Is this game still being maintained? Pocket Edition is a buggy mess.

[exsul]

I’ve being playing the PE version of this game (the one provided by an Apple Arcade subscription) for about two weeks on an iPad gen 6 with iOS 14.8.1.  The gameplay itself is great, one of the best games I’ve played in awhile.  But bugs have made me give up on this.  The frustration of dealing with them has ruined what had the potential to be a wonderful game.

 

I was willing to live with the periodic, if annoying, crashes every few hours that would make me lose progress (fortunately only a little).  I was even willing to work around other bizarre problems like the game not responding to “murder” commands to Rabbits and the like, having to drop and hit the mobs instead.  Now I’ve reached my last straw, because after the excitement of finally being able to make Bundling Wrap, I discovered that trying to use it by unwrapping the bundle will crash the game.

 

What happened was that I went through the UI process to bundle all of my food in preparation for a journey out to a new map location.  All of my food, as in everything I had and spent the last hour or so prepping, oblivious that I had just put all of my food into a black hole.  When I went to unwrap the bundle, I immediately got an error screen (which ironically was itself bugged because its buttons wouldn’t respond) as shown in the attached images.

 

Now, having spent some time googling this issue, I have come to realize that there doesn’t seem to be much interest or effort by Klei in maintaining this game.  Other people have reported this same problem:  it’s not an isolated issue with me, and it’s apparently easily reproducible.  It has been known for at least the better part of a year.  And it’s not even the only serious game bug.  Others have also reported not being able to descend into level 2 of the caves without the game getting hung in a state from which there’s no recovery, their games being IRRETRIEVABLY LOST, with reloading the game not resolving the problem.  This issue has ALSO existed for several months (years?) without Klei bothering to address it.  That’s a whole section of the game inaccessible to PE players because of Klei’s inaction.  There are probably other significant bugs in PE, but I stopped researching once I learned of these.  Enough is enough.

 

I don’t feel inclined to also work around the Bundling Wrap problem now (by not using it — ridiculous) just to enter the caves later and find out I can’t experience that part of the game either (or lose my entire game if I attempt to).  I don’t expect perfection in games and I acknowledge they will always have a bug hiding somewhere, but these are glaring, easy-to-encounter bugs that totally detract from the gameplay.  How are they not fixed already?  They’re not present in the versions on other platforms from what I read, such as the PC.  So again I ask, is the Pocket Edition still being maintained?  These issues have been known for many months, they’re not small, and yet nothing gets done about them?  What an odd business approach; certainly not one that will retain customers.  Klei already lost one.

 

I’ll at least have to give Klei credit if this is allowed to be posted, since it would demonstrate they’re paying attention to this stuff and care about player satisfaction, but I’m not betting on that considering the fact that these bugs continue to exist.  A could-be great game unfortunately marred by a neglected iOS port that has obnoxious and rather obvious dealbreaker bugs, and unbelievable that some of these easily reproducible ones initially escaped Klei’s test team before player reports began surfacing.  No testing of major functionality like unwrapping bundles or descending to level 2 of the caves, seriously?  On the surface, the game appeared to be polished, but the actual experience for me was anything but.  The bugs only seem to get worse the more I play, so I’m cutting my losses, ditching this game, and jumping on the internet to rant.  Future potential players, if you’re not willing to bet on any change in Klei’s care of their games, be forewarned.

[nome]

On 2/5/2022 at 9:29 PM, exsul said:

Now I’ve reached my last straw, because after the excitement of finally being able to make Bundling Wrap, I discovered that trying to use it by unwrapping the bundle will crash the game

I've spoken with our porting partner and confirmed that the fix for the bundling wrap crash got missed on apple arcade and only went out to the regular iOS version. We are working on a build right now and will bring it to you as soon as we can.

On 2/5/2022 at 9:29 PM, exsul said:

Now, having spent some time googling this issue, I have come to realize that there doesn’t seem to be much interest or effort by Klei in maintaining this game

We did have a period where this port was sadly unmaintained - we didn't do it in-house so our ability to fix bugs was limited. That has changed now - we now do all our builds in-house and our new porting partner is actively maintaining the port. We are investigating all bugs and working on fixes for any we can reproduce. As mentioned the bundling wrap fix will be rolling out to iOS as soon as possible, in the mean time if you have other issues you've found in the game we would welcome more details so we can investigate.

Thanks for your interest and we're very sorry for the inconvenience!

[exsul]

I appreciate Klei’s responsiveness to my and other players’ concerns with these issues.  I may have been a bit hasty in abandoning this game, and my frustration when I first posted reflected that.  I’m willing to wait for what hopefully will be a more solid iOS version.

 

Just a reminder, in addition to the Bundling Wrap, there are two other known common problems (that I’m aware of):

• Entering level 2 of the caves — very serious; may result in the loss of a game session
• The UI not acting on the “murder” command in the context menu of mobs in inventory such as Rabbits — can be worked around but would certainly help if functional

 

Thanks for addressing this and providing an explanation for the long life of these bugs.  I’m sure we’ll all be glad to see their removal.

[nome]

19 hours ago, exsul said:

• Entering level 2 of the caves — very serious; may result in the loss of a game session

I know this one is one we've tried and failed to reproduce. It may be related to lower end devices or more mature worlds? If anyone has advice on how we can replicate the issue we'd love to hear from you!

[anid1]

On 2/9/2022 at 2:25 AM, nome said:

I know this one is one we've tried and failed to reproduce. It may be related to lower end devices or more mature worlds? If anyone has advice on how we can replicate the issue we'd love to hear from you!

I think it may be related to more mature worlds.
Once I went to the ruins at like day 6 and day 13 and stuff and I don't think it got stuck.
But when I went at day 80, even after entering before, it got stuck.
I'm not too sure though, so I will test it a bit more.
Also I read somewhere that after entering ruins, if you immediately save and quit, then rejoin, then you can play. I tried this and it seems to work.

[exsul]

1 hour ago, anid1 said:

I think it may be related to more mature worlds.
Once I went to the ruins at like day 6 and day 13 and stuff and I don't think it got stuck.
But when I went at day 80, even after entering before, it got stuck.
I'm not too sure though, so I will test it a bit more.
Also I read somewhere that after entering ruins, if you immediately save and quit, then rejoin, then you can play. I tried this and it seems to work.

Hmm interesting.  If you find out anything else, I created a new bug thread to compile info for this.  Thanks for the save and rejoin tip.

[ConfuseU]

murder rabbit works : RofG

murder rabbit not works :  normal game (not RofG)

on iPad6/iOS15.4 and iPad Air 5/iOS15.4