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stranger
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OP
stranger
Joined: Jul 2014
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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.
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Support
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Support
Joined: Mar 2003
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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.
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stranger
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OP
stranger
Joined: Jul 2014
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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.
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stranger
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stranger
Joined: Aug 2014
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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.
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?
Last edited by Dr. Hieronymous; 22/08/14 08:23 AM.
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old hand
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old hand
Joined: Dec 2006
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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.
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stranger
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OP
stranger
Joined: Jul 2014
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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.
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enthusiast
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enthusiast
Joined: Aug 2008
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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)
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stranger
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stranger
Joined: Aug 2014
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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%?
Last edited by Dr. Hieronymous; 22/08/14 09:05 AM.
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member
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member
Joined: Jul 2014
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There will be a hotfix today that fixes:
- hp bug on load Nice. Thanks a lot! - 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) 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.
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stranger
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OP
stranger
Joined: Jul 2014
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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 you for the hotfix and for the information, much appreciated.
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stranger
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stranger
Joined: Aug 2014
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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. 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.
Last edited by Malkavi; 22/08/14 09:46 AM.
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stranger
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stranger
Joined: Aug 2014
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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.
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stranger
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stranger
Joined: Jul 2014
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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.
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Support
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Support
Joined: Mar 2003
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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.
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stranger
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stranger
Joined: Jul 2014
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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.
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enthusiast
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enthusiast
Joined: Jul 2013
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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) 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!
Last edited by El Zoido; 22/08/14 11:37 AM.
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enthusiast
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enthusiast
Joined: Jul 2013
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thanks for the updates 
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Support
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Support
Joined: Mar 2003
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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. FWIW, from Larian's twitter, 4 hours ago: "A feature that fixes this is in testing, and *should* ship next week".
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stranger
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stranger
Joined: Aug 2014
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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.
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apprentice
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apprentice
Joined: Jul 2014
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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.
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Moderated by ForkTong, gbnf, Issh, Kurnster, Larian_QA, LarSeb, Lar_q, Lynn, Monodon, Raze, Stephen_Larian |
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