KickStarter Underworld Ascendant is a disaster

[Nyast]

These gems, posted by one of their devs on Steam:

Flarechess [developer] 58 minutes ago

So I've been here at OtherSide since late August of 2017. It is absolutely NOT true that "production on Underworld Ascendant simply stopped." The team was still busy hammering away at finishing up core systems before we could polish. I'm pretty sure we had mostly placeholder art for many of the enemies at that point, as is natural for that point since we had just released our pre-alpha build.

Get that, the core systems were being finished in Aug 2017 and they spent a year polishing this game. Yup. Lol.

We kept our KS backers and progress public as we worked on the game with each month as Underworld Ascendant came together.

That one is even better.

So yeah, their progress was so public that nobody was informed of the lack of factions, dialogues, interconnected dungeon or the saving system, and was discovered just 2 weeks before the release.

This is pathetic.

Anyone who has been playtesting for us since August 2018 knows that we've made great strides since then. Our usual workflow has always been like this. Yes, some bugs fell through the cracks, and we had a hard deadline we had to meet. We paid for development costs out of pocket to meet November 15th, and we squeezed as much as we could into the launch build. This does NOT mean we have given up on the game, or have ever. I know it would be helpful to have a more in-depth post-mortem, but I think that honor should go to a developer who's been on the project since the beginning.

I have no words.

They've made no fucking progress since Aug 2018. All the same bugs are still there at release. They even cut even more features ( goodbye diving underwater ) as a welcome launch surprise. The physics, which everybody complained about, is exactly the same as in the alpha build. No, I lied, it's even worse. In the beta builds you were not glued to water when walking in a puddle.

In my entire gaming career of 30 years I've never seen a developer make such dishonest and pathetic answers for their poor game.

 

[Curratum]

My favorite part was

Yes, some bugs fell through the cracks, and we had a hard deadline we had to meet. We paid for development costs out of pocket to meet November 15th, and we squeezed as much as we could into the launch build.

Well, rather, something that resembles a game a bit fell through the cracks in your bugs...

But also

Faction Banners are still in the game, but the description and use has changed since then for scope. The usage with relations to Factions is still preserved.

 

[Nyast]

I couldn't contain myself and posted an answer to this guy in the Steam forums. I wouldn't be surprised if I ended up being banned.

How this guy has the balls to claim that the KS backers were kept informed of the progress of the game, simply infuriates me.

 

[Mustawd]

In my entire gaming career of 30 years

career

 

[BEvers]

More dev posts:

As for the state of the game, we did the best we could when meeting this launch date. Of course there's still more we wanted to put in and polish, but this was the date we had to meet. Some of the core systems are still intact and just need to be polished up, and there have been a lot of improvements from just last month's build to the launch build alone.

We understand your position, and you're still allowed to be critical. Now that we're back from the Thanksgiving holiday, we've been holding a long series of meetings going over what we need to improve on for the liveops stage, and what the game still needs.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/692840/discussions/0/1742226629874946695/#c1742226629875351937

All right, more than a LITTLE bit of polish. That's true.

Some features (like the semi-operational way to "swim" underwater) were not meant to be cut. They were bugged out. Other features were nebulous as we worked on them earlier this year, so it was hard to confirm anything until they were in or not.

I've mentioned before that we could pinpoint a lot of mistakes that were made during the development process, but a lot we also can't talk about right now.

In the meantime, we're working on changing up our production pipelines to make things more efficient during liveops.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/692840/discussions/0/1742226629874946695/#c1742226629875439953

Liveops? Improved production pipelines? Are they planning to strike it big with the console release?

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.othersideentertainment.com/forum/index.php?topic=7062.0

Hey everyone!

A weekly update a little later in the day than usual...

So the team has returned from Thanksgiving travels and we spent the majority of today alone just having meetings and brainstorming how and where to go from here. We already have a list of priorities we'd like to work on as quickly (and safely) as possible, and try to maximize our time.

We have another hotfix queued up for this week, particularly tackling crashes near the beginning of the game (before even Marcaul!) and common movement bugs, like the player being sluggish in water. We're aiming to have a lot of other fixes in too related to bug reports we've received about AI and combat issues. Additionally, the fullscreen exclusive option and turning subtitles off will be available.

Other issues we're working on are upping the consistency of arrows (sometimes they fire, sometimes they disappear, etc), more combat and AI issues (especially to show when they're afraid / low on health and want to flee, etc), performance in areas past the Underswamp, and of course making the save system more accessible while we also work on bugs. (Like putting "swim-crouching" back in!)

In the meanwhile, it will be really busy in the office for us as we continue to coordinate with you and our KS backers on your digital and physical rewards. After this week's hotfix, we're also working on an improved save system and improving more performance issues by mid-December.

As always, we're open to hearing your feedback and suggestions - and bug reports!

Thanks Sam!

You guys can help us in three of the areas we're looking to make improvements. In each of these areas, can you give us more specific and detailed feedback of some of the issues you're having or seeing? A good example of being specific is: with player movement people were having issues getting out of water (a bug that we've fixed and are testing). That type of feedback will help our engineers and designers target fixes. Here are those three areas
- Player movement
- AI
- Combat (melee in particular)

Note we're doing a lot more that what's on that list, like working up a better save game system, fixing holes and other visual glitches in levels, balancing combat/mana/economy, skill progression, etc. We're planning a bigger update later this month to address some of the things we're seeing in those areas. We're planning future updates and hotfixes after that to continue to improve them. We'll likely ask for some playtesting again, although the turnaround time will be pretty tight.

Last, as Sam noted, we have hotfix 1.03 planned for later this week. We're testing a new build now that has a bunch of fixes in--we'll provide more detail when we feel like we know what's going to make it in or not. Sam alluded to some good things in her post.

Thank you for sticking with us -- we're not giving up and we appreciate that you haven't either.

 

[MRY]

Two hours ago, Steamcharts registered more people playing Primordia than Underworld Ascendant. Not promising. :/

 

[Yosharian]

RE: newer Deus Ex games XP rewards for hacking; not only does it incentivize certain activities over others, but the reward is massively different compared to the original Deus Ex.

In the original, XP bonuses were nice, but ultimately they didn't have such a huge effect on your character because they only rewarded you with skill points, not augmentations. But in HR/MK, these XP rewards lead directly to more augmentations, so it's a huge deal to make sure you get each and every XP reward on each level.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[MRY]

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

https://www.othersideentertainment.com/forum/index.php?topic=7062.0

Hey everyone!

A weekly update a little later in the day than usual...

So the team has returned from Thanksgiving travels and we spent the majority of today alone just having meetings and brainstorming how and where to go from here. We already have a list of priorities we'd like to work on as quickly (and safely) as possible, and try to maximize our time.

We have another hotfix queued up for this week, particularly tackling crashes near the beginning of the game (before even Marcaul!) and common movement bugs, like the player being sluggish in water. We're aiming to have a lot of other fixes in too related to bug reports we've received about AI and combat issues. Additionally, the fullscreen exclusive option and turning subtitles off will be available.

Other issues we're working on are upping the consistency of arrows (sometimes they fire, sometimes they disappear, etc), more combat and AI issues (especially to show when they're afraid / low on health and want to flee, etc), performance in areas past the Underswamp, and of course making the save system more accessible while we also work on bugs. (Like putting "swim-crouching" back in!)

In the meanwhile, it will be really busy in the office for us as we continue to coordinate with you and our KS backers on your digital and physical rewards. After this week's hotfix, we're also working on an improved save system and improving more performance issues by mid-December.

As always, we're open to hearing your feedback and suggestions - and bug reports!

Thanks Sam!

You guys can help us in three of the areas we're looking to make improvements. In each of these areas, can you give us more specific and detailed feedback of some of the issues you're having or seeing? A good example of being specific is: with player movement people were having issues getting out of water (a bug that we've fixed and are testing). That type of feedback will help our engineers and designers target fixes. Here are those three areas
- Player movement
- AI
- Combat (melee in particular)

Note we're doing a lot more that what's on that list, like working up a better save game system, fixing holes and other visual glitches in levels, balancing combat/mana/economy, skill progression, etc. We're planning a bigger update later this month to address some of the things we're seeing in those areas. We're planning future updates and hotfixes after that to continue to improve them. We'll likely ask for some playtesting again, although the turnaround time will be pretty tight.

Last, as Sam noted, we have hotfix 1.03 planned for later this week. We're testing a new build now that has a bunch of fixes in--we'll provide more detail when we feel like we know what's going to make it in or not. Sam alluded to some good things in her post.

Thank you for sticking with us -- we're not giving up and we appreciate that you haven't either.

Everyone at some point has professional failures, it's just part of life. This has got to hurt though.

 

[sk2k]

Two hours ago, Steamcharts registered more people playing Primordia than Underworld Ascendant. Not promising. :/

Primordia is a nice point'n click adventure. Go play it!

 

[sk2k]

What irks me a lot is that they want 30 Euro for this mess. They should significantly reduce the price.

 

[Funposter]

1: in DXHR it gives its own xp rewards, meaning you're incentivised to hack stuff even if you've already found another way around

If you're going to harp on DXHR for stuff like this, you need to begin at the fact that it is far more rewarding to knockout every person in a building than it is to simply sneak by them. You can still receive the Ghost and No Alarm EXP rewards this way too, allowing you to double up on insane EXP gain.

 

[Zakhad]

1: in DXHR it gives its own xp rewards, meaning you're incentivised to hack stuff even if you've already found another way around

If you're going to harp on DXHR for stuff like this, you need to begin at the fact that it is far more rewarding to knockout every person in a building than it is to simply sneak by them. You can still receive the Ghost and No Alarm EXP rewards this way too, allowing you to double up on insane EXP gain.

Oh yeah, that too.

The whole incentives system was messed up.

 

[Zakhad]

a profound numbness

I agree with all of your points, but especially this. It's just depressing, but not actively so. After a little time thinking about it, the whole situation drains you of your rage and amusement and sadness and you just feel deflated.

 

[Funposter]

1: in DXHR it gives its own xp rewards, meaning you're incentivised to hack stuff even if you've already found another way around

If you're going to harp on DXHR for stuff like this, you need to begin at the fact that it is far more rewarding to knockout every person in a building than it is to simply sneak by them. You can still receive the Ghost and No Alarm EXP rewards this way too, allowing you to double up on insane EXP gain.

Oh yeah, that too.

The whole incentives system was messed up.

It was clearly designed to guide the player towards stealthy options, but the gameplay already does that. Try playing a combat-focused build on the highest difficulty. It's not fun.

 

[Curratum]

The official UA forum is something else...

 

[BEvers]

They've done some brainstorming on the save system and silver saplings:

 

[fantadomat]

They could have just made game about sociopath hitting people on the back of their head with a blackjack.

 

[Avonaeon]

Whyyy?! Just make a normal save system! Really seems like they're overthinking it.

 

[Nyast]

Have to admit, this is a great shit show. Every day the lols are coming.

 

[Curratum]

Whyyy?! Just make a normal save system! Really seems like they're overthinking it.

Because they can't. They really just cannot code in a normal save system because their engine is a heap of garbage and it's very likely that their physics-enabled bullshit adds a ton of data they can't neatly store in a save.

 

[TemplarGR]

Because they can't. They really just cannot code in a normal save system because their engine is a heap of garbage and it's very likely that their physics-enabled bullshit adds a ton of data they can't neatly store in a save.

At least add the option to save a snapshot of the ram. Better than nothing. Disk space is cheap. LOL

 

[unfairlight]

Because they can't. They really just cannot code in a normal save system because their engine is a heap of garbage

Untrue, nothing wrong with the engine. Unity has no issues with saving, it's just they are really fucking incompetent and want to be cool gaym designors and be ~different~