Mount and Blade: Warband - Viking Conquest. Riddled with bugs

[False Messiah]

Being a big fan of M&B Warband I bought the new DLC, sold on the premise and knowing the dedication of the team who made it. And frankly, I'm pretty disappointed.

Within a day some guy picked the mod apart and found out that there are a lot of mistakes in the code and it's poorly optimized.
http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,319843.0.html
To quote a bit of his post; "Small objects do not need a collsion [sic] mesh at all. I saw a couple of sausages that had a 1000 Polygon collision mesh. Why? Do you need to walk on them? do you need to hit them with your sword? Most likely not."

After playing for about 2 hours I've been crashed to desktop nine times now. Five of those because my party was clipping on a piece of terrain on the map, three when starting a battle and once when loading into a town. I also noticed that the performance is a lot worse, when fast forwarding through travel the FPS sinks to about 3 making it a lot harder to spot and avoid danger.

I think they should have released this as Beta or early access, what do you guys think?

 

[Recusant]

Ten years ago, the joke went around: You create a total conversion mod of a wildly popular commercial game that in itself proves wildly popular. Blizzard sends you a C&D letter; EA sends you a pack of carnivorous lawyers; Valve sends you a job offer.

It looks like Taleworlds is trying to follow the approach Valve used; you can't blame them for that. From what I've heard (I haven't played Viking Conquest myself) I suspect QA was not what it might have been- or even should have been- but selling betas as full products is hardly a new thing. It's only going to stop if the market demands it.

 

[Elfgore]

I think Taleworlds needs to be real careful with who they let use their IP's name and who they advertise the crap out of as well. This game has been released in a terrible state, I've played mods in alpha that run better than this. And they don't charge me money either.

I've played about a total of thirty minutes of Viking Conquest and have seen multiple issues. Most of them small, but they add up. The continue button at character creation will not work for about ten seconds after you click it. Yet everything else does. They were to fucking lazy to code the clothing to genders. Meaning there is set clothes for genders. If you put on a woman's cloak as a man, you become a woman with a beard. I'm pretty sure I'm quicker off a horse than on one. Load times are insane. And that's just thirty minutes.

They posted a hotfix thread along with an apology on Steam and the amount of issues are insane. Missing textures, game-breaking glitches, and crashed seem to be the norm. It's like Total War: Rome 2 all over again.

 

[False Messiah]

*snip*

I can understand that the development cycle for a mod is different then a normal game or piece of DLC. A total conversion takes years with regular updates and a strong community around it. A game needs (or should) be finished the moment you launch it, with maybe a patch after a few weeks to iron out the last wrinkles.

Just to add a small pet peeve of mine, M&B never loads fast but I just clocked the loading time on VC being 67 seconds! And I'm running this from an SSD.

I hope I can come back to this game in a month or two and everything will be better..

Edit: Typo

 

[BathorysGraveland2]

That's what happens when you have a mod team develop something new and charge for it as an "expansion". Brytenwalda wasn't made in a day. It underwent many stages of development, many different versions, all improving upon the last until it finally reached a status that could proudly be declared complete. I imagine a similar thing will occur with Viking Conquest. Difference is, they're charging money for it.

I'll probably get it myself once it's stable. All the additions and innovations made to the single player, including an actual story with characters, has lots of potential and the Viking/Anglo-Saxon setting is always brilliant.

 

[LetalisK]

...so it's not that different from when M&B Warband came out? <.<

I kid, MB:W wasn't that buggy. Just kinda incomplete. Thank god for the modding community.

 

[Thebazilly]

I haven't had any crashes yet, but the game runs really choppy sometimes, especially when you're docking somewhere on the world map. I have run into a bug where I had to restart the game - I went back to Sven Bull-Neck's hideout after rescuing Bodo (nonviolently) and attempted to conquer it, then got caught in an infinite loop of pillage -> Bodo joins party -> back to pillage screen.

Plus it takes for-fucking-ever to load the title screen. I think that's my biggest annoyance so far.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

Thats the future of gaming, buggy and broken games can be released. You would think consumer law would protect people from this. Because these types of games are unfit for purpose as they dont live up to the quality we expect. Ok its only £10 but still that doesnt matter, it should be perfect on release.

Glad i never buy anything on PC day one. Just not worth the risk anymore. Better to wait as limit the disappointment.

 

[BeeGeenie]

Yup, it's pretty buggy. Crashes everywhere.

But hey, at least the base game, and the free mods still work.

So... still playing Gekokujo mod for now.

 

[sataricon]

What about warsword?
Is it also buggy or better developed?

 

[Diablo2000]

What about warsword?
Is it also buggy or better developed?

Warsword is a mod, it's being developed and it's quite buggy.
If you join a army and leave it, all the factions reset back to neutral (Even if they completely hate you before) for example.

 

[Scow2]

Ten years ago, the joke went around: You create a total conversion mod of a wildly popular commercial game that in itself proves wildly popular. Blizzard sends you a C&D letter; EA sends you a pack of carnivorous lawyers; Valve sends you a job offer.

And the result of all 3 is the same outcome - never make another game again.

Thats the future of gaming, buggy and broken games can be released. You would think consumer law would protect people from this. Because these types of games are unfit for purpose as they dont live up to the quality we expect. Ok its only £10 but still that doesnt matter, it should be perfect on release.

There is NO piece of software more complex than "Hello, World!" that is perfect. According to you, consumer law should ban the selling of all software.
This is not the future of gaming - this is the past and present, and eternity of gaming. The ONLY way to go back to a more bug-free release environment is to dramatically reduce the size of games. And even that wouldn't make them bug-free.

 

[False Messiah]

There is NO piece of software more complex than "Hello, World!" that is perfect.

True, but I think it's fair to expect that an average player wouldn't encounter a bug. And we're far from that

 

[BathorysGraveland2]

Eh, to be honest, there is a world of difference between a texture failing to load and the game crashing to desktop. Apparently, there's even a way to get stuck in the main quest and not be able to progress. Such things of the latter variety is when it's unacceptable to be released. The former stuff is annoying but more understandable, that can be more easily forgiven with a patch after release.