How does Bethesda get away with everything they do wrong?

[Ratyrel]

Bethesda's games are amazingly complex. There's a reason no other companies makes games on their scale. Mindless bashing is immensely disrespectful of the work that goes into titles like that, especially the Q&A department that probably fixed millions of bugs. In the end, people buy it to have fun and if they do that then there is nothing to get away with etc. It's just mindless moaning. If you didn't like Skyrim, why did you buy Fallout 4? Learn from your own mistakes in taste, don't bitch about others' choices.

[Wilian]

Bethesda's games are amazingly complex. There's a reason no other companies makes games on their scale. Mindless bashing is immensely disrespectful of the work that goes into titles like that. In the end, people buy it to have fun and if they do that then there is nothing to get away with etc. It's just mindless moaning.

"Their games are amazingly complex" is age old trite that went old by the time Oblivion was released.

They've been practically rehashing the same engine since Morrowind so it'd only be expected that in 13 years they'd have squashed at least some of the issues that have existed since it's inception. There's still mind boggling amount of bugs and patterns that can be traced back to unpatched first release of Morrowind it's just insane. Especially considering a lot of them are not even particulary subtle.

On top of that, there are a ton of other games that outshine Bethesda's creations on their complexity yet manage to come out far more playable. It's like sickening mantra that has warped entire viewpoint on their releases.

That along with the inane indoctrination of "mods will fix it" that has somehow made it acceptable that games release in state that they do.

[Jonnusthegreat]

Bethesda is probably the best single-player sandbox publisher in the world today.

[GennGreymane]

Honestly I wouldnt compare a buggy 3 hour campaign and multiplayer with a game that easily is meant to last at minimum, 50+ hours. Games like Fallout, Elder Scrolls, Witcher, Dragon age, GTA and even some shorter titles like Mass effect are very buggy because they are larger. Personally I think I only ran into any major bugs in Oblivion, which was fixed rather quick by dying. My friends Witcher game crashes once in a while, my friends Fallout 4 game crashed at last twice, and I did run into the infamous death on reload bug in NV, but that was fixed after 2 deaths and holding my analog stick to the right.


When you play massive open world games, expect bugs. Expecting otherwise is foolish.

[Cosmic Janitor]

That along with the inane indoctrination of "mods will fix it" that has somehow made it acceptable that games release in state that they do.

Especially when you push sales on console where that just doesn't work (why is that even? Consoles are just fucked up PCs anyway these days oO).

Edit: I guess microsoft doesn't let you mess with the data folders on the console?

[Yunru]

This is why you never buy bethesda game on day one and always wait half a year or something so they add some hotfixes.

Sadly, sometimes devs are so lazy that even after they finish fixing the bugs...there is still that 10% left.
So it comes to fans to fix those instead.
I mean why would they fix them, if they have crazy fans to do that for them.

But they are not the only company that does that. Egosoft is the same sadly.
http://www.pcinvasion.com/egosoft-ap...e-of-x-rebirth

[Grimbold21]

You should've tried Total war: Rome 2 for more frustration

[S7orm]

Morrowind promoted Bethesda to the status of God and the gaming community can act very similar to Saudi Arabia in these cases, especially when a game is released on multiple platforms. You end up with 2 good releases (XB1 and PS4) because optimization is easy and one horribly coded PC port with hundreds of driver-related bugs and hardware incompatibilities

But it's pretty much like that in every IT sector when you throw money at graphics and go budget on the programmers. We can all keep lying to ourselves but from a business prospective the gameplay is secondary

[GennGreymane]

This is why you never buy bethesda game on day one and always wait half a year or something so they add some hotfixes.

Sadly, sometimes devs are so lazy that even after they finish fixing the bugs...there is still that 10% left.
So it comes to fans to fix those instead.
I mean why would they fix them, if they have crazy fans to do that for them.

But they are not the only company that does that. Egosoft is the same sadly.
http://www.pcinvasion.com/egosoft-ap...e-of-x-rebirth

I also wait a bit too for any major game like this

also there is always a price drop by then : D

[effs]

At least with Bethesda's Fallout/Elder Scrolls series you'll be getting more than worth the price you paid for. £40 for 100+ hours at least? I'd take that over a 20 hour game with no replayable or repetitive content at the same price.

[Lightwysh]

I have had 1 game breaking bug that was actually caused by Fallout not playing well with a new AMD driver. I have almost 100 hours played and have 0 regrets purchasing this game. Everyone I know who has purchased the game, has had minimal issues.

[Deleted]

My current and first save in Fallout 4 is at around 10 days, and I know I'm nowhere near to finishing the main plot line. It's been helluva fun so far. I don't know, maybe people just really don't know how the hell to play a sandbox game. Besides that, I've played the shit out of Morrowind on Xbox (the first one), as well as Oblivion, Skyrim and Fallout 3 on PC. They've all been pretty goddamn amazing. I have absolutely no idea why people think Bethesda does things "wrong" all the time.

[Kolvarg]

*snip*

Any examples on these 13year-old bugs?

Also examples on games more complex and more polished? I can't think of many, and the ones that might be comparable I find it hard to measure complexity, or to measure how polished a game is on top of my head, considering the same game might behave flawlessly for one player yet be riddled with game-breaking bugs for another.

[Donair]

Is this primarily on console versions of the game? Aside from some pathing issues and wonky physics which I think were intentional, I didn't encounter a single bug on pc. Nothing noticeable or game breaking at least.

[GennGreymane]

here is a witcher bug (I think it happens in 3, but this is in 2 I think)

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ml9c_IsxF9g/maxresdefault.jpg

warning pretty creepy

[Wilian]

Any examples on these 13year-old bugs?

Sure, just look at the excellent pathfinding and running against walls. Classic Morrowind right there.

[ro9ue]

I feel like Oblivion was Bethesda's high point.

[Jazzhands]

One of the biggest issues is that, as time goes on, AAA games cost more and take more time to make, but the amount of money made from them hardly increases, so they begin to cut corners and reuse assets.

I think a large part of it is the demand for newer, shinier, prettier graphics. That stuff takes a lot of money which could be spent elsewhere, like on gameplay or bug fixing. I never understood peoples fascinations spending thousands of dollars on a high end PC just to have shinier graphics, does it really add anything to your gameplay beyond the initial "oooooh look at that cell shading and water reflections ahmagerd/fapfapfap... and that RESOLUTION OH GAW--"?

[Cosmic Janitor]

Morrowind promoted Bethesda to the status of God and the gaming community can act very similar to Saudi Arabia in these cases, especially when a game is released on multiple platforms. You end up with 2 good releases (XB1 and PS4) because optimization is easy and one horribly coded PC port with hundreds of driver-related bugs and hardware incompatibilities

But it's pretty much like that in every IT sector when you throw money at graphics and go budget on the programmers. We can all keep lying to ourselves but from a business prospective the gameplay is secondary

Wasn't the PC port the one that ran well for the most part, wheres the console release were night unplayable when it comes to Fallout 4?

[Deleted]

The difference is that unless they release another Portal or make jokes about HL3, the majority of the internet tends to forget valve even still makes games. Not surprising, since they all swim in steam money these days .

Again, not really. When CSGO was released in 2012...everyone thought it was shit, none of the major tournament organizers picked it up, and it had 30?,000 players at peak (which is terrible for a counter strike game). Forums where filled with shit about what they did wrong and how to fix it over the course of a few months..they soon fixed the problems and people started to adopt the game.