I challenge you to link to thee threads discussing different games where positive comments outnumber the negatives. It's ok, I'm not in a rush
Do the threads need to be unlocked?
Are there any respectable, dependable devs/pubs?
- Thread starter Shifty Geezer
- Start date
Do the threads need to be unlocked?
DuckThor Evil
Legend
I'm thinking for example GTA 5 and the Trials games have pretty favourable user reviews in most places.
D
Deleted member 11852
Guest
Funnily enough when I was writing the post I originally said one thread and I immediately thought of Trials so I changed it to three. But even if you can find three, three out of thousands of games is poor which is really my point. For every Trials there are a dozen WATCH_DOGS , Colonial Marines or Unity threads.
I'm not expecting Shifty to actually spend time counting and categorising posts in threads!
DuckThor Evil
Legend
You actually changed it to "thee" threads haha, I thought it was supposed to say "the" 
that is annoying but its design choice instead of bugs right?
Good, because I'm not going to.
I've read people rave about Warframe, Destiny, DriveClub (after the launch moaning), Bloodborne, just off the top of my head.
However you classify it, its "game play breaking".
In the case of H4 they could have given priority to weapons and vehicles the user has interacted with to prevent them from being over zealously garbage collected/cleaned up/purged.
when including stuff like that, I find too many game did that. The most common one is invisible walls and undestructibles.
developers love to use them to arbitrarily limit player's gameplay freedom despite it is breaking their own game play.
BF3,4,H did that, destiny did that, mgsv did that...
its really game play breaking and immersion breaking and I hate it. Luckily after a few hours I usually got accustomed to them and able to understand how the developer's mind works. So I no longer get shocked by sudden invisible wall, by stuff than suddenly cant be destroyed, by terrain that suddenly cant get traversed.
but worst offender is destiny. Warlock have an ability to revive itself with super energy. But bungie arbitrarily disabled it in a few boss battle in King's Fall raid (yup, they did not disable it across all boss, just a few). feels really inconsistent with their own game play.
developers love to use them to arbitrarily limit player's gameplay freedom despite it is breaking their own game play.
BF3,4,H did that, destiny did that, mgsv did that...
its really game play breaking and immersion breaking and I hate it. Luckily after a few hours I usually got accustomed to them and able to understand how the developer's mind works. So I no longer get shocked by sudden invisible wall, by stuff than suddenly cant be destroyed, by terrain that suddenly cant get traversed.
but worst offender is destiny. Warlock have an ability to revive itself with super energy. But bungie arbitrarily disabled it in a few boss battle in King's Fall raid (yup, they did not disable it across all boss, just a few). feels really inconsistent with their own game play.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
Blizzard has been pretty good in that regard other than WoW (as mentioned previously, it's difficult to have a completely bug free MMO). Not 100% bug free, but at least free of any major game breaking or game stopping bugs which would constitute a broken game, IMO.
One thing you'll find out quickly if you ever watch speed runs. There is no such thing as a bug free game.
What separates the men from the boys is whether a developer can release a game without any game stopping or game breaking bugs. And unfortunately there aren't a lot of men anymore, mostly boys.
So, now the big thing is, how good and how fast is a developer/publisher at fixing those bugs after release. It's a shame that the gaming industry is this way, but it's the reality of a combination of...
- Increased development budget needing games to be released with X timeframe before funding runs out and/or developer goes bankrupt and/or publisher goes bankrupt.
- Increased complexity of game development. Hence why MMOs (probably the most complex type of game you can possible make) are at the top with large open world games coming in close behind. After all Open world games are basically just MMOs without a lot of people or social interaction.
- Lack of significant budgeting for adequate QA testing (public BETA's aren't a perfect substitute) which is intertwined with [1]. In regards to public BETAs. They can be mostly sufficient if there is also adequate time to fix bugs assuming they get reported. This includes the ability to delay the release of a game. Which is something most developers can't afford to do. However, many developers/publishers treat public BETA's as just a demo for the game, which doesn't help.
- Easy access for most people to broadband internet. This means developers can try to squeeze in more development time before a game goes "gold" (which is usually 3-4 weeks prior to release), and then they hope they can fix any major bugs in time for a "Day One patch." Not all succeed.
- Something else I was going to mention, but have forgotten. Onset of senility? I'll edit it in if I remember.
And then there's the whole Early Access thing...
Regards,
SB
Oh man you reminded me of Arkham Knight on PC. What a train wreck that release is even after months of official launch
D
Deleted member 11852
Guest
When the original PS3 The Last of Us launched they had some weird online problem where autosaves were tied to the servers so a lot of people, myself included, lost a few hours of play. That was a bit annoying but there are worse games to have to replay
Prophecy2k
Veteran
There was the wierd aiming issue with Uncharted 3, although whether you consider it a bug or not probably depends on who you're asking.
Prophecy2k
Veteran
Typically, for me game breaking bugs on consoel have been very few and far between.
On PC on the other hand, they've been myriad.
I remember spending over £1000 on my first gaming PC to be able to play Dragon Age: Origin, then after buying some DLC, some wierd authentication error with the EA servers basically locked me out of my saved game so that I couldn't even play the game at all. That's a absolute game-breaking bug to me, and I still don't think they bothered patching it to this day.
On PC on the other hand, they've been myriad.
I remember spending over £1000 on my first gaming PC to be able to play Dragon Age: Origin, then after buying some DLC, some wierd authentication error with the EA servers basically locked me out of my saved game so that I couldn't even play the game at all. That's a absolute game-breaking bug to me, and I still don't think they bothered patching it to this day.
All developers have the talent and skill to release a good product at launch.
Not all developers are afforded the luxury of: extended deadlines, increased budget, go from beginning to end without having to re-scope/re-work major parts of their games, to use mature tools from the get go, customer expectations as high as hell such that the bar from a graphical, story and gameplay perspective become unreadable targets they ultimately cause deadlines to be missed.
At least that's what I think. Not all developers are equally talented either, but time and good team work should resolve these issues. Most of the AAA companies when hiring demand a very specific level of experience in shipping games before you can jump on-board. I feel that as a baseline each of these people can ship a bug free game if they were not under such ridiculous deadlines.
Not all developers are afforded the luxury of: extended deadlines, increased budget, go from beginning to end without having to re-scope/re-work major parts of their games, to use mature tools from the get go, customer expectations as high as hell such that the bar from a graphical, story and gameplay perspective become unreadable targets they ultimately cause deadlines to be missed.
At least that's what I think. Not all developers are equally talented either, but time and good team work should resolve these issues. Most of the AAA companies when hiring demand a very specific level of experience in shipping games before you can jump on-board. I feel that as a baseline each of these people can ship a bug free game if they were not under such ridiculous deadlines.
The reason I single out devs is for those who are indie (or well supported) and not reliant on a publisher setting limiting release schedules. I was not saying there are lousy devs out there chucking out crap games, but asking if there are any names in gaming, whether publishers or specific development houses (either published or independent) where you can trust 100% that the game will be solid, or at least have significant issues dealt with promptly. The cause of the game problems isn't really the issue - I think we all appreciate it's basically business driving the release of poor and broken games rather than inability.
That was a problem by design, but people ranted against it (because your gun shot off to the side at close range) and eventually it was fixed. ND dragged their heals on that one (I had a debate with an (self claimed) ND tester on the forums who said everything was fine and we were all lousy players, and eventually I presented video evidence backing up everyone's complaints), which is why I don't trust them 100%. Also their network matchmaking and game install kills that required an uninstall/reinstall IIRC. So even a AAA dev powerhouse like ND can sell you a game that doesn't work properly and generates a fair degree of frustration.
I guess underlying this is a clear sense moving from PS2 gen to PS3 gen of games just not working like they used to. The debate of game QA has been raised before. I'm just wondering if anyone knows of game producers who are elevated above the new status quo.
Prophecy2k
Veteran
Nintendo, outside of launch software, there haven't been any Nintendo developed games that needed a big day one patch. They have done some updates to games to fix a bug here and there, but they are by far one of the best when it comes to quality control on release day. So many of these developers rely on the ability to patch a game later, but this often takes months, and even then, often these games underperform.
Its true that many of these developers are creating much more ambitious projects, so its tougher to accomplish than Nintendo's projects, but as a customer, that's not our problem. If the game isn't done, delay it and get it right. These strict deadlines are causing many of the issues.
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