Was this joke even tested at all?

[Sovieticozasz]

It was probably tested pretty thoroughly, but with the large amount of issues they probably didn't find enough time to fix things before their wanted launch date. Since people playing Paradox games have a long history of not caring enough about such things for it to have a meaningful financial impact, they probably decided to release it anyway (as usual).

I find it hard to believe that it was tested "thoroughly", or at least thoroughly on a meaningful non-specific issue hunting way. Any player, after 30 minutes of playing the core game loop, would have noticed that the Industrialists IG. Arguably the most important early-mid game IG to bolster besides intelligentsia, is not growing and that you are locked out of most of the game mechanics. Unless every playtesting was made with France/GB and lasted 10 minutes there is no excuse for a bug with so gamebreaking repercussions and that is so obvious to not be found, and fixed before release. It is literally just changing 1 line of code, since it can be fixed by mods that do just that.

And that is only one example, this patch, as much as i love the game, has been disastrous. I cant even play the game vanilla in this patch and say that i was having a good experience.

 

[Brynjar]

But it’s a bug in something they are fixing. And it’s something so basic to coding, how if conditions work, that I refuse to believe that a professional coder thought that was correct.

Here is something that may come as another surprise to you then: Paradox does not just use professional coders (as in coders with vast experience/relevant education) for basic things such as events, and probably not achievements either. If by professional you mean somekbe making money on the time they spend doing it, that is never going to say anything about qualifications.

It could also simply be a typo, those do happen.

The only way I see this happening is if the person doing this spent less than 30 secs doing it.

I'm not sure why that would be beyond belief if the fix was supposed to be as easy as you say.

Anyone makes mistakes. But they need to do something to avoid these kind of mistakes. Because it seems a recurring problem.

Here is the thing, Paradox have no reason to change. Their releases are doing very well financially, despite this being a recurring issue.

 

[Oglesby]

But it’s a bug in something they are fixing. And it’s something so basic to coding, how if conditions work, that I refuse to believe that a professional coder thought that was correct. So it had to be a typo in the single sentence they had to change for their fix. The only way I see this happening is if the person doing this spent less than 30 secs doing it. Not saying it was that person’s fault because there seems to be a pattern here with this kind of mistakes. The achievement one only serves to illustrate it. There’s a similar problem with IG’s attraction, which breaks politics ( and for which we still don’t have a basic official hotfix). And there was the problem with the defines in the original release. I’m not saying bad pdx and all that. Anyone makes mistakes. But they need to do something to avoid these kind of mistakes. Because it seems a recurring problem.

It started as a "literacy_rate = 1" so it is understandable that a task of change the limit from 100% to 95% was done by changing the 1 in the statement to 0.95. It was also probably tested by using the console to set the literacy rate to 95% and seeing the achievement fire.

 

[doubleskulls]

Here is something that may come as another surprise to you then: Paradox does not just use professional coders (as in coders with vast experience/relevant education) for basic things such as events, and probably not achievements either. If by professional you mean somekbe making money on the time they spend doing it, that is never going to say anything about qualifications.

It could also simply be a typo, those do happen.


I'm not sure why that would be beyond belief if the fix was supposed to be as easy as you say.


Here is the thing, Paradox have no reason to change. Their releases are doing very well financially, despite this being a recurring issue.

The example I cited of the Literacy achievement...

PDX decided it was "too hard" at 100%, and decided to improve it by reducing the target to 95%. I'm fine with this, although I'd question the prioritisation. Bugs in achievements ought to be low priority, and improvements to achievements even lower.

The developer, instead of changing it to ">= 95" changed it to "= 95", presumably it was "= 100". This is an annoying mistake that anyone could make.

No one from PDX tested the change to see whether the achievement would trigger. This, IMO, as a senior professional in software development, is a "never never" event.

The rationale behind PDX taking more time about releases is that they have to ensure quality that modders do not. Most Modders would, in my limited experience, at least test that the thing they changed had the expected effect, before they released the mod. So basically PDX are failing very hard to justify themselves IMO.

This is just one particularly bad example. The Industrialists bug is another. I don't get the impression that PDX are doing usability / customer experience testing. The number of pointless, irrelevant, notifications that spam out in 1.1 is terrible. I appreciate not everyone agrees, but I think removing the instant front move exploit for generals was an awful decision to prioritise ahead of a general fix to warfare.

I wasn't particularly happy with the original release, but to be honest, I think they are just making things worse right now. I think they ought to review how they are prioritising what to fix, and need to do better testing the changes they are making. If that means we end up having to wait 3 months for relatively small patches that would be preferable to me than low quality releases like the one they have just put out.

 

[OllyOllyOxenFree]

Whether business is taking priority over releasing a quality product or the QA/QC teams have been stripped down to barely anything the result is the same. A product whose quality is questionable at best and downright broken at worst.

Who is to blame for this is Paradox's decision to come to and for the playerbase we're either left with mods that fix these problems (to a limited degree) or a long hiatus to wait for content that breathes new life into the game.

 

[curtadams]

Here is the thing, Paradox have no reason to change. Their releases are doing very well financially, despite this being a recurring issue.

IR crashed and burned and the bugs were the #1 reason. For the rest of their games, yes, they are selling, but they'd sell a lot *better* if we didn't get smacked around by these obnoxious easy-to-spot easy-to-fix bugs with almost every update. Way more than enough to pay a dozen in-house testers to just play the game through a couple of times prior to every release. And way, way, WAY more than the cost of running open betas, which is almost free.

 

[Brynjar]

I find it hard to believe that it was tested "thoroughly", or at least thoroughly on a meaningful non-specific issue hunting way. Any player, after 30 minutes of playing the core game loop, would have noticed that the Industrialists IG. Arguably the most important early-mid game IG to bolster besides intelligentsia, is not growing and that you are locked out of most of the game mechanics. Unless every playtesting was made with France/GB and lasted 10 minutes there is no excuse for a bug with so gamebreaking repercussions and that is so obvious to not be found, and fixed before release. It is literally just changing 1 line of code, since it can be fixed by mods that do just that.

And that is only one example, this patch, as much as i love the game, has been disastrous. I cant even play the game vanilla in this patch and say that i was having a good experience.

What makes you think Paradox wasn't aware of the issue?

 

[Sovieticozasz]

What makes you think Paradox wasn't aware of the issue?

The fact that the example is a pretty gamebreaking bug, and the fix takes all of 5 minutes apparently. So i would assume it was a bug they were not aware of, the other option is pure conscious dereliction of duty, and i dont believe the people who work at Paradox would just "meh" gamebreaking bugs just because.

 

[Mithkabob]

As someone who's played Stellaris off and on, the pattern was completely predictable. As I stated on a thread a couple of weeks back when someone asked if they should buy the game yet:

I've played for 200 hours, great game, but if you were on the fence I'd keep sitting there till 1.1... or knowing Paradox, 1.1.2 hotfix after 1.1.1 hotfix fixes 3 issues and breaks 2 other ones.

 

[shoebird]

Here is something that may come as another surprise to you then: Paradox does not just use professional coders (as in coders with vast experience/relevant education) for basic things such as events, and probably not achievements either. If by professional you mean somekbe making money on the time they spend doing it, that is never going to say anything about qualifications.

Anyone with a basic knowledge of how to code knows how a basic if condition works. I would say you don’t need to know how to code for this, just the basic math from high school. So it must be a typo.

I'm not sure why that would be beyond belief if the fix was supposed to be as easy as you say.

Yep, and if the problem is a == instead of a >=, reading the statement would be enough to catch the bug.

Here is the thing, Paradox have no reason to change. Their releases are doing very well financially, despite this being a recurring issue.

Well, they have announced a new initiative for coming up with new features. Maybe we get open betas for next patches.

It started as a "literacy_rate = 1" so it is understandable that a task of change the limit from 100% to 95% was done by changing the 1 in the statement to 0.95. It was also probably tested by using the console to set the literacy rate to 95% and seeing the achievement fire.

Yes I imagine that was the issue. But if they really tested it or simply read the line they just changed and still they didn’t catch it, it’s more worrying. This is the typical mistake that students do when they begin to code. So anyone that is working in a company should catch it I think. And of course testing only if it fires at 95% is not testing properly.

Assuming that the problem is in that condition and not somewhere else. I haven’t checked the code. Just trusting the bug report.

In any case my point is that it seems to be a pattern here with typos not being caught before release. I hope someone is taking a look at this general issue.

 

[Brynjar]

IR crashed and burned and the bugs were the #1 reason. For the rest of their games, yes, they are selling, but they'd sell a lot *better* if we didn't get smacked around by these obnoxious easy-to-spot easy-to-fix bugs with almost every update. Way more than enough to pay a dozen in-house testers to just play the game through a couple of times prior to every release. And way, way, WAY more than the cost of running open betas, which is almost free.

Source? There is nothing indicating that their "release as is" approach is ccausing Paradox to lose significant amount of sales, if there was, we would most likely have seen significant improvements. Anything else would have been clear evidence incompetence on a leadership level. Again, the issue isn't the lack of testing, Paradox could hire a thousand testers, but that would not increase their bug fixing capacity.

The Imperator issues were more complex than that. Outside of the day one issies people had with running the game, I can't remember anyone stating bugs as the reason they lost interest in the game. The reason I lost interest was that it simply wasn't a fun game, mainly because it has too many unfinished mechanics. The game just got boring long before I got a chance to encounter any game breaking bugs.

Victoria 3 seemingly taking the same route with mechanics specifically designed to be expanded in DLCs is one of the major reasons I have no plans of playing the game any time soon. Another reason is theur now long history of pushing clearly unfinished patches to release. It's not like we haven't seen these kinds of issues for several years by now.

 

[Morrowind3]

Normally not that much of a hater but "was this even playtested" definitely went through my mind with 1.1 tbh

 

[Brynjar]

The fact that the example is a pretty gamebreaking bug, and the fix takes all of 5 minutes apparently. So i would assume it was a bug they were not aware of, the other option is pure conscious dereliction of duty, and i dont believe the people who work at Paradox would just "meh" gamebreaking bugs just because.

In past cases with game brwaking bugs where they could have simply chosen to not include certain changes Paradox have explicitly said that lack of testing wasn't an issue. I would fully expect them to release game breaking bugs they are aware of.

Their only duty is to make money for their shareholders. I'm pretty sure Victoria 3 have been doing very well in that regard so far, and will continue to do well based on people's attitude both prior to release and after. If you have bought the game, you are a part of the problem.

 

[Cpt.Pirx]

I agree with the general sentiment. When the game released in basically early-access I thought 'fine, complicated game, deadlines; it's wrong but I'll take it'. First patch needed an immediate hotfix for infrastructure, I was frustrated, but ok, I'm happy they want to improve the game and are doing it quite quickly.

But for this patch it was stated explicitly that it's gonna take longer because they want to make sure it's a solid release. Yeah, about that...

I'm not giving up on the game, I will play it once the hotfix lands. But I'm seriously disappointed, and will be more cautious regarding further promises..

 

[TripleAgent]

I wish we had some response on WHY every V3 release so far has been so riddled with gamebreaking bugs. This is not okay for a full priced game.

Are these patches being comprehensively tested? Because from the outside this seems like either a failure to test, or a failure to test effectively, those are the only explanations I can think of for this getting through QA. (Not blaming QA, this seems like an issue with QA's procedure/standards/timeframe rather than QA itself.

These are issues that are going to need to be resolved if this game doesn't want to turn into the next I:R. Bugs are fine, I've been playing PDX games for over two decades, it comes with the territory. This is significantly worse than what I'm accustomed to.

 

[Johan]

Their only duty is to make money for their shareholders.

now i am not sure working on the v3 team, nor am i involved in making decisions for them, but..

i do not think there is a single developer at any paradox studio, nor any game director or other leader who thinks money for shareholder is the top and only priority. we are here to make games we like ourselves and are proud of, while making sure we can do it in the future.

/ a founder of paradox, a non insignificant shareholder, and veteran of 20+ gsgs.

 

[Ir0nSlug]

In past cases with game brwaking bugs where they could have simply chosen to not include certain changes Paradox have explicitly said that lack of testing wasn't an issue. I would fully expect them to release game breaking bugs they are aware of.

Their only duty is to make money for their shareholders. I'm pretty sure Victoria 3 have been doing very well in that regard so far, and will continue to do well based on people's attitude both prior to release and after. If you have bought the game, you are a part of the problem.

One can only wonder what drives to repeat over and over in this thread that "Paradox is doing things right since they are making money!". People in this thread are players and you keep imprecating them to look at it through the eyes of the shareholders. You might have some point you are trying to make or a lesson you are trying to teach ("you are part of the problem"), which would be vain and futile, you may be a troll or, worse, an ancap. Maybe you're just the kind of person that takes great joy to explain people that it's their fault they are getting fooled and that you are way more clever than them because you can see behind the veil, which would be sad. Anyway people in this thread are just distraught and concerned about a game they care about, which make them not care the slightest about your argument. I probably shouldn't have fed you, but hey, I can't play Vicky 3 so I'm kind of bored.

 

[Lauxman]

now i am not sure working on the v3 team, nor am i involved in making decisions for them, but..

i do not think there is a single developer at any paradox studio, nor any game director or other leader who thinks money for shareholder is the top and only priority. we are here to make games we like ourselves and are proud of, while making sure we can do it in the future.

/ a founder of paradox, a non insignificant shareholder, and veteran of 20+ gsgs.

I wouldn’t lay the blame at individual engineers, personally, but with the roadmap and some very lacking gameplay experienced being part of the 1.0 release of V3, I think many fans get the feeling that the game was rushed to make money rather than to provide a game that players would enjoy and that the developers would be proud of releasing.

 

[doubleskulls]

I can understand position of "PDX don't have capacity to test everything" and some of the changes would require a lot of gameplay to test. However this is NOT a resource constraint PDX operate under. PDX have already established open betas for other games. There are thousands of people playing V3 on Steam, and its reasonable to assume hundreds of them would happily participate in open-beta testing to identify and eliminate many of these bugs before they are included in a general access release. I for one would quite happily play a beta and report bugs so they could be fixed. This isn't a replacement for internal QA, but feels like it ought to be a relatively inexpensive approach, and one that means the community get to see what is coming and have a sense of progress - i.e. we aren't all sat there asking when is the next release coming out.

 

[Ir0nSlug]

I agree with the general sentiment. When the game released in basically early-access I thought 'fine, complicated game, deadlines; it's wrong but I'll take it'. First patch needed an immediate hotfix for infrastructure, I was frustrated, but ok, I'm happy they want to improve the game and are doing it quite quickly.

But for this patch it was stated explicitly that it's gonna take longer because they want to make sure it's a solid release. Yeah, about that...

I'm not giving up on the game, I will play it once the hotfix lands. But I'm seriously disappointed, and will be more cautious regarding further promises..

Sensible post. Feeling the same, except you are more resilient than me. Since release I have been trying to be supportive, constructive and keep the obvious and legitimate grief toward me. But then I found myself staring blankly at my ever increasing mod list for a game 1 month and a half old, unable to figure out what I though the game was supposed to be, and I just realized I didn't wanted to play anymore.