PS3 Mass Effect 2 Workaround Revealed, Patch in the Works

[squid5580]

That's quite a thing to slip through testing, especially for BioWare.

Still, at least they seem to have responded fairly quickly.

"As an alternative workaround, PS3 owners can also avoid the Mass Effect 2 save bug by purchasing an Xbox."

Fucking hell, the Escapist is flame-baiting more than the users at the minute xD

It went through the testing phase. That is how Bioware tests their games. They release it, wait for the customer feedback then fix the issues. At least that is how it has gone on for their console releases. Afterall there is no excuse to have things like spelling errors if the game was tested properly.

The last line is epic for its lulz. I am jumpin out now before the war starts.

No, that's how Obsidian tests their games, this error is very rare, it's not surprising it wasn't found.

A spelling error or two is acceptable if you have as much text in the game as Mass Effect 2 does, it probably has a better spelling error to text ratio than most novels.

Lets be fair. This is how most companies test their games these days. And the only ones who deserve any leeway is when it comes to problems with MP. Afterall you can't test what will happen when millions of people are playing it.

And yes I am aware making a game is hard work. Just like 99.9% of jobs in the world. So until I start getting partially refunded for my time and frustration either waiting for the patch or suffering through the bugs that excuse isn't going to hold water. Bethesda is a great example of this. For those of us who bought Fallout 3 pre patch they gave us a M$ theme for our dashboard. Sure it isn't much and not something I would buy but at least it was a small apology for their fuck up. And bugs are their fuck up for a product we are paying premium money for.

And for the record danpascooch paragraph #2 was not directed at you personally. I just know someone is going to read paragraph 1 and respond with "making games is hard, you shouldn't expect perfection" which I don't. I just expect the game to function flawlessly on the console it was designed for.

If you expect the game to function flawlessly you obviously don't know any programming. That is literally an impossible goal. And I'm speaking as someone who is currently enrolled for a Game Development degree.

There are a million billion ways things can go wrong, and many only happen under the perfect circumstances, it's not like a book where there are X amount of spelling errors to fix then the book is flawlessly working.

As it stands, on average 20% of development resources are spent making a piece of software, and a fucking ridiculous 80% is spent debugging it. If you held most games to your standards, they would take over a decade to make.

There are also diminishing returns, the more time you spend debugging, the more time and money it takes to find each bug, it's impossible to find them all, it would take years and years and so much money we'd end up with AAA titles with the complexity and content of Pac-Man.

You are right I don't know programming. What I do know is I spend $70+ for a game. And when I spend money on a product I expect it to work the way it should. Not crash if I approach the Bloody Diner from the south instead of the north. I expect when I walk into a dungeon that I will be walking into a dungeon and not into some black pit of nothing. I expect when a bunch of enemies start swarming me the framerate will not drop to 0 because there is just too many to process (and I also expect the developers to understand the limitation of the console they are putting it on and not put more enemies than the CPU can handle just so they can add some fancy tagline on the box). What I don't expect them to do is to jack the price 10 more bucks because making games has become more complex when they, according to you, haven't even mastered the basics yet.

 

[Danpascooch]

That's quite a thing to slip through testing, especially for BioWare.

Still, at least they seem to have responded fairly quickly.

"As an alternative workaround, PS3 owners can also avoid the Mass Effect 2 save bug by purchasing an Xbox."

Fucking hell, the Escapist is flame-baiting more than the users at the minute xD

It went through the testing phase. That is how Bioware tests their games. They release it, wait for the customer feedback then fix the issues. At least that is how it has gone on for their console releases. Afterall there is no excuse to have things like spelling errors if the game was tested properly.

The last line is epic for its lulz. I am jumpin out now before the war starts.

No, that's how Obsidian tests their games, this error is very rare, it's not surprising it wasn't found.

A spelling error or two is acceptable if you have as much text in the game as Mass Effect 2 does, it probably has a better spelling error to text ratio than most novels.

Lets be fair. This is how most companies test their games these days. And the only ones who deserve any leeway is when it comes to problems with MP. Afterall you can't test what will happen when millions of people are playing it.

And yes I am aware making a game is hard work. Just like 99.9% of jobs in the world. So until I start getting partially refunded for my time and frustration either waiting for the patch or suffering through the bugs that excuse isn't going to hold water. Bethesda is a great example of this. For those of us who bought Fallout 3 pre patch they gave us a M$ theme for our dashboard. Sure it isn't much and not something I would buy but at least it was a small apology for their fuck up. And bugs are their fuck up for a product we are paying premium money for.

And for the record danpascooch paragraph #2 was not directed at you personally. I just know someone is going to read paragraph 1 and respond with "making games is hard, you shouldn't expect perfection" which I don't. I just expect the game to function flawlessly on the console it was designed for.

If you expect the game to function flawlessly you obviously don't know any programming. That is literally an impossible goal. And I'm speaking as someone who is currently enrolled for a Game Development degree.

There are a million billion ways things can go wrong, and many only happen under the perfect circumstances, it's not like a book where there are X amount of spelling errors to fix then the book is flawlessly working.

As it stands, on average 20% of development resources are spent making a piece of software, and a fucking ridiculous 80% is spent debugging it. If you held most games to your standards, they would take over a decade to make.

There are also diminishing returns, the more time you spend debugging, the more time and money it takes to find each bug, it's impossible to find them all, it would take years and years and so much money we'd end up with AAA titles with the complexity and content of Pac-Man.

You are right I don't know programming. What I do know is I spend $70+ for a game. And when I spend money on a product I expect it to work the way it should. Not crash if I approach the Bloody Diner from the south instead of the north. I expect when I walk into a dungeon that I will be walking into a dungeon and not into some black pit of nothing. I expect when a bunch of enemies start swarming me the framerate will not drop to 0 because there is just too many to process (and I also expect the developers to understand the limitation of the console they are putting it on and not put more enemies than the CPU can handle just so they can add some fancy tagline on the box). What I don't expect them to do is to jack the price 10 more bucks because making games has become more complex when they, according to you, haven't even mastered the basics yet.

First off, the very nature of game development means it cannot be mastered.

Secondly, allocation of resources and diminishing returns, what is worth it for you? To have a game with one or two glitches, or to have a game that takes ten years to make, and costs 5 times as much, because they had to playtest for YEARS to find those last 6 glitches. That's no exaggeration, Black Ops has thousands of years of playtime and they are still finding NEW GLITCHES that were unknown before, could you imagine how long it would take to hire playtesters and pay them to log thousands of hours? It's absolutely impossible.

Games that are as glitchy as New Vegas are unacceptable, but to say games should have no glitches betrays an ignorance of the nature of game development and coding. Games are never going to be glitch free, because of the diminishing returns it's just not worth it when they could spend the time finding the last few glitches making new content, it's all about how many glitches the game has compared to other games, and I think Mass Effect 2 is a perfect example of a very good ratio.

 

[Lethos]

I stand by my conclusion that this whole bug was just the game's way of telling BioWare that Genesis sucked.

I honestly have no sympathy for anyone affected by this. Seriously guys, if you're going to play Mass Effect, play it on a platform where you get the entire saga and one of the greatest stories ever told in a video game isn't completed ruined in a 15-minute comic strip. (That's not a knock on the PS3; if the system had gotten the full original game as well, I'd be happy. But anyone who plays ME2 on PS3 is not a Mass Effect fan and never will be.)

Get of your high horse. Microsoft is finding it hard to reach your crack with you up there anyway.

I bought ME for PC and for Xbox 360. I then sold my 360 before ME2 came out so I could get a PS3. I was thrilled when ME2 got released on PS3 because it meant I could play the sequel that I never had an opportunity to play (my comp isn't powerful enough to handle it).

However little but-hurt fan's like you insist on retaining this elitist attitude. Grow up you toddler.

And ignorant console fanboys like yourself insist on making this a flame war even when I EXPLICITLY SAID that if PS3 had gotten the entire saga, I'd have been fine with it. How is that being elitist, when I'm saying PS3 owners should have received better treatment than this?

You've been reported. Go the hell away. The Escapist would be a better place without people like you.

How is "anyone who plays ME2 on PS3 is not a Mass Effect fan and never will be" anything but elitist? You insist that people who play a game on another console are not fan's of a series and then get all defensive when someone say's that that is wrong.

I'm glad to see that you clarify that you would be okay with it if we got the first game as well. I will just have to hope that it's released on PS3 so I can gain your approval and be called a true fan of the series.

And BTW, I'm not reporting you because unlike you, I don't say thing's and then get OTT when someone criticises my points.

 

[draythefingerless]

Lets be fair. This is how most companies test their games these days. And the only ones who deserve any leeway is when it comes to problems with MP. Afterall you can't test what will happen when millions of people are playing it.

And yes I am aware making a game is hard work. Just like 99.9% of jobs in the world. So until I start getting partially refunded for my time and frustration either waiting for the patch or suffering through the bugs that excuse isn't going to hold water. Bethesda is a great example of this. For those of us who bought Fallout 3 pre patch they gave us a M$ theme for our dashboard. Sure it isn't much and not something I would buy but at least it was a small apology for their fuck up. And bugs are their fuck up for a product we are paying premium money for.

And for the record danpascooch paragraph #2 was not directed at you personally. I just know someone is going to read paragraph 1 and respond with "making games is hard, you shouldn't expect perfection" which I don't. I just expect the game to function flawlessly on the console it was designed for.

It is physically impossible to find every glitch in a AAA game. The most you can ask for is a reduced number of glitches. Nothing in this world is perfect. Sometimes you come across a defect. You should only ask that the defect is in reduced numbers, and in this case particularly, it is a very small number of error events, whereas New Vegas was an unnacceptable ratio, when at least a 3rd of the gamers suffered fatal errors, and a lot more suffered other glitches. Obsidian should test their games better.

Im not saying you shouldnt complain, you should expose youre complaint that your product isnt working. But dont act as if you were wronged by the game devs in some way. They know this will happen(or they shoud know) and most will gladly fix it for you. Believe me, nothing makes a dev happier than finding out a new error in his product and fixing it. You dont complain when your house gets hit by lightning and burns to the ground in 10 seconds do you? Its just a freak unpredictable event. You should also read a EULA once in a while. I think youll find it interesting.

 

[jono793]

Mass Effect 2 has been available since 2007? Presumably on some hypothetical super console from space, because last time I checked it only came out last year!

Andy Chalk; Console-fanboy. Tabloid journalist. Dilligent fact checker. Everything a growing news website needs.

 

[Suskie]

How is "anyone who plays ME2 on PS3 is not a Mass Effect fan and never will be" anything but elitist? You insist that people who play a game on another console are not fan's of a series and then get all defensive when someone say's that that is wrong.

I'm glad to see that you clarify that you would be okay with it if we got the first game as well. I will just have to hope that it's released on PS3 so I can gain your approval and be called a true fan of the series.

And BTW, I'm not reporting you because unlike you, I don't say thing's and then get OTT when someone criticises my points.

If you can't see the difference between criticizing points and calling someone a toddler (as well as saying Microsoft is reaching for my ass), then yeah, you really don't belong here.

I have no issue with people playing ME1 elsewhere and then finishing up the series on PS3, but a huge chunk of people playing ME2 on PS3 are experiencing the series for the first time, and in my mind, they're cheating themselves by settling for such a rushed, bare-bones version of ME1's story. I'm more mad at BioWare for doing such a half-assed job of it, but yeah, if you can't tell me what the Thorian is, you're not a Mass Effect fan.

I unabashedly love the series and PS3 fans are getting a bastardized version of it. I certainly wish they weren't, but the fact means I'm indifferent to any issues the PS3 version might have because yes, you should be playing it on a different platform.

 

[Suskie]

Mass Effect 2 has been available since 2007? Presumably on some hypothetical super console from space, because last time I checked it only came out last year!

Andy Chalk; Console-fanboy. Tabloid journalist. Dilligent fact checker. Everything a growing news website needs.

He said "series," and the series has been around since 2007.

 

[Exort]

That's quite a thing to slip through testing, especially for BioWare.

Still, at least they seem to have responded fairly quickly.

"As an alternative workaround, PS3 owners can also avoid the Mass Effect 2 save bug by purchasing an Xbox."

Fucking hell, the Escapist is flame-baiting more than the users at the minute xD

This isn't the first buggy bioware game...

 

[Irridium]

A member of the PC Master Race causing an XBox vs PS3 flame war, to weaken his adversaries before the impending PC vs console war? You, Sir, are a true saboteur.

Oh please, PC users a master race? HA!

No, the true master race is those of us who own all the consoles and a gaming PC. Those of us who play on a Wii, PS3, 360, PC, DS, PSP, and anything/everything else. Those of us who play games like Cooking Mama and Warioware and in the next hour play Halo, Ratchet and Clank, Fable, Mass Effect, Crysis, The Witcher, and any other game from any other genre.

WE ARE THE TRUE MASTER RACE! BOW BEFORE OUR GLORY!!
...

What were we talking about again?

 

[Sentox6]

It went through the testing phase. That is how Bioware tests their games. They release it, wait for the customer feedback then fix the issues. At least that is how it has gone on for their console releases. Afterall there is no excuse to have things like spelling errors if the game was tested properly.

No, that's how Obsidian tests their games, this error is very rare, it's not surprising it wasn't found.

Dammit, I was about to post the exact reply. BioWare may not be perfect, but compared to Obsidian's releases...

 

[Sentox6]

First off, the very nature of game development means it cannot be mastered.

Secondly, allocation of resources and diminishing returns, what is worth it for you? To have a game with one or two glitches, or to have a game that takes ten years to make, and costs 5 times as much, because they had to playtest for YEARS to find those last 6 glitches. That's no exaggeration, Black Ops has thousands of years of playtime and they are still finding NEW GLITCHES that were unknown before, could you imagine how long it would take to hire playtesters and pay them to log thousands of hours? It's absolutely impossible.

To be precise, by the end of December Black Ops players had over 600 million hours - or over 68,000 years - logged cumulatively.

And as danpascooch says, new bugs are still discovered. Software development at an AAA game level is massively complex. Perfection (or at least the internal testing required to reach such perfection) is simply not economically feasible.

 

[draythefingerless]

That's quite a thing to slip through testing, especially for BioWare.

Still, at least they seem to have responded fairly quickly.

"As an alternative workaround, PS3 owners can also avoid the Mass Effect 2 save bug by purchasing an Xbox."

Fucking hell, the Escapist is flame-baiting more than the users at the minute xD

This isn't the first buggy bioware game...

Wich would be the other one? Please do remember to base what youll say on general public, not your own personal experience.

 

[draythefingerless]

A member of the PC Master Race causing an XBox vs PS3 flame war, to weaken his adversaries before the impending PC vs console war? You, Sir, are a true saboteur.

Oh please, PC users a master race? HA!

No, the true master race is those of us who own all the consoles and a gaming PC. Those of us who play on a Wii, PS3, 360, PC, DS, PSP, and anything/everything else. Those of us who play games like Cooking Mama and Warioware and in the next hour play Halo, Ratchet and Clank, Fable, Mass Effect, Crysis, The Witcher, and any other game from any other genre.

WE ARE THE TRUE MASTER RACE! BOW BEFORE OUR GLORY!!
...

What were we talking about again?

Thats just having too much money, and lil real life activity. I think the master race is those that can stay away from videogames altogether and...you know...achieve something better in life.

 

[Exort]

That's quite a thing to slip through testing, especially for BioWare.

Still, at least they seem to have responded fairly quickly.

"As an alternative workaround, PS3 owners can also avoid the Mass Effect 2 save bug by purchasing an Xbox."

Fucking hell, the Escapist is flame-baiting more than the users at the minute xD

This isn't the first buggy bioware game...

Wich would be the other one? Please do remember to base what youll say on general public, not your own personal experience.

Dragon age:
http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Dragon_Age:_Origins_Bugs/Glitches
and those arn't all of them. some Item modifer doesn't work like "+ ?% healing recived", some items stats are bugged, some quest are bug (most major one are listed in that list).

farthermore those are only Origins bug do get me talk about awaking (quest are even more buggy). ( http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Dragon_Age:_Origins_-_Awakening_Bugs/Glitches )

Then Mass effect 2 have crashes on PC version.

worst of all is most are not patched.
They doesn't really seems to care, as long it doesn't get on the press.

 

[squid5580]

That's quite a thing to slip through testing, especially for BioWare.

Still, at least they seem to have responded fairly quickly.

"As an alternative workaround, PS3 owners can also avoid the Mass Effect 2 save bug by purchasing an Xbox."

Fucking hell, the Escapist is flame-baiting more than the users at the minute xD

It went through the testing phase. That is how Bioware tests their games. They release it, wait for the customer feedback then fix the issues. At least that is how it has gone on for their console releases. Afterall there is no excuse to have things like spelling errors if the game was tested properly.

The last line is epic for its lulz. I am jumpin out now before the war starts.

No, that's how Obsidian tests their games, this error is very rare, it's not surprising it wasn't found.

A spelling error or two is acceptable if you have as much text in the game as Mass Effect 2 does, it probably has a better spelling error to text ratio than most novels.

Lets be fair. This is how most companies test their games these days. And the only ones who deserve any leeway is when it comes to problems with MP. Afterall you can't test what will happen when millions of people are playing it.

And yes I am aware making a game is hard work. Just like 99.9% of jobs in the world. So until I start getting partially refunded for my time and frustration either waiting for the patch or suffering through the bugs that excuse isn't going to hold water. Bethesda is a great example of this. For those of us who bought Fallout 3 pre patch they gave us a M$ theme for our dashboard. Sure it isn't much and not something I would buy but at least it was a small apology for their fuck up. And bugs are their fuck up for a product we are paying premium money for.

And for the record danpascooch paragraph #2 was not directed at you personally. I just know someone is going to read paragraph 1 and respond with "making games is hard, you shouldn't expect perfection" which I don't. I just expect the game to function flawlessly on the console it was designed for.

If you expect the game to function flawlessly you obviously don't know any programming. That is literally an impossible goal. And I'm speaking as someone who is currently enrolled for a Game Development degree.

There are a million billion ways things can go wrong, and many only happen under the perfect circumstances, it's not like a book where there are X amount of spelling errors to fix then the book is flawlessly working.

As it stands, on average 20% of development resources are spent making a piece of software, and a fucking ridiculous 80% is spent debugging it. If you held most games to your standards, they would take over a decade to make.

There are also diminishing returns, the more time you spend debugging, the more time and money it takes to find each bug, it's impossible to find them all, it would take years and years and so much money we'd end up with AAA titles with the complexity and content of Pac-Man.

You are right I don't know programming. What I do know is I spend $70+ for a game. And when I spend money on a product I expect it to work the way it should. Not crash if I approach the Bloody Diner from the south instead of the north. I expect when I walk into a dungeon that I will be walking into a dungeon and not into some black pit of nothing. I expect when a bunch of enemies start swarming me the framerate will not drop to 0 because there is just too many to process (and I also expect the developers to understand the limitation of the console they are putting it on and not put more enemies than the CPU can handle just so they can add some fancy tagline on the box). What I don't expect them to do is to jack the price 10 more bucks because making games has become more complex when they, according to you, haven't even mastered the basics yet.

First off, the very nature of game development means it cannot be mastered.

Secondly, allocation of resources and diminishing returns, what is worth it for you? To have a game with one or two glitches, or to have a game that takes ten years to make, and costs 5 times as much, because they had to playtest for YEARS to find those last 6 glitches. That's no exaggeration, Black Ops has thousands of years of playtime and they are still finding NEW GLITCHES that were unknown before, could you imagine how long it would take to hire playtesters and pay them to log thousands of hours? It's absolutely impossible.

Games that are as glitchy as New Vegas are unacceptable, but to say games should have no glitches betrays an ignorance of the nature of game development and coding. Games are never going to be glitch free, because of the diminishing returns it's just not worth it when they could spend the time finding the last few glitches making new content, it's all about how many glitches the game has compared to other games, and I think Mass Effect 2 is a perfect example of a very good ratio.

Let me try and clarify this a bit. I understand deadlines and all that jazz. They gotta make money and delays cost them money. That isn't my beef with the way things have been running as of late. When was ME2 released on PS3? Under 2 weeks ago? And a patch is being submitted tomorrow for it? Which means Bioware only needed 2 weeks to fix a pretty major flaw with it (this just just an example here I understand the memory wipe is not common). So either it is a problem that is easily fixed (which should have been caught during the testing phase). Or they knew about it for alot longer than the time it launched and have been working on the patch the whole time. Meaning they knew full well they were launching a sub par product. And frankly I don't know which one is worse. And believe me I don't hate Bioware. They have consistently made games I have beaten the shit out of. I can't think of 1 Bioware game that I didn't beat more than once (well Baldur's Gate 1 I didn't but I made up for it by beating BG2 a bunch of times). And for me that is very rare to play a game after the credits roll (if you don't count achievement hunting that is).

I just keep looking back at the PS2 days. When the PS2 launched the games were crap from a technical standard. If you compare them to some of the titles late in it's lifespan is what I mean. As developers unlocked it's secrets games became increasingly better. In this gen it seems that they are putting the cart before the horse. We will push it as hard as we can and hobble it. Then patch it later. Which sure is great short term thinking. You get to boast about how great the graphics are and blah blah blah but who cares if the game doesn't run properly out of the box. Only the people who are buying the game and essentially paying your checks that is who. I would rather have 20 enemies on screen and the game run smooth than have 100 enemies and it chug. Until they learn how to utilize the console they are making it for so they can have the 100 enemies on screen and it still run smooth. Not have them pray to whatever gods that they can patch it sometime down the road. Unfortunately I seem to be in the small minority who believes this. But unfortunately for them this means I have stopped buying games when they launch as well. Not that I believe my money alone was supporting them. I just won't pay $70 for an unfinished game anymore. Not while other people are buying the finished version for a much lower cost. It isn't like there isn't enough of a selection of games out there to play while I wait for them to patch the game I have been waiting for. And this mentality is very dangerous for them in the long run.

And keep in mind this is from a consumer perspective. One who doesn't care about all the inner workings that go on behind the scenes. Just like, for example, you might not care that the guy who was cooking your steak is bleeding half to death because he chopped of a finger. You just care that you have been waiting an hour to get it. And are pissed because it took so damn long.

 

[Reaper195]

As an alternative workaround, PS3 owners can also avoid the Mass Effect 2 save bug by purchasing an Xbox.

Or PC. Or not be a cheap bastard whose parents buy the consoles and have both....? Pretty sure most of The Escapist has at least a twenty hour job.

 

[Irridium]

A member of the PC Master Race causing an XBox vs PS3 flame war, to weaken his adversaries before the impending PC vs console war? You, Sir, are a true saboteur.

Oh please, PC users a master race? HA!

No, the true master race is those of us who own all the consoles and a gaming PC. Those of us who play on a Wii, PS3, 360, PC, DS, PSP, and anything/everything else. Those of us who play games like Cooking Mama and Warioware and in the next hour play Halo, Ratchet and Clank, Fable, Mass Effect, Crysis, The Witcher, and any other game from any other genre.

WE ARE THE TRUE MASTER RACE! BOW BEFORE OUR GLORY!!
...

What were we talking about again?

Thats just having too much money, and lil real life activity. I think the master race is those that can stay away from videogames altogether and...you know...achieve something better in life.

Or, maybe its because I saved up, buying a console each year. Also getting a job helped with the expenses. And with the "real life activity" part.

 

[Andy Chalk]

Okay guys, since my assumption that people would be able to figure out that my remark about 360 owners playing Mass Effect since 2007 referred to the original game is proving problematic for at least two of you, I've adjusted the wording slightly to make it clearer.

Apologies for any confusion.

I also feel compelled to comment on the screaming hilarity of being called a console fanboy. I mean, seriously, dude, that's just... wow.

 

[Danpascooch]

That's quite a thing to slip through testing, especially for BioWare.

Still, at least they seem to have responded fairly quickly.

"As an alternative workaround, PS3 owners can also avoid the Mass Effect 2 save bug by purchasing an Xbox."

Fucking hell, the Escapist is flame-baiting more than the users at the minute xD

It went through the testing phase. That is how Bioware tests their games. They release it, wait for the customer feedback then fix the issues. At least that is how it has gone on for their console releases. Afterall there is no excuse to have things like spelling errors if the game was tested properly.

The last line is epic for its lulz. I am jumpin out now before the war starts.

No, that's how Obsidian tests their games, this error is very rare, it's not surprising it wasn't found.

A spelling error or two is acceptable if you have as much text in the game as Mass Effect 2 does, it probably has a better spelling error to text ratio than most novels.

Lets be fair. This is how most companies test their games these days. And the only ones who deserve any leeway is when it comes to problems with MP. Afterall you can't test what will happen when millions of people are playing it.

And yes I am aware making a game is hard work. Just like 99.9% of jobs in the world. So until I start getting partially refunded for my time and frustration either waiting for the patch or suffering through the bugs that excuse isn't going to hold water. Bethesda is a great example of this. For those of us who bought Fallout 3 pre patch they gave us a M$ theme for our dashboard. Sure it isn't much and not something I would buy but at least it was a small apology for their fuck up. And bugs are their fuck up for a product we are paying premium money for.

And for the record danpascooch paragraph #2 was not directed at you personally. I just know someone is going to read paragraph 1 and respond with "making games is hard, you shouldn't expect perfection" which I don't. I just expect the game to function flawlessly on the console it was designed for.

If you expect the game to function flawlessly you obviously don't know any programming. That is literally an impossible goal. And I'm speaking as someone who is currently enrolled for a Game Development degree.

There are a million billion ways things can go wrong, and many only happen under the perfect circumstances, it's not like a book where there are X amount of spelling errors to fix then the book is flawlessly working.

As it stands, on average 20% of development resources are spent making a piece of software, and a fucking ridiculous 80% is spent debugging it. If you held most games to your standards, they would take over a decade to make.

There are also diminishing returns, the more time you spend debugging, the more time and money it takes to find each bug, it's impossible to find them all, it would take years and years and so much money we'd end up with AAA titles with the complexity and content of Pac-Man.

You are right I don't know programming. What I do know is I spend $70+ for a game. And when I spend money on a product I expect it to work the way it should. Not crash if I approach the Bloody Diner from the south instead of the north. I expect when I walk into a dungeon that I will be walking into a dungeon and not into some black pit of nothing. I expect when a bunch of enemies start swarming me the framerate will not drop to 0 because there is just too many to process (and I also expect the developers to understand the limitation of the console they are putting it on and not put more enemies than the CPU can handle just so they can add some fancy tagline on the box). What I don't expect them to do is to jack the price 10 more bucks because making games has become more complex when they, according to you, haven't even mastered the basics yet.

First off, the very nature of game development means it cannot be mastered.

Secondly, allocation of resources and diminishing returns, what is worth it for you? To have a game with one or two glitches, or to have a game that takes ten years to make, and costs 5 times as much, because they had to playtest for YEARS to find those last 6 glitches. That's no exaggeration, Black Ops has thousands of years of playtime and they are still finding NEW GLITCHES that were unknown before, could you imagine how long it would take to hire playtesters and pay them to log thousands of hours? It's absolutely impossible.

Games that are as glitchy as New Vegas are unacceptable, but to say games should have no glitches betrays an ignorance of the nature of game development and coding. Games are never going to be glitch free, because of the diminishing returns it's just not worth it when they could spend the time finding the last few glitches making new content, it's all about how many glitches the game has compared to other games, and I think Mass Effect 2 is a perfect example of a very good ratio.

Let me try and clarify this a bit. I understand deadlines and all that jazz. They gotta make money and delays cost them money. That isn't my beef with the way things have been running as of late. When was ME2 released on PS3? Under 2 weeks ago? And a patch is being submitted tomorrow for it? Which means Bioware only needed 2 weeks to fix a pretty major flaw with it (this just just an example here I understand the memory wipe is not common). So either it is a problem that is easily fixed (which should have been caught during the testing phase). Or they knew about it for alot longer than the time it launched and have been working on the patch the whole time. Meaning they knew full well they were launching a sub par product. And frankly I don't know which one is worse. And believe me I don't hate Bioware. They have consistently made games I have beaten the shit out of. I can't think of 1 Bioware game that I didn't beat more than once (well Baldur's Gate 1 I didn't but I made up for it by beating BG2 a bunch of times). And for me that is very rare to play a game after the credits roll (if you don't count achievement hunting that is).

I just keep looking back at the PS2 days. When the PS2 launched the games were crap from a technical standard. If you compare them to some of the titles late in it's lifespan is what I mean. As developers unlocked it's secrets games became increasingly better. In this gen it seems that they are putting the cart before the horse. We will push it as hard as we can and hobble it. Then patch it later. Which sure is great short term thinking. You get to boast about how great the graphics are and blah blah blah but who cares if the game doesn't run properly out of the box. Only the people who are buying the game and essentially paying your checks that is who. I would rather have 20 enemies on screen and the game run smooth than have 100 enemies and it chug. Until they learn how to utilize the console they are making it for so they can have the 100 enemies on screen and it still run smooth. Not have them pray to whatever gods that they can patch it sometime down the road. Unfortunately I seem to be in the small minority who believes this. But unfortunately for them this means I have stopped buying games when they launch as well. Not that I believe my money alone was supporting them. I just won't pay $70 for an unfinished game anymore. Not while other people are buying the finished version for a much lower cost. It isn't like there isn't enough of a selection of games out there to play while I wait for them to patch the game I have been waiting for. And this mentality is very dangerous for them in the long run.

And keep in mind this is from a consumer perspective. One who doesn't care about all the inner workings that go on behind the scenes. Just like, for example, you might not care that the guy who was cooking your steak is bleeding half to death because he chopped of a finger. You just care that you have been waiting an hour to get it. And are pissed because it took so damn long.

I get where you're coming from, but there are two important points I would like to make.

First of all there were less glitches is PS2 days because games were less complicated and less advanced, much in the same way you'll find glitches in Windows Vista but not in a graphing calculator, it's because of how less complex a calculator is.

Secondly, they were able to fix it because it was an easy to fix glitch, most glitches are easy to fix, the problem isn't fixing them, it is FINDING them, you have to have the exact conditions come along that trigger the glitch to find it, and it was only because PS3 users found it and reported what they were doing when it happened that it is being corrected now. There is nothing to suggest any reasonable amount of playtesting could have found this, and again, I (and most consumers) would rather have them spending time making new content, then hunting down a single glitch that could takes years to find. With so many people playing ME2 for the PS3, it took a lot of man hours to find the glitch, Bioware couldn't have been expected to find it.

Yes it sucks, and it would have been better if it didn't happen, but it's not a result of any negligence on Bioware's part, their games are for the most part less glitchy than the majority of games out there.