Do Bethesda and/or Obsidian not play test their games anymore? You'd have to assume at least a quarter of the hundreds of bugs that're being reported would've come up in a few hours of play testing, but of course not. It's an honest question, and I'd like an honest answer from the devs, if possible.

If you knew anything about programming, testing, or any process/system these companies use to ensure a quality product, you wouldn't be so confrontational.

Software programming isn't as easy as it sounds/looks. Personally, I haven't experienced any bugs. If I was a play tester, I wouldn't have much to report. However, I do see the big list of problems others have on the forums, and perhaps the play testers just got lucky and had machines that didn't offer any oddities in the code.

No software in the history of software has ever been released 100% bug free for 100% of it's users.

I am sorry you have problems, but if you give it some time, all your issues will hopefully be resolved in a patch. I know that isn't what you want to hear, but it's going to have to suffice for now. I can't even imagine how beta testers feel when they hear/see complaints like this. For doing nothing but playing games, they actually do have a pretty difficult job (I should know; I was an in-house tester for Electronic Arts for 3 years).

Ditto

Do we ask for it to be 100% bug free for 100% of it's users? I don't think so. Do we ask for it to be playable, without a plethora of game ruining glitches that seem to be affecting the majority of people that buy it? Yes. I think that's a reasonable request. But, I knew what to expect when I bought the game once I saw the Obsidian logo; I was one of the few people to play Alpha Protocol.

I tend to disagree here. Releasing and then patching within hours is an indication that the problems were known about, work was being done to correct some of them, but release went ahead on the day anyway. However, if that could occur, surely it would have been able to be done pre-release with beta testing? I've done some beta testing on various games, and you can see the difference between releases that had good testing/corrective work done on them, and those that don't. The way you can tell is that the game works, perhaps not flawlessly, but without game breaking bugs.

But I do agree as to the wait and see approach, because there is no other option open to us.

There's no way you can justify a game ending SAVE BUG in a finished product. You'd never see anything like that from Blizzard of Rockstar..

This was the fault of Steam. Not Obsidian.

Blame Steam for that.

Seriously, I'm sick of seeing people blaming Obsidian for everything when 50% of the bugs are caused by the game engine and 40% are caused by Steam (on the PC version). There's actually a very small amount of bugs from the devs, most of which will actually be fixed when a true patch is made by Obsidian.

25 hours and no game breaking bugs.

I apologise in advance if I seem rude here, but how do you know?

I've played a lot of Steam based games, and many of them have no problems. If a developer is going to release via a server service, then you test it on that service.

I have had one server dropout since I started FNV yesterday, and that was a problem of my ISP, not Steam. Every other issue has been game related.

If you know things that the rest of us don't, perhaps you could either enlighten us or ask someone who can to do so, please.

What you are saying makes no sense. The game should have released with the "true patch" already in it. Obsidian had PLENTY of time to polish this game up.

Pardon me for being so incredulous - but either you're very inattentive, very forgiving or very lucky. Not to say it can't happen - I had almost zero issues with Fallout 3 from day one and people would call me on it when I would say so while they were dealing with a myriad of infuriating issues. I would count that as very lucky.

Not really true Nintendo Games are pretty much 100% clean of bugs on day 1

Blizzard and Rockstar have a lot more money, and they publish their own games.

Yes, they had plenty of time after DEVELOPING the game for a good majority of the 2 years they were. At most, they probably had like 3 weeks to bug test. Reason why, Bethesda wanted the game out by the 19th, no questions asked. So I'm pretty sure if Bethesda hadn't imposed a deadline, we'd have a game that would be released in about a month from now with little to no bugs.

Mostly none of this is Obsidian's fault. It's mostly the game engine's fault for being so poorly optimized and in need of an upgrade, Steam's fault for it's back-up function constantly messing with saves (now fixed), and Bethesda's fault for imposing a dead line.

You people need to really do your research before griping.

Well the thing is, There are so many PC configurations out there, it would be hard for bugs not to appear.
Let's not forget that we are talking about a game engine that has more bugs than most people have had hot dinners...

This too. The way I see it, the stats on bugs are like this. (For the PC version)

50% Gamebryo
20% Bethesda's deadlines, which cause little to no time for a proper bug test
20% Issues with Steam
5% Problems related to bug reporter's hardware
5% Bugs from early in development that weren't caught before the small testing period (Devs)

Of course, that's just a rough estimate...

Yes, but most (if not all) Nintendo games aren't near as massive as GTA, RDR, OB, FNV, etc, etc, etc.

Do you have any proof of this?



Again, where's your source? We all have opinions or favorite sides to take but without evidence they're nothing but conjecture. Mine is its an equal opportunity screw up most likely from too many cooks in the kitchen so to speak (I can think of three entities - maybe four). But then again, I'm just pulling an opinion out of the air like everyone else.

I do and I agree with them.



If Obsidian's QA team and platforms were this narrowly confined it's an indication of their utter failure to properly test. In other words, your defense of Obsidian is to imply they're incompetent buffoons.



Nice straw man argument you got there. Nobody but YOU has so much as implied it ought to be 100% bug free.



That explains a lot.



Which is irrelevant, they charge the same price.



Unless Bethesda changed the deadline and moved it up without sufficient notice this is complete horsecrap. It is not Bethesda's job to manage the project. If we setup a deadline ahead of time and my team misses it or rushes a poor product out the door it's our fault for mismanaging the project, not someone else's fault for sticking to the plan. That said, if Bethesda forced an unrealistic time frame on them in the first place, fine. But then Obsidian still bears the responsibility for agreeing to it.



It's usually too many managers who think meetings are a productive use of a developer's time. Meanwhile they look for ways to justify their salary by interfering in work they know nothing about.

Then throw in the occasional sales [censored] who just promised the customer they'd have it ready to make them coffee by next weekend.

The save issue was indeed a "Steam Cloud" issue and has been turned off.

http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1125221-please-read-from-the-teams-at-obsidian-and-bethesda/

Some of the "bugs" I have encountered are the same as FO3. (Creatures crawling under ground, no hit points showing.) I have to ask why they have not made sure those bugs did not come up again. Second I tried testing and it is very hard and things work ok with some tester but not others. These are hard to track down and take time. Lastly look at the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series. It took the developer three games before they started getting it right.

Once again, what the heck are you talking about? The game seems very stable to me, and I'm playing the PS3 version.

Poor Obsidian; they're being bombarded with complaints right now. Even if my game is filled with problems, I'd still be happy to be a "beta NV" tester. I'm just so bored; Hell I'll probably keep a list of everything I see.

So does Bethesda now. Your point?

Also, to those saying 20-40% bugs due to Steam, here is a little fun fact. Steam is responsible for exactly two bugs. The Steam cloud checkbox not working and the save bug.