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View Full Version : Have to start new AP game for the Orcs campaign? RU Kidding Me?!?


brettjv
09-18-2010, 08:33 PM
So I pre-ordered CW from Steam along w/Armored Princess like a week ago, and I've played AP for many, many hours now, fully expecting to continue my campaign with the added content of Orcs on the March once CW unlocked.

But now I go to play and discover that my AP saves are not there when I start up OOTM?!?

I've even tried copying my AP saves in the save game folder with orcs_ at the beginning like the saves are formatted ... still not there in the save list.

I just have to say, if this is the intended behavior, I am officially FURIOUS right now. :evil: :mad:

What other expansion pack does this, when all the expansion is an add-on to a main game with some new quests, spells, and units, basically?

Off the top of my head, games I've played recently where I didn't have to restart after installing an expansion are Borderlands, Fallout 3, Titan Quest, and Sacred 2 ... and I know there's MANY others that have worked like this.

Can you imagine if they did this on WoW ... if you bought WotLK and later found out that in order to play it you had to restart your entire game and play through WoW to level up all over again?

This is garbage IMHO, and might just be the most infuriating thing I've ever seen a game developer do. It's not like AP is some short game that people won't care about starting all over again

NOWHERE in any promo materials was it explained that the add-on campaign would require a brand-new game of AP be started. Something like this should be in big bold letters everywhere the game is advertised, because NOBODY else does this EVER (edit: okay, not never, but ... usually not)

DGDobrev
09-18-2010, 08:49 PM
No need to vent out.

Crosswords' OOTM has a number of new skills (check the skill trees, each class has a new skill), units, items and whatnot. For that reason the saves are incompatible.

It stood to reason that they would be incompatible thanks to the new content. I was 99% sure they will, so I never started a new game till the expansion came out.

brettjv
09-18-2010, 09:05 PM
I'm sorry, but I am way irritated ATM. Whether it 'stood to reason' or not, this just is not the way these things are done in ANY other game I've seen. Thus, I think the claim that people should've just kinda 'shoulda known' is spurious at best.

The way to handle this is that if you make new skill(s) you simply put it/them at the bottom of the tree, or you make them 'stand-alone' like Alchemy is. It's not that hard. And stuff like units, items, and quests should be have been no problem to add on to existing game, devs do it ALL the time.

You can defend 1C for this if you like, that's fine. I personally think was very wrong for them to do this without advertising the fact that a brand new AP game would have to be started to play OotM expansion.

If Blizzard did this with a WoW expansion w/o telling people ahead of time ... there'd be open rebellion in the streets ...

So now, I'm like 15 hours into AP, and I no longer want to play AP anymore. NOR do I want to start a brand-new campaign in OotM. Sooo ... $30 down the drain, basically. All it would've taken was a little note from 1C in the Steam advertisement that mentioned this, and I'd have waited to start OotM instead of AP.

DGDobrev
09-18-2010, 09:09 PM
WoW is MMORPG, KB is a simple SP game. If any MMORPG forces incompatible saves, it will be the end of it.

I can think of a number of games that had incompatible saves. let's take the Heroes series, for example, as this game resembles them a bit. You couldn't take a heroes 3 game and turn in into armageddon's blade with the new content - you had to play it as it is.

vmxa
09-18-2010, 09:19 PM
Well nearly every strat game I ever bought that added changes to the game broke the prior saves and certainly a new addition/expansion would.

Several times for patches alone in civ III. Only way to make them compat is not not change anythig that is keep in the save. That would be a bug fixes at best.

brettjv
09-18-2010, 09:21 PM
It may be SP, but it's still very long, and people get attached to their creation that it's taken many hours of their time to create.

I dunno about Heroes, I've never played those games.

But there have been plenty of games along the lines of KB like Sacred 2 and Titan Quest that have seemlessly added expansion packs to add feature to the main game without breaking saves. And TQ:IT was a pretty huge change, with new classes and everything. In order to get the new features, you fired up the IT.exe and used your toon created in TQ, no problems. Same with DLC in Borderlands and Fallout 3.

What I'm talking about here can clearly easily be done, and it very often is. I think it was more reasonable to expect it than not, given we're talking about an add-on expansion with the same core game with some new units and skills and quests.

But honestly, my biggest complaint here is that we weren't informed in any way ahead of time. The issue could've been avoided for many people had they done so.

Aesir
09-18-2010, 09:26 PM
No need to vent out.
<snip> the saves are incompatible.

It stood to reason that they would be incompatible...
No need to be apologetic on the dev's behalf. They need to hear the problem with the decision to overwrite existing game files, including making it impossible to continue your existing campaign.

Should you expect to run an AP save game through CW? I suppose not.

Should you expect to run an AP save through AP? Definitely so.

For example, on both Impulse and Steam, games with expansions remain eligible to run separately **. Yet, for this game, the installation of CW corrupts a vanilla AP install. You are left with the sole option of starting a new game, and in the process losing access to your AP mods (including the 'official' gift bag) and such.


(**) Games such as Titan Quest, DoW, Dow II, Civ IV, HoMM V, SupCom, Gal Civ II, Sins, Oblivion, Borderlands, CoH, King Arthur, SotS/ANY, Tropico 3. That's just my collection of games+expansion bundles.

brettjv
09-18-2010, 09:36 PM
Aesir, I am able to play my old AP saves by using the AP option in the CW exe. Haven't tried clicking AP in my steam list to see if the original app still works ... your posts here and on steam forums have scared me off of trying ;)

Well nearly every strat game I ever bought that added changes to the game broke the prior saves and certainly a new addition/expansion would.

Several times for patches alone in civ III. Only way to make them compat is not not change anythig that is keep in the save. That would be a bug fixes at best.

Well, I'm not a big strat game player, but I know off the top of my head that the Chaos Rising stand-alone expansion allowed you to use your DoW II save game.

And like I said before ... TQ:Immortal Throne was a MAJOR expansion that changed the game pretty significantly ... but didn't break saves.

To me it just doesn't make sense to break save games unless the expansion is legitimately making a huge change in the core game. Now, I haven't played (and may never, now) but from looking at the OotM change list in the manual, I'm just not seeing anything there that qualifies as remotely huge in my book that couldn't have been worked around.

And if they couldn't, they should've told us up front.

Aesir
09-18-2010, 09:38 PM
Aesir, I am able to play my old AP saves by using the AP option in the CW exe. Haven't tried clicking AP in my steam list to see if the original app still works ... your posts here and on steam forums have scared me off of trying ;)

Thanks for the info. The failure to load in my case may have been in-between installs, when my install folder had both ap and cw content in it.

Levesque
09-18-2010, 09:51 PM
I personally think was very wrong for them to do this without advertising the fact that a brand new AP game would have to be started to play OotM expansion.


+1. I totally agree with this post. KB is one of my favorite game ever, and I have played AP for far too many countless nights without sleep... But I have reach the ''ad nauseam'' level with AP a couple of months ago... So I was all ready to continue my game using an old AP save game... But... But... Sigh.

Can't believe I will have to replay a new game from the start to get to the ''new campaign''. Should have read more before buying this.

Buliwyf
09-18-2010, 11:14 PM
It's a bad design decision and yes, there should have at least been some forewarning of this... heck something like when you speak to the orc woman she teleports you to the new stuff right away... or hell at least let you start off with the correct island uncovered to allow you to proceed.....

way way annoying and the Devs love them as I might for creating such a wonderful game, need to know they dropped the ball on this one.

BB Shockwave
09-18-2010, 11:22 PM
I saw this coming, in fact everyone should have seen it coming... After the Gift Pack Mod, that was essentially just adding new items to the game, required the same. I guess the way KB is set up, the only possibility of amending the existing game is by mods, and those cannot be played together.

My question would be, however - we know the new Orc units are in the Orcs on the March mod, however, I heard a lot of other units get modifications, and new units are added as well. Are those also ONLY in this campaign?

Buliwyf
09-18-2010, 11:32 PM
I should have seen this coming because of the giftpack mod? what gift pack mod?

brettjv
09-19-2010, 06:11 PM
Well, BB ... I've only played KB:TL vanilla and did so like a year ago, never got AP until I heard about CW on steam, got the pre-order with all three, and started AP.

I can see how people that are into the 'scene' of the game might or should have supposed this would happen, but to the average consumer like me ... it was very frustrating the way it went down. A simple note somewhere that had said that AP saves would be incompatible with OotM would sure have been nice. As I said above, it's not at all unreasonable to expect that an add-on expansion that appears to mostly adds quests, skills, and new units to buy would work w/old saves.

I broke down and started over since I didn't want my money to be wasted. There certainly are a whole lot more orcs around to be bought right from the beginning, along with what look to me to be new units like 'witch hunter' (although maybe I just never found one of those before in AP).

I've yet to really see anything that's made me go 'oh NOW I get why they HAD to break saves'. I suppose some of the stuff that they've added to the beginning would sorta be 'wasted' if you were starting on a way higher level/on a distant island, but ... that's about it. And there's some minor changes on the skill trees, which I guess technically 'complicates' things with old saves.

grjohnson
09-20-2010, 06:14 AM
Even the old SSI games of the 90's and old Sierra's Games (Hero's Quest anyone), allowed you to transfer characters from one game to another...
Very disappointing... wish I'd known that before purchasing also.

Mandea
09-20-2010, 08:08 AM
Why don't you finish AP and then play Orcs on The March? AP still makes sense and so does OOTM. I finished AP 10 times already and I think I'll finish Crossworld more times. Maybe you don't like the changes in OOTM and still want to play AP.

Zechnophobe
09-20-2010, 09:29 AM
You listed a bunch of action/adventure games (AKA, diablo clones), which simply operate under totally different types of rules than a game like this. Yeah, it'd be cool if you could get your save games updated, but that would require some pretty weird programming to extend off what they currently have.

When you create a new game, ALL of the content of the game is generated at once, including which random armies exist, what lewt in what location, how much in the little piles of gold, and which leadership flags there are. All of it.

I can completely understand that with that as a basis, it'd be pretty darn hard to just smush more stuff in there.

grjohnson
09-21-2010, 02:59 AM
Is there going to be other "add on's" after Crossworlds....??? Am I going to have to restart AGAIN if there's is?

BB Shockwave
09-21-2010, 06:26 AM
Well, BB ... I've only played KB:TL vanilla and did so like a year ago, never got AP until I heard about CW on steam, got the pre-order with all three, and started AP.

I can see how people that are into the 'scene' of the game might or should have supposed this would happen, but to the average consumer like me ... it was very frustrating the way it went down. A simple note somewhere that had said that AP saves would be incompatible with OotM would sure have been nice. As I said above, it's not at all unreasonable to expect that an add-on expansion that appears to mostly adds quests, skills, and new units to buy would work w/old saves.

I broke down and started over since I didn't want my money to be wasted. There certainly are a whole lot more orcs around to be bought right from the beginning, along with what look to me to be new units like 'witch hunter' (although maybe I just never found one of those before in AP).

I've yet to really see anything that's made me go 'oh NOW I get why they HAD to break saves'. I suppose some of the stuff that they've added to the beginning would sorta be 'wasted' if you were starting on a way higher level/on a distant island, but ... that's about it. And there's some minor changes on the skill trees, which I guess technically 'complicates' things with old saves.

Let's see... there are new skills that you can learn for every class. The maps have changed, there are new buildings such as the Academy (where you can upgrade units) and new quests, there is even a new boss in the game. Then, as you said, there are lots of new units - if you have used your old save you'd have never found them. Also, ALL the Rage Spirit skills are now available as spells to be learned.

I think the main problem would have been altering the map - you most likely already cleaned up Debir, well now there'd be some new quests and buildings there that you most likely would have missed as you wouldn't have gone back to check.

Zechnophobe
09-21-2010, 09:37 AM
Is there going to be other "add on's" after Crossworlds....??? Am I going to have to restart AGAIN if there's is?

Crossworlds came out about a year after Armored Princess. Do you really think you'll be playing the same game a year from now?

DGDobrev
09-21-2010, 10:04 AM
A good question :)

However, this save transfer plight seems to affect a lot of people. It might be prudent to consider a possibility of a save transfer, but still, I can't see how that could be done. It is not an MMORPG where you simply add new skills to the existing ones and add new areas with new units and new content to avoid this kind of problem.

vicheron
09-22-2010, 06:41 AM
I don't know why the new content is so incompatible with the old stuff. There are plenty of games with DLC's that add new content. Look at Fallout 3 for example. It had DLC's that added new items, new perks, higher level cap, etc.

DGDobrev
09-22-2010, 08:38 AM
After I played OOTM for a while, I can see why.

Since the shops are populated by troops, items and spells from the get-go (game start), I see no way to add some new in there through the save. Many games with DLC do not have the randomness this game provides, or they have a repetitive randomness (each time you visit a shop, it has different stuff), which would allow for DLC packs to be implemented with new items.

There is also the matter of overall runes received throughout the game and the lack of ability to re-spec. If they add more skills but the rune amount remains the same, one would feel at a strong disadvantage. Even if there is no level cap in KBCW (there wasn't one in KBAP either), the reduced amount of runes by 50% will make it very hard to obtain one or all of the newly added skills.

Also, if you already took all the maps, I'm not sure the game can just generate one somewhere, somehow, to get you to the new area.

camelotcrusade
09-22-2010, 08:00 PM
I can see where you guys are coming from, but remember they said it was an expansion to the original KBAP campaign - and then they clarified that this meant new units, a couple new quests, and some new spells.

If you could somehow skip to just the new quests, I doubt you'd have more than a few hours of gameplay there - especially at your high level given the save game transfer. So you'd transfer, play a few hours, tinker with some new stuff (assuming they plopped it all in front of you with a few vendors) and then get bored (and some people would complain it didn't add enough, probably).

IMO the gameplay from this expansion comes from the fact that all these new elements are interwoven in the new campaign, giving it a fresh experience (but not "new") and increasing the replay value.

As for me, I started with the champion mode (and was surprised how fast I beat it on normal) and then blew through the boss arena. Those were fun, but my real fun didn't start until I restarted KBAP with the new Orcs mod on it and I have to say it's great fun. I remember the original well enough to be delighted by all the little tweaks every time I run into them.

indio68
10-20-2010, 04:08 PM
Hi,
i'm Italian and i bought all KB games, but i bought the wonderful FX Interactive version , that are subtitled in italian...now i think Crossworld will not be translated, so i ask you: if i Buy a steam version (english only if i rememebr correct) of crossworld ..can i play it having my Armored princess FX version installed on my pc?
sry bad english....
Thanks