Poll: Just finished New Vegas: this is why people should still get paid to Beta Test.

[GonzoGamer]

Having recently completed Fallout New Vegas I think I?m getting fed up with console gaming. It used to be that when you buy a console game, it worked. Sure many of them (many of my favorites as a matter of fact) have glitches and bugs but you would not find the frustration I?ve found with New Vegas.

It?s extremely obvious that they rushed this game to shelves banking on the popularity of Fallout 3 to sell pre-orders and launch units. Well, they got me. This was one of the only games I pre-ordered this year. And I expected bugs and glitches but the amount of times I had to hard shut down my ps3 was just absurd; not to mention all the times it crashed to the xmb on its own, vanished companions and npcs, or make a quest unfinishable. Even when I was able to play, I had to deal with constant framerate drops, un-responsive controls, and a bunch of other annoyances.

I found myself wishing I had gotten the PC release as that one at least has the modders patching it to a playable degree. The official patches have only fixed the more benign problems and exploits... Just like they did with Fallout 3.

It?s obvious to me that publishers now depend on consoles being online so that their games can be fixed after the release.

I just think they are depending too much on the patching system. No retail released game should require so many hard shut downs and not every gamer has their console on the net: especially if they only like single player RPGs Like Fallout. Abd those hard shut downs aren?t good for the console. I don?t know if this game has officially shortened the life of my ps3 or to what extent but I wouldn?t be surprised. This is why people used to get paid to beta test: it?s not fun (this game really did stop being fun and just became an endurance test; a challenge for me to overcome) and you can damage your hardware.

What do you think? Are they going too far? Have you gotten a title at launch that you found to be completely intolerable in regards to quality of the product itself?

The main question is, are they getting out of line?
I think so, these games/systems aren?t cheap and I think we should expect some quality for $60. Not perfection of course but not this bad.

 

[TheYellowCellPhone]

I think the some problems are less the game designers and more the engine they're using.

But yes, they need better patches for the game.

 

[psivamp]

The patch on the 360 seems to have alleviated most of the issues with New Vegas. My most recent run through the game was free from technical problems.

The developer, Obsidian, is kinda notorious for doing this. The phenomenon isn't by any means new. Ultima IX, anyone? The game only ran on the test machine or computers that were coincidentally very similar -- like mine was. And then it was so unoptimized and buggy it was absurd.

Short answer: Are they getting out of line? Yeah, kinda. But the backlash may also remind publishers that there is indeed a line.

 

[PunkyMcGee]

it's an obsidian and Bethesda co-lab. those two are bad about glitches

 

[Carlston]

Well this is how Microsoft made a entire business model. Make a dead line, vomit it out, fix later.

Sad ,PC gaming you must make a game that spans several types of hardware. Most PC games released are just console ports. Consoles are two sets of hardware both using old PC tech to begin with. So you can't use the PC gamers defense of a crap game on hardware... it's the same stuff. If they so called claimed to blew 200 million on a games development... don't you think they would have tested it as well?

As one nerd raged on me earlier to day about pc elitism or whatever... another reason I prefer my RPG's or anything more than mortal kombat on my console are things like this. Users can make patches, give command line mods or just disable a direct X feature and allow the game to run smoother. Even devs can update a forum with a mini patch in hours.


I'd say it really is the quality of gaming going down hill for graphics.
I'm just waiting for a repeat of Jurassic Park Site B to come again, a 240 meg game with a 280 meg patch...

 

[social_outcast]

Feh, Obsidian are kinda a unique, recurring case. The same thing happened with KOTOR 2, NWN2 and all expansions. I remember being sick of the bugs in Mask of the Betrayer yet it got progressively better with patches and I was always willing to forgive simply because they're work was so great. Same goes for New Vegas in a way, most of the bugs that I've encountered exist with the engine (which has been used since Oblivion and isn't even theirs) and since I got most of the with fallout 3 as well, I'm willing to forgive them as in a masochistic way, it's better to get a buggy, yet steadily improving, good game than it is to get an average game regardless of polish.
Debugging won't hurt them, I'm not saying that, but if a publishers pressing for a holiday release it's sometimes better to beg forgiveness than ask permission.

 

[GonzoGamer]

The patch on the 360 seems to have alleviated most of the issues with New Vegas. My most recent run through the game was free from technical problems.

Hmmm.
For some reason them making the game playable for one third of the copies doesn?t make me feel better. Also, I?ve heard a different story: that the Dead Money dlc is an even bigger disaster than the original game. A friend of mine who got it wasn?t able to get back into the main game.

Users can make patches, give command line mods or just disable a direct X feature and allow the game to run smoother.

I'd say it really is the quality of gaming going down hill for graphics.
I'm just waiting for a repeat of Jurassic Park Site B to come again, a 240 meg game with a 280 meg patch...

That's why I kind of left the PC out of the argument. Even if the company abandons the title, there's usually someone that comes along and fixes it.
They shouldn't have to of course but that's not an option on the console at all.

Debugging won't hurt them, I'm not saying that, but if a publishers pressing for a holiday release it's sometimes better to beg forgiveness than ask permission.

That?s actually the main reason I have a problem with all this. They don?t beg forgiveness or ask permission.
It would be one thing if they said something like ?hey, we know we screwed you over? then offer us some sort of compensation. But they never do that. We get silence and a couple of patches that don?t solve any of the major problems.
They just assume we?re suckers that will take it lying down then bend over when the next release comes out.
And for the most part, it seems they're right.

 

[GonzoGamer]

Anyway, there have been buggy sandbox games going back a long time,

Don't I know it. San Andreas was one of my favorite ps2 games and Fallout 3 is my fav for this gen.
I understand that those kinds of games will always have problems and as glitchy as those games were,it never ruined the fun.
This game really got so bad that it just wasn't fun any more.
Those games walked that line but New Vegas left it in the distance.

 

[SomethingUnrelated]

I've never really had any problem with what are supposed to be glitchy games. Fallout: New Vegas, Red Dead Redemption, and Oblivion all played quite smoothly for me.

I just think all games have issues which slip through the net, some more than others. As long as they're hastily patched, I see no real problem in the long term. Although ideally, a game would be released without any glitches or bugs in it at all.

 

[skennedy929]

The only major problem for me with New Vegas is the loading times that spiral out of control once you've been playing for a couple hours. I've actually timed loading screens for the same area right at the start of a session and hours in and some loads can take upwards of 5 times as long once you've been playing. New Vegas has a serious memory leak problem.

Besides that it's easily as buggy as Fallout 3. The gamebryo engine needs to be retired, now.

 

[Berserker119]

The only game I've ever had a problem with is Fable 2, and all I had to do for that was install it to my hard drive for a bit. Also, I actually haven't noticed anything wrong with mine, or my friends' NV games. Or Fallout 3. Odd.

 

[s0m3th1ng]

Has anyone else had literally no bugs while playing NV? I had one instance in 80 hours of play where a companion disappeared and a couple times where enemy mobs would go for a swim in some rock. No crashes, no framerate issues (After the ATI fix of course), no game-breaking bugs.

 

[Jekken6]

After the first patch for New Vegas on PC, I have not experienced anything gamebreaking. Fallout 3 on PS3 at launch is much how you describe New Vegas,OP. It was a trainwreck of technical issues.

 

[Falconus]

I haven't noticed all that many bugs with new vegas compared to some games I've played and of the ones I've encountered only one was a serious problem. It was one where you try to fire the space laser and your game crashes, other than that I've seen glitched dog eyes and enemies falling through the terrain.

It's not just Obsidian either. Dragon age had a real mother of a memory leak. where loading times could take up to twenty minutes. Well probably longer actually, that's just the point my patience broke. And yeah these things can be hard to catch, because it doesn't affect every system.

Now I'm fairly forgiving when it comes to bugs, They are to be expected after all since programming isn't simple. But I feel that developers could spend a little bit longer on testing. I don't mind waiting a few more months if it means we get a better product out of it. Or at the very least one that works.

 

[psivamp]

The patch on the 360 seems to have alleviated most of the issues with New Vegas. My most recent run through the game was free from technical problems.

Hmmm.
For some reason them making the game playable for one third of the copies doesn?t make me feel better. Also, I?ve heard a different story: that the Dead Money dlc is an even bigger disaster than the original game. A friend of mine who got it wasn?t able to get back into the main game.

I don't know how the patch did on the other systems.
Also, Dead Money traps you in the DLC until you're done -- it tells you that up front.

The gamebryo engine needs to be retired, now.

I'm pretty sure Bethesda is using a new engine for Skyrim -- so the Gamebryo engine is pretty much retired.

 

[Souplex]

When PC developers moved from the PC to console over this and the last generation, they brought all the problems of PC gaming with them.
This is one of them.
It'll iron itself out, just like quarter eating difficulty did a while after arcades got eaten by the consoles.

 

[Chairman Miaow]

Honestly I experienced absolutely zero glitches or freezes throughout my entire playthrough of New Vegas. I know they must exist because so many people have experienced them so frequently, but I experienced none.

 

[GonzoGamer]

The patch on the 360 seems to have alleviated most of the issues with New Vegas. My most recent run through the game was free from technical problems.

Hmmm.
For some reason them making the game playable for one third of the copies doesn?t make me feel better. Also, I?ve heard a different story: that the Dead Money dlc is an even bigger disaster than the original game. A friend of mine who got it wasn?t able to get back into the main game.

I don't know how the patch did on the other systems.
Also, Dead Money traps you in the DLC until you're done -- it tells you that up front.

Yea, he was done with the dlc and couldn't get back to the main map.

I hear they will have a new engine for Skyrim too. However, I'm not convinced it wont be a complete fiasco either. If I do get that, I'll get goty for the pc, that way, even if they aren't able to iron out all the bugs after a year, I'll probably be able to find some user made patches that will.