Should rates be lowered for bugs?

Been pondering this for awhile.

While brief experiences may be fun once in awhile, large RPG's such as Gothic 3, Arcanum and Fallout NV have offered me more than compact games like Tomb Raider: Underworld and Call of Duty: Black Ops.

However, large RPG's are often ridden with bugs and get shunned because of it. It's often the case, that the games I loved the most ended up in the 70-80% range due to it's bugs.

Lesser games are rated higher because they are easier to bugcheck.

Should major review-sites be more accepting of bugs in large RPG's and assume that it's part of the package rather than something unexcuseable, or should all games regardless of size be held to the same standard?

The experience as a whole should be taken into account, with all revelant factors. If bugs take away from the experience, in a significant way, then it should lower the rating.

However, the problem with bugs (PC version) is that they may not affect everyone - and even if they do, they may not affect them to the same degree.

As such, I find it's best to make it plain in the review text how the bugs affected the experience. I don't think the reviewer has any real choice but to give the rating that corresponds to his personal experience. Which means he should probably test the game on multiple setups to be reasonably sure that the bugs are not specific to one configuration or the other.

But ultimately, I think the key is to remember that ratings are largely arbitrary - and that we really can't rely on them for anything but a (very) loose estimation of perceived value for money.

My reply is simply : Yes.

Gothic 3, for example, got lower rates than expected here because of the bugs, if I remember it correctly.

DArtagnan said:

The experience as a whole should be taken into account, with all revelant factors. If bugs take away from the experience, in a significant way, then it should lower the rating.

Click to expand...

This.

The alternative would be to give separate scores for technical polish and for the "game", but it's non-trivial to draw a distinct line between the two.

It's typical RPG problem.

The demands towards RPGs are higher and the tolerance to non-standard behavior lower than in other genres.
If you make an average 6 hours long shooter and put some marketing behind it you can be reasonably sure to get 80%+ ratings. In the RPG genre reviewers are very quick to lower the score for just about every reason they can think of, including that 6 of your 40 hours are only average.

it should not be lowered if the bugs doesn't have a huge impact on the gameplay and the overall experience since patches will probably fix these bugs sooner or later but reviewers don't redo their reviews after patches and it happened with lots of games where version 1.0(or the version that first was released) was problematic and buggy but the game had a great potential and after the patch that game was fixed and polished back to its greatness that it was supposed to be played with.

Fair enough but it will hammer small studios with small developer teams and fanbase to beta test their software.
Not fair for companies making very complex games like SI or Paradox , sometimes bags require a specific style of play to be revealed in their games.

Bugs are bad and they should be treated as such… why think otherwise?
I'd say that developers should not bite more than they can chew or, if they do, accept the consequences (and it may even worth it - these consequences may not be very severe at all if everything else holds together). ie I find no excuse for bugs - you couldn't find the time to fix your bugs because your game is too big? you should have made a smaller game. You didn't have the time to test further? you should have managed your time better.

If I was ordering a game to be made according to my specifications I could accept such excuses but since it's the companies themselves that make the decisions it's them that take the responsibilities too - you can't have it both ways. And no, I don't care if there are other factors that might influence them - I'm the consumer, I am only interested on what they are selling me and the blame goes to the ones that put their names on the product - they can figure the rest out on their own, that's part of their job.

I do not however suggest that the 'blame' should be more severe than the problem. I don't suggest that games should be destroyed if they crash occasionally or something. Give them a lower rate, explain what the issue is, and let me decide if I want to 'risk' it. Ratings are ridiculously high anyway.

By the way, it seems to me that such discussions emerge because people tend to want to be involved or at least informed at the creation process of a game. I believe that I am myself not qualified to evaluate the decisions of the professionals. So I can't, for example, actually judge whether the time management or the budget of a company was proper or if a big game world was the right design decision… therefore I can not judge the validity of an excuse. I can only evaluate the final offering in relation to myself - and to be honest, that's the way I like it. And that's because I'm afraid that if I really get involved to any actual design decisions, then I'm risking receiving a lower quality product due to my own incompetence, in which case I would deserve all the bugs I'd get and I'd have waived my right to refuse them.

That's all well and good, holeraw, but that black&white attitude encourages the 6-hour shooter. If you can't accept that complex RPGs might have more issues than simpler games and your response is "they should have made it shorter", why would you expect anyone to supply this genre?

The problem with all of this, is that ratings are given too much importance by the uninformed. The uninformed being the people who rely on ratings to make their decision to purchase or not.

I don't think there's any way to change that, except to stop using ratings altogether.

Instead, just make it plain what issues the game has, whether they relate to bugs, balance issues, gameplay issues or whatever. Forget ratings entirely.

That would improve the gaming media quite a bit, if you ask me.

Dhruin said:

That's all well and good, holeraw, but that black&white attitude encourages the 6-hour shooter. If you can't accept that complex RPGs might have more issues than simpler games and your response is "they should have made it shorter", why would you expect anyone to supply this genre?

Click to expand...

I do accept that a complex RPG will have more issues than a simpler game and I do tolerate bugs if the overall experience is worth it.
I think 'tolerate' is the right word: you tolerate something that is annoying.
I'm simply saying that 'bugs are bad' (more, less) and that the reasons for their being in a game is none of my business.

Also it's not just "they should have made it shorter", it's "they should have made it shorter if they wanted time to fix all the bugs". If they decide not to do so that's fine with me - you get -1 for bugs but if you can still pull it off then go for it.

After all it's not my attitude that encourages the development of certain games - it's my purchaces, and I assure you that I have never bought a six hour shooter. (in fact I've been often buying buggy and even incomplete games lately. it doesn't matter, I was always informed about their condition and I'm perfectly happy with them)

Also what DArtagnan said.

Ratings should stop or at least become a lot more abstract. It's pointless approaching games with such a cold mathematical mentality - at least as long as there's not a standard that will serve to help us calculate the exchange rates of a game's elements… how much 'gameplay complexity' does a CTD worth? How many sidequests should a game include to make up for bad collision detection?

You don't want a black and white attitude? Don't give me black and white rating… and certainly don't give me excuses why I need to wait for modders to fix the issues of your 98% rated game!