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verriker
Honorable
Legendary Hero
We don't need another 'eroes
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posted December 09, 2015 06:44 PM |
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Antalyan said:
As about efreet, I would like to know why Ubi did not tell us it was a mistake. I know you wont't tell me either, but... they don't communicate, they seems not to care. So I'd like to ask you if they at least communicate with you and if you colaborate in your opinion well or bad (because most of studios who worked with Ubi don't want to do it again, as about Heroes: Nival did not get on well with them and Black Hole even bancrupted thanks to them).
I think secretly they have already decided to end the project and are deliberately letting Limbic take centre stage to become their fall guys,
why should the publisher be bothered to deal with all those stupid patsy customers on the fan forums when the developer's community management is pretty happy to handle all that dirty work, after all it only makes sense to the publisher, it means they get an even longer lunch break and more sessions of League of Legends in their day lol
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Brukernavn
Hero of Order
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posted December 09, 2015 07:12 PM |
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Antalyan said:
It is like painting the wall of the house which is being built.
Just like building a house, you have different roles and responsibilities in the team. The painter might be good at painting, but not so good with installing windows. So if there are a lot of windows to install, it's better for the painter to work on something rather than just wait for them to finish. So maybe he'll paint the garage.
It's not possible, or desirable, to make the whole team work on the same issue. The map makers can't improve the AI, and vice versa. So if there are two guys working on the AI, it doesn't speed up their work if the map makers stop working on the map editor for instance.
At this point a lot of their time goes into testing and trying to re-produce reported bugs. They need to find out why something is wrong before they can fix it. Unfortunately this kind of troubleshooting is very unpredictable. Some things are easily sorted out, while others might be hard to re-produce (like the lost skills issue). That is why you'll have a general progress of improvement in all areas of the game, and sometimes longer periods of time with less visible progress.
With that being said - this is what alpha and beta testing before release is for. And the amount of problems this game is facing, indicates a poor foundation.
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Maurice
Hero of Order
Part of the furniture
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posted December 09, 2015 07:19 PM |
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Brukernavn said:
With that being said - this is what alpha and beta testing before release is for. And the amount of problems this game is facing, indicates a poor foundation.
Agreed. I work for a testing department of software used by the government and the bugs I am seeing in this game would be a direct rejection if it were software we're usually testing. And then you have to keep in mind that the software being used operationally isn't bug-free, it's just bug-free enough to work around the still existing ones.
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blob2
Undefeatable Hero
Blob-Ohmos the Second
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posted December 09, 2015 08:36 PM |
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Edited by Elvin at 23:49, 09 Dec 2015.
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http://i63.tinypic.com/5vt7xj.png
OK, long time since I've been here only to see that things, well, didn't change...
Game is still c*ap, so I won't give it another chance (yeah I've tried it a little before), cause I don't want another H6 expierience all over again.
In the long run this all comes down to one point, and I'm afraid it's the thing I've been telling like mantra since Ubi took over the franchise back in the day. I've had my fears, cause in my understanding it was a really bad thing to happen, yep. Sure the franchise was "saved" and blah blah, but even with the well recieved H5 (only because Nival was involved imo) this series was doomed to begin with. A company that was always known for bugged and unstable products (had a lot of bad expieriences with their games) didn't bode well (it shows it's something with their quality testing). Even with some good games (but hey, usually because they're handled by divisions like Ubi Montreal, which seems like a solid one) Ubi is not, saying it as mildly as possible, your best bet...
Sim Turns was never my thing, but I understand the outrage, and I can only thank myself that I've abandoned this game when I had a hunch something was wrong (not very fanboyish, I know, but once again, I've had my full "serving" with H6 already). I can't understand why some of you Guys still have the nerve to bother with this game, but true love (for the franchise of course) never withers...
H7 well... I hate it's design, ugly UI, and bland colours (and the whole atmosphere), I hate it's instability and bugfest, I hate how fans are f*cked in the as* over and over again, and I'm fed up with Ashan (they can even make dragons right!). No more of this s*it...
Sorry for my brag, but I won't be here anytime soon (I still visit, and will be visiting this board from time to time though). At least not until Ubi will abandon this franchise and maybe, just maybe, some nice guys will pick it up via Kickstarter and they'll make something good out of it (2D please!).
Stay strong Guys! I'm out for now...
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malax83
Famous Hero
Game ranger, HotA Player
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posted December 09, 2015 09:29 PM |
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gomaki said:
natalka said:
Taking resources/mines now costs 1 MP. That was the change I was going to propose. I wonder why you don`t include it in patch notes.
Ninja change even to me
No
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Gryphs
Supreme Hero
The Clever Title
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posted December 09, 2015 09:58 PM |
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blob2 said:
Game is still c*ap,
You censored crap but not your pic, lol. 
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"Don't resist the force. Redirect it. Water over rock."-blizzardboy
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blob2
Undefeatable Hero
Blob-Ohmos the Second
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posted December 09, 2015 10:48 PM |
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Edited by blob2 at 23:04, 09 Dec 2015.
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Gryphs said:
blob2 said:
Game is still c*ap,
You censored crap but not your pic, lol.
Sorry, but I always do that with the "c" word on this board (better then snow  ), while a meme is a meme 
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LukaOo
Hired Hero
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posted December 10, 2015 07:00 AM |
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3lion said:
gomaki said:
However when it comes to community requested changes, if I field a good enough argument
It is now your number one topic to think about and to sleep with. Forget about new maps. Forget about Axeoth. Forget about everything else. Give us normal SimTurns. It is a top priority request from the community now.
I don't know what is more complex and important thing to fix SimTurns or improve AI? Without any of them the game is not playable both in MP and single player modes. Without AI the game process turns into meaninglessness wandering
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Antalyan
Promising
Supreme Hero
H7 Forever
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posted December 10, 2015 07:48 AM |
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Brukernavn said:
Antalyan said:
It is like painting the wall of the house which is being built.
Just like building a house, you have different roles and responsibilities in the team.
I agree that there are some people who are specialised on some concrete problems and would not probably help much with the other issues so it is better for them to do the other things. Nevertheless, the problems is then that Limbic has incredibly low amount of people who can solve the basic problems like AI. Or at least it seems to be in this way - the time 1.5 and 1.6 were almost three weeks and there were very little changes to be compared to the amount of things still waiting to be fixed.
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LukaOo
Hired Hero
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posted December 10, 2015 08:14 AM |
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Antalyan said:
Brukernavn said:
Antalyan said:
It is like painting the wall of the house which is being built.
Just like building a house, you have different roles and responsibilities in the team.
I agree that there are some people who are specialised on some concrete problems and would not probably help much with the other issues so it is better for them to do the other things. Nevertheless, the problems is then that Limbic has incredibly low amount of people who can solve the basic problems like AI. Or at least it seems to be in this way - the time 1.5 and 1.6 were almost three weeks and there were very little changes to be compared to the amount of things still waiting to be fixed.
I guess they don't have a specialist who capables to solve AI problem, because if they had such staff it would be done before release but now we see that situation is not significantly changed in three month. Release this product without AI equals don't release it at all.
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frostymuaddib
Promising
Supreme Hero
育碧是白痴
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posted December 10, 2015 11:26 AM |
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They didn't care to fix issues (AI included) before releasing. They had two beta tests, and instead of using them for fixing problems and bugs, they were merely used as marketing trick: preorder game and you get beta!
And now, after the 'release' they are doing what should've been done, and they are not very good at it.
____________
"Occam's shuriken: when the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas." -- Dr. Gordon Freeman (Freeman's Mind)
"lol" -- VERRIKER VON ERWINSSEN
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gomaki
Shaper of Lore
Community Manager, Limbic Ent.
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posted December 10, 2015 12:26 PM |
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Antalyan said:
@gomaki
Nice to hear about possible better sim turns, I think it can help many people.
As about efreet, I would like to know why Ubi did not tell us it was a mistake. I know you wont't tell me either, but... they don't communicate, they seems not to care. So I'd like to ask you if they at least communicate with you and if you colaborate in your opinion well or bad (because most of studios who worked with Ubi don't want to do it again, as about Heroes: Nival did not get on well with them and Black Hole even bancrupted thanks to them).
And finally one more related question: I am not experienced in game programming and so on but it seems to me strange that you work on this game's problems -well, how to say it- in a very strange way for me. Instead of focusing on one main problem, your improvements are like "everything and nothing". The minor problems are being fixed, the main problems are usually only slightly improved. And that's what makes many people quite angry I think. They see no general progress, the problems are still the same as they were immediately after the release. Could you explain it me a bit to understand you better? The question is: why you don't focus on one main problem, fix it completely (or let's say the best you can do in the current situation) and after that focus on another problem instead of making thinks paralelly as I explained above?
I would very thankful, I am not sure what to think now.
I'm in the process of writing a long reply to this which will also cover other peoples questions.
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MoritzBradtke
Known Hero
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posted December 10, 2015 12:59 PM |
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Quote:
OK, long time since I've been here only to see that things, well, didn't change...
Game is still c*ap, so I won't give it another chance (yeah I've tried it a little before), cause I don't want another H6 expierience all over again.
Stay strong Guys! I'm out for now...
GOOD BYE! Such posts are no help and even not everything u've said is true
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gomaki
Shaper of Lore
Community Manager, Limbic Ent.
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posted December 10, 2015 01:25 PM |
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Ok to answer what Antalyan asked.
First and foremost Ubisoft didn't say anything about the Efreet mistake because it was literally MY mistake. I compile the patchnotes and use a document that is updated every time someone changes/fixes/implements something to the new build. I then take these notes, make it so people can understand what the programmer has done (sometimes they're incredibly technical and no one cares about your 1s and 0s) make them pretty, post them and send them to Ubisoft to post them on SC. I then post them in other social media outlets. Regarding the Efreet I simply took the change from a later edition of the patch notes. It is coming, but in a later patch. So for this I entirely hold my hands up. It was my mistake.
As for the other question I have spent the better part of an hour figuring out how to answer you. I have written up a little bit of a 'game developers, thought process insight' that I will share here which will hopefully make things clearer, or perhaps more confusing.
So lets see what insight I can give on how games get made/patched/fixed.
You have producers. Who are the 'managers' of the product if you will. They oversee every section of the team, will be involved with some of the design decisions (at least sign them off) and will likely have the most involvement with the publisher (in this case Ubisoft).
You then have a design team who, well design. They come up with the features, re work existing features, implement a lot of the 'blue print' of the product and with in this team you can sometimes have a coder, but it's by no means a requirement as a designer.
You then have programmers. This team is split up into multiple smaller teams. So you have AI programmers, GUI programmers, Game mechanic programmers, Editor programmers,save/load/Uplay programmer, Engine programmer, multiplayer programmers and I’m positive I’ve missed some others for specific things. Some times these roles can cross over with the same person but it's not usual for that to happen.
Then we have someone who concentrates on Art and animation assets.
A small internal QA team (not the primary QA team).
Ubisoft then have producers and designers also who will be the top of the food chain, ultimately most things go through them in the end (to some extent) and they provide A LOT of the story, core design mechanics, lore, and lots and lots of other stuff that isn't relevant to this conversation.
So that's a very, very rough tree. Now when asked 'why don't you just concentrate on fixing one thing' it's just not that simple because there are people that are not involved in any part of that process so they are doing what is in their work flow (namely fixing bugs, polishing, implementing quality of life features like turning the combat grid on and off)
THEN on top of that when we want to rework an entire feature or perhaps implement something entirely new (think SimTurns which is the most recent topic, but look at color saturation) It's not as easy as me going to the Art guy and saying
Hey, turn the colors up 30% will ya they're a little bland' I mean someone originally decided for them to be that way in the first place. It must then go through our producers to agree that we will change it, and then we go to the person who would change it (the art guy) and he has to give an estimation on how long that will take. It then goes back to the producer and they work out if it's worth it (time taken, what will it provide, what other stuff does this person have to do bla bla bla) THEN it has to be agreed by Ubisoft. Then it finally gets done, or not. This is an insanely long process for something that seems so simple right,just make things brighter. That's what it seems from a player perspective, and I know people think like that because 8 months ago I was in the same place.
Lets take another example. AI.I have spoken to one of the programmers who is involved in this process and he's written a reply for you to give you a bit of insight of why TBS (Turn based Strat) AI is much harder to programmer than say Call of Duties AI (FPS)
'FPS AI works a certain routine: search, destroy, (optional: die trying), recover. TBS AI works with hundreds of variables thinking what move to do next. We run an utility-based AI meaning that the AI as a whole is working kind of like an organic being. It has sensors (like living beings have a few of those.. you know.. skin.. nose.. ears.. gut feeling, too) and these sensors determine the "need" or "usefulness" of a certain action to perform. The flow is as follows: sensor->utility->action scoring->decision. our AI takes the top decision, even though it could have a random factor inside, serving as a sort of "indecision" factor, but we decided against it. Actions can affect each other and the scoring, so it's an ever-changing thought process. Every time an action is performed, everything needs to be re-evaluated. Changing just one single thing ripples across the system like you would expect from the classic butterfly effect. Sometimes it surprises us, and I mean a positive surprise. Sometimes it starts doing retarded snow. it's a question of finding the right balance between values, wants and needs and objectives we want the AI to achieve that defines its actions. '
Now it's very easy to look at what things we don't have, as opposed to what we do have. The fact that AI has sped up nearly 400% since release was not some 1 line of code change that everyone believes game development to be 'What do you mean you can't make this unit do that it's 1 line of code!!' is a common email I get.
Heroes 7 is by no means perfect. A lot of people here say it's simply bad, and hey, in your opinion that might be the case. Do remember though that Heroes Community, Celestial Heaven, Acid Cave or who ever else are the hard core community, you speak for a VERY small majority of the playing community. That doesn't make the opinions in-valid and in fact I wouldn't even be here if I thought what all of you guys said was irrelevant. In a lot of cases you're spot on with some assessments and ideas. But you have to understand we're not making a game just for you, the hardcore fan base. If some things don't make sense from the perspective of a hardcore player, it might be because it's better for a majority. However I will accept some things might just not be good, and in those cases we will aim to change what can be changed.
Now I'm sure a good reply to that paragraph is 'well look at the steam review % , we're not the only ones who think it's bad' And you'd be right to take that approach. HOWEVER. A lot of those reviews are from day one. Day one was bad, it's no secret, and it's even had an official statement addressing it at some point. A lot of them are regarding Uplay, nothing we can do about that one. And alot of them have <2 hours of play. Meaning people literally bought the game just to give it a bad review, that sounds very tin foil hat, but part of my job is going through these reviews and that literally has happened, a lot. A long with the fact that anyone who got into a beta can also review the game. If there is ever a free weekend, you can review the game. Steams system is by no means a fall proof indicator on the quality of a game. Though it certainly has merit and there are a lot of legitimate complaints, which brings us back on topic of why aren't we just fixing one thing at a time.
The process is long. We have a finite amount of time to do things. Things from the community are essentially 'new things' and though they might be the holy grail, it might not line up with any one of those parties I've mentioned that are involved in the process of actually making them real. It's my job to make sure the holy grails DO happen and to shine a light on them. I do my best there but as I've mentioned before, I don't make the end choice.
This is a super billy basics guide. But I would like to think it gets the point across.
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Galaad
Hero of Order
Li mort as morz, li vif as vis
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posted December 10, 2015 01:40 PM |
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Please enlighten us about this so called majority of gamers happy with what Ubisoft is doing with this franchise, believe it or not reviews are an indicator of the success of a game. Look at Witcher III, or Divinity Original Sin for instance, it's like the other side of the mirror.
I know you are not the one making big calls here but please do not believe all the crap they tell you.
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gomaki
Shaper of Lore
Community Manager, Limbic Ent.
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posted December 10, 2015 01:55 PM |
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Galaad said:
Please enlighten us about this so called majority of gamers happy with what Ubisoft is doing with this franchise, believe it or not reviews are an indicator of the success of a game. Look at Witcher III, or Divinity Original Sin for instance, it's like the other side of the mirror.
I know you are not the one making big calls here but please do not believe all the crap they tell you.
I know you like the game Galaad but I didn't realize you bought all of these steam copies of Heroes 6 yourself. http://steamspy.com/app/48220
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fuChris
Promising
Supreme Hero
Master to the Speed of Light
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posted December 10, 2015 01:55 PM |
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So this confims that the Limbic managers are pushovers and Ubi producers are the geniuses behind the piss-poor game design. Not that this is anything new by now. This wouldn't be a problem but as Erwan himself stated they have no idea what they should doing.
My advice for you guys is to simply man up. A feature like flanking should never have been introduced in the fist place.
What I don't understand is why the game didn't recive 6 extra months of early access so that the AI and debugging department could catch up with the graphical team.
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"Now I am become Chris, the destroyer of worlds." - Robert Oppenheimer.
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Antalyan
Promising
Supreme Hero
H7 Forever
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posted December 10, 2015 01:56 PM |
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Thank you very much for this reply. It help me to look at the game development a bit in a different way.
I can understand that decision processes are very time consuming. I guess if there would be any way how to make these decisions faster, it would help to increase the game's improvements speed as well but you probably now it (it seems to me like pointless byrocracy to have to have everything approved by ubi many times).
As about general: I think you have described quite well what is the situation like. People's % reviews are not worthy because of threse reasons:
1) People usually review the game without many time spent playing it (as you wrote)
2) People often give this game negative reviews because of technical issues - bugs, performanæe ...
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Galaad
Hero of Order
Li mort as morz, li vif as vis
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posted December 10, 2015 02:01 PM |
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gomaki said:
I know you like the game Galaad but I didn't realize you bought all of these steam copies of Heroes 6 yourself. http://steamspy.com/app/48220
lol
This comment says a lot about you guys. Keep defending Heroes 6, isn't it what you've been doing all along with H7 anyway.
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verriker
Honorable
Legendary Hero
We don't need another 'eroes
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posted December 10, 2015 02:02 PM |
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gomaki said:
Heroes 7 is by no means perfect. A lot of people here say it's simply bad, and hey, in your opinion that might be the case. Do remember though that Heroes Community, Celestial Heaven, Acid Cave or who ever else are the hard core community, you speak for a VERY small majority of the playing community. That doesn't make the opinions in-valid and in fact I wouldn't even be here if I thought what all of you guys said was irrelevant. In a lot of cases you're spot on with some assessments and ideas. But you have to understand we're not making a game just for you, the hardcore fan base. If some things don't make sense from the perspective of a hardcore player, it might be because it's better for a majority. However I will accept some things might just not be good, and in those cases we will aim to change what can be changed.
Now I'm sure a good reply to that paragraph is 'well look at the steam review % , we're not the only ones who think it's bad' And you'd be right to take that approach. HOWEVER. A lot of those reviews are from day one. Day one was bad, it's no secret, and it's even had an official statement addressing it at some point. A lot of them are regarding Uplay, nothing we can do about that one. And alot of them have <2 hours of play. Meaning people literally bought the game just to give it a bad review, that sounds very tin foil hat, but part of my job is going through these reviews and that literally has happened, a lot. A long with the fact that anyone who got into a beta can also review the game. If there is ever a free weekend, you can review the game. Steams system is by no means a fall proof indicator on the quality of a game. Though it certainly has merit and there are a lot of legitimate complaints, which brings us back on topic of why aren't we just fixing one thing at a time.
I'm getting some serious deja vu here, where oh where have I heard these things before, lol
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This MEGA THREAD is pages long: 
