[.95] BETA 4 Initial Impressions

Multiple events firing at once still makes you jump all over the place. There really needs to be a "wait" process to the multi-threadedness of the UI. It's so chaotic at the beginning of every turn. Even after every unit action it tries to auto-select the next unit. Pop-ups for the game still come up when you quit to the main menu!

- I haven't noticed that as much.

Tactical battles still slow to a crawl every so often. You have to auto resolve them to get through.

- Yes, I've noticed that too.

Multi-turn spells seem to really mess up the flow of battle. Either they really slow things down, make UI elements like the action bar disappear, or they never finish. Noticed most with Titan's Breath.

- They've introduced cooldown with spells in Beta 4.  I like that better.  Unfortunately, there's no way to counterspell them.  Maybe they'll drop counterspell, but I doubt it.

Balancing units, traits, and spells still needs a lot of work.
Lots of glitches related to the strategic map. Pathfinding, moving to a specific square, animations being wrong, display of units, etc . . .

- Welcome to the Beta!  What units, traits, and spells still need a lot of work specifically?

We need a way to deny a quest without having it disappear. Accidently going on a master quest dragon statue when you are not ready and declining it well means you can no longer finish the master quest.

- Maybe this isn't done for all the quests yet, but I was able to "return later" on the "Bard summons a dragon" quest.

Are you playing the same game I am Brad?

- Nope, Brad is playing a different game.  He's playing Gal Civ 3.

Some valid points here in the cons list. The only major issue I can confirm is save integrity. I have a 90% save integrity rate, but that is far from acceptable. 

I disagree about multi-turn casting. That is a great tactical consideration. I also feel the balance is not finished, but is better than before. Hp is finally right. The only problem is weapon damage and unique weapons with massive damage. Not a major focus in Beta 4 though. This one seems to be focused on buildings and strategic depth. 

Of course, we may need to gather a order of beta testers to protest against bugs that are not being fixed. There are somewhere around 20 bugs that are seeping through the cracks. We have not even gotten an acknowledgement by the devs that they are working on it. Not as concerned about new bugs, since that is expected.

lol oh man i would kill for a Gal Civ 3 . . .

If you have more than one event fire an the beginning of a turn it sort of randomly moves you around the screen. I think it actually zooms in on the last one that fires but you only see the first pop-up message. For example if you have a city level up, tech complete, and resource destroyed event all happen at once good luck guessing where your screen ends up.

I love the idea of multi-turn spells i just mean that currently it is still very buggy. There's a lot of slow down when the spell finally goes off. Not sure if this is related to the spell effects or what but sometimes it breaks the UI and you are forced to auto-resolve to complete the battle.

As fat as unit, trait, spell, faction, etc balance I do understand Brad said BETA 5 will be dedicated to that but I guess I was hoping for a better foundation to work on. Just an example Burning Hands is almost useless right now unless you have some fire shards. Most monster units you can recruit are underwhelming because they are so fragile. They are only useful in the first 50 or so turns of the game but you can't get a lot of them until 100+ turns in. Traits like Finesse are just useless. I can go on and on.

Most quests when you first step on them have a "go into battle" option and a "no i'm not ready option." Pick the later and the quest just disappears. You have no second chance at it later. (Most notable with Epic level master quests since they all show up now in the beginning of the game and you can go on them without any tech requirements.)

Mind you I'm not really asking for any game play or game design changes. I'm just asking for the current game to "work better". I love the direction it is going in.

Don't get me wrong I do love the idea of multi-turn casting. Like I said above though it is just really buggy and not well implemented right now. I can't wait for it to be all ironed out.

But yes we should definitely compile a list of issues that have not been acknowledged yet. Because as far as we know the devs don't think they exist.

I see now. Good point about tactical battles then. 

As to quests, there is a simple switch to make each quest allow you to return when you are ready. They seem to have shifted most quests to this side, but it looks like they are still working on it.

Please stop whining...  They have publicly said that there is AT LEAST one more beta in which the majority of balancing and AI optimization will take place...

It is a BETA...   Whether you pretend to understand this or not...  Brad has said it is mostly stable..  Don't read anything else into this like a 6 year old child.

I am not whining. I am posting feedback. There is a difference. I have always praised the game and tolerated the bugs but there comes a point when you lose hope. If I don't provide such feedback then what is the point of a BETA? Don't take it so personal. Blindly praising things will just lead to mediocrity. I too am a developer so I know what it is like to be trapped in a sort of tunnel vision on your own project. I understand far too well what an actual BETA is. I've been coding for the past 12 years. Believe it or not most BETA's are what get released as the final product to be patched up later. Judging by WoM I have no reason to believe otherwise.

A lot of this stuff besides the balancing has been issues for a while now with no acknowledgement. Mind you we are on BETA 4. With BETA 5 just a balancing/polish phase as I understand. Final release should be sometime after BETA 5. There might be a BETA 6 if more time is needed. (If the dev journals are anything to go by.) There is not much time left to fix these issues that keeps falling through the cracks though.

Brad saying it is mostly stable means a lot. In his words BETA 3 should have had little to no bugs left (or did I misread that somewhere?). I understand new bugs being introduced in BETA 4 but most everything I mentioned has been around since BETA 2. (or forever for the save issues.)

Notice most of my issues are with functionality and things not working correctly. Not changes to game design or mechanics. Like I said I love the direction and what the game is trying to do but at the pace things are going I really don't expect a miraculous push in the next two BETA's to make this game 100%. I have been following this series since it's very first rumor of WoM so you can say I have a lot to go by. But hey I am hoping they prove me wrong . . .

BTW I thought my post was pretty professional. Certainly above six year old level =P

To be fair, legaceez, the phrase "It saddens me to say though that BETA 4 has been truly disappointing and I am really starting to lose hope in the series." seems quite strong, emotionally biased and unsupported both by the severity of your issues and by your subsequent comments...

Please don't take any offence from this - I for one have found that feedback threads that begin "The product sucks because..." work much less effectively than thread that begin "I like the product so far and here are the issues I think can be improved.", and your original post was of the former variety IMHO.

Personally, I found beta 4 to be a massive improvement in balance and functionality over beta 3, nonwithstanding the several bugs and functionality improvement needs that I have identified, and will also post.

Anyway - here's to us beta testers staying vocal and active enough to make this game as excellent as its potential...

Yea I suppose you are right ins2 I did start off pretty negatively but I guess at the very least I did list some pros first. I do apologize for the tone it sets. Game play wise I agree BETA 4 is a vast improvement. This game has been a roller coaster ride though. You have to understand I actually am quite emotional about this game and comparing it's progress with the first game in the series I am drawing a lot of parallels. You might not pick up on a lot of this if you just started following the development. After all those promises in WoM you will realize that I'm not just overreacting. I've been silent about these issues for a very long time.

I guess I am being so critical because I want this game to succeed just as bad as anyone else but the track record just isn't there. I almost feel like the game engine was too botched up from WoM. It has left a very bad taste in my mouth. All the blind praise will just lead to the same results. I guess at this stage in development I just expected a lot more but run into the exact same issues beta after beta. It does get disheartening after a while. It might seem like I'm beating a dead horse but apparently the horse isn't dead yet. Game play and mechanics wise the game is getting better with each revision but that means nothing if the core of the game is still broken. Being unable to save and load a game 100% is huge! If anything it should be fixed before any new features make it that much harder to fix.

But you get my drift I hope. I do want this post to incite some emotional response from the devs because sometimes that is what it takes to realize something is wrong.

It amazes me when people see a lingering bug and assume that means the developers either don't know about it or don't care.  

Is it possible that based on their development flow they purposefully ignore certain bugs because they know that this code has to get messed with anyway?  

Or is it possible that they are ignoring bugs in exchange for concentrating resources on development of the major systems (which may alleviate or aggravate the bugs in question anyway) because there is an entire beta round dedicated to.. wait for it... waitttt for it....  polish, bug fixing, and balance prior to release?  Source - First Paragraph

A couple of your points are excellent.  The save game glitch in particular, though I've never experienced it, is a big issue.  So is the tactical battle slowdown, which sucks if it happens in a battle you don't want to auto resolve.  It's just a shame the good feedback is lost in the stomping of feet and screaming that is the rest of the post. 

It would amaze me too but I work in software development at a few different companies now and lingering bugs almost always mean there is a bigger issue at hand. There is a small chance they are just focusing on other things and will come back to it later but that is very rare from what I experienced. A lot of times because of deadlines those things set aside never get looked at again. Not saying all development companies are the same but trust me it is not a baseless complaint. Contrary to what is promised I am willing to bet a lot of these issues will persist past the polishing and bug fix phase and onto release. Mark my words. But once again I hope they prove me wrong.

Now not to mention the logistics of leaving an issue around for so long will just make it that much harder to track and fix later and sometimes even impossible without a complete overhaul. Even harder if the original developer of said code is no longer available.

I'm basing this on the fact though that they are very good at responding to bugs or acknowledging things on their support forum but these issues in particular have never received a "noted: added to bug list" type response. I post about them almost every beta. The inconsistency leads me to believe they don't think it's important so I'm here to light a fire under them.

Once again don't get me wrong guys I am not bashing the game. I think you guys are taking it way to seriously in defending the game. I hope more than anything for it to succeed. Yes some of my remarks were negative but all my points remain valid. You can even view my cons list as a "suggestion" list of things that need to be fixed if it sounds better.

Ya, I ignored the tone because I remember Legaceez from the good old days and searched his posts to see many of the same posts repeated for each beta cycle. It can get annoying. Just look at my post about the roads bug which crashes the game on saves. We haven't gotten a direct response from support teams or Derek about many of these issues. We can't be sure they are recognized or how Derek is managing bug lists. Could be there are people working on the deeper bugs from WoM and bad coding is making that process take forever. Could be no one has noticed. Could be they are looking at simple fixes first. Beta 4 has just started though, so I am going to extend the benefit of the doubt until later in the cycle. Hopefully at the end we can put together a comprehensive list of those WoM bugs and get some information from the dev team. 

Exactly my sentiments seanw3! . . . We're not trying to sound like your random over-entitled gamers. We actually have a long history of participating in the betas and doing what we can to help. We've helped identify bugs and gave input on a lot of the things you see in the game now.

Don't take my post personally (it was meant for the devs unless you are one of the devs?) and don't just concentrate on specifics of my words or tone because you are missing the real issues at hand here. My brief intro was an attempt to distance myself from the random self entitled gamer but I can see that went terribly wrong. I do apologize for that.