Serious question about game testing : Fallout 4

» Mon Nov 30, 2015 10:25 am

Ok this is for the game industry all around but I am picking on Fallout for it. Dont get me wrong I love Fallout always have but I read before the release about all the hours they had in it testing. Is that or was it a complete lie? Because with the ammount of issue on all platforms there is no way in hell that can be true. Think about it either they play in one platform and dont notice [censored] or they are all just lying out there teeth! Are the testers all way to stoned to notice? I would like serious feedback on this. Not just this game but the whole industry. Bad games or broken games released to us to buy is a load of bull

» Mon Nov 30, 2015 11:16 am

I don't think all these issues are missed in pre-release testing. I think the ones that are found are put in the "we'll deal with that later" basket. Then they tell everyone the issues were only found after release and that they'll fix them in a patch. No developer is ever going to say publicly and plainly: "We just left a bunch of issues in our game because we didn't feel like addressing them before release". They always say they were discovered after release.

» Sun Nov 29, 2015 10:16 pm

What bugs?

I have yet to see anything game breaking, or anything that would make me want to stop playing.

» Mon Nov 30, 2015 9:24 am

A game this large with this many interlocking systems and variables is extremely difficult to test thoroughly.

As Bethesda's statement said, they had 100 testers. Those 100 people never have access to the final finished game. They are constantly testing a work in progress, and as anyone who has used mods knows, even a tiny change or adjust can introduce bugs. Then MILLIONS of people get the game, and of course they are going to discover way more than was missed. It's inevitable. Add into that all the hundreds of different configurations of hardware and software on PCs, and it can become a nightmare of a bug showing up for a few hundred people that can almost never be replicated by someone else.

» Sun Nov 29, 2015 7:39 pm

Hi, former game dev and modder here. The testing conducted on games is extensive - nothing gets on a console without passing rigorous qualifications from Sony and Microsoft, for example. That rigorous testing isn't going to catch rare or minor bugs, though. If Bethesda had 100 testers working 4 years (at 40 hours for 40 weeks), those testers have played the game for 640,00 hours. Bethesda reports shipping 12,000,000 units to retailers for launch. If even half of those copies were sold to customers, the game has been played ten times more in one hour than it has by all the testers during four years. And, as LateWhiteRabbit noted, the testers did not have access to the final game for the majority of this time. I can't tell when Bethesda did a content lock, but I imagine that they've only had access to the "final," game for under a year. I put final in quotes because it would have been changing daily as people fixed bugs up until maybe a month or two ago, and each of those bug fixes had the chance to create a new round of bugs.

Occidentally also has a point, though he's framing it rather negatively. Yes, some of the bugs we're encountering have probably been previously found by Bethesda. Not most, or many, but some. Why were they not fixed? Bugs are tiered according to severity. If something prevents someone from loading up the game, that's a must fix. If something prevents 5% of players from completing a random side quest, it's way lower on the totem pole. As the gold date nears, those low priority bugs may very well be saved for a future patch. Other bugs may just not have had solutions found, or not have been able to be reproduced. It's impossible to fix something unless you know how or why it's occurring.

Finally, no matter how many bugs you're encountering, please don't say that the developers are lazy or "stoned." I guarantee you that these people worked 80 hour weeks and didn't get to spend time with their families or friends for weeks (if not months) at a time. Testing games, especially games as ridiculously huge and complicated as Bethesda's is hard and tedious work. It's not just "playing videogames."

» Sun Nov 29, 2015 10:17 pm

Unfortunately, none of Bethesda's test machines has a standard-resolution monitor.