They’ve definitely noticed that they screwed up and we’re unhappy, because you’d have to be blind and death to not. But have we ever actually seen a developer even post here?
The Beta Backers gave a lot of great feedback in the builds they got, but it seems those were completely ignored. Obviously and flagrantly broken problems made it into release, and they didn’t even have a day-1 patch to try and fix some of it.
I don’t want to blame specific developers, but it seems the whole studio is screwed up beyond trust. So despite claims they read these forums, I’ll call bull on that till I see some kind of evidence. Clearly, there’s no evidence they listened to the BBers, so this promised patch better work as effective evidence that they have any idea what players would like.
Not impossible. It could even explain some people who defend some of the broken features adamantly, if they coded them. I would generally recommend that sort of thing.
That’s hardly satisfactory in this situation, though. Skilled developers have the right to cut themselves off. Unskilled ones who fail ought to explain themselves.
If they are participating I would think it would only be to gather more information on subjects, and not bend the truth. I have seen no evidence of that.
There are very few actually defending the game, me being one of them. Most people seem to be concerned with bugs, design and balance issues. And then there is a few who are down on the game, shouting bad press, not even giving the dev’s a chance.
Surprised you’re sticking up for it. I thought you were furious they went with Epic. If not for that, I’d think you were a game developer at this point.
Trust must be earned. I gave PP a lot of trust because of its link to the original XCOM. I even stood up for them when they decided to join Epic. But releasing a truly shoddy game with features that have been obviously broken for months if not years… that’s broken my trust and expectations. A pity, as I was really looking forward to this game.
I think many of us were looking forward to it. Even though i already issued a refund request i would love to see this game gettig fixed so i might return one day as it looks like it has so much potential. However i am not willing to pay to participate in what is (in my opinion) an open beta.
I do believe @UnstableVoltage goes through the forum (eventhough with the quantity of posts it must take lots of his time).
However, I see lots of posts after the release being near copies of posts that came out after BB5. For instance, “return fire” and “rockets” (either “Winged” Chiron, Scarab, Fury and how overpowered they can be).
A heads up, some of my faith has been restored. A staff member stopped by my Overwatch Line of Sight and Free Aim thread, and responded to some of the issues.
I’m not going to say this makes it all roses and chocolates, but it is the sort of gesture that goes a long way in these circumstances. They noted the first patch probably will be disappointing, in that a lot of stuff will still be broken and being fixed. I’ll come back to the game in a couple of months, and see how it goes.
That is reasonable. I can deal with paying for the open beta, since it’s about the price of the full game at launch. I probably should’ve waited till it was fun to play, but I do like supporting indie devs and fig was interesting.
Amen to that, Brother. I got sick pretty fast of the whole Epic Steam squabble (especially when the vicious personal attacks started). The game and the studio were always the most important things. Of course, a studio needs good games to justify itself, and PP is not to that stage just yet.
It is weird and disappointing, that stuff has remained broken or even regressed. I don’t know who lit a fire under Snapshot, to make them release so early, but it was a bad idea that could harm its future.
It’s fair to assume that they are working hard on a patch. The Community Manager is probably gathering feedback, and maybe 1-2 other people. Most developers should stay away from forums at this stage, because shortly after release forums are always dominated by those who are disappointed and hate the game. Reading that kind of all-negative stuff all day long about something you created crushes the spirit, no point doing it. Better to have someone filter it and pass actual bug reports and constructive feedback along to the devs.
I haven’t played yet. Just from my reddit notifications or glancing at this forum you’d think the game is trash. The mostly positive professional reviews tell a different story. Especially those by reviewers who have solid credentials as actual long-time competent tacticians. So while of course I can only speculate at this point, I expect the game to be at least solid.
From occasionally reading the XCOM reddit the past few years, I know that most players actually think XCOM2 is hard on Veteran or Commander level, which just shows how badly most people suck at tactical games. This kind of player most likely has a hard time adjusting to a deeper game that isn’t as easy as the Firaxis XCOMs.
No offense, but reading/hearing negative stuff about something you screwed up is part of the learning process. If you cant handle critique you really should stay away from a job that involves creating something.
I see both sides of the argument, here. Normally, I give the developers plenty of leeway. But… they screwed up hard, in a lot of ways. In a lot of ways that were obviously wrong from the drawing board. I figure harsh is deserved. If you go to a full release, if you get people to pay full price for not even half a game… there’s not a lot you can expect but backlash. They didn’t call this Early Access, after all.
If they make some genuine progress with the patches, and don’t make things WORSE as some developers do… everyone ought to ease up and talk up the good points more. Part of the reason for the harshness, is this looks rather like the abandonware some studios have pumped out in recent years. Show that isn’t the case, and trust can be mended.
@Jadawin You’re using GAME JOURNALISTS as a basis of skill? That class of clowns who couldn’t get through the tutorial in Cuphead? Who complain endlessly about Sekiro? I think there’s little that can undermine you more than, “lol, lern 2 play noobz,” but that is exactly what you’re saying here. We have enough of that stupidity going around the forum as is, so please don’t add more.
Game Journalists seem to be rating everything up, these days. The reviews I saw seemed to put PP down for its myriad of problems, and it was like they were trying desperately to find a silver lining for a hyped game. I have noticed a few mediocre or hopeless games getting talked up like this. Game Journalists seem to score as the wind blows, so they’ll often rate games down for purely political reasons, too.
I’m still here reading the forums and collecting information, as are the QA guys and some of the designers. There’s a lot to go through as much of it is repeated and there’s a lot of subjective opinions.
I’ve not been actively posting because I’m the only person at Snapshot manning emails and currently all of my time is being taken chasing up people’s keys and various other delivery/installation problems.
The team and working on a patch, and as soon as I have any information that I can divulge there will be an announcement.
Just want to make sure (since you are replying to me) … I wasn’t saying that you weren’t reading, on the contrary I was saying that you were very probably.
That’s really cool to hear. This game can be a legend amongst games, but it still needs a little bit more push ;).
It would be nice to have a topic from devs to discuss the changelog on a weekly basis or at least some summary of the issues the dev team gathered over the past week. Being heard is one thing, actively being listened to is another
I’m sure that will come, but at the moment; it’s all hands on deck.
I know some would have liked to see a patch sooner (we’d have preferred no patch be needed), but you can’t rush these things.
Issues need to be identified, replicated, traced and fixed. Then tested extensively to make sure that not only was the issue addressed, but that you didn’t add 5 more bugs along the way. Rushing a patch can do more harm than good.
We do have one come though. As soon as we have a clearer idea of the delivery schedule and a change log, we’ll make an announcement.
I think everyone appreciates that the team takes the necessary steps to iron out everything that is holding this game back to become a success. But:
no offense if this was the intention your company should have used the testing done by the backers from the previous builds and fix the problems before release. As of now its just a “here is your product, its not working but it should be fixed in a couple of weeks/months”.
@Rookie Generally agree about game journalists as a class. Which is why you have to pay attention to their reasoning for a review, and their review history, more than the score they give.
For example if a reviewer trashes the game because he obviously tried to play it exactly like XCOM and it didn’t immediately work, I know his review is worthless. If he hypes it without mentioning any of the problems, or reasons why it just might not be everyone’s cup of tea because it’s less mainstream, I’d also be skeptical about the review.
On another note, I’m fairly sure that game studios regularly flat-out buy positive reviews and there are a lot of corrupt game “journalists”. But I don’t expect that a studio like Snapshot does this, or could even afford it. But EA and the likes? I’d bet on it.
The issue there is that bugs found/reported in the Backer Builds could well have been found and fixed - only to have the same bug reintroduced (or a different bug with a similar effect) pop up in the release version. Our QA lead will be more than happy to tell anyone that even the slightly change of anything can break 10 other things, even ones completely unrelated to the change.
Even though there are many people reporting bugs, there are also many people who have played tens of hours or even multiple campaigns with no bugs at all. I’m not trying to be dismissive of those who have experienced bugs - as I am certain they are all genuine - but it does highlight that one particular system/specification/configuration may experience bugs while another does not.
As with any developer, we only have access to a limited number of hardware configurations for testing, and can’t possibly hope to cover every combinations - even the likely/popular ones.
Bugs are prioritized by how much they impact the player - with bugs which causes the game to crash, fail to start, or become unplayable (“showstoppers”) being at the top of our list. While things such as typos and graphical glitches, which while annoying, don’t really affect the gameplay, go to the bottom.
This first patch will attempt to address as many of the major issues as possible - along with some of the other low-hanging fruit (such as adding a confirmation dialogue to the restart button).
