The Outer Worlds - Interview @Den of Geeks

Drithius said:

I waited a year and half to play PoE 2. And Obisidan still managed to break my character with a patch halfway into my playthrough.

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I have historically had a MUCH worse experience with patches than with the state of games at launch, even the famously buggy ones. I remember Fallout: New Vegas being just fine until they patched it, and then NPCs were standing around like scarecrows with their arms sticking straight out and all kinds of other jankery. Once I've started a game, I'd rather keep playing it to completion than risk a patch.

Case in point from the above discussion. I played PoE2 at launch, didn't have a single issue that I can recall. In my experience, bugginess is almost always overstated.

In case it is any help, this is supposed to come to Game Pass on day one. Since Game Pass is available for as little as 1$, you can subscribe, play the game, see if you like it or if it is buggy, then go from there.

If it is buggy, you can wait and get it when the patches and price drop (and play other games for the rest of your sub). If it is stable, then you get to play the game for a dollar. Depends on your outlook, of course, but it appeals to me...

Bugginess seems always overstated when you are member of the lucky crowd. Matter of point of view I say.

For example, encountering bug, which doesnt let you change party members after you invested 50 hours into game can have quite an impact on buggyness perception (happened to me with PoE2).

And Ironically, one can be in company of lucky few and not encountering single significant bug in game, which is, at the same time, being lynched by angry internet mob for buggyness (happened to me in Kingmaker).

I will allow myself to give prediction, that The Outer Worlds will not be as buggy as some of the older Obsidian games (Alpha Protocol) and will be playable on release.

Nevertheless I will wait for reception feedback, before I buy it, as Im not thrilled by setting and atmosphere. Hopefully I will be so captivated by Disco Elysium gameplay at that time I will not even notice its released.

Andrew23 said:

Bugginess seems always overstated when you are member of the lucky crowd. Matter of point of view I say.

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If so, I've been "lucky" literally hundreds of times.

There's no question that I'm less aggravated by bugs than some. I've experienced that repeatedly. There are also people who call things "bugs" that are not bugs. Sometimes they are intentional design choices that person doesn't agree with. Sometimes they are glitches (like clipping). Sometimes they are a result of the player expecting something to happen (because they read a walkthrough, are impatient, etc) and simply haven't done the necessary things in the game to trigger the event they expect.

So no, it's not luck. It's me not sweating the small stuff.

I doubt most people complaining about bugs are simply sweating small stuff. In my experience, when people are complaining about a bug it's usually legit.

And it is possible to be lucky when it comes to bugs. As an example, I knew someone who finished Gothic 3 at release and claimed he encountered very few bugs. Does that mean Gothic 3 wasn't actually as buggy as everyone else was claiming? Obviously not since it's well known that it was indeed a very buggy game.

Maybe I'm late to the party but I just read The Outer Worlds will be joining the Xbox Game Pass for PC lineup when it gets released this October 25th. Great news

You're late, but not here. In top250 imdb movies thread we got stuck on the best brazillian movies in this century and remembered only Cidade De Deus, Elite Squad and ES:The Enemy Within.
Because I avoid drama/biography/war/history, I skipped 2 Filhos de Francisco… Am I unfair? I mean, is it really something people should watch before dying as some suggest?
What about Araby, one of critics here was so impressed with it after some festival I've added that title on my to watch list, but so far didn't find it anywhere.
Etc etc, it'd be a shame to skip stuff due to our ignorance, and thus please point us on some, by your opinion, above average titles please.

As about xbox game pass and Outer Worlds, that move was expected after Microsoft bought Obsidian. I'm still gonna pay a chunk of $ and VATS the game with my k+m on Epic Store.

JDR13 said:

I doubt most people complaining about bugs are simply sweating small stuff. In my experience, when people are complaining about a bug it's usually legit.

And it is possible to be lucky when it comes to bugs. As an example, I knew someone who finished Gothic 3 at release and claimed he encountered very few bugs. Does that mean Gothic 3 wasn't actually as buggy as everyone else was claiming? Obviously not since it's well known that it was indeed a very buggy game.

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That's not obvious at all. Unless you were sitting beside him taking notes, I don't see how you draw that conclusion. Really, that's an example of my point, since it's exceedingly unlikely that someone completes a 40 hour game without encountering what everyone else supposedly encounters.

It often seems that every game that's released immediately receives 50 Steam reviews claiming it's unplayable due to bugs. The times when that turns out to be remotely true are few and far between.

JFarrell71 said:

That's not obvious at all. Unless you were sitting beside him taking notes, I don't see how you draw that conclusion. Really, that's an example of my point, since it's exceedingly unlikely that someone completes a 40 hour game without encountering what everyone else supposedly encounters.

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It's a well known fact that Gothic 3 had a ton of bugs at release, but that doesn't mean every person who played it encountered all of the bugs. A lot of bugs can be random and don't happen in 100% of playthoughs. That doesn't make them less serious though. It's quite possible for a minority to play through a buggy game and encounter very few bugs.

JFarrell71 said:

It often seems that every game that's released immediately receives 50 Steam reviews claiming it's unplayable due to bugs. The times when that turns out to be remotely true are few and far between.

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That might be your perception, but I haven't seen that. When there's a lot of smoke, there's usually fire. You're welcome to believe what you like though.

joxer said:

You're late, but not here. In top250 imdb movies thread we got stuck on the best brazillian movies in this century and remembered only Cidade De Deus, Elite Squad and ES:The Enemy Within.
Because I avoid drama/biography/war/history, I skipped 2 Filhos de Francisco… Am I unfair? I mean, is it really something people should watch before dying as some suggest?
What about Araby, one of critics here was so impressed with it after some festival I've added that title on my to watch list, but so far didn't find it anywhere.
Etc etc, it'd be a shame to skip stuff due to our ignorance, and thus please point us on some, by your opinion, above average titles please.

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Ok Joxer, I'll try to give my contribution in the correct thread.

JDR13 said:

You're welcome to believe what you like though.

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'

That's reassuring. Here I was thinking I'd have to run everything by you. That would have gotten tiresome.

JFarrell71 said:

That's reassuring. Here I was thinking I'd have to run everything by you. That would have gotten tiresome.

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Such a compelling argument.

I can't wait for this game so I'm messing around with this character build planner.
My dumb coward/pacifist is taking shape.

JFarrell71 said:

If so, I've been "lucky" literally hundreds of times.

There's no question that I'm less aggravated by bugs than some. I've experienced that repeatedly. There are also people who call things "bugs" that are not bugs. Sometimes they are intentional design choices that person doesn't agree with. Sometimes they are glitches (like clipping). Sometimes they are a result of the player expecting something to happen (because they read a walkthrough, are impatient, etc) and simply haven't done the necessary things in the game to trigger the event they expect.

So no, it's not luck. It's me not sweating the small stuff.

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I just had an experience tonight that might help you understand the quirkiness of bugs and 'bugged' games:

So I was playing Darkness Over Daggerford tonight, a Neverwinter Nights premium module that is currently available to buy after you've purchased the NWN Enhanced Edition.

This has been a buggy game. Most notably are the two sins of:

Regular crashes to desktop, usually occurring during transition between areas. This occurs randomly and reloading the game results in you being able to transition to the next area with no problem. The effect of this bug is that I am now forced to save the game every single time I'm about to transition between areas, which, in this game, happens about every 5 or 10 minutes.

Pathfinding generally is appalling. Characters regularly get stuck on scenery. Clicking on a place on the map will regularly have no effect and your character will not move. Companions will crowd your character in enclosed spaces rendering you unable to move without flaying about with the camera and clicking every point on the screen until something budges. It's headache inducing, like watching a television programme that keeps cutting out every other word with stuttering breaks in sound.

However, none of this is gamebreaking as of yet. You might call it sweating the small stuff whereas someone else might be driven insane by these two types of bug.

However…

These aren't even the bug I'm going to tell you about.

The bug that explains the conversation you're having with JDR was:

I'm quite near the end of the game. Another bug the game has persistently had has been to not 'drop' items upon first look. For example, earlier in the game I defeated a character, looted the body and got on with the quest. Upon completing the quest the quest giver did not recognise that I had completed the quest. I looked all over the dungeon but I had missed nothing. I left it for a few days. I later went back and found the quest completion 'note' on the dead body of that body I had already looted.

And this kind of thing had been happening randomly throughout the game.

So here I am, near the end of the game at the end of a very long dungeon & I have a locked door to get through. But it's one of those doors you can't pick or bash, it has to have a key. But there is no key anywhere.

I search the entire dungeon again, and don't forget, every step of the way is with the appalling pathfinding. My headache is turning into a migraine by this point. Eventually I have to go on-line to get a walkthrough. But my search terms don't bring any results. It seems no-one else has had this bug. I go to youtube and have to spend half an hour finding the right place in someone's let's play to find out what they did.

It turns out my problem was:

I rested outside the door to the penultimate room in the dungeon. I was awoken while I rested by "your rest has been disturbed by enemies" trash mobs. During this fight the door was opened, I have no idea how. I killed the harassing mobs and rested again. I then went into the penultimate room via the freshly opened door and nothing seemed to be working, neither the door nor some sparkling shrine in the room. The game was literally un-proceedable.

By watching the let's play I was able to discover that a cut-scene was supposed to happen when you open the door, but because the door was opened during a disturbed rest I didn't get the cut-scene and so the end-boss didn't spawn in the room.

I simply went back to the door and prayed that if I close it and re-open it I would get the cut-scene and be able to progress. Luckily, this worked.

Now…

Pre-internet days, this could well have been end-of-game here.

Because it is not an 'everybody' bug, in fact it's so obscure a bug that I could well be the only person to have ever encountered it, even with the internet there was no solutions to it anywhere. This could have been end-of-game for someone pre-youtube.

Even with youtube I still had to have the ingenuity to even think that opening and closing the door again might have some baring on the problem. For people of less-bug-experienced knowledge this could have been end-of-game even with youtube.

This bug is most definitely not sweating the small stuff, but it's also not a bug that will be common to everyone, and it's most certainly another bug in a game with lots of variable standards of bugs but that, for some people, could well play "ok enough to not notice the bugs too much depending on how lucky they are".

Great post by lackblogger above. My only question after reading it is how in the world would the devs have caught this bug with standard playtesting? The bug is so obscure that even after release you couldn't find it online. I'm sure there are exponentially more owners than QA folks.

If you want perfectly QA'd games, play pong. Otherwise, the more complex a game the more likely bugs will get through standard testing. If we wait for perfection, it will be at least 8 years between Skyrim and TES VI...and it will still be buggy

crpgnut said:

Great post by lackblogger above. My only question after reading it is how in the world would the devs have caught this bug with standard playtesting? The bug is so obscure that even after release you couldn't find it online. I'm sure there are exponentially more owners than QA folks.

If you want perfectly QA'd games, play pong. Otherwise, the more complex a game the more likely bugs will get through standard testing. If we wait for perfection, it will be at least 8 years between Skyrim and TES VI…and it will still be buggy

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Well, the benefit of the EE version is precisely that:

"...over 500 bug fixes/gameplay improvements." over the originally released module. Lol.

And the bug with the door relates to a specific design feature that is copy-pasted throughout the game and inherent to everything NWN EE not just Daggerford, that cut-scenes are tied to doors. So one assumes playtesting would involve looking at how doors and their cut-scenes work under all the different conditions available to doors.

On the Beamdog forums last year some people were talking about a bug where transitions stop working if you bash down the door, for example.

But, generally, the game does feel more buggy than it actually is, mainly due to the poor pathfinding and constant crashes, which make any other bugs feel magnified.

Also, the game isn't played by that many people, it only has 24 steam reviews and 4 Gog reviews after over a year of release, so it's very hard to estimate what is a common bug and what is truly obscure at this point. Of those 24 reviews on steam, 6 are negative and four of those negative reviews cite the constant crashing as their primary gripe.

Thanks for the nice words about my post, I'm a sucker for trying to make good posts, even if it's on a thread that will be lost to time in a couple of days

One hour of gameplay (character creation included) commented by Leonard Boyarsky