Games being released that were not ready in 2014

ScumLord

Stone Deaf 4evr wrote: »

At least PC's have the excuse that you have so many potential combinations of motherboards, drivers, etc etc that you'd expect to have to odd conflict, but consoles were supposed to offer the bonus of unified hardware to prevent this kind of thing.

I'd wonder how much variation there can be across batches of consoles? I could imagine updated versions can have slightly different hardware and bios. even the same version might have had alternative chips put in for cost savings.

The problem with in house testing can also be that it tends to be very strict and specific so that it can be automated to an extent and results can be monitored. You can't test all the variables because you go over budget.


Money really is the bottom line for any company no matter what their doing. If it costs to much to do comprehensive testing it won't get done. The fact is if testing costs to much they'd be more likely to abandon the project than risk more money on it. A month of bad press is an easier pill to swallow.

dbit

FACE OFF !

dbit

ScumLord wrote: »

I'd wonder how much variation there can be across batches of consoles? I could imagine updated versions can have slightly different hardware and bios. even the same version might have had alternative chips put in for cost savings.

The problem with in house testing can also be that it tends to be very strict and specific so that it can be automated to an extent and results can be monitored. You can't test all the variables because you go over budget.


Money really is the bottom line for any company no matter what their doing. If it costs to much to do comprehensive testing it won't get done. The fact is if testing costs to much they'd be more likely to abandon the project than risk more money on it. A month of bad press is an easier pill to swallow.

True as xbox 360 had roughly 8 itterations of the main Phat mobo and then the slims had multiples as well. So nothing is as vanilla as one might initially think.

Shiminay

There's already a perfectly valid regulatory system for this. Stop pre-ordering. Don't buy any games till you've seen at least 10 different reviews for it. Then this problem goes away.

I'm not trying to over simplify, it really is the answer. Marketing Departments get half of the budget for a AAA game. That is madness when you see software teams struggling to get things done to the beat of marketing's drum. That is just madness, software is done when it's done, not when marketing says it needs to be released. All software has bugs. This is more or less unavoidable because writing software well is an art not a "by the numbers" exercise as so many non-software people think. We should expect some bugs on launch day and we judge the company on how well it responds to those bugs.

There are hundreds (maybe thousands) of brilliant software engineers out there who probably hate their jobs because the products they've had a hand in have been pushed out to an expectant consumer base in shockingly bad condition and their overlords have let people like them (gamers) down so badly.

Stone Deaf 4evr

I'll have to say that I've been guilty in the past of pre ordering, but I've never bought a season pass before the first round of DLC drops. It amazes me how people can shell out the guts of 100 euros on an untested product.

Destiny is a prime example of this, the content in the main game is thin, but lord help us, theres almost nothing in the DLC.

ScumLord

Shiminay wrote: »

I'm not trying to over simplify, it really is the answer. Marketing Departments get half of the budget for a AAA game. That is madness when you see software teams struggling to get things done to the beat of marketing's drum. That is just madness, software is done when it's done, not when marketing says it needs to be released. All software has bugs. This is more or less unavoidable because writing software well is an art not a "by the numbers" exercise as so many non-software people think. We should expect some bugs on launch day and we judge the company on how well it responds to those bugs.

The marketing department will always get priority because they bring in the sales (or so they'd have us all believe, to be fair their job is a lot harder in todays world).

But what you've described is happening in every industry all over the world. In most industries they have to met a bottom line because of competition and new technology is always forcing them to cut costs, that can be blamed on the consumer prioritising price over quality.

With the gaming industry being knowledge based more than anything I think they're applying the cost cutting measures purely to increase profits rather than to compete. It's a market with huge profits to be made, but rather than be happy with their profits their focused solely on gouging the market for everything they can get. The product is just the tool they use to do their gouging.

It is an odd industry that's pretty new to the human economy, I'm sure the market will find a way of balancing it out over time. It wouldn't surprise me if in ten years all the current crop of developers are gone and a completely different batch of companies that found a fair way of making software for a reasonable price in their place.

Big corporations that try and control the market to keep things as they like them tend to get left behind by the companies that innovate for the world as it actually is.

I'm not surprised by any of it, and once you're aware of it you can spend your money wisely. Expecting the market to not try and gouge you is like expecting rain not to get you wet.

johnny_ultimate

Even more than not pre-ordering, don't buy the game until it's been out in the real-world and consensus has decided it is indeed in a stable condition. I can't imagine many people value playing a game on day one over guaranteeing it actually works, and if they do then that is some peculiar prioritising :pac: Heck, wait it out and the first round of discounts may even have been applied by the time the major patches have filtered through. I get the impression Driveclub is now the game it should have been at launch, for example, and that at least coincides with the fact most shops are selling it with twenty or thirty euro knocked off the launch price.

Just wait it out, or if you must have the game at launch at least wait a couple of days to ensure no major issues are flagged. As games grow more complex and more ambitious in terms of their online features, there will inevitably be a few unstable launches, but then there's never been more coverage of games in the days and weeks following launch either, so one just needs to keep themselves informed.

dbit

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Even more than not pre-ordering, don't buy the game until it's been out in the real-world and consensus has decided it is indeed in a stable condition. I can't imagine many people value playing a game on day one over guaranteeing it actually works, and if they do then that is some peculiar prioritising :pac: Heck, wait it out and the first round of discounts may even have been applied by the time the major patches have filtered through. I get the impression Driveclub is now the game it should have been at launch, for example, and that at least coincides with the fact most shops are selling it with twenty or thirty euro knocked off the launch price.

Just wait it out, or if you must have the game at launch at least wait a couple of days to ensure no major issues are flagged. As games grow more complex and more ambitious in terms of their online features, there will inevitably be a few unstable launches, but then there's never been more coverage of games in the days and weeks following launch either, so one just needs to keep themselves informed.

Yup did it with Alien isolation , and this was hard for me to wait as im a massive LV426 monkey. - Got it for 30 quid over 1.5 month ago launch date and cost of 70 quid . Sometimes its hard to hang in there when your group or social circle are running in there with they're micheal's isteach an lamh's

death1234567

I had a lot of problems with Far Cry 4 on PC. Apart from that I can't remember any others that stand out but I'm sure there were more. More Blizzard/Valve style the release date is when it's ready please.

Stone Deaf 4evr

dbit wrote: »

Yup did it with Alien isolation , and this was hard for me to wait as im a massive LV426 monkey. - Got it for 30 quid over 1.5 month ago launch date and cost of 70 quid . Sometimes its hard to hang in there when your group or social circle are running in there with they're micheal's isteach an lamh's

yup, thats certainly a part of it, and again its all part of marketing - most of it is meaningless whether I've never prestiged once of 10 times in Call of Duty, its like an artificial status symbol designed to make non n00bs feel better and to encourage n00bs to keep playing to rise their rank. people all want to start at the same level, it can be a bit (intimitdating is the wrong word) but you can feel out of place if you're a level 10 player trying to hang with a bunch of 5th prestige players just because you waited to buy the game.

dbit

Gamerscore was never really a valuable commodity to me , I simply love the gaming experience not a Chevy whore either . IF it plays well and i can get a good laugh out of the title or have the crack in party then im a happy camper . However titles that deserve to be the last piece of toilet paper on the roll is my gripe.

Shiminay

Shiminay wrote: »

There's already a perfectly valid regulatory system for this. Stop pre-ordering. Don't buy any games till you've seen at least 10 different reviews for it. Then this problem goes away.

I'm not trying to over simplify, it really is the answer. Marketing Departments get half of the budget for a AAA game. That is madness when you see software teams struggling to get things done to the beat of marketing's drum. That is just madness, software is done when it's done, not when marketing says it needs to be released. All software has bugs. This is more or less unavoidable because writing software well is an art not a "by the numbers" exercise as so many non-software people think. We should expect some bugs on launch day and we judge the company on how well it responds to those bugs.

There are hundreds (maybe thousands) of brilliant software engineers out there who probably hate their jobs because the products they've had a hand in have been pushed out to an expectant consumer base in shockingly bad condition and their overlords have let people like them (gamers) down so badly.

I'm going to quickly add that the devs are now putting emabrgos on reviews until release date or well past release date which is utter BS IMO

Stone Deaf 4evr

M!Ck^ wrote: »

I'm going to quickly add that the devs are now putting emabrgos on reviews until release date or well past release date which is utter BS IMO

yup, you'd have to smell a rat when that happens alright.
I feel bad for studios when it seems like a genuine case of pressure from a publisher to get the game out the door. Halo is surely a prime case of this, it was lined up as a big gun in the hugely aggressive thanksgiving / Christmas push that they did this year. Its ultimately hurt the franchise as a whole - a franchise that for the most part had an impeccable image.

I will quickly re-phrase what I said above...maybe not so much the devs that have placed embargos but the publishers themselves

Nody

Stone Deaf 4evr wrote: »

yup, you'd have to smell a rat when that happens alright.
I feel bad for studios when it seems like a genuine case of pressure from a publisher to get the game out the door. Halo is surely a prime case of this, it was lined up as a big gun in the hugely aggressive thanksgiving / Christmas push that they did this year. Its ultimately hurt the franchise as a whole - a franchise that for the most part had an impeccable image.

Smell a rat? Rather a case of "It's so **** we can't even buy reviews to be positive" bad that you should cancel any preorders and find out what's wrong once the reviews come in and buy it in store...

Every Early Access game ever "released". I absolutely hate this trend. Never again will I buy Early Access.

Shiminay

Actually, there was some stress around pre-release reviews for Shadow of Mordor which had everyone going "WTF?!" and had a lot of people wondering if it was about to be a magnificent failure (and thankfully, we were all wrong ). But I believe that was because they were selling exclusive "first look" partnerships to YouTubers and the likes (which is a horrible thing to be happening too I think).

ScumLord

Deleted User wrote: »

Every Early Access game ever "released". I absolutely hate this trend. Never again will I buy Early Access.

I bought into Assetto Corsa in early access and I've had no regrets. As long as you're aware of the fact you're getting access to early code and are prepared to live with bugs and a lack of content I think it's a great system for supporting games that wouldn't get made otherwise.

It is a bit of a gamble but a bit of research will give you some idea of what games are worth investing in.

BeerWolf

People seem to often forget that games today are hell of a lot more complex to develop compared to games a decade or more ago, a core test team can only discover so much... which is why many companies now are opting to have open betas for tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, of players to look for bugs for them.... unfortunately this is generally for PC games, as consoles don't readily have "Betas" out from what I've noticed... hence why many console games are buggy on release.

And it's not just bugs, but exploits too... which are infinitely harder to find as a tester, which would be a massive issue come online and MMO games.

That being said, right out of the box in regular play through with outstandingly obvious bugs and issues is absolutely NO excuse to not have been fixed before release... such as the horrid fps issues in The Evil Within. ... Honestly wonder if they even bother testing it on the actual console instead of through PCs via developers kits and what not. Such games should have the Developers and Publishers, mostly the publishers [absolute king culprit being EA], damned at.

dbit

BeerWolf wrote: »

People seem to often forget that games today are hell of a lot more complex to develop compared to games a decade or more ago, a core test team can only discover so much... which is why many companies now are opting to have open betas for tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, of players to look for bugs for them.... unfortunately this is generally for PC games, as consoles don't readily have "Betas" out from what I've noticed... hence why many console games are buggy on release.

And it's not just bugs, but exploits too... which are infinitely harder to find as a tester, which would be a massive issue come online and MMO games.

That being said, right out of the box in regular play through with outstandingly obvious bugs and issues is absolutely NO excuse to not have been fixed before release... such as the horrid fps issues in The Evil Within. ... Honestly wonder if they even bother testing it on the actual console instead of through PCs via developers kits and what not. Such games should have the Developers and Publishers, mostly the publishers [absolute king culprit being EA], damned at.

XB1 betas i have played on .
Halo MCC
Halo 5 MPB
Battlefield 4
Call of duty
Destiny
Titanfall
Cant rem the name of that everyone kill the beast game !!!!!! played it on beta as well.

Its only been a year and theres not much out but could have played more betas if i had the time.

These are usually opened up on the Dash to all after the first two waves or so of invited players to beta's.

Also im participating in the Dash preview update system since launch.

Shiminay

We need to stop thinking of those things as betas, they're marketing tools that only seem to serve to further incentivise people into pre-ordering. Of all the games that had "betas" in the last 24 months, how many of them still arrived out broken? The purpose of a beta test in the real world of software is to find bugs and fix them ahead of release.

kunst nugget

Shiminay wrote: »

We need to stop thinking of those things as betas, they're marketing tools that only seem to serve to further incentivise people into pre-ordering. Of all the games that had "betas" in the last 24 months, how many of them still arrived out broken? The purpose of a beta test in the real world of software is to find bugs and fix them ahead of release.

They're a fantastic way for companies to really ramp up the hype machine. I know they're meant to be primarily be there to stress test the servers for online play but there fantastic ways of sucking people into a game with their lotteries and invites for spots on the beta before opening it up to everyone when the hype gets fever pitch - especially with the promise of being able to carry over any achievements you have collected to the game itself. I'm kind of glad I completely suck at most multiplayer games and prefer single player campaigns or else I'd be sucked up into that sort of thing very easily. Day one purchases don't appeal to me at all because I don't care about keeping up with the Joneses in terms of the multiplayer experience.

Cuddlesworth

Shiminay wrote: »

We need to stop thinking of those things as betas, they're marketing tools that only seem to serve to further incentivise people into pre-ordering. Of all the games that had "betas" in the last 24 months, how many of them still arrived out broken? The purpose of a beta test in the real world of software is to find bugs and fix them ahead of release.

Or a brief stress test on the servers. They hold no bug solving measures.

ScumLord

ScumLord wrote: »

I bought into Assetto Corsa in early access and I've had no regrets. As long as you're aware of the fact you're getting access to early code and are prepared to live with bugs and a lack of content I think it's a great system for supporting games that wouldn't get made otherwise.

It is a bit of a gamble but a bit of research will give you some idea of what games are worth investing in.

Then there's a whole host of games that never get beyond the early alpha stage. The developer makes their money back and quits. Achieving early access release on steam seems to be the main goal for some.

readyletsgo

Every dev should take a leaf from Nintendo's book and ONLY release a game when it is coneplete with no bugs at all.

They only release updates for their games for small tweaks.

Ninty are the only dev I buy games from on day one cause I know it is complete and ready to play out of the box.

Shiminay

There are companies out there that arrange server stress testing with limited functionality code, I've been involved in them in the past. So this sort of testing has been going on long before the rise of the "pre-order and get beta access" routine, it's just that someone obviously gave Marketing wind of it and they saw the $$$'s

ScumLord

Deleted User wrote: »

Then there's a whole host of games that never get beyond the early alpha stage. The developer makes their money back and quits. Achieving early access release on steam seems to be the main goal for some.

I'm sure that does happen but I had been following Assetto Corsa for a long time before they got onto early access and I was delighted to get early access. Now the game is released with a whole raft of updates and DLC scheduled for this year. The company went from very little to one of the top brands in PC sim racing because of steam early access.

The other early access I bought was goat simulator, I had no expectations with that game and don't really expect it to expand much past what it is. I really only bought it out of curiosity and enjoyed the time I spent with it. It's a good game to take out when you're with people who don't normally play a lot of games.

The_Valeyard

Got screwed over with 'X-Rebirth'

I am now very wary with pre-orders now. Lesson learned.

Was also let down by Steams Green light program. I had bought Starforge and now that has more or less been abandoned.

Taylor365

And the cycle continues.

Pre-order game - game is mess - complain - pre-order game - etc.

Don't like crap? Wait for reviews.

Got burnt by TW:Rome myself so lesson learnt the hard way

Nody

The_Valeyard wrote: »

Got screwed over with 'X-Rebirth'

I am now very wary with pre-orders now. Lesson learned.

Was also let down by Steams Green light program. I had bought Starforge and now that has more or less been abandoned.

Green light program had great potential but sadly Steam has completely thrown under the bus and approve anything and everything with out even a basic check if it can be installed or completed. TB actually uploaded a great video as an example on the topic earlier today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JO6VCQo0ppo