Sword of the Stars II released, is gigantic pile of fail

[Edi]

I actually never buy a game on release, or within six months of release.

If I wait until the relase hype dies down, the patches are released, user mods correct the most glaring flaws, I not only save money, but also get a vastly better experience out of the game. Oh, woe is me, I don't get special supercool content that I will forget all about in two weeks.

There is also the option of preordering to get all the cool stuff, then simply sitting on the game and playing something else in the meanwhile while you're waiting for the polish and fixes to be applied and then enjoy it all.

[Stark]

We call that option 'supporting shit developers'. Amusingly, outside of competitive multiplayer games which take a while to settle down, this is only necessary on PC. If the market tolerates shit levels of QA (right up to 'whoops we shipped the wrong version, AGAIN'), it'll just keep happening, because hey, people are totally fine with paying now and not playing for six months, and will actually encourage others to do so! Valve could probably use its position to demand standards in the way the console owners do in their closed environments, but Gave Newell is the dumbest man in the world so I don't see it happening.

[PeZook]

There is also the option of preordering to get all the cool stuff, then simply sitting on the game and playing something else in the meanwhile while you're waiting for the polish and fixes to be applied and then enjoy it all.

Yes - Enjoy it all at release prices (150% of what it will be in six months). Of course some people might have different standards of value than me, but IMHO no cool retextured clothing is worth the difference in price between a release title and a repackaged fixed "platinum bargain" version that will probably have it bundled in anyways.

Plus of course you have the time to read up on the game being played and decide that maybe the hyped up new title isn't worth the dough anyways.

[Losonti Tokash]

Yeah, there's literally no reason for that. Not even if the preorder bonus is like that for BF3 or DA2, where they gave you DLC worth $10 by itself.

[Edi]

There is also the option of preordering to get all the cool stuff, then simply sitting on the game and playing something else in the meanwhile while you're waiting for the polish and fixes to be applied and then enjoy it all.

Yes - Enjoy it all at release prices (150% of what it will be in six months). Of course some people might have different standards of value than me, but IMHO no cool retextured clothing is worth the difference in price between a release title and a repackaged fixed "platinum bargain" version that will probably have it bundled in anyways.

Plus of course you have the time to read up on the game being played and decide that maybe the hyped up new title isn't worth the dough anyways.

True. It depends on what your priorities and valuations are. Perhaps it is not the smartest option, but it is an option.

[Slacker]

Just an update for those curious, they've dropped three major patches already in the space of this week, and the game seems to be coming together. They've included random new freebies in each patch as well as a thank you to everyone who bought the game. It'll still be two weeks until I try and fire it up again, but to their credit they really are trying.

[Stark]

It's sad the 'handouts to stop anyone burning their house down for doing such a terrible job and costing them millions' is now called a 'thank you'. What are they thanking you for? Blind obedience? Lack of discernment? Enough ennui to forget to so for a refund?

PS they're 'really are trying' because the accountant phoned up and said 'you fucked guys'. When Stardock fucked the gutter with Elemental sucking dogshit it really fucked the company. Itd be a laugh if you got told by Paradox your game was too broken. :v

[Thanas]

If I had bought the game and then received this as a reply I would demand a refund immediately.

Wow, what smugness. Even I am impressed by that.

[Stark]

At least they are clearly aware that the chances of future sales are pretty poor... But Paradox is used to bad project management. This is mind lovingly bad, Stardock level failure.

[Thanas]

Paradox is bad and has little quality control (AI sucks and the worst challenge to players is having "random" bad events go off if the player beats the AI too bad, aka EUIII), but even for them this is a new low.

[Vympel]

Well I've put in a request for a refund to Paradox. For some reason, they said they would get back to me re: "compensation" next week. We'll see how it goes.

[Stark]

Surely they couldn't be assholes about it after all this noise?

[Thanas]

Surely they couldn't be assholes about it after all this noise?

It's Paradox. These are the guys who released steam versions of their game which required you to install obsolete directx to run, but did not say so at steam, nor was it included. You had to visit their forums to find out what the problem was....and then you had to register to see the tech support forum.

Because putting it out for the world to see would be bad because of....quantum, I guess?

[PeZook]

It's Paradox. These are the guys who released steam versions of their game which required you to install obsolete directx to run, but did not say so at steam, nor was it included. You had to visit their forums to find out what the problem was....and then you had to register to see the tech support forum.

Because putting it out for the world to see would be bad because of....quantum, I guess?

Wait, what?

Are you serious? How can that even be done, since new DirectX generations...just don't come out that often?

[Thanas]

By programming Europa Universalis III on an old directx and refusing to move up?

Yes, I am deadly serious. This stuff happened to me exactly that way.

[Stark]

The game is so broken it can't even calculate the pie chart of spending right.



If it's an attempt to communicate a budget shortfall, an empty space probably isn't a big success. :V In this case my balance is increasing by about 80k a turn, not decreasing.

[Thanas]

Did you buy that game?

[Stark]

Nah but when we talked about how broken it was my buddy said 'fuck it you play it then'. He's happy to 'wait until it's fixed', but won't play it now (because half the missions for your fleets crashes the game).

[White Haven]

Black, by the way, is income lost to corruption. It tends to spike up as you reach really high levels of research spending, thus giving you some manner of diminishing returns past about 75-80% of budget spent on research. It's a function of the amount spent on security, which counteracts corruption among other things.

[Stark]

Why would they choose such a dumb colour? I know most of the tooltips are drawn behind the UI elements for some reason, but honestly.

How many hours does it take for there to be other things to spend money on besides research? Enforced savings is a bit socialist! It says my ships have upkeep but I'm not noticing at 50 ships.

On the third update the combat AI seeems to be totally broken too ... And having 'move' and 'attack' on the same button is STILL retarded.

[White Haven]

Not sure yet, as I tend to start getting reproducible crash bugs somewhere around turn 30-60. I suspect, though, that Dreadnoughts wipe out your 'lol I have infinite cash' pretty quickly, and I know that aggressive station-creation can do the same.

[Stark]

I'm building a lot of stations (and wondering why it's so annoying to do, copying SEV is not a good idea) and by the turn 40 crash I'm still sitting at 99% research.

If only real corruption was a giant black wedge of 25% GDP! They should have just implemented decreasing returns on funding, but these are the guys who gave us 'BattleRiders'.

[Rightous Fist Of Heaven]

On turn 200 in my current game with the latest patch, experienced two crashes getting there. Been researching, fighting, building and colonizing during the entire game without any of those causing a crash. However, its still apparent that the game is horribly broken. It takes me 30 SECONDS to get back to the strategic map after I close any other window than station management (that only takes 15 seconds). Ending a turn takes somewhere around 2 minutes at the moment. So with the missing/broken features (are there any that arent either missing or broken? ), I'm pretty much ready to put SoTS II away for a month or two while they actually finish the beta that they handed out in exchange for my money.

[Vympel]

Well Paradox is willing to refund me. All who bought SotS2 and elect to keep it will get free DLC. Meanwhile Kerebos is supposed to be handing out free copies of SotS1.

[Stark]

From what I can tell the 'free dlc' is worthless crap like nose art you don't care about. Have they announced anything meaningful?

I'm glad you got a refund. Everyone should, even those who are willing to 'wait' for it to be good.