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RANT about recent game releases

flexy

flexy

Diamond Member

The best examples

() Gothic III

() Neverwinter Nights 2

What is WRONG nowadays that companies release games where you need at LEAST a couple patches to get even the BASICS going.

BUGS which seem to point to HORRIBLE quality-control, in Gothic III after one (?) month now we STILL have ambient-sounds not working right and the forums full of peopl complaining about serious bugs.

In NeverwInter Nights II are other bugs, GUI related, crashes, etc...etc...

I cant say more because of all the tweaking and trying to get stuff running i dont even have the time to PLAY.

() How can you get an idea whether a game release will be a good one or a BAD one ?

EASY !!!

If a company releases a game which went thru good QC and they are convinced the game will SELL - they WILL release a demo BEFORE the actual game release. The people will look at the demo and then make a purchase decision based on the demo !

A company which does NOT release a demo before release is AFRAID and KNOWS that the product is merely in an alpha-stage...so they rush out their alpha/beta %$$^!%^! untested junk as retail....and then submit a patch the next day to fix the WORST bugs. The demo comes WAY later when they think the game is sellable and doesnt turn off potential custumers.

If people would have seen a demo of, say, G3 or Nwn2...lol..based on that those games are AT BEST betas still *right now* AFTER a patch already...

What should the demo have been ? A pre-pre-pre alpha ? 🙂

Just wanted to rant
 
When I was playing Oblivion, it would crash or the game wouldn't load previous saves a lot of times even with a couple of patches. Essentially I had to restart with another character, then the previous saves would load, WTF!!! I don't know if they ever fixed said problems, great game if it work, but very frustrating.
 
What good old days are you talking about?
Did you ever try managing EMS and XMS for DOS games?
Did you ever play DOS/Win95 games?
Did you try running a 3D accelerated game under Win98?

Sorry to crap on your opinion buddy but, (by and large), games are running better than they ever have. At least with winXP.

Back in the "good old days" as you put it, you had to do a lot of extra work to get games running. DOS was a pain, especially if you had to make a boot disk for each and every game, since each and every game usually required a different amount of EMS or XMS or conventional memory.

When Win95 first came out some games were supposed to be DOS/Win95 compatible but usually ran much better under one or refused to run on the other.

When we first broke into 3D accelrators we had all kinds of trouble. OpenGL and Direct3D were buggy as hell and usually slow but very common in most games.
Glide was fast but only one video card company used it (they would still be alive today if they made it open source).

I hate to say it but you sound like you havent played a crapload of games over many years.
From my viewpoint, modern Windows XP games are far more reliable on average than any other generation.

Also, I never had ANY problems with Oblivion until I started getting user mods. But the core game has always been rock solid for me and I've played two 500 hour characters. I cant figure out why so many people are having massive issues.
 
Originally posted by: shortylickens
What good old days are you talking about?
Did you ever try managing EMS and XMS for DOS games?
Did you ever play DOS/Win95 games?
Did you try running a 3D accelerated game under Win98?

Sorry to crap on your opinion buddy but, (by and large), games are running better than they ever have. At least with winXP.

Back in the "good old days" as you put it, you had to do a lot of extra work to get games running. DOS was a pain, especially if you had to make a boot disk for each and every game, since each and every game usually required a different amount of EMS or XMS or conventional memory.

When Win95 first came out some games were supposed to be DOS/Win95 compatible but usually ran much better under one or refused to run on the other.

When we first broke into 3D accelrators we had all kinds of trouble. OpenGL and Direct3D were buggy as hell and usually slow but very common in most games.
Glide was fast but only one video card company used it (they would still be alive today if they made it open source).

I hate to say it but you sound like you havent played a crapload of games over many years.
From my viewpoint, modern Windows XP games are far more reliable on average than any other generation.

Also, I never had ANY problems with Oblivion until I started getting user mods. But the core game has always been rock solid for me and I've played two 500 hour characters. I cant figure out why so many people are having massive issues.
Click to expand...

i disagree. i never had problems running old games back then (early to mid 90s or so). patches didn't even exist because they didn't need them. the game was actually finished and tested before it was released.
 
I agree with you, however, there is another factor few people consider. The human element. Back in the 90s, PC gaming was a fairly small nich market. Most of the people in it knew how to build and maintain their PCs. Combined with the relative simplicity of games in those days, this made them easy to be made stable.

Today, the PC gaming market is much bigger and games are much more complicated code. Games in the 90s shipped on 1 or 2 floppies, today, they ship on multiple CDs or even DVDs. There is a lot more that can go wrong with that much more code. Now, people are also more ignorant today. I can't tell you how many times I've heard people I work with brag that their video card is faster because it has 256MB of RAM. I used to work with one guy who replaced his 64MB GF4 with a 256 X1300 and bragged that it was 4x faster than his GF4 because it had 4x the RAM.

A lot of people these days don't really know how to maintain their PCs properly and efficiently. I think this leads to a lot of problems people have with games these days.

Another thing, which really annoys me, is that a lot of people will call something a bug because it doesn't fit their personal preference.

I know I've played many games that people have considered super buggy and unplayable and never had a single issue with them. I spend all day yesterday having a blast playing NWN2, never had a single crash or quirk the entire time.
 
I'm at the point now where I expect games to come out in beta or even alpha shape. My response will be not to buy them until they're patched to something resembling a finished product.

Hardware incompatibilities are one thing - they can't test for every configuration and conflict, sure. But when you have broken skills/feats, cases of broken scripting, or unmanageble AI, that's not acceptable.
 
() How can you get an idea whether a game release will be a good one or a BAD one ?

EASY !!!

If a company releases a game which went thru good QC and they are convinced the game will SELL - they WILL release a demo BEFORE the actual game release. The people will look at the demo and then make a purchase decision based on the demo !

A company which does NOT release a demo before release is AFRAID and KNOWS that the product is merely in an alpha-stage...so they rush out their alpha/beta %$$^!%^! untested junk as retail....and then submit a patch the next day to fix the WORST bugs. The demo comes WAY later when they think the game is sellable and doesnt turn off potential custumers.
Click to expand...
BF2? Dark Messiah?--which has been more problematic for me than NWN2. BF 2142? All had Demos and when the game came out it still wasn't ready. Dark Messiah is one of the funnest games I've ever played, but part of the reason why I'm playing NWN2 more right now is because it was sooooo broken that it took a lucky load to get up to Chapter 4. Otherwise it kept crashing to desktop everytime.

I hate this common trend though as well but I also realize why it happens. These games are going to be running on a diverse amount of hardware and software. The variables that can lead to some of the glitches are just so immense considering everyones rig. That's why I probably won't buy a new game again. I'll wait until I hear the responses from those who do buy them and whether or not they're buggy and getting fixed.
 
Originally posted by: flexy
The best examples

() Gothic III

BUGS which seem to point to HORRIBLE quality-control, in Gothic III after one (?) month now we STILL have ambient-sounds not working right and the forums full of peopl complaining about serious bugs.
Click to expand...
So... Gothic III hasn't been released in the U.S. What's your point?
 
Originally posted by: cubby1223
Or I suppose everyone could take Blizzard's approach, and have every game delayed by ~2 years.
Click to expand...

With lousy gameplay and dated graphics too. No thanks.
 
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