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

[Vympel]

So they apparently released the wrong build onto Steam. Some old beta build that didn't work for shit.

Then they released a new build. Which is apparently equally awful, but is compatible with the pre-order bonus DLC. Yay.

Seriously, what goddamn idiots.

[KhorneFlakes]

I had some feeling it was going the be shit the moment I saw it. Don't ask why.

[Stark]

Baseless after the fact claims of prescience are worthless.

But since SOTS had so many fundamental problems and Kerberos are such a pack of insular wankers, was there any chance of meaningful improvement.

[Vympel]

Baseless after the fact claims of prescience are worthless.

But since SOTS had so many fundamental problems and Kerberos are such a pack of insular wankers, was there any chance of meaningful improvement.

Well, I heard good things about SotS1 and the stuff I heard and saw about SotS2 seemed interesting (even though I maintain the ship designs are all horrible) so I foolishly went ahead and pre-ordered it. I was ready for some small lack of polish but figured for $39.99 it wasn't a big deal.

Instead all indications are that they're out and out liars - they claimed it was a mistake (when apparently the version uploaded was a 2 weeks old build) and then uploaded a new version which is basically just as bad (which is unsurprising given there's only 2 weeks difference). The shit is laughably broken. Its literally a beta. I haven't even bothered to run it.

[Xon]

I posted a brief rundown of what's broken feature wise on arstechnica's gaming forums in thier sots2 thread, not only is it buggy as fuck, it's missing some significant features and has a lot wrong with it. Also that the dev staff at Kerberos where even suggesting they where up 50 hours before/during/after launch points to this being a clusterfuck that just keeps on giving.

The utter lack of polish, the number of disabled/missing features, the nerfed planet manager, the missing fleet manager and that unholy 3-6 second pause between screen transitions point to this being an unplayable mess.

On the plus side that they ship a 64bit verison and 32bit version at the same time as seperate exes. Except Steam only kicks off the 32bit version and there is nothing to indicate that the 64bit version even exists till you dig into the directory structure of the game.

[Vympel]

This is just priceless:-

Guy replies to Paradox Dev Team member confirming that the "new" version uploaded onto Steam after the mistake is the one Kerebos wanted to release:-

You are seriously sitting there, on your imaginary high pedistal, calmly and coldly stating that this is in fact the release version?
Note, i am not talking to you personally, i am talking to whoever it was that was responsible for this being accepted as a full release game. Paradox Q&A team, Paradox CEO giving the final green light, Kerberos for not giving a damn, whoever. I do not know, so i will respond to the only person here that has mentioned anything, you. I apologize in advance.

How dare you? How dare you sit here, with our pre-order money in your pocket and calmly and arrogantly chill back and give cold facts about how everything is obvious and the way they are supposed to be? "Oh sure GG got another version, it's so they can all patch up with steam. Duh."
No. Just no.
We are talking about half the game missing, about half the UI being grey boxes, about the entire basic gameplay not even being playable.
Don't dare sit there like that, get off your horse, take off your hat on behalf of whoever was responsible (you still work for Paradox, so you are our only representative so far), and god damn well apologize for literally scamming all of us out of our money! A full retail game was advertised, we recieved a completely broken mess that is NOT just about bugs or glitches, it is about the entire game not even being in beta stage!

Beta = feature complete, bugfixing and polish.
This is alpha. You sold us an alpha version and you have the audacity to still waltz around the truth instead of clearly and plainly stating the truth.
This is Shogun 2 all over again with the anti-aliasing issue. They did the same thing.
They spent days just waltzing around the truth, waiting to make sure people pre-ordered and spent their money, before the truth was revealed that it was too a buggy piece of mess. In fact they never came clean, they still pretended like the issue was nonexistant. It was the most disgusting behaviour i had ever seen from a developer, but Kerberos just took the crown.

Bravo. Feel free to ban me for writing a constructive reasonable reply. I'm done with Paradox.

The Paradox response:-

I'm sorry, what else should I do? Panic? Lie and say this is another mix up and a perfect version will appear any second now? I have made no claims about the quality of the release, just that this is the version Kerberos wanted to upload, not a mistake like the beta version from yesterday.

Kerebos lied by omission. They made it sound like the release version would be better, and it plainly isn't. Seriously, there's releasing buggy pieces of shit, and there's outright mendacity.

[Xon]

Susana, I get a sense from what you're writing that version 17369b IS the release version. Can this please be confirmed. At the moment most of us are waiting for the real release and it would save us a lot of angst if we knew one way or another what the release version is. Thanks.

It is the release version.

What.

This game is fundmentally unfinished. It's got at least another 2-3 months of work before it gets into a half-way playable state.

[Calanor]

I too made the mistake and preordered this unfinished pile of crap. By now I should really know better than preordering games, especially ones where there has been hardly any information beforehand. SotS 1 was a relatively fun game despite its many flaws, but in retrospect I only bought the version with four expansions at a reduced price after the vanilla game had been available for more than a year. I really should have done the same this time around.

Not only is the game crash-prone and bug-ridden, but many features are completely unexplained with no tooltip anywhere in sight. The ingame encyclopedia is mostly bereft of any useful information (no, I don't want to know what some NPC I never heard from and who has no actual presence in-game did when I can only guess what the space station modules are supposed to do and what the hell the special abilities of my fleet admirals are) and often seems to jump randomly to other entries. The newest patch seemed to do nothing but disable the options-menu, but that is fine, the entries didn't work anyway.

This mess is a long time from a playable, let alone enjoyable game.

[Vympel]

Paradox Apologises

Well, at least they did it fairly quickly. Most publishers and developers try and pretend nothing ever went wrong.

[PeZook]

Paradox Apologises

Well, at least they did it fairly quickly. Most publishers and developers try and pretend nothing ever went wrong.

The problem with the industry is that people are not bothering with demanding their money back under consumer protection laws.

Probably because they'd have to end up in court, and then prove the product they received is fundamentally unusuable, but until game companies start getting slapped in the face by government regulation, it will only get worse.

[CaptHawkeye]

The entire video game industry just reeks of top-to-bottom corruption these days. Everyone is so conservative they just totally ignore obvious and occasionally malicious problems from product design to management to advertising.

[Anacronian]

Man i was literary minutes away from buying this game and it's only dumb luck i opted to swing by SDN and check out the topics.

Thanks people.

[Stark]

The nerd rage in the quotes is priceless. A Paradox published game? Unfinished? Bugs? Low polish?


NO FUCKING WAY!

Xeon e list is pretty funny stuff. It doesn't even sound like the core game has improved, so even without all the broken shit it'd still suck.

[Skgoa]

I too made the mistake and preordered this unfinished pile of crap. By now I should really know better than preordering games, especially ones where there has been hardly any information beforehand.

Why do people still preorder games? I don't mean to attack you, I just don't get it. If I really believe I will wan't to buy a game - something that happens less and less these days - I still wait a week or so. Actually, it often only takes less than 24 hours for the internet to find out, if the game is shit. It's not like we still have to wait for magazines to come out to get reviews.

[White Haven]

Big-ticket games that Steam preloads I'll pre-order, so I don't have to wait for the download once the game's actually live.

[Slacker]

Having pre-ordered and played it, both the first and second builds, there are fundamental improvements between the two builds. The game, the second build that is, is a playable game. It's an unpolished train wreck in some regards, with no sense of intuitiveness and a window-licking painful lack of things like tooltips, but you can actually see a tremendous amount of potential.

It's basically the mother of all Paradox releases. It's a flaming piece of turd *now*, but three patches from now it'll be pretty damn awesome. We'll see, I'm willing to wait a few weeks. I just wish they had been up front about the whole thing, I have hundreds of hours played in the original SotS, I was okay with waiting, or hell, knowingly playing a beta.

[Stark]

It'll be 'pretty damn awesome' if you liked the first one and it's mind blowingly awful UI.

And man, Paradox appropriating these games is pretty funny. Sure, Paradox QA sucks shit and always will because fat people don't care about bugs, but this is all Kerberos' fault.

[Skgoa]

Big-ticket games that Steam preloads I'll pre-order, so I don't have to wait for the download once the game's actually live.

But isn't this basically saying "I don't care about the product, just take my money"?

[Slacker]

It'll be 'pretty damn awesome' if you liked the first one and it's mind blowingly awful UI.

And man, Paradox appropriating these games is pretty funny. Sure, Paradox QA sucks shit and always will because fat people don't care about bugs, but this is all Kerberos' fault.

I would more say, 'despite the sketchy UI, the first one was a really good game'.

[Calanor]

I too made the mistake and preordered this unfinished pile of crap. By now I should really know better than preordering games, especially ones where there has been hardly any information beforehand.

Why do people still preorder games? I don't mean to attack you, I just don't get it. If I really believe I will wan't to buy a game - something that happens less and less these days - I still wait a week or so. Actually, it often only takes less than 24 hours for the internet to find out, if the game is shit. It's not like we still have to wait for magazines to come out to get reviews.

Well, I hardly play video games anymore because lack of time and this was in fact the first game I bought this year. I liked the first one and didn't really do any research. Likewise, I haven't really followed the state of the game industry for several years. In order not to forget about it I preordered. Stupid, I know.

[Havok]

Question: What is the point of pre-ordering?
Follow up question: Why do people still pre-order when this problem seems to persist from multiple publishers?

[Zablorg]

Only reason I can think of is to get pre-order exclusive content. Although I'm pretty sure most of it becomes DLC shortly after release.

[Havok]

Only reason I can think of is to get pre-order exclusive content. Although I'm pretty sure most of it becomes DLC shortly after release.

This is what I was thinking, but I thought the PC people had some other reason for doing so.

[Stofsk]

If there is some kind of promotion bonus that comes with preordering, I'll consider it. I preordered BF3 to get some kind of mini expansion map pack or whatever. But generally speaking I prefer to wait awhile after a game's release so that all the bumps get ironed out.

[PeZook]

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.