Gearbox Software have just published the changelog for their first patch for Aliens: Colonial Marines (PC, Xbox 360 and PS3), released February 11 on PC and February 12 on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. The developer has also recently stated via a representative: “We are paying close attention to community feedback (both here and via other channels) and will have more updates in the future”.
- General user interface improvements.
- Various performance improvements.
- Fixed issue where a door may not function properly if a Xeno was killed while opening it.
- Addressed issue where players could become stuck in a close encounter after killing a Lurker that had pounced them.
- Fixed collision issue where bullets would not pass through certain open doorways.
- Fixed an issue related to clients incorrectly interrupting Xeno melee encounters.
- Addressed an issue where doors would sometimes not open properly.
You can find the full patch notes here.
There shall be some fixes, but the vast majority of stuff in the single-player campaign won't be getting changed.
But for some reason, reason doesn't really seem to be the dominant force in modern corporate structures.
Randy's getting to be too big of a personality to shrug this off completely, I think. Partially due to the hype fortress they built instead of designing the game. But he'll meet people halfway I'd imagine, remaining 99% my game is awesome while conceding some tiny margin of error or difficulty in the creative process or differences of opinion on what "good" is or whatever...
The lack of integrity betrays the false endeavor concerning the whole shebang. An artist would eat this criticism and either fire back that they love what they've produced and stay committed to it, or accept their failure in a mature way and build something truly great from the ashes. Either way, you'd stay committed to your project if you were "such a fan." That's called growth, and it's sad to see this company not doing it.
Chickenshit outfit man. What a chickenshit outfit.
There was no guarantee of a profit from day 1, but there is more profit to be had by fixing whats already there rather than doing something new.
Lets say they just write the game off as a loss and the DLC we get is paper thin. 4 missions fighting WY and a flying Alien boss or something equally sucky. The guns are just all the guns from the various preorders and the skins are just the collector skins. Bug hunt ends up being crappy and their obligations are met. Game is dead. 65% chance of this.
They go make a new Duke game and every single sponsor, reviewer and customer says "oh Gearbox, those are the guys that put out that other crappy Duke game and managed to botch A:CM on 4 platforms while burning a hole in Segas pocket, Ya... Ill wait for Borderlands 3." They cant drop this potato that easily and right now Randy is in a really bad place lol.
They will probably eat the loss because Randy doesnt seem to recognize a mistake when its facehugging him but its their company, whateva...
As far as the story is concerned, they KNOW whats wrong with it now, these boards in particular have dissected its issues and given them a roadmap to fixing it. Canon shmanon, it can all be fixed. The final product as it stands now sucks but they can change the levels around, the order of the levels, details that arent correct, dialog problems, the ending whatever they want just as easily as adding a crappy mini campaign.
They probably wont do this, but its not as big of a deal as people seem to think. Lets just say that they double down on this game and do fix it. Every complaint is gone, sales pick back up, the hypetrain keeps on rolling and Randly ends up looking like a hero for giving the customer what they want which is priceless from a business perspective. Then go make annother crappy Duke game lol.
And I honestly don't see a thing they can do to fix the story aspect of it. They really should've just said they were making an arcade game and be done with it. All the constant referencing of how it should be held to the same standard as a legitimately canonical sequel, ended up harming it.
Like I said, I have no idea what all they have going on, but they dont have any excuses at this point. There is profit to be had simply by fixing the game. Everyone who bought the game and reviewed it will have to say something about an updated version, and this time it would be positive press. Those people who backed out of buying the game and are waiting for a fire sale price (tons) will be much more inclined to buy it if people have SOMETHING good to say about it down the line.
People forget that games like Resident Evil bombed and got lousy reviews at first but once the game caught on a year or two later, it became a best seller. Of course thats different than the case of fixing a busted game, but someone realized the potential in re-releasing it and re-promoting it down the road. It cost Capcom a lot of money to do that and paid off.
The Xeno perspective is broken as far as im concerned
Id rather have an augmented main story rather than some new offshoot. If they have to build levels, add new dialog and weapons and cutscenes, balance everything over again I would much rather see the effort put into the main campaign. and they do owe me atleast 1 story DLC. Just make it a fix...
They've got plans, dude. They're not sitting still. They want to do their own 'Duke Nukem' game, for a start.
How about profit?
It wasn't that they hadn't finished them. It was a deliberate gameplay choice.
Yeeeeeah... Not gonna' happen.
It might be unfair for people who dont have an internet connection and I dont know what to tell them.
They can't do that at all. Re-writing the game would require them reprinting and redistributing all the discs, anyone who has a hard copy wouldn't be getting one for free that's for damn sure, it costs hundreds of thousands of pounds to print a significant amount of software copies.They could possibly release it as a download over steam like a patch, but it would be gigs large and likely not get to anyone on console (because of the cost of patching etc.) which would alienate their console customers.
Have them finish the xeno first-person animations for multi and some of the balance quirks, fix the lighting and ugly textures, and AI, finish the missing effects like motion blur and bloom and instead of a DLC addon... just rewrite the game.
That sounds like a lot but its not. With their tools, the community could do it... and do it better within 6 months so theres no excuse. Theres nothing that says they cant do a re-launch a little while down the road and consider the overhaul part of a patch for existing owners.
The game has gone down in history for being a huge @#$% up and "always positive" Randy should know that this kind of attention means its redemption would be equally historical and profitable.
He said this game is "costing him a lot of money" well it hasnt cost him a dime so far lol just everyone else, so maybe that comment means hes dumping that BL2 money back into making it "right". Alpha testing is over Randy, its time to be a big boy.
The $, because every patch costs $40,000 and every DLC has to be certified. If they've made enough of a loss I'd imagine they'll tie every patch into the DLC and not bother releasing any independant patches. If they even patch it at all.
True, this could be.
How about the interests of your pissed-the-hell-off customers who are leaving the game in hordes?
https://www.avpgalaxy.net/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi49.tinypic.com%2Fjfhpnc.jpg&hash=c1eb96324984855ea9db65e9d40d2ef35d61162a
Though Sega/Rebellion didn't address all issues, what they did address made a huge difference. There were a lot of bug fixes, but most of the tweaks were specifically for balancing. And it made a world of difference.
The Alien was at a distinct disadvantage (especially against Preds; as I'm sure many of you remember), but these changes could turn you into a bio mechanical badass. lol Especially if you got a team that actually worked together. It could get pretty EPIC. Things are now much more balanced on the PC version.
They tweaked things like:
1) Pred focus attack range equalized with the Alien's (oddly enough, the Pred's focus jump range wasn't; which was stupid).
2) Alien's could knock down opponents when focus attacking at maximum range (like the Preds could).
3) Alien counter timing was tweaked to improve melee combat balance.
4) Alien could knock down opponent when performing a counter attack (again, like the Preds could).
5) Marines take some damage when blocking an Alien's or Pred's light attack.
6) You could earn XP and rank up in ANY multiplayer mode save for survivor. In other words, you don't have to deal with the horrendous ranked matchmaking system.
7) Improvements to the netcode.
That's all I recall off the top of my head. So yeah, we were SUPER pissed when Sega/Rebellion cancelled the final patch for 360 and PS3.
God that's just infuriating.
Do you know what they were planning with it, Bio Mech, by chance? I imagine if they reduced the length of the Predator leap attack, and made the Marines melee much weaker (so it didn't knock down a damn Alien) would've gone a long way to making the game better.
If history is any indication, you're right.
Not only that, the final patch Sega/Rebellion released for AVP addressed many of the critical issues with the game (not all), but that patch was never released for the console versions. That still pisses me off.
Those bastards.
Gearbox are getting well and truely slated over this game - I imagine we'll get a max of 2 minor patchs which don't do anything thats really needed and that will be it
I got the Witcher for £5 on Steam and am working into my 90th hour, I can take being Elitist when our good games are so damn good
http://store.steampowered.com/stats/
Currently sitting on a peak MP today of 1,884 players world wide on A:CM on PC today. You had around 12,500 at release in MP. 49/100 for activity within two weeks of release for a AAA FPS, unheard of.
It's only got 500 more players than The War Z for f**k sakes!
I guess in this age of instantaneous everything, we all want things fixed immediately.
@ Pelz, I agree that rupture is very powerful, but you can defeat it with careful coordination and cooperation. If you don't bunch up, it really limits the damage it can do, and once you know how easily you can be killed, avoiding the puddles becomes a priority. It really works best in Escape and Survivor, since the marines are so much tougher and tend to group up in small huddles.
But I do like that it makes the Aliens feel like Aliens. I mean, the explosion and puddle are perfect, but maybe not all weapons should make it burst like that or something?
I also don't think it's quite as OP as people suggest, as the marines aren't using every weapon/tactic in their arsenal. Claymores, along with prox. mines, as well as the holy annoying Shock charge for the shotgun can all make quick work of Spitter rushes, and a good team can shut down the Aliens repeatedly. Also if you don't bunch up as much, or run to revive a downed teammate who's laying in a rupture pool, you'll extend life expectancy by at least 5 more seconds!
But yeah, I agree. This game needs lots of improvement if the multiplayer is going to be kept alive. Host migration is a bare minimum, dedicated servers would be great.
I also think that the Spitter rupture ability needs a nerf. That puddle that insta-kills you is unbalanced and shouldn't be in the game, the explosion is quite enough.
Another option would be to buff the marine acid armor and make it give protection against that puddle.
Anyway, I bet Gearbox will only release patches in conjunction with the DLC, much like what DICE does with Battlefield 3.
They are probably working very hard on a large patch as we speak, and many other things for the game. It's not too late for them to turn this all around. They can fix the lighting issues, release a high quality textures pack, give us ded servers, and continue to optimize the game with patches for SP and MP.
I'd expect a large patch release within a month. If we don't get one start to worry. You have to keep in mind, their game is in terrible shape, they need to be very careful, take their time and throw a hail marry.
But it would help if Gearbox made an offical announcement and said "we're working on a large patch, it will be released asap" done. I remember when BF3 came out it suffered from a lot of crashing and glitches on the PC, the developers took forever to say they were working on a patch, took even longer until they released a patch to fix things too, it was a full month atleast.
So the best thing to do at this point is to forget about the game and don't juice it out. Come back in a month and play other games.
The shit is just all over the place. Sometimes you can kill a marine with one hit (Heavy Strike) other times it takes three plus, and they can just backpedal and mow you down. We've been getting killed by Spitters in 1 hit, which is impossible, and the pump shotgun has miraculously started putting Aliens down in 1 shot as well. How the fuuuuuck?
This game just needs some tweaks and balancing, some care and attention paid to it. The mp glitches are no worse than any game is on launch, the only difference is that other game companies give enough of a shit to listen and support their own product when the time is most important to do so!
There is no limit to how thick and nasty my rage will become if they completely neglect this one part of their game that's actually good and deserves some attention. Worthless, Gearbox, you're totally worthless and you don't even have the spine to support your own products.
The time to act is now if they want to keep any players. They had a strong player base, but didn't do jack shit to counter the waves of bad press and justified hate.
ERRGHGHUHHHHH I WILL FLIP MY f**kING LID if they don't even give their own game a chance with some patches and care.
The nerd anger is boiling.
Same here.
- Players using the Russian language will no longer crash as soon as they use the sniper rifle.
- Various issues that have been seen on specific configurations that caused the game to not be able to start up at all have been addressed.
- Problems with the Sniper Challenge Unlocks not carrying over into Hitman: Absolution have been addressed. On first starting the patched game you will receive your unlocks.
o Note that North American users that have been provided the Sniper Challenge by Gamestop will need a separate unlock key in addition to this. Gamestop can provide these.
- Problems with negative level-scores have been fixed. Newly accomplished positive scores will be needed to erase your incorrectly remembered negative scores.
- A problem with keyboard and mouse controls where users would accidentally melee attack a person next to them when they intended to throw an item has been addressed.
- Legal and Intro movies can now be skipped immediately on startup after the game, on all launches but the very first on a machine.
- DirectX 10 hardware can now enable the simplest version of the Depth Of Field effect.
- Problems with audio occasionally being muted after ALT-TAB have been fixed.
- Various localization fixes.
- Miscellaneous other stability and general improvements based on crashes we have seen coming in.
I just got Hitman yesterday but I haven't played it. Why did it need such large patches? And Aliens needs more then an overhaul at this point I think.
Tell you what, I ain't surprised. Hitman Absolution got 7GB and 12GB patches separately.
It'd be good if they overhaul the entire game.
lol, f**king christ.
Those checkpoint save files must be huge.
Exactly this. The 8 gig thing is insane because the game itself,from what I hear, doesn't even go to 7.
Well, considering how much is wrong with the game, an 8Gig patch might be about the right size to fix everything. lol
Not that I don't want the game fixed, but... an 8Gig PATCH?! That's bigger than most full games. I really don't want 8Gigs of my HDD eaten up by a patch if I don't have to. It sounds like they're replacing the entire game. If that's the case, they're better off issuing replacement discs with the "finished" game on it.
Randy still has A LOT of explaining to do.
Case in point:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lGXDM3LGnk#ws
https://www.avpgalaxy.net/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fweknowmemes.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2012%2F06%2Fprepare-your-diddly-hole.jpg&hash=2c7b36fac7aa8ad7e8706610fa11ec0f0e55a238
Going to take me all day to download on my connection.
https://twitter.com/Smoolander/status/301868864462008321
https://twitter.com/MarcRader68/status/301874920080687104
http://n4g.com/news/1173478/massive-updates-may-be-on-the-way-for-aliens-colonial-marines
This does not speak well of how extensive their testing phase must have been...
I'd be really, REALLY surprised if Sega doesn't do that with A:CM (AVP '10 was the first thing that came to mind).
That whole situation was a crime because, despite some gameplay and balance issues, AVP '10 was solid and showed a lot of promise. Sega really screwed us over with that. ESPECIALLY if you played the console versions. Rebellion wanted to continue support for it, too.
A:CM, on the other hand, is an abysmally glitchy mess. Which, blows my mind considering how f***ing long it's been in development. What the hell has Randy and the rest of Gearbox been doing with it all this time?
Not only does AVP '10 look considerably better than A:CM (Really, GBX? No DX11 support?!), it's a far more polished game.
Remember AVP 2010? Sega did exactly this with that title. History repeats itself yet again. Hopefully the dlc will help clean this up. Doubt it though, probably just a map pack or two, seeing as how the title only has a few maps per mode.
Apologies to previous posters, didn't realize AVP had already been brought up. Anyone else feel avp has better graphics, I might be pulling that from memory alone but it seemed to from what I remember.