How badly did Battlefield 4's save bug harm the game's reputation?

[Ambient_Malice]

In my view, Battlefield 4 is a pretty good darn FPS game with good gameplay, some amazing set pieces, great soundtrack, and a really powerful ending. But for many people, it seems, Battlefield 4 is a game that erased their saves. Repeatedly. A soul-crushing cycle which meant that a fair few people seemingly couldn't be bothered finishing the game due to the game repeatedly spitting in their face. DICE took forever to patch the issue.

On top of that, if people wanted to play some MP to deal with the heartache of their broken save files, they had to deal with a broken MP that took ages to get satisfactorily patched.

Were you affected by the save bug? Did you finish the game? How do you feel about games erasing/corrupting saves compared to other serious bugs?

 

[RedBeta22]

I played through the campaign twice, on 360 and One, never encountered the save bug. I did have my campaign progress erased on Battlefield 3 though. Never did bother finishing 3.

 

[Ambient_Malice]

I played through the campaign twice, on 360 and One, never encountered the save bug. I did have my campaign progress erased on Battlefield 3 though. Never did bother finishing 3.

When I first played BF3, I encountered bugs ranging from AI navigation failing (fatal in a game where the AI opens lots of doors) to fistfights with invisible characters. Got patched reasonably quickly, though.

I'm very curious which platforms had higher save corruption rates for BF4. I've seen a lot of reports for PC and PS3. Apparently cloud saving played a role.

 

[RedBeta22]

I realized I didn't answer your question in my reply. "How badly did Battlefield 4's save bug harm the game's reputation?" I don't think it harmed it at all. Battlefield 4 was a buggy mess at launch, not just the save bug, everything was broken. But DICE LA put in a whole bunch of work into fixing things and now people love BF4.

 

[baddude1337]

Considering the main pull for Battlefield is the multiplayer, probably not by a huge amount. And it probably took so long to fix as, being a mainly multiplayer title, online had a plethora of bugs and issues to fix first. To be fair, Battlefield 4 in general harmed the series' reputation after it's incredibly broken release. Hell, Even EA fessed up to it being buggy as all hell.

I can't say I enjoyed 3's campaign that much, or modern linear shooter campaigns in general, so never picked up 4. I prefer BF 2 and it's mods like Project Reality and Forgotten Hope 2 with bot support. Battlefield solo is more fun as an open sandbox than a short, linear campaign IMHO.

 

[RJ 17]

To be fair, Battlefield 4 in general harmed the series' reputation after it's incredibly broken release. Hell, Even EA fessed up to it being buggy as all hell.

My favorite part about all that was how DICE came out and said "All these complaints coming from the beta players are bullshit! Our game is perfect and awesome!"

OT: Pretty much what baddude said. I doubt any issues in the singleplayer really hurt the game's reputation considering how - like CoD - most people get Battlefield for the multiplayer...which had a plethora of game-breaking bugs.

My personal favorite was the Death Shield...the fact that the game failed to remove the hit-box for recently killed players, meaning that people standing behind those players were completely invincible. In some cases, the Death Shield even reflected damage back on the attacker. Behold:


It was stuff like this in the multiplayer that hurt the game's reputation far more than a bug deleting save files in the singleplayer.

 

[Ambient_Malice]

OT: Pretty much what baddude said. I doubt any issues in the singleplayer really hurt the game's reputation considering how - like CoD - most people get Battlefield for the multiplayer...which had a plethora of game-breaking bugs.

It's a bit of a complex issue. I don't think game devs have a clear idea on the topic of "do people buy this game for the MP or SP?" What is clear in CoD's case is a fairly high percentage of players finish the campaigns. (CoD did start out as a singleplayer-oriented PC game, after all.) Battlefield is fuzzier. One reason we don't have Bad Company 3 is DICE aren't sure what players liked about the old ones. Did they like the MP? Did they like the story? The characters?

I think a big contributing factor is the SP and MP fans don't share the same online social circles.

What is clear is that there is a big audience that won't touch FPS games if they have no proper campaign/storyline. EVOLVE and Titanfall are examples. We just don't have data breaking down CoD/Battlefield's SP vs MP user bases.

 

[RJ 17]

OT: Pretty much what baddude said. I doubt any issues in the singleplayer really hurt the game's reputation considering how - like CoD - most people get Battlefield for the multiplayer...which had a plethora of game-breaking bugs.

It's a bit of a complex issue. I don't think game devs have a clear idea on the topic of "do people buy this game for the MP or SP?" What is clear in CoD's case is a fairly high percentage of players finish the campaigns. (CoD did start out as a singleplayer-oriented PC game, after all.) Battlefield is fuzzier. One reason we don't have Bad Company 3 is DICE aren't sure what players liked about the old ones. Did they like the MP? Did they like the story? The characters?

I think a big contributing factor is the SP and MP fans don't share the same online social circles.

What is clear is that there is a big audience that won't touch FPS games if they have no proper campaign/storyline. EVOLVE and Titanfall are examples. We just don't have data breaking down CoD/Battlefield's SP vs MP user bases.

Evolve and Titanfall's shortcomings weren't based around the fact that there were no single player campaigns, it's the fact that they were both built around gimmicks...and those gimmicks got pretty old pretty fast. With Evolve there were only a handful of maps and what, 3 monsters? The games weren't really that complex. Either the Hunters manage to catch the monster at lvl 1 and kill it, the monster gets to lvl 2 and can actually survive long enough to run away, or the monster gets to lvl 3 and kills everyone. Every game was essentially the same.

So too was that the case with Titanfall. There were only a few mech types, not enough to provide any nuance or diversity. I don't know how many maps there were, but I don't think there were that many, and there weren't enough game types. As such - just like with Evolve - the gimmick the game is based around gets pretty old pretty fast. Everyone I met that played TF said that they really enjoyed it while they were playing, but got bored with it in 6 hours. This isn't because there was no SP, it's because there wasn't enough to keep the MP interesting and fresh.

Take CoD and Battlefield for instance, they both have their draws. CoD has a crap-ton of game types and incredible amounts of customization for your character, Battlefield offers massive games on massive maps with numerous different vehicles. Quite simply: they have enough MP content to mix things up and keep it interesting...for those interested in such games.

I'd imagine that people complete the campaign because it's there and because "why not"? But I don't think there's that many people who would honestly tell you "I buy each new CoD/BF for the campaign, I have little interest in the MP." Not saying that such people don't exist, just that I'd imagine they're in the minority.

And I'm not discounting the fact that yes, a bug that deletes your saved games really sucks, but in terms of the question in your topic: it's BF4's multiplayer bugs that killed it's reputation, not it's campaign bugs.

 

[Ambient_Malice]

Evolve and Titanfall's shortcomings weren't based around the fact that there were no single player campaigns, it's the fact that they were both built around gimmicks...and those gimmicks got pretty old pretty fast. With Evolve there were only a handful of maps and what, 3 monsters? The games weren't really that complex. Either the Hunters manage to catch the monster at lvl 1 and kill it, the monster gets to lvl 2 and can actually survive long enough to run away, or the monster gets to lvl 3 and kills everyone. Every game was essentially the same.

So too was that the case with Titanfall. There were only a few mech types, not enough to provide any nuance or diversity. I don't know how many maps there were, but I don't think there were that many, and there weren't enough game types. As such - just like with Evolve - the gimmick the game is based around gets pretty old pretty fast. Everyone I met that played TF said that they really enjoyed it while they were playing, but got bored with it in 6 hours. This isn't because there was no SP, it's because there wasn't enough to keep the MP interesting and fresh.

The problem is the audience that simply isn't interested in MP, or who prefer to play solo. These people don't care about these flaws because they don't buy the game when they discover it lacks a proper campaign. These are the people who buy the game, finish it, and then shelve it -- maybe to replay 6 months down the track. In a massive series like CoD, that can be millions of sales.

Take Battlefront III. The kinda people who wanna recreate the Rogue Squadron experience mixed with even a Battlefront II-esque minimalistic campaign are not interested in this new game.

edit:
The audience that buys games for SP, plays them, and then moves on is kinda invisible. It's interesting to note that CoD games (and Battlefield games) maintain fairly high piracy rates even as new entries and competing titles appear -- the people pirating CoD for PC aren't gonna be playing MP. I'd like to see some decent research done on the demographics of FPS games, MP and SP.

 

[Dragonbums]

It depends on how long they left that bug untreated.

I mean, Pokemon X and Y also had a save bug where your entire save file shat itself if you saved in specific (and at the time unknown.) parts of Kalos City. The most used and important location in game.

It didn't harm the game's reputation at all.

 

[RJ 17]

Snip.

Without such research, the question is "what is this game known for?" Games like BF and CoD are known for their MP, not their campaign. As I said in my previous post: I'm sure there are some that buy those games because they want to play an FPS campaign, however compared to the demographic that buys those games because their primary interest is the MP, those that buy the game for it's campaign are in the minority. Just look at the advertising and marketing: what are all the big announcements that are revealed with regards to BF and CoD? Is it about how thrilling the campaign is? Or what new features the MP has?