Why are Broken Games Accepted?

[Sylveria]

Diablo III wasn't broken, OP. That's just your perspective of the product. Or if it was broken, it wasn't in the same way that The War Z was. Blizzard didn't sleaze out and hand us an unfinished and incomplete game. The Error 37 fiasco is a server-side issue; it has nothing to do with the code that's on the CD you purchased.

Actually Diablo 3 was and still is unfinished. Major components were not complete upon release with the promise they'd be patched in later. PVP being one of those features. Blizzard has since discontinued working on PVP since they can't get it to function how they want.

 

[zehydra]

"So why do we accept broken games?"

Why does who? If it's broken don't buy it. If you didn't know it was going to be broken, then you should have done your research. You bought it day 1 release?

Never buy it on day one. Ever.

Buying games on day one tells these companies that they can get away with patching it later. Expecting a buggy release and not buying on day one is the only way publishers will listen.

 

[Joccaren]

War Z was broken in its terrible glitches, bully tactics by the developers, and was so poor it was taken off Steam.

Diablo III was broken at its time of launch due to the terrible always-online DRM that causes so many to be unable to play something they paid for, yet pirates could play no problem. People defended it because "it's Diablo".

Steel Battalion for the Kinect was a defective product. No getting around that, it just didn't work, it was defective and if it were any other sort of product it would be recalled and probably couldn't legally be sold.

Now I'm not talking about games with glitches, in this day and age that's something that's bound to happen. Heck it's been happening since gaming started, but most of them aren't so bad they completely ruin the game. So why do we accept broken games?

Uhh...

What?

For one, NONE of those games has been accepted. Even Diablo, which is mostly accepted, has caught a lot of flack for this - and its not broken. Early on there were server problems, but now that's fixed. You don't have good Internet? Don't play an online game, its no more broken than WoW is because you need an Internet connection to play that too.

Steel Battalion... Have you not seen Yahtzee and Jim rag on about how shit it is? And the comments?
In no way is it accepted.

Same for WarZ, people bash the hell out of both of them.

Either you're question is "Why are broken games still made?" or it is "Why aren't people always complaining about the same broken games they've already complained about?".
The answer to both should be obvious.

The only broken games I see that are accepted are Bethesda games that, whilst not always broken or unplayable have ridiculous numbers of glitches and errors, often game breaking, and yet people brush it aside because "They're Bethesda, they do that", and even that's not that big a deal IMO 'cause they do slowly patch out many of the problems - even if some of their games are still downright unplayable for some people.

 

[Mauler]

Well for me as an ELITIST PC gamer its more of an common problem to wait for right patches(ergo Gothic 3) and still after half a year of patching its still unplayable, then download a Skidrow patches from a torrent site(or some other random community patch) and its DONE. For consoles I could say that they hawe less problems whith broken games(still hate those peskey PC dmr's(like realley why I had to be connected to internet to play Assasins creed(like realley I dont hawe internet at home and use it mostley from friends house, last job place(that's why most peoples who uses cracks hawe legit copies of games(sorry for off-topicking and overusing the "()")))))...

 

[Starik20X6]

It's not so much the gaming public that's accepting broken games (at least, it shouldn't be), it's the publishers that have started accepting it. And I think it's because now we have the ability to patch games. Back in the day, a broken game didn't sell, end of story, and the people who made them went out of business fast. Because it had to be perfect or near perfect at launch, there was a lot more strenuous testing and such.

I understand that occasionally glitches will slip through the net, and the infinite complexity of todays games means some minor glitches are inevitable. But these days it seems half-finished games get released because "we can patch it later". That's not how it should work. At all. And I can't believe someone has to explain that to them.

 

[Vausch]

War Z was broken in its terrible glitches, bully tactics by the developers, and was so poor it was taken off Steam.

Diablo III was broken at its time of launch due to the terrible always-online DRM that causes so many to be unable to play something they paid for, yet pirates could play no problem. People defended it because "it's Diablo".

Steel Battalion for the Kinect was a defective product. No getting around that, it just didn't work, it was defective and if it were any other sort of product it would be recalled and probably couldn't legally be sold.

Now I'm not talking about games with glitches, in this day and age that's something that's bound to happen. Heck it's been happening since gaming started, but most of them aren't so bad they completely ruin the game. So why do we accept broken games?

Uhh...

What?

For one, NONE of those games has been accepted. Even Diablo, which is mostly accepted, has caught a lot of flack for this - and its not broken. Early on there were server problems, but now that's fixed. You don't have good Internet? Don't play an online game, its no more broken than WoW is because you need an Internet connection to play that too.

Steel Battalion... Have you not seen Yahtzee and Jim rag on about how shit it is? And the comments?
In no way is it accepted.

Same for WarZ, people bash the hell out of both of them.

Either you're question is "Why are broken games still made?" or it is "Why aren't people always complaining about the same broken games they've already complained about?".
The answer to both should be obvious.

The only broken games I see that are accepted are Bethesda games that, whilst not always broken or unplayable have ridiculous numbers of glitches and errors, often game breaking, and yet people brush it aside because "They're Bethesda, they do that", and even that's not that big a deal IMO 'cause they do slowly patch out many of the problems - even if some of their games are still downright unplayable for some people.

Ok, I'd like to clarify those were the big 3 games I thought of when writing this. I have seen people genuinely try to defend those games (save for steel battalion) and other terrible ones, and it boggles my mind that they would. And I don't say "terrible" as an opinion, the games were objectively broken or just didn't do what they were supposed to do.

Heck I'll add Brink to that list if you want. Short levels, parkour that made no difference, terrible AI, crap maps, a shitty single player, and you can't really do anything without playing for god knows how many hours. My friend said "You just didn't play it enough to get to the good stuff", and I responded "like you didn't with FFXIII?".

 

[IamLEAM1983]

Diablo III wasn't broken, OP. That's just your perspective of the product. Or if it was broken, it wasn't in the same way that The War Z was. Blizzard didn't sleaze out and hand us an unfinished and incomplete game. The Error 37 fiasco is a server-side issue; it has nothing to do with the code that's on the CD you purchased.

The War Z, however, is a case of desperate and unscrupulous devs hedging their bets by slapping microtransactions and a pay-to-win bundle on a product that wasn't functional at all to begin with. The problems weren't just server-side; The War Z wasn't fit to be delivered to consumers on the client side, period. Everything from the art assets to the animations screamed "Shady Developer". It even became apparent that Hammerpoint intended to abandon support for War Z ONE MONTH into its retail existence.

Why? Most likely because Sergey Titov's boatload of LLCs within other LLCs were part of a laundering scheme. Limited liability companies cannot be held accountable if their product tanks. You can prosecute them, but their status gives them more legal leeway than your standard incorporated company. In essence, Hammerpoint is legally allowed to simply take off with its subscribers' money.

Actiblizzion isn't an LLC. It's registered on the stock market. It has a shareholder base to report to. It has obligations. If Blizzard had pulled one fifth of what Hammerpoint did, you'd have a media blowout like nothing the gaming press has ever seen.

As unfortunately for you, comparing War Z to D3 can't possibly hold water. The auction house system works as intended, whereas the cash shop in The War Z is more or less designed for repeat visits - seeing as dying robs you of everything you've scavenged, including your purchased items.

One is a company that tends to overshoot just a tad but that nonetheless manages to operate within the boundaries of the law. The other is a scam shell constructed so a lucky few would have the opportunity to line their pockets and cut their losses before it's too late.

Diablo 3 was and is broken if you are only interested in hardcore mode. Nearly got killed by lag a few times, decided not to play anymore seeing as my character would definitely get killed by lag at some point, wasting all that time and effort.

Like I said, the definition of "broken" is a personal one for most of us. Lag is part and parcel of the Internet, so I don't see the occasional timeout as being a serious issue. Hell, I played Diablo II for years, and regularly ran into instances where my connection to the Battle.net servers would just drop out. I'd see the last few tiles of terrain my client was able to grab, and then a black void. Game usually crashed a few seconds later.

That never made me consider Diablo II as being broken.

Actually Diablo 3 was and still is unfinished. Major components were not complete upon release with the promise they'd be patched in later. PVP being one of those features. Blizzard has since discontinued working on PVP since they can't get it to function how they want.

Okay, that's fair. Minecraft is still technically unfinished, seeing as they're still adding to it. You could argue that any game that comes with a DLC release plan is technically "unfinished" as well.

But that still doesn't lug D3 into the "broken" category. The Sagrada Familia is unfinished, for instance. Not broken.