Thatrocketeer said:
That's because the WoW has been around for a long time. Every single update fixes bugs. They had alot of updates since 2004, and clients usually forces patches, that's why it doesn't seem so buggy when you play it. Try it vanilla, if it still exists, I'm sure it's just as buggy if not more so. As for mass effect, I never played the shit, and besides comparing mass effect with skyrim is irrelevant. ME's not a sandbox. You can't kill everyone you meet the moment that you meet them. You can't even attack in the cities. And not to mention exploration there is different since they only use small worldspaces compared to skyrim as well as travelling involves being in a car FFS.
I highly doubt that when WoW originally came out it had as many bugs as Skyrim. Would it have had more bugs then now? Certainly. To the level of Skyrim? Technical issues related to hardware and networking maybe, but Blizzard games are generally pretty well polished on release. Skyrim honestly was not ready to be released with the numbers of bugs it has. Spend the time to fix them - especially major ones like the PS3 one - and then release it, and you'll have an argument.
Also, Mass Effect is quite comparible. Whilst it is not all connected at once, not all of Skyrim is loaded at once either. Both load and unload areas as needed, Mass Effect merely takes a different route of doing so. Both have large amounts of variables capable of affecting different things [A main part of your 'Its complex to make a large sandbox world' argument], and both have large areas that are able to be explored as well. Hell, ME probably has more variables due to all the conversation options. Also; you don't have to travel in a car. Its just recommended as there can be strong enemies about and large distances to cover. Play the game before you comment on it.
Also, you can't kill everyone you meet when you first bump into them in Skyrim either. There are numerous essentials characters, and whether or not you can kill people really doesn't speak for the game's complexity and how hard it was to make, only how many NPCs have had a certain flag ticked for them.
Yeah, uh-huh. Spare me the excuses. If you can't do it just say so. Oh, and what was that? Oblivion was unplayable without patches? I'm sorry. I'm calling bullshit on that point. I was able to play and finish VANILLA oblivion without any of the needed patches. Oh, and that's not just me. Almost everyone who played oblivion have finished it in vanilla.
Believe what you will, but I have told you the truth; there is no reason for me to use the CK to try and fix a game I won't play.
Also, Oblivion was basically unplayable without the fanmade patch. Can you make it through it? Sometimes. At least earlier on there were several performance and crashing issues, game breaking bugs and normal bugs that the unofficial patch fixed. If Bethesda have finally gotten around to fixing some of that crap... Its about time. BTW, PC version here. And I wouldn't say almost everyone. You will find a large number of people who had problems.
I call bullshit on the Gothic 3 with no problems. You literally need the community patches to fix the stuttering as well as the sound on that game. Don't try to even lie by saying that you had no problem with it and it's not patched. Also, about that fix you're proposing, if you haven't even seen the the script they're using, I doubt that'd work.
I call bullshit on it not working. Stuttering sounds like a lag issue or something, so maybe I'm spared as I have a pretty good PC, if there are sound issues I'd like to no what with. I always have music off, as most in game music from all games annoys me, and I haven't had any notable problems with other sounds so far. I am still very able to play it and make it through the game.
Also, how much do you know about code?
If nothing or very little, I don't think you can comment on whether or not something will or won't work. You seem to assume it is some big mystical thing judging by your comments relating to it, and it is no such thing. If implemented properly, the fix I proposed should not interfere with anything (It uses its own variables, and only affects the variable related to completing that objective in a quest - which really Bethesda shouldn't have linked to anything else. If they have, odds are that's part of the problem) and is simple enough that it should get the job done.
I'm not hiding, that fact is still true, you still haven't made a triple a game, hell, you haven't even made a sandbox game.
Ok, lets turn this around.
Have you made a AAA game?
Have you made a sandbox game?
Have you done any code at all in something at a minimum level of C#?
If you answered no to all, then you cannot comment on this as you do not understand it, and should not follow along with heresay without understanding what you are talking about.
If yes to the final one, do you seriously think that it would be that hard to fix the more simple, yet still questbreaking, bugs in Skyrim?
If yes to either of the first two, please, link me to it. I am most intrigued.
Fan made patches are bigger because they always report to the community rather than reporting to Bethesda back then, and the oblivion fix is a compiled fix from many people from the nexus as well as different communities, who have much more time and composed of much more people than Bethesda's team, compressed into one. Compared to back then, more fans are at least reporting more to Bethesda now and we can see the results due to the stream of patches from November up till now by Bethesda.
Regardless, there is a QA department at the company that tests games. Blatantly obvious bugs do come up in these places. Hell, its these guys JOB to find these bugs. They report straight to the devs. Tell me that they wouldn't have found the ton of bugs in either game, I dare you.
As for the size; Bethesda wrote the engine. They have hired professionals on staff, and coded the game. If they are unable to fix even 200 of those 2,200 bugs themselves - being the professionals - and are outclassed by people who haven't used the engine before, and don't know the games code - I have to ask who the hell Bethesda are hiring. No, I don't expect them to fix every one of those 2,200 bugs within a month (Though seeing as the fixes are out there, it wouldn't be too hard for Bethesda to find out what they've done and implement such fixes in an official patch), but progress should be made.
I have also been largely disappointed by most Skyrim patches. They have either introduced new bugs (Backwards flying dragons), or fixed exploits (Enchanting Alchemy) that could have been fun for people to use instead of more pressing bugs that show up [Though recently I have read that there have been a few bug fixes, there are still numerous things broken].
Bethesda "gets away" with releasing these games because of two important reasons. First off, An open world sandbox game have a huge amount of codes in it, and everyone knows that. With so many variables, trying to fix a small thing can have an adverse effect on a numerous amount of things in the world. No one can deny that fact. The second reason is that because Bethesda creates games that are actually fun as well as a different experience from the usual games around. People are more willing to forgive since not much games can allow you so much freedom to explore, to kill, etc. in a whole world that they can explore and go wherever they want. No games are like Bethesda's games, that's why they "get away" with it.
1. Every game has a huge amount of code in it. That is no excuse. It seems you simply take the mob excuse of 'Its large and open, therefore it must be hard to code' and use it. As for trying to fix a small thing having an adverse reaction - it depends on the thing, and how badly the game was originally coded. Changing the Dragon AI ended up causing dragons to fly backwards. Somewhat expectable considering that the flight is tied into the AI, and really that sort of stuff should have been picked up by QA and testing. Things like the fix I proposed tie into basically nothing. If they do tie into other things, I really have to question why. Without a very good reason it screams at me of sloppy coding. A simple variable should not have the butterfly effect on an engine. A key variable, maybe. Something as simple as 'Is this objective complete'? No.
I can agree with you that they get away with it because people are accepting of the mistakes they make as they like the games, but it really is no excuse. QA and testing, as well as Programming should be doing their job and getting rid of the numerous bugs that plague all Bethesda games.
