I think it depends on the level of bugginess in the game. Sure, Bethesda should be putting as much effort as possible to fix serious issues. If it is game-breaking, it shouldn't be left alone by the developer. Issues like the bug where the key to the Oculory during the College of Winterhold questline doesn't work on the door are inexcusable (not nearly as much of a problem on PC like how I play, but many have to deal with it on consoles, and it still should not be a widespread issue). Daggerfall, likely the buggiest of any Bethesda game ever, was so riddled with bugs on release that it was literally impossible to complete the Main Quest. Even with Bethesda and community patches it is still really buggy, but playable. Although that was partly because Daggerfall was made on a tight schedule (a little over 2 years after Arena, the progenitor of the series, released).

Personally, I haven't encountered many serious bugs. The Purity quest bug (where you cure Vilkas and Farkas of lycanthropy) was way more of a hassle than it should've been, and quite tedious to circumvent. I seem to remember running into that CoW questline bug that I aforementioned, but it is has been a long time. I must've had to use the 'unlock' console command for the door to the Oculory. But apart from that, not too many big bugs happened to me.

Asking them to fix every bug is a bit much. That isn't to say Bethesda shouldn't do a better job with it though, because they absolutely should.

I've never had many game breaking bugs playing Bethesda Game Studios developed video games.

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind I only have Crashes to Desktop (CTD's) and sometimes getting stuck, that's it.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion I can't remember any game breaking bugs at all.

Fallout 3 a few Crashes to Desktop (CTD's), that's it.

Fallout: New Vegas I never got that head twisting bug or missing textures bugs.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim I never got the dragons flying backwards bug.

From The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion to The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim I got a lot of bugs, but they are not game breaking bugs or bugs that stop me from being able to do quests.

Sadly, you can get very far.

There is the great movie Fight Club. In a scene at the beginning, the main actor sits in a plane and describes his job to a women in the next seat.

His job is to check, if to make a call-back of a series of cars would cost more then to pay the lawyers of the people dying in such a car.

I`ve once seen a report, that flight-services calculate with 3 millions for one death customer.

Lets not forget the Diesel-Cars...

People basically want to feel like their purchase was a good one. Unfortunately, peoples' perspective might be that software companies seem to push with what they can get away with because people are still buying the products as https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0V59PqiI9U

You're right that some of the follower stuff is a case of unfinished development rather than an actual bug. It's still a huge annoyance. I despise constantly having to check behind me only to find my follower infinitely running into a two foot high rock because Bethesda couldn't be bothered to fix the obstacle negotiation algorithm.


Don't get me wrong,'Skyrim is one of the all-time great games in my book - but as software it's a bunch of crap.

lol

Vote with your wallet. That is the only way companies will change.

I was like you 20 years ago and was laughed at. Then ridiculed online by these very forums on Bethesda when Morrowind came out. I told people that the computer game industry would go to a Release early patch later mentality and was told I don't know what I am talking about since I know nothing about computers and it was a fluke that a few games did this at the time.

Now look at everything. It's standard practice now. Release now, patch later.

Only way to change it, is don't buy. Vote with your wallet.

I could actually live with release early and patch later if the end result was a game that had few bugs. What galls me is that they say "we're done" when the game still has bugs left and right.

developers don't have any ethical responsibility to remove bugs actually.. there is not a piece of software out there that doesn't have bugs, and fixing one bug often creates two more..




i think it would be interesting to see how the people who think "no, you HAVE to fix bugs" would have dealt with 90s PC gaming, where bugs were almost never fixed.. at least these days developers do fix many of their games bugs, but expecting them to work on a product until its bug-free is sort of unrealistic

I've been playing PC games since the early 80's. Games were far less buggy then. The second really buggy game I played was Master of Magic, and they literally shipped the game with a card to write off to for updates it was so buggy. Patches came in the mail on 3.5" floppies or CDs, depending on which you needed, and over time they did make the game pretty bug-free.


The rest of the software development world considers it a high priority to fix bugs. Tell me the last time you ran into a bug in Word, Excel, Firefox, Chrome, Photoshop, or any other major piece of software. Most other games are pretty bug-free.


But TES games are absolutely filled with them.

at bare minimum? I see them 3 times a week at least.. I work at an IT service shop, people call in almost bi daily with issues because those software bug out..

no, they really aren't.. go on the forums for just about any game available right now (even those that have been around for several years), you will see countless posts about bugs

Here is a link to bugzilla (Firefox) there is a load of bugs and such

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/describecomponents.cgi?product=Firefox

I dunno, yeah Skyrim has it's share of bugs, but compared to Morrowind when it was on the original Xbox, Skyrim runs like a dream on the 360. I remember crash after crash on Morrowind.

And i'm not saying Skyrim runs perfect, it doesn't. I'm just saying that I don't have the frustration that I did with Morrowind .

The only serious bug I encountered with Oblivion was it crashing on the 360 when I tried to turn in a sword at one of the shrines.

I guess I must be really lucky. I've never had bugs in any of TES games that made them unplayable - and I've played every TES title beginning with Arena.

Then again.... I'm probably the only person in the world who played Undermountain through to the end - without the patch(es) and with no bugs. Some of us are just really lucky....