Kingmaker - Free Bloody Mess DLC

will add more realism to the game as the faces of your trusted companions and awful enemies are stained with red and their clothes will be soaked in blood during the fight

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Do I need that ?

rjshae said:

Sometimes it's better to get the game engine right first and ship a more modest effort before trying something this ambitious. A buggy game will damage your financial returns and you risk economic failure.

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Well, it's unity game engine. P:K is huge and very complex.

I think they are having problems with scripting. RPGs are all about scripting the quests and interaction of stats in combat system.

rjshae said:

Sometimes it's better to get the game engine right first and ship a more modest effort before trying something this ambitious. A buggy game will damage your financial returns and you risk economic failure.

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Or, for some of us, release and become one of the best CRPGs ever made.

I don't understand this "start small and simple" mindset. Hell no, I want developers taking risks, being ambitious and going for their dream project, which is exactly what Owlcat did and why its sales are successful and the game is thriving. It would be much less exciting if it was a smaller, "modest" project. They poured their heart and soul into this one and it shows. They have plenty of time to work on bugfixes now and we get a super huge, super complex CRPG out of the deal, one that I've already spent 200 hours with and haven't hit a game-breaking bug yet.

Their financial returns are not hurting because it's selling well, and most people love the game and are happily awaiting bufixes (which are coming at a very fast rate, faster than any other developer I've seen). But small and modest? Nah, save that for less ambitious developers. Bo-ring.

I think most us would agree that games should not, ideally, be released in the very buggy state they often are. As I've said before, my preferred solution would be for games to be released into Early Access when that's a fairer reflection of the state they're in. But, I'm sure the financial necessity of pushing to a full launch is inescapable in many cases.

I do discriminate between cases. If it's a AAA game, I'd be much more critical, as they have the option of holding off for a couple more months QA. And, if it's a half-assed Kickstarter that just releases a scrap of a thoroughly broken game, which languishes for months before they finally stop communicating, I'm going to be pretty unimpressed. But, cases like P:K I can understand, if they need to release to keep the lights on, and then keep working seriously on it for months afterwards. To some degree, I think that's likely to be an inevitability for games in this bracket, and I just bide my time until they're fully cooked.

DarkELVES said:

The game's awesome. Probably my GOTY.

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My GOTY for sure

joxer said:

I still have to ask you sure it's about people and not a product itself?
Is a person who normally enjoys horrors a hypocrite when says some horror movie sucks?

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Both really. The game is buggy in the later chapter yes. But the game has so much depth and detail. The question is, which do you weigh more? If the game don't click with you, obviously you will focus on negatives and try not to bother with the game, if the game clicks with you, then you appreciates all the positive aspects of the game despite its flaws.

Yes, the game is complex. Yes, it's understandable that there are a lot of bugs.
But that is not something the customer should suffer for. If my product is complex I need to assign more budget and time to QA. In this regard they've failed dramtically.

But as mentioned before the game is fantastic. Not perfect of course but for me this game is the spiritual successor to the BG trilogy, not any of the early titles of the RPG rennaissance. For me it is easily GOTY.

So because of the immense fun factor and especially because of this game being their first big title imho they shouldn't be attacked to hard.
But if they repeat this miserable project management in the sequel project they deserve all the complaints (I don't want to say "hate") they'll get.

Plus again, it's very complex. This isn't some indie 3 stat hack n' slash here, it's an incredibly deep CRPG, probably deepest of all-time (even counting BG2). So of course some slack needs to be cut here, too. Skyrim released with a bajillion bugs, too, and that was a triple A title and also not even that complex as it lacked 95% of the features Kingmaker has. That game allowed you to equip one simplistic ring, let alone combining all the armor slots Kingmaker has to make sure bonuses stack properly, equipment is working properly with classes and so much more. I can't jump on the hate wagon for a buggy release like this. And just like with Skyrim, I got hundreds of hours without gamebreaking bugs, so it works for me.

Morrandir said:

Yes, the game is complex. Yes, it's understandable that there are a lot of bugs.
But that is not something the customer should suffer for. If my product is complex I need to assign more budget and time to QA. In this regard they've failed dramtically.

But as mentioned before the game is fantastic. Not perfect of course but for me this game is the spiritual successor to the BG trilogy, not any of the early titles of the RPG rennaissance. For me it is easily GOTY.

So because of the immense fun factor and especially because of this game being their first big title imho they shouldn't be attacked to hard.
But if they repeat this miserable project management in the sequel project they deserve all the complaints (I don't want to say "hate") they'll get.

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They made less than one million dollars in Kickstarter. For that price what they've done is a miracle. Did they have additional funding? We shouldn't suffer for bugs but I also think this is a special case where the game had to be released and they are working very hard to fix it, and will continue to. It's also my GOTY and a true successor to the BG series, head and shoulders above the competition.

Someone on Steam had this to say that I found interesting:

This game has the touch of insane required for a true masterpiece. Allow me to elaborate. If you look into the development of some of the greatest games of all time, a common thread is that the small teams behind them didn't have anyone telling them how insane and unrealistic their plans were. So, even though they ended up making bug filled messes that…they were unique and amazing. It's the difference between Daggerfall and Oblivion or Skyrim. Yes, Daggerfall is a mess, but it's also a unique beauty.

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Think about games like Arcanum, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, Daggerfall, Morrowind, etc.. True, ambitious masterpieces that were released as buggy messes. However, the difference here is that it's 2018, and the devs are going to fix the game because they can. We've got a new Arcanum in the process of being fixed on our hands. This is a game that will go down in history, but unlike the previous games needing fan patches and bugfixes, the developers are doing it themselves. That, was an interesting review quote.

I think this game has many bugs because mechanically I it is much more complex than BGx…the number of feats and ability/class combos in PF is huge - there are so many ways things can interact and stack… I think that expecting a system this complex not to be buggy is extremely optimistic. Yeah NWN2 had many classes/combos etc - but how big was there dev team by comparison? Owlcat may have been better off with a smaller set of feats and abilities, although everyone would then have attacked them for that. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. I have not yet encountered any game breaking bugs - 95 hours in - but I'm sure my time will come So far the game is worth what I spent of it and then some - so even if it breaks now, I have had my money's worth and they have shown commitment to continue patching, which is great.

For those playing now, exactly how playable is the game as it stands? I was thinking of pausing Grimoire or Bard's Tale 4 next week and giving this a try, but I don't want to pause a playthrough because of bugs preventing my progress.

@forgottenlor; I had no issues until I reached chapter 4. By then I already sunk in 50+ hours easily (and since I played beta, I was progressing much faster than others, in beta I spent 70+ hours for first two chapters). And as we speak the rest of the game is being patched. I'm nearing the end of chapter 5

I'd say go for it

purpleblob said:

@forgottenlor I had no issues until I reached chapter 4. By then I already sunk in 50+ hours easily. And as we speak the rest of the game is being patched. I'm nearing the end of chapter 5

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Yep same with me it seems the bugs start to happen after chapter 3 more frequently, and that's probably due to Owlcat not testing them enough before final release.

anc45 said:

Yes, well, I'm not alone in that I don't care about DLCs, I care about a game I can actually play to the finish without game-breaking bugs.

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Someone is taking halloween cosmetic humorous *free* DLC a bit too seriously lol.

You are not alone but there are many who don't agree you as well

I find the game to be brilliant! I haven’t been able to sink too many hours into it, but it has the richness, depth, and continuity that I’ve always loved in the best RPGs. It’s been many years since I’ve decided to set aside time for a game of this scope, but this is a special game and it really should be supported out of the gate by all RPG fans.

forgottenlor said:

For those playing now, exactly how playable is the game as it stands? I was thinking of pausing Grimoire or Bard's Tale 4 next week and giving this a try, but I don't want to pause a playthrough because of bugs preventing my progress.

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Extremely playable. Some have finished the game already. I played 220 hours (some of that is AFK time) and haven't had any noticeable bugs. If/when the game lags I restart my computer and it's fine again. The game is a real treat and a special CRPG. I'd say go for it as they've already done double digit hotfixes and will continue to do so, and as I said some people finished the game already. One person did it in 160 hours according to howlongtobeat.com . Worth every penny and then some.

TheRealFluent said:

Or, for some of us, release and become one of the best CRPGs ever made.

I don't understand this "start small and simple" mindset. Hell no, I want developers taking risks, being ambitious and going for their dream project, which is exactly what Owlcat did and why its sales are successful and the game is thriving. It would be much less exciting if it was a smaller, "modest" project. They poured their heart and soul into this one and it shows. They have plenty of time to work on bugfixes now and we get a super huge, super complex CRPG out of the deal, one that I've already spent 200 hours with and haven't hit a game-breaking bug yet.

Their financial returns are not hurting because it's selling well, and most people love the game and are happily awaiting bufixes (which are coming at a very fast rate, faster than any other developer I've seen). But small and modest? Nah, save that for less ambitious developers. Bo-ring.

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Straw-horse argument. Are Owlcat's sales successful? Where's your data? They peaked at 22.5K on the Steam charts compared to 41.8K for PoE. (They're now down to 8K.) The fact that you enjoyed it doesn't mean it will do well in the market. ToEE was a very decent effort, but the company failed and died due to releases of buggy software.

I like the game a lot, but the shoddy release would preclude it from being my game of the year for sure. I don't expect a game to launch perfectly on day one, but systemic issues like the ones in this game and, say, Bard's tale four would prevent them from getting that coveted prize from me.

Keep the patches coming though, looking forward to revisiting this world hopefully later this year.

It needs another 6 months in the oven for sure. It's fine if you take it at face value (although you will still hit bugs in the later chapters) but if you know Pathfinder or are a someone who likes to understand how the underlying mechanics work the bugs are almost intolerable right from the get go. Still a whole lot of display and feat errors. Probably at least half of the bugs I raised during beta are still unfixed and some worse ones have been introduced (my poor alchemist actually lost the use of his bombs).

If you want a relativity bug free experience then play are a fighter, barbarian, ranger or rogue. They seem to have the least issues from what I have seen. Paladin is okay as well but they have had some issues with LoH/Divine Channels.

Despite the technical issues, OwlCat should be proud of what they have created. But I'm disappointed they haven't acknowledged the performance issues.

I was characterizing the memory leak in Kingmaker tonight for fun. Read onwards! Every time I saved the game (I'm at Chapter 5, and my saved game files are ~50 MB as they should be), RAM usage of the program goes up by about 500 MB. That's not a typo. RAM usage also goes up about 25 MB/minute when just standing around in town doing nothing. Thankfully, RAM usage more or less resets when you restart the program, but it certainly starts to trend upwards as you advance through the game's chapters.. this gives you even less wiggle room before performance takes a nose-dive.

Minimum system requirements = 4 GB, recommended = 8 GB. You're basically relegated to hellish load times and use of swap files.

bjon045 said:

(my poor alchemist actually lost the use of his bombs)

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At least that bug should be fixed since yesterdays patch.

purpleblob said:

Someone is taking halloween cosmetic humorous *free* DLC a bit too seriously lol.

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Sorry, but I can't see much humour in adding blood and realism into a Fantasy game. Is this going to be Hitman or Conan, with its blood fountains, or what ?

Sorry, but apart from Monty Python I'm unable to see much "humour" in adding blood.

There's enough blood in RL, I really don't need that in games. Last night a drunk 26-year old driver crashed wish his car into a building entrance, killing a 69-year old homeless woman who was sleeping there. He drove home, and then called the police. Considering this, I really don't want blood in my games.