mamarider wrote:

buzzkill wrote:

And I think what twimpix means is that the difference in resources between adding what's basically a GIF and fluff text to a Hero template uses a much smaller amount of resources than diagnosing, fixing & testing bug fixes.

You are right in general, but in this specific situation there are crippling bugs that can be fixed within 5 minutes according to the modders. Like the special laws missing bug. So sometimes that is not an excuse. ELCP is great and highly appreciated, but even the core state of EL now is much better than the on of ES2. And there is no such hero as Leader Enemy Boss for ES2. There was an Aitarus balance mod, who had some healthy insight on the game, but I think it is abandoned now? Am I wrong?

Aitarus left the community, because he wasn't being heard about his balancing the game. I think he just got fed up with the devs and left the community for good, years ago. I am sure other users have more info on the matter, I just found out like yesterday about it, through looking for some balance mod. Read comments here and there on the web.

I honestly did not realize they were done, but from what I have been reading the last few days, there does need to be some balance and fix patches run on the game. 

mamarider wrote:

buzzkill wrote:

And I think what twimpix means is that the difference in resources between adding what's basically a GIF and fluff text to a Hero template uses a much smaller amount of resources than diagnosing, fixing & testing bug fixes.

You are right in general, but in this specific situation there are crippling bugs that can be fixed within 5 minutes according to the modders. Like the special laws missing bug. So sometimes that is not an excuse. ELCP is great and highly appreciated, but even the core state of EL now is much better than the on of ES2. And there is no such hero as Leader Enemy Boss for ES2. There was an Aitarus balance mod, who had some healthy insight on the game, but I think it is abandoned now? Am I wrong?

This is fair. I haven't played ES2 extensively enough to notice game-breaking bugs, except the missing law bug you point out.

I'm at an impasse; on one hand I'd rather the devs focus on Humankind in order to get it out the door, and hopefully they'll have learned enough lessons from past games that it'll launch in a very stable state. On the other hand, leaving ES2 in the state that it is is a bad indicator of what the state of Humankind might end up as.

Raven2012 wrote:

mamarider wrote:

buzzkill wrote:

And I think what twimpix means is that the difference in resources between adding what's basically a GIF and fluff text to a Hero template uses a much smaller amount of resources than diagnosing, fixing & testing bug fixes.

You are right in general, but in this specific situation there are crippling bugs that can be fixed within 5 minutes according to the modders. Like the special laws missing bug. So sometimes that is not an excuse. ELCP is great and highly appreciated, but even the core state of EL now is much better than the on of ES2. And there is no such hero as Leader Enemy Boss for ES2. There was an Aitarus balance mod, who had some healthy insight on the game, but I think it is abandoned now? Am I wrong?

Aitarus left the community, because he wasn't being heard about his balancing the game. I think he just got fed up with the devs and left the community for good, years ago. I am sure other users have more info on the matter, I just found out like yesterday about it, through looking for some balance mod. Read comments here and there on the web.

There are many stories like this, unfortunately... I haven't heard from Kuma in a long while, he had some very good insight into balancing as did Aitarus. Plutar was a math genius when it came to combat balancing. I don't know where these guys are gone and how many of their ideas were heard. And I am sure there are a few among us here who remember the AMAZING guides the 4XAlchemist brothers did. I've learned most of my craft from their videos! But after realizing that the priorities the devs had for balancing the game did not match what they thought the game needed they just left the community. That is a shame. A very big shame. I think these people provided opportunities for the game to become better balance-wise and these opportunities were missed.

While I'm sure that the devs were always busy working behind the scenes but I felt that the sometimes months of silence and lack of patches were alarming.

I don't have to look very far to find games that are still being patched and worked on and systems reworked years after their release, that's the sort of love I hoped ES2 would receive too.

I know, Paradox is a bigger company with more resources than Amplitude but what I was hoping I guess was that becoming part of the SEGA family would propel them towards quality.

It is nice and all to get goodies like the new hero and stuff, I really appreciate it. But I can only join the people who spoke before me in wishing for a big polish before Amplitude moves on to other projects.

And to answer what I meant by artists not fixing bugs. You can't build high-level science buildings (bug fixing) without antimatter (bug fixers) if you can only spare adamantium (artists)  at the moment.

I still hope we'd receive a one, last farewell package of fixes and reworks.

Alternatively, at least a word from Amplitude that they consider ES2 a done deal.

I too am hoping for polishing.

Race creation system is in bad need of some rework and balancing.

The AI needs Machine Learning. Just run simulations in a cloud environment until it figures out the best behaviour by itself.

Kuma wrote:

twimpix wrote:

There are many stories like this, unfortunately... I haven't heard from Kuma in a long while, he had some very good insight into balancing as did Aitarus.

I'm still there and still working on the community balance and bug fix mod even though I don't post on the public forums as often as I used to (apart from the modding subsection) because I'm not expecting devs to change anything related to balance now, I still bugger Cat with bug reports and possible fixes when I find them hoping at some point the game will receive a final patch. I don't blame Amplitude's devs though, you have to understand fixing bugs, even if it requires literally only 5 minutes to change some xml lines as I mentionned on the discord, still needs to go through Quality Assurance and sometimes tend to have bigger side effects requiring even more manpower. With Humankind development going into full gear, it's understandable they'd rather have all available manpower working on it for the time being, people seem to forget Amplitude is still a rather small dev studio.

Anyway, I recently fixed the riftborn outpost boosting bug and the lumeris/sophons/riftborn quest laws not being awarded properly (it actually only affects those 3, the UC laws from quests are working in vanilla, and so are the minor faction collection laws) in the aforementionned mod and I'm always looking at more fixes.

That's worth pointing out; in software development fixing bugs could possible introduce new unforseen ones. This is especially true in something like a 4X game where systems (in)directly affect each other either programatically or through affecting balance across systems.

+1

Yes, please. I feel like this game is one of the best games humanity ever created. It deserves some polish.

P.S.: Immediately dispatch Vodyani fleet on that one heretic location.

Well, I have to say, I'm disappointed that I feel compelled to "sign" this, but here I am.

/signed

Honestly I don't think it will happen anytime soon, the devs are busy with the new game I guess. Profit first. I mean they have to eat right? modders are our hope.

Yes, agree, please finish and polish!  

I sincerely hope they listen and actually do polish & balance the game. I Stopped playing a while ago due to all the bugs and unbalancing, the terrible diplomacy, etc. But i still think that will some polish, this could be one of the greatest 4X games ever.

Yes, please!