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Jan 30, 2011
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Hey folks! Helluva weekend eh?

Welcome to the perfect storm of cock up made up of 40% Murphy's Law, 30% Chaos, 20% Overambition and 10% wishful thinking. And you have our deepest regrets for what it is worth as none of this was part of the plan.

I am tempted to go into full blown explanations but a) that starts to smack of making excuses and b) in reality I think the biggest things on people's minds right now judging from your posts is "Who's responsible?!!" and "What's going to be done?!!" And even when its time for explanations I am sure you would all rather hear about it in the context of "How this won't happen again".

That latter question is an easy one and best gotten out of the way quickly. "Who is responsible?"...I am. Half my job at Kerberos is to be the one that makes the hard call. What gets prioritized. What gets pulled. What gets released. What get accepted. And in many ways, what gets said. When push comes to shove, I am the one who makes the deal with the devil. When something is supposed to be watched, its me who has to know the answer. When the switch got thrown on the wrong build, costing many of you an extra big download and letting loose an extra buggy code base, I was in traffic instead of giving the yay or nay myself. That should not have been...hell I should have insisted nothing moved until the right code had been there and confirmed multiple times. Instead I blew it and bad things happened.

So lets set this straight here. When you are dealing with SotS2 this weekend and wondering quite rightly "Who is to blame for this?!!" The answer is me. NOT Paradox...NOT Steam and certainly NOT my team. All of those forces have been exemplary in helping deal with a bad situation. When it comes to who should be at the end of anyone's fingerpoint, it's just plain ol' me.


Ok...so now onto the real important thing...The Future of SotS2 and what you can count on.


First of all the bad news...Thanks to various factors we are now sitting on top of a pile of blown apart code and unstable features. The first thing you can expect though is stability. There will be an update tomorrow which will set right much of the chaos created friday in terms of crashing and keeping you from playing that game. What it WON'T do is magically add back in every piece of functionality. Gods know I wish that I had that magic wand but the reality is that path leads to more chaos and more broken gameplay sessions. Remember that part where I mentioned making the hard calls? This is another one of those. As much as the team wants to throw themselves at this like crazy people, I am not going to ok that. Instead we will go about this in a relatively sane and orderly fashion with regular updates that make sure everything that goes back in is as stable as possible before you see it. Oh I am sure some stuff will leak through, but at least that will be dealt with quickly and cleanly. Sorry to just put the hard facts to you straight without flowers but I think we are somewhat past the flowers make it all better stage of this relationship

What this means to you...

This plan means that you folks can expect at least 2 or 3 updates a week over the next month or so that will gradually make this game into what it should have been when the switch was pulled on friday. Soon after that you can expect personel in black suits to arrive at your house to flash a red light in your eyes. After that you will find yourself happy and enjoying the best release day ever and none of this will ever have happened.
Ok fine...I am a lil shakey on the last half of the plan but what I can tell you is that by the end of this period you WILL have more additional content than you would have under more ideal circumstances. Every update will go out with some thank you for your patience...some badges, extra maps, new nose art, more background entries. Basically whatever can be done alongside the priority path will be put in as well. The people out there who know Kerberos know that we support our games not just for weeks or months but for years. For all of you people new to us, please let me assure you that despite how your purchase may look at the moment, you can look forward to years of support. I would ask that you consider not giving up on us because it will literally take the end of the world for Kerberos and Paradox to give up on SotS2.


What I would like to ask of you...


Oh I know that is hardly what you expected to hear right now, but before your temperature rises, please hear me out becuase this portion is in reaction to ALL the posts I have read which seem to subdivide into certain clear groups.


If you are a Kerberos and/or a SotS fan then please just enjoy the game as you can over the next few weeks. I know you want to help as much as possible but to be honest you should NOT be rewarded for your support with more work. Your feedback is appreciated but in no means are you expected to act as testers or hunt bugs. Literally your patience and continued support is more than enough.

If you truely feel like you have been dumped into an unannounced beta test on this game, then please, I ask you to put the game away and not look at it till someone fires off the "all done" flag. I am not going to tell you that you should not feel this way. What I am going to say is that if you feel this way then you should not feel victimized any more than if you had made a pre-order and then been informed of a delay. I know this does not make it all right but at least it should make it clear that no one wants to use you as a beta tester nor was that ever the intent.

And finally, if you are in the camp that still feels robbed by the time you have reached this point of my post I can only offer what I can. We are fixing it and we need folks to either cheer, step aside or get out of the way cause vitriol is not going to help right now. If you demand a refund then I completely understand and you can be assured, the cost of that will make it directly to us. We will feel your "voting with your dollars", you can be sure about that and we accept that as fair play. On the other hand, if a free copy of the orginal SotS will help tide you over while we get this game shined from turnip to jewel, then please write to "contact@kerberos-productions.com" and we will set you up. If nothing else, if you are not familiar with how we support our products, you can play it and then ask the old-timers how much it changed over the years and that may reassure you.



So if you are still with me after this long post...let me summarize.

a) cock up
b) my fault
c) will be Completely fixed
d) fun stuff in many updates
e) Understanding of your position
f) Apology again and underserved request for faith and patience from people who don't know us.


That's about it folks. I hope this helps in some way or another. If enough people care, I will try and post a "Ways I can think of to prevent this from happening ever again". But otherwise its sunday and I got a whole lot of work to get done for tomorrow's update.

Once again, Regrets and our deepest thanks for whatever patience each one of you can offer.
--Martin Cirulis
CEO/Creative Director
Kerberos Productions
 
time for the refunds. Im sorry, Im not paying for months and months of beta.
You guys lost my faith.
 
Like I said elsewhere, this is a good letter with enough swear words to make people giggle and feel better about everything. :)

So, if some folks are still unhappy with the situation, they now have it in writing that they can get a refund, so hopefully there will be less whining and drama, which really only drags everyone down needlessly. I do hope that some of those with doubts take him up on the offer to get a free copy of SotS1 instead, so that they can keep your money and we all get a more improved game sooner!

Hopefully the drama will subside some now and we can all either play something else or enjoy watching how the game unfolds. I look forward to the latter, the frequent updates and the bonus content, and I think quite a few others will, too. :)
 
There you go mate: support@paradoxplaza.com see you in six months when you'll buy the game for 50$ ;)

Warder

Nope, mate, wont be coming back.
this is as I have said the biggest cock up Ive seen in a game, and he's making the "hard decision" to waste our time and string out the updates? Yeah screw this.
As I said, lost my faith.
My email is sent.

I will say I hope IKerberos has better luck than Cryptic did after their screw up
 
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^^^ I dont know if your a Civilization fan or not but when Civ 4 came out I was extremely excited to play it. I got it home installed it and it threw an error message before the game even loaded. It was an issue with the game and AMD (ATI at the time) video cards. It was a HUGE mess. If I wanted to play the game I had 1 choice and that was to buy a Nvidia card. Well needless to say I did about 3 weeks after release and guess what... they released a patch 2 days later that fixed it. So basically I was out ~$350 until I returned the card. This release is better then that one by far.. I COULDN'T even play the game. Atleast in this instance I can play and it rather enjoyable. So go ahead and get ur refund... but your gonna miss out. Civ 4 became one of the greatest Civ games ever and people even still play it online. I see that hear. I mean these guys have devoted there weekend to you instead of there families or a good day of football and beer to make this game better. They could have just left Friday afternoon and never said anything until monday let alone work on the issues.
 
"If you truely feel like you have been dumped into an unannounced beta test on this game, then please, I ask you to put the game away and not look at it till someone fires off the "all done" flag. I am not going to tell you that you should not feel this way. What I am going to say is that if you feel this way then you should not feel victimized any more than if you had made a pre-order and then been informed of a delay"

Unfortunately, there's one big difference which I suspect will have more to do with Paradox than you - pricing policy. In your scenario, the price would be the same after, say, 3 months. In this case history strongly suggests the game will available on offer somewhere if not everywhere at a very big discount after that time. Hence 'hanging on' will cost the customer considerably more than refund followed by re-purchase.

However, I'll hang on. I owe you guys that for the hours I've got out of SotS1 if nothing else. And there isn't a lot else, frankly with this debacle.

and he's making the "hard decision" to waste our time and string out the updates?

In fairness (which isn't easy, I grant), 2-3 updates a week is hardly 'stringing them out'.
 
Soon after that you can expect personel in black suits to arrive at your house to flash a red light in your eyes. After that you will find yourself happy and enjoying the best release day ever and none of this will ever have happened.

Have them bring a job apllication form for me, will you? :)
 
wow the forum just ate my reply -.-
 
Considering the opening price of this game was 39.99. Next time your guys marketing department might want to consider calling it a opt-in paid beta, and even if you never intended to price the game higher, i would of said the 39.99 was a bit cheaper than what the retail would of been. People would buy into it, maybe not as many if you deceptively call it a release, but they sure as heck wouldnt be upset and trying to lynch everybody involved. Especially if this was a money issue release, i think youd find people would be more forgiving if you guys were more upfront about the situation. Minecraft should be a great example of an open Development company allowing the people to help develop, and support a game well before release can make a successful product.

Now as to a refund...i dont care...i dont like to be a jerk saying im rich and all..but 40 bucks isnt anything to me...it wouldnt be worth the hassle. Plus, while the game is well...early beta...i see a decent enough foundation that if you guys really do hold up your end of the bargain we could be looking at a pretty fun game someday in the future. Once you can figure out whats going on, you can see there is a lot of potential there, but its in an extremely raw state. Add in the fact that skyrim is coming out soon enough, and that my steam account has upwards of 240+ games on it...im sure i can keep myself occupied in the meantime.

What ticked me off at release the most though, was that I had waited around my computer off and on upwards of 10 hours friday, thinking a complete game was coming soon. At 2am after all that wait, it seemed like all i got was an option button greyed out. That really ticked me off no doubt about it. It stunk of deceit. If a heads up was given that it wouldnt be much better, I probably would of shurged and went out for the night. Instead I got screwed out of 10 hours of my life as i fiddled around my house doing small repairs/chores inbetween the checks of the computer.

PS. Just get what needs done, done. Time, i dont really care about... I dont need silly trinket extras. I just want the game working, spend time on that first and foremost. Nobody that wants a refund is gonna stay just because of some new art. They will be gone already. Save the time for that, into fixing 2-3 more bugs or something IMHO.
 
Ok, lemme give some backstory so this makes sense.
I was in the OB for STO (Star Trek Online). That game came out at least a year too early because the publishers gave them a "get it launched or its done, we're out of money" deal. This is a MMO without even a penalty for dying.
Hell we werent even sure Cryptic was gonjna be around long enough for the game TO survive.
I bought a LTS (about $300) fr the game. After it launched and I got to see what they actually put out, I TRIED HARD to like it. Really did. I fought back and forth with myself about keeping it or taking the refund they offered. When I finally did decide to take it, I was a day late. Literally. They had cancelled the refund program the day before.
So I got burnt on a game after they offered a refund because I waited too long.

Dont get me wrong, Ive been a hard core SOTS 1 fan. My book is so worn I cant read the CD key an had to get Kludgy to get me a new one.
Its just the "if you dont learn from the past youre doomed to repeat it" feeling that I have here that makes it so I just CANT let this just go.
 
Am I to understand there was a version that was gold, but they somehow lost it ?
that sounds like a very unlikely story, although I suppose odd things happen.
Also Are the dlc's added for free yet ? would be a start.
 
"Nope, mate, wont be coming back.
this is as I have said the biggest cock up Ive seen in a game, and he's making the "hard decision" to waste our time and string out the updates? Yeah screw this."

-Buddahcjcc


No offense, but are you 15? Or are you one of the people who nostalgia is always what it was cracked up to be?

For those who talked in prior forums about the perfections of all of our 1990s games, for those who actually played them, does anybody remember Wing Commander 2? Or Crusader: No Remorse? Back then you'd pay 40 bucks for a game, and it didn't work with your video card. And you'd never get a patch. Or it crashed on loading. Every time. Or you could play as far as the first time it popped up a movie (with real actors and video), and then crashed. Every time.

The difference is, now things get fixed. Anybody remember editing your autoexec.bat in order to decide whether you should mount your CD-Rom drive and copy a 250 meg game onto your 1 gig hard drive or be able to listen to music?

I'm not meaning to say this wasn't a cockup. Far from it. But for us who remember "the glorious 90s," things weren't all cheery for the gaming industry back then. If I can remember more games that made me pull my hair out to get running, many of which I never finished, I'll let you know. And FYI - I paid more for Crusader and didn't get half as far. And they never offered a refund or an apology. I understand being mad, but be reasonable as well.
 
Can someone put a link to the Kerberos forums or otherwise confirm the OP is genuine? It's rather poorly written and formatted, so I'm having my doubts.

Yes, it's genuine. I saw it on the Kerberos forums first, even responded there -- and then their web server took a dive again. But it's the real thing.
 
Dont get me wrong, Ive been a hard core SOTS 1 fan. My book is so worn I cant read the CD key an had to get Kludgy to get me a new one.
Its just the "if you dont learn from the past youre doomed to repeat it" feeling that I have here that makes it so I just CANT let this just go.

We understand your frustrated mate - and its fair enough, what I guess everyone is saying is that its time to make your choice, you got the options, but that its time for people to move forward. If you want to consider, or not consider re-purchasing the game at some point in the future thats your choice, and its no ones business but your what you do in the future :)
 
Am I to understand there was a version that was gold, but they somehow lost it ?
that sounds like a very unlikely story, although I suppose odd things happen.
Also Are the dlc's added for free yet ? would be a start.

the existing DLC's wont become free - they ahve either been given free as a pre-order bonus, or purchased by others (such as myself). What you and everyone else are getting is entirely new content which will be available to everyone, whether they have purchased all, or nay of the DLC's or not.
 
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