We don't need new art, we need a working game.

[Nietzsche's Mustache]

I'm really saddened that I have to come to the forums with this sort of angry mindset. I love this game. I want it to work. I want it to work, REALLY badly. But here's the deal: every time we get a patch for this game, we get new bugs. We get loads of them. You guys take 2 steps forward, we take 10 steps back. I mean, new themes or figureheads are nice and all, but ...

FIX YOUR FUCKING SHIT.

... Seriously, why are we focusing on adding more features when every time we do, it breaks the game? Ships STILL disappear inexplicably when in a dust cloud. Just when you think we're supposed to have performance improvements with flamethrowers, we start getting reports of 3 frames per second when flamethrowers start firing.

So, I'll put it to you this way:

SUSPEND ARTWORK. NOW.

ONLY PAY ENGINEERS.

If you have artists that are decent programmers, put them to work. We want this game to work in the first place, not break every time a new patch comes in. It was getting good before this last patch, some people reported no lag at ALL. But now it's all ruined. All for not.

Fix it.

[Imagine]

You... do know that's how programming generally progresses right. New patch, new unforseen bugs pop up, takes a bit to squash them, new patch, etc... Some patches will have something go horribly wrong more than others, but that's the cycle that generally happens.

So really, your suggestion is for them to fire the hard working art folks they've got who have supplied us with some awesome stuff and hire programmers (not even going to touch the "artists that are decent programmers" btw, that's a huge facepalm by itself) instead? Putting aside just how insulting that is, Muse is still made up of what, a dozen staff, it's not like there's hundreds of engineers they can just throw at problems that crop up.

Yes, we'd all love a completely bug free perfectly working game, as would literally every other company that has ever made a game. Your suggest here is just... well it's just ludicrous.

[Goldenglade]

[Spud Nick]

How are they going to make us a chef hat if they suspend the artwork? Didn't think about that now did you.

[Nietzsche's Mustache]

Ok. so I exaggerate the point.

The point is not that people need to be fired, although I did word it that way in the initial posting.

The point is that I expect this kind of buggery from free and open-source software, but not in commercial software. When I was running Arch Linux, I continually broke the system because I would update pieces of software which other pieces of software depended upon to work properly before they themselves had actually been updated to use the new-found "shared libraries"

But you know what? Those problems get fixed pretty quickly. I remember installing a fresh Arch installation IMMEDIATELY after an update a bug in GRUB popped up, causing configuration errors. Not only was there a solution ready in 24 hours, but a hard fix was ready before the next version of GRUB.

But that's Arch Linux. It is notoriously hard to use and I was warned before hand that these kinds of things would happen. Guns of Icarus is different. This is commercial software that is expected to work out of the box and it is (as far as I'm aware) illegal for outside sources to view and fix the source code. And not only that, but bugs that have been known and persistent for mooooooonths have gone unfixed while new bugs get created. Perhaps the issue is this is the only Indie game I've taken a liking to and that my expectations are unrealistic. Either way, I think that the MUSE team can do better than this. They HAVE to do better than this. Or else these words will echo from every reach of the internet:

"How the hell is "Adventure Mode" supposed to work if they can't even make the game they've ALREADY PUBLISHED work?"

[Frogger]

man cmon it aint that bad sheesh.   theyll fix it in a week,  2 tops

[Nietzsche's Mustache]

man cmon it aint that bad sheesh.   theyll fix it in a week,  2 tops

That's what we said about ships disappearing on Scrap NEARLY A YEAR AGO.

This, in the middle of MLG nonsense and the Gold Playoffs for Hephaestus League? Sorry, but no. Not going to put up with nonsense. Whenever I've emailed the devs and been offered freebies in return for my troubles, I always replied "I don't want your freebies. I want this game to work."

That's still yet to happen. I'm always in-game asking other players "why can't you do this?" and being responded to "because my framerates are too slow!" or "because lag!" I'm saying the same thing to captains that I fly under more now than ever before. Consider myself on strike. Sadly, just in time for a fresh wanted season. I was looking forward to winning that. 

[Spud Nick]

Whenever a ship disappears in a sand storm a Sky Whale appears in it's place.

[Nietzsche's Mustache]

I'd like to actually be able to shoot at that Sky Whale. Or the potted plant that's always spawning with it, saying "oh no, not again."

[GeoRmr]

"because my framerates are too slow!" or "because lag!"

I'm hoping these new found frame rate issues will prompt them to optimize the game to a higher standard than before this patch.

[Squidslinger Gilder]

Well, I can certainly relate. I've felt the same way about the game off and on for a year now. Especially about the start of the Heffy Challenge when we had to compete under some of the worst lag conditions the game has ever had.

Gotta admit this is a sign you are passionate about this game and care for it more than normal players. Pretty much how I feel about the squid and why I'll never stop demanding my baby back.

However, I do feel you are coming off a bit hard. Patch was just days ago and they are working to figure out what went wrong. Goldenglade's post is very accurate in what they are having to deal with and honestly, I've never seen a Unity engine game run without very visible bugs. This is one reason why I'm not jumping off the walls about MLG. When you compete in this game for as long as myself and others have, you realize there are a lot of things you'd love to see happen, but then there is reality.

Reality dictates that this game will never be ready for MLG unless Muse had 2 teams working at once. One team on Skirmish, and one on Adventure could do it. The amount of work involved is just too much as they are now, sorry but the game is just too buggy and PVP games take extensive focus and tuning. Don't believe me, look at how WoW and other MMOs have splintered their playerbases between PVP and PVE players. Both sides hate each other because the dev hasn't gotten smart enough to separate the games. It is a never ending balancing act which PVP turns into. There will always be one class or another that is stronger and people will always mass around it till it changes. Just like what we have in GOIO.  The only positive thing for Muse is they seem to be keeping both separate. That helps a lot but still PVP will perpetually require attention and tuning.

One has to suffer for the other to come to pass. Now here they launch a patch while heavy into COOP dev and its probably forcing them to focus time away from that to fix Skirmish. All we can do is be patient. If you have logs, send them in. Help them out.

[Alistair MacBain]

As unfortunate as it is ...
show me one game that doesnt have this issue.
We all know the sentence: Never play on patchday.
And that one exists for a reason.

[Spud Nick]

I'd like to actually be able to shoot at that Sky Whale. Or the potted plant that's always spawning with it, saying "oh no, not again."

Try using a flare gun to spot ships in the sand storm. It can be very useful on desert scrap because that storm is always rolling in.

[Spud Nick]

As unfortunate as it is ...
show me one game that doesnt have this issue.
We all know the sentence: Never play on patchday.
And that one exists for a reason.

Play on patch day. Report bugs!

[pandatopia]

I think the problem is uh, artists and software engineers have completely different skillsets, and work on completely different things, all the time.

I'm pretty sure its safe to say, we'll still have this many bugs, if we had 0 new artwork/models, or if we had 100 new artwork/models every single day.

Unless its something like a clipping issue or something I have enough faith in "black box" and modularity to feel that no amount (or lack thereof) of artist work is going to significantly impact programming work.

That said, you must also know the "too many cooks in the kitchen" thing where throwing (or hiring) more programmers isn't going to solve this problem either.

I have no opinion on the graphics bugs - yes they suck, but from the few courses I took on graphics programming, its hard. And oftentimes you are working with an abstruse (or obtuse...heh) graphics engine that is out of date or significantly customized and it is hard to figure out a solution without causing more problems.

Art, assets, new content, is always the scapegoat when it comes to things breaking, while 99% of the time they aren't the problem.