It's not the Developers, It's the Community!

[whiting1289]

A gaming company is not your friend and needs no understanding when they give you a broken product, unless they tell you from the START, BEFORE you buy the game... I mean jeez you sound like one of those ISheep...

[woolerland]

Releasing a game littered with bugs is unacceptable. End OF.

you can claim it's the communties fault for pressuring them but yet again it's the developers fault for following the public's demands.

The developer should have delayed the game as it now has damaged their reputation permanently. i.e. I'm never purchasing a firefly game if it has been released under 6 months & goodluck for getting ANY preorders now.

[coldroll]

Initiate of War the sad truth is Firefly hasn't made a good Stronghold since Stronghold Crusader sure Stronghold 2 was ok at best. But it still didn't have the same game play as Crusader. I personally think Stronghold 3 was Firefly just trying to milk a dying franchise.

[-GS-]

I'm a long time Stronghold fan, having played all of them and loving (and still playing) the original one and Crusader in particular. I was overjoyed when I first heard about a third (well, seventh actually) release, but decided to wait and not to buy it immediately. Then negative reviews started to appear. They all agreed on one opinion: bugs, bugs everywhere. So I was further convinced that I had to wait for more patches/updates. Months later, when the Gold Edition was released, I bought the game. I am playing now: I have yet to reach the ending (I'm only on mission 7), but I still can notice a general unresponsiveness of the troops. Sometimes they don't obey orders: when I issue a "move" or "attack" command, some soldiers either stand still or wander around aimlessly. On mission 6 (Blackstaff - the one where you have to fight your way through the forest in the rain to reach Blackstaff's Gates) while wading through the swamps, 8 peasants and a spearman (I even remember the exact number!) decided it would be fun to just get stuck into the environment and stay there helplessly until the end of the mission. OK, they aren't game-ruining bugs, but annoying nevertheless. I hope there won't be more later on, because I've been enjoying the game very much so far.
I can't comment on multiplayer because, having never been a "multiplayer type" gamer, I'm not interested in trying it.

Apart from this, I'm trying to walk in the shoes of a loyal fan who has bought the game on day 1 or pre-order. I didn't try the game back then, so I don't have direct proof, but I don't think all the complaints, rants and error reports were forged or fake or just jokes. There are too many examples of people noticing enormous quantities of bugs. So, I can understand that, in the eyes of a user who has spent almost 50€ to buy a severely flawed game, this unexpected sloppiness may seem outrageous. I'm not accusing anyone, I don't and can't know whether this is to blame on the developers' alleged haste or on the publishers not having properly funded the venture or not having given the devs enough time (or whatever else). I'm only perplexed by the fact that a long-estabilished and solid developer such as Firefly could release a bug-ridden or unfinished game (and I'm not claiming it's their fault!)