This Extra Credits episode really breaks down why this can happen to even the best of us, Amplitude Studios included:

Extra Credits: Why Do We Ship Buggy Games?

I'll break down some of the points of that video here, with one major thing to understand: This is not meant to defend the practice of releasing buggy games.  In fact, by holding developer's feet to the flame when they do this, you're doing your duty as a responsible consumer. That's not just understandable, it's responsible.

However, it's important to realize that when it happens it's almost never because the studio has gone sour, has contempt for you as the customer, or whatever else. It's because of certain scheduling realities in the industry and the difficulties of recouping costs on the business side of it. This absolutely needs to stop happening and the industry as a whole needs to be held accountable for it. This very much includes Amplitude even in as high regard as I and many others hold them. So while the backlash itself is deserved, I do want people to understand why and likely how it happened. Something Amplitude was very transparent about -- something borked with Unity and there was a huge pothole in getting it fixed for release. This is one of those dangers that comes with licensing engines instead of developing them in-house.  (something that is less and less common a practice because of the huge budget required and engine licensing is why we have so many games in this era;  hard to imagine a world now without Unity or Unreal and so on)

Please, definitely hold their feet to the flame for it. But please don't feel betrayed. Disappointed, maybe, but they're still human. Probably. 

(I sometimes wonder myself, considering their ability to lock down such beautiful art and music assets so reliably and avoid so many trite science fantasy tropes in the writing.)

In any case, I have faith they will get this sorted out. ES2 holds some incredible promise as a space 4X and possibly a standard-bearer for the subgenre.

Groo wrote: 

Still the people you are talking about believe game gets polished and will be awesome in the end. Like you write, they want to change their reviews - if it's fixed and polished.

Yes. Sure. Said that. Looking at negative reviews (not read all, only quick look), most of them recognise the potential of this game. Really I only found two that didn't like the game, the rest were complaints of bugs.

 I think it's not only a problem of Amplitude or SEGA these times. And the communities know about. So they regularly don't buy on release day no more - for known reasons. They wait. For the bugs to get fixed and the reviews changing to recommendations by that way. Another good point to wait these days is, the game is not more polished and fixed only - special offers are common by time. 

Agree. Still don't like this practices. But as said I'll continue playing and buying Amplitude games in EA. I like how why work, their implication with community, etcc... My worry here is that they rushed release, and don't want to see a exceptionally 3 years good work to rush a release ¿one month?

I repeat: not complaining, not angry, just worried about their reputation, cause its one of my favourite studios and want more games from them.

If you are some kind of "fanboy" - like most of us - you are not happy about these practices, but you want to play game as soon as possible and you are ready to pay for. Me i.e., I bought the game for a good friend and we still had lots of fun. Gamebreaking bugs... sometimes. Most time endless fun. And you know what ? Amplitude will continue to fix this game - we all love (I guess, why else posting here ?). 

For sure they'll continue. Indeed the following of their products is another aspect I like of them. They just don't forgot games once they get the money. They first fix, then release free DLCs, and only pay DLC when they feel this content will worth the money.

In that sense they're doing far better than other companies. Again a reason why I want their reputation untouched.

I don't know if Amplitude and/or SEGA bother about the total number of sold units at this point. I guess not, why else releasing game as soon as it was - knowing about the mechanics I wrote about ? I don't think they are as naive, as many people here seem to believe. We will see.

Was telling the number cause I think this is a success for a studio the size of Amplitude having sold all that copies in these few days. People are buying their games even knowing there's no offer, is not black friday and product has bugs. This is imo cause they have a previous good reputation, and most of people are sure the fixes will come.

May the power of Auriga always be with you, my friends. Heads up.

P.S. I didn't expect the devs - *hide away* - to react as fast as proved these days, by delivering patches (beta i.e.) frequently. My first impression was, it could develop worse.

Have high expectations on them. they really never deceived me since now, and are not doing with this game. My fear: not everyone will have this confidence in the studio.

I say again: my best wishes to them, I want you to succeed guys. And of course I'm sure actual bugs will be fixed soon (received a patch even in weekend, so you're for sure working hard)

And as last reflection: you can do lots of good stuff, won't go again into Amp deeds, but one you fail once people can quicly forget the previous. Fortunately for them I got good memory, and know they'll do it well with time, and probably, @Groo, you too have good memory and know the same as VIPs and lots of people here does, but again not sure about this millenials memory with their culture of "I want it now"

lo_fabre wrote:

Reading stem revisions, most are positive, even the ones not recommending the game, tells that it has a great potential, but most of them eon't recommend for same reason: bugs. And this reviews start appearing and growing just after release.

Still the people you are talking about believe game gets polished and will be awesome in the end. Like you write, they want to change their reviews - if it's fixed and polished. I think it's not only a problem of Amplitude or SEGA these times. And the communities know about. So they regularly don't buy on release day no more - for known reasons. They wait. For the bugs to get fixed and the reviews changing to recommendations by that way. Another good point to wait these days is, the game is not more polished and fixed only - special offers are common by time. 

If you are some kind of "fanboy" - like most of us - you are not happy about these practices, but you want to play game as soon as possible and you are ready to pay for. Me i.e., I bought the game for a good friend and we still had lots of fun. Gamebreaking bugs... sometimes. Most time endless fun. And you know what ? Amplitude will continue to fix this game - we all love (I guess, why else posting here ?). 

I don't know if Amplitude and/or SEGA bother about the total number of sold units at this point. I guess not, why else releasing game as soon as it was - knowing about the mechanics I wrote about ? I don't think they are as naive, as many people here seem to believe. We will see.

May the power of Auriga always be with you, my friends. Heads up.

P.S. I didn't expect the devs - *hide away* - to react as fast as proved these days, by delivering patches (beta i.e.) frequently. My first impression was, it could develop worse.

Witchi wrote:

Slashman wrote:

Well it's very convenient to assume that everybody is suffering from X bug just because you are, but I haven't had a crash or endless loop since release. I'm at near turn 75 on my current game.

So to someone who has had the same experience I have had, most of the bugs have not been game breaking. Doubly so if a number of these are multiplayer only, since a minority of players engage in multiplayer anyway.

It would be valid point if these forums, reddit and steam weren't filled with complaints on the same problem that completely throws your playthrough out of window. Check back in turn 150 and tell us the same thing.

Save from turn 152 attached. No game breaking issues so long.

The Unfallen .zip

Reading stem revisions, most are positive, even the ones not recommending the game, tells that it has a great potential, but most of them eon't recommend for same reason: bugs. And this reviews start appearing and growing just after release.

Amplitude, I'm not angry with you. I'm worried. Cause as said many times I love your games, but with the prestige you've won with your previous games, people expect impeccable releases and this game should be in EA for a month or two. As said, I'll continue playing and buying your games, as this is not a problem for me having bugs as long as you continue fixing them as you did in ES1 and EL, with also exceptional good DLC that really was that: DLC and not something that should be in game start.

but I'm sure not everybody out there will share my opinion, and lots of people don't want to wait (as said, may be I'm getting old and this doesn't matters for me), they want something like this game can be, but want it now and not in a month.

Still have hope: new patches and free DLC will for sure fix that. Also on steam spy, today 90.000+ copies sold (if you look at estimated real number without SD it is near 5.000 copies sold since yesterday) and 55.000+ players at 7 days after release, this sounds good, and you can success, even more than in your previous games if you fix quick.

for now, the only support I can give to you a part from buying your game: positive review on steam (short but is there)

Well it's very convenient to assume that everybody is suffering from X bug just because you are, but I haven't had a crash or endless loop since release. I'm at near turn 75 on my current game.

So to someone who has had the same experience I have had, most of the bugs have not been game breaking. Doubly so if a number of these are multiplayer only, since a minority of players engage in multiplayer anyway.

Asuzu wrote:

Sure, I'll kick the baby, if everyone does it.

The game was released too soon.

I purchased it in EA.

It was unplayable by turn 60, memory leaks, bugs, degenerating performance. Dumb AI doing dumb AI stuff.

That's on top end PC with GTX980, latest Intel processor and 16Gb RAM. I shudder to think what is going on with people who have less powerful PCs.

Now it is "released" but overall still feels barely optimized, with gazillion of bugs and still degenerating performance.

So basically I have the game sitting on my PC for a while now - a few months, still unplayable, waiting for those patches.

If the modern policy is to turn your customers into unpaid QA testers, I guess it works, but only for 1 product.

No way in hell I am ever pre-paying for experience like that.

I see several core issues as it is:

1) Simultaneous turns blow

End of turn slows everything to a crawl, because you save the game, process all events, and move ships same time.

There is no definitive "end" of turn, you still do global crap when it's my turn already.

That's bad.

If we are talking turn-based, let everyone do their moves/turns, then neutrals, then me.

Stop moving galaxy when I am trying to think what to do.

So, make turns actual turn-based, e.g. enemy does not act/move when it's my turn.

2) Too much unoptimized civilian life

Yeah I remember how everyone was asking for civilian ships to make galaxy more alive.

But clogging the game with thousands of civilian ships, especially when AI starts moving his pops between planets nonstop - bringing even most powerful PCs to their knees - that's not the option we had in mind boys.

If you have performance problems running those civilians, at the very least, instead of making them visual de-facto, give us the option keep them as a quick background calculation.

i'd say please do not make it IGUGO (turn based)  because it would kill multiplayer.(real men play multiplayer) 

 and no please keep civilians visible , the more visible representation the better. immersion is important, and if you ask me i 'd say we need more immersion

i am very dissapointed with  multiplayer stability , but overall game works almost 60fps non stop for me (vsync enabled)

and i have slightly/moderately weaker pc than you:

i5 4690k 4.5ghz

gtx970 oc

8gb ram

HDD

buggs are problem

please do not write words like : "EA" it reminds me of Electronic Arts company

The fact is... Like Paradox strategy games, Amplitude create really complex stuff... By really complex, I mean, literally, that any average or low spec computer older than 6 years wouldn't be able to only handle the logic behind it. You can't expect games to be bug free on release, it's completely surrealistic.

Which is making you reacting is just one or two big bugs, introduced by fixes... Which created endless (no pun intended) loops AI bugs... These are game breaking bugs and don't reflect the whole quality of the product.

This game weren't released too soon... as many players come, the more you get bugs as you have a lot more different ways to play the game. I generally point out bugs nobody had before as I try things, sometime stupid, sometime not usual, and I get these errors... or as I noticed, people don't see any bug where there's one, they take this or that as a feature.

Now, this game is released and, as they did before, they'll solve  all  issues we can submit. Note that the 1.0.5, despite introducing some infinite loop issue in AI, included fix for 3/4 of the other bugs reported until now.

Look at games like WOW... 13 years it's out and there's still lingering bugs coming back with patches requiring hotfixes... This is happening EVERYWHERE, and it's related to the global complexity of the tools we now use every day...

As a web developer, I see how I came from simple HTML sites to HTML5/CSS/JavaScript with PHP backend and from a hundred lines to two thousands... not for the same result for sure, but at the cost of a few bug arising there and there.

Sure, I'll kick the baby, if everyone does it.

The game was released too soon.

I purchased it in EA.

It was unplayable by turn 60, memory leaks, bugs, degenerating performance. Dumb AI doing dumb AI stuff.

That's on top end PC with GTX980, latest Intel processor and 16Gb RAM. I shudder to think what is going on with people who have less powerful PCs.

Now it is "released" but overall still feels barely optimized, with gazillion of bugs and still degenerating performance.

So basically I have the game sitting on my PC for a while now - a few months, still unplayable, waiting for those patches.

If the modern policy is to turn your customers into unpaid QA testers, I guess it works, but only for 1 product.

No way in hell I am ever pre-paying for experience like that.

I see several core issues as it is:

1) Simultaneous turns blow

End of turn slows everything to a crawl, because you save the game, process all events, and move ships same time.

There is no definitive "end" of turn, you still do global crap when it's my turn already.

That's bad.

If we are talking turn-based, let everyone do their moves/turns, then neutrals, then me.

Stop moving galaxy when I am trying to think what to do.

So, make turns actual turn-based, e.g. enemy does not act/move when it's my turn.

2) Too much unoptimized civilian life

Yeah I remember how everyone was asking for civilian ships to make galaxy more alive.

But clogging the game with thousands of civilian ships, especially when AI starts moving his pops between planets nonstop - bringing even most powerful PCs to their knees - that's not the option we had in mind boys.

If you have performance problems running those civilians, at the very least, instead of making them visual de-facto, give us the option keep them as a quick background calculation.

*Double post*

Considering the huge amount of features ES2 have compared to all their previous games, one could say that they are performing better. ;)

PS: By the way where are all my very importants forum veterancy medals gone!? With this new candycrush style forum I look like a baby, it's scandalous! ^^

Someway I agree with @Aghastamok.

This game has been released too soon.

Understand me, if you look into forums for my comments, I love this game, and most of time defend Amplitude, because I also like lots the way they work with the community.

I have no troubles in actual game status, as I had been there all EA and it has improved a lot, but I'm afraid people who buys the game expecting a finished product and with high hopes on Amplitude may feel dissapointed.

Sorry to say that. Really I want Amplitude to success, because at few months after release both EL and Es1 turned into very good games (I was too in EL EA) and I want more games like them. What I'm afraid is that the well earned prestige may be lost due to a quick release.

ES 2 is a very good game introducing fresh concepts to 4X and really want Amplitude selling lots of copies, to allow them continue working and making good stuff, but I'm bit worried all good work done can be lost.

Still and to be honest, at 6 days after release, Steam spy says about 90.000 owners of Es2. Not to count over a million for Es1, El and 700.000 DotE (My link with search 24/05/17: http://steamspy.com/search.php?s=endless), all of them with userscores over 80%, add to this if you search "Endless" in steamspy, all Amp games are the first to appear. More about that 1.600+ revies on Steam are mostly positive and recommend this game.

With this numbers in mind, still have hope that with a quick fixes of actual issues they can recover they prestige fast enough.

Sorry for the rant. My best wishes for you, Amplitude, hope you can continue making good stuff. 

I understand your point of view but the major problem in the most case of a new game release is "Players have short memory".

Yes Amplitude had a solid reputation (and they must preserve it) and made polished games but no that was not realy more bug than on the previous release day one.

Endless Space had plenty bug and balance problem and a realy poor UI but that was the first one from a small indie, they bring back 4x at the top and we forgive and forget.

Patches and further Disharmony made the game well polished and we enjoy it.

Endless Legend had same problem too, the game 1.0 and the game today is completely not the same.

Maybe ES2 release was a bit too soon, maybe the players become demanding too because Amplitude generate more hype than before.

I know that releasing game too soon is a slipery slope but I think it's a bit too soon to take out the torches.