"Recent News" on Steam cites mass criticism! : V - Skyrim

» Mon Dec 12, 2011 12:21 am

Releasing a product with this many bugs is not acceptable. The game's release should have been delayed until more of the kinks were worked out, not (presumably) shoved out the door for the Christmas season. If any game had been released during any previous generation of consoles with this level of fault, the company would have been rightly ridiculed for such a poor showing. Just because a company can patch a game on today's consoles doesn't mean they should release it with so much work left undone.

Frankly, if they couldn't develop a bug-free game of this scale, they should have reduced the scale. There are obviously a lot of people on here willing to go to the mattresses for Bethesda, but money speaks louder than fans. I've never purchased a Bethesda game before, and after my own frustrations with the bugs in this game, I probably never will again.

» Mon Dec 12, 2011 8:13 am

Amen to that!

Developers know they can release a buggy mess for consumption and that people will buy it up just the same as if they had waited an extra 6 months to really fine tune everything. Getting this to change will more than likely require one of the following:

1) Massive social change in attitude concerning what an "acceptable" finished product is. (Highly unlikely)
2) Developers realizing that they're promoting bad game development practices and stopping it themselves. (Highly unlikely)
3) Enough developers screw over enough people and a smart developer decides to capitalize on gamers desperation for a polished/finished product. (Doubtful)

The DLC generation has killed any notion of what a "complete at release" game should be. Everyone expects games to be released prematurely and then to be patched/fixed/completed after they've already bought it. MOST gamers are willing to pay EXTRA for these things. Until these things change, gaming will only get worse and worse.

Remember back in the day when you used to pay full retail price of maybe $40 for a game with horrible resolution and maybe 3-4 hours of horrificly simplistic and redundant gameplay. Now we've got games with beautiful artistic landscapes in massive open worlds with branching gameplay that last for 100's of hours, and they cost about $60. Gaming really is going down the crapper. At this rate who knows what kind of horrible things are going to happen in the future.

Frankly, if they couldn't develop a bug-free game of this scale, then they should have reduced the scale. There are obviously a lot of people on here willing to go to the mattresses for Bethesda, but money speaks louder than fans. I've never purchased a Bethesda game before, and after my own frustrations with the bugs in this game, I probably never will again.

People want bigger and better games, and are willing to deal with bugs and updates. Money does speak louder than fans and the money is telling bethesda to keep on doing what they're doing. Bethesdas sales from Morrowind to Fallout to Skyrim have only gone up and up and up with each of those releases being buggy and later patched. We want bethesda to be ambitious and make great games. Playing it safe is stilting and crappy.

» Sun Dec 11, 2011 11:14 pm

... what?

When people make mistakes they deserve criticism. Just because you've done some things well does not mean you are allowed to screw up other things and have those mistakes go ignored. I'm not saying Skyrim is a bad game, I love the game but stop being a ignorant really devoted fan.

What's ignorant is characterizing other people as ignorant. See what I did there? :flamethrower:

Too much overreaction...they want their game to work properly...it'll get there.

:tes:

» Mon Dec 12, 2011 4:45 am

Remember back in the day when you used to pay full retail price of maybe $40 for a game with horrible resolution and maybe 3-4 hours of horrificly simplistic and redundant gameplay. Now we've got games with beautiful artistic landscapes in massive open worlds with branching gameplay that last for 100's of hours, and they cost about $60. Gaming really is going down the crapper. At this rate who knows what kind of horrible things are going to happen in the future.

Nice sarcasm chief.

FF3 was nowhere near "3-4 hours of horrificly simplistic and redundant gameplay". I'd venture to say it's the first game I ever invested more than 100 hours into.

I don't get your argument... you're basically saying that games look better now and that's reason enough for us to just shut up and deal with it? Your "3-4 hour" argument isn't backed up by anything... so I'll just go ahead and ignore that. You are aware that there are PLENTY of modern games that release with a measly 3-4 hours worth of campaign and the rest of gameplay is made up of half-baked multiplayer options?

Graphics aren't everything.

» Mon Dec 12, 2011 10:34 am

Do you come from Planet Naive? Was the buggy as hell FNV fixed? They have your money, job done

Obsidian developed FNV. It's still a great game even if not perfect and it has one bug that bugs the hell out of me. I support the development of open world games and the road in that developement is not going to be perfect. If only life were perfect..........

:tes:

» Mon Dec 12, 2011 12:16 pm

I know what regression testing is and it doesn't always find everything.

Really? That's somewhat surprising considering you thought it was beta testing an hour ago. Regardless, properly coded regression tests will find everything they're supposed to. However if they're not written and you don't rigorously adhere to an exhaustive accepting testing process then you are not managing the risk of regression and are probably going to release an update riddled with bugs.

What pissy little applications do you work on that come out flawless with every update?

Nice. Obviously you're as classy as you are informed.

» Mon Dec 12, 2011 6:56 am

Nice sarcasm chief.

FF3 was nowhere near "3-4 hours of horrificly simplistic and redundant gameplay". I'd venture to say it's the first game I ever invested more than 100 hours into.

I don't get your argument... you're basically saying that games look better now and that's reason enough for us to just shut up and deal with it? Your "3-4 hour" argument isn't backed up by anything... so I'll just go ahead and ignore that. You are aware that there are PLENTY of modern games that release with a measly 3-4 hours worth of campaign and the rest of gameplay is made up of half-baked multiplayer options?

Graphics aren't everything.

I was an avid nintendo player back in the day and those games are a mere fraction of what any game is now for roughly the same price. The production value, length and breadth of gaming has gone through the roof. Thanks for adding that we also have multi-player games with dedicated FREE servers. That's immense. We get so much more for our gaming dollar now it's not even funny.

Developers should work hard to make their games as functional as possible, but comparing what we have now to the "good old days" is probably the WORST way to make that point.

» Mon Dec 12, 2011 1:31 am

I was an avid nintendo player back in the day and those games are a mere fraction of what any game is now for roughly the same price. The production value, length and breadth of gaming has gone through the roof. Thanks for adding that we also have multi-player games with dedicated FREE servers. That's immense. We get so much more for our gaming dollar now it's not even funny.

Developers should work hard to make their games as functional as possible, but comparing what we have now to the "good old days" is probably the WORST way to make that point.

There's good and bad from both generations of gaming. No need to try and prove that yours is better than mine. I didn't do that in my original post, yet you've cornered me and made it seem like that was my intent all along.

I hate forums.

» Mon Dec 12, 2011 6:30 am

Really? That's somewhat surprising considering you thought it was beta testing an hour ago. Regardless, properly coded regression tests will find everything they're supposed to. However if they're not written and you don't rigorously adhere to an exhaustive accepting testing process then you are not managing the risk of regression and are probably going to release an update riddled with bugs.

Obviously, you're as classy as you are informed.

I never said regression testing was beta testing; though beta testing does the same thing infinitely better. Pre-determined and automated testing of different functions will only get you so far; that you think it's the end all of finding bugs proves you know nothing about software development on this scale, or likely any scale.

» Mon Dec 12, 2011 2:20 am

I have not been slow at pointing out the many faults in Skyrim and it clearly was not ready for release on the 11.11.12 but I am also impressed with how few bugs there are. I have played over 250 hours and only found one graphics error in the land scape. Considering the size of Skyrim i think thats impressive. The number of quest they have made, dungeons and story lines is fantastic and I feel that they have gone for quantity rather then quality. I have had very few problems with quest or NPC I have had few CTD and some models not rendering but these are fixed by a restart. Overall I think the game is excellent in comparison to previous games of this type, but it still has plenty of room to improve.

» Mon Dec 12, 2011 12:36 am

There's good and bad from both generations of gaming. No need to try and prove that yours is better than mine. I didn't do that in my original post, yet you've cornered me and made it seem like that was my intent all along.

I hate forums.

You like what you like; I'm not insulting your choice of gaming but it is empirical fact that we have a lot more for our money now.

» Sun Dec 11, 2011 11:14 pm

Bethesda definitely does not deserve to be slammed for an awesome game like Skyrim. It's not reality and it's not fair. There's been way too much overreaction to every little thing. If people couldn't handle some bugs that go along with such a huge game right at release, they should have waited for a few months and some patching. What a downer...my game is awesome and I know any problems will be fixed.

:tes:

I totally agree they don't deserve it, and they always support their games....look at NV, I never had a issue from day one but many people did but the major bugs were corrected.

Bethesda :wub:

» Mon Dec 12, 2011 8:13 am

It's not 'Devs these days' but 'Gamers on forums these days'. Gamers want top end graphics, top end content absolutely bugfree for $60, and they want it now.

» Mon Dec 12, 2011 11:14 am

Bethesda was stupid to promise a releas date. A game should be "done when it's done." Skyrim clearly needed another few months of QA testing.

» Mon Dec 12, 2011 12:58 am

With 100 hours of gameplay I've yet to encounter a bug that makes me stop playing the game, it's a game, it's impossible to not have bugs.

» Mon Dec 12, 2011 3:00 am

You like what you like; I'm not insulting your choice of gaming but it is empirical fact that we have a lot more for our money now.

Quantity != Quality

You're right though, for our money, we get "more" than we ever got back in the old school PC/NES/SNES days. That doesn't necessarily make it better though.

» Mon Dec 12, 2011 9:15 am

Interesting if the recent news on Steam slams Bethesda.

Talk about pot calling kettle.

Steam has caused me nothing but grief. I've been playing in offline mode ever since their messed up servers wouldn't let me play last week.

The bugs I've encountered in Skyrim are almost entirely in the minor nuisance category if that. Easily ignored. Interesting that some people get so hung up over it. I can see Steam wanting to make a big deal out of Skyrim's bugs as it pulls attention away from their own much more serious problems.

The one which needs to be slammed is Steam. The next time I'm considering buying a game I'll be looking at whether it requires Steam. If it does that will be a massive black mark against that game.

» Mon Dec 12, 2011 5:33 am

Closed to review

Edit: But some of you do realize that that Steam feature just pulls stories it deems related from other sites, right?