Comments on: Hellgate: London Second Look – Hellgate Chronicles Chronically Bugged

By: Shawn Sines

Shawn Sines — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 19:52:07 +0000

@JZN: True, but all I can report on is my experience. I’m a founder, I like Hellgate also but I am disappointed. I don’t think I was being unfair to Hellgate, I didn’t fabricate anything to drum up the position I stated above. I was one of many according to a sampling from the Hellgate:London forums who spent three days waiting for the Stonehenge patch release to finally get it right – despite a month delay and further beta on the test server.

I’ve played Hellgate since launch, I continue to play it and will continue to do so in the hopes that one day it reaches the high bar the developers set for it initially and in hopes that many of the problems are fixed promptly.

Note my final line: “Personally I hope this product survives and thrives, but it is becoming unfortunately clear that Flagship Studios may not quite be ready to support all their grand plans.”

I’m warning people to hold back and watch the situation.. I’m warning people that the problems are not gone and that they should enter with eyes wide open. My enthusiastic optimism has tapered off a bit since I wrote the initial review.

As to the question from Xaeli, I didn’t talk a lot about Stonehenge, true. I experienced a few bugs (which you mention have been corrected to some extent) that kept me from playing through to completion on the boss content so far. The party portal system being broken was a factor. Now that said I’m also not a huge fan of the Essence farming mechanic in Stonehenge, some of the rebalancing is nice but the Wild gameplay does not quite feel like it was worth the wait for me.

Games are evolving products. I’m glad Flagship responded to patch the bugs that their software development process introduced. I had never had the bugs I mentioned above before the patch and they repeated despite multiple play sessions on Tuesday evening.

By: jzn

jzn — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 19:16:47 +0000

Shawn- I can’t say why you happened to experience the uncommon bugs, but it is too bad that you did. The last couple months, FSS has made tremendous strides in polishing the game, but because you happened to experience these rare ones, instead of a headline saying “Hellgate Improves”, we get a headline basically saying “Hellgate will never improve”.

By: Somnophore

Somnophore — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 18:50:32 +0000

I also love hellgate. I found that your article is a little out dated. There are no lag issues anymore with stonehenge, and they were fixed very quickly. Also, those ‘bugs’ you experienced have been there since day one and are still on the list of bugs to be squashed. None of them are game breakers, but they certainly are not NEW bugs since stonehenge.

Overall, you didnt say much about stonehenge, I wonder if you even played it through to the boss?

-Xaeli

By: Shawn Sines

Shawn Sines — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 18:17:18 +0000

@jzn: I admit the second post patch patch did resolve the problems caused by the 1.0 patch.. which honestly is not good for FSS. However how is it that I managed to have multiple ‘rare’ bugs all at the same time in the same play session if they are in fact so rare?

By: jzn

jzn — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 17:37:50 +0000

I’m a hellgate player, I enjoy it a whole lot. Just wanted to let you know that the lag problems you experienced were a bug that was hotfixed the day after patch release. The other bugs you described are quite rare. The game is unique and tremendous fun.

By: Shawn Sines

Shawn Sines — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 20:49:59 +0000

Didn’t want to make the article too much longer but as you must login to get this from the link, here is the official announcement from Scapes-Flagship, community manager for the studio at 1-21-2008, 1:50PM:

“Hellgaters,

For those who aren’t aware, a new build was pushed to Test Center late last night. This build accidentally had some strings (lines of text in skills and such) that weren’t intended for Stonehenge Chronicles. In fact, it had entirely previously-unseen skills that are intended for a future Chronicle. Naturally, this gave us some pause. I learned of this one just as I walked into the office about 45 minutes ago.

I hear your frustration. I know there’s disappointment. However, yesterday, when we were battling the “stat feed” bug, the consensus was that if the bug couldn’t be fixed in time that the vast majority of players would prefer communication and a delay, both towards receiving a more solid launch. These unreleased skills wouldn’t function, would be imbalanced, and would essentially BE a giant bug.

I’ll be getting word on changes to our launch time shortly. Stay tuned. And Hellgaters: thanks for your patience.”