EVERYONE is going to find some bugs (or at least glitches) if they play long enough, because there are scripting errors that can be verified with the GECK. For example: I was just doing the side quest to get 'This Machine', I tried to take the conciliatory approach, but was forced to shoot the guy because someone had buggered up the dialogue tree. Clearly it was never play tested, or it would have been spotted. Now, I could fix it myself with the GECK, if I could be bothered (which I can't), but it kind of takes the fun out of a story when a publisher hands you a book with the pages bunged together in the wrong order! When you see the denouement before the plot it ruins the experience a bit!

If you're going to make a game of this size and complexity then you're going to need a decent sized QA department to accommodate it. If there's no budget, put it out to public beta or something (but since Bethesda Softworks chalked up $300 million in the fist weeks sales, they could probably afford to invest a little).

Ok, 100% agreement.

Let's throw 'profit' into the mix:

I paid $80 odd Aussie dollars for this game. Say the profit to Beth/Obsidian was $20 US per game....(a profit margin of 25%)

5 million copies x $20 US = $100 million profit.

Still think we don't deserve a fully functional game at release?

But a $300 million figure, compared to the release state of the game, is obscene...and an absolute insult to us.

Actually, they havn't sold 5 Million copies, they have shipped 5 Million, not sold.

I didn't say they 'sold' 5 million copies...

You're grasping at straws and being argumentative...I won't get drawn into peripheral pedantics with you.

But, even so, $300 mil. profit on less than total sales of the shipped product is even more support for the argument that more should have been done pre-release to ensure that the game was stable.

That, combined with the fact that the patch is taking a considerable amount of time to appear, indicates to me that there are definitely things wrong in the management of the company.

Terribly, TERRIBLY misinformed.

I agree with this, and the OP.

Remember a time when it was just a given that a game worked out of the box? It might have minor bugs, that might warant a patch in a few months, but there was no such thing as a "release day patch" or even a "release week patch" because anything that glaring was found during QA.

I'm not about to say that old games never had issues. Fallout 2 itself had more than a few, but while some broke the ability to get a perfect ending (gecko, anyone?) none broke the game into unplayability.

You have a duty to your customers to ship a functioning product. In fact in some senses not doing so could be considered fraud. It mystifies me why people accept this in PC games or yell at other people for being ticked a product they bought didn't work. If a company built a washing machine that wouldn't run on gentle cycle for one in twenty people they'd be sued out of business or at least be forced to refund a whole lot of money, but Obsidian can ship a game that has all the companion quests, the arena zone and several other areas bugged to total unplayability for a good portion of people and [the word fan-person seems to be censored, wow] yell at US for asking them to give us something in return?

Seraphian, you are so spot on....

Remember the days when a game came out, and you had to get the patch through a games magazine disc. I don't recall one game from that era that was unplayable until the patch.

The problem is now that there is an entire generation of gamers that have come to accept shoddy workmanship, and they have allowed the industry to rake in massive profits at all our expense.

I'm sorry, I just can't understand the 'I love Obs./Beth./Ubi/whoever' people... It's the product which is important, not some soul-less profit margin based corporate entity...

Personally, I have asked before to have such posters removed from threads because, in some cases, their behaviour is essentially spamming.

Don't get me wrong though I am a fan of the individual developers even if I don't care for, as you aptly put, the faceless entity behind them. I'm a fan of the tremendous creativity and obvious passion they put in their products. The problem is their QA department let them down. And in some cases the games industry is a victim of increasing gamer demands. Debugging a 2-d isometric engine is a lot simpler than a 3-d engine with physics implemented.


In the end I guess the question is always "what can a company do to make their product worth the cost" FO:NV is worthwhile to me for many reasons: I was a massive fan of FO1 and FO2 and I remember eagerly reading all of the posted design documents for Van Buren at NMA, I was dissapointed when it was stuck in development hell and then canceled. So having a chance to see some of that content brought to life, changed as it may be, is really cool for me.

The problem is that the rampant bugs reduce the value of the product, to me. I can't even see all the content I paid for!
Giving us SOMETHING to add value to the product would help put the balance sheet on more favorable terms and make me more likely to pre-order another Fallout product.
As it stands I will probably wait for the GotY version of FO4 to be assured I'm not stuck with a game that's mostly unplayable and a long wait for fixes and an even longer wait for DLC content that is initially locked to exclusivity agreements.

And it doesn't have to be a lot. Mass Effect 2 put out some very simple content patches for free that increased the psychological value assessment of the product immediately at very little dev time. Two or three models, an hour of coding, that's all it would take to give us a weapon download pack or a mini-quest pack.

They should give us the DLC for free with how buggy the game is and with no scheduled patch (we haven't seen any info by them about it)

When we buy something then we are paying money for something that should have barely issues since you are paying for it.

Why does everyone stress out? I've been: locked out of the Strip, corrupted save, etc. and guess what? We should get a patch, but should we get free DLC? No way.

I'm curious, honestly, about how you feel. Just because I see a lot of people say that, and I'm trying to understand the point of view.

Is it because you don't want something for free, think that feeling obligated to give away swag because of bugs would set a bad precedent for the company/industry, worry about the financial impact or impact on development of the for-pay DLC?

I'm just curious because I'm shocked how many people don't want something for nothing...

We should get at least the first DLC as compensation for all the crap that shouldn't be there since we paid for the game.

We didn't pay for something to be broken.

It seems you have never played any game on the release date.

Every game has bugs at the start.

But guess what...?

People wait, And then people fix them.

Yeah I have but the others weren't this buggy. I have honestly never played a game that made it so everytime I save on the 360s hard drive that my save would be corrupted.
We don't get any updates on the patch either and we just get told there's DLC coming soon which is a like them saying "Screw you guys, we want more of your money and then lets talk about a patch"

Fine, even better then.

So here's your options in today's business climate:

Option A) Have a game rushed to release with a minor patch almost waiting for you on release date, then have to wait "forever" (two months = eternity apparently) for a patch.

Option B) Have the game delayed over and over, building anticipation while your money is tied up in pre-order, and then released with bugs anyway.


There's no more perfection, because there's the option not to. Do you know why there's a certain amount of fecal matter in beef? Do you know why some people drive with a beer or two in their system? Because there's the option. You give an option, it will be taken. If cattle farmers/slaughterhouses had to ensure beef was 100% sterile, it'd be done (for the most part), but regulations say there's a certain allowable amount, so they get away with it. If people weren't allowed to have ANY alcohol in their system when driving, more people would not try and get away with having a couple drinks before getting in their car (though there's still the people that would anyway, but that's because they're alcoholics). You give an inch, people will generally take a mile. It's the same with game developers, they have no incentive to release a game that's perfect anymore, because the options exist to patch it. And the consumer is no better... a working game isn't good enough. Now some people want DLC. Then they'll want the rest of the DLC for free, then they'll want a discount on the next game... or they want the game for free, for their money to be refunded plus the patch.

Video games companies are the modern day robber-barons. They have laws which protect them - 'intellectual property', EULA's, and consumer 'protection' laws that don't protect against under-performing programme products, all coupled with the capacity for obscene profits.

However, I have seen companies provide free DLC as compensation for long waits for patches (Creative Assembly, for one), and it does go a long way towards improving good will.

I won't argue either way for free DLC. I will argue for a workable product at release... The first is a privilege, but the second should be a right.

I kow that will be contentious with a number of people here, but there is a very good business based reason for that: It weeds the incompetent out of the market place and provides for competition, both of which are the basis for our existing commercial system.

TLDR;

Y'all know that the Dead Money DLC for free is a complete non-starter, right? Microsoft paid for an exclusive on that and Bethesda can't gyp them by giving it away for free to Xbox users or by making it available to the other platforms.

They could, conceivably, do a small pre-order type DLC release as an apology, but it would be too small to appease most angry console users and fairly useless to PC users who can make their own mods anyway.

I honestly can't see how they could do this and make the majority happy without impracticable costs to themselves. Which would make their investors very unhappy.

Maybe a small quest pack that leads to some rewards and a good home area
or what about the Virtual Reality simulation at Nellis, that would also be a good apology

With at least $300 mil. on the table, no cost is impractical....

This.

It doesn't have to be Dead Money, in fact I know it won't/can't be thanks to microsoft.

But they could throw together a weapons pack or a short quest pack that would do some useful things for us and give us some more play-time.

How's this: a research facility from before the war, quest sends you in to steal something, on the way 3-4 unique weapons.

What do you mean by the "corruption bug"?

do you mean your save game gets corrupted?

I noticed this happening when using certain mods and there is a very easy fix.

Just allow your character to be killed or blow yourself up. Somehow this fixes the corrupted save files. Turn off auto-save on travel and auto-save on wait. going forward use only manual saves.

Also, each time you launch the game, you have to kill yourself once before you start playing.

I doubt that's a table Bethesda is sitting at. Even ignoring the fact that is _retail_ sales figures, not wholesale it doesn't include the development costs, shipping, marketing, packaging, license fees for various engine elements, licensing fees for the Xbox and PS3, and all the other things required for a game release.

Im on 360 and everytime I save or let the game save onto the 360's hdd I always get the pop up when trying to reload the file it says that its "missing dlc" and I can hit ok to let it continue. After doing that the next pop up says that "the storage device has been removed" then it just goes back to the main menu.

I can save on the USB and my saves are fine. But after opening up a corrupted save in Hex Workshop I can tell the save is corrupted as it looks much different than a normal save.

Even when I try to load that same save that is corrupted on the PC version of the game to see if its just a problem with the Xbox the game just crashes on the loading screen, but my other saves work fine after converting back and forth

I grew up in the early 80's and 90's. As far as I recall, I've never had any game ever come out that has given me this trouble. I've probably had one or two instances, but generally, something like this was a non-issue. Like you, I work, spend time with the wife, pay bills. But I do have free time, and that free time is something I would like to spend playing a game, which is why I spent the money on it. Some people can play a game 3x's through avoiding the bugs. I really don't have the time or inclination.

going on this "in the 90's" thing...is why I feel the way I do. I grew up playing games that may have had bugs in them...but nothing to this extent. Sure, it's a huge game, but from my PoV...it's not really a game. It's a pretty paper-weight. Sure, I've gone out and bought Fable 3, and a few other games...but that's not the point.

Like I said, and I still stick with it, they don't owe me anything. It'd be good PR, it would make me feel like "Ok, this month of no gaming was not an issue". If not, no skin off anyone's back. In the long term, as simply one customer, and I'm not claiming anything more than just myself, I don't think I'd ever buy any game new from release from them. Not a huge loss for them, and it's ok. I will eventually get a working game so it's no biggie. It does mean though that future releases I can't buy because I can't say to my self "well, they did release a buggy game, and this might be buggy, but they were cool and even though the game was buggy, they compensated for it".