Bugs' invasion - Arcanum deja vu?

As I don't have ToEE so far I obviously read a few reviews and basically even though everyone agrees this is a great game as far as combat and graphics is concerned it is overflown with bugs. And a whole lot of serious ones at that. Just take a look at this thread and see for yourselves. Troika, Troika when will you learn?

One more thing, from what I read it seems there's hardly any plot beyond "forces of darkness arise" and not so many subquests either. And I was so hoping for a great Arcanum like adventure with tweaked engine and hardly any bugs. Not that I will not buy this game anyway.

 

And it won't be enough I'm afrai.d Well like someone in that forum wrote: ToEE buyer = alpha tester.

Don't get your hopes up about the main plot too much. Let me just quote an excerpt from that review:

 

i dont have this game, but i do have fallout 2 and arcanum. what is it with troika and delivering all these great games with a side order of incompleteness? jeez...

i mean, you'd think they'd learn you know? how many games have they put out that havent been riddled with glaring flaws marring the beautiful face of such quality games? may be this is why they rely on such dated graphical technology, imagine if they had to learn how to make a 3d game? itd be years of patches before the game would be playable.

 

Troika didn't make Fallout. True, Troika Games was founded by the people who made Fallout or at least some of them but it was Iterplay who delivered us Fallout.

Ok, now I really don't want to derail my own thread but have you even taken a look at screenshots of ToEE? Do you really say its graphic engine is dated? Come on, this game looks beautiful. And 3D isn't better than 2D with hand drawn backgrounds at all. But like I said I don't want to derail my own thread so if you want to discuss this matter further start a thread in GD.

 

the set designs themselves might be inspired and attractive, but the default resolution is embarassingly low.

working with a 3d engine would make it easier on them as well, because its much easier to animate a 3d model than it is to sequence the frames for a 2d sprite.

 

1, this game was developed from a D&D module, perhaps the first one written. Being D&D, it has to feature quite a bit of hack 'n slash.

2, Trokia did not have controll over content, that was WoTC, who bought TSR, the developers of D&D. They could have added more plot content if they wanted it & paid for it. Trokia could submit more plot (writing it on their own nickle) & see if it got cut like the whorehouse.

3, There are a number of sidequests in hommet, depending on alignment, & who in your party is talking. Most are fairly simple or lead to the Moathouse it is true, but some take thought.

4, Main Plotline, Help the fiends are back in the temple! This is different from Help, save the world / univerise! in exactly what way? It is not the 6 word summary of the plotline that makes it interesting, but how it unfolds. I haven't cleared the Moathouse yet, so I realy do not know how this one unfolds.

In the meantime, the game in incredably dense with features that are keeping me interested & playing. Tactics is a thread on the Atari site far more interesting than the bugs thread, none of which has yet bitten me.

 

Now that's good to read all those positive words about ToEE Shadygrove. Though I must admit that I will feel even better when there's a patch.

 

So will we all. The $64 question is will Atari / WoTC pay for it? Trokia has talked about going it on their own patchwise, but if they do that, the patch will cost.

Must check out Eye on Trokia.

 

I seriously hope it will be available for free. After all sheer decency requests it that when you sell a bugged product you must not request money for fixes.

 

of course the best alternative to dealing with this problem would be to stop making such buggy merchandise...

 

Once upon a time there were no patches for games. And then Windows came to be. Seriously, I can't remember patches before that. Of course internet development did its part. Now you can only get a bug-free game if you have a console.

 

uhhhh, warcraft 3, diablo 2, grand theft auto 3, quake 3, half life, ghost recon, sacrafice, baldur's gate 2, a few more i've played but cant think of, etc.

these games all had patches but i never actually discovered what the bugs were without looking at a list, and when i saw the list i usually had no idea what the bug descriptions meant. mostly the patches were there to IMPROVE ONLINE GAMEPLAY. we SHOULD expect mostly bugless games if we're going to be paying 50 dollars for them.

 

I have to disagree about Half-life. It had unresolved problems with Matrox Graphic cards which made it really hard to play (open_gl unusable on this card plus you couldn't quit to main menu or the graphics would be totally messed up). And these problems remained unresolved in Opposing Force and Blue Shift add-ons.

As for the rest of the games you mentioned I either agree or have no position as I didn't play all of them.

 

you sort of prove my point, i've never even heard of a matox graphics card, so if there was a patch fix for it, i didnt understand it in the read me etc.

 

Atari sold it. But Trokia has its reputation hanging out in the breeze. And then there is Wizards of the Coast who own D&D. They have a whole franchise to watch out for.

Check out the on line chat. Atari, who seems to have the least to loose rep wise, is the one who doesn't want to pay for a patch. This after releasing the game early. And probably squezing Trokia for more speed on the project.