Was this joke even tested at all?

[benis1996]

I am really getting fed up with Paradox recently (mainly regarding HOI4 but lately Vic3).

Warfare has been horrible from the start. Losing battles to countries many techs behind me just because they magically got more/better units into the combat width.... An infinite number of fronts to manage with finite genrals.... But at least they seem committed to fixing it within a few months...

Now the legitimacy system is horrible and unworkable for the AI... Capitalists are bugged... Qualifications don't seem to be working correctly... Game is unplayable. Did they seriously test this before releasing it?

 

[SmokeyMcSubpoena]

All the quarterly earnings went into designing communist flags. Don't be so hard on them, it's not like each of the 3 or 4 patches after release introduced a game breaking bug that most of the time could be fixed by editing a text file.

That, THAT'D be a joke. Oh. Wait. ........

 

[Cpt.Cross]

right now its like a stable version of the leak tbh.

 

[Inquerion]

I am really getting fed up with Paradox recently (mainly regarding HOI4 but lately Vic3).

Warfare has been horrible from the start. Losing battles to countries many techs behind me just because they magically got more/better units into the combat width.... An infinite number of fronts to manage with finite genrals.... But at least they seem committed to fixing it within a few months...

Now the legitimacy system is horrible and unworkable for the AI... Capitalists are bugged... Qualifications don't seem to be working correctly... Game is unplayable. Did they seriously test this before releasing it?

I think that they run the game on observer mode until 1936 after "hot" build is "frozen" (likely a few days ago) for release (in corporate AAA world you can't just add fixes at any time like indie devs are doing, bureaucracy there is...let's say complicated ) and check if it works, but that's all.

I don't think that they play "normal" games until 1936 anymore. Some bugs are visible just after few hours of gameplay in early game. Open beta testers (Steam players) will playtest their games for them (and for free!)

 

[Question]

I suspect the way they test things is very different from what a typical game experience is like.

For example, the 0% political power bug for industrialists would have been immediately obvious to any normal playthrough where the player would be managing IG clout for the bonuses and would notice that industrialists had strangely low clout. But if you arent playing the game normally and am doing very specific test cases, you are not going to see that unless your test case specifically includes checking party clout.

Its basically tunnel vision.

 

[Meneye]

It kind of reminds me of the old Stellaris days, from megacorp until necroids, when every update broke something and every patch only ever sorta fixed it. Usually while breaking something else in the process. Performance was terrible after midgame too, to top it all off. Eventually they got their stuff together, and the game is in a really great place right now.

Eu4 also went through something similar at one point. Hey if this is a pattern, maybe we can predict when Vic3 will get better! Let's see it took them both about... 2-3 years. Oh.

 

[doubleskulls]

I've just seen this bug report https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ent-proc-at-literacy-95-not-95.1560972/unread - which makes me think the OP was correct, and PDX didn't test the change.

I can take "we fixed A, but that unintentionally broke B", or when we changed A, if X,Y and Z all happen then it breaks... Just not testing a fix listed in the release notes on its own, even once. If that were my team I'd be livid.

 

[Inquerion]

I suspect the way they test things is very different from what a typical game experience is like.

For example, the 0% political power bug for industrialists would have been immediately obvious to any normal playthrough where the player would be managing IG clout for the bonuses and would notice that industrialists had strangely low clout. But if you arent playing the game normally and am doing very specific test cases, you are not going to see that unless your test case specifically includes checking party clout.

Its basically tunnel vision.

During pre release streams they were surprised about obvious bugs that players catched few minutes after streams started...
They don't play their games "normally" anymore.

 

[OllyOllyOxenFree]

As described by developers in the past the devs have a build that they "freeze" in regards to content and then bug fix for release.

The rest of the developers continue to work on features that will be in future DLC/Immersion packs.

It's not an act of incompetence, it's an act of business...

 

[ezno]

I hope that Victoria 3 will get the same beta system that Stellaris (very optimistic yes), of course not DLC features, but real players just experimenting this version of the game could have seen so much of the damage in hours

 

[Meneye]

As described by developers in the past the devs have a build that they "freeze" in regards to content and then bug fix for release.

The rest of the developers continue to work on features that will be in future DLC/Immersion packs.

It's not an act of incompetence, it's an act of business...

I can see the potential merits of this, but as we can all painfully see, put into practice it's a very flawed system. Are they that hellbent on keeping to the schedule that they'll consistently release unplayable updates on builds that they know have some very serious issues?

Actually, don't answer that.

 

[Lauxman]

We’ll be lucky to have a working game by 2023.

 

[OllyOllyOxenFree]

I can see the potential merits of this, but as we can all painfully see, put into practice it's a very flawed system. Are they that hellbent on keeping to the schedule that they'll consistenly release unplayable updates on builds that they know have some very serious issues?

Actually, don't answer that.

The only exception was when Imperator:Rome was cancelled and the freed up developers spread across various studios to work on extra bug fixing. It's why CK3 was so clean on release in terms of issues (or lack of should we say)

 

[Inquerion]

As described by developers in the past the devs have a build that they "freeze" in regards to content and then bug fix for release.

The rest of the developers continue to work on features that will be in future DLC/Immersion packs.

It's not an act of incompetence, it's an act of business...

Sadly as a player and consumer I don't care.
I care for a working paid product.

Indie devs like Iron Tower Studios (Age of Decadence, Colony Ship RPG) are fixing bugs almost immediately after noticing them (yes, they play their own game!) without all that corporate AAA bureaucracy.

 

[The Zeus]

I just don't understand why they are releasing patches with obvious bugs. The late game lag in release, trade center bug, and now this are all bugs that would be 100% evident to any normal player. And from the response to the bug reports it seems like they where all known issues when the patches dropped, so if that's the case why not delay them?

Maybe its because I work at a software company that deals with medical data and for us any known bug prevents a release and the testing phase on any new release is 2+ weeks. I don't expect that kind of rigor from a video game company but is playing the game on the release patch, seeing a obvious bug and having a senior dev check in the fix before dropping the release not possible? The state of the game is just intolerable, and I'm done with it now. I'll come back to it when it goes the way of Imperator and maybe at that point it will be better than this dumpster fire.

 

[Brynjar]

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).

 

[OllyOllyOxenFree]

Sadly as a player and consumer I don't care.
I care for a working paid product.

Indie devs like Iron Tower Studios (Age of Decadence, Colony Ship RPG) are fixing bugs almost immediately after noticing them (yes, they play their own game!) without all that corporate AAA bureaucracy.

Yea and as the company grows, streamlining becomes priority. Not for the sake of lining the shareholders pockets (though that is a factor) but, to trim the fat in any part of the development cycle.

Yes, indie devs do better however, they don't have developers constantly shifting between projects, have their management change etc. etc. etc.

 

[天皇の神風]

I don't want to be harsh, i'm sure the devs are doing the best they can, but i'm a bit disappointed with the game.

 

[Aloraand]

I don't want to be harsh, i'm sure the devs are doing the best they can, but i'm a bit disappointed with the game.

I mean at this point you have to look at the silver linings, like the game being highly modable and the community willing to do mod fixes really fast. But yeah, 1.1 with bugs after a messy release with radio silence instead of the usual occasional reply is disappointing.

 

[TacticalRetreat]

It's unfortunate. The game is still playable, but I hope they fix the politics system first. Even passing laws doesn't seem to draw most of the factions out of Marginalized status.