all games have bugs

its inevitable

good thing Beth. give a rat's ass to fix them quickly

Surely a day one patch means that Bethesda are still tweaking and looking for issues rather than just going "We've gone Gold, everyone can go home."?

I'd much rather see a developer that's on the ball and gets fixes out quickly than have to wait a for fixes to be released, especially important IF they are major fixes - which this does not see to be.

There has to be a cut of when the game gets the venerable v1.0 stamp and is sent off to production, but that doesn't/shouldn't mean that they stop working on it - and if they have started as they mean to go on by getting patches out quickly (read: on release in this instance) then Im all for it.

The OP should know by now that you can never go criticize Bethesda without getting a fan-army wrath storm upon you. So a reminder to all the people who want point out negative aspect in the development of Bethesda games, please remain silent, because the unquestioning horde of blind worshipers are giving the orders around here.

So... you're mad because they're trying to get it right? It's like being mad at the ump for blowing the call before he corrects himself and reverses it. All that matters is that the game gets better. I'm all about day 1 patches.

That much is true.

nope!! most games i play have a day one update/patch!

I'm a long time forum lurker, first time poster and I thought I'd help clear up some of the confusion around bugs and testing.

Some years back I got the chance to work as a software tester on some pretty boring and linear financial software. We were told to test for every possible scenario you could think of that a user could possible try. We thoroughly tested the software and after the software was release the users still found some bugs. The users were just doing so many random things in random combinations, that it was mind boggling to see what they came up with. Now remember we had a pretty large team testing a small specialised project for a firm with only about a hundered users.

SO what the hell does this have to do with Skyrim you ask?

Well Skyrim is a massive non-linear game with hours of game play, loads of interactive objects and NPC. Beth could hire a hundred testers, to test 24 hours non-stop and they would still never ever catch every weird bug. There're just too many possible strange random outcomes for a random user action. That's why day 1 patches exist, because the wild is where games, like TES are really tested. when millions of gamers interacting with the world.

(However, I do not agree with ANY game EVER being released with OBVIOUS game BREAKING bugs. Those are usually much easier to catch by the testers and should be fixed in the development cycle)

I could try to point out some issues with your position, but you'd just take it as proof of your thesis. No win situation. :shrug:

I am always quite skeptical about day 1 patches. As has already been pointed out, they have an impact on leaked and pirated copies, meaning that they will almost be 'demo' versions. It is in fact in the company's (and not just Bethesda all developers nowadays seem to release day 1 patches) interest to release a slightly buggy gold game requiring registering in some form to get it to work properly. Some therefore might suggest that some of the bugs will not be completely on accident.

As for car anologies, the day I spend ￡10k on a computer game is the day that the comparison is a fair one. This is more like taking the family to the cinema and being told when you are seated that the camera lens needs realligning before the film can start, delaying your viewing by a few minutes.

Games are huge these days, mucho complexo. Back in the day, a game could release with a few bugs, and they wouldn't be game breaking, nowadays we have games that have so much content developers couldn't possibly find every bug and fix, especially before release.

Did you know, you could have 40,000 lines(this would be an amazingly small game) of C++(a programming language) that wont do a damn thing if you forgot so much as a single semi-colon? Imagine what bigger mistakes do to games.

tl;dr patches, specifically day 1 patches, are nothing to complain about.

I accept with one modification - the lens will be realigned several times during your viewing - by a few minutes. It don't believe that it will end with a day one patch.

If Bethesda games don't meet your standards, don't buy them. Exercise those consumer rights!

The consequence of proclaiming a consumer right to software that is unbugged on release would be smaller, simpler games. I'll take the bugs--and be glad that Bethesda is minded to fix them!

Also, based on the replies to my first post, I find it hard to imagine a scenario in which it would be possible to post on an Internet forum, but impossible briefly to connect an xbox to the Internet.

If you forget a semicolon in C++ it will never get gold as it won't compile. But as I said, Daggerfall is probably the buggies TES even though it was produced 'back in the day' with no fancy physics engines or something like that. It is the negligence we are talking about. It got better since Daggerfall, but slowly.

So what amount of release day bugs and glitched would be acceptable in a game such as Skyrim?

I'm always hoping it need not get to that, as there is much in TES I really love. I just think that that doesn't mean that I should keep silent and be happy with it.

You say you do not have it connected to the Internet. Are you just to bothered to take it to your computer and plug it in for a few minutes or do you not have access to Internet at all? If it is the first one, then there is no helping laziness, but if it is the second then yeah it svcks but maybe a friends house?

Why don't you connect it to the net, you are on now.
It would take less time to CONNECT YOUR XBOX TO THE INTERNET! than it did to type all that, even if you had borrow a connection somewhere.

It will be easiest to tell you what I think after few days.

1) I know it wouldn't compile, hence the "it wouldn't do a damn thing." No compile, no program. I'm trying to make a point. Source codes are fickle, and its easy to make one do something you don't want it to.

2) daggerfall kind of makes my point actually. Big open world, lots of npcs and enemies(many being randomly generated), rolling dice, so to speak, in the background to check things like whether or not a strike connects. Daggerfall was a pretty advanced game for its time.

This. If they want to stay in business making these huge games, they have to make them work. Interplay had this problem: releasing games bugged to death and then not patching them properly. Grant, they were also mismanaged, but they actually released the source code to Klingon Academy within a month of release (iIrc) because they threw in the towel on fixing the bugs.

Failing to fix bugs kills games and could kill the Elder Scrolls IP, at least as it exists today with the following it has now. They have to keep working on it to keep it alive.

They're not failing to fix them- they're releasing a patch the moment you install the game!

It seems Bethesda is damned if you do, damned if you don't. Try to build a huge game world because that's what the fans want, but then they find bugs and the customers complain they have to fix them.

What do you want them to do? There is literally *no* way possible to test 100% of this game since many aspects are RANDOMLY GENERATED.

Exactly. Thank you for the clarification.

You dont need to pay for xbox membership to download patches.

What you do is simply unhook the internet from your pc and stick the cable into your xbox.
You can then download the patch that comes with most games I buy these days and it does so automatically.
It works for me

I'm trying to remember the last game that didn't have a day one patch... can't think of one.

Glitched npc's in a wall is an example of an acceptable glitch. 99% of the games has those and Skyrim has a lot of them. With advanced behaviour.
I can also live with some weird animations now and then, like an npc floating in the air as if on a horse.

What is unacceptable is anything that can break the game. Ranging from non responding essential npcs to random freezes.