Witchi wrote:

Biggest problem is that the game is riddled with bugs.

And there are a lot of bugs that affect gameplay such as; endless turn waiting, endless space battle waiting, endless invasion waiting. Pretty damn living up "Endless" name, eh?

MidnightTea wrote:

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.

Yep. That's why i blame Sega (publisher of the game) for this. The scheduling for releasing ES2 was too short. Maybe I'm wrong and Sega has nothing to do with this. As Amplitude told us in their apologize letter , they rushed new stuff few days before the release and didn't test properly.

After last devs post, Amplitude shown a great deal of responsability.

They went from very positive -> mixed -> mostly positive in steam reviews, so hope reputation has recovered quicly. Also >100k copies sold on steam spy.

They did their part, I'll do my little: my apologies to devs if I offended someway in this thread.

I'l rework my revision on steam (which of course recommended the game) and I'll do in 3 languages (probably during weekend).

Thanks you for your great job, and also thanks for giving us the opportunity to participated in your EA. You're best in this way to develop games, and hope setting the future of game creation via internet in touch with commmunity.

Again my apologies. Never lost trust in you.

- Fabre

There is no doubt that they will fix the issues. ES 2 is a worthwhile game from a design/mechanics standpoint. The presence of a few bugs doesn't throw that out of the window or lessen the scope of what Amplitude built. People are acting like they're shuttering the studio and running. Pretty sure more free content is to come along with fixes and updates.

Game design forums were mostly irrelevant at the time of few weeks before release, since people gave their feedback on few-months outdated build. They did responded in other sections thought, particularly those hidden from public.

With regards to bugs in the game, I think that lo_fabre makes an excellent point about games released digitally and how it allows things to be patched to perfection after release. However, to me the critical thing here is that the game was released in full knowledge that it had a lot of bugs, some of them quite game-breaking. This is a game that you don't pick up for a few hours for a complete experience; it plays out over multiple days so by the time you discover a game-breaking bug, you've already invested a big chunk of your time and then have to abandon it. 

On the wider subject of EA, I think it wasn't as good as it could've been. There was a lot of resistance from the devs to changing things like tech tree and combat, good Ideas from the Ideas section weren't feeding into EA updates (maybe some will be implemented later on, maybe not), dev engagement on the forums wasn't always great (if I remember right, the Game Design section went for 15-16 days without a Dev response towards the end). Hopefully, over time the game will improve to the level of Endless Legend as it has a lot of potential, for sure.

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.

if there was no multiplayer i 'd give es2 to my non existant dog to shit on it and eat it afterwards. if there is multiplayer (and there is) it must work, no excuses. its not a side feature

aghastamok wrote:

I, too, was present for day 1 of original Endless Space. It had its flaws, for sure. The lack of polish was apparent, and there were some gameplay bugs. Some that even impeded the regular flow of the game. I recall having to regularly save and rehost multiplayer games before desyncs got too out of hand. The issues were eventually figured out and Disharmony added much-needed polish.

Here and now, we have a game with beautiful UI, nice polish and bugs so bad that we have to just abandon a whole save. Disassociate yourself entirely from the rest of the Endless catalogue (how many Steam reviewers are doing their reviews in a vacuum rather than reviewing one of their favorite 4x series?) and think about this game as if it were the first release from a new company. I don't know about you but I would be pretty appalled.

Because it's Amplitude I have faith they won't abandon their product.

Because it's Amplitude I'm sure it's going to be damn near perfect someday.

But because it's Amplitude, I expected a great deal better than this on day one. This isn't ES1. They've had years to become a sharper, more professional outfit. They should be performing better, not seeing previous performance as an easy mark to hit.

Amplitude, as a studio, works better than when they launched ES1. They hired more people. Those who were there from the beginning are getting a lot of XP.

But in the same time their games are more and more ambitious (apart DotE which was more a "let's do this crazy thing" trip). ES2 needed a lot more engineering time than ES1 or EL.

So, they become a sharper, more professional outfit, it's just that they put a lot more layers in ES2 than they could handle. So it "seems" they didn't leveled up : they just try harder "quests".

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.

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.

I didn't start seeing major bugs until turn 120 or so. After that point, elections would cause the game to get stuck and I'd have to force quit and load an auto-save every time.

I talked you guys up.

I really did. I told friends who like 4x to buy ES2. I said the bugs would be worked out because all of your previous titles have been total knockouts. Your reputation spoke through me and I relied on it.

The situation with ES2 is bad.

You've released the game officially! Hurrah. I love the concept and the game you've dreamed up as always. I buy your games one and all because they're genuinely fantastic. But ES2 has problems... big ones. Bugs where my friends and I have to restart the whole game. Only the host can play custom factions. No random maps. Quests that just don't function. Huge swaths of the game that seem poorly balance or not completely thought through.

Don't be like the other guys.

In a lot of cases, game publishers have been releasing their games in an incomplete state to use the first wave of paying customers as unpaid beta testers. It is so plain that this has happened here. Look at the bug report forum: looks like something like 10-20 serious bugs posted a day. 2 or 3 serious patches in less than a week since release. Your reputation is valuable and irreplaceable. Don't let it just get destroyed through careless development practices.

Aghastamok

Biggest problem is that the game is riddled with bugs, it's been almost a week since the release and there has been multiple major game breaking bugs, not visual or inconvenience bugs, that pretty much destroy your playthroughs. While it is encouraging to see the team working so hard to squash them as they come up, it is saddening to see how incomplete the game is in terms of it 'running'.

I'm a bit let down truth be told as I can understand gameplay lacking polish etc however releasing a buggy game that seemingly gets even more bugged with each and every patch is what I feel is a bad business practice. Sure, they will eventually be fixed but what is the point of me buying the game at release if it is going to sit in my steam library waiting for it to be functional.

It is trend that is the case with AAA games but Endless Space 2 is one of the worst ones I've seen to date. There always have been buggy games at launch, looking at you Andromeda, however this is a different case as these are game-breaking bugs. Saying but hey, Endless Legend/Space were worse doesn't make it any better.

For instance let's take two of this game's competitors, Stellaris and Civ 6. Stellaris recently had its expansion pack released and with it came a game-breaking bug. It was fixed within the day and now there might still be problems (not that I know of) but they don't alter the gameplay drastically to the point of discarding a playthrough. The difference with ES2 was patch after patch the same bugs resurface and it feels like it is the last month of Early Access with things taking a turn for better or worse.

In the case of Civ6, the game felt unfinished. However, there were NO game-breaking bugs at its release. I am more than willing to pay for more content even if it is glaringly obvious the gameplay is lacking however it alienates the customers to play a unfinished game with bugs, an example to this is the very recent Andromeda. And it pains me to say, but ES2 is in a MUCH WORSE shape.

Going back to this, really I understand the situation now. Back in the golden 90s, you bought a CD, and no possibilities of any fix after this, so companies didn't released anything with big bugs (except for the water faction in SMAC if there was no water in the planet XD).

Internet changed all that, which imo is good, as allows to patch almost everything.

My concern is that they released the game IMO too soon, but not a yer too soon, may be only one or two months. They fixed most of issues in less than two weeks. Conuldn't they wait a month to release the game? I'm sure they budget can support this.

I'm not angered with Amplitude, I'm worried about they reputation. I'm almost sure I'll buy next games from them, and 100% sure for ES2 - at least first one - DLC, but as said before, I want them continue making this good games, and for that reason they need a good reputation.

Personally had no problems in testing EA with the sight of the potential behind this game, and no problem with actual bugs, but not sure if everyone has the same opinion.

Or may be I'm getting old and millenials are used to this and will buy the game even if they have to wait three weeks to play this bug-free.

For me framerate drops only when CPU is busy, which is normal for 4X strategy game. And Unity isn't known to be a very good multithreading engine, AFAIK. On a GPU side I almost always have stable 60FPS (1080p highest settings) on 5(?)-years old 660Ti. So yeah, performance-wise it's not perfect, but it already performs better then Endless Legend, and certainly not as bad as Asuzu describes.