Buggy games -- a new trend?

[Artnez.com]

I finally had the pleasure of sitting down and trying out Age of Empires 3 (I was an avid AOE2 fan back in the day). Needless to say it absolutely sucked. The visuals were ok.. nothing that you can't expect nowadays in the gaming industry. Just take a look at Forgotten Hope, a non-commercial mod with amazing graphics. Graphical quality isn't an amazing feat anymore... it's a prerequisite to a good game.

The gameplay was horrifying in AOE3, although that is completely opinionated. Some people love the laid back gameplay, so I wont say much more about that.

What alarmed me most was the abundance of bugs in this game. And when I say the bugs were abundant, it's an understatement. For example, a known bug right now is that when an in-game cutscene is playing and you press ESC, many people have the lock up. Other bugs include arrows going through walls and buildings (soldiers can shoot through buildings at each other), a very popular sound bug that either cuts the sound out or completely un-syncs the voices with animation in cutscenes. The list goes on.. and on.. and on.................and on, and on, and on.

The AI is even worse. Picture this scenario. I have a group of crossbowmen behind a gate. They can shoot arrows, so it is in their best interest to stay behind that wall and fire at the enemy on the other side. Instead, the crossbowen leave the compound, walk out of the gate, only to get slaughtered by the cavalry on the other side. At first, I thought this was a bug, but it keeps happening both to me and the computer player every single mission that includes reinforced walls and gates. It's ridiculous!

And as a last example (much more, but dont want to waste time with it), the game is missing a hold stance button!. Can you believe that? A strategy game that focuses on building many units and attacking tactically does not have a feature for the units to hold position and not chase the enemy.

So what ends up happening is I build up a large army and move away for a second to tell some settlers to collect resources. When I come back, half of my army followed a lone enemy soldier to his base and was slaughtered. You can imagine what this is like in multiplayer. If someone is defending two flanks, you distract him at one flank and, while he's not looking, send a lone soldier to his other flank and make the enemy follow your lone soldiers into a trap. It just amazes me how these things get "past" their testing departments.

Which leads me to BF2. I dont know if anyone here has any experience with software/application development, but, if you do, you will know that most respectable software developers would never have a release something in the state that BF2 was in.

Why brought me to think like that about BF2? The infamous server browser. If you play the unpatched version of BF2, you will notice that the server browser is completely unusable. Seriously, you just cannot use it. Half of the features simply do not work. Take that literally... they.. do.. not.. work. It's more of a beta, yet it was released to the public.

And how about the username change thing? I mean come on. How the hell did that get past them? Are they so ignorant that they didnt realize that most of their community participates in clans?

Clans in an FPS? Noooooooo.....

This angers me for one reason. People pay $50.00, more or less, for a piece of software and is released in a complete shitty form -- riddle with bugs.

How many of you can think of less than 10 bugs in BF2? I would bet bottom dollar that anyone who plays BF2 regularly for 2 weeks will be unable to give me list of less than 10. That's how bad it is.

I'm the type of person that gets angry at the "principle" of something, rather than how it directly affects me. If I put 50 bucks into a game and it sucks, I have the means to just turn the other cheek and put it on the shelf .. or sell it on ebay.

I can just picture some 16 year old kid with a low ass budget saving up money for AOE3, or some other game of that "caliber", because he adored the previous versions and gets completely disappointed because the game itself is nothing like it was advertised. Atleast the intro is cool, which was probably made by a completely different department abour 3,000 miles away.

Back to BF2, I read a thread in TotalBF2.com where some gamer said that has began grinding his teeth more and more since he started playing BF2. I too, have started biting my nails while playing sometimes (and I dont even play as often as I'd like). A few others have posted in that thread and completely agreed that the game really frustrates them at times.

One interesting bug I'm starting to have with BF2 alot is the shader bug. What basically happens is, if I bring up the console and type "EXIT" to leave the game (something that's been done for a LONG time with games that have a console available to the user), the next time I load it, the view distance is cut to about 10-15%... how's that! I usually dont notice this until I consistently get shot from places I don't see.

Don't get me wrong, I still love BF2 as there aren't newer games out that compare at the moment. I'm just expressing my contempt for the gaming industry because I just got a flare of anger after reading an AOE3 review on gamespot that gave it an 8.2

Some games are amazingly bug free as I've noticed. Including:
- Call of Duty series
- FEAR
- No One Lives Forever
- Rome Total War

I've played the above games on multiple systems and never, ever, had any issues whatsoever. The gameplay was always smooth on even non-highend systems and the gameplay mechanics simply worked. There were little popups comfortable popups that gave you instructions on what to do, but didnt tell you too much (unlike that stupid crap with BF2 where if you reinstall the game, you have to unwillingly listen to that tutorial guy talk over the battle. What sucks about that is if you're sniping and relying on sound (I heavily rely on sound), you'll get stabbed in the face before he shuts up about how to switch firing modes.

I know that certain people have a few problems with the games I listed... but they are nowhere near as bug ridden as some of the latest shit out nowadays.

And that concludes my rant

[HogansHeros]

I think many companys don't put nearly as much effort into sequals(sp) as the first game in a series. They think once they get you hooked, your just keep coming back, and they are usually correct.

[Enforcer1975]

Well, i buyed BF2 hoping they would have corrected the bugs in the demo version...i was wrong..they even became more
And it would take a couple of hours to numerate them.

But BF2 is not the only game not working properly, i know a worse game. Anybody know "New World Order"? It had the potential of becoming the best fps, but somehow the devs couldn't make the game run even if you had a high end system. And the numerous bugfixes didn't work either...45€ blued.

[Artnez.com]

Originally Posted by HogansHeros

I think many companys don't put nearly as much effort into sequals(sp) as the first game in a series. They think once they get you hooked, your just keep coming back, and they are usually correct.

True... but COD2 demo was flawless. I hear COD2 retail is the same.

[DAWG]

Originally Posted by Artnez.com

I finally had the pleasure of sitting down and trying out Age of Empires 3 (I was an avid AOE2 fan back in the day). Needless to say it absolutely sucked. The visuals were ok.. nothing that you can't expect nowadays in the gaming industry. Just take a look at Forgotten Hope, a non-commercial mod with amazing graphics. Graphical quality isn't an amazing feat anymore... it's a prerequisite to a good game.

The gameplay was horrifying in AOE3, although that is completely opinionated. Some people love the laid back gameplay, so I wont say much more about that.

What alarmed me most was the abundance of bugs in this game. And when I say the bugs were abundant, it's an understatement. For example, a known bug right now is that when an in-game cutscene is playing and you press ESC, many people have the lock up. Other bugs include arrows going through walls and buildings (soldiers can shoot through buildings at each other), a very popular sound bug that either cuts the sound out or completely un-syncs the voices with animation in cutscenes. The list goes on.. and on.. and on.................and on, and on, and on.

The AI is even worse. Picture this scenario. I have a group of crossbowmen behind a gate. They can shoot arrows, so it is in their best interest to stay behind that wall and fire at the enemy on the other side. Instead, the crossbowen leave the compound, walk out of the gate, only to get slaughtered by the cavalry on the other side. At first, I thought this was a bug, but it keeps happening both to me and the computer player every single mission that includes reinforced walls and gates. It's ridiculous!

And as a last example (much more, but dont want to waste time with it), the game is missing a hold stance button!. Can you believe that? A strategy game that focuses on building many units and attacking tactically does not have a feature for the units to hold position and not chase the enemy.

So what ends up happening is I build up a large army and move away for a second to tell some settlers to collect resources. When I come back, half of my army followed a lone enemy soldier to his base and was slaughtered. You can imagine what this is like in multiplayer. If someone is defending two flanks, you distract him at one flank and, while he's not looking, send a lone soldier to his other flank and make the enemy follow your lone soldiers into a trap. It just amazes me how these things get "past" their testing departments.

Which leads me to BF2. I dont know if anyone here has any experience with software/application development, but, if you do, you will know that most respectable software developers would never have a release something in the state that BF2 was in.

Why brought me to think like that about BF2? The infamous server browser. If you play the unpatched version of BF2, you will notice that the server browser is completely unusable. Seriously, you just cannot use it. Half of the features simply do not work. Take that literally... they.. do.. not.. work. It's more of a beta, yet it was released to the public.

And how about the username change thing? I mean come on. How the hell did that get past them? Are they so ignorant that they didnt realize that most of their community participates in clans?

Clans in an FPS? Noooooooo.....

This angers me for one reason. People pay $50.00, more or less, for a piece of software and is released in a complete shitty form -- riddle with bugs.

How many of you can think of less than 10 bugs in BF2? I would bet bottom dollar that anyone who plays BF2 regularly for 2 weeks will be unable to give me list of less than 10. That's how bad it is.

I'm the type of person that gets angry at the "principle" of something, rather than how it directly affects me. If I put 50 bucks into a game and it sucks, I have the means to just turn the other cheek and put it on the shelf .. or sell it on ebay.

I can just picture some 16 year old kid with a low ass budget saving up money for AOE3, or some other game of that "caliber", because he adored the previous versions and gets completely disappointed because the game itself is nothing like it was advertised. Atleast the intro is cool, which was probably made by a completely different department abour 3,000 miles away.

Back to BF2, I read a thread in TotalBF2.com where some gamer said that has began grinding his teeth more and more since he started playing BF2. I too, have started biting my nails while playing sometimes (and I dont even play as often as I'd like). A few others have posted in that thread and completely agreed that the game really frustrates them at times.

One interesting bug I'm starting to have with BF2 alot is the shader bug. What basically happens is, if I bring up the console and type "EXIT" to leave the game (something that's been done for a LONG time with games that have a console available to the user), the next time I load it, the view distance is cut to about 10-15%... how's that! I usually dont notice this until I consistently get shot from places I don't see.

Don't get me wrong, I still love BF2 as there aren't newer games out that compare at the moment. I'm just expressing my contempt for the gaming industry because I just got a flare of anger after reading an AOE3 review on gamespot that gave it an 8.2

Some games are amazingly bug free as I've noticed. Including:
- Call of Duty series
- FEAR
- No One Lives Forever
- Rome Total War

I've played the above games on multiple systems and never, ever, had any issues whatsoever. The gameplay was always smooth on even non-highend systems and the gameplay mechanics simply worked. There were little popups comfortable popups that gave you instructions on what to do, but didnt tell you too much (unlike that stupid crap with BF2 where if you reinstall the game, you have to unwillingly listen to that tutorial guy talk over the battle. What sucks about that is if you're sniping and relying on sound (I heavily rely on sound), you'll get stabbed in the face before he shuts up about how to switch firing modes.

I know that certain people have a few problems with the games I listed... but they are nowhere near as bug ridden as some of the latest shit out nowadays.

And that concludes my rant

Excellent RANT man!

I have to agree with all the points, especially the ones concerning BF2, it has got to the point now where I try to play it, I really do; but after 10 -15 minutes in game my temper flares and it has to be shut down. The game industry don't give a monkeys about PC games is the problem. If EA or any other company stopped making games for PC, the dent in their annual revenue would be so insignificant it would hardly show. There is a thread asking if people are PC for life or Console gamers, unfortunately if you look at what the future holds, it points to consoles, they now have the ability to use broadband connections, you can buy keyboards for them and in the case of the XBox 360, you can even purchase additional hard drives etc. People might not like consoles, but the fact they out sell PC's ( in games ) 8 - 1 suggests to me that it won't be long before the PC game becomes a thing of the past.

To summarise BF2 is shit! EA and most other publishers are arseholes, who care not a jot for the consumer, they are concerned only with the mighty dollar. Unfortunately, unless you wish to switch to console gaming, we have to put up with the shit being released and hope like hell that teams like PR continue to support and fix the games we love to play.

[Artnez.com]

A day will come when that all ends. The same trend was going around with software (IDEs for programming, database servers, etc etc) until open source hit the market. It revolutionized software engineering because it was done by folk that take pride in developing a bug free application. Right now, enterprise software development has become one of those things... if your application is filled with bugs & isnt focused on user experience, you literally feel ashamed. Atleast the descent developers do.

There have already been multiple attempts for people to create either free & open source or free & closed source games. Some have been succesful, some have miserably failed.

At some point, it boiled down to programmer mingling with designers.

Most good designers (3d artists, texture artists, etc) wouldnt want to waste their time on an unpopular attempt in creating a game engine for free. They would, on the other hand, work on mods that have the game engine readily available.

Most good rogrammers are the opposite. They pride themselves in developing something from scratch, proving their godliness among the coding community. They would cringe at modifying python script files (ie BF2) because it's so elementary.

So you either have a mod that looks great, but plays like shit. Or you have a fully developed game from the ground up that plays great, but looks like shit. There are, of course, exceptions to this... but more often than not, even if a mod is good, it's not as good as it could be because the devs dont have what they need to get the job done.

Half Life 2 Source, in my opinion, is a stepping stone. Everyone should be kissing their ass because they really did give the community something special... the ability to recreate the entire game with the help of their engine.

Remember my words... there will come a time when a brave and knowledgable soul (group of souls most probably) will develop an open source, free, game engine. At that point, designers and programmers will be able to work together to give us the best gaming experience ever.

Lastly, note that most of these bug filled games can usually be released in a quarter, if not half, the time that they are. There is alot of red tape that game studios need to the cut through before they can get a release out. There are also countless "standards" that they all need to follow... most of which absolute nonsense (I'm sure you all understand how corporate policy works and why it exists).

And regarding consoles... I think it's a great thing. The more of those losers leave our beloved PC community, the better. PC gaming is a complete different dimension from Console gaming. PC gaming has fansites, communities, forums, IRC rooms, clans, teamspeak/ventrilo servers, gaming leagues, ladders, tournaments and more. There are server leasing companies out there that were founded on a few guys playing games and learning computers -- eventually starting up their own company. Then there is the hacker vs fair-play war... man.. it goes on and on.

The PC community will never die because there is so much immersion. I realized that the day I was sitting in teamspeak server talking about politics, booze and women (while playing mind you, lol) with an austrialian dude and a japanese guy who works for a robotics engineering company in Tokyo.

[Wolfmaster]

Originally Posted by DAWG

The game industry don't give a monkeys about PC games is the problem.

now that´s a bullseye! take the last E3 for example. EA spent god knows how much on pimping all their console titles but bf2 had to make do with 2nd rank screens etc. Thank god we´ve got mods to take care of taking care of us...


btw, @ Artnez.com that's the best rant ever

[Mad Max]

Artnez... I'm sure you're me from the future. You have pretty much the exact same views on thing I do! I agree with everything you said there. Companies (or empires... whatever you want to call them) like EA are a bad thing for gaming in the long run, they'll just go with the old "it's been done.... just make it look nicer and give it a new name" plan for everything. There's hardly anything EA have produced that's original. The B&W series may be one exception, but I believe Lionhead told them to "shove it" if they think EA will tell them what to do with THEIR game. I wish more devs were like that.

The sad thing is these days it's harder. B&W 1 was made in the days when EA were semi decent, before the all conquering presense we have now, so they had the chance to make something great and unique which gave their studio the power to tell EA to get lost, because they couldn't afford to lose their contract.

EA (and Ubi, especially with PC games, my god they should avoid making PC games) need to stop spouting out sequel after sequel of crap that just gets lower quailty with every passing release. Sure they look nicer, but the gameplay is generally crappy or flawed, or buggy! (Ubi make some wonderful patches for PC games.... that actually add bugs so they have something to patch in the future so it looks like they give a shit).

Games like Operation Flashpoint are still unbeaten in what they can do, which is pretty poor really considering how old it is. Thankfully BIS (guys who made it) put themselves and the community first and split from Codemasters for the sequels so they could do what they wanted, THEN look for a publisher on the grounds of their finished product. It's just annoying Codemasters still own the rights to the name and original game. (OFP: Elite it out on Friday by the way for XBOX... i'd seriously recommend it for those of you with said console and who love realistic immersive and well researched military stuff... also it has gameplay! GAMEPLAY PEOPLE!)