Patches successful?

Hi there!

Although sitting on the edge of my seat since G3 was released I have waited to actually start playing it myself. I didn't want my "G3 experience" be ruined by an arsenal of bugs and issues… (sheesh, sound like some teenage girl that's saving herself for the right man)
So I just wanted to ask you guys if all the patches (up to 1.09 if I'm not mistake) have actually made a positive impact on the gameplay and it's issues. Or is G3 still as unplayable as most people claim it to be?

Cheers!

Originally Posted by Bronzebeard
Hi there!I didn't want my "G3 experience" be ruined by an arsenal of bugs and issues… (sheesh, sound like some teenage girl that's saving herself for the right man)

Or is G3 still as unplayable as most people claim it to be?

First let me just say…. lmfao where did you grow up? I'll try to avoid those ladies…

In regard to the patches… yes they make a big difference… but whether they're enough for you or not is really a matter for personal expectations, tolerance and a bit of luck.

If you're unlucky like me, your game will crash a lot (at least once every other gaming session assuming you play for several hours non-stop). However, according to the poll on my other thread… most people only experience up to or around 5 crashes throughout their entire first run through the game (or around 10 at the most, but that's assuming most the people who participated in the poll hadn't yet beat the game).

Also, you have to ask yourself how patient you are and what you expect in terms of stability and solid gameplay. I would wager that the game will never be 100% stable (which rarely occurs anyway in game… most are at least a little unstable). I should note from personal experience, that aside from one particularly annoying quest thats not a part of the main storyline (it is optional), the game content itself seems to be very stable. There are a few minor excepts (you can read about some of them by clicking here.

In my opinion, the game is stable enough with all the current patches to enjoy the game. I think Gothic 3 is one of the best RPG games ever made (top 10), but I probably wouldn't say it is as good as Gothic or Gothic 2 (more of a personal preference I think).

I'd say the most common complain you might have is the occasional lag or video glitches. If you're anything like me then the quests that you never intend to complete remaining indefinitely in your quest book might annoy you but that's very minor. I suggest unless your expectations are unrealistic in the sense that you anticipate and flawless and 100% bug free game, then it is time to install it and start playing! It's a great experience and you'll have lots of fun.

P.S. What are your computer specs? That might be useful in determining the likelihood of gameplay issues. Actual content, however, is fairly bug free (with about an average number of exceptions).

The latest v1.09 is rock-stable. Only two crashes for me: when I pushed my hardware over the limit, and when I messed up the ini. There are some indications that a new patch may be released soon. It is not official and it wouldn't surprise me if it were an indefinite waiting period. Might be worth waiting for, but it would be easier if we knew for how long…

If you have waited until now, you might as well wait a little longer for the big, final patch*, which should include some form of combat overhaul. I think the game is perfectly playable but the last news on the patch was early December, so might as well see what it brings.

*Time will tell if it is final, what it covers exactly and whether it appears when anticipated.

I remember Gorath mentioning that this would be, according to someone at PB, indeed the last patch. You're saying that it's entirely possible that they'll continue to release more patches? That would be great; I hope they do keep supporting it. I'm just now finishing up Gothic 2 (end of chapter 5), so I've been saving myself for Gothic 3, too . I'd wait for the next patch, personally, which is supposed to be released any time now.

Until then I have to worry about all the things I still need to do on the Isle of Khorinis before leaving.

Chances are that it is there intention to rake care of all issues that they have decided they'll resolve in a single patch.
Questions are:
- Can they do it?
- What will the game look like after the patch?

The game is one patch away from fixed. Whether the next patch (whenever it arrives) will actually be the one that fixes everything remains to be seen. If you don't mind scouring the forums and applying tweaks, the game is currently a little rough, but perfectly playable right now. Up to you.

I waited until the US release, applied patch 1.09 to that, a handful of tweaks and finished the game no problem (except for the dreaded demo savegame bug, which required a total restart.)

I applied 1.08 straight away and happily played on that for some time without any issues. That's the version I think you should go to at a minimum (for gameplay reasons more than anything - no more stunlock!)

What I'm wondering is what they're thinking at PB. I mean, it's obvious that they've read a lot of the criticism about bugs and balancing from reviewers and the community. I guess they can only take that seriously. Trusting on the idea that they care about all that, would they want to put in as much effort as possible to fix it all? Can they? Will Jowood/whoever let them? etc.

It comes down to attitude and money. Even if they want to ship many patches they still need to find a way to fund the development.
In the past PB only released enough patches to fix most major bugs and add a few missing gameplay elements. They´ve never really polished their games with patches. This makes me think they would prefer to move on and make the first add-on better.

Ascaron on the other hand has a tradition of fixing their games, no matter how many patches it takes. They were lucky that Sacred sold like hot cakes. Which allowed them to budget the patches through the add-on.

I'm also amazed at the level of support given to the Neverwinter Nights series of games. At least, the first one got a lot of patches and new official content and the patches for the second one so far are great from what I've read. If you really love a game, you can only hope for such a level of commitment from the developer. *sigh*

Originally Posted by kalniel
I applied 1.08 straight away and happily played on that for some time without any issues. That's the version I think you should go to at a minimum (for gameplay reasons more than anything - no more stunlock!)

Same here, I did not yet upgraded to 1.09 because I'm not willing to fix what is not broken .

Same here, 2nd patch is working well, playing like a trooper almost every day, couldn't be better, no .ini tweaks, no hang-ups, no freeze-ups, all menu settings at default on medium but cache size on max'

Originally Posted by Danicek
Same here, I did not yet upgraded to 1.09 because I'm not willing to fix what is not broken .

Same here - I can say I completely evaluated the 'out of box' Aspyr game all the way through (including two endings) as a fire mage … without any significant corruption or crashing issues.

Version v1.09 is just a hot fix for v1.08. Basically they are the same thing. The hot fix bottles up a memory leak, which is by all means present and its existence was discovered and confirmed quite some time ago. I'd say your "fear" of v1.09 is unfounded.

1.09 doesn't really fix the memory leak. It changes things, so that it will no longer crash while saving but when loading a savegame instead. However, as this problem doesn't occur for all people: if you don't experience crashes while saving, there's no need to update to 1.09, indeed.

I want to know when they're going to release a patch that allows anti-aliasing.

If you want anti-aliasing, you'd have to disable all post-processing. I think this is still a problem with most video card (all but the very latest); you can't do HDR and AA at the same time and I think the same goes for bloom and depth-of-field. However, I'm sure they can include a setting where you could enable just anti-aliasing.

Anyway, it seems that there a some system configurations that play the game just horribly and maybe that's where the bad reviews come from? I don't know how many systems people test these games on today. Judging from the reviews, they don't spend a lot of time with the game.

Originally Posted by Wulf
Same here, 2nd patch is working well, playing like a trooper almost every day, couldn't be better, no .ini tweaks, no hang-ups, no freeze-ups, all menu settings at default on medium but cache size on max'

That's a first. Is this really possible? From what I've heard is that even people with the best of the best hardware have stuttering and freeze-ups when it loads new areas. It would be cool to play it completely fluently.

As an off-topic side note: I have finally almost finished Gothic 2!! I'm at the start of chapter 6 and I'm about to enter the Halls of Irdorath with my Heavy Dragon Hunter's Armor and Large Ore Sword. So Gothic 3 better run smooth as a baby's butt when I'm done!

Originally Posted by Thaurin
configurations that play the game just horribly and maybe that's where the bad reviews come from? I don't know how many systems people test these games on today. Judging from the reviews, they don't spend a lot of time with the game.

*nods* I think it's an unfortunate side effect of the limitless variations of hardware that are out there. For all the bad points, consoles do present a much better picture for requirements - every one is the same so you both know whether it'll work and how well it'll work.

At the same time the money for reviews is less and less, meaning you've got to get an impression quickly - if a game gives you problems at the start it can be frustrating and eat into review time and give you a bad impression. I couldn't play either Gothic 3 or NWN 2 out of the box - the former was an unknown configuration problem with my computer, the latter required waiting for the 1.03 patch.

I'm really not a fan of consoles that try to emulate PCs, but I can really see the draw when PCs still haven't sorted out a decent hardware matching system/standards.

Hi again!

Thx for all the replies
I got the game today, downloading patch at the moment, can't wait to get going on it! I hope I won't be back in a couple of hours with tons of questions

Cheers!