The quality of the physical collector's edition is surprisingly, and unfortunately, disappointing

[kilobug]

I've got PS:T boxed copy with all CDs still running. it's 18 years now, FYI.

Lucky you ! Saddly one of my PS:T CDs is dead (or perhaps even more than one now...) But I got the GOG version, and now the Beamdog version too so... still can play it

[waltc]

Well just like I said, 20 years down the road GOG and Steam may disappear.

well, "20 years down the road" your CD's probably wont work anyway. Their life expectancy is arround 15 years, sometimes more, sometimes less.

Considering I have 25 year old game CDs that are still working and have never had one fail I'll disagree. Plus, working as a professional in media technologies I can tell you CDs will be around for a long time as there is still no other media storage as reliable for consumer use.

Yea, but gosh what happens in 20 years when the newest optical disks (assuming the tech isn't obsolete by then) refuse to read your 20-year-old DVD disk? And suppose the mainstream OS in use at the time doesn't recognize the file format or even more likely the hardware/OS/APIs won't even run something that ancient? Finally, yea, *maybe* if you never use the DVD disk for more than a couple of installs and you never scratch it or smudge it, etc., maybe it could still install the game 20 years down the road *if* all the other stuff I mentioned lines up perfectly--like the conjunction of the spheres...

Like it or not, today the most reliable media preservation format is *redundancy*--that's why we have the "cloud", local RAID mirroring, local disk backups, dropbox, etc., ad infinitum. Heck, the Internet itself is one "giganormous" software library. Online services like GOG, Steam, and Origin are redundant services for your software--you put your money in a bank, OK; so you put your software in one or all of these services and if your house burns down (or blows away like the Wizard of Oz) and turns your prized CD/DVD collection to slag along with your local computers--your software's still safe--because you have legitimate copies of it in redundant locations! It's the only method of software storage and preservation that works--local storage on local disks is just a small part of any real solution to the problem of long-term software storage. CD/DVD's aren't "better" by any stretch.

About DRM...on Steam it's entirely elective and up to the developer publisher--Witcher 3, its expansions, and Pillars of Eternity--just as recent examples--all hit Steam first and none of them has a shred of DRM (Steam doesn't have to be running or even *installed* for such Steam programs to run.) And for those developers and publishers who still opt for some on-line DRM when their customers are running their Steam games--Steam has improved to the point that even if your Internet goes down the game will still run fine and play like it should, anyway--Steam has come a long way with that off-line aspect. And GOG--well--the official policy of the site is no DRM, no exceptions. That's easy to understand.

Fast, inexpensive Internet connectivity has made local disk software storage far from being the only way to go... It has its place, still, as everyone likes convenient local storage for his software. But remote software redundancy via a very fast Internet is just as primary as local disk storage! For instance, I have all of my GOG masters in exe installable format stored on separate physical hard drives drives from the installed games themselves--just so that if I need to reinstall for some reason I do not have to download again. However, in the event that something bad should happen to my local disk copies--it's great to know they are all just a download away! (I've already written far more here than I had intended! Concept is simple: local CD/DVD disk storage is not nearly enough in and of itself.)

[mindx2]

Concept is simple: local CD/DVD disk storage is not nearly enough in and of itself.)

Still better than Steam.

[Atsuico]

Considering I have 25 year old game CDs that are still working and have never had one fail I'll disagree. Plus, working as a professional in media technologies I can tell you CDs will be around for a long time as there is still no other media storage as reliable for consumer use.

Yea, but gosh what happens in 20 years when the newest optical disks (assuming the tech isn't obsolete by then) refuse to read your 20-year-old DVD disk? And suppose the mainstream OS in use at the time doesn't recognize the file format or even more likely the hardware/OS/APIs won't even run something that ancient? Finally, yea, *maybe* if you never use the DVD disk for more than a couple of installs and you never scratch it or smudge it, etc., maybe it could still install the game 20 years down the road *if* all the other stuff I mentioned lines up perfectly--like the conjunction of the spheres...

CD/DVD's aren't "better" by any stretch.

I see the children have come out to enlighten me on storage mediums. It doesn't matter if newer drives won't read my optical disk because I'll still have the option to dig my old commodore out of the garage and play them on it. However that's irrelevant because the fact is I bought a game, a physical game, and did not receive that. I've gotten bored of reading the rest of your post so I'll leave it at that.

[Gizmo]

Yea, but gosh what happens in 20 years when the newest optical disks (assuming the tech isn't obsolete by then) refuse to read your 20-year-old DVD disk?

I build all of my PCs with a floppy drive that has write support.

External drives will exist long after the internal devices stop being a mainstream option. Also, many of my DOS CD games are setup to access the CD as a mounted image file.

[Salmanasar]

I see the children have come out to enlighten me on storage mediums. (...)

Sorry, but I hardly belive that you're adult Mr I-know-everything-about-data-storage. At least not mentally.
No point in discussing with you then.

(btw. he was right that downloadable installation files from gog that can be moved freely between drives are better than CD/DVDs (especially if they're protected from copying or if you need to keep that CD/DVD in your drive to play the game), but that's damn obvious not only to collectors, but to everyone who ever owned console/PC)

@Gizmo
everything depends on the game - when I've played Torment/Baldur/Fallout first time (~2007) they didnt work properly without some workarounds, like disabling some directX functions. And those titles were "only" 10 years old then.

[Atsuico]

Because you guys are saying the same thing over and over again trying to justify not getting a physical non-drm game CD.

[Vandervecken]

Like it or not, today the most reliable media preservation format is *redundancy*--that's why we have the "cloud", local RAID mirroring, local disk backups, dropbox, etc., ad infinitum. Heck, the Internet itself is one "giganormous" software library. Online services like GOG, Steam, and Origin are redundant services for your software--you put your money in a bank, OK; so you put your software in one or all of these services and if your house burns down (or blows away like the Wizard of Oz) and turns your prized CD/DVD collection to slag along with your local computers--your software's still safe--because you have legitimate copies of it in redundant locations! It's the only method of software storage and preservation that works--local storage on local disks is just a small part of any real solution to the problem of long-term software storage. CD/DVD's aren't "better" by any stretch.

I don't know about you, but I put my money in the bank because the FDIC insures it.
There's no insurance if a cloud provider closes up shop and swallows all the stuff you have there.
The recent example of cloud photo hoster PictureLife is a great example of this. Host your stuff on the cloud for convenience sure, but back up offline, lest the service disappear on you one day.

[Woolfe]

Considering I have 25 year old game CDs that are still working and have never had one fail I'll disagree. Plus, working as a professional in media technologies I can tell you CDs will be around for a long time as there is still no other media storage as reliable for consumer use.

Yea, but gosh what happens in 20 years when the newest optical disks (assuming the tech isn't obsolete by then) refuse to read your 20-year-old DVD disk? And suppose the mainstream OS in use at the time doesn't recognize the file format or even more likely the hardware/OS/APIs won't even run something that ancient? Finally, yea, *maybe* if you never use the DVD disk for more than a couple of installs and you never scratch it or smudge it, etc., maybe it could still install the game 20 years down the road *if* all the other stuff I mentioned lines up perfectly--like the conjunction of the spheres...

CD/DVD's aren't "better" by any stretch.

I see the children have come out to enlighten me on storage mediums. It doesn't matter if newer drives won't read my optical disk because I'll still have the option to dig my old commodore out of the garage and play them on it. However that's irrelevant because the fact is I bought a game, a physical game, and did not receive that. I've gotten bored of reading the rest of your post so I'll leave it at that.

You are both right and wrong.

The reality is CD/DVD as a medium is going away. We don't use them in our corporate environment anymore. They will go the way of floppy's eventually. But there will always be a way to read them. It just might cost a little more to buy the device to do it.

Usb storage has not been an acceptable medium as a replacement, altho it is used. Essentially because of the availability of Steam and other Direct download solutions, the USB memory stick style replacement for CD's never eventuated on a large scale.

The advent of DD, and nearly 100% internet penetration, has smashed the physical media.

THAT SAID. I too hate the idea of providing physical media, that then REQUIRES you to connect to an online service. Why bother if that is the case.
If it is for DRM purposes, then make sure you note everywhere and OBVIOUSLY that the physical media is simply to reduce "download" times. Because whilst Steam may only require to be connected once, and then you can play forever direct from the install. The reality is that once is still DRM. It requires a phone home. Which means it is not DRM free. A small but important distinction.

[Gizmo]

One nice advantage of a CD-R / DVD-R is that they can be write protected —and actually BE writer protected. I have dozens of Flash Drives, but only one has a hardware write protection switch... As I understand it, most drives rely on the OS respecting a write protection flag... that it doesn't actually have to.

I recall once, traveling to a friend's house with a Flash drive loaded with diagnostic tools, and as soon as I plugged it in, the guy's freaky protection software erased the entire drive on the spot with no confirmation. (That's actually what prompted me to seek out a protected drive to use from then on.)

[GothamHunter]

Quite a conversation my thread turned into...

[Salmanasar]

Well, I'd gladly discuss about quality of my signed CE if only inxile send it to me

/summon sear for update

[Damitus]

I have received my CE box a few weeks ago, and I was hugely disappointed by the quality of almost ALL items.
- The box looks fine outside, but it's too big for the content - stuff inside dangles around (I was lucky nothing was damaged. Inside "lining" looks extremely cheap (I get the idea of unusual non-rectangular feel, but the implementation is terrible).
- The artbook is way too small – pages are ~13,7 * 18,5 cm (~5,4 *7 inches). You can’t really enjoy first few “big” pictures in that formal.
- Сardboard envelope for game DVD is shockingly cheap. Considering many collectors editions have nice “steel boxes”, anything below normal DVD-box should be no-go.
- 40-page stapled manual looks cheap. I expected something with more pages and binded, with lots of interesting fluff text – like original Fallout 1/2 or Baldur’s Gate 1/2 manuals. Alternatively, you could have included printed Strategy Guide.
- Map is okayish, but the cuts are uneven…
- Soundtrack’s box is a bit better than game DVD one, but still has cardboard front cover. And ink already started to peel-off near bending corners.

I compared all this to with few of Collectors Editions I could lend my hand on @ friends (within same price range - such as Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear; different addons for World of Warcraft, etc). All of these looked and felt much, much better…

[GothamHunter]

I saw that the signed CE's are going out, which means that inXile has finally gotten their hands on copies of them. I saw that the last thread regarding this was locked because of the troll, but as a non-troll who already expressed his disappointment in his own thread here viewtopic.php?f=32&t=17684&sid=6673da3e ... e642cb4f7b, I would like to know what you guys think of it.

Thanks,

GothamHunter

[GothamHunter]

I'm also wondering where we are at with getting the corrected printed manual.

[Godfather101]

We have already the correct printed manual.
It is only 40 pages because techland reformated it.
There is no "bigger" version of it anywhere.
The fact that we have the same manual as the "normal" boxed copies was techlands fault too.

So there is nothing we did not get what was promised, physical wise.

[GothamHunter]

We have already the correct printed manual.
It is only 40 pages because techland reformated it.
There is no "bigger" version of it anywhere.
The fact that we have the same manual as the "normal" boxed copies was techlands fault too.

So there is nothing we did not get what was promised, physical wise.

We definitely did not get what we were supposed to with the manual. I may have misspoken regarding getting a different version, but even sear acknowledged what we received is not what we were promised:

Hey guys, there has been some confusion about the Traveler's Guide/manual that we've been looking into.

When creating the manual, we agreed with Techland that there should be two versions, the full backer version and a shorter one. We provided separate text for both of them, with the Traveler's Guide being ~30 pages vs. the full manual's ~80 pages (before formatting).

inXile requested samples of the retail and backer boxes from Techland, however, as of now, none have been sent, so we've been unable to verify this. However, based on the comments and photos/videos we've seen online, it appears Techland instead took the full backer manual, formatted it to fit into 40 pages (though they didn't remove contents from what we can see), and then called it the Traveler's Guide. Rather than having two separate versions, they instead used the same one for all boxes, which was not what we agreed on.

We are assuming there was some kind of misunderstanding on Techland's end, but regardless, we are not happy to hear that the contents seem to have been changed without our input, and will be following up with Techland about this.

[Godfather101]

I think you don't understand what sear is posting.
NOTHING was removed from the 80 Pages manual.
The 40 Pages Manual has everything in it, the 80 Pages had.
It was only reformated to fit into 40 Pages.

Of course, the retail buyers should only have a 30 pages manual and now have the full backer manual, thats bad.
But unless you want the same content stretched to 80 Pages (as sear said, nothing was removed from the manual content-wise) and named differntly to have something a retail buyer has not, you got what was promised.

Also, what do you think should happen?
Do you really think Techland will appologize, re-reformat the Manual and send it to all backers?
Thats not gonna happen, nobody would do that.

I'm fine with it that nothing got removed, and can live with a reformated "smaller" but contentwise complete manual.
But of course inxile should think about getting in touch with another publisher, as Techland clearly did many mistakes.

[Crosmando]

Honestly, InXile should just do away with physical rewards entirely. It's nothing but a giant waste of money and as has been shown the actual quality of the stuff isn't great either. The great advantage of indie studios is the ability the go fully digital and avoid all the costs associated with that, also not having to deal with publishers either.

I mean what is even the point of a manual if all that information is already inside the game in the form of tooltips or ingame encyclopedias? It's just printing out crap for the sake of it.

[Skirge01]

@Crosmando: I'd suggest taking such a discussion into a different thread, as I don't think it really applies to a thread where someone is speaking about being dissatisfied with the physical edition they received. If you do, I'll explain there why I disagree with you.