Bethesda? Is anyone home?

Post » Sat Nov 28, 2015 10:34 am


The people with issues are the vocal minority, always are. I can play perfectly no problems, and I haven't rated the game on steam.

If you're suggesting about 20% of all sales are having issues you're talking hundreds of thousands of people. That's unrealistic.
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Alexander Lee
 
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Post » Sat Nov 28, 2015 1:54 am

How about the release of the latest Simcity from EA (http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-03-06-as-origin-server-woes-render-simcity-unplayable-in-the-us-ea-confident-all-will-be-well-for-brits-on-friday) and the totally bug free new Batman game that they stopped selling. (http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/batman-arkham-knight-for-pc-pulled-by-warner-bros-after-bugs-and-disastrous-launch-10344079.html)

I'm pretty sure that was hundreds of thousands of people.

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Rude Gurl
 
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Post » Fri Nov 27, 2015 9:56 pm

Isn't Black Ops the best selling game of the year? Where are you sourcing this information from?

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Roisan Sweeney
 
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Post » Sat Nov 28, 2015 2:53 am

From statistics? Fallout made 3/4 of a billion on day one.

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Sammygirl
 
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Post » Sat Nov 28, 2015 1:46 am


It was. But those are extreme cases that received tonnes of media coverage due to how bad they performed, 1 of which forcing the publisher to revoke the sale of their game.

I'm not saying F4 is perfect, but the attitudes some people seem to have a suggestive of a similar level of issue as those in your post. That's just simply not true, and speculative thinking isn't going to get those bugs fixed.

What is going to get them fixed is allowing the team time to actually find the causes instead of popping in here to say hello.

Bare in mind Bethesda can't test your system setup precisely so with only specs and a dxdiag, and the posts of half helpful descriptions, they have to work out fixes. Those things take time. Functional and non functional testing play a part. And many graphical issues may be linked to drivers, which requires working with hardware vendors to.

People don't seem to understand the length and breadth of software development. It's a shame.
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evelina c
 
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Post » Sat Nov 28, 2015 9:44 am

You lost credibility as soon as you claimed that BGS still uses Gamebryo. There is no Gamebryo anymore. They have completely rewritten the code, same as if they started from scratch (but they didn't need to since they bought the source after Emergent went bankrupt). The flowcharting for the new engine would be the same regardless.

Many people are playing just fine. Things you mention are definitely NOT game-breaking at all. Game-breaking, as you would know if you are as knowledgeable as you state, are bugs that actually impair or prevent specific necessary game mechanics from functioning throughout the game. That's the definition of "game-breaking" (i.e., literally breaking the game making it impossible to play).

Bethesda has no need to reply to reports on forums as they are collecting said reports and creating fixes. Why waste time posting to each and every report rather than spend it creating a patch? Again, if you were as knowledgeable as you state, you'd know this. It is standard practice in all software development, not just entertainment software.

BTW, people need to stop inflating claims of sales. FO4 has sold a reported 1.87 million copies the first THREE days (not day one) so it made under $120 million as far as the first three days sales go. Excellent, of course, but hardly over $1 billion or more as some are claiming. Bethesda wishes it make that much I am sure, but it has a long way to go in sales before it hits such high revenue.

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Dezzeh
 
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Post » Sat Nov 28, 2015 7:08 am


Standard practice is to use a ticketing system to orgamize bugs and update on progress. Granted most software companies don't make this available to the public, but they either show this or they post news updates.

I've never had issues with their games before. However this is the first time I've encountered a game breaking bug in their game, and if they didn't need to respond to comments before, they definitely need to now.

Sure they may have made their money, but I'll be holding off on their next title, and I'm probably not alone there.

Anyway, why are you defending them?
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Quick draw II
 
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Post » Fri Nov 27, 2015 6:47 pm

I take waiting for patch that actually fixes things and performance (never I have seen patch from bethesda that broke performance) rather than crappy patches that don't fix anything and worsen the performance and PR yelling and people how stupid they are (Witcher 3). Why are you not bringing torch there? They are going dark month by month making the game actually worse.

Also, who said that I'm accepting this? I would rather play bug-free game without bugs this simple to see and reproduce. And at least they learned SOMETHING from Skyrim, after all, the weapons are finally "attached" to the NPCs when they die and not laying around causing the game to bloat and screw up saves.

My point is, making such a big deal out of that there is no fix for everything week after release is ridiculous. Also, I don't have to imagine industry starting selling products that weren't complete, because it started long time ago. After they release a patch and there will be no fix for some really bad bugs, I wouldn't go saying that developer doesn't care.

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Ella Loapaga
 
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Post » Sat Nov 28, 2015 10:03 am


Their only making matter worse by delaying the fixes. Obviously they are working on patches, but my worry is its going to introduce a bunch more bugs.

It's more effective to release a small patch that fixes one or two things then ask for feedback, rinse and repeat every half day or so. We are going to get a 2GB patch, and no one , not even the devs are going to know how well it works.
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TOYA toys
 
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Post » Fri Nov 27, 2015 10:22 pm

I think that was just the digital sales figure, they shipped 12 million copies for day one sales. http://www.gamespot.com/articles/fallout-4-ships-12-million-copies-in-one-day-break/1100-6432277/.

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patricia kris
 
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Post » Fri Nov 27, 2015 8:41 pm

Shipping is not the same as sell-through. Lots of titles ship big numbers, the real gauge of success is in sell-through. I don't doubt this game has sold a lot, though.

But the whole sales figures thing is irrelevant to the point I made. You seem to be asserting that just because F4 sold a lot, Bethesda's image is fine. I would disagree. Clearly, not everyone is happy or we wouldn't even be having this conversation in the first place.

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ezra
 
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Post » Fri Nov 27, 2015 8:01 pm

True, the sales are probably more in the 5-million range for day one, still a whole lot more than 1.8 in three days though.

From a business standpoint that's exactly what it means. Is everyone going to be happy with it? Of course not, the only thing that everyone unanimously agrees is good is cookies. (And if you say you hate them you're lying). But their image is fine, enough people think well enough of them that millions of people bought their game on the day it was released.

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Barbequtie
 
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Post » Fri Nov 27, 2015 11:07 pm

I've got to assume there will be a huge return as well this week.

With Steam, we've got until Monday, but knowing nothing will change over the weekend, I plan on returning it for a refund on Friday to be safe.

So 2 days to go. Comon patch, please.

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Elizabeth Falvey
 
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Post » Fri Nov 27, 2015 11:33 pm

As I see it I'm their customer I've bought their product and there are lots of things wrong with their product. I know it's game and usually with most games nowadays there are always the first day or two tweaks & I can handle that.

But I have now stopped playing the game as it's become too frustrating to play.

I can only play game with 2/3 rds of the screen, if I'm in full screen mode I can't pick lock and the left hand side of Pipboy is not there. Because of the mapping restrictions on the keyboard I've remapped to arrows other keys I can't remap so it's making it awkward to play. I also can't move around when I'm in building mode.

It's been over a week now since their game has been released and yes we had one patch on the first day but there has been absolute silence from Betesda since then. This is not good customer service practice and it's only going to make their customers more frustrated and angry with their silence.

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xxLindsAffec
 
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Post » Sat Nov 28, 2015 6:20 am

The guys who are defending Bethesda and stating that instead of giving information to customers about a possible upcoming patch, they should work on the patch. Do you think that whole Bethesda company consists of 3-4 people?? that if they spare 2 minutes for a simple announcement on forum it will affect patching process badly.... This is their own forum, not steam, not metacritic or somewhere else, and by keeping their silence, they are disrespecting everyone who paid for this game....

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Ownie Zuliana
 
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Post » Sat Nov 28, 2015 1:10 am

Do you know how long it takes to design and list all the fixes of a patch? It's definitely not 2 minutes.
Does literally anyone on this forum think there's even the slightest possibility that this game will never be patched? Because unless you do I'm not sure what good you think a public announcement that they are indeed going to release a patch would do.

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Siidney
 
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Post » Fri Nov 27, 2015 11:33 pm

I totally agree with you. I registered here just to say that I am not happy with the way the game state is. Sure you can say that the people having issues are a minority and the people having issues and voicing them are an even bigger minority but that doesn't make the issue any less important.

We need a patch for this game. It's unoptimised and needs to be updated/fixed.

Let's stop talking about sales figures and start reporting every bug or issue we run into so we can get a better game. You can't get anywhere without being critical. That's how progress is made. And just because people are being critical doesn't mean we are whining or [censored]ing. It means we want the gsme to be as good as possible.

I really hate beating a dead horse but I enjoyed the way CD Projekt RED did the witcher 3 launch. They added how many gbs of patches? Like 10gb? It's incredible. They patched the gsme quick and listened to the people who gave them money for the game. Role model devs if i've ever seen any.

We need less inventory clutter. Need a tab just for notes and a separate tab for holotapes and keys. Also should have a way to distinguish which holotapes/notes you have listened to or read.

Also Hope we get a hi resolution texture pack too. Don't get me wrong I love the true volumetric lighting/godrays and all the other pretty effects you see but the game seriously needs higher res textures.

Anyways I think fallout 4 could have been an amazing game but instead it came out just O.K. not more or less.
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Stephanie Kemp
 
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Post » Sat Nov 28, 2015 8:23 am

If there is no sli support within 2 weeks, I will return this game and get it for console. I am not giving out 500-800 euro for a new card just because Bethesda is not capable of releasing games with this very basic thing included.

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Aman Bhattal
 
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Post » Fri Nov 27, 2015 11:02 pm

Yep, whoever is taking this stance doesn't understand the way things work obviously. Believe it or not, not every single person that works at Bethesda, or any development studio, is a programmer frantically working to wrangle bugs. They actually hire non-technical people whose only job is to focus on marketing, PR, social networking, web-content, and so on.

Some of those people certainly have the time and capability to communicate with the public, without, in any way, hurting the further development of a patch. They're obviously being told not to, probably because Bethesda doesn't want to be in any position of forced accountability. In other words, they can't be accused of not keeping to their word if they don't use any words to begin with.

Bethesda customer service is both terrible, and, sadly, not atypical. Believe it or not you're actually supposed to respond to the automatic robo-reply you get when you submit a ticket. No where in your email does it say that, I only knew about it because a forum admin told someone else here. If you reply enough times to their boilerplate responses, you will eventually get an actual person, but it takes a lot of effort, and they put these steps in the way hoping you'll just give up, to increase their throughput. I was told to "use the forums" about five or six times, even though my issue literally got 0 views, lol. One of their actual recommendations was that I start my game over from scratch due to what I'd assume they suspected was a save file corruption bug. No apologies or acknowledgement of anything - they said it like they asked me to do something routine, like reboot.

At the end of the chain I was informed that they're going to report my issue to the bug team, but they can't make any promises as to when (or if) it's going to be resolved.

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JeSsy ArEllano
 
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Post » Sat Nov 28, 2015 7:18 am

I wish

I'm sorry that happened. Man since this game is new, they should automatically report the bugs to the bug team. I understand that some issues will be user error but o feel like there are bugs which are not being reported because they(customer service) assume it's user error. This could have been an amazing game.
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Charlotte Buckley
 
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Post » Sat Nov 28, 2015 3:52 am

All of you - please ask for refund. The only language they understand is money. They just kidding us.
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Curveballs On Phoenix
 
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Post » Sat Nov 28, 2015 4:29 am

It seems these are USER forums and gamesas does not use them to communicate. Support tickets seem to be the only communication people are getting.

So we are really just talking to each other. Vent away, means nothing to them, they don't read this tripe anyway.

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remi lasisi
 
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Post » Sat Nov 28, 2015 3:47 am

As it's always been!

Sure they do. I've seen a few Bethesda staff on while reading some posts. Not more than 20 minutes ago in fact.

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sw1ss
 
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Post » Fri Nov 27, 2015 6:30 pm

I really can't get which part you don't understand. Let me roleplay Bethesda PR like some other guy did in this topic.

-Hey guys, we are aware of the bugs and problems, and our team is working on them right now, we are also checking every s?ngle topic here :) -

Guess what, it took 22 seconds for me to write the line above.....

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Zualett
 
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Post » Fri Nov 27, 2015 6:46 pm

I have seen several ZeniMax mods...mods from the company that OWNS Bethesda and the forums. Unfortunately, they seem to only be interested in policing the forums, no word about actual fixes to the PC UI or anything else so far. Still, only been eight days, the games been selling like crazy, and like WoW they have a rabid group of devoted fans that attack anyone that reports a legitimate bug. Bethesda'll come a running when sales slow.

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clelia vega
 
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