In all my years of playing games, spanning back as far as the Intellivision, never in my life have I dealt with so many gamebreaking bugs in a single title.

In the 34 hours of game time I've fought to put in thus far, here's what I've been dealing with:

• 27 complete game freezes;
  
• Companions who mysteriously vanish for long periods only to return just as randomly after a zone change;
  
• Texture pop-in stuttering that ALMOST locks the game;
  
• Excessive frame stuttering when mobs or NPCs spawn on screen;
  
• GUI elements that stay on screen (eg. target lifebar) for minutes after looking elsewhere;
  
• Quests completely bugging out and failing within minutes of accepting them;
  
• Mobs clipping through textures and/or falling through the world texture;
  
• EXTREME cases of input lag;
  
• Dialog that just warps off screen at super speed;
  
• Periodic loss of sound and sound effects for no apparent reason;
  
• Extremely long load times;
  
• And so on, and so on...

I've TRIED to play through these problems, but I've reached a point where these problems have made the game completely unplayable.

Without spoilers, I'll just say I've followed the NCR path and am in an epic battle against the Legion. In said battle, there are often 3-4 Legion enemies, myself, and 2-5 NCR allies. The frame rate and input lag has slowed the game to an absolute crawl. It literally takes 10 seconds or more to switch a weapon or use any aid product through hot keys. Even when I'm not trying to switch weapons or use consumables and am simply trying to shoot, from the time I hit Right Trigger, I can start counting the seconds until I actually shoot on screen.

Sorry for making an account just to rant, as that is generally NOT my style, but I slogged through these issues for a week now with the knowledge that a patch was being worked on, but the more I attempt to play the game, the more I realize one patch won't fix all the problems with this title. I've simply reached my frustration limit.

There is no excuse for the poor quality of this release. I am extremely disappointed and I have no desire to bother trying to play anymore. I will likely trade it in to pay off other preorders at this point. Perhaps when/if there's a GOTY Edition with all of the DLC attached, I'll give it another attempt. Maybe by then the bugs will be ironed out. But I'm doubting it.

I commend you on how intelligently you laid this out. Everything you have said is pretty much what all of us, or at least most of us have tried putting into words. I haven't really expressed my frustration with this game yet but now I don't need to because you've summed it all up for me. Thank you!

I've said this in another thread and i totally agree. Considering Bethesda or whoever made this game has had 5+ years to fiddle and perfect the game engine. Yet we still see the same [censored] bugs as well as the constant freezing!!! I've been playing for 10+ hours and have had a total of 8 Lock freezes resulting in me restarting the console.

Fed up.

I'm not even close to where you are in the story yet and I've already given up...
what did it for me was when a battle starts most of the time when I try
to access VATS it takes like 2, 3, 4 or sometimes as many as 5 or 6 times of
pounding the button to get the darned thing to finally come up...

FO3 never had VATS problems like that... other problems maybe but the
VATS system usually worked pretty consistently, although I remember a few
times when the game crashed the instant I hit the VATS button... lol

all I can say is... wow

It must be that the game is bascially running by the seat of its pants all
of the time so the crashes come at totally random times and seemingly
out of nowhere.. lol

M

Thanks and no problem.

I'm usually very forgiving of software bugs, and I will gladly concede that open world games usually have some bugs. None of them, however, have ever had bugs to the extent this game has. I envy those people who are honestly not having any problems with the game. I know I'm not alone in my disappointment, as my long time friend and neighbor returned the game (360 version) last Thursday after dealing with many similar issues.

My first real frustration test came on Friday when I had 4 lock ups in a one hour span, all while trying to get to Ranger Station Foxtrot. It's really sad that this steno pad sitting on my desk that usually use to keep a few notes when playing RPGs (so I'm not trying to track all the little bits of information in my head) is being used more as a pad to keep track of how many times the game has locked up.



I know the frustration. Out in the open world, where there's very little going on, VATS didn't give me too many problems. When I started getting into places where there were more mobs or NPCs, VATS would take forever to load. Where I am now, in the big battle, I can't even bring VATS up. Sometimes when I bring VATS up, it doesn't even properly show the targeting overlays.

This is so weird because I have over 40 hours of gameplay (level 22) and have not experienced 1 single problem. Everyone has been saying how glitched and terrible this game is but I have not had one single problem! Absolutely nothing!!! I have a 2 USB port 80GB FAT PS3 (the last version of the FAT PS3 models), I was an original 60GB launch owner but it died last year so I replaced it. I mean things like the infinite cap glitch and infinite xp from some speech challenges exist (however I consider those cheats not glitches because they don't break the game and you can choose to use them or not, like a cheat), but nothing out of the ordinary or game breaking such as freezes, slow-down, problems with quests or companions. This game hasn't missed a beat for me!! I don't really care if a patch comes or not because I don't need it.

Now addressing the frame-rate slow down you guys have experienced, or audio cutting out, this is most likely due to long game sessions (several hours), and eventually the PS3's cache fills up and needs to be cleared. I don't know all the technical aspects of it but, the PS3 caches game data as you play and eventually it fills up because, i guess, unlike other games, Fallout doesn't tell the PS3 to clear its cache every once in a while? Once filled the frame-rate is most likely to take a huge hit and the game may freeze all together. All you have to do is simply turn off your PS3, which clears its cache, and turn it back on.

I hear you all, but these problems will start to appear for me even after 1-2 mins of gameplay and then sometimes after 15 mins but it also has become so bad I am no longer playing.
For a game to have a 5 GB + install file and still have the amount of disk reading this game does is not good. I understand how big the game is but come on. The loading screens
are far to many and they last 30 - 45 seconds and then just freeze up. The frame rates are so bad at times it has become unplayable for me.

On thing I noticed is my save file size will increase and decrease every save. If I go in somewhere and loot the place and then go save all the stuff my save file should increase right?? But most times
it will decrease. My game freezes alot in the save screen which is totally unexcuseable.

He is right and one patch will not fix these shortcomings and I don't want to wait for 3 months of patches to be able to sit and play through without so many problems.

Very disappointed.....

First, if you are experiencing problems just minutes in it sounds like you PS3 is dieing, PS3's seem to slow-down and lose performance over time, what kind of PS3 do you have? Second, I think I have an answer as to why your save file might decrease, where are you when you save? If you save while in the wasteland and then walk into a small building and save, the game might delete some things laying around the wastes that you left behind such as dead bodies and items, thus leading to a smaller game save.

Layman - this sounds exactly like the problem I had with Fallout 3 in the Operation Anchorage DLC.

Unfortunately, http://support.gamesas.com/eng/resolution.asp?sid=062449101025094195105092&pid=400000953&pnm=Fallout:%20New%20Vegas&seid=400002572&pos=Playstation%203&top=Gameplay&rid=400003361 seems to be "live with it" - something which I find totally unacceptable. Astonishing that they haven't fixed major bugs like this, even more astonishing that they are either unwilling or unable to fix the issues.

As I've said before, it's unbelievable that a company can release a product in such a shoddy, unfinished state. I'm surprised that both Sony and Microsoft QA passed this as a saleable product. It really is quite disgraceful.

Has anyone tried to go to Sony's website to complain about the issues? I'm assuming they're not responding either.

I'm glad you are experiencing no problems with your game, but others are and I can tell you that my PS3 is not that old,
only a few months and it works beautifully on many other games some of which are new within the last few months...
I have games I can play for 10-12 hours without even a stutter much less all the crashing of FONV, so I know it's not my
machine...

One thing you are right about is that FONV, not to mention FO3, will 'eat' all the resources of the PS3 and at that point a crash is inevitable...
The only way you can avoid it is to stop playing - shut the machine off and then fire it back up and reload the game...
doesn't that kind of ruin the whole experience, I know for me it does to always have to shut the machine
off because if I don't it's going to crash for sure...? give me a break..

the problem is that the game engine is really bad at handling the small
amount of resouces on the machine, not like other games which handle it quite well and no problems...
It's the game engine itself that's the cause of the constant crashing not the PS3...

I honestly thought this situation would have been fixed or at least made better with the release of FONV but obviously
that is not the case since FONV is now doing it exactly the way FO3 does and I can't play either
one without a constant series of system crashes... unbelievable...

now that I'm about half way through the game even this only helps a little because the
game is now crashing after only a few minutes of gameplay.. I finally just gave up because I don't want to keep
crashing my machine again and again and again just to play one game... it's not worth it...

PS3 120 Gb fat - like I said purchased only a few months ago..

M

Exactly.
I never had anything near the level of problem in FO3 that I'm having with NV. Heck I've not had this sort of freezing issues on any of my other games. Graphic and script glitches are one thing but this freezing issue is serious for a lot of us and for me it's definitely making the game unplayable. Fingers crossed that some sort of patch is coming soon.

I at least have some hope that they will release some patches for the PS3 this time around for FONV..

with FO3 I didn't get the game until it had already been out for a long time so there wasn't anything I
could do... sad to say I haven't played that game for months due to all the crashes and I love that
one more than most of my other games but it just won't stop crashing... oh well...

M

It's not dying. As people often point out, they don't have problem with any other games than these (FO3 and NV). I had severe problems with FO3 months back. I don't play it anymore and I have zero problem with any other game, but FO3 started to freeze and stutter right away upon starting.

The evidence is overwhelming that there are severe bugs in these games so it's kind of pointless to try to put it on the individual user (saying it's your console, your settings, etc).

It ridiculous having to do "hacks" like reinstalling the game data or ditching companions or turning off the auto-save etc when it's Bethesda that has done wrong and should make it right. Plus at best it only works for a while (I was able to finish the DLCs in FO3, but some bugs lingered and got worse).

I'm happy I didn't buy New Vegas, but I also wish I could stop reading these forums, it's just that I hope to see a topic such as "new patch, freezing solved!", so I can buy the game.

I have been seeing a lot of posts, here and elsewhere, claiming that it's amount of time played that have been causing some of the issues. The logic behind the idea is somewhat sound, but I don't think it applies.

My PS3 was unused for the last 16 hours. I just popped in FNV, loaded up a previous save, and started the mission "We'll Know When It Happens" again. This mission has been one of the ones that has been giving me grief with completion. The rest I will place in a spoiler below as it has to do with a story mission late for the NCR:



Today, on the very first time I played after just turning on my PS3, I had the exact same issue with this quest as yesterday where it would fail immediately upon zoning outside.

I don't honestly believe length of play has anything to do with these bugs. I've had marathon sessions of FF13, Uncharted, Red Dead Redemption, Midnight Club LA, and other games and they all worked just fine several hours later. My wife and I spent 4 and a half hours playing Sports Champions last Monday (mm Bocce Ball and Disc Golf FTW) without any issue.

Weeee Neeeed a PATCH. But with all the problems this game seems to have it will be a patch about the size of the game itself.

My machine is only 4 mos. old and its not the machine. It is the program and its ability to do everything it needs to.
For one the PS3's memory cache is not all that big so when it gets filled things start to go wrong. With a game
this size it dosn't take long to fill it up, then the program has no where to dump anything when it is processing
data and hence the dreaded crash of freeze up.

My game now gets these mini freezes that last about 2-3 seconds but they come about every 4-5 mins. My play time
is 39 hrs on this save and the save file is 3955 KB and grows and shortens all the time. I can stand in one spot
and save 3 or 4 times and the save file will increase or decrease by as much as 500 kb's which to me sounds
like a error in the save file system.

I can't begin to fathom how in the hell the testers let this out of the office with this many bugs and problems.
I would be ashamed if my name was on this game as a developer or tester.

I would hope they are working on a solution but I feel this will not get fixed with one of two patches if
they can fix it at all. But hey I'm hoping cause the game is really good on the outside but the inside
is very broken.....

I agree the crashes seem totally random... I can say for certain though that the first 10 or so hours I played new vegas it was running very smoothly...
and then at some point it has become unstable and seems to be on the verge of crashing anytime, anywhere, whatever I am doing...

I loaded my save the other day and only played for about 3 hours and it was stuttering so badly I knew a crash was in the works..
all I was doing was standing in one place and rotating the camera around 360 degrees and I was getting consistent dropped frames...
that's pretty bad, actuallly the worst I've seen on any of my games and I have quite a large number of them...

for example, I can play red dead for as long as I want and it runs beautifully... after 12 hours it is still smooth as silk... so is DA origins as
well as res evil 5, metal 4, COD 4, just to name a few.... I've only experienced 3 crashes in all the hours I've played all these games
and I have logged a lot more hours on these than I have on NV...


when NV starts doing the constant stuttering thing I just shut the machine off....

man this really sux... I want to finish the quests I have going right now!!! lol

M

The 360 seems to be having more issues than it did with FO3 as well. The conclusion I have come to is that Bethesda forced Obsidian's hand for a release prior to the holidays. Bethesda needs to recitfy this and stop working on DLC to fill their pockets with even more money. With Oblivion, FO, and New Vegas, Bethesda seems to only care about the money. Sad. They seem to have gone the way of Blizzard...Except that Blizzard doesn't release bugged products.

Small coding errors can bring about huge and diverse symtoms in a game.



Lots of things that won't explain, like how it's possible to sometimes play for a couple of hours, and sometimes only 10 minutes, and why a big save file matter (like it does in FO3 at least). Most of the info in the save file is *not* active in the memory at the same time anyway. Info pertaining to Megaton, for example, won't load when you're in Point Lookout. In fact nothing from the wasteland will load in Point Lookout, as it isn't relevant. Bigger save file doesn't mean juggling with more info in RAM or the cache, yet bigger save file clearly correlates (if not causing) with freezing in FO3.

I would have to agree that a patch to fix every single problem at once is NOT going to happen. More than likely it would be broke up into smaller fixes, each addressing a smaller issue to buy them some breathing room from consumer complaints to *TRY* and get the bigger problems solved. Honestly, I suspect that they wont be able to fix the bigger issues of freezing and lockup, and if that is truely the case, I would like to know, that if their solution is, when freeze up, just restart the console, who is going to reimburse me for premature console failure due to constant off and on of the console? Restarting the console is like a bandaid on a gunshot wound...useless. So yes, I am hoping that the PS3 community doesn't get shunned like what happened with FO3, but, I fully expect it. The reason? They have done it before, and they will do it again. The Windows version had a patch put out for it at lightning speed, so that should tell you where either the priorities or ease of code restructure are. I would expect the next patch will be for 360, and the PS3 universe will be left waiting once again .Bethesda, I spent over 100$ for mine and again, over 100$ for an xbox 360 copy for my kids (both collectors edition) and they both have the same problems. I cant get my money back from Gamestop, your not going to give it back, SO FIX IT, plain and simple.

*note* I do not expect reimbursemant for the strategy guide, poker chips, the comic book, or the cards...they all work just fine.

Well..its been confirmed...the 360 was next in line for an update

added: IGNORE THIS ONE; FOUND THE ANSWER, SORRY BUT IT WAS HARD!

Cannot reach Ranger Station Foxtrot. I've been trying for a long time and I give up. I can't find a path or road all around that small mountain that will let me up. I see in the Guide photo that it seems it was approached facing SW but even that didn't help. I keep getting stuck in the rocks and the one skinny path between the rocks from the Cazador nesting area just won't let me through.

Please fix this; my quest for Tech Sgt. Reyes and the Ranger Station protocol updates has ended in failure. I hope there's a PS3 update soon.

It's the same for me. I can put up with the majority of in game glitches, some of them can even be entertaining!

But not being able to walk 50 metres without the game pausing for up to 2 seconds and complete freezes are completely inexcusable! It's hard to shoot fast moving enemies, and I even get lag when speaking to people.

I hope Bethesda are doing something about this as I have spent ￡40 on a useless round bit of plastic if it doesn't get patched!