13 réponses à ce sujet

[PSUHammer]

Just a curious question.  This isn't a flame or an indictment of Bioware, or anything.  I am sure it comes down to budget and time constraints.  But, why is it that I can get a ton of fixes for things (Qwinn's fixpack, FTG UI fix for bigger fonts, armor and quest fixes, etc.) from mods but when patches come out, they say they "can't fix them"?

Just curious if developers do this intentionally knowing mods will fix things or if they won't do some fixes for fear of breaking something else?

[Gorath Alpha]

I'm curious where you've seen anyone from Bioware say that.  Various of the gamers in the forums have written that we doubt that Bioware would ever devote effort and time to this or that very minor quibble, but I don't think that I've even seen anyone I knew was from Bioware ever write that. 

I've watched Bioware's people continue applying new patches to the original NWN1 until relatively recently, and to NWN2, even more recently.  It seems to me that as long as their games are seen as viable to a reasonably large number of devotees, the company seemed to allow their staff to apply new fixes.  Whether EA will change that in the long run remains to be seen, of course. 

[PSUHammer]

Bioware claimed they cannot import some gear into Awakening when modders have done so. Also, there are a lot of dialog glitches that modders have fixed (Qwinn). Not to mention the recurring theme in Bioware games to have tiny, unscaleable font sizes for anyone with a widescreen monitor.



I think Bioware is fine. My favorite developer, in fact. Was more curious than anything.

[BrunoB1971]

the explanation is simple...it is all able the dollar my friend.

The mods do it for free out of pure dedication for the game versus official patching costs bioware money with no income coming back.



At this point in the gaming industry the main goal is to push out content to make money. The rest ( customer satisfaction comes next) Nowadays there are but a few studios that will actually work and make the effort to make their game better by fixing them. The bigger the company the more red tape involved and the more time it takes for a patch to be made.



At one point in the future the gaming industry will suffer and it is going to suffer a major collapse because people at one point will get fed up with this business model from gaming companies. There is so much time you can put or push out a defective product in hopes that everything will be allright and not much people will complain and all the problems will be kept low profile.



Most of the complaints about the problem of the game happens here for those who bought the game already. But for prospective or would be buyers if you look on the internet, everyone has given this game high praise and high scores and do not talk much about the problems this game franchise has...so that is why the game looks so good everywhere.



When you get into the game and you run into the problem it has, then you realize that most gaming site and magazine gave you a rosy picture of the game whilst it is not the case.



A lot of cover up is happening in the gaming industry on different products and like everything else, it is a reality.



If gaming sites would have been honest they would have praised the game but also explained to people that the game has issues that are either going to be resolved or resolved.



No one so far has appended their reviews on the big gaming sites. And they are real quick to dismiss you on those sites if you complain about the game. Yet for the amount of people who have problems with the game and post here, there is no way that all of these people can be liars or fabricate stories just to rant because they have nothing better to do.



This site is damage control for the game. as long as no one from the big gaming sites or magazines are honest about the game, things are gonna remain the same. The patching is gonna be slow and issues will take forever to be resolved...because as i said this site is crowd control and the big site are the ones showing the shiny golden door knobs to people and in reality they are doing a big diservice to everyone by always painting rosy hoverhyped picture of games.



so to be honest, a lot of people are complaining but not enough so there is no point of going warp speed, spending money just to please a bunch of people out of millions who bought the game and dont care to complain.



nuff said...

[PSUHammer]

Well, I wouldnt go as far as calling the game unplayable. Most of the issues I have found are, indeed, minor. I finished the game without issue before the first patch so I cant complain too much. I do wish Bioware would throw us high res widescreen folks a bone and allow the fonts to scale!!

Modifié par Hammer6767, 25 juillet 2010 - 01:59 .

[FollowTheGourd]

At least for consoles there seems to be the additional restriction of patch sizes, because they need to account for systems without a HDD. At least that's what I got from some ME2 discussion a while back.

Modifié par FollowTheGourd, 25 juillet 2010 - 12:05 .

[searanox]

It's all about what BioWare are allowed to change about their game code. There are certain limits they have regarding what they can test, which in turn limits how much they can fix, since they have to extensively test everything they do. On top of that, EA likely has some restrictions as to what sorts of things BioWare is able to edit - for example, they may not be able to modify users' save files. It's also been stated that the DLCs, except Return to Ostagar, don't have any sort of post-release support, which was why BioWare wasn't able to fix some of the issues regarding DLC in Awakening.

Of course, there's also the simple fact that mods are provided "as is". Often a single person can identify a problem, find the source and create a fix or a work-around very quickly, as can BioWare's own patching staff, I imagine. The difficulty comes in testing it and getting it all approved, which constitutes dozens if not hundreds of hours of work. If a mod has a problem, well, the modder isn't really accountable to anyone; BioWare, as a company, have to provide a product that works properly. While the exection may be questionable concerning Dragon Age at this point, that is how the infrastructure is designed.

I'm sure they have a bug database that's thousands of entries long, but they have to prioritise what they can fix based on the amount of work required, the impact it has on the final game, and how much testing would be required to make sure it actually fixes the problem without introducing other problems.  Some companies may operate differently, and it's possible that being bought by EA has changed what BioWare are capable of in this respect.  There are upsides and downsides to every approach.

Modifié par searanox, 25 juillet 2010 - 04:47 .

[Loerwyn]

Gorath Alpha wrote...
and to NWN2, even more recently.

Uh, Gorath? NWN2 was Obsidian - They're the ones who handle it, not BioWare.

Why can modders fix things? Because they're not constrained by file size limits, testing, certification and various other hinderances. BioWare have to prioritise major bugs and serious gameplay issues over smaller things like correcting DLC files to allow them to transfer to Awakening.

[BrunoB1971]

That is why at a certain point of times gaming as we know it will fail. The games are getting more and more complex and it shall be hundreds or thousands fold more complex in the future. Therefore the game will be sensitive to have bugs because no code can be perfect.



But the main problem is that gamers will demand more and more perfect coding, and if the companies keep treating their software coding as simple cash cows and nothing more than you will see many studios close their doors.



It seems that all of the support after the game is an after tought for many developpers and publisher and is not even factored in in the cost of creating the game and maintaining it.



So far only Blizzard has proven that they constantly support a major product and fine tune their game after release. Ok WOW is a cash cow and thus they can afford to pay people to patch and support by this business model.



But when you start building a game would you not have some sort of strategy in mind to make the game and support it properly for a decent amount of time if your have a decent size studio and a major publisher at your disposal?





to me it looks like it wen that way:



a couple of years ago....



okay guys i got that great idea for a game...lets call it dragon age....and then work began....time passed and the game was released...the game was found to have bugs or technical issues.





some time after that..another meeting...damn...we were not prepared at all to support the game...we are cuaght with our pants down now and do not know what to do...we dont have the man power and the resources to do this plus we are releasing dlc's and preparing a new game....damn, what are we gonna do?



and so some guy decided to scramble a few guys and decided to look at the most urgent problems but no promises were made and thus the game is in the state that it is because of lack of planning....and leadership from bioware and EA....

[searanox]

BrunoB1971 wrote...

That is why at a certain point of times gaming as we know it will fail. The games are getting more and more complex and it shall be hundreds or thousands fold more complex in the future. Therefore the game will be sensitive to have bugs because no code can be perfect.

But the main problem is that gamers will demand more and more perfect coding, and if the companies keep treating their software coding as simple cash cows and nothing more than you will see many studios close their doors

Well, it's a matter of whether or not bugs are visible that really matters.  Almost every game has tons and tons of bugs, but if they have no appreciable impact upon the game experience, then who cares?  Apparently there were bugs in Neverwinter Nights that lasted for years and years simply because they didn't have an impact on anything until other changes were made to the game.  It's impossible to rid all bugs from a game, but it's definitely possible to remove all bugs that are noticeable - assuming that we're not talking about bugs that stem out of something design-wise, for example, AI making silly decisions.

Great examples of fan patch projects that I can think of are Killap's unofficial patch for Fallout 2, Quarn's work on Oblivion and Fallout 3, and some of the efforts made to restore Arcanum: of Steamworks and Magick Obscura.  All of these are responsible for removing nearly every scripting, terrain, etc. glitch from those games.  The official developers could have done all that work themselves, if they had the infrastructure and resources to do so.  Realistically, no, that's not going to happen, but the fact that it's been done by various fan communities shows that it's certainly not a task beyond our ability.

[PSUHammer]

searanox wrote...

BrunoB1971 wrote...

That is why at a certain point of times gaming as we know it will fail. The games are getting more and more complex and it shall be hundreds or thousands fold more complex in the future. Therefore the game will be sensitive to have bugs because no code can be perfect.

But the main problem is that gamers will demand more and more perfect coding, and if the companies keep treating their software coding as simple cash cows and nothing more than you will see many studios close their doors

Well, it's a matter of whether or not bugs are visible that really matters.  Almost every game has tons and tons of bugs, but if they have no appreciable impact upon the game experience, then who cares?  Apparently there were bugs in Neverwinter Nights that lasted for years and years simply because they didn't have an impact on anything until other changes were made to the game.  It's impossible to rid all bugs from a game, but it's definitely possible to remove all bugs that are noticeable - assuming that we're not talking about bugs that stem out of something design-wise, for example, AI making silly decisions.

Great examples of fan patch projects that I can think of are Killap's unofficial patch for Fallout 2, Quarn's work on Oblivion and Fallout 3, and some of the efforts made to restore Arcanum: of Steamworks and Magick Obscura.  All of these are responsible for removing nearly every scripting, terrain, etc. glitch from those games.  The official developers could have done all that work themselves, if they had the infrastructure and resources to do so.  Realistically, no, that's not going to happen, but the fact that it's been done by various fan communities shows that it's certainly not a task beyond our ability.

Excellent points.  This is why I chose to be a PC gamer (as opposed to consoles), as I know I can mod or find fixes for things outside of developer patches.  I also accept this as something you will always have to deal with as a PC gamer.  There will always be glitches in games.  Always has, always will.

[Gradlein]

OnlyShallow89 wrote...

Gorath Alpha wrote...
and to NWN2, even more recently.

Uh, Gorath? NWN2 was Obsidian - They're the ones who handle it, not BioWare.

Why can modders fix things? Because they're not constrained by file size limits, testing, certification and various other hinderances. BioWare have to prioritise major bugs and serious gameplay issues over smaller things like correcting DLC files to allow them to transfer to Awakening.

I may be wrong on this one, but wouldn't it be better if they did work on the simple things first, like say, the Ancient Elven Boots thingy and other similar issues? It's like working on a test where you answer the simplest questions first or the ones you can answer in an instant before moving on to the more complex stuff. So even if you do run out of time, you still get points or at least have something to show.

[Ishar_wyrm_dragon]

I honestly think that once Bioware ripped us all of our money, they are just fine with it... but that's a very very veeeeeeeery bad marketing plan, because... you know who is going to buy DA2?



Well, i can't tell you who won't: ME.



So... could you please gentle people tell me where is the so called mod to import properly gear from DAO to awakening? it would be of great help.

[Loerwyn]

Gradlein wrote...

I may be wrong on this one, but wouldn't it be better if they did work on the simple things first, like say, the Ancient Elven Boots thingy and other similar issues? It's like working on a test where you answer the simplest questions first or the ones you can answer in an instant before moving on to the more complex stuff. So even if you do run out of time, you still get points or at least have something to show.

They have to prioritise, and I would suspect serious engine issues (like the well known performance issues) have a higher priority. If they've only got a small limit for patch size, they have to focus on what breaks the game and what doesn't.
One piece missing from an armor set would be low priority, I suspect.