Bard's Tale The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep - Director's Cut

[Curratum]

Because they obviously want those negative reviews. There is no way in hell Fargo was not aware of the state the game was in, yet they chose to release.

 

[Mustawd]

Why didn't they go Early Access until everything was fixed?

This is actually a good question. Is their money situation so bad they couldn’t polish more? Unless ur a AAA game everyone is gonna okay anyhow, your game is gonna get killed review-wise if it has shit performance.

 

[JarlFrank]

Yeah, this smells like inXile was really low on funds and had to go for the full release NOW because that brings in more sales than EA.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

I'm also irritated that in order to create your own party members, you have to get fucking tokens.

-If a mechanic isn't fun, the defense is that it's more realistic
-If a mechanic is unrealistic, the defense is that it's more fun

This mechanic is both unrealistic and not fun, so I dunno what the defense is.

 

[BEvers]

There is no way in hell Fargo was not aware of the state the game was in, yet they chose to release.

I don't think he was, he seemed genuinely surprised. He even called out a specific group of employees for the foul-up:

 

[newtmonkey]

That's what happens when you don't have a certified megagenius like Michael Cranford or Rebecca Heineman designing and programming your games for you

Instead, the lead designer was influenced by Hearthstone or Duelyst, in his own words.

 

[toro]

Why didn't they go Early Access until everything was fixed?

The entire design is flawed. It cannot be fixed unless they develop an entire new game.

 

[Hamster]

Ok, never mind what I said earlier about Gord... troupeg is coming in hot!! This guy is showing true dedication.

Nah, troupeg is just a harmless troll. Gord is a variation of the normal person meme that can actually do a lot of harm.
"Hello, fellow rpg fan, i hate dumbing down too, but wouldn't you agree that there is no harm in removing all those skills? Old games were not actually that good anyway, so no harm is done. Let's just enjoy ourselves!"
I vividly remember packs of such posters roaming gaming forums in the wake of Oblivion's release and managing to convince a huge chunk of the populace.

 

[Bohr]

The new patch has been released apparently!

... only to that youtube guy I mentioned earlier who lost 45 mins of progress to a soft crash in a battle lol

At least the threads are still making progress

 

[Grampy_Bone]

The new patch has been released apparently!

... only to that youtube guy I mentioned earlier who lost 45 mins of progress to a soft crash in a battle lol

At least the threads are still making progress

This is amazing.

 

[Hamster]

LoL the main quest is bugged and you can't progress "bones in the fog". I don't know what to say.... those people deserve what they get. Fargo up yours!

All the main quest cheevos after that point are still stuck at 0% on Steam, 72 hours after release. So yeah, looks like the main quest might be impossible to complete right now. No wonder so many reviewers still have "reviews in progress"

 

[fantadomat]

Found a new obstacle

 

[Shadenuat]

That hp discrepancy between creatures on the screen is hilarious. And a reason why I wouldn't pick Hard for this game again ever, since it drags so long.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

weird how not a single ""professional"" reviewer mentioned that the game can't be completed
wonder how they got around it

 

[newtmonkey]

"As someone with 10,000+ hours gaming"
10,000+ hours logged in the trenches of video games, what a hero

That breaks down to 10 hours a week for 20 years. Is that supposed to be impressive?

 

[ortucis]

As amusing this thread is, I feel bad for the developers. They must've been so excited during release, only to have the whole house come crumbling down in a day of bad reviews.

While we're at it, is it just me or hardly anyone talking about the game world? Shouldn't a interesting story and characters be a thing in an RPG? Maybe I am expecting too much from a blobber. Last one I played was M&M and it was fun, but still generic shite when it came to the game world itself.

That said, any interest I had in this game waned after reading some reviews like this. Weird though, I played and finished Hunted, another Unreal game from inXile a long time ago (it was alright). Unreal 4 doesn't really differ that much from Unreal 3, so how exactly did they manage to fuck up a simple blobber on this engine performance-wise? Demon Forge ran just fine without any crashes back then.

Also, this serves as a good example to idiots who attack Unity engine. It's the developers who fuck games up on these engines, doesn't matter how amazing the toolset is (and Unreal 4 is pretty amazing compared to Unity).

 

[BEvers]

First report of an RTX 2080 being unable to maintain 60FPS in FullHD: https://forums.inxile-entertainment.com/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=19487

This is by far the most graphically demanding RPG ever made

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

It climbed up from 46. Great success.

ive heard you work in inxile now. How are purchase numbers looking?

probably looking for a new employer now

heard larian is always hiring

Sven seems like a weirdo, but it would be an pportunity to urinate into McComb's shoes.

Tempting.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Why didn't they go Early Access until everything was fixed?

That is the best post in this thread to date. Seems obvious to go for that instead. They knew it's fucked. They knew people will react badly. They've done EA before so it wouldn't shock anybody. Must be more desperate for money than we realized.

 

[Gord]

You're the one intentionally misrepresenting all criticisms as a dislike of change.

No, you obviously don't read and/or understand what I'm saying.
All I've ever said is that it's a heavy case of nostalgia and very selective memories if Bard's Tale 1-3 are painted as highbrow or complex games. They weren't. And thus most of the things that BT4 allegedly removed weren't to be found in the series anyway.
Whether BT4 might be a better RPG if it had them is a completely different question.
Unfortunately you are being deliberately obtuse here, because edgy.

 

[Jarpie]

If they're gonna fix up many of the problems by the end of the next week, as they (I think) claimed, why not just push up the release by two weeks? They must've known what is the state of the game, were they that desperate for money?

 

[Zombra]

I don’t understand how they thought the combat engine was a good idea. What the fuck is up with only having so many points to spend across your entire party? Has there ever been an RPG in history where every character doesn’t get to do something on their turn? The way this plays out, some characters can’t even act if you have a party bigger than the point pool available to you.
I mean, come on guys, what is this shit?

Remember that the combat system is largely inspired by card games. You can only play so many cards in a turn and the rest remain in your hand. If you want to play 4 Wizard cards in a row instead of one each of Wizard, Fighter, Rogue, Bard, you can. Of course you don't have to.

The combat system is odd. Under no circumstances can it make sense that one character would have all the opportunity in combat, and another just sits there twiddling their thumbs.

Of course it can. In terms of visual explanation, I appreciate that these moves are called "opportunity". I enjoy that circumstances don't afford every person a chance to do something every x amount of time like clockwork. Physical combat is far more chaotic than that. Watch a boxing match, you'll see that the contestants don't each swing exactly one punch every six seconds. They wait for good opportunities, then make a flurry of moves. In a group situation opportunities will open up for some while others are still looking for a window. Try walking through a narrow door at the same time as a friend - you can't do it, there's not enough room. Even though you both have the same amount of time to spend, one of you has to wait for the other to go through. Think of Opportunity Points as an abstraction of this idea and it makes sense.

While we're at it, is it just me or hardly anyone talking about the game world? Shouldn't a interesting story and characters be a thing in an RPG? Maybe I am expecting too much from a blobber.

Well, there are obviously more controversial issues out there and controversy drives internet conversation.

For whatever it's worth, I thought the story was interesting as far as I got in the beta. I cared about a few of the characters and the conspiracy plot was a good hook that motivated me. I guess the world itself is medium to cool; there's a generic fantasy town and a generic tower dungeon, but also an "undercity" with the old town being underground, kind of a neato environment now that I think about it. Of course I haven't seen most of the game so I have no idea what later areas are like.

If they're gonna fix up many of the problems by the end of the next week, as they (I think) claimed, why not just push up the release by two weeks? They must've known what is the state of the game, were they that desperate for money?

Eh, once you declare a release date it's bad form to miss it I guess. Anyway, who expects a final product on day one these days? Not an excuse, just facing the reality.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

I gotta say a lot of negative reviews from people claiming to be backers are downright idiotic. Oh I backed for 30 million dollars and I feel betrayed because this is nothing like original games. No, it's not, but no one ever claimed it's going to be. A lot if not most of these changes were communicated already during the campaign. Others were obvious, it's not 1985, you're not going to have text based combat, nigga.

Do these people have attention span of an ameba and not understand that they're backing a turn-based game with card game inspired combat? Nobody was fucking hiding that information.

I get being angry about grid movement, but some of these people are clearly retarded.

 

[Gord]

If they're gonna fix up many of the problems by the end of the next week, as they (I think) claimed, why not just push up the release by two weeks? They must've known what is the state of the game, were they that desperate for money?

Eh, once you declare a release date it's bad form to miss it I guess. Anyway, who expects a final product on day one these days? Not an excuse, just facing the reality.

This is one thing I don't understand either. Sure, delaying the release is not a great thing, but releasing in that state is practically suicide.

 

[Mortmal]

LoL the main quest is bugged and you can't progress "bones in the fog". I don't know what to say.... those people deserve what they get. Fargo up yours!

ha, clusterfucks like this game are so great. It's going to be comparatively boring when Kingmaker comes out and everyone is just playing it and the posts about it are just "yeah this is pretty good"

The codex will bash it to high heavens,for the first few days that is. After that people will begin talking about old games as usual,just look at this thread.

Shall we start betting brofists about kingmaker release state , will this indie team from russia delivers a smooth bug free experience with great performance , or will it be like TOE release day ? Pretty sure it will be a bug fest as well.