Why is Bethesda's lack of QA so acceptable for most people?

The whole "They are ambitious, open world game, bugs are to be expected blah blah" arguement is pretty much all I ever get when I ask this question. Why are people foaming at the mouth to buy their stuff when it is GUARANTEED to be busted upon release?

I just don't get it.

Sure Skyrim was a blast but it was broken like everything else they have ever had anything to do with. I can't really think of many other businesses where you could get away with releasing your product in the condition they do and still remain in business at all.

I've always played the PC versions of their games, never had any glaring issues, and if there was something annoying I modded it or fixed it myself in a few minutes. It's also clear bethesda gives a lot more love to the PC crowd.

A lot of the bugs that people complain about I almost never experience, and when I do, I either giggle when it's something silly (mammoths spawning and falling to death) or simply shrug it off if it's something inconvienent (a sidequest not being able to be completed).

Most of the time, nothing hinders my enjoyment of the game and still adds up to a wonderful experience. I don't mind bugs, they can be fixed whenever. As long as the game remains fun for me, I simply don't care.

One word...fanboyism.

No matter how bugs that could be game breaking, like the random vampire attacks when installing Dawnguard, 50 people can complain with legitamate reasons why it should be fixed, and you will always have a die hard fanboy defending the bugs saying 'you just suck and I think it's fine' or 'I haven't experienced the bug and you're exaggerating'.

Case and point

The whole "They are ambitious, open world game, bugs are to be expected blah blah" arguement is pretty much all I ever get when I ask this question. Why are people foaming at the mouth to buy their stuff when it is GUARANTEED to be busted upon release?

I just don't get it.

Sure Skyrim was a blast but it was broken like everything else they have ever had anything to do with. I can't really think of many other businesses where you could get away with releasing your product in the condition they do and still remain in business at all.

Alter_Echo

It's the content you get for the amount of money you pay, the sheer enjoyment and excitement for hours and hours at a time for months on end. Despite the games being buggy, they're still very very good. And, the argument is valid that due to the size and scope of the game finding all bugs is pretty much near impossible. Bethesda's games are arguably the biggest content packed games on console with so many things in game for the engine to account for that it would take years of game testing to get it completely bug free. And this brings into account another argument, that being almost every game in existence has bugs to be found and most are a lot smaller than Bethesda's RPG's. Also, I'm not saying I wouldn't like their games to be less glitchy and less prone to console freezing, because that goes without saying. I do appreciate their ambition and the games they make overall and wouldn't want them to stop making them.

Hugeopen world game and you expect them to find every bug before the games launches? Sorry, they don't have the man power to playtest a game of that size to such a degree, most of the bugs aren't game breaking and for the amount of enjoyment I recieve from the elder scrolls franchise, I'll put up with them!

Who says people do accept it? Games like Fallout were immediately criticised for their technical issues both by reviewers and users. Ultimately though, those bugs are few and far between enough to be ignored in light of the overwhelming quality of the rest of the game. Most of the bugs that are encountered have to do with mods not being integrated properly and I've always found Bethesda to be quick to address technical issues as they arise.

Probably because they can cut costs by letting the modding community do their work for them.

I wouldn't say it's acceptable, but I do think some people over-exaggerate problems with games like Skyrim and of course many people under-exaggerate them. I know for Skyrim I turned off autosave in order to try and hold off freezing (and it surprisingly did work for the most part, as I still had one or two freezes in 94 hours). While I didn't have any major/game-breaking bugs during my play through, I will not be getting Dawnguard until Bethesda attempts to fix all the issues with it, and I never had any of the Fallout 3 DLC since so many people were saying how incredibly buggy it is.

Though, at the same time Dark Souls has incredibly amounts of slow down in it where I worried if the game would just freeze, forcing me to turn it off and risk corrupting my data, but yet nobody complains about that. So it's not just Bethesda getting off relatively easy, though they do seem to get it a bit easier than others. I think it also helps that they seem to fix most of the large problems not long after the release of a game.

Open worlds games tend to be kinda busted. Usually its in very small, probably unnoticeable ways, but the majority also aren't attempting to create something on the scale of an Elder Scrolls or Fallout game. What they do is try to craft a living, breathing world. Making a vast space work is enough; adding some semblance of life to it? Even more so.

Frustrating as it is, you really can't expect a totally glitch-free game when they continue to refine that style of open world play. The hours it'd take to weed out every little bug would take forever. A QA nightmare, as there would always be something new to test and glitches to replicate ad nauseam. It just isn't feasible.

Are they plagued by horrible performance and fundamental issues? Sure. Are they still great at what they do despite that? Heck yeah. That's why they're so adored: the good outweighs the bad.

It's just the usual fanboy cheerleader nonsense. I've played plenty of gigantic open world games that were virtually bug and glitch free, but to listen to the fanboys tell it, A) Bethesda is the only maker of open world games on the planet and B) by their very nature open world games must be full of bugs and glitches.

Meh...let them have the pleasure of of encountering numerous frustrations due to the games being released - for purely financial reasons - six months before they were finished, and then pretending they aren't bothered by it afterwards. That's their thing apparently.

The whole "They are ambitious, open world game, bugs are to be expected blah blah" arguement is pretty much all I ever get when I ask this question. Why are people foaming at the mouth to buy their stuff when it is GUARANTEED to be busted upon release?

I just don't get it.

Sure Skyrim was a blast but it was broken like everything else they have ever had anything to do with. I can't really think of many other businesses where you could get away with releasing your product in the condition they do and still remain in business at all.

Alter_Echo

In short, because software coding is not perfect. It takes monumental coding for Bethesda's long, open world games. I can't begin to imagine how many lines of code it takes for games like Fallout, Oblivion or SkyRim. Thoroughly debugging such complex code in time for a release date that wouldn't bankrupt the company is a virtually impossible task. I love their long single-player games, so I can forgive the glitches.

It's just the usual fanboy cheerleader nonsense. I've played plenty of gigantic open world games that were virtually bug and glitch free, Jackc8

I generally give them a pass because I've never encountered any game breaking bugs in their games.

I'm not saying that they dont happen... They just dont happen to me, and I guess its only a matter of time until I come across a game breaking one, but until that happens they get a pass from me.

Complaining that a Bethesda game is buggy and broken is like complaining that a Micheal Bay flick is incoherent and shallow (in both cases no reasonable person would have expected otherwise). I confess that in a moment of idiocy I bought the PS3 version of Skyrim, but I should have known better and I'll never make the mistake of buying a Bethesda game again.

The whole "They are ambitious, open world game, bugs are to be expected blah blah" arguement is pretty much all I ever get when I ask this question. Why are people foaming at the mouth to buy their stuff when it is GUARANTEED to be busted upon release?

I just don't get it.

Sure Skyrim was a blast but it was broken like everything else they have ever had anything to do with. I can't really think of many other businesses where you could get away with releasing your product in the condition they do and still remain in business at all.

Alter_Echo

[QUOTE="Jackc8"]

It's just the usual fanboy cheerleader nonsense. I've played plenty of gigantic open world games that were virtually bug and glitch free, smerlus

Sure Skyrim was a blast but it was broken like everything else they have ever had anything to do with.

Alter_Echo

Never had any real problems with Bethesdas game. I sure wouldnt want to have played Skyrim on the PS3 though. The game was definitley broken there, but myself have never experienced any glaring issues.

I remember the previous GTA games on last generation to be extremely glitchy yet we all gave them a pass too.

Never had any real problems with Bethesdas game. I sure wouldnt want to have played Skyrim on the PS3 though. The game was definitley broken there, but myself have never experienced any glaring issues.brucecambell

It's not so bad on PS3 now. Still the occasional frame rate drop and lock-up (they aren't nearly so frequent as before, though), but generally the game should be just as playable there as on any other platform.

The whole "They are ambitious, open world game, bugs are to be expected blah blah" arguement is pretty much all I ever get when I ask this question. Why are people foaming at the mouth to buy their stuff when it is GUARANTEED to be busted upon release?

I just don't get it.

Sure Skyrim was a blast but it was broken like everything else they have ever had anything to do with. I can't really think of many other businesses where you could get away with releasing your product in the condition they do and still remain in business at all.

Alter_Echo

I typically don't by Bethesda products until they release the GOTY version. Deep down I hope they put all the patches and whatnot along with the games that come packaged together. I don't bother buying their products at launch because they launch them with these bugs. I'll wait until they're completely done releasing content for Skyrim before I buy it. It'll be on Steam in a year for $20-$40 with all the content and that's when I'll buy it. Hopefully by then they'll have patched it so that I won't find so many bugs, but time will tell.

It is because Bethesda does this that I do not buy their products, or anyone elses with serious bugs, at launch. I'll maintain this practice as long as companies continue to release games that are not completely polished or finished. (Diablo 3 notwithstanding...)

[QUOTE="Jackc8"]

It's just the usual fanboy cheerleader nonsense. I've played plenty of gigantic open world games that were virtually bug and glitch free, smerlus

Kingdoms of Amalur and Dragons Dogma run well even on the consoles, and even their FPS game Brink is by far the glitchiest shooter out there, theres no excuse for it.

[QUOTE="brucecambell"]Never had any real problems with Bethesdas game. I sure wouldnt want to have played Skyrim on the PS3 though. The game was definitley broken there, but myself have never experienced any glaring issues.c_rake

It's not so bad on PS3 now. Still the occasional frame rate drop and lock-up (they aren't nearly so frequent as before, though), but generally the game should be just as playable there as on any other platform.

yea he was trolling....

ive always wondered why so many reviewers/gamers are so forgiving of Bethesda on this issue as well any other game that had/has the kinds of bugs their games have would get so much sh*t for it, and alot of times its not minor stuff they have had game breaking bugs in more then one instance-DirtySanchez-

[QUOTE="smerlus"][QUOTE="Jackc8"]

It's just the usual fanboy cheerleader nonsense. I've played plenty of gigantic open world games that were virtually bug and glitch free, crimsonman1245

Kingdoms of Amalur and Dragons Dogma run well even on the consoles, and even their FPS game Brink is by far the glitchiest shooter out there, theres no excuse for it.

This ALWAYS cracks me up to be honest.

Now first off I am not a Bethesda hater in the slightest (I own ever game they have released and Daggerfall/Morrowind are two of my favorite rpgs ever), but the way Bethesda gets away with buggy games and a company like Obsidian gets the opposite treatment. They have about the amount of issues in games frmo my experiences in the past, yet one company gets a pass for it and the other company gets trashed for it all the time on forums.

I have loved games from both devs, but ive honestly had more a worse experience with bugs and glitches in Bethesda games then I have with Obsidian games.

People enjoy games despite bugs, that is just the way it is, its just kind of funny that some get passes by mainstream media and gamers yet others don't get that same treatment. Morrowind had issues and so did Alpha Protocol, but I loved both those games to death despite the problems.

A lot of the bugs that people complain about I almost never experience, and when I do, I either giggle when it's something silly (mammoths spawning and falling to death) or simply shrug it off if it's something inconvienent (a sidequest not being able to be completed).

Most of the time, nothing hinders my enjoyment of the game and still adds up to a wonderful experience. I don't mind bugs, they can be fixed whenever. As long as the game remains fun for me, I simply don't care.

MLBknights58

What he said.

A lot of the bugs that people complain about I almost never experience, and when I do, I either giggle when it's something silly (mammoths spawning and falling to death) or simply shrug it off if it's something inconvienent (a sidequest not being able to be completed).

Most of the time, nothing hinders my enjoyment of the game and still adds up to a wonderful experience. I don't mind bugs, they can be fixed whenever. As long as the game remains fun for me, I simply don't care.

MLBknights58

I didn't see any bugs.

Every time I ride a horse up an 80 degree incline it goes just swell.

[QUOTE="-DirtySanchez-"]ive always wondered why so many reviewers/gamers are so forgiving of Bethesda on this issue as well any other game that had/has the kinds of bugs their games have would get so much sh*t for it, and alot of times its not minor stuff they have had game breaking bugs in more then one instanceTeufelhuhn

It's one thing to enjoy the game, but it's another to be so freaking awed by the game's "expansive, ambitious" world and so forth to be giving it GOTY when there are numerous bugs and glitches. To this day, I still hear people telling me that they are unable to play it because they keep happening. And it sickens me that places like Gamespot and IGN are like "Oh my awesome, Skyim's the f******* s***!" and give it GOTY just because it's Bethesda slapped all over the box. Same thing with GTA and Rockstar; un-f******-believeable! Critics need to stop being biased and actually play the game and judge it for what it's worth; a decent game with a hell of a lot of problems. And it's unfortunate that no one is doing that. NO ONE.

This annoys me too. They need to have a big department for their QA. I mean I gurantee that Brink would have been a great game if Bethesda or ZeniMax had better QA. Instead they shipped an awesome looking game that was so buggy it couldn't be played at all. I am afraid this is going to be the fate of "Dishonoured" too. I hope I am wrong though. Then another great looking game that they were having made by Human Head Studios, Prey 2, was cancelled. And then there is that game that was a cover based third person melee game that was made by InExile and it turned out to suck because of lack of good QA.