Tenderfoot Thahd Unwieldy Posted February 20, 2013 Share Posted February 20, 2013 When I attempt to equip a character with a second heavy sword, I'm prevented from doing so with a reasonable warning similar to "this weapon is too heavy to be carried in your off hand." Yet, if I have a lighter sword in my off hand and a heavier one in the other, I can click the lighter followed by the heavier one to make them swap hands. Now, I have a heavy sword in my off hand, at which point I can replace the lighter sword in my dominant hand with a second heavy sword. This makes no sense! How am I suddenly capable of carrying a heavy sword in my off hand just by trading swords with my dominant one? Is this yet another bug that fundamentally altars the realism and consistency of the gameplay mechanics? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hatchling Cockatrice Randomizer Posted February 20, 2013 Share Posted February 20, 2013 Yes Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tenderfoot Thahd Unwieldy Posted February 20, 2013 Author Share Posted February 20, 2013 It's so frustrating that Spiderweb can make such an engrossing game yet mar it with such poor quality control. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hatchling Cockatrice Lilith Posted February 20, 2013 Share Posted February 20, 2013 Just so you know, 90% of players are way less bothered by this stuff than you are. Games have bugs: most people see that as a fact of life today. Beyond a certain point it's not economically viable to spend any more time finding and fixing them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kyshakk Koan Skwish-E Posted February 20, 2013 Share Posted February 20, 2013 Can't wait to exploit this as soon as I get home. Thanks for the tip! BMA 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tenderfoot Thahd Unwieldy Posted February 20, 2013 Author Share Posted February 20, 2013 Lilith - Nearly every piece of software, games included, has bugs. Most of them are trivial and not worth pursuing. Some definitely are. The two that I've pointed out on this forum are more than trivial because they allow exploitation of the game in such a way that gameplay is artifically, fundamentally altered. Good software developers care about this. Neither you nor I know the percentage of players that do. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hatchling Cockatrice Lilith Posted February 20, 2013 Share Posted February 20, 2013 I haven't collected statistics, but I have been on this forum for a long time and seen a lot of different players with different preferences. For every player who's bothered by bugs like this, there's another who enjoys finding and exploiting them, as represented by Skwish-E in this very thread. And frankly, yes, this one is a fairly trivial bug. Many of the best swords in the game are light enough to be used in the off hand anyway, so the effect on game balance is minimal. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tenderfoot Thahd robert1 Posted February 21, 2013 Share Posted February 21, 2013 You don't have to exploit bugs that you find. I'm just saying... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hatchling Cockatrice Alorael at Large Posted February 21, 2013 Share Posted February 21, 2013 Also consider the number of major, exploitable bugs in the big-name, huge team, long development cycle games, the so called AAA releases. Yes, there seem to be about as many. More in quite a few games that get rushed out the door. —Alorael, who isn't making excuses. Bugs are annoying. But they're also a fact of life in games, and the fact that few of the bugs in Spiderweb games actually break the game, or worse, break your save file is far more important. (Yes, it does happen sometimes. And that's bad. Jeff is good about fixing these problems when he can hunt down the cause.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tenderfoot Thahd Unwieldy Posted February 21, 2013 Author Share Posted February 21, 2013 Fair enough. I'm actually not much of a gamer save for the occasional RPG, so apparently these types of things are way more common in video games than I realized. I am a software developer of line-of-business applications though, so I guess I have a different perspective on usability bugs. Also, count me firmly in the non-exploitation camp :-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hatchling Cockatrice Alorael at Large Posted February 21, 2013 Share Posted February 21, 2013 I've found plenty of professional software with bugs as well. But it's different when bugs aren't something to exploit. Users usually don't go around trying to do crazy things just to see if they work the way players do. —Alorael, who read this and recognized that the inventiveness, audacity, and sheer insanity of players makes stopping exploits nearly impossible. Users of less exciting software can be depended upon not to try so many things just for the hell of it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ineffable Wingbolt BMA Posted February 21, 2013 Share Posted February 21, 2013 I'm so inattentive that I never notice bugs. But when I do, it's usually something big like the saves going corrupt. And there's nothing exploitable about that. Just saying. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Magnificent Ornk nikki. Posted February 22, 2013 Share Posted February 22, 2013 I'm the kind of person who'll occasionally use a cheat to restore spell points or HP without having to trek back to town. As such, any bugs that make my game easier or more fun (hello, Celt magic bug in Nethergate!) are probably going to be exploited. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tenderfoot Thahd Monfred Posted February 23, 2013 Share Posted February 23, 2013 The point is, this bug can be easily fixed. A line of code, not more. Many other bugs are much more complex and could take a lot of time and effort to fix (crossing quests conflicts, etc.) so they can be excused. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Easygoing Eyebeast Triumph Posted February 23, 2013 Share Posted February 23, 2013 Fixing it still takes time. You may not think it's a significant amount of time, but maybe it is for a one-man operation like Spiderweb. If that one worker takes time to fix this bug, it's that much time he's not spending producing his next product. I also side with those who find this a trivial bug simply not worth fixing. Considering how long the game was out before this thread appeared, I can only assume a great many people played the game and never noticed it...or perhaps noticed and were never troubled by it. The opportunity cost in time and effort simply isn't worth it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hatchling Cockatrice Lilith Posted February 23, 2013 Share Posted February 23, 2013 It's not just a matter of editing one line of code, either: after making the edit you have to recompile and reupload the new version, which is a non-trivial amount of work. And if you do this for every little bug that's found and fixed, eventually people are going to get sick of downloading a new version of the game every time you find a bug, and they'll start to think "if the game needs this many bugfix releases, it must be unstable: if these are all the bugs that have been found, how many bugs haven't been found yet?". Paradoxically, waiting to fix bugs until you've found a critical mass of them can make your software seem less buggy to customers than fixing every bug as soon as it's found. In short, apart from being more work than you'd think, making a lot of minor bugfix releases amounts to advertising that you have a buggy game. It's bad marketing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ineffable Wingbolt Mosquito---Slayer Posted February 24, 2013 Share Posted February 24, 2013 this bug can be easily fixed. Not exploiting it is even easier. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rotghroth Rhapsody The Reverend Posted February 24, 2013 Share Posted February 24, 2013 Also, as I think was pointed out earlier, "exploiting" it really doesn't buy you anything, since many of the best swords in the game are light enough to be wielded in your off hand. This includes IMHO the best sword in the game, the spectral falchion. So really this exploit is hardly an exploit ... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Easygoing Eyebeast Jerakeen Posted February 25, 2013 Share Posted February 25, 2013 The fact that Ward of Thoughts actually does nothing at all is a much worse bug than this. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Understated Ur-Drakon Earth Posted February 25, 2013 Share Posted February 25, 2013 The fact that Ward of Thoughts actually does nothing at all is a much worse bug than this. it does but enemies spells are better. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Easygoing Eyebeast Jerakeen Posted February 25, 2013 Share Posted February 25, 2013 In the Mac version, at least, WoT has zero effect on mental resistance as shown in your character info screen. The other wards do affect their respective resistances. I think someone once suggested that WoT just affected the hit rate of mental attacks, but I don't find that plausible, and it would be hard to prove. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Easygoing Eyebeast Jerakeen Posted February 26, 2013 Share Posted February 26, 2013 Update: Just to be sure, I went into the script and changed the base level of the WoT effect from 1 to 50,and went up against the Darkling Wight in the ancient crypt. My fighters still got dazed 100% of the time. Triumph 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Easygoing Eyebeast Triumph Posted February 26, 2013 Share Posted February 26, 2013 Fascinating. I did not know that spell was useless (not that I ever checked - I just assume stuff in the game works; silly me!). It will be helpful to be aware of its pointlessness next time I play (well, assuming I remember). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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