Well, I haven't had a single crash after 30+ hours of play with 1.04a (retail). If it's not the system, then what is the difference? (I'd really like to know that...Erufailon said:
)So noone accidentally mess up things.Erufailon said:
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Havard said:Well, I haven't had a single crash after 30+ hours of play with 1.04a (retail). If it's not the system, then what is the difference? (I'd really like to know that...
So noone accidentally mess up things.
I've only had one crash after playing almost 100 years now, but the game does tend to slow down quite a bit over the years, at the highest speed.
Peter Ebbesen said:
Very eloquent as always Peter, and for the most part we see eye to eye. Perhaps outright blame isnt appropriate, and given NDA "pot shots" arent fair, but I think we teeter on the edge of accepting failure, again, if we abstain from pointing out that beta testers are apart of the overall process, which some of us feel is flawed to the point of producing inferior work, based on past performance.
If I accept your argument here then the straws at which to grasp for rational and logical understandings of why things are they way they are, are dwindling. I dont suggest to mean I am owed anything, but I like Paradox, I spent a lot of time here, a lot of time playing thier games, and want to be a good customer, but its to the point where thats nearly impossible.
Beta's apart of the process by which games/patches are developed, based on my expirences that process is the defining trait by which Paradox, as a gaming company is measured by fans. Some call it support, some call it needed fixes, whatever you call it its the catalyst by which these veins of conversation come up, a situation created soely by Paradox, not its customers.
Eliminating questioning the process, and its components, removes a very key value that Paradox has as a company. The liberal nature of thier boards and the open solicitation of ideas is a strength of this company, placing parts of it above the fray (for lack of a better term) is a failure to nurture a strength, no company should ever do that. In addition, given the redundancy of the threads and issues concerning patches and games, I would think that an open questioning of the process might be a means to indentify ways of improving it.
Note this in my original post:Odin1970 said:
Peter Ebbesen said:
As you will notice, I left the door wide open for questioning the entire QA process of which beta testing process is part - and that IS most certainly an area in which Paradox has a less than stellar record. The only thing I attempted to close down was blaming release quality, patch quality, game problems etc. on the beta testers themselves, for the simple reason that in no rational fashion are they to blame for either.
Peter Ebbesen said:
If they are apart of the Q&A process Peter, thier is no rational fashion by which they (specifically) shouldnt be looked at. I understand your original post was in response to a post that looked like blame, but I read it to be more from the vein of ambaquity. No one knows why these problems keep happening, over and over, we can speculate all we want, thats all we have and thats what I think the original post was attempting to point out.
Faith is a wonderful thing, but its been exhausted for a lot of us with Paradox, Blame should be handed out fairly and equitably to all those involved in the patching process, god knows the praise is, and that includes Beta Testers Peter. If they choose to be apart of the process of Q&A, wonderful and thank you, but when consistant issues arise something is wrong and putting it soely on one aspect of the process, dev, seems a bit generous to me.
I guess we part on this aspect of the issue, something isnt right and I think its wise to question specific aspects of the process, including beta testers and what they do, and how its used. Obviously if its being done in an efficent and productive manner the seemingly endless corrupt save games from the first 2 patches wouldnt have exsisted, unless beta testers were always testing new files. If the later is fact, then all the more proof question that aspect of the process is worthy, as it might have avoided the need for addtional patch work and dev time.
Not really. If a process is bad, it is those with authority over the process who are to blame. In the hypothecial here, it is conceivable that a company might conclude that their use of beta testers in the beta process had been badly managed/not yielded the desired results. If so, that is their own responsibility. (Misusing, overusing, or misunderstanding the capabilities of an available resource) Conversely, if a process if good, it is also those with authority over the process who are to credit for setting up a good process.Odin1970 said:
Too few betatesters available to test? Company responsible for not ensuring adequate number of testers... Betatesters all with IQs less than 40? Company responsible for taking in the wrong testers... All betatesters concentrate on one issue to the exclusion of all others? Company responsible for not better managing the available testers... Betatesters have deliberately exchanged all bmps with XXX rated p*rn and on purpose inserted random quotations from the Kama Sutra in the game text files, and this was released in a patch? Company responsible for not running better QA on patch. (And person responsible for QA to kick relevant betatesters off the team - however, even so the patch problem would still not be the fault of the betatesters, though it would certainly highlight a problem with both QA and the beta process.
)Well, our worldviews may be different, I am just stating that from a developer's POV all blame, credit, and responsibility ultimately lies with those who develop the game and are paid for it, those whose job it is and whose time is allocated to it, and the only thing you can really "hand down" is credit. It is close to the ultimate moral bankruptcy for a developer to blame problems in a game on unpaid volunteers "not doing their work well enough", and therefore something that you will see very, very, rarely.
That does not mean that a developer should not scrutinize his own beta process and try to improve it, but that is another matter.
Havard said:Well, I haven't had a single crash after 30+ hours of play with 1.04a (retail). If it's not the system, then what is the difference? (I'd really like to know that...
The difference might be the system, but if it is, then it's that my system is not supported by paradox, since everything else works just fine. I know it's impossible to get bugs which only appear on certain systems, but if it's my system then it still frustrates me
Odin1970 said:
There is this thing called "irony", sometimes it makes people smile.
Grosshaus said:
Irony is often employed by those who dont have any thing of substance to say or a topical rebuttal. With all due respect Grosshaus, Irony is often conveyed in the delivery via tone of voice and body language its hard to grasp it on the web when your on a forum.
Particularly when your like me, someone who dosent smile.
I wasn't taking cheap shots at the beta testers, though - rather, objecting to the idea that they are immune from blame. I'm not claiming that the bugs in Paradox games are the fault of the beta testers, but merely noting that as far as we know, it may be their fault.Peter Ebbesen said:
As for everthing else you said... well, I can't agree with your point of view. Taking your logic to the extreme, there is only ever one person at fault - the guy at the very top. All the people below him in the hierarchy can clear themselves of blame by applying the same logic you applied to clear the beta testers - that the people in charge should have supervised the process better. And while there's a lot of truth to that argument, it ignores the fact that, as a general rule, the people on the lower rungs of the ladder have an inherent interest in hiding their mistakes from the people above them - thus often making it impossible for the people in charge to fix these mistakes.
In short, it's honourable for the people at the top to say "It's all our fault", but reality is never as simple as that. Just because it's dishonourable for you to blame someone doesn't mean that they're not actually guilty.
And I am just pointing out that as they have no responsibility for any part of the product, and they are not accountable, they can have no blame either.Quarto said:
blame: to place responsibility for
responsibility: moral, legal, or mental accountability
accountability: the quality or state of being accountable; especially : an obligation or willingness to accept responsibility or to account for one's actions
No, they cannot clear themselves that way automatically (though they might occasionally wish they could). The important difference being is that they are employed on a contract to provide a certain service, be it programming, design, marketing, QA, or whatever. Making the game is their job, and the company has allocated responsibility to individuals within it, and with the responsibility, substantial authority over decisions taken within their area of responsibility. If you are e.g. the lead designer or lead programmer, you personally are responsible for some parts of the project - it is part of your job description, and responsibility can only be shifted upwards if you can show that problems arise from causes beyond your control and area of responsibility.
An unpaid beta tester, on the other hand, has no such responsibility towards the company. He is a free agent, and whatever the company can get out of him is a bonus. The company cannot make him do anything, nor can it allocate his time. On the other hand, his opinion carries onl, since he is a free agent bound only by an NDA, he has neither a vote in the decision making process nor responsibility for the choices made by the company. In many ways, you get what you pay for: If you want somebody to be accountable, you pay them for their work. Likewise, if you want somebody to be responsible, they must have authority over choices made in their area of responsibility.
It is nice having good beta testers willing to put in countless of hours for free, but whether you are fortunate or unfortunate in your choice of testers, they are not responsible for the game: the development team is.
Just a slight point about what is actually a problem when a game is first released.
The idea that one can conquer the world with a tiny country may be considered less of a flaw to the average gaming public than to the seasoned veterans of this forum. My son, for example, does not consider EU2 too easy, he considers it too hard. If I could make a suggestion for developing a broader audience, it would be to include a very easy level on these games/simulations--so that my sons friends could sit around and semi-conquer the world one evening, for the screaming fun of it, while I could still cogitate about the historical reality of some obscure element of it. Really, it would not hurt the company to be generally popular (duh, of course), and it would not necessarily hurt those who are experts on the Holy Roman Empire.
I also heartily agree with the publishing of Gold editions, etc. Let me see, I think I finally bought Railroad Tycoon II when the Platinum edition came out. Even if it just repackages the patches--really, not every buyer can/wants to download a patch. And people with plop down $50 bucks for Madden 2005, even when they have Madden 2004 and 2003--crazy as it might seem. A tiny twist, and people, less fiscally tight than many of the people on this forum, will spend money. (It is fruitless for me to tell my children to wait a month or two before seeing a movie, so they won't have to spend 8 bucks). Throw in a historical treatise, or a book with statistical explanation of some of the game mechanics, and you can probably get the veterans to open their wallet.
On the other hand, my impression is that HOI and VIC were virtually unplayable as originally released. As a comparison, CMBB and CMAK by Battlefront may have had patches, but I don't think one would say they were unplayable. (Though deriviatives of CMBO--but aren't HOI and VIC from the EU2 engine?--I am not minimizing the difficulties).
I am not calling anyone not-bright. There are, no doubt, zillions of considerations which are mind-boggling to manage. I am one of those who wants Paradox to succeed. No one needs, really, all these back-seat managers, but I just occasionally feel a need to contribute something to the forums.
The idea that one can conquer the world with a tiny country may be considered less of a flaw to the average gaming public than to the seasoned veterans of this forum. My son, for example, does not consider EU2 too easy, he considers it too hard. If I could make a suggestion for developing a broader audience, it would be to include a very easy level on these games/simulations--so that my sons friends could sit around and semi-conquer the world one evening, for the screaming fun of it, while I could still cogitate about the historical reality of some obscure element of it. Really, it would not hurt the company to be generally popular (duh, of course), and it would not necessarily hurt those who are experts on the Holy Roman Empire.
I also heartily agree with the publishing of Gold editions, etc. Let me see, I think I finally bought Railroad Tycoon II when the Platinum edition came out. Even if it just repackages the patches--really, not every buyer can/wants to download a patch. And people with plop down $50 bucks for Madden 2005, even when they have Madden 2004 and 2003--crazy as it might seem. A tiny twist, and people, less fiscally tight than many of the people on this forum, will spend money. (It is fruitless for me to tell my children to wait a month or two before seeing a movie, so they won't have to spend 8 bucks). Throw in a historical treatise, or a book with statistical explanation of some of the game mechanics, and you can probably get the veterans to open their wallet.
On the other hand, my impression is that HOI and VIC were virtually unplayable as originally released. As a comparison, CMBB and CMAK by Battlefront may have had patches, but I don't think one would say they were unplayable. (Though deriviatives of CMBO--but aren't HOI and VIC from the EU2 engine?--I am not minimizing the difficulties).
I am not calling anyone not-bright. There are, no doubt, zillions of considerations which are mind-boggling to manage. I am one of those who wants Paradox to succeed. No one needs, really, all these back-seat managers, but I just occasionally feel a need to contribute something to the forums.
Victoria is the single most stable and bug-free product Paradox has released yet. It had major balance issues, but it was more playable than any other Paradox release I can think of out of the box. Unfortunately, it was also the single most complex game Paradox had made, and it was slaughtered in the reviews for, of all things, bugs. (I mean, I could have understood if somebody had slaughtered Victoria 1.00 or 1.01 for balance issues, but not for bugs)Rankorian said:
Peter Ebbesen said:
Something I'll never understand is the way Victoria was/is referred to as bug-ridden. I agree, it was stable and had only a handful of play-issue bugs, yet it was slammed
Dinsdale said:Something I'll never understand is the way Victoria was/is referred to as bug-ridden. I agree, it was stable and had only a handful of play-issue bugs, yet it was slammed
And it's a shame as it has given a new level to historical strategy gaming, a level I don't think will be matched soon. (and that is a bad thing).
Ck is cool, once I have regained some basic level of co-ordination I will play it (give me another 20 min or so).
Yeah, I don't think it will be matched at least until we travel back in time to 1992 and play Colonisation, the game that inspired most of Victoria's most innovative featuresTamas said:
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Quarto said:Yeah, I don't think it will be matched at least until we travel back in time to 1992 and play Colonisation, the game that inspired most of Victoria's most innovative features
What do you mean "travel back in time." I've got my Colonization disks right here . . .
Yeah, yeah, we've all got Colonisation around somewhere . The point of my post was just to point out that Victoria isn't quite as innovative as some people think (although melting EU2 and Colonisation into one game is already quite creative in itself).
. The point of my post was just to point out that Victoria isn't quite as innovative as some people think (although melting EU2 and Colonisation into one game is already quite creative in itself).