I sent this to Overhaul last week, after playing around with BG:EE for a while. I haven't received an answer yet. I post it here because I want to know if everyone else's experience has been similar.
To Overhaul games costumer support.
I have been a fan of Baldur's Gate for many years now. When I read about Overhaul and your plans for the game, I was overjoyed. Modern RPGs are nowhere near the quality, depth or challenge of the BG series. Many gamers make excuses for these 3D, dumbed down games, how they are appealing for a wider audience, more casual, with better graphics, etc. Some even argue that some of them, like KOTOR and ME1 are on the same league as the BG games. But just by comparing the amount of dialog on each of them, it's plain to see that they are not the same thing. So I applaud your effort to bring BG and, more broadly, the kind of RPG that they are, back from the dead.
I bought the game for PC the minute you announced that the iPad and Mac versions where delayed, I would have rather had any of those, but I wanted to play right away (By the way, you handled said delay poorly by announcing it the day before realease).
I wasn't bothered when you postponed the release the first time, to clean up bugs and make sure the quality was up to snuff. I didn't wan't to play a buggy version of the game I knew and loved. The thing is, even now, BG:EE is full of bugs.
For starters, it's full of random annoyances. Sometimes the game slows down to a crawl, and must be restarted. I have had several random lock ups, that required killing it from the task manager. The THACO is calculated differently on the character sheet than on the inventory.
As for the original content, I have picked up two of your new characters, Neera and Dorn. On the first Neera specific quest, the one where you go find Adoy, his dialog seemed to drop some lines, because it didn't make sense to me. He also gave me a magical belt that, after being identified, had no description, it was just a regular one. I reloaded, did everything again, and this time the belt did have a description. But this time around, I missed some dialog by Neera, that did take place on the first try. I'm guessing that's another bug.
On Dorn's quest, upon meeting with Kryll, some dialog popped up between Dorn and I, but it was about Kryll, it didn't include her. It was probably supposed to happen before finding her. After that, the camera locked on Dorn, and my attempts to initiate dialog with Kryll where unsucessful. In fact, upon attacking her, she didn't even respond, and just stood there. Dorn never said another word about the quest, and it still shows up on my journal as it is not completed.
This weekend I tried to play the Black Pits on multiplayer with a friend. We created the characters, started the story, bought some armor, saved and quit. When we tried to pick it up again, the saves weren't there, not the specific save, nor the quicksave or autosave. We tried again, with a random party (we had lost the characters we created on the first run), and the saves weren't registering. We gave up.
It's mind boggling that every bit of new content I tried hasn't worked. I can't understand how you realeased this as it is. Perhaps you needed the income to keep the books out of the red, or maybe your partners forced the release date on you, but still, you where wrong to publish it on this state. Maybe you should have concentrated on making the core game work, and then release the extra content as free DLCs, I don't know, but unless mine is an isolated case, this is going to hurt your company. In particular for those new to the series, who will only know this version of BG, you might be turning them off to the whole thing. They'll lose out on BG and you'll lose out on customers. It's a shame, because the games can be great.
Having to reload, travel to one area and comeback, restarting, etc, just to try to get around the bugs makes for an awful experience. BG is about immersing yourself on the story, the characters and the setting. You can't do that when you are constantly engaged on a frustrating battle with the software.
I deleted my saves and I won't be playing the game anymore, I have good memories of BG, and playing like this will sour them. Perhaps I will pick it up again when you have worked out the bugs, but not as it is now. I feel cheated, like I payed for beta software.
I hope you'll rectify this situation, and I still wish you luck, because I really want the kind of RPG development you are doing to succeed.
Sincerly.
To Overhaul games costumer support.
I have been a fan of Baldur's Gate for many years now. When I read about Overhaul and your plans for the game, I was overjoyed. Modern RPGs are nowhere near the quality, depth or challenge of the BG series. Many gamers make excuses for these 3D, dumbed down games, how they are appealing for a wider audience, more casual, with better graphics, etc. Some even argue that some of them, like KOTOR and ME1 are on the same league as the BG games. But just by comparing the amount of dialog on each of them, it's plain to see that they are not the same thing. So I applaud your effort to bring BG and, more broadly, the kind of RPG that they are, back from the dead.
I bought the game for PC the minute you announced that the iPad and Mac versions where delayed, I would have rather had any of those, but I wanted to play right away (By the way, you handled said delay poorly by announcing it the day before realease).
I wasn't bothered when you postponed the release the first time, to clean up bugs and make sure the quality was up to snuff. I didn't wan't to play a buggy version of the game I knew and loved. The thing is, even now, BG:EE is full of bugs.
For starters, it's full of random annoyances. Sometimes the game slows down to a crawl, and must be restarted. I have had several random lock ups, that required killing it from the task manager. The THACO is calculated differently on the character sheet than on the inventory.
As for the original content, I have picked up two of your new characters, Neera and Dorn. On the first Neera specific quest, the one where you go find Adoy, his dialog seemed to drop some lines, because it didn't make sense to me. He also gave me a magical belt that, after being identified, had no description, it was just a regular one. I reloaded, did everything again, and this time the belt did have a description. But this time around, I missed some dialog by Neera, that did take place on the first try. I'm guessing that's another bug.
On Dorn's quest, upon meeting with Kryll, some dialog popped up between Dorn and I, but it was about Kryll, it didn't include her. It was probably supposed to happen before finding her. After that, the camera locked on Dorn, and my attempts to initiate dialog with Kryll where unsucessful. In fact, upon attacking her, she didn't even respond, and just stood there. Dorn never said another word about the quest, and it still shows up on my journal as it is not completed.
This weekend I tried to play the Black Pits on multiplayer with a friend. We created the characters, started the story, bought some armor, saved and quit. When we tried to pick it up again, the saves weren't there, not the specific save, nor the quicksave or autosave. We tried again, with a random party (we had lost the characters we created on the first run), and the saves weren't registering. We gave up.
It's mind boggling that every bit of new content I tried hasn't worked. I can't understand how you realeased this as it is. Perhaps you needed the income to keep the books out of the red, or maybe your partners forced the release date on you, but still, you where wrong to publish it on this state. Maybe you should have concentrated on making the core game work, and then release the extra content as free DLCs, I don't know, but unless mine is an isolated case, this is going to hurt your company. In particular for those new to the series, who will only know this version of BG, you might be turning them off to the whole thing. They'll lose out on BG and you'll lose out on customers. It's a shame, because the games can be great.
Having to reload, travel to one area and comeback, restarting, etc, just to try to get around the bugs makes for an awful experience. BG is about immersing yourself on the story, the characters and the setting. You can't do that when you are constantly engaged on a frustrating battle with the software.
I deleted my saves and I won't be playing the game anymore, I have good memories of BG, and playing like this will sour them. Perhaps I will pick it up again when you have worked out the bugs, but not as it is now. I feel cheated, like I payed for beta software.
I hope you'll rectify this situation, and I still wish you luck, because I really want the kind of RPG development you are doing to succeed.
Sincerly.
