Gothic 3 - Patch News [Archive]

Gorath

March 30th, 2007, 19:49

Piranha Bytes´ music wizard Kai Rosenkranz posted a few infos about the next patch (http://forum.jowood.de/showpost.php?p=2029746&postcount=1558) in the official forum, followed by a further clarification (http://forum.jowood.de/showpost.php?p=2029790&postcount=1570).
Of course the posts are in German. Here´s a short summary and a few points based on other sources mixed in:

Is the patch confirmed? Yes.
ETA: Unknown. PB / JoWooD will only announce it when they are sure to ship on time.
KaiRo said they´re running into considerable problems in various areas while developing the patch.
Is it free of charge? Yes. Additional distribution methods are under consideration, for example including it on the next project´s DVD, but the usual free download options will definitely be made available.
Will the patch make it necessary to start over? No definite infos about this, but PB is evaluating it.
Size: Unconfirmed, although it seems safe to expect the dimension to be GB rather than MB.
Reason: "Changes to story / logic / world data / 3D data lead to a size explosion [of the patch]" (transl.)
The technical problems are solved (status -> patch 1.12). Therefor PB prefers to work on a well thought out solution instead of rushing the patch out the door.
Months ago PB has made clear they are well aware they can only ship a patch of this size once.If you add up 2+2 it´s not unlikely PB could be pulling a Bethesda and ship the patch a few days before the "next project" everybody thinks he knows what it is hits the shelves.More information. (http://www.rpgwatch.com/show/newsbit?newsbit=4449)

josephwatson

March 30th, 2007, 19:49

Maybe someday they'll finish this. Disappearing landscape and floating trees really break the immersion for me. Great game, don't get me wrong, just not as polished as I'd like it.

Alrik Fassbauer

March 30th, 2007, 20:54

Shipping it on the "next project's DVD" sounds very much as if there was an addpon in the works. It simply would make sense this way, imho.

txa1265

March 30th, 2007, 21:11

Shipping it on the "next project's DVD" sounds very much as if there was an addpon in the works. It simply would make sense this way, imho.

Well, I think that they had to look at the possibility that some people wouldn't be able to get the patch otherwise. So those people will have to wait a while, likely.

Gorath

March 30th, 2007, 21:26

Well, I think that they had to look at the possibility that some people wouldn't be able to get the patch otherwise. So those people will have to wait a while, likely.

The patch will certainly also be included on print mag DVDs. Other options are asking a friend to download it or requesting the patch from the publisher. In Germany most of them send out patches on CD/DVD for free - although they make sure to wait some time to discourage people from going this easy route all the time. ;)

karka

March 30th, 2007, 21:28

ETA: Unknown. PB / JoWooD will only announce it when they are sure to ship on time.

This was funny. They had no problem with releasing the game unfinished however.

Gorath

March 30th, 2007, 21:30

This was funny. They had no problem with releasing the game unfinished however.

Unfinished but in time. ;)

bjon045

March 30th, 2007, 21:42

I really don't see why they couldn't have released another small patch that just addressed quest bugs or made it so some skills actually worked.

It certainly does sound like something Beth did with the 1.2 patch, but at least with the Oblivion 1.2 patch we actually have it now, god knows how long it is going to be till the "next project" is released. And the other difference is Oblivion was actually close to bug-free for most people....

Ragon der Magier

March 30th, 2007, 23:09

"... pulling a Bethesda..."

*ROFL*:rotfl::rotfl: :rotfl:

There are really curious ways of making oneself a name... aren´t there?!
^^

If this will really become a standing phrase?! :uneasy: :cool:

Ragon, very amused indeed

curious

March 31st, 2007, 02:18

Moriendor

March 31st, 2007, 03:35

yeah real close to bethesda
patch 1- 1mb patch 2- 5 mb (oblivion)
patch 1 thru 4 over 50 mb each final patch over 1 gig.

also the orginal oblivion was released ~7 months before gothic 3 and it took them 1 year for a 2nd patch. i don't think you've quite given gothic 3 and its much smaller staff quite a fair chance;)

also one of the main guild quests i had in oblivion was unrepairablely broken, which i see as a huge problem. gothic 3 may have crahsed more but i had no such game breaking bugs from gothic 3. and a few missing skills and detachable trees while certainly are annoying and show a lack of polish are squashed bugs on a semi compared to the contents of said semi that contains something even more awesome that a car name kit.

Ummm... I'm not sure which Oblivion you are talking about but the game that goes by the name of Oblivion and that was made by Bethesda that I played had a mod (so much for "unrepairable" no. 1) that fixed that one guild quest almost instantly after release (I'm assuming that you are talking about the mage guild quest and a missing body). Secondly, that quest was also officially fixed via the first patch that was released three months after the game was released (so much for "unrepairable" no. 2). Thirdly, that bug is a rare occurrence that only ever affected a very small number of players.
Finally, it made a hell of a lot of sense for Bethesda to leave Oblivion alone for the most part (the game was rock stable out of the box for the vast majority of the players) so the mod community could unfold in peace. A patch orgy (that would have been completely unnecessary... what for anyway?) would have interrupted many modding projects because of potential version conflicts and incompatibilities. Frequent patches would have annoyed, frustrated and potentially destroyed the ES modding community. That would have been plain stupid of Bethesda. It definitely made sense to take a wait and see approach and to learn from the community how they would put the ES construction set to use. Then patch when it's inevitable because you need a clean code base for the expansion. That's what they did. That's why you haven't seen a million patches.

Gothic III on the other hand is a totally different (sad) story and there are definitely still game-breaking bugs in the game (save game corruption is still being reported, NPCs falling through the world etc.). Just because you haven't experienced one of those bugs doesn't mean that there are none (just like the Oblivion bug that you experienced does not happen to everyone by far). You need to see the bigger picture and stop thinking of yourself and your own experiences as the center of the universe.

curious

March 31st, 2007, 04:01

i would never want to take away the center of the universe title away from the reigning champ but insults aside i was not referring to that quest and i never have nor should i be required to use mods. its obvious that you like the mod community but i don't share much in common with the average gamer so why should place my faith in their unknown abilities. i am of the mind to believe in the developer who is making the game. if there is something wrong with the game in my opinion then they have let me down. i don't play games because i want to share the experience with someone else or their version of what they think the game should be. obviously i have used some single player content over the years but with the exception of bloodlines i have never kept a mod installed (and that was after playing the game 3 times first). you care about bethesda, i care about pirahna bytes i think that pretty much somes up our viewpoints.

JDR13

March 31st, 2007, 04:47

I agree, you shouldn't have to mod a game to fix things that should never have been wrong in the first place.

Moriendor

March 31st, 2007, 06:03

you care about bethesda, i care about pirahna bytes i think that pretty much somes up our viewpoints.

No, it doesn't because the Gothic series -despite the piece of crap that part 3 currently still is (I'm still hopeful regarding the patch though)- ranks quite a bit higher on my list of favorite RPG franchises than the Elder Scroll series.
Any semi-objective person would have to be able to see though that Gothic III and Oblivion just don't compare on the level of quantity or the level of severeness of bugs. Gothic III loses that "contest" in every category.
There are a lot of things I didn't like about Oblivion but bugginess wasn't one of them. And if you look around on the usual (RPG/fansite/official) forums then you will quickly find out that even most Oblivion haters can agree that Bethesda did at least do a pretty good job at polishing the game. Might also want to take a look at the reviews for both games. But who am I kidding? A true fanboi will always keep their eyes and ears shut to any voices of reason ;) .

Garrett

March 31st, 2007, 11:46

Oh, this is good news, the patch will be free of charge...thank you very much

Elwro

March 31st, 2007, 14:40

Patches should absolutely be free of charge. But I'm not sure about the supposed fact that "all technical problems are fixed". I've played 1.12 for, I think at least 60 hours or more and have not encountered a single quest-related bug. But there are still weird 3d-related issues with people walking through huge rocks, boars attacking from caves below the character (=attacking, and hitting, through the ground). I guess such issues are unfixable, then.

ikbenrichard

March 31st, 2007, 14:56

Oh, this is good news, the patch will be free of charge...thank you very much

do i sense some beth sarcasme ;)

KasperFauerby

March 31st, 2007, 14:56

Great news! Sounds like they are working on something much bigger than a standard patch (new story elements etc). With a little luck they'll release it just in time for when the urge for a replay starts to kick in for me ;)

Elwro

March 31st, 2007, 15:18

Supposedly (gossip from December? I don't remember :-)) they were going to completely change the combat system, which'd be a good idea, imo. (Just think about combat with mutliple opponents, which always means "multiple PASSIVE opponents".) I'm not sure how did they want to do it, though.

Dez

March 31st, 2007, 21:29

Great news! the large size definitely gves away that it will fix more than just regular stuff.

MudsAnimalFriend

April 1st, 2007, 04:42

And if you look around on the usual (RPG/fansite/official) forums then you will quickly find out that even most Oblivion haters can agree that Bethesda did at least do a pretty good job at polishing the game.
Yes, I bow to no one in my contempt for Oblivion or my Gothic fanboyism but Oblivion’s retail release was rock solid stable next to Gothic 3 retail - fact. Gothic 3 is one of the most bug-ridden POS I’ve ever had the misfortune to install on my hard drive and I’ve been video gaming since Pong.

Corwin

April 1st, 2007, 04:47

You obviously didn't play the original release of Daggerfall. I lost count of the number of released patches before it became even remotely playable. Now it's a classic!! :) I think it's version 2.13. It began as version 1.0!!!!

MudsAnimalFriend

April 1st, 2007, 05:43

You obviously didn't play the original release of Daggerfall.
I did and, unlike Gothic 3, it didn't crash upon saving the game and corrupt that save game slot in the process. In fairness, there is no comparison between Daggerfall and Gothic 3. Daggerfall was a magnificently ambitious failure, Gothic 1 was a magnificently ambitious success, and Gothic 3 is a magnificent f*@king mess.

JDR13

April 1st, 2007, 05:51

I disagree. Despite all the bugs, Gothic 3 is still tremendously fun to play, and few people experienced bugs as serious as you describe. It's only going to get better after the patch.

Gorath

April 1st, 2007, 05:59

ad #23:
That´s your opinion. IMHO PB´s assessment is correct, G3 v1.12 is technically stable and most A bugs have been fixed. Of course there are still many smaller bugs and a long list of design issues but almost everybody can finish the game correctly.

HiddenX

April 1st, 2007, 10:32

Great news! the large size definitely gves away that it will fix more than just regular stuff.

As I understand PB even some little bugs require a gigabyte patch, because the quest data is embedded in the (huge) world data.

Must be a strange database design :-)

Danicek

April 1st, 2007, 18:46

I think, I'll play Gothic 3 once more with this patch. I believe some design things will be revisited making the replay value greater.

gargar

April 1st, 2007, 19:25

i got the game. but waiting. i can wait. i've got patience. and world of warcraft. and jade empire.

Burress

April 2nd, 2007, 17:58

My "technically stable" game still crashes every couple of hours and has save game corruptions and after a large battle there is about a 25% chance that a large portion of the world disappears, but I can finish the game with the patience I only afford to a Gothic game.

Thaurin

April 3rd, 2007, 14:30

Elwro

April 4th, 2007, 01:21

Perhaps. But I wouldn't have thought rocks would have to be specially flagged to be impenetrable... I hope they fix it, anyway. It's a damn good game.

kalniel

April 4th, 2007, 14:09

Great news! the large size definitely gves away that it will fix more than just regular stuff.

Well not neccessarily more in number, just that any change to the world data unfortunately requires a multiple gb file :( My *guess* is that they basically have a baked/compiled landscape, unlike the non-compiled ones for example in Morrowind, that allow you to plug in and out changes to the gameworld practically on the fly.

And yup, I agree - Oblivion was a very polished release. Not perfect by any means, but considering the size, the polish has been good for me, and a boon for third party modders.

You obviously didn't play the original release of Daggerfall. I lost count of the number of released patches before it became even remotely playable. Now it's a classic!! :) I think it's version 2.13. It began as version 1.0!!!!
Oh the fun of corrupting the game install several times. 2.13 is an absolute must for Daggerfall. That said, just like Gothic 3, the fun made it worth the pain, and I would rather have a fun game + bugs, than no game at all.

Thaurin

April 5th, 2007, 12:30

Perhaps. But I wouldn't have thought rocks would have to be specially flagged to be impenetrable... I hope they fix it, anyway. It's a damn good game.

I'm not an expert, but I think games still do this to help with pathing. Some objects might be better off if NPC's can just clip through it, while in other places it might help if a normal flat piece of ground cannot be walked through by an NPC. I can imagine that a fully functional world in which all NPC's can determine their path purely based on geometry would be very complex and prone to bugs. Not that pathing issues don't exist now. :)

As for Oblivion, I recently updated it to 1.2 and the last time I played it was with 1 GB; now with 2 GB. I have to credit Bethesda, compared to Gothic 3, loading times are really fast, quick load finished in about a second and performance is pretty stable. No crashes on exit so far, neither! Plus, I don't feel its world is as empty as some people say. The quest design is in general pretty good, too.

darghan

April 12th, 2007, 01:40

As I understand PB even some little bugs require a gigabyte patch, because the quest data is embedded in the (huge) world data.

Must be a strange database design :-)
very very badly done and i cannot think of one good reason why a company that has made two very good games and technically solid for a small team would make such a bad design decision
however its been about time someone from PB told something and so far it looks like they have not even decided how they will repair the whole thing
my guess is still the datadisk

MudsAnimalFriend

April 14th, 2007, 03:00

ad #23:
That´s your opinion. IIMHO PB´s assessment is correct, G3 v1.12 is technically stable and most A bugs have been fixed.
Even if that is the case (and I in no way accept it is) how does that negated the fact the retail release of Gothic 3 was completely buggy dreck? In fairness to PB their patches were very prompt, but that doesn't excuse the awfulness of the release product.

Gorath

April 14th, 2007, 07:18

Even if that is the case (and I in no way accept it is)
You don´t have to accept this. PB / JoWooD have a different perspective. You see a sample of 1, they observe statistic effects in a sample of 500k. It´s quite possible that you are part of the group which still has technical problems. I guess they interpret their tech support numbers in a way that the game is "stable enough" to patiently work on the next patch.

how does that negated the fact the retail release of Gothic 3 was completely buggy dreck? This is not a fact. Nobody would deny that it was buggy. You don´t like the game? Others do. Want to start a discussion about taste? ;)

In fairness to PB their patches were very prompt, but that doesn't excuse the awfulness of the release product. Not even PB disputed that G3 was in bad shape on release day. They posted their perspective on why this happened and the reasons for certain design decisions in the German part of the WoG forum a short time after release.

Corwin

April 14th, 2007, 09:57

Alrik Fassbauer

April 14th, 2007, 12:26

The problem Gorath, is that they only posted in the German forum!! There's a few (hundred) thousand English speakers, who didn't get to read that!! PB 'owed' it to the English speakers to address them as well. It should NOT be the responsibility of sites like ours to do this for them!!

This the exact opposite of people of non-English-speaking countries who might feel about devs telling things only in English and only to angle-saxon readers.

I recently filled out the newsletter form for the official Genesis site. At first I was surprised that it didn't accept my "Umlaut" ä I have within my second name, but then I wasn't. That'y typically for English-speaking countries. Some forms even *require* the data of the state or privince, but do have *only* US states/privinces in a drop-down list, as if there were no countries with no states and provinces outside the US at all.

For TOEE, there was developed a patch ONLY for the US version of the game. For no other country at all. And Infogrames/Atari is even a European company !

In my rather cynical opinion, I'd say that this is a good learning lesson for americans to see how american companies often negkect Europeans.

A "Clash Of Cultures" ?

Corwin

April 14th, 2007, 12:34

I'm not excusing the faults on the English side, and I have screamed at the stupid America only drop down menus, BUT, let's remember one important fact; English is the dominant language and there are more English speakers who BUY games than for any other language. Not catering for those is sheer foolishness!!

Alrik Fassbauer

April 14th, 2007, 23:02

This is what I partly meant with the "clash of cultures".

There are still a *lot* of Chinese people out there, what about therm ? Shouldn't we produce for and keep in contact with them, too ?

Sorry, but i don't like this. I mean the opinion "we are dominant, so you have to do things for us." That's what i read from your comment.

I do know I'm quite extreme with my opinions / points of view, but I think that I must try to look at them to see what might come out of it.

If I don't look at extreme standpoints, then I won't ever know what could happen in extreme cases - generally speaking. Same goes for swithichng the point of view towards the opposite side.

Dhruin

April 15th, 2007, 01:42

I can sympathise with your point, Alrik. However, English is inescapably the language of the web. Communicating in German (or Chinese, or whatever) limits your audience while communicating in English will be widely understood, even by Germans and some Chinese.

I can understand it may not be their preference -- or your preference -- but it is practical. This is one (small) part of the puzzle as to why Gothic is a quaint niche German game that few outside of Germany or a rabid fanbase care about, even though it is a small thing they can address.

Have a look at Silverfall. I would hazard a guess that it outsold Gothic in this same timeframe in NA (that's just a guess - I have no data) but the Silverfall devs (and Atari, obviously) went to lengths to build bridges with the English community. It's just a mediocre action game but they built quite a big profile. Same for The Witcher. Both use (ex- BioWare) Tom Ohle for PR. I hear from Tom at least twice a month on something or other.

Who represented PB / Gothic in the English market? How often did they communicate with us (answer: I've never heard from them. I bet Gorath had, but I also bet not as often as I hear from Tom).

Simple question: do you want them to make some cultural point or sell games?

Corwin

April 15th, 2007, 02:42

Dhruin expressed it extremely well Alrik. The reality is English is the major language of the world. It has NOTHING to do with culture, but everything to do with communication!! Marketing is all about communicating and PB don't do it well!! Remember, I love and support the Gothic series; I'm on their side!! :)

Moriendor

April 15th, 2007, 03:58

I seem to remember that Aspyr's Blaine Christine(?) did quite a lot of the English PR. I also seem to remember that Mike (txa1265) mentioned getting pretty regular updates on the status of Gothic III (pre-release that is). Now it would be interesting to know how regular :) .

As far as PB are concerned, we do not know whether the contract with Aspyr even allows them so say a single word without Aspyr's approval. Though I'm fairly sure that -realistically- even a carte blanche wouldn't change all that much ;) . They (PB) probably just don't consider international PR as their job but as JoWood's/Aspyr's thing.

BTW, the major reason that they are so open in their communication with the German community at all is the fact that they won that community relations award at the same big awards show where they also scored the price for best German RPG (or even game?) or some title like that. They said that they were proud of that community award and in order to live up to their good rep, they wanted to pay attention to communicating with the fans more regularly. And that's what they are indeed doing now...
Well, umm... maybe RPGWatch should award them "best English community relations" and see what happens :biggrin: .

Besides, while KaiRo is pretty good at communicating (in German and English), I don't think you really want some of the other folks (no names... for now at least :biggrin: ) from PB to even attempt to communicate in English since even their German is barely comprehensible sometimes.

Corwin

April 15th, 2007, 04:07

Ah Mo, we need you back on staff to handle all these things!! :)

txa1265

April 15th, 2007, 04:12

I have heard nothing from Aspyr since the release of the patch for the game. But I haven't asked, either ...

Dhruin

April 15th, 2007, 04:53

Blaine was nowhere near as proactive as Tom Ohle - not even close. In all fairness, Tom is probably as good as it gets so perhaps that comparison is unfair, but still...if you want to build a stronger English audience...

Perhaps Aspyr / JoWood did gag PB...I still don't think that changes my perspective that communication for Gothic rates about a 2/10 on a scale of best practice. It goes well beyond KaiRo, who I'm sure tries hard. A good PR system can notify sites of new media, write an IGN blog, send out patch updates - things that build a connection and keep Gothic in gamers' minds - and a PR guy can do that fine. He doesn't need to be a developer.

*shrug* I'm not the one who might have lost propective sales. If they're satisfied with the <200k sales they'll get from the combined English sales of the expansion, that's their call. Glad I don't own shares, though.

Acleacius

April 15th, 2007, 07:10

Yup Gothic PR has been bad from a stand point of global coverage, it's why Gothic can't get a fair shake in the English speaking countries.

It's certianly not the gamers fault of any language or culture, most gamers reguardless of culture are chomping at the bit to get a good RPG like Gothic, but jowood keeps kicking Gothic in the private parts with there publishing style (or lack there of).

I would have to agree and disagree with you, I would say that English has been unfairly forced on the world where it was not an inherent language, very much like Windows has forced itself on the world, but it's also a much closer and better (in many cases) world because of it, as an example many countries and cultures would not have access to the web if it wasnt for the English speaking cultures.
Does this mean it's a perfect world or that it couldn't be much better? Of course not.

The only people whom don't want progress are people that are currently profiting at the expense of progress, for all.

You seem to think that knowing or having a first language other than English is a bad thing. you dont seem to realise how lucky you are, many people in English speaking countries are at a disadvantage compared to you.

Through the arrogance of our leaders, in English speaking cultures we were taught only English out of some deluded patriotic fundimentalism (DPF).
That same DPF forced English on you as a second language has now given you a major advantange, as being multicultural not only gives you instant advantages in getting better jobs but also at Any social level.

Maybe it's a choice to how you look at it or use it. :)

Gorath

April 15th, 2007, 07:21

Mike and I had contact to several guys at Aspyr before the release. They gave us quite a lot of infos and tried to help whereever possible. I think they´ve treated us well. :)
How good their buzz building was outside of our site(s) is hard to say. They certainly did more than all international Gothic publishers before them combined, but this doesn´t mean all that much. ;) G3 surely was no hit internationally, but what was the reason, crappy marketing or the buggy state of the game?

The marketing and PR work in the German market is of course on a completely different level. Koch Media / Deep Silver is doing a great job spreading the word, with the help of PB and JoWooD. Due to the special situation of the Gothic franchise it´s not the typical "publisher talks, the rest STFU!" situation, but generally speaking there´s a lot of communication and most of it is under control.

It seems PB considers PR the publisher´s job. Which is quite normal IMHO because it´ spart of the publisher´s core competence. But is such a situation desireable for a developer who is doing more than contract work?
What I don´t understand is why they don´t hire a full time PR monkey & community manager who is fluent in 3 languages? It would seem to me a natural measure to protect a rather valuable IP and maintain a little independence from the publisher. If you consider how much work he can take off the devs´ shoulders and what he could do to sharpen the company profile it´s simply a no-brainer.
Ascaron for example has at least 2 community managers - and they had to suffer a lot before Sacred was playable.

Corwin

April 15th, 2007, 08:59

I think most of us agree with you Gorath. Why are some devs so blind? It's the same with my pet peeve of NESB devs who don't hire a competant native English speaker to check through the English translation and fix up the fundamental errors of syntax and grammar. I'm sure the people translating an english game to a different language would do that!!

Dhruin

April 15th, 2007, 10:07

Yes, I knew Aspyr was in contact with you and Mike - I wasn't trying to suggest they didn't support us but I still don't think they were as proactive as others. I think we agree on the same main point: good community managers are worth the price.

Jabberwocky

April 15th, 2007, 17:40

I know personally if I were developing a game and contracted with a large publisher, I would expect them to take up the torch regarding PR and leave me alone to concentrate on building a fun stable game. I therefore think that the bad marketing is mostly the fault of the publisher. Nevertheless, I think that Gorath and Corwin have valid points - it would have been smart for PB to add someone else to the team just to market the game. Let's face it, some people are brilliant in many areas, but completely lack business sense. We all know that the personalities of the people making up any business are largely what makes or breaks the company. I'm not saying that's exactly what happened here, but it could be a contributing factor.

Acleacius

April 16th, 2007, 02:46

I seem to recall them saying it was English and none of them felt comforatble enough with it to go on forums.
At the very least offering some emailed questions from English sites would/will go a long way and at the very least proper translations of German interviews.

Seems they are finally seeing these things as improtant steping stones and great sties like RPGWatch are helping bridge the gap. :)

It has been a long hard fight just to help get PB the recognition it deserves and I don't think it's done, quite yet.