1.04: We waited how long for THIS!?

[unmerged(12746)]

That would be fine, from a position of relative ignorance. However, it is rather illogical that you continue to attempt to assign equal blame to everyone involved in the process, even after people in the know tell you how it's supposed to work and where the bigger and specific flaws in the process lie.

If a car breaks down, you usually can't assign equal blame to every single component of it. Not if you actually want to identify the problem and fix it.
The process may be flawed, as per your reasoning, but that doesn't mean that there are no degrees of blame, power and responsibility involved, which you almost seem to want to make irrelevant.

It didnt take you long to take it and run with what you percieved to be my intent Scythe. This has been your MO for over a year, and subtle infrence to "ignorance" or stupidty, which if you bothered to read the posts you would see they are in context to offering beta testers "immunity" from blame.

In addition your "degree's of blame" commentary on the car assumes I dont understand that Beta Testers dont make decisions that get into the games. Just because I am no fluent in how games are made, Im not an idiot and can deduce that testers test, and report issues, you seem to be convinced that I have some cross to bare against Beta Testers. I dont, its the entire process, which they are apart of.

You tell me to what degree Scythe, and please spare me the condesending infrences to my level of understanding or ignorance, you and I have been down that road before in prior back and forths, no one is assigning "equal blame" as you put, it. The process is broken, the games arent getting better, you Grosshaus, Mr T, Johan, the god of your choice Scythe isnt going to change that fact. You can get as specific as you want to prior posting comments of mods and what they percieve to be the problem is, you can even suppose to think I should accept it as fact and move on.

But, sadly for you and me, the games arent getting better at release and are taking the same amount of time (4-6) patches to work out the game balance kinks and AI issues. So Scythe when you say

If a car breaks down, you usually can't assign equal blame to every single component of it.

Technically your right, but when the same model car breaks down over and over and over it would be ignorant not to question the entire process by which the car is made.

 

[unmerged(13520)]

Well Odin, I did not mean to insult you at all, whether you believe me or not. It was a rather blunt statement, as many that have been uttered before in this thread and likely in previous discussions, but it wasn't made in bad faith. I guess that's all that's left to be said, on my end. I still respect your opinion but I can't hide the fact that I don't agree with it, just as you aren't hiding that you don't agree with mine and that of others either.

 

[unmerged(22135)]

Ya know, if it's boring to click on every court on the map trying to find the perfect wife, perhaps you should stop doing that, start roleplaying, and pick the daughter of your neighbor/liege/vassal to marry like most European nobles did.

I don't think that this would be role playing. It's just economising on the search costs. And I believe, that is what a medival ruler would have done or does any body believe, that the typical way was to send a servant to use a ledger to find the best possible bride?

No, they used their own knowledge, that of their advisors and maybe did some search activity. All this together woudl reveal probably less information than you would get from five minutes researching. Thus, CK is modelling the process very well and it is even bettern than role playing. The only thing I believe one could complain about is, that's far to easy to find a suitable bride.

Yours sincerely,
OG

P.s.: Besides, some complained that there long spell where is nothing to do in CK. I use these times with low acitivity to look around at different courts an seeking future brides. Is there one promising 2 year, which will give a good Queen? Is there a 15 year old chick, who will be a superb spymaster? Yea, there are these girls, then put them on your soon to marry list!

 

[unmerged(12746)]

Well Odin, I did not mean to insult you at all, whether you believe me or not. It was a rather blunt statement, as many that have been uttered before in this thread and likely in previous discussions, but it wasn't made in bad faith. I guess that's all that's left to be said, on my end. I still respect your opinion but I can't hide the fact that I don't agree with it, just as you aren't hiding that you don't agree with mine and that of others either.

Just to clear the air Scythe you dont personally offend me, but in the past, as is now you freely throw terms out thier like Ignorance, which when starting a rebuttal hardly engratiates the other person to your argument.

To the topic, I understand clearly your point as to the beta testers, I understand that its folly to attempt to assign to them the same level of blame as the develpers, but Im not willing to concede "Immunity" which is what Dinsdale was eluding to, the process is broken, or, sadly, maybe its WAD.

Eitherway you and I have history Scythe, so in the future I will temper my replies to not be so direct to you persay, but more to your arguments, which I think we have common ground on.

 

[unmerged(2456)]

I don't think that this would be role playing. It's just economising on the search costs. And I believe, that is what a medival ruler would have done or does any body believe, that the typical way was to send a servant to use a ledger to find the best possible bride?

No, they used their own knowledge, that of their advisors and maybe did some search activity. All this together woudl reveal probably less information than you would get from five minutes researching. Thus, CK is modelling the process very well and it is even bettern than role playing. The only thing I believe one could complain about is, that's far to easy to find a suitable bride.

Well it wouldn't be so bad if there was a way to tell the chance of marriage success and a way to stop spamming, or atleast have a price for it. That way you can go try searching around, but the further up the ladder for rank and succession, futher away geographically, the better the stats, if you had a different religion/realm/culture, and the lower your ruler and candiate's peity and moreso prestige the less likely. Also some traits and whatnot such as they are now, like kinslayer would make them less appealing.
This would certainly move it in a more historical pattern which i agree with Solmyr you should try to do, but still allow people to look around, espeically if its clear what the percentage chance of acceptance is (nothing wrong here either as its used in eu2 for colonization and rulers certainly didn't know the chance of success beforehand there).

 

[Sekenr]

Yes, and finally give us a reason why your prince should marry a princess, not just some courtier girl with no parents.

 

[unmerged(31065)]

Yes, and finally give us a reason why your prince should marry a princess, not just some courtier girl with no parents.

The system is already there. The better the marrige, the more prestige you gain.

I'm not _sure_, as I run a somewhat modded version myself, but I've also taken prestige hits at times (pretty massive ones) when arranging marriges for my daughters. In those particular cases, I couldent exactly pinpoint what the reason for the hit was - so its quite possible that its a bug - if it isnt, it appears on a far too irregular basis to be an effective incentive, anyway.

But marriges do effect prestige, so..

Besides, it wasnt all that uncommon to marry common folk - or rather, it did happen. It was just an issue of getting your parents to give up all the juicy political connections that would benefit the family.. Heh.

 

[unmerged(33254)]

yeah, I am getting crashes in 1.04 that i did not get in 1.03b

 

[Dinsdale]

Well I don't want to sidetrack the conversation with marriage, but any system who's only constraint is the amount of time a player is prepared to mouseclick and manually remember, is not strategy.

It's more akin to those old graphic adventure games where a puzzle would require checking every pixel for a clue. Unsurprisingly, those games a now thankfully defunct.

To me, strategy means making decisions based upon information which is both easy and effecient to access, even if some of that information is concealed by some fog of war mechanism.

 

[Da Biggman]

Maybe it's just me, but is anyone else having probles when you start 1066 and when you get to the 1100's the game just won't load anymore. I had absolutly no problems in 1.03 but with 1.04a all I am is mad.

 

[Grosshaus]

yeah, I am getting crashes in 1.04 that i did not get in 1.03b

You should upgrade to 1.04a

 

[Duuk]

Grosshaus, in an effort to restore my faith, could you perhaps tell us if 1.05 is going to be a long while or a short while?

After all, I'm wounded in my soul over this fiasco and am looking for something to cheer me back up about CK.

Oh, and could you tell me if it's finally going to take EU2 down as my fave P-Dox game?

 

[unmerged(22135)]

Maybe it's just me, but is anyone else having probles when you start 1066 and when you get to the 1100's the game just won't load anymore. I had absolutly no problems in 1.03 but with 1.04a all I am is mad.

No Problems with 1190 save games to load. However the game was started under 1.04a, maybe you are trying to load a game that was started under 1.03b. I understood, that could cause problems.

Yours sincerely,
OG

 

[lenny]

No Problems with 1190 save games to load. However the game was started under 1.04a, maybe you are trying to load a game that was started under 1.03b. I understood, that could cause problems.

Yours sincerely,
OG

I am currently continuing a game that was started with 1.03b in 1.04a, and did not encounter any problems, so far. However, ff you use mod you need to reinstall them after upgrading CK, else you will most likely run into problems.

 

[Grosshaus]

Grosshaus, in an effort to restore my faith, could you perhaps tell us if 1.05 is going to be a long while or a short while?

No beta is allowed to tell you anything about that.

After all, I'm wounded in my soul over this fiasco and am looking for something to cheer me back up about CK.

I still don't see the fiasco in all this

Oh, and could you tell me if it's finally going to take EU2 down as my fave P-Dox game?

Personal opinion: no. But it has nothing to do with CK not being an excellent game or becoming even better as EU2 is my all time favourite for life.

I dont know everything the goes into the process, but rather then make excuses I cant back up with fact I site practical examples that appear on the boards we can all see. One of those examples are, Beta Testers are apart of the process, therfore if the process is flawed then its not illogical to include them in criticism.

Let me take Scythe's example a bit further:

You have a car that has magnificent steering, accurate as an olympic archer, takes no effort to move and never breaks down. Then the engine breaks and the car won't move, would you include the steering in the critisisim?

 

[Quarto]

You have a car that has magnificent steering, accurate as an olympic archer, takes no effort to move and never breaks down. Then the engine breaks and the car won't move, would you include the steering in the critisisim?

There is only one (huge) problem with the car analogy - the analogy is specifically designed to absolve the beta testers. By saying that they're the steering, and it is the engine that's broken, you're clearly saying that they are not a part of the problem, and cannot be held responsible for it... which is what this analogy was supposed to prove in the first place. In short, you're using your statement as proof that this very same statement is true. I'm a genius, and this is proven by the fact that I'm a genius.

Meanwhile, in the situation at hand, we do not have any clear evidence that the beta testers are not to blame. Quite the contrary. All we know, really, is that Paradox games get shipped full of bugs. Clearly, unlike your steering/engine fault analogy might indicate, these symptoms fit the "betatesters screwed up" explanation just as perfectly as the "programmers didn't/couldn't fix the issues reported by the betas" explanation. With the data available to us (you, as a beta, of course have more information available, but you're bound by an NDA, and so cannot tell us), we have no way of proving that one of these theories is true, or that the other is false.

 

[unmerged(490)]

I am not touching CK again until they solve both the mongol problem and the crusades problem. It is just too frustrating...

 

[unmerged(12746)]

Let me take Scythe's example a bit further:

You have a car that has magnificent steering, accurate as an olympic archer, takes no effort to move and never breaks down. Then the engine breaks and the car won't move, would you include the steering in the critisisim?

If it were the 6 model in a row to do so, yes I would, lest you neglect in your example and something I have said many times, CK isnt the first Paradox game with theses kinds of problems Grosshaus, thats why I think the process is broken, or as I am begining to think, maybe its all WAD (noting your sig).

The later being even more repulsive then the status quo.

 

[Erufailon]

My story:

yesterday at night I have decided that even tho there are no new features in this patch, I would give it a try, after all one of the major reason why I haven't played were constant ctds. So, I uninstalled, cleared the directory and reinstalled from cd, then applied 1.04a. I started to play, and after about 40 years there came a ctd. O well, I thought, let's reload the autosave. Guess what, it crashed while autosaving...
Sorry, but getting a bit frustrated. It's not my system, everything else runs fine, even really resource-hungry stuff, and I have 10+G free space on my system drive and 30+G on the other one, 1G ram and stuff, no virii, so don't know what to say. (let me add, the most stable release for me was 1.02, it rarely crashed, but every and each one crashes after that.) Also, why are there a lot of files that are set as read-only?

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

Meanwhile, in the situation at hand, we do not have any clear evidence that the beta testers are not to blame. Quite the contrary. All we know, really, is that Paradox games get shipped full of bugs. Clearly, unlike your steering/engine fault analogy might indicate, these symptoms fit the "betatesters screwed up" explanation just as perfectly as the "programmers didn't/couldn't fix the issues reported by the betas" explanation. With the data available to us (you, as a beta, of course have more information available, but you're bound by an NDA, and so cannot tell us), we have no way of proving that one of these theories is true, or that the other is false.

Which is one very, very, good reason to not take cheap shots at the betatesters. It is shooting at the only group involved that cannot, in good conscience, defend itself. Attempts to do so anyhow usually skirts the borders of what the NDA allows.

Moreover, it is shooting at a group that has no say in when a patch is released.

Can beta tests go bad? Of course they can. Can beta testers be lazy, incompetent, or borderline insane? Hey, it may happen. Can they be absent at critical times? Sure.

But ultimately, ultimately, the beta testers are not responsible for the product that is shipped and patches released: the development team or company producing the game is. That is irrespective of whether bugs are introduced in the code, in scripting, or whatever. It is irrespective of whether all reported issues got fixed or whether beta testers overlooked issues. (The latter might be a case for a flaw in the beta process, but it would not make the beta testers responsible for the issues)

If there is a consistent problem with the use of beta testers, it is the company's problem, as is finding out how to resolve it - perhaps part of the model is flawed, it is not the beta testers fault.

There is no possible problem that fits the "the betatesters screwed up", that moves the responsibility of product Quality Assurance from the ones developing the product to the unpaid volunteers who test it, and hence beta testers are NEVER to blame for perceived weaknesses and shortcomings of a game - no matter how tempting targets they make.


It is easy to blame beta testers, but as they are neither responsible for content in the final say (even if they write some of it), nor able to defend themselves against most attacks, it is futile to do so. If you must, you can criticise a company's QA and its beta testing process if it lets too many bugs slip through, but that is another matter: a company decision.


Okay, that was written as a developer rather than a beta tester, but I get very, very, tired of seing people take potshots at the one group that is not really allowed to defend itself, and which is usually chosen as a soft target because of proximity to those who really bear responsibility, namely the development team. If you want to bitch, target the company.

If I release a buggy product, the fault is not with my unpaid testers, it is mine for either running unrealistic schedules or for having insufficient QA. The same goes for all other developers as well.