V20 feedback

[Daithi]

Oh. You got to the base, but without getting to the boss? That's good question.
Or do you mean like you attacked the same facility on the same tile right after? (did you get intel from each battle?)
Hm, a lot of things including battles cost time now. Would it be possible that they managed to build another one in between?

We will report and brag about things but does it all need to be dealt with soon?
So far (10+ missions), no big bugs coming on my side (hadn't gotten as far as Nomad yet). Those small ones, I'm thinking about holding them captive till getting promise that they won't be tackled soon:) (or being berated for unprofessionalism, whichever comes first)

Btw., some games have threads about known issues and workarounds. As we're playing in advance, you may as well have something at hand for the EA launch. But depends what is applicable. Right now comes to my mind as useful to warn linux (and perhaps mac) players about alt-tabbing. If you want I can sum it up for them.

It seems like they may not be removed... will tackle soon : )

Any bugs you report... will be tackled soon!

Good idea concerning known issues - will write up some info on this for steam page.

[Nomad]

Have sort of used enemy facilities & rackets interchangably - they are the same thing. So attacking one doesn't remove it?

Correct.
I believe the button to start a Facility attack shows up before the Facility is ready (the button is there, but it doesn't work).
Attacking the Facility doesn't remove it. I've hit the same one three times.

Should be 12% ... whoops

Is it just the description that's wrong? Does it function correctly?

Dammit... I came on here to ask a question about something that didn't feel right... but I answered these and forgot what I was going to ask.
Edit: I remembered. Do skills max out at 150? Elena's gun skill was at 151 and I couldn't spend any more points on it.

[Nomad]

Also... I'm interrogating the heck out of these people.
I keep getting the message that they want to spill, but they don't know any more than I do.

What is required to find out about Lieutenants? I only have 33% on one for one gang and I have one at 66% for another gang.
There are four of them per gang and no one is giving up the goods.
Is there some kind of requirement or trigger to gain more intel?

[Daithi]

Correct.
I believe the button to start a Facility attack shows up before the Facility is ready (the button is there, but it doesn't work).
Attacking the Facility doesn't remove it. I've hit the same one three times.

Okay, that's on the list for V21.

Is it just the description that's wrong? Does it function correctly?

Dammit... I came on here to ask a question about something that didn't feel right... but I answered these and forgot what I was going to ask.
Edit: I remembered. Do skills max out at 150? Elena's gun skill was at 151 and I couldn't spend any more points on it.

Yes, perk functions properly to the best of my knowledge - it's just the display string that is incorrect. Skill should be able to go higher than 150 (from automatic allocation), but by the sounds of it, you can't manually raise them any higher. 150 isn't necessarily the skill cap though, it will be revised later on.

[Nomad]

Yup... I've seen it go higher, I just can't increase it.
That's cool. It means I'll start spending the points on other skills now.  =)

[ushas]

It seems like they may not be removed... will tackle soon : )

Did survivalist training facility at G4. The mission including post mission looting took 6 hours. Afterwards: there is facility at G4. I think, getting what you were talking about, guys.

One more thing happened with that: no post-facility intel. Opened a bug thread for this. @Nomad, I think it would be useful if you can add anything to that. I did only one facility attack so far.

As I see it, if there is no intel from facilities we'are gonna have even harder time to reach gang leaders than during v19.

Any bugs you report... will be tackled soon!

Hm, as 'tackled soon' is conditioned by 'report'...
Oh, I see!   No report -> not soon.

But ok. Will try to write up things during tomorrow.

[ushas]

Went to check the shop page and... folks are mentioning bugs, I've failed!

Will try to post the ones due from the last week with regard to what is reported on Steam forums in case of duplicates.
Are issues posted also somewhere else than there?

Btw., @Nomad, are you moving to Steam or staying here?

[Nomad]

I hate Steam with a passion that burns as brightly as a thousand suns.

[ushas]

Wow, such an animoluminosity makes your passion a giant star!

May I ask why so much?  (don't have to answer, of course)

Not a fan myself too, if not drm-free won't bother. Just that staying away is usually enough in terms of feelings from me.

[Nomad]

It all started with Half-life...
My girlfriend was studying in another city and I went to visit her for a while. I took my computer with me and decided that I would re-install half-life on it. I used the CD's I had and installed the game.
Then... it required me to use Steam...
I just wanted to play a bit of half-life. I had the CD's. The game is single player.
Steam refused to let me play.
I had to wait for half-life to update... over a dial-up connection.
Took much longer than 8 hours. I was livid.

Another time I bought a graphics card. The game Dirt 3 came with it.
I installed the graphics card and then went to install the game to run the card through it's paces.
That's when I got this lovely dialog box:


I thought it was a bit strange, so I contacted Steam support.
They said: Send us a picture of the game box, the receipt, the CD key and I think they wanted something else... but I forget.
Now... this wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't back 2007 before mobile phones with camera's were a big thing. I had a film camera.
Sufficed to say I did what I could and Steam jerked me around for ages.... Three months in fact.
This is me contacting Steam, Eidos UK, and other help sites trying to get the game sorted.


It was three months before I was even able to install the game.
I played it a bit, but was so soured by the experience of talking to a brick wall that I uninstalled it in disgust.

About a year later I thought that I probably didn't like Dirt 3 just because of how Steam treated me. So I went to reinstall it again... and got this message:


I contacted Steam support and said something like: "I don't care about this game any more. I don't want to install it. What I DO want to know is why the key has been taken away. I fought for three months to prove I own the game. Does someone else have the same key. What is happening?"
Steam's response was: Send us a picture of the game box, the receipt, the CD key and I think they wanted something else... but I forget.
I replied telling them to fuck off and left it at that.

Funnily enough... many years later... when they released the Dirt 3 Complete Edition... I got a copy.  ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?


Another time I logged on to Steam I was greeted with this screen:

That's a little dude telling me to F-off.

Another time I bought Mafia II from the shop, took it home and went to install it and got this screen:


So on and so forth.
Effectively I keep Steam in offline mode. Then when I go online for one of the few games that is online only, Steam and I play a game of "Guess which games Steam will disable". I play mostly single player games. Yet Steam refuses to let me play them if the developer has added Steam controller support. Or updated the game to support some language I don't speak. These are games that I don't go online with yet I can't choose whether to update or not.

The one that pisses me off... I was playing a game called Satelite Reign.
One day I couldn't play it until I updated it. The update was the developer disabling the cloth in the game because some people were having issues with the cloth. Until Unity fixed the cloth issue, they disabled it.
I WASN'T having an issue with the cloth. I LIKED the cloth. Tough luck. No cloth for you.
No choice.
Hate it.

GoG
GoG have got it right. You don't have to use it. You don't have to patch. It's wonderful.
It's the place to go if you want to get the latest official patches, but you aren't forced to use them.
When I jump on to play a game for 20 minutes... I don't want to be spending that 20 minutes watching Steam update the single player game.


And all this.... doesn't even touch on the fact that Steam can simply take all your games away from you.
They pretend they're a shop front. But they're not.
They're not a shop, they're more like a game's arcade where you have to enter to play.
When you buy at a shop, if you violate the shop's conditions of entry, they kick you out and you can't buy from them any more. They don't come to your house and remove everything you've bought from them previously.

Also... the examples above are not all of the reasons I hate Steam. This has been going on since Half-Life was released.

[ushas]

First of all, appreciated all that write-up. You're good at documenting.

In a way being lucky not to have such first hand experiences. Steam wasn't supporting Linux long time. In 2007 not many games run natively anyway. For a change, I was probably spending half a day trying to get Planescape: Torment running under the wine program ('not' an emulator of win). Playing then felt like you earned it:)

Being a child of the open source world, the philosophy is more about the right tools for the job, specialized building blocks, and liberty. All in one solutions are in conflict.

Seems to me Steam is offering comfort for players and developers alike, in exchange of autonomy. Great if everything goes well and if not being out of norm, but when doesn't, enjoy feeling powerless...

GOG is... better:)
But we should be making backups.

[Nomad]

I'm an old-school gamer. Or, should that read "I'm an old gamer"?

I have a collection of computer games starting from back in the old five-and-a-quarter-inch floppy disk days.

I'm used to buying a game, installing it and playing it. When it doesn't work like that, I get annoyed.
I used to get cracks for all my games because I thought it was laughable that game publishers thought that their disk was the only one I'd have in my drive.
Swapping disks constantly to play different games was just never realistic.

Steam has cheapened the game's market. Just look at the absolute deluge of garbage on Steam. They opened the floodgates for any shitty developer to dump their barely playable garbage.

Not to mention Steam sales.
How does that help developers? "Oooh... that game looks interesting. I'll wait for a Steam sale."
Why pay full price when you KNOW that the game will be discounted sometime soon.
(by the way... if you buy a game on GoG and then it goes on sale shortly after, they give you credit of the difference, as though you bought it at the sale price)

Steam's cheapened the whole thing and the only one that has benefited financially... is Steam. They take a huge cut for just being a "store front".

My wife, and one of my best friends, love Steam. Both of them fully understand why I hate it. My friend even jokes that Steam has a flag on my account that tells them to f*@# me over.

[Daithi]

Went to check the shop page and... folks are mentioning bugs, I've failed!

Will try to post the ones due from the last week with regard to what is reported on Steam forums in case of duplicates.
Are issues posted also somewhere else than there?

Btw., @Nomad, are you moving to Steam or staying here?

There are some bugs, not dozens/hundreds of bugs - you have succeeded : )

[Daithi]

It all started with Half-life...
My girlfriend was studying in another city and I went to visit her for a while. I took my computer with me and decided that I would re-install half-life on it. I used the CD's I had and installed the game.
Then... it required me to use Steam...
I just wanted to play a bit of half-life. I had the CD's. The game is single player.
Steam refused to let me play.
I had to wait for half-life to update... over a dial-up connection.
Took much longer than 8 hours. I was livid.

Another time I bought a graphics card. The game Dirt 3 came with it.
I installed the graphics card and then went to install the game to run the card through it's paces.
That's when I got this lovely dialog box:


I thought it was a bit strange, so I contacted Steam support.
They said: Send us a picture of the game box, the receipt, the CD key and I think they wanted something else... but I forget.
Now... this wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't back 2007 before mobile phones with camera's were a big thing. I had a film camera.
Sufficed to say I did what I could and Steam jerked me around for ages.... Three months in fact.
This is me contacting Steam, Eidos UK, and other help sites trying to get the game sorted.


It was three months before I was even able to install the game.
I played it a bit, but was so soured by the experience of talking to a brick wall that I uninstalled it in disgust.

About a year later I thought that I probably didn't like Dirt 3 just because of how Steam treated me. So I went to reinstall it again... and got this message:


I contacted Steam support and said something like: "I don't care about this game any more. I don't want to install it. What I DO want to know is why the key has been taken away. I fought for three months to prove I own the game. Does someone else have the same key. What is happening?"
Steam's response was: Send us a picture of the game box, the receipt, the CD key and I think they wanted something else... but I forget.
I replied telling them to fuck off and left it at that.

Funnily enough... many years later... when they released the Dirt 3 Complete Edition... I got a copy.  ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?


Another time I logged on to Steam I was greeted with this screen:

That's a little dude telling me to F-off.

Another time I bought Mafia II from the shop, took it home and went to install it and got this screen:


So on and so forth.
Effectively I keep Steam in offline mode. Then when I go online for one of the few games that is online only, Steam and I play a game of "Guess which games Steam will disable". I play mostly single player games. Yet Steam refuses to let me play them if the developer has added Steam controller support. Or updated the game to support some language I don't speak. These are games that I don't go online with yet I can't choose whether to update or not.

The one that pisses me off... I was playing a game called Satelite Reign.
One day I couldn't play it until I updated it. The update was the developer disabling the cloth in the game because some people were having issues with the cloth. Until Unity fixed the cloth issue, they disabled it.
I WASN'T having an issue with the cloth. I LIKED the cloth. Tough luck. No cloth for you.
No choice.
Hate it.

GoG
GoG have got it right. You don't have to use it. You don't have to patch. It's wonderful.
It's the place to go if you want to get the latest official patches, but you aren't forced to use them.
When I jump on to play a game for 20 minutes... I don't want to be spending that 20 minutes watching Steam update the single player game.


And all this.... doesn't even touch on the fact that Steam can simply take all your games away from you.
They pretend they're a shop front. But they're not.
They're not a shop, they're more like a game's arcade where you have to enter to play.
When you buy at a shop, if you violate the shop's conditions of entry, they kick you out and you can't buy from them any more. They don't come to your house and remove everything you've bought from them previously.

Also... the examples above are not all of the reasons I hate Steam. This has been going on since Half-Life was released.

I can feel the anger from all the way over here

[Nomad]

I can feel the anger from all the way over here

I'm not surprised, seeing as:

I hate Steam with a passion that burns as brightly as a thousand suns.

=)