View Full Version : Please, do NOT give us a buggy TS...
Marcabru
24-09-2006, 04:49
Just to balance things off...
Please, Atari, we the signers below ask you NOT to give us a buggy NWN2 TS. The NWN1 TS was a great success because it was NOT too buggy when it came out, which allowed its extraordinary features to shine. Although we all are eager to continue our mod development with the new TS, our eagerness is not stronger than our wish to have a good piece of software. Of course, we understand no software can be perfect, especially when it is released for the first time, so we are not asking for perfection here (not even NWN1 is perfect, after four years). We are only asking for a product that we can trust. We would not like our time and effort to be threatened by bugs that may well represent the difference between quality and shoddy modding. Our mods will be as good as the TS. The buggier the tool is, the poorer our mods will be. Although we were very disappointed with the delay, we have not let our disappointment cloud our judgment. We rather have it right than right now, to be let down by a delay than by a low-quality product. Better have a good product later than a bad product now. A buggy product is much worse than a delayed product. Please, fix as many bugs as possible. The more you fix, the better. Make this delay and the disappointment it has caused in all of us count. Give us the kind of quality you gave us with NWN1.
Marcabru
24-09-2006, 04:50
*signed*
Marcabru
withdraw your hand then. no one would force you to take a buggy toolset, i myself give you personal permission to wait until the final one's polished and bugs are all sorted out. whenever that may be. although i'm optimistic by nature (otherwise i'd never startet my petition) i am prepared for the game and toolset beeing delayed again, i even hope it will be delayed until the code is a lot more mature than what we got in the first boxes of nwn1.
but still i've to sign your demand:
please, atari, don't give him a buggy toolset :-)
Marc - then maybe you just should not use the tool set at all until the 3rd or 4th official patch , if Atari is still in business at that time - stock price on Friday was .61 US. I wonder how low it will go Monday. A bunch of us could get together and just BUY OUT Atari for a few dollars each and release the tool set, jk. Considering this and your point for a second - I think it may be entirely possible that Atari plans absolutely NO official support for the product after launch.
If they, for whatever reason do release a toolset before the 30th, simply do not use it if you feel that way. Most people that want it now are not going to spend massive amounts of time building PWs right away, we just want to get a grasp on any changes and see how importing NWN1 files work, etc, so any work lost to bugs is trivial.
However, I am fairly confident that the ONLY reason they are holding it back at this time is to be in line w/ the whole "1 month before game release" deal, which is simply quite petty on Atari's part after pushing it back so many times , the fiasco with the timer, and total lack of communication on the matter. They should just release it as a good faith measure for all the **** they put us through.
If the Toolset was good enough to build the single player campaign, it is good enough for a beta release. The only exception is if it has the bug that reformats your HDD like PoR if you do not install to the default directory as someone else said.
To be honest, the download website was in a constant state of flux on friday. Based on the (minimal) official contact we have had I would guess that at least part of the delay is to do with getting the distribution structure ready.
I just hope the fileservers they set up can cope with the massive influx of people, and that atari do not give into the temptation of releasing a smaller content free toolset (no art/tilesets).
Petitions to release/not release at this point are somwhat useless. Even if you got many thousands of signitures, by the time it reached the people who make the decisions it would be next weekend anyhow!
Lorft
*Goes back to writing NPC conversations*
of course you are right if - and only if - we really get the toolset next weekend. if we don't - and as there have already been two delays, so no one can guarantee there won't be another one - giving us access to the beta toolset or something alike would at least show that someone cares about us.
as for the downloads... i agree, atari may face some sort of ddos attack just because all of us will push the "download"-button at the same time. the problem could be solved either by sheer volume (using a broad mirroring/loadbalancing system as akamai, but that's expensive) or by intelligent use of communities eagerness: if they just seeded a torrent say two hours before opening "normal" downloads they'd effectively cut down the first wave of downloaders and make them add their own (upload-) bandwith to the task.
distributing a cut-down version without or with less art work would render the toolset almost useless to the broad mass of preorder customers, and it would as well contradict their promise to polish the toolset until next weekend.
tenebra_uk
25-09-2006, 00:20
CCAP12, may I ask you to refrain from making gratuitous and unfounded posts?
While I can definately see the arguement for saying 'give us a buggy toolset and those that don't want it can just not have it', there *is* a very important first impression to be made. Sometimes holding back can be a good thing, and giving people what they want a bad thing - sometimes being cruel is being kind.
Regardless of how many warnings they would put up about it being an alpha or whatever version, people would still download it and play with it, and then make a judgment on the quality of the product before buying the game. A bad toolset release could actually loose Atari sales of the game itself. Also what if something quite major had to change? The outcry from the very people that Atari would like developing for their games if they've been building away in a toolset for months and then they discover that actually it's been worth nothing due to a major change would be a major blow for custom content.
So while personally I would like a look at the toolset - not to build anything, but to start learning the skills again which I would use in the real toolset, I don't think it would be a good thing for Atari to release a buggy toolset that anyone could download.
sometimes being cruel is being kind.yes, i know that one, and i hold to it when talking to my two years old son. but then again i think that _i_ should be the one to decide what ist good for me and what is not. that's the privilege of beeing grown up.
The outcry from the very people that Atari would like developing for their games if they've been building away in a toolset for months...we are not talking about building modules (if that thought troubled anyone they could simply disable the saving function!), and hopefully not for months anyway. if it _was_ for months, the more we'd want to have at least something right now.
anyway i understand your concerns, and although i don't share them (or don't think they're applicable to at least the people surrounding me and my pleed) i've noticed that there are quite a few people thinking along your lines. so, sad for me, i think you need not worry about your fears becomming true :-(
yes, i know that one, and i hold to it when talking to my two years old son. but then again i think that _i_ should be the one to decide what ist good for me and what is not. that's the privilege of beeing grown up. Would that the majority of the market for NWN2 were as wise as yourself and could clearly seperate the quality of a pre-release toolset from the quality of the final game... but I think it's rather optimistic to think that they are :)
Of course, it could be that I (and Atari perhaps) are being too pessimistic, but I can understand why they would rather be safe than sorry - delaying a release of a toolset when the first words on the subject were that infact there would be no pre-release at all shouldn't lose them any sales. Releasing a buggy one could. Then it's just a case of comparing my needs with Atari's ;) so while it might be best for me personally to have an early toolset, for Atari and Obsidian's sake I don't want them to lose any sales, because I want people to think there is money to be made in this genre and thus make more games for me to enjoy in the future :D
BloodGodxXx7447
27-09-2006, 06:52
withdraw your hand then. no one would force you to take a buggy toolset, i myself give you personal permission to wait until the final one's polished and bugs are all sorted out. whenever that may be. although i'm optimistic by nature (otherwise i'd never startet my petition) i am prepared for the game and toolset beeing delayed again, i even hope it will be delayed until the code is a lot more mature than what we got in the first boxes of nwn1.
but still i've to sign your demand:
please, atari, don't give him a buggy toolset :-)
Hmmm Now read this
i'm sure loads of forum members are going to read this one, and i hope you guys at atari read along. first i'll tell you what i'm asking for, then i'll give you the reasons, and at the end i provide you with a cheap way to do it.
please, atari, give us access to the nwn2 toolset right now. give us the beta-toolset or the "work in progress" version of the final one, even though there are still bugs in it, even if you consider it disfunctional at all.
please continue reading about the reasons to ask for this:
nwn1 was a great success, still prominent on sales shelfs after more than four years. this is due to the large community of nonprofit developers creating tools, artwork and content for running "persistent worlds" all over the (real) world. all of us are eager to continue our work on nwn2, most signed for the closed beta, some were accepted, but the greater part of us were not.
so we settled for the second best way to get our hands dirty with the toolset: we went for the preorder packs. dates were given, first we knew only about september 7th (release of the preorder packs), then we had to find out that we had to wait for september 18th to download the toolset, which was then changed to september 22th and againg to september 30th.
Not sure why you are quoting?
Tanita is asking that the game and final toolset be delayed if neccessary to produce a better product, but at the same time asking for an early release of a non-final toolset so he can get his hands dirty.
thank you for explaining to your foreposter (or is it fourposter? no, thad'd be silly...) what i'm asking for in the quoted paragraphs. you're absolutely right, except one little detail: "... so she can get her hands dirty." :-)
dear bloodgod, perhaps you misunderstood part of my postings, perhaps my english isn't good enough to present my arguments clearly enough. sorry, if you were mistaken.
except one little detail: "... so she can get her hands dirty." :-)
Hehe sincerest apologies, my only defense is to claim that a genderless 'they' isn't proper english, and as I dislike he/she I should add a disclaimer to my posts that when I say 'he' it is of course an abreviation for he/she* ;)
kalniel
*This convention was defied by my college at Cambridge which proud of it's once feminist roots purposefully used 'she' for every document...:p
ah, never mind. anyway, i couldn't care less about who's a he or a she around the boards or in irc, as long as s/he's gentle and polite.
BloodGodxXx7447
28-09-2006, 02:31
I quoted because one post that she made awhile ago saying she wanted a pre release of the toolset and giving ideas and how it could be done then a post she made sence then saying she hoped it would be delayed after this deadline... People just cant make up there minds on what they want.
well, i do know what i want, and i expressed it in those two postings... kalniel put it in less words, but it's exactly what i meant to say.
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