Dear Bethesda,

I don't know if you are gonna read this or even respond to this.
I'm in love with your games since the early ages (and I'm not talking about Oblivion or Morrowind... nah, I'm talking Gridiron and Wayne Gretzky Hockey!). I'm in love with most of your franchises (Fallout being an Interplay franchise I've played since the beginning, but you did quite a good job in its legacy, imho).
BUT
honestly... Do you even program? Do you even debug? Are you sometimes developping a software correcting the bugs BEFORE trying to sale the whole [censored]?

Talking about Fallout Shelter : I've got an iPhone 6 + 128Gb, a hundreds of games, most of 'em are from big and well known developping studios, some hardcoe graphics frenzy and high end [censored] that would come directly from console or PC and it's still crazy like... ! It works wonders on an iPhone 6+ (Baldur's Gate even, dude !!!! or XCom, same as PC, and not mentionning latest Unreal Engine games). But this... THIS Fallout Shelter game... DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUDE ! Less than a week playing, and I thought : "I'm gonna throw my device through the window and let it fly from the third floor!"
Do you even PivotTable without MEMORY LEAK !!!! Seriously...
Got 200 vaultdwellers and three dozens rooms, it slows down to hell, crashes to springboard every time I use a PivotTable (vaultdwellers, equipment, ...) not mentionning now I couldn't even MOVE a single vaultdweller without crashing ! Game is slow and laggy, and buggy when it comes to zoom-in/out for any event or even for simple actions like : I want to gather my ressources, NOT zooming on a particular vaultdweller !

Hopefully, I've got one thing for me : I didn't pay anything for lunchboxes, 'cuz I've read a lot of people here who did the same and lost money in the process !

Do something, correct these bugs, and ideally, do this BEFORE launching an app, not AFTER ! This is what beta-testers are for (and in case you don't know, there are some testflights accounts possible to beta test apps for mobiles) !

I REALLY enjoy your games, when they FINALLY are stables (hopefully because of fan-made patches most of the time - eg Daggerfall) but, really... you are a well grown up firm now, a big company, successful and all. Don't you have the funds to employ better developpers (not more, but BETTER) ! I DO hope Fallout 4 will be thoroughly beta-tested before it comes out in the shelves... really. I know I'll buy it nonetheless (for PC ofc) and I know the beginnings WILL BE hard, waiting for patches, fixes and whatnots... But seriously, hire better developpers, test your stuff, and get along with it!

Maybe this post will be moderated to oblivion, but hopefully, people will have read me, and I feel better having told what I had on my heart!

This was the ranting of a really old Bethesda-really devoted fan, who will still gives money to them (and this is because I give money to you that I feel the right and the urge to rant). Thank you whatsoever for reading (if you did).

The difference between "them" and "us" is the point of view: they see the game from the inside, we see it from the outside. So, yes, they know how to code and the way they do it probably respond to other concerns than the ones we consider obvious. Also bugs are a way of introducing "hazard" and chance in a video game. A video game that would always respond the same way each time you play it would be awfully boring, to me it would be at least.

Regarding your complaints, many people around seem to be able to play the game without any problem, so...

@ladyonthemoon : reading you it's pretty much obvious you're not a programmer, and NO, you don't MAKE bugs to introduce "hazard", there already are RNG algorithms for that! And no, I'm not the only one, YES, there are a lot of pple here that DO encounter memory leaks and crash to springboard problems when attaining high number of dwellers and/or rooms, stuff...

This game IS bugged to a point where it becomes unplayable, period.

Never said that bugs could be made... and you're over reacting. Anyway, this game is brand new, isn't it? There will be updates.

I will add my opinion about game and devs.


About GAME:


I'm using iPhone 6 and iPad Air 2, I have noticed only few little bugs: sometimes i can't move pregnant women, only restart helps. Few times my several dwellers were invisible, i could select but not move also restart helped. And once somehow i sent dweller to wasteland with 50 stimpacks and 40+ radaway. But game had no crashes. My iPhone has shelter with 46 Dwellers, iPad has 140 dwellers, on iPad i feel lags when i try to scroll all dwellers, or then i'm doing quest: "send dwellers to wasteland", after doing it i'm imediatly recalling them, and quest pop-up and game freezes for a less then 0.5s. But it's not a problem at least for now. And the game is really very fun! I hope new patches and features will come later.


Opinion about DEVS:


We all know that Devs now focused on Android platform well at least i have read about it. Maybe they are fixing or fixed some bugs on iOS and i hope they will dispatch fix on Tuesday. Why tuesday? It's the mid of working week:)


What i do not like: developers or moderators - silence. Maybe they have a plan or they do different from what we expect. I'm sure(because i saw) they are reading our posts at least. If they could create a stick thread with the problems they are fixing/looking, I'm not talking about promises or etas, just to recognize about the problems/bugs and etc to show respect to players who are suffering and reporting it. Many players would be happy to see it, because same problems each day... Players can't make cool threads not about bugs/exploits because they are fast going down by new ones about crashes, bugs and other stuff, and new players only see how bad situation is. Only a few ppl comming here to share some things, or make fun.


As always sry for my english. It's not my native language.

Respect for being a devout Fallout/Interplay/Bethesda fan. Baldur's Gate was a great game but I was more of a Icewind Dale guy. Anyway, you seem to know your way around computers and code. So I must ask, have you even considered that perhaps the problem is YOUR device?


From the above quote I am going to assume that you are running a jailbroken iphone with numerous apps, backgrounds, winterboards and various other MEMORY hogging daemons. iOS is notorious for having terrible memory allocation, even on a non-jailbroken A2 running iPad Air. These devices have very little user management for memory, even using jailbroken software. (perils of using a closed source OS). I am by no means an expert programmer, I have experience in C and I am 100% certain that Bethesda does debug, complete with QA. Problem is, everything Bethesda makes is always pushing the envelope. Fallout Shelter is basically a tower build game (Think of Pet Hotel Story) except it pushes the envelope by having complex individual AI (Albeit not all that complex) for each Dweller. Combined with random events and constantly changing stats; it can easily consume plenty of inactive DRAM passed 150 Dwellers.


That is not to say that an iphone 6 CANNOT run FOS optimally. It just means that the devices they debugged with had plenty of memory resources available during debugging. I seriously doubt any of their QA team used a jailbroken cluttered device that was running dozens of background daemons unbeknownst to the user.


I do not doubt anyone when they claim to have forced shutdowns, freezing, and app closures beyond 150 dwellers. But since you opened this thread trying to sound like the smartest man in the room. I figured I would throw in my 5 cents here. I myself have 120 Dwellers and an iPad Air 8.2 ios, and the App runs brilliantly. I do NOT jailbreak my devices anymore, after educating myself on the memory hogging that Cydia and all its plugins cause on even the fastest device. (You would be amazed how many background daemons are added after a Cydia install.)


If I am completely wrong and you are running an up to date, iphone 6, with a few dozen apps; then I apologize for this response. But I am taking a shot in the dark here in ASSumming about your device. If I am correct in my assumptions, then I recommend OPTIMIZING your device before pointing the finger at Bethesda's debug team. Because afterall, if they were not developers, we wouldn't be playing their games.

Wrong. My iPhone is totally JAILED, hasn't been jailbroken and will never be. It's with iOS8.3 (genuine) and won't even argue about that (I could send pics but who cares, anyone could fake pics, so you got to believe me on this one).

this is EXACTLY the problem, and obviously, their Pivot Tables are really bad.

Have I had a jailbroken iPhone, I would have agreed 100% with you. This is really a problem, not with my device only (I have browsed quite a numerous forums (other than Beth's, and including Beth's) but a lot of people seem to have cluttering, stuttering, lagging and ultimately crash to sprinboard issues when the game is at 180-200 dwellers (which happens to be my case).

OF COURSE... of course, I tried all the usual - insert every FAQ answer possible here - solution, to no avail. As soon as I enter either :

- list of dwellers by clicking in the wheel button, left upper corner or through any other means (clicking on a building, then on the detail list of dwellers in this building, click on an empty position) or clicking on wasteland to access dwellers being sent away.

- list of equipment / stuff inside inventory (through menu)

But also when I try to move dwellers from one buidling to another, game almost immediately loses noticeably a lot of its framerate (lagging / stuttering) and ultimately crashes.

All my games (in my iPhone) are genuine, bought through iTunes (I'm an iPhone user since the very first one) and I must say I've seen quite a few buggy / laggy / crashy apps from time to time, but this one... dude... this one ! Well... It's Bethesda !

Well... huh... not 100% sure ! Knowing Bethesda's games the way I do, I could tell tales decades long (from TES serie, Wayne Gratzky serie, Fallout serie) that would REALLY let you think so. I've seen Fallout 3 GOTY for PS3 soooo badly bugged up it would crash the console, game breaking bugs through campaign that would prevent you from finishing the game in Oblivion or Morrowind but would never be corrected because of console. Daggerfall was THE ONE best RPG game of the century, along with the buggiest ever, if it wasn't for fan-made patches and save-cleaning programs, game wouldn't be completable!

Y'know, I really love Bethesda's games, from all my heart. They are the BEST games EVAAAAH ! Really are. But also (being the more complex, richest and deepest - so I fully understand how hard it'd be not to have bugs in such games, I admit) the most bugged games EVAAAAAAAAAAAH ! What I really blame Bethesda for is their lack of reactivity, communication and follow up on their games' updates and patches ! And as FOS is meant to be a 'snack' game to wait up for F4, I hardly think Bethesda will make fixes soon... if any ! (may I be wrong, for all I know, I really WISH there is some follow up on this app, it's a really cool one for a tower like), and this is why I criticize and rant about it. Plus... I hardly can understand why such a big company as Bethesda (who bought id, and surely many more studios) could not endeavor a better finish of their product BEFORE lining them up in a store !

That was my two cents, and I hope someone, someday, somehow, at Bethesda's office, reads this, and it gets up to their devs...

Again... A REALLY true fan speaking.

It is kind of weird that Shelter wasn't bug tested better. Giant huge games are one thing but an iOS app? Really?

I've enjoyed the game while it has worked. (on my 4th reinstall and play through, taking notes when it crashes and becomes unplayable)

I'm also a fan of previous games.


What I'm gathering from those having issues in the forums,

They just want some transparency, and that you are listening to your fans.

Maybe the silence is a PR thing, i don't know. But, tranparency and honesty will always earn respect in my books.

It's quite clear this was a hit it/quit it app, it's been almost 2 weeks since it debuted and the best their CS can do is to send people to the forums to do what? Get their questions answered by Bethesda? Nope.

As someone who has played several Bethesda games near their launch I can say that my experience has not been positive. Running into game breaking bugs in the larger titles like fall out 3 which I could never finish because it would just crash in a certain area. Or skyrim riddled with bugs as well. And I'm sad to see this little app go the same route. I loved fallout shelter from the get go, I have an iPad Air 64gb model. Not jailbroken or whatever people were talking about and the game literally doesn't even launch anymore. I press the icon, it shows the loading screen for like a second. And boom it goes back to the iPad's home screen. Strangely though the app remains running, but switching to it repeats the same issue I just described. Super disheartened with the lack updates and or communication from devs. And considering the app hit #1 in the store you'd imagine they'd show it a little more love.