences of the change, and the suggestions people have given.

Thank you for your reply.

Even if you have no information to give, taking five ten minutes to communicate is priceless! Just the fact that we hear from you guys, even if it is a "we don't know when or even what will be fixed" is a big deal.

I'm betting that your reply alone will have good effect on the gamers who love this game. Because, like I said, then we know and don't have to speculate. News and information doesn't have to be good, just keep the customers informed.

Thanks, glad to hear.

EDIT:

I'd also appreciate any more details you can get us on the precise mechanism of the Leech change. Does Leech still heal for the same *amount* of total damage, but just not until the start of your turn, or is healing from damage not on your turn "lost"? I.e., if ten opponents hit you for 10 points each, do you heal for 20 points of damage at the start of your turn, or 2, or none, or none until you move a step, or ? What about the turns of other *characters* on your team?

We're alive, just so incredibly busy. Between working on our future games and continuing to support D:OS, there's surprisingly little time.

We introduced the cap and increased the difficulty near the ending somewhat because we saw a lot of people complain the game became too easy. The common pattern among the character builds we received from those people was that they had several of their resistances over 100%. To be fair, we're not too big fans of caps either, but introducing it seemed the lesser of a few possible evils.
The alternative is to not have a cap and make it a lot harder to ever reach such high resistances, but that'll require bigger changes. If your character build is focussed on getting your resistances over 100%, a change like this will obviously affect you more than if you just started playing the game and I can understand that may be frustrating. Our goal remains entertaining players and if it turns out the cap is not having the desired effect, we'll adapt our approach. (edit) I need to add to this that the resistance cap is part of a bigger balancing change we're working on, and it may be that we released it a bit too soon.

As to any bugs that may be introduced by an update, I'm afraid that's almost inevitable. D:OS is a huge game. If a tester start testing an 80 hour game on monday morning, that tester will only be finished on the friday evening of the next week. And that's just one iteration in which one tester made one set of choices. He or she didn't see what would've happened had other choices been made. On top of that, if the tester encounters a serious bug during those 80 hours, it first needs to be fixed, and then the testing process needs to be restarted. The net result is that it's impossible test all paths and so things will slip through.

The only way we can reduce slip-ups is by taking more time to test (as in several weeks to months) but I'm of the opinion that it's better to update regularly at the risk of occasionally missing out on something than to update slowly and cover all your bases. While the former approach has some risk, you do help more people more rapidly. In the latter approach you have has less risk but you have larger groups affected for a longer time by whatever happens to be the issue.

There's no perfect solution unfortunately, so whenever we'll update, there is a risk that something goes wrong. However, we will try to fix it as fast as we can and we do spend lot of time ensuring nothing fundamental can get broken by an update.

Thank you for your reply Lar_q, it is much appreciated! I'm going to take a break from D:OS for a day or three, wait for any hotfix/patch. But I'll be back! I love this game - which is why I might come of as a bit to passionate.

There will be a hotfix today that fixes:
- hp bug on load
- changes to resistance cap that were supposed to be in the patch but did not make it in (zombie talent fix, can go over cap with potions and temporary effects from spells)

Thank y'all for your hard work on getting that out so fast! I really appreciate it coming out before the weekend.

One additional question though: how will the new cap work with debuffs? Example: Let's say I have 120% fire resist from gear, lowered by the new cap to 80%. If I then get hit with a "Burning" status effect, will my new fire resist be 60%, or 80%?

If someone casts Absorb the Elements on me, will that then raise my fire resist to 80%, or all the way to 100%?

Nice. Thanks a lot!



In my opinion that sounds like a perfect compromise. You can get up to 80% resistance with gear, and then increase it to 100+ by spells and/or potions. You can still be healed by for instance fire damage but it will cost you some resources and/or action points. I like that idea a lot.

Thank you for the hotfix and for the information, much appreciated.

I have a few issues with this response:

1) Divinity: Original Sin has been a commercial success, one of the higher-ranking top sellers on Steam, and was only officially released less than two months ago. Statements like "Between working on our future games and continuing to support D:OS, there's surprisingly little time" are incredibly discouraging to your customers.

2) I understand it's impossible to test for every possible bug, but some of the things we're talking about are very basic. Party health being reduced to base level (without gear bonuses) every single time a game is loaded. Resist caps applying to obviously resist-centered mechanics like Zombie or certain spell buffs. To compare testing these things to a single person working a 40 hour work week is completely disingenuous. It's either a cop-out answer or it shows extreme incompetence.

3) There are methods in place to test beta-level patches, which is what this definitely was. I know Steam has a system to opt-in to beta updates. There are also ways to do so through manual download. To force such an incomplete update to every user creates a mess.

This was a game that just a week ago I was recommending to all of my friends. Considering the above points, I have lost faith in Larian. Some of these things are far too amateurish to simply be brushed away like the above post tried to do.

I honestly don't know much about Larian but if it's like most indy game developers that have gone the kickstarter route, they probably have a small staff and can only do so much. These guys aren't Blizzard, cut them a little slack; saying you've "lost faith" over one bad patch they're hotfixing the next day seems a little out there.

That said, I actually agree with you that moving to the Steam beta patch system seems like it would make a lot of sense, though I don't know how that would effect co-op play. I know a lot of other indy game developers use that system to help with playtesting new patch changes.

Why the is no co-op dialog fix out yet?
Why such an easy fix is so much delayed?
Getting so frustrated after buying the game with intention to play with a friend and after almost 3 months I still can't do it properly.

What about Larian staff info that it has been worked on like 2 months ago and that it is going out soon? I also saw that somebody from Larian said that it is going to be implemented in new patch.

Malkavi;
See Larian_QA's post above. The game was tested with the zombie talent; the problem was something missing from the patch. I don't know if that was also the case with the HP bug, but would think it would have to be that, something added/changed at the last minute or a problem when creating the patch.


fxluk;
Why do you assume the co-op dialogue is an easy fix?
It should be implemented soon. Apparently it took longer than expected, and didn't make it into this update, or this update took longer than expected, and that delayed the co-op dialogue update.

Raze: I am refering to the information I was provided on this forum/steam one. What I know that I cannot fully enjoy the game without this fix (and I really don't know how it get passed through Beta phase).

If the fix would be like this: when somebody enters a dialog coop partner get a prompt to see it or not then it seems like pretty simply addition to the game. It's not like they have to reprogram whole AI system or overhaul whole game. The testing of such functionality would also be easier since you don't have to go though whole game but just test it via making conversation and checking the dialog options there. Think it can be checked in first location.

I know this is a small studio but now I think that this fix is not a priority for them and that makes me kinda frustrated.

Sounds good to me, too.

Also, for people who really like to rely on the healing from resistances above 100%, or argue that people should be able to play a single player game the way they want:
Keep in mind that the game is very modable. I know it's not the same as if it's in the vanilla game, but there surely will be mods for all your/our needs soon!

thanks for the updates

FWIW, from Larian's twitter, 4 hours ago: "A feature that fixes this is in testing, and *should* ship next week".

It's all to the good that Larian got on top of this so quickly. I write software for a living, so it's a truism that I write bugs for a living too. I'll never ding someone because they left bugs in their software. We all do it.

That said, if QA tested Zombie with the res cap, but the relevant mitigations to the cap didn't make it into the released Steam patch, then it means that QA isn't testing what the studio as a whole is releasing. That's indicative of a process problem. I learned (the hard way) that whatever build QA has cleared, it _must_ be the one released, even with the bugs you hate staying in.

Also, if you're going to release such a huge game change, a specific callout in the patch notes stops whiners like me reporting it as a bug, when it clearly isn't (with the exception re: zombie, potions, spells, etc.)

For me, I just hope that the "Weather the Storm" talent also increases the soft cap, or that's the two talent points on my tanks totally wasted, that should have gone into "Picture of Health" If there's a bigger rebalance coming along, releasing part of it before the rest might not be the best idea. I'm happy to wait on a larger scale patch which has been thoroughly beaten to death by QA.

Yes good work with latest patch but i do partly agree with the op it would be nicer for larian to communicate with their fans abit more although I love this game there seems to be a lack of communication between fans and devs in this game.

Sounds like the Zombie talent isn't seeing enough use at Larian HQ...

Given Larian's intent to offer long-term support (and presumably lots more patches), a beta series of patches as others have suggested ("use at your own risk, not fully tested, etc") may be the best way of squaring the circle and keeping most people here happy.

Take a page from the Infinity Engine games and add an Override folder which is then used as the first source for any data files. Beta patches can be implemented as zip files that go into Override (allowing for compatibility with Steam and GOG releases) and "official" patches then only need to clear that folder to "de-beta" an install.

Thanks for the info.

I love people cheering Larian due to their independancy and then complain about Larian for their lack of everything... They are a smaller team than major companies so be patient.

And still I find them very reactive!

Keep up the good work and thanks for the ongoing support on D:OS!

Just wanted to say that I am happy to see the Larian team reply so fast and I am eagerly awaiting the changes/hotfixes.

With kind regards,

Rashar.

+1

there is a forum called latest news. use it. even if you just give one-liners like "patch out (+ changelog)" or "we are working on issues", ppl would very much appreciate it!

From Larian's post above, it really seems like the resist change was not because the designers felt strongly, but more that they believed their players wanted that change. Which means the vocal "I want a harder game zomg" minority got to ruin some fun builds for everyone else. Which is disappointing, hopefully they don't do that again. As someone who only got the game ~3 weeks ago and hasn't had time to play through it all the way even once, these disruptive patches are really aggravating. My 1st game(s) where I was trying out different main character builds and compensating with henchman got shot to pieces when you could no longer customize a henchmen effectively. So then I know to build a party around assuming Jehan and Madora and get rolling again, just in time for another fundamental change. Mods aren't really an answer since I'd have to start over yet again, and frankly I haven't seen a mod work right yet (the "buy all skillbooks" mod resulted in starting abilities being corrupted, the "4 player" mod seemed awesome, except with it enabled quicksave doesn't work). It's incredibly annoying and really diminishes what otherwise is a great game. The least Larian could do is push such changes behind the difficulty settings or put it out as a Steam Beta or something rather than continually changing the rules as we go. Or even just let the rules stay the same within a game save would be fine. But this is just plain aggravating.

Ultimately it's hard to say what Larian's thoughts behind it really was, but I got the impression that they also intended for the late game to be more challenging. So it might just as well be the case that they capped the resistances to keep the intended (by them) challenge.

And really, you can still do builds around high resistances, only now you need some potions and/or spells.

You make it sound like Larian is only taking on player feedback under some sort of duress.

The devs have stated repeatedly how helpful the beta feedback was for them in making the game what it is. They've also stated a few times I think that they want a difficult game -- not obnoxiusly hardcore, just always on the challenging side of approachable. The latter half of the game did not go that way. The reality is that, post-release, it's not a difficult game at all if you build your character with common sense.

For the sake of adding some words from the horse's mouth (no offense intended), here are a few quotes from Swen in a PC Gamer interview:

Interview published 9th July.




I get the impression Larian know what they're doing when wading through our feedback. If a change is made, I trust it's because they believed it to be a Good Thing To Do, y'know, in their own game.

Sure. Except that most builds that involving owning items cap out fairly early, making further investment, and indeed many previously interesting character options like the Man-At-Arms talent or crafting with rubies, worthless.

Perhaps Larian should introduce new, stronger content, rather than limiting player options.

Right there, he pretty much states "well, we aren't crazy about changing this, but we got a lot of complaints and couldn't think of anything better to do". His statement is not at all what I'd expect if the design really wanted to rule out immunity to elements. And so many skills and talents only make sense if it is possible to permanently ignore an element (the Pyromancy PBAoE's, the mage affinity talents, etc.). And there are any number of ways they could have made the changes such that people already mid-game aren't getting the shaft. I'm sure your next bit of advice will be to crack out a saved game editor and re-spec my party rather than starting over yet again (which doesn't work as there only seem to be PC versions of the tools).

Nah, I'm not trying to defend the impact these balance changes are having on current game players. My argument here is that I think the devs are implementing changes based on player feedback because they want their game to be better. More of my thoughts on this specific matter are in this post. I have no idea what the reality of the situation is on the dev's side. I'm sure they don't *want* to inconvenience players who are currently in the middle of a playthrough, so I'm left with assuming that there are limitations somewhere. The only other alternatives are (1) that the devs forgot that this will effect current playthroughs, or (2) they don't really give much of a shit. I'm not willing to make either of those two assumptions though, I'd rather give them the benefit of the doubt.

My long view on all this is that the game will eventually find a nice point of balance. Soft-capping the resistance in a vacuum empty of other associated adjustments was of questionable execution. But, as mentioned, it's eventually supposed to exist within a wider balance pass.

Again, I'm not discussing this in defence of how Larian are going about it, I'm just strongly of the opinion (assumption?) that they wouldn't be doing these passes if they didn't think them worthwhile. I don't think we're holding knives at their throat on this, nor do I think we're bullying them behind the bike sheds until they do our homework for us.

That is crap. I'm not going to venture to say who the minority or majority is. There were many thinking the game was too easy. We don't know if there are more it was too easy vs I want massive resistance to the point it heals group. We don't know that.

The game on easy imo either way is just that, easy. And if there is a group that wants to play hard, they should have that to. Imo the resistances the way it were, used as healing and not just blocking damage, to the level it was, I really can't believe people thought that was normal. What other games do you play that have that mechanic?

sincere suggestion to Larian: discern pvp minded player opinions.

"100+ resist healing too OP!!!"...."ok, how about you don't pump them over 100+?"

"Void Dragon is too vulnerable to stun, blind, and knockdown"..."ok, maybe we'll pump up its bodybuilding and willpower, or even add some more immunity at hard difficulty."

Who said it was "normal"? What does that have to do with anything? Look at the talents and skills, they clearly have a very different take on what roles/classes/levels than other games, why should the elemental system surprise us? And from their own statements, they weren't impressed with the idea of changing that but did that because they thought players wanted it. And they botched it by doing it incompletely (broken Zombie) and without regard to people trying to get through a play-through. If they had made those changes apply to Hard mode, no one would be caring right now.

Stop fabricating your own interpretations and claiming that is what someone else had said or is thinking.




is this some sort of self deprecating sarcastic joke?

you better hope it is.



his statement?

you mean your statement, right? the one quoted just above, the one you literally invented and posted yourself.




ruling out immunity to elements?

from which discussion did that one come from?

the one spinning in your head in some imaginary world completely out of touch with reality?

they removed 100% resistance to some element to be too easily achievable, nothing else. and you still can get it by drinking a potion or using spells which are both extremely plentiful.

while your resistances are not removed at all, because you can have them at 95%.



nobody is getting a shaft. there is no "people", its only you and your nonsensical posts made out of your own invented ridiculous brain farts.

shaft is being 95% resistant to some element? thats the "shaft"?

and then drinking a potion or using a spell to go over 100?




youre sure because you are telepathic, right?

of course, that doesnt have anything to do with anything even remotely real and nobody is ever going to say that to you or even much care.


because you can just continue playing.

I believe he is referring to the many players (myself included) that have one or more savegames in which they focused on boosting the resists of one or more characters in order to achieve a desired effect, often sinking many hours into doing so, only to have it snatched away by a knee-jerk reaction from Larian in response to those screaming for Larian to limit their gameplay.

Or at least that's what I think he's talking about.

yes, pretty much the same.

the same overblown, spoiled, pathetic, whining, invented and laughable accusations about supposed Larian motives you just repeated.

How did this guy make it to 700+ posts acting like such a jackass douchebag?

Hiver, do you post on Steam forums with the name Dorok? I swear you guys could be twins if you do not.

Read the post from Lar_q on the 1st page of the thread. My quotes were cut'n'pasted straight from that without alteration, Hiver.

And given that the games doesn't give you a way to respec until pretty late, and using it can cost you skill books you'll never be able to find again, having your build destroyed by a careless patch really is quite annoying. All they had to do was apply their change to hard mode and I would have kept playing along on normal and cared about the resist nerf. I already had to restart thanks to henchmen getting a radical change in implementation a couple of days into my 1st game, it really gets old.

Ah, the old trickl of just repeating previously stated moronity in the hope that this time it will work.



Without alteration? Guess i have to repeat what i already wrote again since im talking to someone who cant understand sentences unless they are repeated.

You quoted this:



and then claimed it actually means this:



- in the very next sentence and thats not alteration?

Is that how things work in the imaginary world of yours? You just make different baseless claims and make ludicrous laughable accusations because you felt bad about something else and then somehow, magically everyone are supposed to just accept that?

And not laugh at you?

:lol:

btw, nobody claimed you altered the dev quote. At all.
but i guess thats too complicated to comprehend since your brain just goes for whatever seems easier for you.



by not being a cheap imbecile like you are.

by the way, you just tried to use a rather laughable personal attack to somehow answer my post which is literally objectively true.

and i wasnt even talking to you.

I think I'm just going to have to stop playing until the big patch with the new companions is added ... and then the hot fix to fix the bugs that adds, then wait a few weeks more to see if other stuff is tweaked/fixed, then play again. Maybe around November. I don't plan on getting DA:I right away anyway as I still have a lot of bitterness against BW.

I don't get what Larian is doing here anyway. The editor needs the love... modders are what keeps D:OS alive, but not forever. Too many open issues, too many "ease-of-use" features missing in the editor.

Larian, you need to fix the editor, you need to improve it. You need to actually support modding with more than just video tutorials.

Remember Larian, some of us are only here for the editor... the game was extra.

Most are here for the game, so it makes sense patching this...

Both will be patched and improved. Its not like they just ran off to Rio, or some Caribbean tax heaven. Right?

:P

..nah, theyre too pale. cant handle that much sun.


I would agree that it would be nice to get some editor improvements, if possible, ahem.
Give them some more time folks. Its been a helish end run. The whole dev part after the kickstarter, really.

Can we cool it down a bit please, guys...

I've deleted the most recent replies from this topic. Either be civil or don't post.

So, was it the curse words that bothered you?

Generally, being condescending and calling people imbeciles is not something considered civil. He hasn't taken the hint from the nice folks here, so I don't mind saying he can go frak himself for being such a piece of felgercarb.

Most people don't mind profanity or uncivil behaviour that they do themselves, or they wouldn't do it in the first place. That does not mean it is either appropriate or wanted, though.

Insightful reply...

I said it on Steam once: the best solution from Larians side would have been, refund the points of the talents Larian altered. If the players still think there are worthwhile then they rechoose them, all the others dont have to sit on (in their eyes) pointless talents.

Well, then, perhaps you would have preferred him to have said, "Between having to get up out of bed to go to the bathroom or fix a sandwich in the kitchen, there isn't much time left for working on the game"...?



I'm sure you'd have much preferred putting a list of bugs on a dart board and (when the developers weren't sacking out) they could have a rousing game of darts to see which ones get fixed and in what order...?



Listen, between sleeping & eating and playing darts, there just isn't time, you know.



Yes, any time a game developer candidly tells us something we'd much rather he simply lied to us and made up a lot of stuff with three and four-syllable buzzwords that sounds plausible, even if there's not a shred of truth to it. Right? Who needs the truth? Fie on that!

On a personal note, I find it very amusing to read lectures from people on "the proper way to make a game" who only learned how to spell "g-a-m-e" last week, and the word "a-m-a-t-e-u-r," yesterday. Always enjoyable...;)