Fallout 3 - Game Developers & Bugs

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And a quote:
if you can collect enough bandit fingers, you can probably make up for anything.

Sorry, they can't make up for bugs.
 
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Mods vs patches… The developer and official support has nothing to do with mods.

Yes it does, they can patch the game but then break a ton of mods and upset a lot of people (who's got a working game) + also create work for all the modders. If the bugs arent too serious and is only affecting a few people they are wise to avoid patching the game at all.

Developing on PC and on phones is not the same thing. And never will be.

Not sure why you're telling me this, and not sure what phones has to do with anything, Bethesda develop for PC and consoles. And yes they are separate things (PC and consoles), which is exactly what i said.

@ChaosTheory: i know from own experience that's is very much still the case, both from doing tons of mods and also working with a few indie games. Even very simple mods can work great on one computer but not at all on another computer. Many times i think its down to the graphics drivers.

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!

I don't fully agree. Modders obviously shouldn't waste people's time. If you think you can make a buggy mod and just say "well f*ck you, i didnt force you to download it" you're just as bad as people demanding 24h support.

There's obviously a limit to what you can do as a modder, but its also wrong to say you dont owe anyone anything as a modder. If you waste people's time with sharing work that is faulty (or is just pure garbage) you shouldnt mod at all. Not saying it applies to your mod or your skills, but it's not a good attitude to have as a modder.
 
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I make stuff good enough for me - and me only. And while I'm at it, I'll throw it up on the Nexus. Most people like it, some don't, and a select minority even get aggressive towards you at not catering to their [typically misguided/ignorant] "guidelines". I've banned two of the latter from my mods. Am I a jerk for that? I really don't care - people too often confuse anyone who creates a patch or mod for someone who owes them whatever it takes to get it working properly w/ their game install. And, with NMM (Nexus Mod Manager) and an increasingly ignorant userbase, it seems there's more and more of that crowd.

This perspective is based on the New Vegas Nexus community; from what little I partook of the Skyrim community, it didn't seem to have its head as far up its ass.
 
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NMM has probably brought a lot of people to mods that otherwise wouldnt care about it, yes, i have my share of people who are completely clueless.

As long as someone share things that isnt a complete waste of time (e.g a mod that is completely bugged, a mod that breaks your game, total garbage done as a joke etc) it's fine imo..
 
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I feel like I'm taking crazy pills here. What the heck is everyone talking about? I did both a vanilla play through and a highly modded play through of Fallout 3, along with Fallout NV, Oblivion, Morrowind, and Skyrim all with Windows 7 and have never had any problems except a few with Skyrim related to mods, which has nothing to do with my operating system. I also have a friend that plays both F3 and NV on a Windows 8 system. There are no crashes for either of us. I have no idea why people would be having problems.
 
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I have no idea why people would be having problems.

Again, it's PC so it will largely depend on your specific setup if you're having problems or not. It's the same discussion with almost every game.. I was afraid to buy Xcom because i read about crashes (people asked if they were fixed and the answer was "no" on the forums). I bought the game and i didnt have a single crash. The wonders of PC gaming ;)
 
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Again, it's PC so it will largely depend on your specific setup if you're having problems or not. It's the same discussion with almost every game.. I was afraid to buy Xcom because i read about crashes (people asked if they were fixed and the answer was "no" on the forums). I bought the game and i didnt have a single crash. The wonders of PC gaming ;)

Partial strawman argument. You're talking about one area of bugs with games, but the Fallout 3 game and its engine as a whole is riddled with bugs that many experience. The game just isn't stable and is destined to corrupt most save games, as I understand it. Yes especially when modding the game but I think they should support the engine itself for modding on PC since it is otherwise so mod friendly. I'm not saying they should work to keep all mods stable, but just that they should do an ample amount of work to shore up the engine from unexpected bugs/issues when mods are used.

Even still, all of Bethesda's Scrolls/Fallout games are abandonware as far as patches go and yet Bethesda has been actively selling and promoting them (Steam/Amazon sales etc) for years. Bethesda has made a very clear statement (by action) with all of their former games that they are happy to profit substantially from them while customers receive zero patch support. I don't understand how anyone can defend that sort of behavior, as their customer. Windows 7 compatibility isn't asking all that much either.

We're not talking about games that the market has abandoned here. Pick some random game from the 80's or 90's that isn't available for purchase and isn't being played.. That is a different story.

I think it's a bigger issue than just patch support. Initially, wasn't Skyrim amaturely complied for PC where basic compile flags weren't set? The public outcry was enormous and it still took much longer than it should have to fix that. Didn't they have a tough time getting one of the PS3 DLCs to run on that system? All the widespread talk on modding forums about their buggy/poorly coded games with sloppy artwork speaks to a consistent pattern here, not an isolated or reasonable excuse that I can see here except a consistent business decision to behave this way.

Someone high up in that company just doesn't give a rats ass. The thinking probably goes something like this "Our games sell very well as they are and we make lots of money already so there's no need for us to patch our games." I don't neccessarily think they should lose a lawsuit but rather just that we as consumers need to keep sending a strong message that we find their consistent behavior as unprofessional, unwarranted, adversarial and harmful to their bottom line.
 
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I don't agree with you assessment at all Daroou. Fallout 3/NV/Morrowind/Oblivion/Skyrim all work perfectly well on Windows 7 and 8. They provide the modding tools and are under no obligation to support mods as that is all they would spend their time doing. You are the one making a poor argument since the games work fine with newer OS's and any mod troubles that I, or anyone that I know, have had have been our fault. A poor load order, not reading the readme properly, not studying compatibility and install order, not having enough VRAM to use the mods properly, etc. Now that King's Quest is on GOG should the Sierra folk be forced to patch it? They are after all selling it. Bethesda informs you of what they will support and won't, if you want to play the game, follow what they say, but it is just sour apples. As I said I have Windows 7 and have had zero problems with F3 and FNV, and have never had any corrupt save files at any point in owning the product. You come across as very unrealistic and very entitled. I have never found Bethesda a company that either "abandon's" its products, nor ignores its customers needs. Maybe you have had bad experiences, but you are not speaking for everyone as I have not. Having worked on open world games, I can tell you that the bugs are going to be there and will require a major patch or two even with a large team and good testing. There are simply too many variables in those types of games. Now if you will excuse me, I am going to write a letter to the company that made my VCR and ask why I cannot get support for it anymore. Totally unfair.
 
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Ran FO3 on XP, 2GB ram and it all went VERY smoothly. Smoother than the other games I had then. Then I added mods and messed it up a bit. Still prefer the buggy-crashy mess to the smooth vanilla experience.
 
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Bethesda are probably a lot less inclined to patch the PC versions because the community has been fixing their bugs since Morrowind, and also always comes up with solutions for rare, but serious bugs (e.g savegame corruption - you start a new game and then load your save to fix that).

I do agree that the engine has bugs that should be fixed, and yes, they sell in those kind of volumes where support doesnt need to be prioritized a lot (to still be able to sell tons of games), and especially with such a helpful PC community.

As for games such as Fallout 1-2 i doubt they even have the resources or even the source code to patch those games, and again there's the unofficial fixes for those games that fixes many hundreds of bugs and even adds more resolutions etc.
 
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Then there are the patches that mess up the fixes that the community already made. Most bothersome for me is that there are issues with solutions already found by the community and made known to Bethesda but still show up in the next game. I remember reading some experienced modders expressing frustration at some recurring problems that Bethesda could've easily fixed on their end.
 
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Expecting games this huge to be bug-free for everyone is an example of mass ignorance.

For me, having grown up with games like Asteroids, PacMan and JetPac - I consider games like Skyrim and Fallout 3 miracles in terms of scope, given how polished they actually are.

Bugs? Obviously.

Serious bugs, given the mods and the advanced nature of the game? For some.

Inevitable? More or less.

If you want an example of a game of that scope that's not impressive?

Check out Fallout: NV.

What's funny is that some of the people bitching about Skyrim and Fallout 3 seem to forgive NV for its massive lack of polish.

Still, these games are HUGE - and they have an absurd amount of systems that interact every which way. Then, they have a massive amount of community content that's beyond the control of the developers if they don't follow certain rules. Then, you have third party executables like SKSE and FOSE - which most people who mod the game use.

Either you want this kind of game and accept some bugs, or you'll have to give them up until we learn how to create huge games without human beings at the helm.

Some people would do well looking beyond their own nose and checking out the big picture. There's a reason these games are so popular - and it's not because they're broken in general.
 
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My view is that they still sell fallout 3 and therefore they should assure a reasonable amount of suitability for todays platform (windows 7 or newer). If it does not work on windows 7, ... they should stop selling it.
 
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Again… it works fine on Windows 7.

Bethesda games are a crapshoot when it comes to bugs. Some people are obviously experiencing more issues than others, but it has little or nothing to do with the OS.
 
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What a terrible article

"like I said, games like Fallout 3 still work perfectly fine on consoles"

No, it doesn't. It doesn't run at all on Xbox One or PS4, and that's the equivalent of Windows 7 or 8. Both are basically the current gen of their respective systems. It runs fine on 360 or PS3, just as it will likely run fine on XP or Vista.

The problem is that he's holding PCs up to a higher standard than he his consoles and not comparing the two fairly. He claims he can hook up his old consoles and play the games with no problem. Well, what's stopping him from buying a cheap computer, putting an old version of XP on it, and using that as his "console" for the old PC games? If he's willing to have two consoles around to play old games and new, then he should be willing to have two computers around to play old games and new.

If you want to argue that they should fix bugs on both platforms while the games are being sold, that's certainly a valid position. But expecting games to play "forever" on PC is like expecting consoles to be "forever" backwards compatible.
 
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"like I said, games like Fallout 3 still work perfectly fine on consoles"

No, it doesn't. It doesn't run at all on Xbox One or PS4, and that's the equivalent of Windows 7 or 8.

Actually it doesn't work on last gen consoles so well either.

If he can't play games on his pc you'd think he could at least use google. If he did he'd find the thousands of post of ps3 gamers with game breaking bugs. Seems it's somewhat fixable though by, you guessed it, messing with some files on your ps3.

You know, that thing he's too afraid to do on his pc.

Pc gaming does require a bit more from the gamer but if you invest a little time to learn how everything works the payoff is enormous.

Anyway, On steam it says it's made for win xp and vista. Those are the only OS's that Bethesda should have to support. Just as if it's released for ps3, they don't have to give support for ps4.

Having said that though it will run on win 7 & 8. Maybe he should praise Bethesda for that or stick his ps3 disc into his ps4 and write us an article on how well that works.
 
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!
I didn't notice this before.
I belong to the camp of players who generally don't use mods for the sake of mods. Rarely I do apply mods, for example Drakensang fixpack which makes your party run a bit faster.

With Skyrim I used two mods. SkyUI is practically "shame on Bethesda" work and IMO a must use as being lazy and putting phonegames inventory in PC game is at least a disgrace. The second mod I used was stopping endless respawns.
No, I did not nor would use unofficial patches. Skyrim is Bugrim and if Bethesda didn't want to have their game called like that anywhere, they'd patch it themselves. I completely agree with you that "modders don't owe anyone jack squat", it's not their job to fix others' bugs!

But if you make a mod and that mod breaks people's game, you know that but you don't care and won't at least warn people it's "dangerous"… Sorry, but you're not better than Bethesda.
 
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