Are we finally not letting them slide on the "they make open worlds and I can pick everything up so it's ok that their games are a mess" excuse now? I hope so.
A crap ton of great games are very mod friendly too, so the whole "mods will fix it so it's ok" excuse has been dead for like 12 years.
Sorry I'm ranting. -Former Bethsoft fanboy that expects the worst.
This is not as an easy of a task as you make it out to be, and becomes more difficult every year as the cost of creating an AAA game increases.
Software is complex, and the more complex it gets, the more bugs there are. There’s no such thing as bug-free software, and for every bug/feature you think “this should have been obvious to anyone making a game like this”, there are hundreds of other bugs/features that you didn’t think of but someone else thinks “should have been obvious way before release”.
(disclaimer: i am not involved in game development professionally, although i have been a software engineer professionally for decades. however these concepts apply to software development both inside and outside of the gaming industry. i also find it disgusting when gamers put on their “armchair software developer” hats and talk about how easy it should be to write a game without “whatever issue i’m currently dealing with”)
Tldr: still letting them slide
Planning. They had set a goal, a deadline, a budget, assigned teams. To get some predictable result.
If a buggy mess isn't their goal, they fucked up something else on their multiple releases. Like not meating deadlines and leaving little time to test and fix things. Or not having clear communication between departments. Or scrapping things they can't implement in a hurry to launch at least some build (to fix it later?).
Their games are impressive and individual parts of them are cool. But why are they so janky as a whole? And do they just accept it?
Besides the old corpse of an engine and it's CS, they have challenges like creating a big open-world with NPCs to qualify as a Beth-game, to update visuals and physics every time, to stay relevant with new trends in industry. But they still decide they would make it – and then launch F76 as it is.
It's not toxic to say their production cycle is fucked and they sell betas. No shame in buying and enjoying them too. Why to defend them on repeated failure to deliver a working product tho?
Software bugs are not aware of, nor do they care about, all of your plans, deadlines, budgets, assigned teams, predictable results, communication between departments, or anything else. By definition, software bugs are unpredicted results. That’s what a bug is: a problem you weren’t prepared for.
Nobody’s goal is a buggy mess, nobody intends to miss a deadline. What happens is some people spend as much time on something until they’re told not to, and this becomes a business decision that comes down to estimated cost of developer time, estimated cost of not implementing it, and sometimes the bug that you care about the most is not prioritized, because of the “cost to fix” vs “cost to not fix” to project managers and executives.
You’re not special. The bugs you want fixed aren’t special. The developer who wants to fix this bug out of personal pride isn’t special, nor is their work. The only thing that is special is developer time vs profit from that developer’s time, and that decision is not made by anyone with any level of passion for the project. Just “cost of doing this” and “cost of not doing this” vs profit when doing/not-doing, which is a decision based on money only.
The whole meme of this post is a clipping issue; in real life, clipping is physically impossible, it would require two things to exist in the same physical space, and the physics that enforce that in the real world are free; we don’t have to check to make sure the physical world is mathematically possible. In game development, there is a mathematical/time cost to every interaction that real life solves with physics. There’s no way to tell a computer “don’t do anything that isn’t physically possible”, because in-game objects are not physical objects and are not affected by physical reality at all, because they are abstract mathematical concepts that are not grounded in physics, just pure math.
Hello friend. I'm also a recovering Bethesda fanboy. I absolutely refuse to be excited about upcoming spacegame until I see reviews and real gameplay footage.
I will not be burned like I was with Fallout 76 and Redfall.
In the defense of Bethesda. They didnt develop redfall simply published it, that fuck up is on arkane. As for 76 I honestly think that is its own weird little income generator, that is to say its a cash grab.
I will probably be buying starfield, but that has more to do with the fact I want to form my own opinions before reviewers get in on it.
They didn't make Redfall.
But yeah I'll be watching actual gameplay videos before I give them full price for the space game. That direct they did looked pretty bad to me. The characters were stiff with bad facial animations, and the jokes they were highlighting were so flat it was painful to watch. I definitely do not trust thier word when it comes to the RPG elements.
Looks like they got a new animator finally at least.
Fully aware they didn't make Redfall.
I'm also a recovering Arkane fanboy...
Breaks my brain that the same studio that produced Prey can release something as uninspired and half baked as Redfall
Games are hard to make. Lower your expectations a little.
Their games are great meaning they are skilled at that AND they are mismanaged to ship undercooked products every time.
They aren't alone in that. But there are still products where bugs are a rare occasion rather than a part of their brand. They sell millions of copies, but keep doing that. It is right to point out Bethesda sucks in that department.
Plenty of games studios are able to make games that are not janky messes. Letting one studio slide just because you can pick up the plates and cheese off tables is pretty low on the achievement scale these days.
That's if those plates and other items you can't use for anything don't explode all around the room when you walk in.
It's not 2004 anymore. My expectations aren't in the ground.
They make some of the best games ever. Those games are also usually too buggy at launch.
I'd much rather play Skyrim and have to download a mod to fix bugs than play a game that's much less interesting and has no significant bugs.
It's a tradeoff and Bethesda's games usually come out heads and shoulders above the rest even after detracting "points" for the bugs.
Complementary bowl provided to allow access to your seat.