Curse

Skawtt · Nov 23, 2006, 09:59 PM // 21:59

Whats to complain about? What bugs? Are they not fixed ASAP? No monthly fees...but I want it NOW!. No mattter how much they test there is going to be some amount of bugs when its pushed to live....and when there is I just say meh and keep going.

Saphatorael · Nov 24, 2006, 12:03 AM // 00:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cherno

I am very happy with nightfall but think their schedule is too agressive and they have to leave things out that they originally wanted. I think ever 9 months would be better than 6.

I agree.

The Elite mission isn't even finished yet, by the way.

And if they say that they want to stick to their promise of releasing a new chapter every 6 months... they're just too stubborn. They already broke it with Factions. 9 months would be ideal, indeed.
Just enough to have perfected play in a campaign, not enough to get bored of it (loads of my friends quit GW in the 10th, 11th and 12th month, unfortunately).
ANet shouldn't rush things.
Not that I'm saying NF was rushed: it's a great game, PvE sure does stand out, compared to Factions, but they admitted it's not completely finished by leaving out a hero and an elite mission.

And giving a major update soon? In December? Hmm. that's almost 9 months after Factions' release. NF should be more-or-less complete in that update. 9 months.

Feurin Longcastle · Nov 24, 2006, 12:16 AM // 00:16

I'm not sure what the issue here is, exactly. Nightfall was mostly complete as far as I can tell. There was the one major Venta bug, and some small quest bugs. Rajah and the Elite Mission also didn't make it in time. All this, in about 6 months of development, give or take. The major farming/AI bugs were introduced by Anet to coincide with release. They could have easily added those changes months before.

Compare this to say, Neverwinter Nights 2. Over 2 years of development, and the game is so buggy on launch that it's hardly playable. An 80 Mb patch is released within the first week. Tons of graphical problems, hench AI is atrocious, many features of the game (i.e. crafting) sport numerous bugs, even after the patch. There is a game that was pushed for release.

Nightfall was fairly complete, in my opinion.

Loviatar · Nov 24, 2006, 12:32 AM // 00:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by Saphatorael

I agree.

The Elite mission isn't even finished yet, by the way.

And if they say that they want to stick to their promise of releasing a new chapter every 6 months... they're just too stubborn. They already broke it with Factions. .

they did not break a thing on that.

each chapter gets one full year so after finishing GW and splitting into two teams for the future six month staggered release schedule .........

please tell me how to make 12 months into 6 months for the first Factions release.

and they did say every 6 months AFTER chapter two.

they made that quite clear

MegaMouse · Nov 24, 2006, 12:51 AM // 00:51

Granted Nightfall came out with a few problems, could have been more polished, and might have needed a bit more time in the developers hands. As I see it A-Nets and NC-Soft's reason to push it out the door to meet a launch date is reasonable seeing as they are always trying their best to fix any issues that happen to crop up. I had major isssues when the preview event went live, they were so bad that I didn't even play it after the first 20 minutes or so. I just went back to Cantha and Tyria. Not everything we as players want will make it into the main release of a game, but as an example, the dev teams did open up Sorrows Furnace for free instead of trying to sell us something they concidered too small to sell seperatly (very large area and quite hard to complete). I would rather they open a new area to us every six months, than have them do a rush job on a new chapter. I can wait for the new chapters seeing as I have 2 accounts with all 3 chapters on each (originaly bought the second to keep from deleting any of my favorite characters I created).

Mega Mouse

Yawgmoth · Nov 24, 2006, 07:56 AM // 07:56

I think its much much better with Nightfall than it was with Prophecies and Factions before. These needed far more immediate patches to fix bugs or add things that didnt make it into the release. There were plenty of uptades adding new quests and items to them.
Nightfall is by itself a complete game, lacking only some extra high-end content and it could have had some features we wait for. It had very few bugs at release comparing to previous campagins. And we know we will get more free stuff, more content, updates, improvements. Only hope we'll get the most important ones this time.

LightningHell · Nov 24, 2006, 07:58 AM // 07:58

Apart from some skills needing fixing IMO, Nightfall is a very complete game. I want Razah though.

bart · Nov 24, 2006, 08:24 AM // 08:24

with 6 months turnover for every chapter i wonder if the devs get to go on holiday

Artisan · Nov 24, 2006, 08:42 AM // 08:42

It depends.

First off, in my opinion, there were NO bugs that warranted a delay of the release date. Nothing major enough to make me think they should have released it later (and no, not being able to max sunspear isn't a 'bug', nor is the lack of an elite mission at this point in time, those are 'features')

I think they should have delayed the release date IF and ONLY IF such features as the elite mission are things they would have done if they had the time to do it - if it was on the schedule, but they didn't have the time to finish it with the release date they had, and could do it within about a month's time, then yeah, I wouldn't have minded a delay.

But for the little bugs? No, a missing elite skill or two is not reason to delay the release date - not to mention, there's no guarantee that if they had, they would have found those bugs anyway.

Ilya Khan · Nov 24, 2006, 08:49 AM // 08:49

NF, in my opinion, could have used a bit more playtesting but it is far more polished than Factions.

Xenrath · Nov 24, 2006, 02:47 PM // 14:47

Prophecies had several years of development (and it shows). Six months does seem a touch short, but then it's likely no GW campaign will ever match up to Prophecies due to the amount of time spent on the original and the comparative lack of time on the campaigns following them.

The Pointless · Nov 24, 2006, 03:11 PM // 15:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xenrath

Prophecies had several years of development (and it shows). Six months does seem a touch short, but then it's likely no GW campaign will ever match up to Prophecies due to the amount of time spent on the original and the comparative lack of time on the campaigns following them.

And for a good part of those several years, GW had a very WoW-esque look to it.

Ninna · Nov 24, 2006, 03:21 PM // 15:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xenrath

Prophecies had several years of development (and it shows).

Prophecies was the buggiest release too
http://www.guildwars.com/support/gam...ve-2005-05.php

lyra_song · Nov 24, 2006, 03:35 PM // 15:35

Dont forget how long Prophecies took to implement some 15k armors .-.

Moa Bird Cultist · Nov 24, 2006, 03:36 PM // 15:36

Just to clear something up, because 99.9% of the people that have posted here have got this wrong: Guild wars campaigns do not have a 6 month development cycle, each one spends a full year in development. Now as for Nightfall being less polished than Factions? I think some people have forgotten a little skill called Assassin's Promise? Which was missing from the game for a couple of months, if I recall correctly? What about the undeniably short PvE experience, complete with buggy missions, NPCs who body block your hench all over the place, buggy pathing, lag, disconnects, that depressing city... Not to mention an Elite mission system which was even worse than the Favour system.

By comparison, Nightfall had no Cinematic, the elite mission and 1 hero have not been implemented as of yet, (this has been admitted, unlike the missing Assassin's Promise cap, which was denied right up till the update which implemented it,) a bug which stopped players progressing, which was fixed within the day of release and a few missing caps, which have been implemented fairly quickly.

So my take is that Nightfall is vastly more polished than Factions was. It's far less buggy in it's own right, it's better paced and the story is actually credible, unlike Factions' "You're the sidekick, Mhenlo's the superhero" disaster.

Mai · Nov 24, 2006, 03:38 PM // 15:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by lyra_song

Dont forget how long Prophecies took to implement some 15k armors .-.

Seriously it took about 3 months before some classes got a 15k look for their armors. Otherwise the sets would cost 15k but it would look exactly the same or the HA bug where people would win halls but not receive fame. There are many others but I haven't had my coffee yet so I'll leave it to someone else to post the many many many bugs of Prophecies when it went live.

seut · Nov 24, 2006, 05:38 PM // 17:38

when Prophecies was released:
-all unlocks had to be gained by playing PVE
-no rune & material traders
-elites had to be capped from alive bosses while they cast it (getting Battle Rage involved littering the bosses surrounding with random drops, otherwise he wouldn't use it.. capping "target other ally" monk elites needed some strategy)
-Fire Island mission bonuses didn't work
-you had to gain refund points, if you wanted to change attributes
-several 15k armor weren't completed (Tormentors was completed in December)

Nightfall is much more complete, though i hope that the Hero equipment system will get changed (getting stuff for all is insane and swapping the equipment between different character's heroes is tedious... giving the heroes access to the pvp equipment builder would be my solution).

p.s. in the first few weeks there were locked strongboxes in the southern Shiverpeaks, i remember a guildmate getting a key as a drop

Iceman2 · Nov 25, 2006, 12:07 AM // 00:07

i remeber attribute points, going outside and killing monsters just because you put an extra point where you didnt want it

vaxmor · Nov 25, 2006, 02:39 AM // 02:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by Enchanted Warrior

Alot of what I see in game and read here makes me think the game (nightfall) was pushed out before the devs would have liked

Alot of what I see in the forums and read here makes me think that if the release date (of nightfall) had slipped to appease the W/R OP there would have been many posts whining and crying in here.

Kuldebar Valiturus · Nov 25, 2006, 02:57 AM // 02:57

This game doesn't come close to being bug ridden. Really, it's pretty damn polished. Whatever beta testing system ANet employs it seems to blow Blizzard's completely out of the water.

And, guess what, Blizzard has a polished game...but their server downtimes are horrendous, patch days are often nightmares and drag on for about a week on average before things get back to normal. (lag issues, disconnects, zone-in delays, authentication server delays...etc.)

I am sure there is always pressure to "rush" a game out the door. But, that's the job of the game company to ensure a balance is struck between the marketing demands and production quality. If they mess up...there's hell to pay and a very long recovery period.

Horizons, Shadowbane, Anarchy Online....releases can be really rough.