Obsidian: Fallout New Vegas Has Bugs Because It's Big

[silver wolf009]

Well by that logic huges games like Just Cause 2 and Minecraft should be, to qoute Yathzee, "Bugged up the ass". Being big dosen't automaticly equate being bugged. Really though if your not going to take the time out to iron out the kinks, dont release it yet.

 

[Canid117]

Sure there are obscure bugs that are hard to catch but from what I am hearing there are bugs all over the fucking game that should have been spotted within the first hour of testing that still got through.

 

[Racecarlock]

To all those who haven't encountered glitches yet. Just because they haven't happened to YOU doesn't mean they don't exist. To all those telling us to stop whining. Well, we paid lots of money for a game. If we can barely play said game due to glitches, that's a problem. Now I don't have new vegas, and haven't encountered any glitches in fallout 3, but that doesn't mean everyone else hasn't. Finally, to all those who tell us "You try coding a game in your basement". Well, I friggin wish I could, that way I could just make myself all of my dream games and be happy forever, but I can't. Also, this wasn't a one man team like on minecraft, this is a team of professional developers that are supposed to know what they're doing, and from what i've heard, some players have had the same glitches in new vegas that were encountered in fallout 3 and they really should have taken a look and fixed that bug in the engine as well. I know game making is not instant and it's difficult, but these guys are supposed to learn from experiance here, and not make the same mistakes twice. Not to mention that if I had spent money on this i'd be pissed, because it's a waste of money. After all, what's the most important aspect in any game? The ability to play it! If you buy a game that doesn't work, you have the right to be pissed, especially if that damn thing was expensive. Also, freezing is a serious problem, unless you aren't frustrated at losing hours of work in a second long freeze up, and testers REALLY REALLY should be able to catch that. You can say New Vegas is fun all you want, but other people won't know if they can't even play it. See where i'm going with that?

 

[AWAR]

It's understandable, all games have bugs, particularly rpgs. I recall watching a behind the scenes video from Oblivion's special edition DVD. Beta testing was just insane. They got a guy playing the game from every different way 24/7.And still oblivion was pretty buggy. Personally, I only encountered the annoying performance bug in NEw Vegas when there were a lot of NPCs around. Fortunately there was an unofficial patch for it now it runs as smoothly as fallout 3. This reminds me of the first time I installed F3, it was a terrible experience. The game would crash every 5 minutes and the sound quality was terrible. Again, an unofficial fix let me play the game, 3 months after I bought it! Imagine waiting for a game to be released for so many years and when you got it, you can't play it Eventually bethesda released a patch for this but that was like many months after the unofficial one. This just proves how important the community really is.

What it boils down to these days though is playability. There are some bugs that don't even allow you to play the game. Those need to be resolved as quickly as possible.

 

[Shpamtastic]

Look... I have played New Vegas for over 40 hours so far... yes there are bugs, but nothing that really killed it for me. (OK... the disappearing save game was annoying, but it was very quickly fixed).

I have also found bugs in ALL of the other "Huge" games that are being kicked around. WOW, Oblivion, Fallout 3, Dragon Age. I have also read patch notes for many of these (some of the bugs I *didn't* get are just amazing).

To all of those who are saying that there is no excuse: show me one game... just one... that wasn't buggy on release. And I am NOT talking not buggy for you but not buggy for anyone. Show me a game that was NEVER patched because it was perfect.

That being said, some games are more buggy than others and Obsidian has a fair share of these. However, the concept and art of New Vegas looked amazing so I gave it a chance. I was surprised by how much less buggy and more polished it was than my expectations and the story has not disappointed me so far.

 

[Sir Prize]

As much I love this game and have managed to avoid game breakers so far, it's just not right. I have experienced a minor bug, in which an NPC got stuck in a table, a glaring bug near the start of the game. Yes, I love New Vegas but most companies would be able to avoid something so freaking obvious.

Look... I have played New Vegas for over 40 hours so far... yes there are bugs, but nothing that really killed it for me. (OK... the disappearing save game was annoying, but it was very quickly fixed).

I have also found bugs in ALL of the other "Huge" games that are being kicked around. WOW, Oblivion, Fallout 3, Dragon Age. I have also read patch notes for many of these (some of the bugs I *didn't* get are just amazing).

To all of those who are saying that there is no excuse: show me one game... just one... that wasn't buggy on release. And I am NOT talking not buggy for you but not buggy for anyone. Show me a game that was NEVER patched because it was perfect.

That being said, some games are more buggy than others and Obsidian has a fair share of these. However, the concept and art of New Vegas looked amazing so I gave it a chance. I was surprised by how much less buggy and more polished it was than my expectations and the story has not disappointed me so far.

Yes, all games tend to have bugs, including some truly evil ones in Oblivion. Does it make game breaking bugs right, hell no. They should be checking through their produce for this kind of thing and should have as few a bugs as possible. They should not be sending out something that becomes unplayable because of a bug they couldn't find because of obiviously poor testing.

 

[XShrike]

Is everyone saying that it is the same size only comparing the map size? It maybe the same map size but, it is denser. There is more to do and there are more things interacting with each other.

I haven't really ran into these bugs people are foaming at the mouth about though. With any software now you run into the time it takes to find all the bugs against the cost to do this. Games like this it is harder as there are so many possible combinations and reactions. Even if I eventually do I am playing it on PC so the console can help me get around some of them and it gets patched much more often.

 

[Bobzer77]

Didn't this happen already with Kotor2?

Tsk Tsk... Some people never learn.

 

[Jennacide]

Poor Obsidian. They did the best they could with what they had, and I will vehemently defend New Vegas as being superior to FO3 and closer to the originals. And I loved, and still do, Fallout 3.

The shame is they can't come right out and say what a lot of us already know: IT'S THE ENGINE'S FAULT. They built the game on a nine year old game engine, that was never stable in the first place. Anyone that has ever opened the TES Construction Kit, or the GECK knows what I'm talking about. Even thier software to make the game is a horrible, buggy mess. Worse yet, what Bethesda gave them to make New Vegas was the bones of FO3 to build on top of. Don't believe me? Open the GECK, the amount of legacy shit that is still in there is baffling. I know what you're thinking "but that's Obsidian's fault, they should of removed it!" And you'd be right to think that, until you actually try to remove it yourself and see how epicly bad it fucks the game up, because removing elements from ESMs is dangerous work in such an unreliable engine.

Bethesda better goddam bide thier time with TES:V and Fallout 4 and wait for Rage to come out and see how stable idTech 5 is. (It's id made, that's a good sign usually.) If it's half as awesome as Carmac claims, they better throw Gamebryo in the goddam trash and use idTech 5.

 

[Blunderman]

No matter how you spin it, this is a bullshit excuse. Since when is it acceptable to fail just because it's hard?

 

[Aulleas123]

Hey, I remember when Bethesda made this excuse. Oh wait, no I don't, because their game didn't have horrific save game or loading bugs.

 

[Something Amyss]

[sub]Haven't actually encountered a bug yet, but you all seem content raging about it, so I'll keep quiet...[/sub]

OT: Bit of a... weak excuse, to be honest. Then again, big games like Oblivion and Red Dead Redemption all have their fair share of glitches. I guess there's some truth in their statement.

there's some truth in it, but not for that reason. Over the last couple of years it's become more and more popular to release then patch, because it means you hit the deadlines. Is that always the case? No, but I'm surprised so many people on here (including some of the reporters) treat it as a new thing.

The fact is, even with a large team, it's probably easier to do it this way, but the argument is that it has to be this way. And when we're talking about small stuff, I agree. You can't plan for everything, and people will come up with new ideas you never thought of.

Hell, people do it to my tabletop RPGs all the time, and I don't even have to worry about operating systems and the like.

But time and again, their games have featured large bugs, serious issues that QA should be catching. If it was one game with an isolated bug, or even a couple, it'd be forgiveable. But time and time again? That's more like your neighbour backing into your mailbox every day as he goes to work. Once might be an accident. Twice, maybe. But after the tenth time, you start to think he has a grudge or doesn't care.

At this point, there's virtually no excuse for people being surprised outside of basic pattern recognition issues. Red Dead is another example from another studio, yes, but it's only slightly more forgivable in the sense that it doesn't happen all the time. Though Rockstar has their own issues, but I digress. It's not even large games that are getting buddier, either, and that's a huge indicator that it's not the size of the game. Obsidian makes big games, but that appears to be largely incidental to their problems.

Especially since, as many people have mentioned, some of these bugs (save issues) are big big big ones.

 

[Merkavar]

yeah some of the bugs are fine. but the ones that have been around since oblivion but werent in fallout 3 shouldnt be in new vegas.

 

[SomethingUnrelated]

[sub]Haven't actually encountered a bug yet, but you all seem content raging about it, so I'll keep quiet...[/sub]

OT: Bit of a... weak excuse, to be honest. Then again, big games like Oblivion and Red Dead Redemption all have their fair share of glitches. I guess there's some truth in their statement.

there's some truth in it, but not for that reason. Over the last couple of years it's become more and more popular to release then patch, because it means you hit the deadlines. Is that always the case? No, but I'm surprised so many people on here (including some of the reporters) treat it as a new thing.

The fact is, even with a large team, it's probably easier to do it this way, but the argument is that it has to be this way. And when we're talking about small stuff, I agree. You can't plan for everything, and people will come up with new ideas you never thought of.

Hell, people do it to my tabletop RPGs all the time, and I don't even have to worry about operating systems and the like.

But time and again, their games have featured large bugs, serious issues that QA should be catching. If it was one game with an isolated bug, or even a couple, it'd be forgiveable. But time and time again? That's more like your neighbour backing into your mailbox every day as he goes to work. Once might be an accident. Twice, maybe. But after the tenth time, you start to think he has a grudge or doesn't care.

At this point, there's virtually no excuse for people being surprised outside of basic pattern recognition issues. Red Dead is another example from another studio, yes, but it's only slightly more forgivable in the sense that it doesn't happen all the time. Though Rockstar has their own issues, but I digress. It's not even large games that are getting buddier, either, and that's a huge indicator that it's not the size of the game. Obsidian makes big games, but that appears to be largely incidental to their problems.

Especially since, as many people have mentioned, some of these bugs (save issues) are big big big ones.

I completely agree with your point on the save bug, that's an error that's pretty damn inexcusable, and frankly, should have been rectified before release. In an ideal world, every bug, glitch, and error would be patched before release, but my point was that, in very large games, it can be difficult to find every last problem with the game, and fix it.

While small numbers of bugs are excusable, as are games with perhaps larger numbers of bugs that are few and far between, developers that consistently release glitchy games, such as Obsidian, are pushing their luck. There will always be a stronger correlation between game size and number of identifiable bugs, but repeatedly failing to treat the problem isn't doing Obsidian any favours.

That's what I think, anyway...

 

[Something Amyss]

I completely agree with your point on the save bug, that's an error that's pretty damn inexcusable, and frankly, should have been rectified before release. In an ideal world, every bug, glitch, and error would be patched before release, but my point was that, in very large games, it can be difficult to find every last problem with the game, and fix it.

While small numbers of bugs are excusable, as are games with perhaps larger numbers of bugs that are few and far between, developers that consistently release glitchy games, such as Obsidian, are pushing their luck. There will always be a stronger correlation between game size and number of identifiable bugs, but repeatedly failing to treat the problem isn't doing Obsidian any favours.

That's what I think, anyway...

Yeah, and I was agreeing for the most part. Not sure I came off that way because, well, I was tired and my mind went tangential.

I want NV, but decided to hold off based on the knowledge of past instances. They seem to be an industry leader in terms of releasing glitchy games, so I'll probably hold off. It's a shame, because I loved F3.

...But at leas I have time to finish it now.

 

[theultimateend]

Interestingly, or maybe not, Just Cause 2 is utterly daunting in size and I have had almost 0 problems with it.

The problems I did have are because my onboard sound is dying . So not the games fault at all.

Relatively speaking Minecraft is a much larger game and if we are just counting single player it has far less bugs to speak of.

It also, up till recently, only had one person working on it.

How big is Obsidian again?

I would never blame any company for making a flawless game, but the bugs people are complaining about in games like Fallout NV and most stuff out of Electronic Arts are bugs that you could find just by taking the test copy to your house, installing it on a machine not used to build the damn thing, and running it for 30 minutes.

 

[icame]

Weak excuse. The rest of the game makes me forgive the bugs though

 

[Zer_]

Interestingly, or maybe not, Just Cause 2 is utterly daunting in size and I have had almost 0 problems with it.

The problems I did have are because my onboard sound is dying . So not the games fault at all.

They outsourced their QA to a firm here in Montreal known as Babel. We generally do a good job in QA. Better than those philipino places who can't form complete sentences to describe their bugs... Yeah... That's how bad the gaming industry is getting.

 

[theultimateend]

Interestingly, or maybe not, Just Cause 2 is utterly daunting in size and I have had almost 0 problems with it.

The problems I did have are because my onboard sound is dying . So not the games fault at all.

They outsourced their QA to a firm here in Montreal known as Babel. We generally do a good job in QA. Better than those philipino places who can't form complete sentences to describe their bugs... Yeah... That's how bad the gaming industry is getting.

Well thank you very much. I had a damn good time and it was worth every penny .