Pixelated Shawn Bird shares his opinion about how game developers should fix their games. He uses Fallout 3 as an example, and I agree with him.
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Fallout 3 - Game Developers & Bugs
- Thread starter Couchpotato
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Irian
Atheistic Pirate
So, in other words, he complains that Fallout 3, a game that was released almost a year BEFORE windows 7, should be patched to support it - and, by this logic, any microsoft os to ever come...?
Say what you want but Fallout 3 is a prime example for his topic. The game still crashes, and you have to edit certain In. files to stop them.
Anyway this has been talked about before so it's nothing new.
Update: At least Steam has a warning about optimization on the games page.
Anyway this has been talked about before so it's nothing new.
Update: At least Steam has a warning about optimization on the games page.
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An old thing, yet still valid.
Some people swear FO3 never crashed on them and F:NV did that every couple of minutes. I had a completely different experience.
Can't remember now if F:NV crashed on me at all. Sure, it does have it's fair share of bugs, but crashes? No.
On the other hand, FO3, since the day I've started it, crashed like crazy. Dunno about final patch (didn't play DLC either), but I just couldn't believe critics are praising a crash-o-rama. Are they normal?
Honestly can't remember any other game that crashed on me so frequently. Even Skyrim which is the #1 game on the list of "games with the most bugs ever" didn't crash that much.
When a game gets released, of course some bug will be still in, it's impossible to weed them all out. But don't tell me developers can't notice their game is crashing like crazy. They can.
And then comes the core problem. The market.
Instead of refusing to buy buggy games, people pay to have bugs for whatever reason. Critics avoid to talk about bugs, dunno why, they don't even mention if a game is so polished it's almost impossible to find a bug.
If you're a publisher, would you care if a game is polished or not? Today, I think you wouldn't care. You'd release a buggy game knowing people won't mention those bugs and instead will try to silence all those who do calling them names.
The change on this matter we'll see only if critics stop putting anything above 5/10 to bug ridden releases. The point of a game is having fun. Crashes are not fun. Crash-o-rama is not a masterpiece. 9/10 should be a masterpiece or a nearmasterpiece game, yet you'll see crash-o-rama on metacritic with 9/10.
Some people swear FO3 never crashed on them and F:NV did that every couple of minutes. I had a completely different experience.
Can't remember now if F:NV crashed on me at all. Sure, it does have it's fair share of bugs, but crashes? No.
On the other hand, FO3, since the day I've started it, crashed like crazy. Dunno about final patch (didn't play DLC either), but I just couldn't believe critics are praising a crash-o-rama. Are they normal?
Honestly can't remember any other game that crashed on me so frequently. Even Skyrim which is the #1 game on the list of "games with the most bugs ever" didn't crash that much.
When a game gets released, of course some bug will be still in, it's impossible to weed them all out. But don't tell me developers can't notice their game is crashing like crazy. They can.
And then comes the core problem. The market.
Instead of refusing to buy buggy games, people pay to have bugs for whatever reason. Critics avoid to talk about bugs, dunno why, they don't even mention if a game is so polished it's almost impossible to find a bug.
If you're a publisher, would you care if a game is polished or not? Today, I think you wouldn't care. You'd release a buggy game knowing people won't mention those bugs and instead will try to silence all those who do calling them names.
The change on this matter we'll see only if critics stop putting anything above 5/10 to bug ridden releases. The point of a game is having fun. Crashes are not fun. Crash-o-rama is not a masterpiece. 9/10 should be a masterpiece or a nearmasterpiece game, yet you'll see crash-o-rama on metacritic with 9/10.
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umm, yeah.
If they're still MAKING MONEY on the game then there should be some kind of support for the game. Why not? That's their product out there in the market and if it's any good then it might bring more customers to your other products. We're not talking DLCs here just some basic fixes to make sure the game runs. And if the game is too old to run on current rigs, then some kind of note to say what's the maximum config the game will run on.
ChaosTheory
Virtual Reality Hero
So you're a "DON'T PUT KIDS IN FRONT OF AIRBAGS" kind of person? Need warnings for every facet of life?
There are some things in PC gaming you just have to accept, as it's been that way since PC gaming was created. Near the top of that list: The older the game, the less likely it will work on your computer. Kinda why old games are only 5 bucks. *shrugs*
Don't run with scissors.
SpoonFULL
SasqWatch
Totally agree, particularly since Bethesda is still around and making profit from it. Going by how business focused the game insdustry now, they don't have to support it, but it is their legacy and reputation to uphold.
Drithius
Magic & Loss
Fucking Blizzard, they stopped support of Diablo 1 - what the hell, I can't play at 640x480 resolution! Their legacy and reputation is forfeit.
News flash, Fallout 3 is old too. You seriously think Bethesda (or any business in their right mind) should sink more time/money into a product that they started ten years ago and people commonly purchase nowadays at a massive discount?
News flash, Fallout 3 is old too. You seriously think Bethesda (or any business in their right mind) should sink more time/money into a product that they started ten years ago and people commonly purchase nowadays at a massive discount?
Nice reply Drithius but please watch the attitude in your posts. Everyone is entitled to their opinion on the site, and there is no need to be rude in your replies.
I'm guilty of the same thing myself sometimes so don't worry.
To answer your question no I don't expect anything, but I do want a working game. Yet we all know most of the errors are due to the game engine. Gamebryo is a terrible game engine yet Bethesda, and other developers continued to use it.
I'm glad most developers have ditched it in favor of unity, or the unreal engine nowadays. That's all I have to say for now.
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Drithius
Magic & Loss
Unity is a bad engine as well... horribly optimized to favor modularity, as can be seen with skyrocketing GPU temperatures in any Unity game. And I was hardly rude, the profanity is there to get sarcasm across.
vurt
serial 𝓶𝓸𝓭𝓭⻤
Diablo 2 got its most recent patch like 11 years after its release, so Blizzard was probably not such a good example..
I'm not defending Bethesda (ok, in a way i am), but i do understand that they're probably less interested in supporting the PC version once the console versions are stable. For PC there are many millions of setups that must be taken into account. Testing alone is of course very difficult and time consuming. Making a new patch can often introduce new bugs or just make the game less stable for another set of users. With Bethesda we've seen this a couple of times.
There's a also a huge problem for us who likes to use mods (as in most PC users). Often a new patch means you have to wait for the modders to update their mods, sometimes they wont because they left the modding scene. So that is a huge problem and many people will obviously be far from happy when Bethesda is releasing a new patch that will break their mods (but also maybe help 1 out of 10 people).
If i was a developer i would probably skip PC completely. Its a absolutely horrific platform to develop for because you have to take all different operatingsystems, drivers and hardware setups into account. The little experience i have (both from modding and working with a few indie games) it just doesnt seem like must fun, at all
I'm not defending Bethesda (ok, in a way i am), but i do understand that they're probably less interested in supporting the PC version once the console versions are stable. For PC there are many millions of setups that must be taken into account. Testing alone is of course very difficult and time consuming. Making a new patch can often introduce new bugs or just make the game less stable for another set of users. With Bethesda we've seen this a couple of times.
There's a also a huge problem for us who likes to use mods (as in most PC users). Often a new patch means you have to wait for the modders to update their mods, sometimes they wont because they left the modding scene. So that is a huge problem and many people will obviously be far from happy when Bethesda is releasing a new patch that will break their mods (but also maybe help 1 out of 10 people).
If i was a developer i would probably skip PC completely. Its a absolutely horrific platform to develop for because you have to take all different operatingsystems, drivers and hardware setups into account. The little experience i have (both from modding and working with a few indie games) it just doesnt seem like must fun, at all
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ChaosTheory
Virtual Reality Hero
If i was a developer i would probably skip PC completely. Its an absolutely horrific platform to develop for because you have to take all different operatingsystems, drivers and hardware setups into account. The little experience i have (both from modding and working with a few indie games) it just doesnt seem like must fun, at all
This used to be the case, but not so much anymore. 95% of PC gamers use NVIDIA or AMD, have Windows Vista or later, and have a motherboard configuration that shouldn't cause issues because it was purchased at a box store (online or otherwise) which means it was likely designed so that the hardware used will work together. There are always snafus, but the vast majority of box store computers are designed without conflict— they're just engineered to be cheap as hell so parts tend to fail more than they should or they begin with manufacturing defects.
The issues you hear about anymore are folks using bleeding edge hardware/software, or severely outdated hardware/software, have done their own mods/builds without testing for conflicts (in which case they should expect issues), or have in some way f'ed up their system (bios mods, unstable overclocks, heat abatement issues, porn viruses, etc).
I have never built a PC before in my life, until last year. Using YouTube and some minimal reading, then went out and assembled my own bleeding edge (at the time) overclocked Core i7 system with Windows 7. It has worked flawlessly since, running anything I've thrown at it. The issue I recently had with Original Sin was that I was using a bleeding-edge new monitor with custom refresh rates and resolution. However, within 3 days, Larian had corrected this issue as it was a bug NOT a conflict.
To summarize, I would estimate 95% of PC gaming technical issues that people whine about on the forums are the result of poor programming and/or bugs by the software— NOT because of any voodoo ninja hardware/software conflicts. The other 5% exception are a result of the above listed reasons.
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Developing on PC and on phones is not the same thing. And never will be.
If you were a PC developer, you'd… Polish your product or not. If yes, you'd be praised, if not, every now and then on some forums ppl would talk about your incompetence.
Mods vs patches… The developer and official support has nothing to do with mods. Just like developers (should) polish the game themselves, modders (should) polish their own work.
Lemme add something else here. Anachronox official support stopped ages ago and it's an ancient game. But still one of devs who has nothing with the game, developing company or the publisher any more made a patch that fixes about a dozen of bugs that were never officially patched. And sorry, but if we got that for probably a hundred years old and not bestseller Anachronox, a game older than FO3, then all I can say about Bethesda is the first word from Drithius' post.
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Windows 7 is the only OS I've ever played FO3 on, and I never had any major issues.
Your one of the lucky ones then. I always have to edit a few INI. files. Otherwise it's constant crashing every 10-15 minutes. This happens on three different computers.
Anyway it seems in every thread about bugs for Fallout 3, or Fallout NV for every person who says they had no problems it seems another did.
It's a modern day puzzle with no solution.
Yes, As long as they're making money from the game. Speaking from personal experience, I know developers are making a nice chunk of money from these old games that are massively discounted. (at least the popular good games that are still being played)
And another thing, just because it's past practice, that doesn't mean its best practice.
If Bethesda, Blizzard, Microsoft, EA etc. don't want to support their older games then maybe I need to reconsider my stance on Torrent distribution. I mean, if they don't want to support a game they're selling me, then I don't need to pay for it.
Maybe that should be the new dividing line. Once a company stops supporting their game, then by default, that means the game can now be considered abandonware? But wait a minute, they're still getting money and enforcing their copyright so it can't be abandoned. Hold on, I called up and asked for support and they stated they are no longer supporting the game. But wait a sec, they sure did take my money.
To me it's a matter of customer service, if you're my customer then I'm going to take care of you.
P
pibbur who
Guest
Or maybe they didn't experience all those crashes?
Now this is what puzzles me. FO3 ran very stable on my system, with few, if any, crashes. And I had very few problems with Skyrim which is on the top of your list of games with the most bugs.
pibbur who considers MM9 the game with most bugs he has ever played.
We must be related because I had the same experiences. Although I consider it somewhat a tie between MM9 and Ultima 9. But the edge goes to MM9 because at least U9 was pushing the bleeding graphical edge at the time.
If Bethesda, Blizzard, Microsoft, EA etc. don't want to support their older games then maybe I need to reconsider my stance on Torrent distribution. I mean, if they don't want to support a game they're selling me, then I don't need to pay for it.
Maybe that should be the new dividing line. Once a company stops supporting their game, then by default, that means the game can now be considered abandonware? But wait a minute, they're still getting money and enforcing their copyright so it can't be abandoned. Hold on, I called up and asked for support and they stated they are no longer supporting the game. But wait a sec, they sure did take my money.
To me it's a matter of customer service, if you're my customer then I'm going to take care of you.[/QUOTE]
You know, I never quite thought of it that way. I am in agreement on your point. If they're making money off the game, then support it. If they don't want to support it, then give it away.
Maybe that should be the new dividing line. Once a company stops supporting their game, then by default, that means the game can now be considered abandonware? But wait a minute, they're still getting money and enforcing their copyright so it can't be abandoned. Hold on, I called up and asked for support and they stated they are no longer supporting the game. But wait a sec, they sure did take my money.
To me it's a matter of customer service, if you're my customer then I'm going to take care of you.[/QUOTE]
You know, I never quite thought of it that way. I am in agreement on your point. If they're making money off the game, then support it. If they don't want to support it, then give it away.
Drithius
Magic & Loss
As a part-time FNV modder, let me just say modders don't owe anyone jack squat and it's infuriating to run into self-entitled people who think otherwise. I hope you don't belong to that camp, Joxer!