[bigsnappy]

News from the homepage:

According to an official press release from Jowood, the next patch for Arcania has been released.

Next to an update, which can be acquired over the Autoupdater, there is also the possibility for a manual installation.

The patch contains small fixes for bugs, and partly improves the performance.


The patch log contains the following information:

• Interruption of interactions with sword strikes
• Acknowledgements playback after loading a savegame
• Jump interrupted by FMV freezed character
• Cool down in the inventory screen
• Reduced ocean clipping problem for Stereoscopic 3D
• Arrows stick on already disintegrated Demon
• Stamina consumption while sprinting with equipped spells added
• SLI issues & optimizations
• Crash on vista machines when starting the game on the second adapter
  while the first adapter was disabled
• Stereoscopic 3D can be deactivated from the NVIDIA control panel before
  launching game
• Pickable item restoration
• Multiple CPU profiles in process manager
• Clouds use dynamic vertex buffer for frequent locking
• Performance problem with terrain tile generation
• Performance bug in trails
• Rare crash when arrows stuck in players vanished
• Additional unnecessary loading screen when using a teleport stone-need

You can also download the patch from WoG.de.

Press release by Jowood (partly in German):
http://presse.jowood.com/?id=1284

Download of the patch on WoG.de:
http://www.worldofgothic.de/dl/download_435.htm

[Darth Crow]

Any hint about this one actually fixing the "flying grass" problem? The game is quite unplayable with this. I even wrote to Spellbound's technical support, but thay (what wonder) haven't answered...

[maledepecher]

This patch is crap.
This patch does not fix nothing important.
Spellbound when will you fix that fucking zoom problem???
And the lags are very annoying.(and I have a powerfull computer)
I know this game is bad but I want to play it but not before Spellbound
will release a better patch that will improve the performance of the game and
to fix that damn zoom problem.(it bothers me very much that I can't zoom
manualy like Gothic 3).

[Petyamester]

I agree, this patch fixes only secondary or unnecessary stuff. Lag is the only - technical - issue people have with the game.

[Rasmus]

I will buy the game when the first community-patch will come out.

[warstrike]

i`ll buy the game only if they change the NAME (remove gothic from it) and never develop another gothic game . (speaking of Jowood & SB ofc )

[Buccaneer]

Would buying the game from Steam include the latest patch?

[veljkovic]

I had such a high hope for this game. Gothic 2 was good, but Gothic 3 (after it got properly patched - patch 2.74) was a dream. Huge world, hundreds of people, diffrent climates, very non-linear story... I love it.
So when this game came out I tried not to have my hopes up because I heard about it not being ''gothic'' enough. I downloaded the demo, and... well, let's just say I was disappointed.
Oh, the graphics are superb and sounds are very good but everything else su**s.
The movement is a bit different. I can't control 'hero' as easily as I did before. And the ZOOM! Whay did they had to chuck out the zoom? For me it was as essencial to the playing as 'moving forward'. I could addapt my view to any place on the map - open ravine, cave, woods... It was easier to see what is in front of you. Now in Arcania it only gots one camera height. I could play with that, it's not bad camera height, but what pis*es me off is the change of the camera height when I draw a wepon. It shots up in the sky as if a small mountain is attacking me and I needed to see all of it. And I CAN'T control it. Why do I need that bird view on my character when I'm fighting? I want to be in the heart of the situation, not behind some mountain peeking. It distracted me when it changes camera view like that without me wanting to.
The inventory is disaster. First, I can't see the objects all that well at one glance like I did before. Second, everytnig I pick up just shatters everywhere throught the inventory. There is some classifications like weapon, shield and so, but inside them there is chaos. I liked it when all the wepons were listed by their shape (swords,bows,crossbows), by their strenght and so. It made it easier form me to equipt them, to sell them or top buy them. The way that it is now I have to list all of my inventory and to memorise where everything is if I want any speed in transaction. It's idiotic. That inventory can only be used if the inventory is limited. This one isn't.
I almost shed a tear when I saw the skill three. Now when you gather skill points you just open a panel and pick some skill up. I loved when you had to go to the master with your skill point to learn a skill. It was so much natural. Plus there was a diffrence between different masters in the level of skill they can teach you. It was realistic. Now (growl) 'the hero' picks up the skills from thin air. So much is lost - hunting for the masters, convincing them to teach you, remebering where they are in the world... It was a second part of the cycle: You do jobs or kill for the experience, then you go spend skill points to get stronger, smarter... And because of that you can do more difficult jobs. And so on.
Now they just ripped a big part of the story from the game. I don't understand why. That also shortened the gameplay by hours. If they wanted a shorter game they should not made a gothic-like. Gothic is a game that is played slowly, with attention for detail. You slowly learn the world as you walk throught it. That's the whole idea behind 'open world' characteristic of the Gothic. You can go almost anywhere right from the start. You are not bound by some straight line. The masters were a big part of the reason why you came back to towns and villages. Not to have them is c*ap.

Also, talking with somebody is soooooooo much slower now.It is ridiciolus.
Why does it have to change to a diffrent screen when i start a conversation?And then there is fading.I spend 10 minutes excanging few sentences. It get's boring. Even Gothic 3 without patches wasn't that slow.
And this is done deliberately.

Anyway, I am pretty dissapointed. I was hoping when the released a patch it will amend some of the things in the game (like the zoom) but the patch is small and insignificant. And now i hear they are releasing an add-on. Already? They just released the main game! It is stand-alone add-on which means you don't need main game to play it. Sound familliar? Let me refresh your memories:

FORSAKEN GODS!

It was the same thing back then. And it was bad. Very few quests with no connections. I didn't even find out what the main story was. I stoped playing after some hours. There was a good number of people there but very few of them had something to say, let alone give you the quest. It was a total dissaster. After the whole game of Gothic 3, which is the biggest in Gothic series, Forsaken gods looked like a demo. Even worse than that. Like they just started developing the game and then for some reason sold it to the public.

Someone said that Arcania looked like it was made for the game-consoles. Controls are very simplified. Mabye they could not be bothered to change a control system of the game so that it fits the PC.

My only hope is that some of the independant programmers will create a Community patch which will change the worst characteristics of the game: control,zoom,inventory... But even if they do, it is going to be a long time before they are done.

[QuiG]

@veljkovic you should start a new thread with that, its not a comment, its a full book posted on the thread XD

sry but it beats my records, ive never seen such long message that wasn't the first post in a thread :P


anyway i personally think arcania need a huge patch to make it just like gothic 2 but just improved graphics and some more epic stuff

but that aint gonna happen, those patches will be enough,

"but its not hard to improve on garbage" - quote from the training course in call of duty 4 when you do bad and improve ^^

[veljkovic]

I am sorry. I started small message but it got away from me. I realy wanted to play it. I waited for the release thinking: 'Gothic 3 is awesome, by now they had patched a lot of the game so gothic 4 has to be even better'. It was like that with the other Gothic's. Gothic 2 was better that 1.Gothic 3 better than 2(it had memory problems and everything but it was biger and with better graphic than Gothic 2).

[Swanny]

I'd trade all that just for fix to the always-run bug