Same old paradox same old sloppy work

[unmerged(97325)]

Apologies for the following rant but I am fed up with buying paradox's half finished shoddy games.

I recently downloaded the VV addition to Rome and just can't believe the amount of bugs in the game.

Some are just annoying but others ruin the game. The constant loyalty drain due to unfulfilled ambitions that are now IMPOSSIBLE is rediculas.

The bottom line is paradox used to be a small outfit and you could over look these things but they have made millions of us and still feed us this half finished lazy work.

I for one will never be buying another paradox game again.

/rant over

 

[tanathos]

I recently downloaded the VV addition to Rome and just can't believe the amount of bugs in the game.

Some are just annoying but others ruin the game. The constant loyalty drain due to unfulfilled ambitions that are now IMPOSSIBLE is rediculas.

That's not a bug.

 

[wilcoxchar]

If you think it's a bug then you should post it in the bug reports subforum.

 

[unmerged(85507)]

Actually the rant you wrote is something I wanted to write after the release of Rome (basic) and the first patches. But the expansion is a step into the right direction again (despite the small issue that I had to download something to make it run).

 

[Ericus1]

While you are basically correct, refusing to buy Paradox games at all is not going to solve the problem; however, neither is buying their games when they come out. A quick check of the forum could have told you that Rome was just as half finished as every other game they have released for the last several years.

I too am tired of it, but what I have decided to do (after I bought Rome myself) is to simply not purchase the game until such time as I am satisfied the game has been patched/expansioned to a fairly polished level, and them I will only buy it when the whole thing is released as a bundle.

That way, I will only reward Paradox with my money when I can buy one, finished, complete game for a reasonable price, and not a game broken into half finished pieces. I only just bought EUIII after the whole bundle had come out, and have been thoroughly satisfied. I'm not buying VV either until it is bundled with the inevitable second expansion. Hopefully Paradox if a large number of Paradox customers start adopting this policy as well, they will start keeping their games longer in development and released a finished, polished game for once.

 

[Lys91]

Paradox make the best game I ever played (exept Rome ^^) but with VV it's ok. I think this kind of game need balance and time to be fixed. I think Paradox listen well what fan say on the forum, a way I never seen in an other company (how players complaint has been fixed ? Not only bugs but things we need to be enhanced as well).

I'm not native english but sloppy sound (or look in this case) a bit rude, isn't it ?

Paradox continue to make such good games !

 

[Star_Wolf]

Well i have one thing to say about this. paradox is realising expantions that should have been included in the original game in my openion. VV is a perfect example of how EUR should have been when it was realesd.
but what make's me love paradox is that they LISTEN to their people. and you can see it in the patch. no other developer give such an audince to their people as paradox.

 

[unmerged(64390)]

I don't think Paradox releases games with any game breaking bugs. People might have wanted additional features or more balanced gameplay, but the nature of these games is being overlooked in this thread.

The balancing of a game such as EU III is a statistical nightmare. You tweak one variable and it might not be apparent for a while that it screwed up the balance of another aspect. There is no way a handful of beta testers is going to catch everything and help make for a perfect release on launch. I would rather it be played by a large amount of people earlier because #1 Even EU III vanilla was a lot of fun for me when released #2 Bugs and balance issues will be identified that much earlier.

Definitely not a big fan of what they did with vanilla Rome, but the EU and HOI series alone are the absolute best in their genres period.

If you want Paradox to hire a massive programming staff and have everything as perfect as possible at launch, then you are asking for a big company like EA to take them over and tie their hands behind their back as they are asked to dumb these games down for the target money spender demographic. Then you end up with EU 4 simplified with first person shooter spy mission mode and a game that is buggy as shit at launch anyways.

 

[unmerged(90249)]

That's not a bug.

For programation it might be one, assuming the triggers are missing or wrongly written.

Allow me to explain, assuming you are an IT professional coder, what the OP describe is similar to an SQL query with missing clauses in the WHERE part., suchas :

INSERT INTO resultSetHotelBeds (
item_code_GTA,
HotelInfo_Name,
RoomCount1,
AdultCount1,
ChildCount1,
SHRUI1,
board_code ,
board_name,
room_code1 ,
room_name1,
room_price1,
currency,
supplier_price,
destination_name,
destination_code,
totalPrice,
echoToken,
supplier_id)

SELECT HotelInfo_Code,
HotelInfo_Name,
RoomCount,
SUM(AdultCount) as AdultCount,
SUM(ChildCount) as ChildCount,
SHRUI,
board_code,
board,
GROUP_CONCAT(room_code SEPARATOR '_') as room_code,
GROUP_CONCAT(roomType) as room_name,
SUM(room_price) as total_price,
currency,
SUM(supplier_price) as supplier_price,
destination_name,
destination_code,
SUM(room_price) as total_price,
echoToken,
supplier_id
FROM " . $tableName . "
GROUP BY HotelInfo_Code,board_code, SHRUI";


Obviously, stil assuming you are a prossional coder, the fact there is no clasuses make the subquery selecting all and everything. Even if the query have a correct syntax (in the dev server it was no need to use a WHERE clause as it would have be only one data set in a time) in production it would NEED a WHERE clause (WHERE supplier_id = '4' ) as we run parallel processes with Perl (the DB being only a repository). So yes the junior coder who commited the SQL query did indeed created a bug , not a syntax bug but the programation bug (where a given prog does not behave as intended).

FRom HOI2, the progs released by Johann and consorts are full of those kings of programmatin mistakes, bugs, errors and other stuffs that were forgotten by juniors programmers. In the industry, it's usually the job of senior programmers or project managers to look over it

 

[AndrewT]

Well i have one thing to say about this. paradox is realising expantions that should have been included in the original game in my openion. VV is a perfect example of how EUR should have been when it was realesd.

Nice theory except that if Rome had never been released, then Rome:VV as it is now would never have been the way it is either, as there would have been no customer feedback to inform the changes.

 

[Zan Thrax]

VV makes Rome into an actually enjoyable game, but there are still some highly irritating bugs in place; and characters having unfulfillable ambitions is one. ("Ally with nonexistent country x" being the most obvious) Many of the other ambitions are, while not broken and perhaps WAD, are poorly designed. A character should never aspire to a lower office for example.

 

[Darkrenown]

A character should never aspire to a lower office for example.

Why not? It might have some special significance to them, they could have a personal or political goal to fulfill or they might just have made a bet with someone p). Since (in republics anyway) terms are limited there's no reason why, say, your consoul might long to be the Army questor at some point.

As for Rome, I honestly didn't like it when it came out. I played one or two games which I never finished and gave up on it untill VV came along. I think they knew Rome needed fixing, and that it needed more than could be done in a patch, so they made an expansion and sold it pretty cheap.

 

[Cheexsta]

Why not? It might have some special significance to them, they could have a personal or political goal to fulfill or they might just have made a bet with someone p). Since (in republics anyway) terms are limited there's no reason why, say, your consoul might long to be the Army questor at some point.

Aside from a little thing called the 'cursus honorum'

 

[Darkrenown]

It's not modeled in the game though.

 

[SirGrotius]

For programation it might be one, assuming the triggers are missing or wrongly written.

Allow me to explain, assuming you are an IT professional coder, what the OP describe is similar to an SQL query with missing clauses in the WHERE part., suchas :

INSERT INTO resultSetHotelBeds (
item_code_GTA,
HotelInfo_Name,
RoomCount1,
AdultCount1,
ChildCount1,
SHRUI1,
board_code ,
board_name,
room_code1 ,
room_name1,
room_price1,
currency,
supplier_price,
destination_name,
destination_code,
totalPrice,
echoToken,
supplier_id)

SELECT HotelInfo_Code,
HotelInfo_Name,
RoomCount,
SUM(AdultCount) as AdultCount,
SUM(ChildCount) as ChildCount,
SHRUI,
board_code,
board,
GROUP_CONCAT(room_code SEPARATOR '_') as room_code,
GROUP_CONCAT(roomType) as room_name,
SUM(room_price) as total_price,
currency,
SUM(supplier_price) as supplier_price,
destination_name,
destination_code,
SUM(room_price) as total_price,
echoToken,
supplier_id
FROM " . $tableName . "
GROUP BY HotelInfo_Code,board_code, SHRUI";


Obviously, stil assuming you are a prossional coder, the fact there is no clasuses make the subquery selecting all and everything. Even if the query have a correct syntax (in the dev server it was no need to use a WHERE clause as it would have be only one data set in a time) in production it would NEED a WHERE clause (WHERE supplier_id = '4' ) as we run parallel processes with Perl (the DB being only a repository). So yes the junior coder who commited the SQL query did indeed created a bug , not a syntax bug but the programation bug (where a given prog does not behave as intended).

FRom HOI2, the progs released by Johann and consorts are full of those kings of programmatin mistakes, bugs, errors and other stuffs that were forgotten by juniors programmers. In the industry, it's usually the job of senior programmers or project managers to look over it

I have absolutely no idea what all that means, but from a "player" only perspective I found EU3 and Rome much more polished out of the box than oldies like EU2, which barely ran on my machine. That said, I can agree that VV was a much needed expansion in terms of gameplay.

 

[Fookison]

.....As for Rome, I honestly didn't like it when it came out. I played one or two games which I never finished and gave up on it untill VV came along. I think they knew Rome needed fixing, and that it needed more than could be done in a patch, so they made an expansion and sold it pretty cheap.

I agree with you. I too played a few games of Rome out of the box, didn't like it much and then put it away knowing that there would be a fix coming along. Picked up VV and have been enjoying the game very much. Sure there are a few bugs to be patched out, but I'm sure that is coming. Had the same experience with EU3 out of the box. Now with Napoleon's Ambition and In Nominee installed along with a few patches, it is a great game. My thoughts are that Rome is well on its way to being a great game too. I hope that the next expansion will include the Alexander era and many of the suggestions from this forum.

 

[unmerged(110049)]

Nice theory except that if Rome had never been released, then Rome:VV as it is now would never have been the way it is either, as there would have been no customer feedback to inform the changes.

The idea is that the devs are supposed to atleast work out the most basic elements to make the game playable on their own.. Then the community can give feed back on all those small changes that needs to be done. Those who takes some time to discover. It didn't take long time to realise something were missing from eu:rome

 

[unmerged(125817)]

You know, I'll say this much for PI. Every other game of theirs is playable. Every other game is enjoyable. I dont know why Rome doesnt measure up to the other games that have been released, but I try not to let one mediocre game ruin the reputation of the people who brought us the legend that is VICKY.

:rofl:

 

[Asmodeous]

I found Rome to be a much easier "Pick up and play for a few hours" game than EU3. I tend to lose entire days to EU3, and miss things I'm supposed to be doing. I suppose it's Casual EU?

Nothing wrong with that, sometimes you have less time than you need to put into EU, CK, or HoI.

Me.

 

[unmerged(90249)]

I have absolutely no idea what all that means, but from a "player" only perspective I found EU3 and Rome much more polished out of the box than oldies like EU2, which barely ran on my machine. That said, I can agree that VV was a much needed expansion in terms of gameplay.

Here is the problem, most of people who post about buggs (or bugg free prog) do not have any idea ( or have little) about programation. Obviously they are players(gamers?) but not techni.

As some of the old p'dox fan/customer, I was attracted by the technical aspect of their games : capacity of modding, modelisation of history (becoming non imposed with EU III/ Rome), stress put on the reflexion (the BB is one exemple) to avoid the 'Gros Bill' concept that exist in so many games.

But , since DD, I saddly notice a move backward. Games are more like beta release, gross errors in the coding ( and when it made a feature not working as designed it's call a bugg).... The reason is obvious, from a small team, P'dox have grow to be a major actor; part of the work is outsourced, another part is handle by junior progrmmers with little verification made (Johann' day have only 24 hours), some other parts are handle by community people (such as the events for hoi2 done by Lothos), too much games handed out in too little time (all those people must be paid , so money have to find a way to P'dox).

My point was (and still be) the quality is not going up (using 3D is not a breakthrought , 3D is used since a long time and it give nothing much but a visual confort as long as you have a computer up to date). What was acceptable from a small company in 2001 who were trying to create something we dreamed about during the 80'/90' is not acceptable from a major actor of the gaming industry in 2008.

You want another exemple, maybe more easily understandable : X want ot be a commander ... you promote him at the head of an army, mission accomplish he got the + 1 in military ... some month after he have the same wish : want to be commander .... weird because if you promote him again at the head of an army, nothing happend ... look the mission file, the triggers are not complete, but anyway he should not get again that mission ... the realk problem is a tiny one : X want to be ADMIRAL (commander of a fleet , that is). So maybe not a coding bugg, but at least a huge lack of control of what a junior coder did that made things frustrating. I can provide at least a hundred exemples like that for VV (mean after I paid for Rome + paid for the extension) so after my day work as senior programmer when I come home instead of play to relax my poor old brain I do have to read P'dox coding and try to fix what they did wrong. Saddly I have to paid for that instead to me getting paid.

Bottom line is : P'dox deliver original games, but they are unfinished