Fallen Enchantress 1.20 update is on its way

When the update is available (next week), will I be able to update directly from v1.02, with a single download ? 

The thing is, I never got around to downloading that intermediate fix (v1.12 ?), because I didn't want to lose  "Curgen's Volcano" (which became prohibitively "expensive" - mana-wise), without the chance of being able to use it, in a couple of games.

Thanks for the Info, and all your other good work!          

If you are actually listening to customer complaints (as you say) when (if ever) will you start fixing those numerous serious bugs in the game? Fine-tuning is completely pointless as long as even the most basic game mechanics don't work. Or are things so broken that you don't dare to touch them? I for my part won't waste any more time, let alone money, on this game until I see a really long list of bugs fixed in the changelog.

And what bugs would that be in your opinion?

???

If you had read the support forum during the past two weeks, you could have noticed some 20+ bug reports from myself alone, many of them containing detailed descriptions, screenshots, and savegames. Quite often I was told that the bug was known since the public beta test and had been reported several times before.

EDIT: BTW it seems like a strange coincidence that the "Latest Post" in the "FE Support" line on the front page never points to any of those showstoppers.

First time here after a long time of absence. Will check...

edit:

Well, I'm not a fanboi of some sort, though I appreciate the game and SD's effort to make up for E:WoM. But most of what you have reported are nuisances. Major ones at best. But no real show stoppers. At least in MY book.

The issue of AI settling on ressources or other "forbidden" tiles and execution of planned moves upon loading a savegame are major bugs that should easily be fixed. I give you that...

I would classify cases of not obeying the game's rules as a showstopper. But if you only put crashes into that category (there are a lot of them too), that's okay with me. I won't quarrel about words.

Three central areas (certainly not the only ones) that subsume a lot of bug reports are:

• Not properly updating the state of the world after some action or event.
• Unit movement (movement points, pathfinding, planned moves, ...).
• User interface.

I'm not at all sure that they can be fixed easily. What I find even more alarming is that the main purpose of the latest releases was to increment the version number. Derek Paxton was tweaking some values (which is his job as a game designer) and Brad "Frogboy" Wardell improved the AI slightly. Probably they are the only ones working on the game ATM. And they don't even bother to fix the simple things like typos.

Kewlness glad to know more SINGLE SOLO Player content is coming soon. Love this game! Love Stardock! Keep up the good work. Stay the cause and all that stuff.

Maybe they have addressed some of the issues you mentioned, but just didn't bother mentioning it in this notice. Seems like it would be more appropriate to list a laundry list of fixes, after 1.2 has been "signed off" on.

I very much hope that you are correct, but generally, I agree with Baddl.  Why not spend a week fixing the 'easy' stuff?  Then it would be done & over with.  In my experience with 'games under development,' it is often the simple things that cause users the most consternation.  And there's always the problem that, if you don't fix the 'easy' things expeditiously, they eventually get forgotten, and never get fixed.

This said, I'll freely acknowledge that things that seem like 'easy fixes' to users are actually vastly more complicated to correct.  Path-finding is probably a good example of this.  How frustrating it is to click to have a unit move west and have it abruptly start heading east - the opposite direction!     The path-finding is probably trying to find a 'safe' path to the destination.  I've learned that, if I have a mounted unit that wants to move through another faction's outpost territory along a road (which it can do easily - just 9 squares), I first have to manually move the unit into the outpost territory and then click a path to the other side - and the path-finding has no problem with this.

The trick is, you have to create a 'condition'in the path-finding algorithm that will allow entry into another faction's terrain as long as you can get out of it on the same turn - no harm, no foul.  How many additional conditions like this would have to be created to have the path-finding work 'properly?'

What he says, it sucks that the game have numerous bugs I have to explain to my friends when showing them the game, and a pretty big scare to them too.

My biggest problems with the issues I have is they are rather commonplace when I play the game, so long since I posted them though, can't be bothered to repost it any more

Edit: Want to clarify I use the word "Bugs" in a loose way...

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

I'm in the too many bugs and UI issues camp too. Not to mention the AI could still do with a significant amount of work so that it is playing by vaguely the same rules and presents a good challenge.

I'm surprised people are concerned about pathing issues since it has such an easy workaround i.e. move your unit slowly.  This works like 99% of the time...

I agree with Mistwraithe's post however I would really love to see the AI present a challenge without having to cheat so much i.e. mobs hardly ever attack them whereas if I wake a mob next to a city it will attack my city the next turn.  Absurd...  I took a lvl 3 enemy city one turn only to have a dragon go directly after the city and destroy it.  The Dragon didn't care about the city until I took it over...  It's a fun game but I would love to see the AI improved and not cheat.

I agree that pathing can be worked around but it slows gameplay down significantly to do it. The same goes for another of other similar bugs where you can't trust the shortcut behaviour (eg auto resolve for a start). This makes playing FE more of a chore than it should be, you spend too much time babysitting everything. FE is already a fairly slow paced game, it needs to have lots of reliable streamlining of such things.

I will never understand the mindset of people who suggest that serious bugs (and nuisances, for that matter) need not be fixed because there are (obvious but tedious) workarounds. ("Obvious" after you reload the savegame and try again.) Even a game should not waste our time.

Fixing bugs probably should attack the problem from two sides: (1) Fix the easy things immediately. (2) Acknowledge harder problems and schedule their solution for some future version. Providing feedback is the prerequisite for expecting patience.

Not even close. There are so many glitchy areas on the map where it's nearly impossible to select the right tile for unit movement and accidentally clicking on the wrong pixel somehow sends a unit on a long path in the opposite direction. It's like the gaps between the hills is the abyss and clicking on it makes your units run away in terror.

What he said

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

If you are worried about a video game wasting your time, you should probably stop playing and get some work done. Or, you should just play a shooter, get your catharsis out on some quick killing, then move on. PC strategy gaming, as a genre, relies on a certain amount of patience and time investment, no? FE is clearly not designed with quick, in and out play time in mind.

Hard to sympathize with those having a scorned attitude about this. Plenty of companies will take more than $40 of your money and not listen at all. Plenty of high-budget and polished games have bugs that are never fixed, and players naturally find workarounds.

Don't play any Elder Scrolls games. You'll waste a lot of time on corrupt saves and bugged out quests. You'll also miss some of the best games ever made, but who wants to waste time?

Your blithe dismissal of dozens of bug reports ignores the fact that people are not complaining that FE is too difficult for their shooter-addled brains, but rather that the game contains serious flaws and glitches which have persisted for months after commercial release.  Playing FE often feels like beta-testing for a game which may one day be great, and that's not what people expect from a supposedly finished product.  

That Stardock is not a company which jumps players in alleyways and steals their cash is a pathetic standard to meet.  We ask for better because we have played and enjoyed games in the genre and therefore know that FE is capable of being so much more.  

Shooters are great, not for dummies. They just require less time commitment than strategy games, generally.

I've logged between 150 - 200 hours in the same game you have. I've seen the bugs over and over. Here's my own post on suggested AI improvements, for the record:

https://forums.elementalgame.com/439017

 FE is frustrating at times, and has lots of typos, but nontheless is functionally finished and not at all broken, at least by modern gaming standards (again, Elder Scrolls games, or how about face imports not working on Mass Effect3 launch?). It certainly has many bugs, but it is playable and fun, and I have played many seminal strategy games.

No one is knocking bug reports here. To whoever logged bugs and is helping to make the game I play better, I respect your efforts and thank you for it.

But whining on the forums that the developers aren't doing what you want, soon enough, is petty and doesn't deserve respect from the developers. 

Creating great games takes massive effort. Whining takes little. This game was released at $40, I got it on Steam for $26. Skyrim went for $60 and had MORE bugs at release. Skyrim is one of the best games ever made despite its bugs - you got a great game with bugs for even less money, more than likely.

Appreciate a company that is still trying to improve this game. 

"We ask for better because we have played and enjoyed games in the genre and therefore know that FE is capable of being so much more.  "

It's not as polished as other strategy games. Fair enough. I think the game is great right now, on its own merits as a semi-unique (outside Master Of Magic) genre blend. Not all will agree with me.

There's making suggestions to receptive developers about improving a game. And then, there's being an entitled princess about the next update not fulfilling your wishes. I'm only criticizing one. Small developers like Stardock, despite their flaws, deserve better.

It's certainly a waste of time to reply to a post like yours. Bobchillingworth said enough already.

For a meaningful comparison you should consider games like Age of Wonders or Civilization 4 plus Fall from Heaven. Concerning the price, those games shipped in a plastic case with a CD and a printed manual, localized to your country...

I can only repeat that this is the buggiest game that I've ever played (and I could even add a "by far") and Stardock is the most unresponsive company I know.

Go on the 2k forums a couple of times and see what unresponsive really is.

Yea, I gotta interject here; no offense dude, but you must have been very lucky in your choice of games, or pretty new to gaming if FE is the buggiest game you've ever played.

As for SD being unresponsive, can't agree with that either. 2K is a great example, check out their remake of XCOM for a truly buggy game. Or King Arthur from Paradox/Neocore. Both of these games contained truly game-breaking bugs, which as far as I know still haven't been fixed. Cripes, Paradox has practically built a name on how buggy their games can be.

That said, FE definitely has it's share of apparent bugs, strange programmed opponent behaviors, design flaws and annoyances. I haven't encountered anything game-breaking, but I only have 265 hours in so far.    I have definitely had some experiences with the game that have annoyed me, (not going to list them because they've all been posted, some repeatedly, on these forums), enough so that I've put it aside until this coming update.

Stardock is one of the few companies I appreciate because of their communication with their customer base, and I'm looking forward to the changes listed for the update.

As I've told my kids a billion times, hyperbole erases believability, but they are by far the most unresponsive and buggiest kids I know.

Considering that its predecessor, Oblivion, was better; I'm not sure where you are going with this....

Post actual bug reports, or it didn't happen.

You can't expect Stardock to fix things unless you are a lot more specific then "it's buggy". Many issues are hardware specific so you have to bring up your specific issues if you want them fixed.