H7 1.5 Announced

[iLiVeInAbOx05]

You forgot that to play full Starcraft 2 game/know full story you need to buy part 2 and part 3 - all for same price as Wings of Liberty. So in the end you need to pay 180$.

No, I did not forget. I think you missed a couple of posts

It was first mentioned that comparing Starcraft 2 Legacy of the Void (LotV) to H7 was unfair because LotV was an expansion (not started from scratch), where H7 was the base game. You can go back and read my response to that.

Now you're comparing a base game and two expansions, to a base game If H7 gets expansions, then you can compare them to HotS and LotV. So, it is still fair to compare Wings of Liberty on launch to H7 on launch.

Lastly, the expansions for SC2 were $40 each (in the US).

[Avonu]

You have to admit that without Heart of Swarm and Legacy of Void it's hard to name Starcraft 2 as "complete". All these three episodes tell one story. These aren't expansion, like Brood War for example, they are part of one game.
It' cleaver move from Blizzard marketing departament but that doesn't change fact, that you have to pay 140$ for full game.

As for the rest, you have right.

[iLiVeInAbOx05]

You have to admit that without Heart of Swarm and Legacy of Void it's hard to name Starcraft 2 as "complete". All these three episodes tell one story. These aren't expansion, like Brood War for example, they are part of one game.
It' cleaver move from Blizzard marketing departament but that doesn't change fact, that you have to pay 140$ for full game.

As for the rest, you have right.

I agree with you as far as the story is concerned I also agree that it was good marketing by Blizzard. I would have bought LotV on day one, just like I did the rest, but I'm so back logged with my current gameset + H4 campaign that I decided to wait for it to go on sale

As far as gameplay and multiplayer, the game is complete. The number of missions also matches that of sc1 (30). I kind of like a longer story for each of the races, but that is, of course, my opinion

[cjlee]

You have to admit that without Heart of Swarm and Legacy of Void it's hard to name Starcraft 2 as "complete". All these three episodes tell one story. These aren't expansion, like Brood War for example, they are part of one game.
It' cleaver move from Blizzard marketing departament but that doesn't change fact, that you have to pay 140$ for full game.

As for the rest, you have right.

I agree with you as far as the story is concerned I also agree that it was good marketing by Blizzard. I would have bought LotV on day one, just like I did the rest, but I'm so back logged with my current gameset + H4 campaign that I decided to wait for it to go on sale

As far as gameplay and multiplayer, the game is complete. The number of missions also matches that of sc1 (30). I kind of like a longer story for each of the races, but that is, of course, my opinion

The Blizzard people are both good at marketing, and good at providing the quality that justifies their marketing. that's why customers don't feel short changed.

Each instalment has LESS than the original 30 starcraft missions, and you can't even play them all because of the alternate missions that are mutually exclusive. In addition, each instalment already costs substantially more than the original Starcraft.

All in all I consider Starcraft an expensive game like what LiveinABox05 said. It is absolutely not a 'good deal'. It is only a 'fair deal' since you really do get quality.

For those people who say that we can't compare Legacy of the Void with Heroes VII since Starcraft 2 came out years ago, let me remind you that when Starcraft Wings of Liberty came out, it had no technical problems or game breaking bugs. It had less problems on Day 1 of release, than Heroes VI had after 6 months. People installed it quickly, it ran smoothly on older computers, it didn't hang, your missions didn't have bugs that forced you to wait for a patch, etc. I never ever figured out what patches were for because I never had complaints. Total number of times that Starcraft 2 hung my computer in several years of gaming, was probably 5 times. I never lost any settings or savegames because all patches were thoroughly tested. You never had to make obvious complaints, such as static animation cutscenes, washed out graphics, etc. because the Blizzard team really wanted to produce a game that they themselves enjoyed playing, rather than just fulfill the minimum contractual requirements for a company they didn't care about.

Is Heroes VIII (Eight) worth $140? If God or some all powerful divinity could reassure me that I would enjoy it as much as I did H3 or H4, and guarantee me that it would not hang my computer more than 5 times in 5 years, I would pay $140 for Heroes VIII. I'm at the age where it is much more worth it to pay big money for quality in order to spend quality time, than to pay $1 for 140 Steam games on discount that have middling quality. I have family. I have other priorities. Paying $1 for a game not worth my time only means that I get less than my money's worth by suffering opportunity cost when I waste time gaming.

Right now I've heard someone say that H7 is on sale for half price. If game was 99% complete I don't mind buying and waiting for the final perfect patches in a few months. But I don't want to give Ubisoft money right now for a 90% complete game. For those who have kids, I'm sure you understand the logic never to bribe your kid with french fries so that he can finish his vegetables. He must always finish his veggies 99% before you let a single fry near his plate.

[ttague2005]

CJLee - Revisiting your Mage Guilds does not help. Your skills are blanked out. I also have had a games where no one retaliated against my attacks.

[Panda Tar]

@ttague2005, that solution was only for spells. Some players had issues that only spell book got blank, but they still had their skills. This other issue, which is much worse, is SUPPPPPOOOOOSSSSEEEED to be addressed in the next hotfix/patch/prayer.

[BB Shockwave]

You're quite safe, it's fairly playable. But a couple more patches will be needed before it shines.

Stacraft 2 Legacy of the Void was fully playable the day after it launched. No hangs, no loss of savegames, no settings mysteriously changed. Smooth and lovely gaming without issues.

For Ubisoft the best you can say, nearly 2 months and 30GB of patches later, is that something is 'fairly playable'. Of course, many people have complained about losing all their spells and skills, but nothing that visiting all your mage guilds again won't cure, right?

Unfair comparison. This is an expansion pack, not a game made from scratch. And it came out some 5 years after the release of the initial game. Of course, had Ubisoft released H7 a couple of months later, it would all be ok.

Then I compare it with Age of Wonders 3 - which had NO bugs upon release, and though it had some unbalanced units or spells, all these were fixed later on -with even addition of new interesting skills for every unit to make them more different.
I played that game far more than H6 or H7, and it never froze on me.

[hellegennes]

Well, H6 never froze on me, but that doesn't mean that it's bug-free. If AoE 3 had NO bugs upon release, why did they release patches, the first one being released within 10 days of the game's launch? Don't tell me it was just for balancing, the patch logs indicate otherwise (fixing crashes, memory leaks, compatibility issues, and so on).

[Panda Tar]

My AoW 3 never crashed. It might be one of those fixes of very peculiar bugs, or fixes of things we didn't get the chance to experience yet. But I cannot say much, haven't played that game for long yet.

[hellegennes]

I don't know how stable AoE 3 is. H7 was very unstable from the get go, but it never crashed on my system. I was perhaps lucky but what matters is what happens on average. No game is bug-free. Not even the old arcades were bug-free and they consisted of a few thousand lines of code versus the few million lines of code required by modern games. What I mean by that is that you cannot expect a game to be free of game-crashing or game-stopping bugs, especially upon release. Some games fare better than others, of course; but you cannot infer that from your own experience. Like I said, H7 never crashed on my system. Does that mean that it doesn't have game-crashing issues? Of course not.

[iLiVeInAbOx05]

I'm sorry, but I absolutely can expect a game that I purchase, anywhere along its life cycle, to be free of game crashing / stopping bugs. If it's broken, why would I spend my money on it?

Starcraft keeps being brought up for a reason. It certainly has a lot of lines of code. I bought and played the first version of Starcraft 1 and 2, and never faced anything game breaking, let alone game crashing.

I have purchased plenty of other games throughout my life, and I can't recall ever having issues like what have been described for this game. I would have immediately demanded a refund if I had purchased H7. Luckily, I do a little research before purchasing games.

[Panda Tar]

One of the games I remember having something that really hindered me from playing was Fallout 3 Dunno-what-else Edition. It froze randomly anytime after you left your bunk. You could play 20 minutes, then , or maybe 2 hours, then . Or perhaps 30 seconds, before .

I later learned it was something related to my video board. It had means to work around, but I was somehow annoyed by that and left it aside, never trying to play the game again. Everything else worked in the game.

Now, I read these reports from H7 and I cannot simply think that it can work normally on my PC. I see no reason whatsoever to support a game with a good portion of bad reports such as H7, not to mention the number of features I don't approve. In a sense, I really didn't try H7 not because of bugs, but because of itself. Bugs were just cherries on the top of the pile of ... mess. And I'm not going to risk spending money and financing such thing.

[hellegennes]

I'm sorry, but I absolutely can expect a game that I purchase, anywhere along its life cycle, to be free of game crashing / stopping bugs. If it's broken, why would I spend my money on it?

Starcraft keeps being brought up for a reason. It certainly has a lot of lines of code. I bought and played the first version of Starcraft 1 and 2, and never faced anything game breaking, let alone game crashing.

There were game-crashing bugs in Starcraft 2 upon release; rare ones, but still. And we're talking about a game that was in development for 7 years.

I have purchased plenty of other games throughout my life, and I can't recall ever having issues like what have been described for this game. I would have immediately demanded a refund if I had purchased H7. Luckily, I do a little research before purchasing games.

Then you have surely never played Daggerfall or Ultima 9 both of which I bought back in the day and both of which I love.

[iLiVeInAbOx05]

There were game-crashing bugs in Starcraft 2 upon release; rare ones, but still. And we're talking about a game that was in development for 7 years.

I'm not sure why you feel the need to defend H7 so badly.

I never experienced any game crashing / game breaking bugs in any version of Starcraft. None of my friends did either. No one in the community was complaining about game breaking bugs. We got into uproars over things like no lan and real id for sc2 I purchased Sc2 Wings of Liberty at midnight on release and played through the campaign as soon as I got home, and then played multiplayer with my friends. No issues. No noticeable bugs, no crashes, nothing game breaking.

Anyway, the point is, those kinds of problems were not just rare, they were exceedingly rare. So if there were a few people that managed to find a way to crash the game, that does not in anyway compare to what was happening with H7. Even after many patches you still had things like skills and spells disappearing without any sure way to actually get them back.

If you feel the need to continue defending sub par software, you can do so

Side note: Just installed Starcraft 1 v1.0 and played the first 5 missions with no issues, and I'm definitely a mass clicker

As far as Sc2 being in development for 7 years, I highly doubt it was in active development the entire time. I have multiple projects going on at my job right now. Sometimes we focus on one, sometimes another. It just depends on the deadlines.

[hellegennes]

But I didn't make the comparison; you did. I just pointed out that it's not true that there weren't game-crashing bugs in SC2*, because I noted in my previous post that you can't expect a game to be flawless upon release. Even that is an unfair comparison because SC2 was developed by a much larger team, with a huge budget and for 7 years. And even with those prospects they couldn't avoid some issues finding their way into the initial release.

I don't remember saying anywhere that H7 is as stable as SC2. And yes, SC2 was in active development for 7 years, Blizzard even commented that they went through 16,130 builds of the engine. By 2006 they were already on build #2000. They also pointed out that the game was virtually finished by 2007, then went through 12,000 more builds and 3 years of optimization and bug fixing. Those are the words of Blizzard representatives, not mine. Also, what you say about multiple projects is not true of games. You can't just redirect your attention to something else. A game that is in development has to have a team continuously working on it. Software gets old pretty quickly and so it makes no sense to pause development on something to do something else.

I will keep bringing Daggerfall to the conversation, because it answers your question: "If it's broken, why would I spend my money on it?". The answer is: because it may worth it. Daggerfall is still the most broken game out there, after several official and unofficial patches and it still remains one of the best RPGs of all time, one of the most influential, atmospheric, innovative, creative, fun games of the genre. I am not saying that H7 is all that, just that your reasoning must have a little more depth.


* my roommate purchased it the moment it came out and he initially had such issues.

[iLiVeInAbOx05]

You're the one that said "Game breaking / crashing is okay" and that "games released now always have game breaking / crashing" in them.

You said that we can't expect games without that in them. I gave you an example of quality which did not include either of the above (except maybe under some extraordinarily rare circumstances which the majority of the player base never experienced). If you're talking about online play issues, then compare SC online to H7 online. Still a night and day difference.

Please read what I said reference development. I'll say it again: active. Blizzard had plenty of projects that were pushed to the front of the pipeline during that time period.

The Daggerfall conversation is irrelevant, because if it's broken I would not spend my money on it. You are free to do what you want with your[/] money, but you are not free to claim that it's acceptable to release unfinished software without criticism (and yes, that's what you are advocating).

Someone else said this here, but I don't remember who it was: The attitude that it's acceptable to release unfinished products is the reason that unfinished products will continue to be released.

That's fine, I just won't waste my money on them.

[hellegennes]

Actually I am free to claim whatever I want, as long as it's not violating any laws and it's not rude to others. We don't live in a non-free world and this is not a non-free forum. You can criticise whatever you want and I can do the same. I am not claiming that you are not free to criticise anything, no matter how out of this world may your criticism seem to other people. And I am free to criticise your criticism, too.

It is accetable to release software which has bugs. Every software has bugs and that was always the case. Software is a very complicated deal. Some software has more bugs than other software and that may be due to a number of factors, but it can be epitomised into three distinct ones: time, funds and programming skill.

When you are comparing two different programs, roughly the same size, one of which developed for 7 years and the other for 2 years, you cannot claim that the difference in quality is not due to the different time scales involved. And I'll say it again, too, SC2 was in ACTIVE development for 7 years; by a dedicated team.

[Kalah]

All right, guys, cool off. You just have a difference of opinion, there is no need to turn the argument into a full-on fight. Just be cool yo.

(2 posts deleted as taking said difference of opinion beyond what is reasonable in a civilized argument)

[Karmakeld]

I don't think iLiVeInAbOx05 is displaying an attitude, but merely accepting the fact that you accept bugs in software/games whatever, because it's to be expected, thus making this an endless discussion. But I will have to disagree with him. Of course one can always argue, 'oh but they had a bigger team, they had more money and more time' etc. but would you accept a new car that was broken, excusing the developers, that modern cars are more complicated than older cars, due to modern software? Well, if you're an engineer and you can't make you product function, then either don't release it before you figure it out or admit you skill limitations and do something else. The issue is indeed that releasing buggy games has become the standard, thus it becomes acceptable/expected. And I think this is an attitude we unfortunately see spreading more and more to various businesses. But as long as the businesses keeps getting support, they can continue to release unfinished products. I feel this tendency of getting pre-paid or quick cash is spreading more and more. It's like buying a ticket to a concert. Buy now, and get 30% off. Only the performers won't be announced for another month. Why is games any different?

[hellegennes]

The argument with cars doesn't completely hold because it's a completely different thing. However, modern cars are more complex than older cars and they do break down more often; especially their electronics. Even luxury cars have this problem. They consume more gas, they are more sensitive, they even come out with bugs! That's not even an uncommon thing. Last year BMW rolled out a major patch that addressed an issue which would allow hackers to open the doors of 2.2 million cars! Expensive cars, that is. That's a substantially bigger potential loss. It's one thing to lose $30 because your game is frustratingly unplayable and another thing to lose $300,000 because someone stole your Rolls Royce.

That being said, I am not advocating games which come out unfinished or with bugs that make them unplayable. I don't know why anyone would get this idea. However I did say that buggy cames were always released. At least now most of the world has Internet access. In ye old days you had to wait for the patch to be included in the CD of your favourite magazine, which meant that at the very least you would pay for the magazine.

And I reallly do mean that modern games are millions of times more complicated in terms of scripting than games of the 80's, for example. I am being literal here, complexity and script size don't have a linear relationship. Up the code from a few thousand lines to a few million and you are upping the complexity by a factor of millions. Thankfully, there are tools available today to make the process easier, but it still is a huge deal.

What that means is that at the very least games have to have a very long development cycle in order to trace most of the major bugs. But unfortunately the cost has risen hugely as well. Thus companies tend to want tigther development cycles if they are hoping to see any returns on their investment. The majority of casual gamers, on the other hand, are more interesting in the presentation of the game, which tends to be the biggest factor in spending a lot for its development, so companies can't downplay its importance. It's a far more complex problem than it looks. Companies like Blizzard can afford to have big development cycles because of cash-cow games, like, for example, WoW. And they are a huge exception in the gaming world, too.