I'm talking about major bugs, not minor ones that don't break the enjoyment.

Amazon reviews have been mixed about the bugs being fixed.

http://www.amazon.com/Fallout-New-Ve...DateDescending

Anyway, what do you all think? If I get it then it will be on Steam but I'd prefer to be able to play it.

Thanks. Here are my specs below.

Best,

Bishop


Operating System: Windows Vista? Business (6.0, Build 6002) Service Pack 2 (6002.vistasp2_gdr.090803-2339)
Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: Dell Inc.
System Model: Dell DXC061
BIOS: Phoenix ROM BIOS PLUS Version 1.10 2.4.0
Processor: Intel® Core™2 CPU 6300 @ 1.86GHz (2 CPUs), ~1.9GHz
Memory: 2046MB RAM
Page File: 2186MB used, 2141MB available
Windows Dir: C:\Windows
DirectX Version: DirectX 10
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
DxDiag Version: 6.00.6001.18000 32bit Unicode
Display Devices
---------------
Card name: Radeon X1300/X1550 Series
Manufacturer: ATI Technologies Inc.
Chip type: ATI Radeon Graphics Processor (0x7183)
DAC type: Internal DAC(400MHz)
Device Key: Enum\PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_7183&SUBSYS_0D021028&REV_00
Display Memory: 1022 MB
Dedicated Memory: 255 MB
Shared Memory: 766 MB
Current Mode: 1024 x 768 (32 bit) (75Hz)
Monitor: Generic PnP Monitor
Driver Name: atiumdag.dll,atiumdva.cap,atitmmxx.dll
Driver Version: 7.14.0010.0612 (English)
DDI Version: 9Ex
Driver Attributes: Final Retail
Driver Date/Size: 8/20/2008 17:57:54, 4003328 bytes

Personally, I'm playing on PC and from the beginning I haven't had any problems with bugs. I think all of the really major problems were on the console versions. Or maybe I was just lucky.

Either way, a new patch or two have been released since launch that have apparently fixed all the major bugs that people have been experiencing.

I think it will probably run better for you if you upgrade your RAM. If you do, you may want to switch to 64-bit vista or 64-bit win7, in order to take advantage of both cores in your Core 2 Duo as well as to be able to use more than 3GB RAM.

im going to do my darndest to return the game. I had no idea about this steam crap. i should have came here first. i wish i would have done what you are doing. the Glory of the Fallout name lured me in complacently.

Do you really have a point in hijacking this thread? Stop spamming and complaining about something that is very light on the DRM scale.

As for the OP: Your graphics chipset is a bit weak, but you should be able to play the game. You may want to upgrade that as soon as possible.

Booty,

Fallout 3 ran fine on this system. From what I understand Fallout NV is almost exactly like FO3 in graphics.

True?

Best,

Bishop

More or less the same requirements.

Ask again in a couple years.

Seriously though, neither Bethesda nor Obsidian games are ever without major bugs. The latest patch made things better for many of us, but some people are still having issues and the next patch could always make things worse. Either get it or don't, but know that you're most likely gonna be struggling with a [censored] buggy game. A fantastic [censored] buggy game, but a [censored] buggy game nonetheless.

The game definitely still has bugs for many, and many still have semi-frequent CTD's. Most of the time the issues aren't insurmountable or enough to keep you from either ignoring the minor bug and/or immediately restarting the game to continue, because (imo) the game is that fun/good, but as always, your mileage may vary considerably.

It still has a ton of bugs, and for some of us performance and framerate has gone to [censored] since the last patch. Seems like as soon as they fix one thing, they break ten others.

In my case I clocked 90+ hours so far with only a crash to the desktop every once in a while. But not repeatable.

Some things need to be fixed, sure, but you can work around them most of the time.

Well in my playthrough, I did not experience any game breaking bugs that some have encountered.
There are the occasional tiny bugs and glitches, Like creatures getting stuck in the terrain, But other than that its quite smooth.
I say get it ASAP

If you go into it understanding you should do seperate manual saves every now and then and that you might have some performance issues then you'll probably love the game. If you don't expect that from the get go, I can imagine some significant frustration.

Me- I knew I SHOULD have been doing seperate manual saves regularly but I was having so much fun in my first marathon play session after I bought it that I wasn't bothering. Of course that meant the universe would need to teach me a lesson about what it means to know you should do something and then not bothering to do so- and so I started again from the beginning since I lost most of my progress to corrupted autosaves and quicksaves. I'm liking it alot. It is buggy at times but it's fun enough that even that really really bad game-killing kind of bug I ran into (corrupted saves) only killed my will to play for about a day.

The recent patch fixed all engine issues and now all that's left seems to be menial scripting work. They still shouldn't have released it in the state it was, but at the least it's being polished.

Well it still needs a little more than just menial scripting issues, but you're right that for the vast majority of users it is not just playable but reasonably solid. Still, I can think of a few important things off the top of my head that will probably be rolled up in the next patch (or at least incrimentally improved):

Scripting issues (yeah mostly minor just as you said- some can break quests but on the PC they are often able to be fixed without even needing to reload a save. another reason to chose the PC of the console version where a script killing one of your quests offers no other solution besides reloading and hoping it behaves)
Companion AI (games always can benefit from improved companion AI but these guys can be downright disobedient and sometimes homocidally murder an entire casino's worth of people for no apparent reason- that last bit is a rare one. I had cass inside gomorrah and at one point, and for no reason I could determine, she decided she wanted to kill all the prosttutes. did not happen on reload though- maybe she got bored and decided to act out with a little of the old ultraviolence)
An accidentally inaccessible ending (yeah, there's one you can't possibly get because of one typeo- community fix adresses it and next patch should to)
Reloading animation oddities (oddly enough the patch notes for the last patch list that as an item that was fixed, but for many people it seems as though it was actually introduced by it)
UltraLuxe bathing area (one of the NPCs in there seems to really enjoy causing crashes to desktop- might be an invalid call in one of her random banters)
Enemies clipping into the ground (mostly insects when dead, so at least you're not losing any really good loot. sometimes happens with living creatures including centaurs though and this will cause your companions to flip out and run in circles over an enemy that can never reach you. Unfortunately this enemy can sometimes appear on top of you if you rest somewhere relatively close by. This is relatively rare and due to autosaves is not going to break you game because you can just reload to right before you tried to rest)
Save game corruption (They fixed the vast majority of this and it seems that people are far less likely to encounter it even if they reload a save just prior to it happening and reload. Before the patch it was much more common and you had to either go much farther back in your saves and or abandon attempting to complete certain quests the way you wanted to. Mostly fixed, should be gone entirely in next patch at least the 2 common causes).
Latest patch greatly improved most people's performance while seems to have degraded certain ATI uers performance as well That one's a balancing act but I don't see it not being fixed in the next patch- not too hard when you have 2 versions, one of each works for each group of those users)

Mostly not gamebreaking things and when they are they usually don't happen again even from recent autosaves. Still, it's a big complex game so there are still some big complex and slightly ugly bugs that can rear their heads from time to time. In its current state I would say buy it. If you are iffy about your PC being able to play it then there's nothing wrong with the console version- but that one I would wait on. Console versions next patch will include many of the fixes, and none of the introduced bugs, of the last PC patch as well as other items to be included in the major update. So right now the PC version is a fully cut but not quite polished diamond well worth picking up while the console version still needs a few more taps of the cutter before I say grab it.

PC here, on my second playthrough. I have very few problems--irrelevant gunfire and reloading slow=down are the two major ones, but no CTD's or anything serious at all.

Remember, thousands bought this game, and the most vocal find this forum, and they are here because they have problems. I can't speak for the thousands, but my guess is a lot have few problems at all. I have done nothing except play the game -- no tweaks or mods or messing with my system. That's how most people play.

Steam, I can live without it intruding and taking over my PC gaming. I really don't like that aspect of it. There must be a better way to DRM than this kind of invasion of privacy. Steam seems to be a great social hub, but I want to play solo-- without the ads and the updates.

Anyway, buy this game.

It is far from free of major bugs, but a lot of people seem to settle with the fact that this game still is and probably always will be an unstable crashing timebomb. I bought the PC collector's edition on the day of its release and still can't play it becase I can not be immersed into a Fallout game when I know it's going to crash to desktop any minute (usually about every 10 minutes on average).

Not a lot of people will tell you it's free from bugs, but when they do they are either very lucky, or lying, or both.
The rest will accept the fact that the developers have screwed us over and try to play the game despite its annoying bugs.
And I tell you to keep your money safely in your pocket and steer clear of this p.o.s.

That svcks - hope the next patch addresses that for you. While the vast majority of people do not experience crashes nearly that often there is a not-insignificant minority that is getting some very unpleasant and atypical behavior out of the game. It seems that each version of the game had stability issues on a particular (and oddly specific) subset of graphics card models. In each version through the current one there have been specific graphics cards which have produced abysmal performance and required a 3rd party modified DLL file to run at a reasonable framerate. Up until the last patch the vast majority were nVidia users (mostly because it seemed to affect a wider range of cards) with a smaller but equally annoyed group of ATI users. The last patch greatly mitigated this problem for most of the nVidia users who were experiencing it but also seemed to cause it for some ATI users who had been getting perfectly fine performance up till that point.

The last patch also rendered the 3rd party DLL people had already downloaded unusable and it would cause the game to become very unstable. People that were unaware of this incompatibility have probably gotten to the point of wanting to feed the game disc to someone.

To the OP- I do not think your card is one of those with the unexpectedly poor performance problems. It is however on the cusp of the minimum requirements and the game does seem to either be more demanding than Fallout 3 or be slightly less efficient in its ability to utilize system resources. This may have to do with the the fact that the open ares are more densely populated by locations, mobs, and other things going on and that there are fewer closed outdoor areas like the DC downtown cells. It may also be possible that the color yellowish orange is just slower to render than a dull green haze- which would explain the design decision in FO3 to cover everything in that as a clever way of improving performance (yes I'm joking).

Hybreed - I tried looking through your old posts to see if you had provided details when talking about your CTD problem but I didn't see it in the first couple at least. If I missed the thread you initially asked for help in and posted your details please feel free to link to it. Your rate of crashing is not typical so there is a good chance something can be done to fix it, but we have to know more than just you keep getting CTDs every few minutes and are angry. If you want to post your dcdiag out put maybe I can try to figure a few things out.

No, it fixed the engine issues for some people and created many new ones for others.

Uh....well, maybe that's true for some people, but I can and still am using that 3rd party .dll with the latest patch and it still works just as fine it ever did.
That is, if you're talking about the .dll file for nvidia users. If you meant another .dll file than never mind.

Tha'ts great for you but I hope nobody would discount it as a possible source of their problems because it is still helping some people. As of the last patch even the listing of this file on newvegasnexus- the up-loaders recommends against using. Just because it's working for you does not mean people having problems should not try to rule it out as a possible source of some of their difficulties post patch. It is known to be able to cause problems in the latest version for both nvidia and ati cards and both the upload listings contain notices to try the game without it first.

Obviously if someone removes it and does not notice an improvement well then it wasn't the source of their problems- but that should be one of the things they check.

O jesus.... The game isnt a failure. FFS! So it was released with a few bugs, boo hoo. What game isn't?

I too have the collector's edition which i pre-ordered. I got somewhere around 160hrs in this game with maybe 5 to 6 desktop crashes. The few ppl still experiencing problems after 2 patches can only point to problem in their own system. Maybe ATI's drivers just svck? They certainly have in the past. And NO one is going to tell you it's free of bugs..... because it's not... again... what game is?

Honestly, the biggest performance gain i got was by updating my nvidia drivers from the early October one's to the October 25th ones. (and the .dll trick)

Yea, i still have a few rad scorpions that get stuck in terrain but that's no reason throw your hands up about.

I'm running this game with a system i bought in 2005 and the only upgrades are a 750w PS and a GTX275 video card. I play the game on medium and it runs fairly well. Yea, there is some studder here and there but for the most part combat, explosions, etc are smooth.

The game has a great story and the out-come totally depends on your actions. Get the game, you wont regret it.

If I hadn't used a Best Buy gift card to get the game (Happy Birthday to me!), I would have definitely purchased/downloaded it from Steam. I hardly ever get hard-media boxed games anymore, and Steam is my delivery method of choice. The FNV box is packed away in a closet now.

I must admit to being amused by the Luddites who fear and revile Steam for ridiculous or downright untrue reasons. Digital distribution is where it's going - might as well get on board.

The game has a few rough spots, but is imminently playable. 128 hours with just a few CTDs and one bugged quest (fixed w/ console command) I'm having a blast. I'm siteseeing and doing all the side quests because I don't want to advance the main quest any more and bring that first-time-through-the-game experience to end.

So, to the OP's questions: Yes, and yes.

Stop defending it, this is by far one of the buggiest big budget games released in recent years.

So, we can "Fear & revile" it for legitimate reasons? & Not everyone can get onboard the Digi-Distro train so easily.