For example : Rage case. Invalid drivers ? So what drivers they used ? How this game passed internal tests prior to release ? What machines were used by testers ? And how the f*k is it possible for other, similar games to work on those supposedly "faulty" drivers ?
Long answer? They were using drivers expected in the future (openGL 4.2) which in some cases, never gets an update because very few games on windows machines use openGL. So the game releases, and AMD and Nvidia are like "...what?" so the beta drivers have some support for OpenGL 4.2, but not full support. So the newest drivers with full support are not here yet.
Yep, i've heard that line of defence. Well, that's their problem, not ours, isn't it ? As for me, it is a perfect example of either low respect towards clients, or detachment from reality. Either game should be able to run on modern equipment or shouldn't come out until "future" happens. It can't be simpler than that.
What? DX:HR was in a shoddy state at release? What?
I dunno man, I had it pre-ordered and pre-loaded via Steam. And it worked brilliantly.
The only issue I've had has been with Space Marine. And given that those issues are a) known, b) were known prior to release and c) haven't actually diminished my enjoyment of the game overall, I think you're grasping at straws.
Back in the days, games were not more stable I'm afraid.
Also, back in the days, PC hardware was much less standardized. Before OpenGL and DX you had to program your game for specific graphics card, then there were arbitrary closed standards, in short it was worse.
Sadly, even back in the days, there were good companies and bad companies. Bad ones eventually died off because people wouldn't buy their crap.
So solution is simple ... Want solid release? Don't support companies that release crap, no matter how hyped or "in" their shoddy product is.
Reading some of your answers, it seems the "back then games were more stable" argument doesn't really hold. However, I'm glad to have gotten this little discussion started, since some of the things here are really insightful.
So how do you explain the plethora of bugs that all of those older PC only games contained? Fallout 1&2 are the most obvious choice for pointing this out. The only difference between then and now is that games are far more likely to get patched now and if they do more people will find out about it. Back then you had to basically keep checking the developers website just incase they released a patch.
Firstly, most older games had no bugs because if they did then they were not called buggy....but broken. It was not until the 360 era did I begin/need to patch games. Beofre then all bugs were either very rare and/or minor.
FA1 & 2 had bugs as it was a tiny dev studio with a massive task. Nowadays games are buggy due to a lack of testing as investors want the game released by a date regardless of what state it is in.
Firstly, most older games had no bugs because if they did then they were not called buggy....but broken. It was not until the 360 era did I begin/need to patch games. Beofre then all bugs were either very rare and/or minor.
FA1 & 2 had bugs as it was a tiny dev studio with a massive task. Nowadays games are buggy due to a lack of testing as investors want the game released by a date regardless of what state it is in.
Most new games dont have many bugs either. About the same amount as your average game ten or fifteen years ago. The only difference today is the internet which makes it easier for peoples complaints to be heard.
Fallout 1 was developed by Interplay and Fallout 2 was developed by Black Isle. Interplay was not a tiny developer when these games come out.
Really? You sure about that?
Lets think about some recent games that have - FA: NV, SC2, Rage, BF3.
Bugs now are far more common and noticeable hence dozens of day 1 or month 1 patches that come out. Also, just look at the credits of the games and how so few actually have test players. Fable originally had dozens of testers, were as the latest one had very little.
You have to remember that many games now are compiled in languages that should be able to auto-find errors and in a language which is more stable and versatile. This was anything but the case 15 years ago so at least they had an excuse.
If I purchase a game for PC, it is usually 10$ or less from Steam & has very small system requirements. Console game otherwise. I don't see how anyone has the cash to both purchase a game AND keep their PC up to date to be able to play said game.
How?
Many people nowadays simply back their favourite devs rather than looking at the quality of game that is in front of them, so when someone does, people ***** at them for being cynical rather than being someone with taste and experience.
Those games were bugged to hell and the only reason is due to lazy/cheap devs.
1. Back in the day games were more stable. Sure, they may not have been as complex, but the diversity in systems was likely equal to the present situation.
What's your take on this? Is it just an excuse or is it a valid argument?
The excuse also happens to be very true, every home PC is a unique mash up of hardware, up to date and out of date drivers, files, viruses and settings. It's very hard to reliably program software that works on them all, so stuff gets released and then the panic fixes begin as issues arise for combinations that weren't tested.
Back in 2004, Steam crashed almost immediately on release, first it and then Half Life 2 were all but unusable for some time after release day.
In the same year Soldner was released in a state so broken that now in 2011 a 'fixed' community mod has just been released. It's taken a dedicated team of fans seven years to iron out most of the bugs.
BF:Vietnam was utterly broken on it's release, also 2004.
UT:2004
UT:2003
STALKER series as a whole.
X-Wing vs Tie Fighter
Fallout 2
Quake 2
Many games, many bugs varying from the hilarious to the utterly game breaking. Same old same old. It's not really any worse than it ever was.
If there's ever a problem with a game due to what sound card you have its always always always Realtek cards. I can't remember the list of games that flat out don't work with said cards I can only remember one, Battlefield: Bad Company 2.
By the way the worst ongoing problem I have with a pc game is the fact that it was poorly coded from the get go.
Saints Row 2 still doesn't work without win7 8gb ram and a fan made mod to get it all to work.
Firstly, most older games had no bugs because if they did then they were not called buggy....but broken. It was not until the 360 era did I begin/need to patch games. Beofre then all bugs were either very rare and/or minor.
FA1 & 2 had bugs as it was a tiny dev studio with a massive task. Nowadays games are buggy due to a lack of testing as investors want the game released by a date regardless of what state it is in.
Most new games dont have many bugs either. About the same amount as your average game ten or fifteen years ago. The only difference today is the internet which makes it easier for peoples complaints to be heard.
Fallout 1 was developed by Interplay and Fallout 2 was developed by Black Isle. Interplay was not a tiny developer when these games come out.
Really? You sure about that?
Lets think about some recent games that have - FA: NV, SC2, Rage, BF3.
Bugs now are far more common and noticeable hence dozens of day 1 or month 1 patches that come out. Also, just look at the credits of the games and how so few actually have test players. Fable originally had dozens of testers, were as the latest one had very little.
You have to remember that many games now are compiled in languages that should be able to auto-find errors and in a language which is more stable and versatile. This was anything but the case 15 years ago so at least they had an excuse.
Let's have a look here, at the games you mentioned..
"FA":NV, which I assume you meant FO, is a mishmash of third party software. Just like FO3, Just like Oblivion. All three of them have bugs, because the entire software package doesn't play the same on different hardware and software packages. It wasn't ever really Bethesda's fault, and no amount of testing could have gotten rid of the issues it was having, you can only do some much with an API.
RAGE isn't a problem with the game itself, and for as much as you may want to blame the developer, it's Nvidia and AMD who kind of ignore OpenGL.
BF3 isn't even out yet. It's in beta. Sure it's close to release, but the fact that it's in beta. When it launches, any problems it has can then be used against it. Not in beta.
Bugs are not far more common now than they were a decade ago. They are about the same relatively. What has changed is the amount of people playing the games. There's also quite a difference in the amount of games out there right now. 1% of 10,000 became 1% of 1,000,000. Yeah you'll notice it more, but it is still 1%.
Also what's changed is the platform on which we can complain on. When the internet didn't exist, you had word of mouth...magazines, any sort of get together with your friends, when the internet was young, no one cared what it said. Now however everyone who plays games at least can be on the internet once in a while, and if they have a problem they'll go to a tech support forum, or rant about it on some other forum. It's all concentrated to specific areas. Sort of like if I was a mechanic and I only got to work on Fords, i'd think fords were the worst cars ever made, ignoring the fact that everyone in 100 miles of me owns a Ford...
Also auto-finding errors is a lot like spell check. It'll help you spell "Pachydermophobia" but it won't help you determine weather to use "there" "their" or "they're" So that was a bit superfluous to mention. Not to mention the problem isn't in the language syntax, it'd be more along the lines of "Game A needs to access File X, System A does not have File X, Game A cannot run." or "Game A needs to access file Z, System B has file Z. File Z is out of date, does not know what Game A is trying to access. Shutting down"
In both cases the auto-correcting would not help. Nor would any amount of testing, unless you can tell me what's wrong with file Z from that.
I think the range of hardware may be greater than you think. Yes, there are only 2 main brands of both CPU and Graphics Cards out there atm, but that doesn't make the cards and chips the same. More recent graphics cards get all the same driver updates, mostly because they are designed in a rather similar fashion and thus work properly with the same driver (Most of the time. Some cards still have issues with some drivers). However, go back 10 years (Sadly, people are gaming on 10-6 year old computers still) and you get far older chips and cards, not necessarily compatible with new Driver releases.
Then in the CPU department, it isn't just one size fits all. You have different kinds of CPU's; Single Cores, Multi Cores, Multi Core with Hyper Threading, different architectures for each CPU. Whilst the combinations are no-where near limitless, and most people will get parts known to work well together, there are some pretty reasonable differences between hardware that affects software, especially with old Tech still being used.
Does this mean that we should be happy with buggy, broken games being released? No. However, it does mean we should cut devs a little slack there.
As an example, a lot of people are having problems with BF3. They have the same OS as me, they have installed the same game as me, they have stopped all other programs and turned off their firewalls and anti-virus, yet still the game bugs for them. I have no such problem. The difference between us: The parts we've used to make our machines. Even more evidence for this being the likely problem is when a fair majority of others show up with the same rig and say they are having the same problem.
There are hardware differences that screw around with software, hence why I had to reload my whole system after I got a few new parts. It does make it harder to make it compatible with EVERY system, and quite often it is perfectly compatible with most newer systems, and I'd personally rather they polish it up a bit rather than figuring out everything that MIGHT be a problem on different hardware and fixing that up.
Firstly, most older games had no bugs because if they did then they were not called buggy....but broken. It was not until the 360 era did I begin/need to patch games. Beofre then all bugs were either very rare and/or minor.
FA1 & 2 had bugs as it was a tiny dev studio with a massive task. Nowadays games are buggy due to a lack of testing as investors want the game released by a date regardless of what state it is in.
Most new games dont have many bugs either. About the same amount as your average game ten or fifteen years ago. The only difference today is the internet which makes it easier for peoples complaints to be heard.
Fallout 1 was developed by Interplay and Fallout 2 was developed by Black Isle. Interplay was not a tiny developer when these games come out.
Really? You sure about that?
Lets think about some recent games that have - FA: NV, SC2, Rage, BF3.
Bugs now are far more common and noticeable hence dozens of day 1 or month 1 patches that come out. Also, just look at the credits of the games and how so few actually have test players. Fable originally had dozens of testers, were as the latest one had very little.
You have to remember that many games now are compiled in languages that should be able to auto-find errors and in a language which is more stable and versatile. This was anything but the case 15 years ago so at least they had an excuse.
Let's have a look here, at the games you mentioned..
"FA":NV, which I assume you meant FO, is a mishmash of third party software. Just like FO3, Just like Oblivion. All three of them have bugs, because the entire software package doesn't play the same on different hardware and software packages. It wasn't ever really Bethesda's fault, and no amount of testing could have gotten rid of the issues it was having, you can only do some much with an API.
RAGE isn't a problem with the game itself, and for as much as you may want to blame the developer, it's Nvidia and AMD who kind of ignore OpenGL.
BF3 isn't even out yet. It's in beta. Sure it's close to release, but the fact that it's in beta. When it launches, any problems it has can then be used against it. Not in beta.
Bugs are not far more common now than they were a decade ago. They are about the same relatively. What has changed is the amount of people playing the games. There's also quite a difference in the amount of games out there right now. 1% of 10,000 became 1% of 1,000,000. Yeah you'll notice it more, but it is still 1%.
Also what's changed is the platform on which we can complain on. When the internet didn't exist, you had word of mouth...magazines, any sort of get together with your friends, when the internet was young, no one cared what it said. Now however everyone who plays games at least can be on the internet once in a while, and if they have a problem they'll go to a tech support forum, or rant about it on some other forum. It's all concentrated to specific areas. Sort of like if I was a mechanic and I only got to work on Fords, i'd think fords were the worst cars ever made, ignoring the fact that everyone in 100 miles of me owns a Ford...
Also auto-finding errors is a lot like spell check. It'll help you spell "Pachydermophobia" but it won't help you determine weather to use "there" "their" or "they're" So that was a bit superfluous to mention. Not to mention the problem isn't in the language syntax, it'd be more along the lines of "Game A needs to access File X, System A does not have File X, Game A cannot run." or "Game A needs to access file Z, System B has file Z. File Z is out of date, does not know what Game A is trying to access. Shutting down"
In both cases the auto-correcting would not help. Nor would any amount of testing, unless you can tell me what's wrong with file Z from that.
Right - why did FO:NV have crippling bugs when many games do not? It has nothing to do with the hardware but the cheap job the devs did with trying to expand and develop an ancient and weak engine. If they had made a new engine from the start then they would of had no problems.
The problems with rage have fuck all to do with the drivers and everyone knows this. Seeing that the PC user can not even select the graphics options shows what a cheap port job it was.
NB. It is no coincidence that the buggiest games for PC's are the ones that are developed for the 360 then ported across.
BF3 is far too buggy for an open beta and again, everyone knows this. The amount of major and simple bugs such as falling through graphics should have been resolved in the alpha along with the massive hit reg problem.
From my experience of games (not reading forums etc as people claim), many more have bugs in them, so many that the minority of games I own from this generation came bug free. Now if I compare this to my last generations game collection (which is in fact a few games larger), the older games had far less bugs. Unless you pull out facts and source your figures, I will take my own experience over wild accusations.
Also testing would always find and solve the bugs because the programmers would know what section in general is going wrong and then they would have to spend time to resolve the issue....like what they did in the past.
Right - why did FO:NV have crippling bugs when many games do not? It has nothing to do with the hardware but the cheap job the devs did with trying to expand and develop an ancient and weak engine. If they had made a new engine from the start then they would of had no problems.
It's not the ancient and weak engine. It's everything they added to it to get the game they wanted to deliver to the consumer. Not really about them it's about the APi, and what it will not allow them to do. So they need something that will allow them to do it.
Imagine if you will, you have a pen. This pen can write whatever you want, but it cannot turn into a plane and fly you to Hong Kong. The people that made the pen, decided that wasn't a feature they wanted to let you access. So you put giant wings on the thing and sail off into the distance. Then they fall off. Lots and lots of exaggeration there btw.
Let's take a look at the copyright cards for Oblivion, FO3, and NV shall we?
Oblivion uses the Gamebryo engine, which they do not own, nor have anything to do with it's creation.
Bink video, like many games
Speedtree
Havok
FaceGen
Fo3 uses the exact same setup, with the addition of FaceFX for facial animations.
NV uses the same package as FO3.
That's a lot of third party software in one game.
Just for kicks, let's compare that to morrowind, a game I never had any crashing issues with (until heavy modding..)
Gamebryo, Bink video.
The reason they stuck with gamebryo? Licensing. Possibly funding too. And then the company went bust, so now they made their own engine, because apparently adding all that third party software, even with the bugs, allowed them to have a much larger budget for skyrim..
Now looking at that entire list of third party software, you may not realize this, but each one uses the same resources as the others. Each one has different requirements from your system. Each one needs to be compatable with the others. Sometimes they may get in the way of each other if your system has a slight hiccup. Sometimes your computer can't cope with a small glitch, but mine sure could. For various reasons.
But go ahead and attack the business practices of them using a constantly updated engine they've had licensed to them for 10 years and using the saved money to make the games bigger and better. The escapist loooves doing that.
The problems with rage have fuck all to do with the drivers and everyone knows this. Seeing that the PC user can not even select the graphics options shows what a cheap port job it was.
NB. It is no coincidence that the buggiest games for PC's are the ones that are developed for the 360 then ported across.
Proof that it's in the drivers is actually right out in the open. It works fine on consoles. Consoles are programmed right to the hardware, no need for drivers. Since without the drivers the game runs okay, and with drivers there are artifacts, stuttering, flashing NPCs and massive amounts of texture pop-in, it's the drivers. Also note that Id Tech 5 can automatically set up your graphics level based on your hardware.(that's why you can't select options.) ....which it tells from your what now? Oh right your drivers. Wrong drivers...wrong graphical settings.. that would be an easy fix though, it would also be the users fault.
BF3 is far too buggy for an open beta and again, everyone knows this. The amount of major and simple bugs such as falling through graphics should have been resolved in the alpha along with the massive hit reg problem.
Still a beta, not worth mentioning the bugs at all. some betas keep all the bugs from when they open the flood gates right to the end, and then they get fixed before the game actually comes out. So we'll still have to see on that.
From my experience of games (not reading forums etc as people claim), many more have bugs in them, so many that the minority of games I own from this generation came bug free. Now if I compare this to my last generations game collection (which is in fact a few games larger), the older games had far less bugs. Unless you pull out facts and source your figures, I will take my own experience over wild accusations.
I rarely have any bugs in any game I play, this gen, or last gen. Going on my experiences, games aren't all that buggy except maybe a few. Usually if I do run into a big game breaking bug that I really notice, the answer is on my end, not the developer. I generally never patch my games unless I run into a problem i can't fix. So it seems our experiences are radically different. But if we're going to base everything on experiences, then really keep on railing on whoever you want. Just understand why bugs exist in the future.
Also testing would always find and solve the bugs because the programmers would know what section in general is going wrong and then they would have to spend time to resolve the issue....like what they did in the past.
No it will not always find and solve bugs. If that was the case then no game ever would have any bugs for all of time. Because hell with just a little testing of every variable ever conceived in the universe they could solve everything!
..Only that's neither cost effective, smart, fun, or even efficient. Not to mention they can't really see into the future. And they have a limit with how far into the past they go. They aren't going to test the game on an 8086 because grampa has one and hell, why not?
It's just not possible to do, under any circumstances. You cannot test for every bit of difference and find every single bug in your software. You can maybe get the majority of the bugs for the most common hardware configurations, but even then you may not.
Right - why did FO:NV have crippling bugs when many games do not? It has nothing to do with the hardware but the cheap job the devs did with trying to expand and develop an ancient and weak engine. If they had made a new engine from the start then they would of had no problems.
It's not the ancient and weak engine. It's everything they added to it to get the game they wanted to deliver to the consumer. Not really about them it's about the APi, and what it will not allow them to do. So they need something that will allow them to do it.
Imagine if you will, you have a pen. This pen can write whatever you want, but it cannot turn into a plane and fly you to Hong Kong. The people that made the pen, decided that wasn't a feature they wanted to let you access. So you put giant wings on the thing and sail off into the distance. Then they fall off. Lots and lots of exaggeration there btw.
Let's take a look at the copyright cards for Oblivion, FO3, and NV shall we?
Oblivion uses the Gamebryo engine, which they do not own, nor have anything to do with it's creation.
Bink video, like many games
Speedtree
Havok
FaceGen
Fo3 uses the exact same setup, with the addition of FaceFX for facial animations.
NV uses the same package as FO3.
That's a lot of third party software in one game.
Just for kicks, let's compare that to morrowind, a game I never had any crashing issues with (until heavy modding..)
Gamebryo, Bink video.
The reason they stuck with gamebryo? Licensing. Possibly funding too. And then the company went bust, so now they made their own engine, because apparently adding all that third party software, even with the bugs, allowed them to have a much larger budget for skyrim..
Now looking at that entire list of third party software, you may not realize this, but each one uses the same resources as the others. Each one has different requirements from your system. Each one needs to be compatable with the others. Sometimes they may get in the way of each other if your system has a slight hiccup. Sometimes your computer can't cope with a small glitch, but mine sure could. For various reasons.
But go ahead and attack the business practices of them using a constantly updated engine they've had licensed to them for 10 years and using the saved money to make the games bigger and better. The escapist loooves doing that.
The problems with rage have fuck all to do with the drivers and everyone knows this. Seeing that the PC user can not even select the graphics options shows what a cheap port job it was.
NB. It is no coincidence that the buggiest games for PC's are the ones that are developed for the 360 then ported across.
Proof that it's in the drivers is actually right out in the open. It works fine on consoles. Consoles are programmed right to the hardware, no need for drivers. Since without the drivers the game runs okay, and with drivers there are artifacts, stuttering, flashing NPCs and massive amounts of texture pop-in, it's the drivers. Also note that Id Tech 5 can automatically set up your graphics level based on your hardware.(that's why you can't select options.) ....which it tells from your what now? Oh right your drivers. Wrong drivers...wrong graphical settings.. that would be an easy fix though, it would also be the users fault.
BF3 is far too buggy for an open beta and again, everyone knows this. The amount of major and simple bugs such as falling through graphics should have been resolved in the alpha along with the massive hit reg problem.
Still a beta, not worth mentioning the bugs at all. some betas keep all the bugs from when they open the flood gates right to the end, and then they get fixed before the game actually comes out. So we'll still have to see on that.
From my experience of games (not reading forums etc as people claim), many more have bugs in them, so many that the minority of games I own from this generation came bug free. Now if I compare this to my last generations game collection (which is in fact a few games larger), the older games had far less bugs. Unless you pull out facts and source your figures, I will take my own experience over wild accusations.
I rarely have any bugs in any game I play, this gen, or last gen. Going on my experiences, games aren't all that buggy except maybe a few. Usually if I do run into a big game breaking bug that I really notice, the answer is on my end, not the developer. I generally never patch my games unless I run into a problem i can't fix. So it seems our experiences are radically different. But if we're going to base everything on experiences, then really keep on railing on whoever you want. Just understand why bugs exist in the future.
Also testing would always find and solve the bugs because the programmers would know what section in general is going wrong and then they would have to spend time to resolve the issue....like what they did in the past.
No it will not always find and solve bugs. If that was the case then no game ever would have any bugs for all of time. Because hell with just a little testing of every variable ever conceived in the universe they could solve everything!
..Only that's neither cost effective, smart, fun, or even efficient. Not to mention they can't really see into the future. And they have a limit with how far into the past they go. They aren't going to test the game on an 8086 because grampa has one and hell, why not?
It's just not possible to do, under any circumstances. You cannot test for every bit of difference and find every single bug in your software. You can maybe get the majority of the bugs for the most common hardware configurations, but even then you may not.
They added so much 3rd party gear to FO:NV because the engine was weak and could only handle giant plug-ins.
Anyway, the fact is that it was buggy and it should not have been and shows games to be poorly made.
As for rage, the PC version is meant to be more powerful and you can't just copy the game software over *facepalm*. Look at GTA 4 as a great example of a failed graphics port. The companies just have inexperienced people who fail to code the game correctly for the PC and their quick and cheap graphics boosts fail miserably.
BF3 is as buggy as an alpha and again, there is no excuse for that. Yes, it is beta.....but it's beta, not alpha.
I am amazed you claim to have few bugs in new games. GTA 4 for the PC is broken, FA 3 and FA: NV are so bugged they are unplayable, E:TW was again broken, Gran Turismo, SC2, Red faction: Guerrilla, Fable 3, Sins of a Solar Empire, Supreme Commander, STALKER's (take your pick), Split Second, DA 2 etc. Most of the bugs were all graphics related as the devs did not optimise them for the PC even though many came from large and well funded studios.
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