Is the Voluminous Codex still in the game?

[kilobug]

When you say you're going to do something and don't do it we call that lying.

No, we don't. "lie (intransitive) To give false information intentionally. " "An intentionally false statement; an intentional falsehood. " "A statement intended to deceive, even if literally true; a half-truth" **intentionally** being the key part. Being wrong is not lying. Changing circumstances is not lying. Lying is something you _know_ to be wrong at the time you say it. If I say I'm going to do something which I never intended to do, I lied. If I say I'm going to do something, and when I said it I meant it, but then circumstances changed, or I tried and failed, or I forgot, or ... I didn't lie.

Intention is critical in what makes a lie and what doesn't - and that's why "lying" is (rightfully) perceived as such a bad thing, because it caries intention to deceive and manipulate. It's an honest mistake, it's not changing circumstances, it's not changing your mind, it's not trying and failing, but it's actually deciding, knowing what you are doing, to deceive.

Using the word "lie" when it's not warranted can only do two things - either empty the word of its meaning, so people who truly lie, who intentionally deceived, can go away with it more easily, or put unfair blame of people (like inXile) who, in good faith, made honest mistakes and, for good or bad reasons that's not the point, where pushed by circumstances to change their mind. And both are harmful.

[anonymous6059]

When you say you're going to do something and don't do it we call that lying.

No, we don't. "lie (intransitive) To give false information intentionally. " "An intentionally false statement; an intentional falsehood. " "A statement intended to deceive, even if literally true; a half-truth" **intentionally** being the key part. Being wrong is not lying. Changing circumstances is not lying. Lying is something you _know_ to be wrong at the time you say it. If I say I'm going to do something which I never intended to do, I lied. If I say I'm going to do something, and when I said it I meant it, but then circumstances changed, or I tried and failed, or I forgot, or ... I didn't lie.

Intention is critical in what makes a lie and what doesn't - and that's why "lying" is (rightfully) perceived as such a bad thing, because it caries intention to deceive and manipulate. It's an honest mistake, it's not changing circumstances, it's not changing your mind, it's not trying and failing, but it's actually deciding, knowing what you are doing, to deceive.

Using the word "lie" when it's not warranted can only do two things - either empty the word of its meaning, so people who truly lie, who intentionally deceived, can go away with it more easily, or put unfair blame of people (like inXile) who, in good faith, made honest mistakes and, for good or bad reasons that's not the point, where pushed by circumstances to change their mind. And both are harmful.

If I told my son that I would be at his baseball game and I promised that I wouldn't miss it. When the day came up I realized that I had way too much work to do and wouldn't be able to make it I have lied to my son. I didn't want to lie. It wasn't my intention, but I still lied. I promised him something and couldn't hold to that promise. I have lied to him. Also, knowing the intentions of someone else is very difficult if not impossible. You can't know what someone else is thinking. You can only know what they do or what they don't do. Intention is not critical. Intention is an abstract that is meaningless. You are only remembered for what you do or don't do. Wait, kind of like the legacies in the game.

Just like in the game. The tides do not come to you based off of your intentions. You gain different tides based off the impressions you leave behind. How others perceive your behavior and not what you may or may not have intended. If you constantly promise to do something and then refuse to do it people will call you a liar.

Either way you want to use the word Inxile lied. Inxile kept something from us "intentionally" for years. Therefore they are liars. You can't take what they say as the truth. They have already shown us that. They have broken our trust in them. It is up to them to regain it. The easiest way to do so would be by openly and completely explaining the decisions they have made. By continuing not explain themselves and potentially withholding even more cut content they are not gaining anyone's respect or belief.

[kilobug]

If I told my son that I would be at his baseball game and I promised that I wouldn't miss it. When the day came up I realized that I had way too much work to do and wouldn't be able to make it I have lied to my son. I didn't want to lie. It wasn't my intention, but I still lied.

No, you didn't lie to him. You broke a promise, you (likely) did hurt him, you might even damaged his trust in you, it's bad, but it's not lying. And part of being a parent in such a situation is actually to make your son understand that you didn't lie to him, that you never intended to deceive him, and that while you are very sorry, he still can trust you, that when you say something to him you mean it, even if occasionally you might be prevented to do it. A (young) kid will have trouble understanding that fine line, but an adult shouldn't.

Inxile kept something from us "intentionally" for years.

No, they didn't. It's just not how projects work at all. But as usual, you speak with already made certainty about things you don't know about... like your "living atoms" or "mutation" stuff, or the "it's because of consoles" thing. There never was someone in inXile saying "oh, we'll cut all those features, but let's hide it to backers, never say it to them", it's just not how things work. They fumbled, but they didn't have any intention to hide or distort or deceive.

[anonymous6059]

There never was someone in inXile saying "oh, we'll cut all those features, but let's hide it to backers, never say it to them", it's just not how things work. They fumbled, but they didn't have any intention to hide or distort or deceive.

This is my exact point. You can't know the intentions of someone else. That is irrelevant. I do know that they said they would do one thing and instead did something else. That is lying. Especially when you do it over and over again.

If I told my son that I would be at his baseball game and I promised that I wouldn't miss it. When the day came up I realized that I had way too much work to do and wouldn't be able to make it I have lied to my son. I didn't want to lie. It wasn't my intention, but I still lied.

No, you didn't lie to him. You broke a promise, you (likely) did hurt him, you might even damaged his trust in you, it's bad, but it's not lying. And part of being a parent in such a situation is actually to make your son understand that you didn't lie to him, that you never intended to deceive him, and that while you are very sorry, he still can trust you, that when you say something to him you mean it, even if occasionally you might be prevented to do it. A (young) kid will have trouble understanding that fine line, but an adult shouldn't.

Breaking a promise is a synonym for lying... Again, this is just semantics.
http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/break+promise

If you'd really prefer I use mislead or renege I will, but honestly I think you're just trying a little too hard here to justify Inxile's actions.

[kilobug]

This is my exact point. You can't know the intentions of someone else.

So why do all our legal systems keep having different penalties and labels for "voluntary manslaughter" and "involuntary manslaughter" ? Why is "good faith" so often involved in trials ? You can't _know_ the intentions of someone else with 100% certainty - actually you can't know _anything_ with 100% certainty.

But you can't navigate a society without trying your best to guess the intentions of someone, and considering someone's intentions when deciding if you forgive them of a mistake or not, if you'll trust them again after they broke a promise or not, ...

And using words which strongly imply an intention to mislead and manipulate, while it's not the case (like "lie"), is clearly misleading in itself - but I do assume you did it in good faith and didn't try to manipulate us

I do know that they said they would do one thing and instead did something else. That is lying.

No, again, this is not lying. And inability to understand the difference between something you know to be wrong, voluntarily misleading and deceiving people (which is bad), and having circumstances make change you change (which to a point is perfectly normal and sane in a project's life, even if in the case of TTON there also been some mistakes by inXile, like underestimating the difficulties of some tasks) or realize you were wrong, is a huge problem.

Especially when you do it over and over again.

They didn't do it "over and over again". They made promises 4 years ago according to a vision and a context that evolved and is no longer valid, forcing them to change. In some parts, it's perfectly normal - they prototyped a crafting system, it didn't work well with the rest of the game, they stripped it, better than having a PoE-like stronghold. In some other parts, it's mistakes on their side, they wrongly evaluated the complexity/cost of the task, but that's an honest mistake that _everyone_ who tried to do ambitious things will commit. But all those mistakes, for the parts that were mistakes, were done 4 years ago, when they had to present a vision and stretch goals for the Kickstarter. They didn't commit them "over and over again".

Actually, if look at BT4 and WL3 Kickstarters, they did learn from their mistakes and provided way _less_ details (to the point that many complained about the lack of details), very likely to avoid doing "over and over again" the same mistake.

[Lord of Riva]

... and in the end it is irrelevant in so far that they could have told us when bigger things had been cut and they should honestly, if they cut even more of the "promised" features, say it before the release, otherwise the games sale will honestly suffer.

people do not take lightly to a (perceived) deception, unintentional or not.

EDIT: also @Kilobug you are a gamedev right? i have worked on a game before as well. It should not be expected that your customers have to know about the development process. I should not need to know how CPUs are constructed in the factories as a end consumer. It should be sufficient to know what i am getting and if they work.

[anonymous6059]

I do know that they said they would do one thing and instead did something else. That is lying.

No, again, this is not lying. And inability to understand the difference between something you know to be wrong, voluntarily misleading and deceiving people (which is bad), and having circumstances make change you change (which to a point is perfectly normal and sane in a project's life, even if in the case of TTON there also been some mistakes by inXile, like underestimating the difficulties of some tasks) or realize you were wrong, is a huge problem.

Yes it is lying. It is a looser use of the word, but still lying. When you make a promise and break it you've lied. Breaking a promise is a synonym for lying. Intention is irrelevant. The facts are they kept information from us. We will never really know why they did that. However, when they finally were forced to admit to us what was going on we found out that they'd broken several promises. That is lying or misleading or reneging which ever one you prefer. http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/break+promise

Going back to the son analogy:
If I told my Son over and over that I would go to his Baseball game and didn't what would he call me? He'd call me a liar.

Especially when you do it over and over again.

They didn't do it "over and over again". They made promises 4 years ago according to a vision and a context that evolved and is no longer valid, forcing them to change. In some parts, it's perfectly normal - they prototyped a crafting system, it didn't work well with the rest of the game, they stripped it, better than having a PoE-like stronghold. In some other parts, it's mistakes on their side, they wrongly evaluated the complexity/cost of the task, but that's an honest mistake that _everyone_ who tried to do ambitious things will commit. But all those mistakes, for the parts that were mistakes, were done 4 years ago, when they had to present a vision and stretch goals for the Kickstarter. They didn't commit them "over and over again".

Actually, if look at BT4 and WL3 Kickstarters, they did learn from their mistakes and provided way _less_ details (to the point that many complained about the lack of details), very likely to avoid doing "over and over again" the same mistake.

They did do it over and over. They made several promises to us and broke them. We only found out about some of them recently. That doesn't mean that they didn't do it several times. We were promised Italian translation, codex, and 9 companions. That is several lies.

Again, all those lies may be well justified, but they are still lies.

[kilobug]

EDIT: also @Kilobug you are a gamedev right? i have worked on a game before as well. It should not be expected that your customers have to know about the development process. I should not need to know how CPUs are constructed in the factories as a end consumer. It should be sufficient to know what i am getting and if they work.

I'm a software developer, I worked 2.5 years in game development, but not anymore.

And while it's true in general that "customers" shouldn't have to know about the development process, crowdfunding does shuffle the cards a bit. We are not customers, but backers, and it's not just semantics. A typical game will detail its features and working when it's near-finished, the players will never see the development cycle. Even in the world of "early access", early access versions are usually relatively close to completion. So typical players won't see that the developers had dozens of great ideas that didn't make it to the final version. That between initial plans and final outcome lots of things have changed.

But when we start doing crowdfunding, when the game makers come to ask for money before release, when the game is nothing but great but still wild ideas in their head, years away from release, things change. We become necessarily more involved in how the dev cycle work, we necessarily will be more aware that things will change from initial vision to final product, that costs of this or that feature may have been underestimated, ...

Backers aren't and shouldn't be mere customers, they should have that understanding that they are taking risks, that they funding a creative project which is, by the nature of creative work, not fully predictable. Or they should be aware they don't understand all the complexity of managing such a project, and trust inXile to do the best to follow their creative vision, even if it means changing some promises. And wait for the final game, to make criticism. In an ideal world, that's how backers should behave, to me.

And sure, in an ideal world, inXile they should have stressed more that their promises were what they currently had in mind, not necessarily exactly what they would do, they should have been more careful in estimating costs, and they should have been more open in communication. Not saying their completely innocent of everything, they did some mistakes (but then, who doesn't, especially when undertaking such an ambitious project).

[kilobug]

If I told my Son over and over that I would go to his Baseball game and didn't what would he call me? He'd call me a liar.

Your son probably would, if he's young, because as a young kid he can't really see the fine line between "being wrong in good faith" and "lying". But aren't we supposed to be adults ?

They did do it over and over. They made several promises to us and broke them.

That's not what we call "over and over". Making a bunch a promises 4 years ago, and breaking them all no, is not "over and over" for any meaningful value of it. To go back to your son example, if your son breaks several glasses by throwing is ball at the table where they were drying, you can't say to him "you broke several glasses, you did it over and over". You can only blame it of doing it "over and over" if after the consequences, after being told he was wrong, he keeps doing it.

InXile didn't do it "over and over", they once, 4 years ago, made a slew of promises (that they shouldn't have made, sure), which for the same set of reasons they were unable to keep, breaking them all at once. Doing it "over and over" would be behaving the same way in BT4 and WL3, which they didn't - they were careful to make much less promises that time.

[Dork Mage]

The "real" problem here is lack of communications by InXile of how things are going.

TToN is new IP. It hasn't been done before. InXile only had vague ideas of how it would be implemented. Some features were dropped (unfortunately) or changed (health pool added) because it is an all new game design.

But not communicating that features are likely not to make it (when known literally years in advance) is deceptive (though not lying).

If I told my Son over and over that I would go to his Baseball game and didn't what would he call me? He'd call me a liar.

If you told your Son that you will "absolutely" make it to the game knowing full well that you will miss the game if anything crops up at work (which often does happen) then yes, you are lying. Otherwise, things didn't work out... what are your priorities?

InXile's priorities pretty clearly are NOT to communicate with the backers. Take that how ever you like.

[kilobug]

But not communicating that features are likely not to make it (when known literally years in advance) is deceptive (though not lying).

That's true to a point, but not that easy.

First, it's not like (AFAIK) features are cut in very formal way. We know (they said it when there was the late "Gullet" stretch goal) that they use a priority system. Something like priority A = must have, priority B = should be done, priority C = if we have time. Most of stretch goals were likely priority C before the stretch goal was reached, then bumped to priority B or A when the goal was reached.

But then the project lived its live, new ideas came and were bumped to A/B, so other things (including stretch goals) were moved back to C, but with some intent to rescue them later on if all goes well. Others were prototyped, didn't work that well, and where moved back to C "if someone gets a brilliant idea to save it".

And then the release date nears, and they need to provide the text to translators so translations are done in time, to provide a near-finished game to testers, ... so everything that's C is cut (or post-poned to expansions/DLCs/future versions), without a clear explicit decision to cut them.

That's how projects typically live - I don't know how inXile exactly handle their projects, and I probably did some mistakes in extrapolating from my own professional experiences and what inXile said. But I guess the general idea holds.

The second issue is that communication is hard and delicate. Look at how people on those forums dissect every quote from inXile, and start angry flames when something is announced they don't like (or fear it implies something they don't like). So you need to word things carefully. To explain. To balance bad news with good news. And that takes time and resources - sure they should do it, but "should" doesn't pay wages.

[Serjo]

The second issue is that communication is hard and delicate. Look at how people on those forums dissect every quote from inXile, and start angry flames when something is announced they don't like (or fear it implies something they don't like). So you need to word things carefully. To explain. To balance bad news with good news. And that takes time and resources - sure they should do it, but "should" doesn't pay wages.

I really think Techland could help them with that. inXile are not alone - they have a publisher.

[anonymous6059]

If I told my Son over and over that I would go to his Baseball game and didn't what would he call me? He'd call me a liar.

Your son probably would, if he's young, because as a young kid he can't really see the fine line between "being wrong in good faith" and "lying". But aren't we supposed to be adults ?

They did do it over and over. They made several promises to us and broke them.

That's not what we call "over and over". Making a bunch a promises 4 years ago, and breaking them all no, is not "over and over" for any meaningful value of it. To go back to your son example, if your son breaks several glasses by throwing is ball at the table where they were drying, you can't say to him "you broke several glasses, you did it over and over". You can only blame it of doing it "over and over" if after the consequences, after being told he was wrong, he keeps doing it.

InXile didn't do it "over and over", they once, 4 years ago, made a slew of promises (that they shouldn't have made, sure), which for the same set of reasons they were unable to keep, breaking them all at once. Doing it "over and over" would be behaving the same way in BT4 and WL3, which they didn't - they were careful to make much less promises that time.

Again, everything you're arguing is literally just semantics. You aren't actually adding anything to the conversation that is of any use. You're simply trying to dissect words and their meaning, nothing else. We can play the word game all day long, but that isn't going to get us anywhere. All it does is derail the thread. Inxile didn't cut the content all at once. They cut it over time we just didn't find about it until some leaked content became available.

It would be more like a kid throwing baseballs at glasses over the course of several years and never owning up to the fact that he was doing it. Several years pass and suddenly it all comes to out at once. The kid had still been breaking glasses over and over again. Not that it makes any difference. You're just trying to dissect every other word as a tactic to obscure the message. Pointing out all the trees so that no one can see the forest.

What Inxile did was wrong. They have rightfully lost our trust. It makes sense to be skeptical of what they say. It is up to them to regain our trust. The easiest way of doing that is to be upfront and honest. Give us a detailed list of features that the game does have. Until that point I find it only sensible to not trust what they say as the whole truth. That is how you should treat a liar.

[kilobug]

What Inxile did was wrong. They have rightfully lost our trust. It makes sense to be skeptical of what they say. It is up to them to regain our trust. The easiest way of doing that is to be upfront and honest. Give us a detailed list of features that the game does have. Until that point I find it only sensible to not trust what they say as the whole truth. That is how you should treat a liar.

Which is exactly why it's not just semantics - you justify your hostility towards inXile by nothing more than calling them "liar" and "that's how you should treat a liar", which is a general rule devised for _actual_ liars, people who intentionally, voluntarily broke your trust and on purposed deceived you. And it doesn't apply on this case, where what inXile did is in part normal project management, in part honest mistakes (should as falling to the planning fallacy and lack of communication for understandable reasons). You just gave proof on why I was right to argue on the "lying" and "again and again" words, why it's not just semantics !

[Gizmo]

I should not need to know how CPUs are constructed in the factories as a end consumer. It should be sufficient to know what i am getting and if they work.

Ahem... Unless the factory decided to offer the CPUs extra cheap, in exchange for including a secret hardware backdoor.

I [of course] agree with kilobug's definition of lying, and know from experience when a project changes under one's feet due to unforeseen circumstance. I haven't been following the development closely; preferring to play the finished product without preconceptions, but I do see the consumer's side of it, and would hope that in lieu of the unavailable, that InXile will endeavor to make amends rather than just offering buy-outs... That doesn't mean fixing it when they cannot; it means devising some pleasant way to placate the disappointed.

*However... not mentioning radical changes to the product [away from what's expected of it] always casts a pall on the customer relationship.

[Luckmann]

[...] you justify your hostility towards inXile by nothing more [...]

Hahaha, what? I almost spilled water all over my keyboard, there. Have you been missing the whole meltdown? The semantics of "liar" is completely irrelevant to what they've actually done, which is why they're being called liars. Whatever you choose to call them, they still mislead people and kept things secret from their backers, and lied to their fans.

[kilobug]

Hahaha, what? I almost spilled water all over my keyboard, there. Have you been missing the whole meltdown? The semantics of "liar" is completely irrelevant to what they've actually done, which is why they're being called liars. Whatever you choose to call them, they still mislead people and kept things secret from their backers, and lied to their fans.

I've seen the "meltdown" by a tiny minority of angry backers, never happy about anything, not wanting to understand that undertaking such an ambitious and challenging project always carried lots of risk, yes. That doesn't make it justified, or inXile liars.

InXile never misled people on purpose, they never lied, they didn't do anything that's not just usual project management, and their main mistake was to underestimate costs/complexity of tasks which is a well known cognitive bias of humans ("the planning fallacy") that scourges like 90% of projects in all fields to various degrees. And yes, they didn't communicate enough or early enough, but that's not "keeping secrets", that's just not having a dedicated communication team, the usual pitfalls of project management, and not being fully aware that having backers create _additional_ expectation in terms of communication (because such cuts that inXile did happen in most video games, but usually no one knows but the developers).

InXile from the beginning to this day have being their best, as humanly possible, to make TTON a worthy successor of PsT, and everything I've seen so far about the game shows they've been faithful to their "4 pillars", to what made PsT so great, and that's what's most important. And it's not fair either to blame and judge inXile when you didn't even see the final product - how can anyone dare to judge an artist or an artistic work without even seeing it ?

The only really bad thing was the cut of Italian translation, because it means some people won't be able to play the game, but by offering a refund for all Italian backers who desire one, they have did what we can expect, offering a refund is the best "I'm sorry" you can ask from a business.

[Hype]

The only really bad thing was the cut of Italian translation, because it means some people won't be able to play the game, but by offering a refund for all Italian backers who desire one, they have did what we can expect, offering a refund is the best "I'm sorry" you can ask from a business.

While I'm not Italian I've requested a refund for my kickstarter collectors edition, which they also said they would offer refunds for. It's been a week since my first email and I've received no communication from Inxile. While they say that they are offering refunds that does not seem to actually be true, at least in my case.

[anonymous6059]

The only really bad thing was the cut of Italian translation, because it means some people won't be able to play the game, but by offering a refund for all Italian backers who desire one, they have did what we can expect, offering a refund is the best "I'm sorry" you can ask from a business.

While I'm not Italian I've requested a refund for my kickstarter collectors edition, which they also said they would offer refunds for. It's been a week since my first email and I've received no communication from Inxile. While they say that they are offering refunds that does not seem to actually be true, at least in my case.

Well, make sure to keep us informed. I had really hoped that this was one thing Inxile wasn't lying about. I've heard this complaint several times now so you're not alone. Had you activated your beta key? This seems to be causing some people problems. Perhaps you should leave a post here: viewtopic.php?f=32&t=17063. It would be nice to get an idea of the severity of this issue.