289: What Happens in New Vegas

[Johnny-Natrium]

I can't express how hugely ironic it is that the PC version is evidently more stable than its 360 counterpart.

It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

The 360 is just a fucked up abomination and that isn´t even adressing only the stability. A 360 game being less stable than the pc version of that game is nothing close to ironic. When you´re talking about a PS3 game compared to a pc version, sure.

 

[The Artificially Prolonged]

Playing on pc with about 140 hours on three playthroughs, I'm had some problems with New Vegas mainly crashing to desktop or freezing after a couple of hours of playing, not much a problem I save regularly but still a pain, these crashes might be to with the mods I was running because teh frequency of the crashes went up when I was trying different mods.

The only major bugs I've had is the one with the ncr firing on you for no reason, which was a pain because I was going for the ncr ending and had killed caesar and house, and didn't want to do yes mans ending again. And just recently I've got a bug with using the c-finder, where the firing animation starts but never finishes and is stuck on a loop always repeating the targeting sequence but never actually firing, which is a pain because I only got to use it the one time, without the bug happening

On the whole I still love this game, 3 playthroughs in and I'm still finding new things to do and explore. I will be glad when all the bugs are nicely patched up so I can enjoy New Vegas without the fear of CTDs looming over, ruining by fun.

 

[Sassafrass]

Well, look at it this way, at least you didn't lose two saves and about 30 hours of play time like I did. This was the first game I've very nearly lobbed out of a window. Happily though, it seems to be a lot more stable for me now and I'm on my...5th play-through, I think. But before then, the problems came thick and fast.

Spoiler: List of problems I had on 360.

Jerky framerate.
Companions vanishing, not at the Lucky 38 or where I found them, mostly a Boone problem.
About 5 crashes.
The loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooading times.
Enemies stuck in the ground.
Friendlies stuck in the ceiling.
Gambling where they always beat me by one on Blackjack, no matter what.
The bloody auto-save system somehow corrupting my saves and I had to turn it off.
Shooting controls and Pipboy lock up, denying me the ability to fire, ADS and heal myself for five seconds. This normally resulted in certain death.
In one of the unmarked train tunnels by Nellis Air Force Base, I fell through the floor and was put back by the entrance to the tunnel, rendering the tunnel unexplorable.
I was locked out of the Strip without warning, before the quest telling me the NCR would brand me a terrorist.
Aiming at someone with the Incendiary ammo equipped on the Anti-Material Rifle in VATS will make them catch fire without you firing a shot or losing any standing. (Admittedly, I have exploited the fuck out of this by using it on Deathclaws, NCR, anyone who might have stuff I can use. Used this glitch to get a key off of a Gatekeper to get back into the Strip.)
All Secruitrons on the Strip hated me despite me being a "Loveable Rascal."
All NCR at the NCR compound on the Strip attacked Lily for no reason, totally ignored me. Going into stealth mode told me I was "Detected", not "Caution" or "Danger".

I didn't get any quest breaking glitches, so I guess that is a good thing.

 

[zelda2fanboy]

I played this for near 100 hours or so and had about 3 or 4 crashes. It wasn't that bad, considering I don't even play most games as much as I played this one. Sure, I waited for the big patch, but it wasn't without issues. I don't get why when NPCs were aggressive for no reason, you didn't reload your save. If it looks like somethings happening that's not supposed to be, reload. Don't let the shit pile up, so to speak. I remember on the generator mission or whatever, the old woman from the dump and her dogs would spawn outside the power plant for no reason, the framerate would drop and they'd be aggressive. All I had to do was reload the autosave and it was fine. Of course, I had about 50 to 70 separate saves piled up by the end of an 90 to 120 minute session. That's just how you have to play these types of games, regardless of bugs. You don't want to wipe out a questline by picking a bad dialog option accidentally. That's why it's a game.

 

[Space Jawa]

"Now we're out of beta we're releasing on time."

It may be just me, but it seems that this is just an example of a larger problem, where with the prominence of digital distribution, too many developers seem to think they can use it as an excuse to fix bugs after a game releases, rather than catching and fixing as many of them as possible while they're still putting the game together.

I'm not saying that games were bug-free in the earlier days of software. But it does seem that post-release bug testing seems to be something that more and more people think they can get away with. And what do you know, they do.

Does anyone remember back in the day, when Ambrosia software made a promise one year that for every bug that showed up in their software, one of their staff would eat a real bug? And then they carried through on their promise? Just where has that kind of dedication to bug-free games gone these days?

 

[loc978]

Problem was with the medium... My first playthrough was with good ol' unpatched vanilla New Vegas on my PC. It locked up hard enough to cause a reboot once in the 130 hours I took exploring and questing. I had the odd bug here and there (mostly the previously mentioned clipping/map physics issues)... and the game crashed during a load screen on occasion (only delaying me the 15 seconds or so required to start the program back up and load the autosave)... but all-in-all, it had fewer bugs to it than vanilla Fallout 3, for me.

 

[MasterChief892039]

.

 

[ratman995]

People this is because it is a PC game being ported to a Console so they hadn't fixed all the bugs on the consoles before release. Its poor practice to release such a buggy game though, its a shame really it used to be that things were tested before they went on any console.

 

[oldtaku]

RE: Randomly attacking you. I had this issue on the PC too (one of the only big glitches I hit once I was able to get the game to run at all).

It may not be the same glitch given how buggy your experience was, but I've reproduced this one a couple times - you get a companion. The companion gets lost - it's somewhere in Nevada, not in your general vicinity - you may even have forgotten you have a companion. But is still your 'companion', so when you go someplace where they hate the faction your companion belongs to, now they hate you too. It's protagonist season!

 

[Mailman]

I honestly feel like I was tricked. For the longest time I avoided playing New Vegas (I got it on the 360) because of all the bugs. I started playing again when Dead Money was announced along with a patch to fix the bugs. Many of the glitches I've come across are still there. Is it too much to ask to be able to play the game I bought with my own money without running into something that makes the game unwinnable.

 

[Rad Party God]

Wow, how unfortunate, I only experienced like 2 or 3 crashes on my 100 hour play time, although I never actually finished the game, because just like Mr. Pitts, I may be honored as one of the best QA testers.

Luckily the rockets didn't crashed but the PC version had a huge game breaking bug, broken saves and Steam Cloud rewriting your saves. All of this has mostly been adressed, but I'm still fearful to find another bug. I guess New Vegas created a Bug Phobia for me.
I'll eventually finish the game someday, but not any tme soon.

 

[doriant]

Wow, Russ. Crashamania went wild on you, brother. But did you have to redo the entire first mission? The game should autosave every time you exit a building.
Still, here's hoping the engine Bethesda is making for Skyrim won't be this buggy.

 

[Gildan Bladeborn]

Long experience with Obsidian is the reason I haven't yet acquired New Vegas even though I'm the target audience for the game so much it hurts (making sense is for suckers). I figure, if I hold off for a while, I'll get the game at a sale price and they'll probably have fixed the really egregious bugs by that point - one can only hope!

It is not helping my resolve very much when people keep talking about how much bloody fun the game is when it isn't crashing though.

 

[slipknot4]

There's a big patch release for the PS3 version. Which version did you play, and with or without the bug fixes?[/quote]

It said a couple of times in the article 360.

 

[Sartan0]

I got to say: "Who would want to play this on the Xbox if they have a PC gaming rig?"

 

[Lord_Gremlin]

Strange, i only experienced 1 crash doing exactly the same thing as what stood in the article. Though i had it for the PC so that could be what made a difference.

Yes, it's because it was PC version.
1) You can turn off a lot of effects and other visual stuff that programmed by a monkey with it's arms showed in it's ass.
2) You can have a high-end PC which neglects memory leaks to a large extent.
Console versions are broken. In some countries shops are accepting opened copies of Fallout New Vegas for a full refund and apologize for it.

 

[Lucifron]

I can't express how hugely ironic it is that the PC version is evidently more stable than its 360 counterpart.

It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

The 360 is just a fucked up abomination and that isn´t even adressing only the stability. A 360 game being less stable than the pc version of that game is nothing close to ironic. When you´re talking about a PS3 game compared to a pc version, sure.

It is ironic regardless of the console's overall performance, as one of the supposed perks of consoles is that they avoid the stability issues that PCs are supposed to suffer from.

 

[auronvi]

Reading this, I am soooo happy I got it for the PC. At least when their are crashes and such, you can find ways to fix it on the internet. I played for 5 hours straight last night with no crashes... albeit after about 3 hours of playing with the sound dropping out for no reason and the crashing.

Run it in compatibility mode for XP and then reinstalled sound drivers and changed the settings to stereo and voila! No crashes and no more sound dropping. I can actually play the game now!

 

[Jason Tocci]

I love how the most common phrase on the Fallout wikia has got to be "This is a known bug." Props to you for turning your pain into something creative.