» Thu Jun 07, 2012 9:35 am http://www.reddit.com/r/skyrim/comments/o6ivz/bethesda_qa_and_respect_for_gamers/
I am the author of small, but almost necessary mod for Skyrim -- Weapons and Armor Fixes (or WAF, which you can find http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=4719). I'm not writing this reddit because I want to pimp out my mod, in fact I suspect most of you won't care for it and would rather wait for the https://unofficialskyrimpatch.16bugs.com/projects/7078/bugs, from the same guys that made the Unofficial Oblivion Patch and the Unofficial Morrowind Patch (both of which literally fix thousands of bugs beyond the last official patch for these games), or are console gamers, in which case you don't have access to mods. No, what concerns me is why it's even necessary to have such a mod.
As of version 0.94 of WAF, 177 Weapons out of 2,848, and 545 armors out of 2,762 are affected. This is roughly 6.2% of all weapons, and 19.8% of all armors. While not every of those are problematic (see first bullet of section 4 on that first link above), most are. Having such a large number of weapons and armor affected speaks volume about the quality of the bug testing/QA going on at Bethesda, or how much they really care about putting out a polished product.
At the very least, 85%+ of these problems can be spotted simply by sorting the items according to various properties (weight, name, weapon type, material, ...) and play a little game of "spot the intruder". These are not the big "OMG, this game is huge and complex, so it's normal to have a few things slip through the cracks" stuff. This is basic Q&A stuff, requiring no more than a few hours' time from some minimum wage intern. I takes me more or less 5 hours to do the whole thing from scratch, with hacks, 3rd party tools (which are very early in development), and zero documentation. And I never had any modding experience prior to Skyrim.
We on the PC are very lucky that Bethesda gives us the privilege of doing their job and uncrapping their game. I can't imagine how users playing on the Xbox 360 or the PS3 must feel (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUoDfO1pWto). Don't get me wrong, Skyrim is a good game, but shame on Bethesda for releasing it in such a poor state. And shame on the gaming press for awarding early beta releases >90% scores (the PS3 version has 92% FFS!), and several GOTY awards.
We as loyal gamers and fans deserve better. Bethesda should look at studios like Eidos Montreal for listening to their fans (who gave us features like the ability to turn of augmented vision in Deus Ex Human Revolution, even if they themselves felt it added to the game, because they RESPECTED their fans enough to not pretend to know what we wanted better than we did), and care for them equally regardless of platform, giving us both a true controller interface, and a true KB+M interface (not to mention proper graphics and basic options such as the ability to key binding controls out of the box for PC users). Or studios like CD Projekt Red for their beyond-phenomenal post-release support of their games like The Witcher.
It is our responsibility as gamers to let Bethesda know we deserve better. Because it's not our gaming press that will do it, for fear of being cut off the money train of early access and exclusive interviews. Nor will it be Spike TV, who's opinion Bethesda seems to consider more important than ours. Nor will it be their focus groups, because they clearly are disconnected from our needs and wants.
So tweet, write letters, blog, reddit, ... anything! But don't sit on your chair pretending it's OK for Bethesda to ask 60$ for a beta-release, or for the gaming press to give them GOTY/SOTY awards. Otherwise, it's just going to be one painful BOHICA for TES VI.
-- Headbomb
I am the author of small, but almost necessary mod for Skyrim -- Weapons and Armor Fixes (or WAF, which you can find http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=4719). I'm not writing this reddit because I want to pimp out my mod, in fact I suspect most of you won't care for it and would rather wait for the https://unofficialskyrimpatch.16bugs.com/projects/7078/bugs, from the same guys that made the Unofficial Oblivion Patch and the Unofficial Morrowind Patch (both of which literally fix thousands of bugs beyond the last official patch for these games), or are console gamers, in which case you don't have access to mods. No, what concerns me is why it's even necessary to have such a mod.
As of version 0.94 of WAF, 177 Weapons out of 2,848, and 545 armors out of 2,762 are affected. This is roughly 6.2% of all weapons, and 19.8% of all armors. While not every of those are problematic (see first bullet of section 4 on that first link above), most are. Having such a large number of weapons and armor affected speaks volume about the quality of the bug testing/QA going on at Bethesda, or how much they really care about putting out a polished product.
At the very least, 85%+ of these problems can be spotted simply by sorting the items according to various properties (weight, name, weapon type, material, ...) and play a little game of "spot the intruder". These are not the big "OMG, this game is huge and complex, so it's normal to have a few things slip through the cracks" stuff. This is basic Q&A stuff, requiring no more than a few hours' time from some minimum wage intern. I takes me more or less 5 hours to do the whole thing from scratch, with hacks, 3rd party tools (which are very early in development), and zero documentation. And I never had any modding experience prior to Skyrim.
We on the PC are very lucky that Bethesda gives us the privilege of doing their job and uncrapping their game. I can't imagine how users playing on the Xbox 360 or the PS3 must feel (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUoDfO1pWto). Don't get me wrong, Skyrim is a good game, but shame on Bethesda for releasing it in such a poor state. And shame on the gaming press for awarding early beta releases >90% scores (the PS3 version has 92% FFS!), and several GOTY awards.
We as loyal gamers and fans deserve better. Bethesda should look at studios like Eidos Montreal for listening to their fans (who gave us features like the ability to turn of augmented vision in Deus Ex Human Revolution, even if they themselves felt it added to the game, because they RESPECTED their fans enough to not pretend to know what we wanted better than we did), and care for them equally regardless of platform, giving us both a true controller interface, and a true KB+M interface (not to mention proper graphics and basic options such as the ability to key binding controls out of the box for PC users). Or studios like CD Projekt Red for their beyond-phenomenal post-release support of their games like The Witcher.
It is our responsibility as gamers to let Bethesda know we deserve better. Because it's not our gaming press that will do it, for fear of being cut off the money train of early access and exclusive interviews. Nor will it be Spike TV, who's opinion Bethesda seems to consider more important than ours. Nor will it be their focus groups, because they clearly are disconnected from our needs and wants.
So tweet, write letters, blog, reddit, ... anything! But don't sit on your chair pretending it's OK for Bethesda to ask 60$ for a beta-release, or for the gaming press to give them GOTY/SOTY awards. Otherwise, it's just going to be one painful BOHICA for TES VI.
-- Headbomb
