[MCV] QA testers warn: Broken games fiasco of last year may repeat this Christmas

AAA Bugfest 2015™ - choose your candidate!

Results are only viewable after voting.
MMaRsu said:
Hmm Assassins Creed, Battlefront and Need for Speed are my bets
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they are going to be testing the servers here soon.

Want to see if its going to bad? Sign up here

http://www.needforspeed.com/en_GB/beta-sign-up



I don't think NFS will launch that badly. However, despite battlefront having an open beta next month......I don't think its the servers that are going to be the problem. It's going to be the framerate or something else. Something tells me the games going to be a lag fest in terms of framerate. We have only seen what? 2 maps over and over and over.
 
I think Fallout for PC will be alright, maybe will need couple patches during first week to be fully playable and enjoyable. Consoles should also be a lot better since you don't have the PS3 complexity and RAM limitations anymore and dev tools are a lot better.

For me BestBuy GCU made pre-ordering Fallout just fine since its basically $40. I know I am going to get a metric ton of gameplay out if it. Same for some of JRPGs coming out like Trails of Cold Steel or Dragon Quest Heroes, since I know what I am getting into. Even NBA2k16 is $40 through GCU and its worth it to see the mycareer mode with Spike Lee shenanigans
 
Not going to be Halo5 or Assassin's Creed, last year the releases done damage to the brand. Don't think they are going to repeat that.
Star Wars Battlefront will have a Beta, if the beta work decently then it should be fine.
My money is on Fallout4 being broken.
 
GasProblem said:
I'm scared for Fallout 4. Especially on consoles. That's why I hope Persona 5 comes out this year, so I can give Fallout 4 two months to fix the worst bugs and glitches.
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Oh come on, it's going to be full of bugs even if it wasn't being released for Christmas. It's Bethesda, it's a given ;).

And I'm still risking it day one... course I have had the benefit of every other Bethesda game (and one game based on the engine, New Vegas) of playing them months after release so this will be my first time trying to play one launch day... maybe I should be a bit scared.

But I know I'm going to want it and I want the pip boy edition so even if I wanted to wait for the bugs to be ironed out (and I'm not patient enough for that for my favorite series even if I know that there is a good possibility of it being really broken at first) I am going to get it day one just for that (not giving up my pip boy edition damnit).

But yeah, patience is not a virtue of mine and Fallout 4 was pretty much my reason for buying a next/current gen console cause I knew I was going to want it.
 
Crossing Eden said:
It depends on the severity of the glitches. People fondly remember the launch of many games that at had tons of issues at launch, like GTAV. The development of pre-order bonuses in the majority of cases usually has little bearing on the game itself. When I look at the track record of Bethesda, I see a company releasing ridiculously huge and ambitious games which no doubt are an absolute nightmare to QA no matter how much time they spend in development. Now if FO4 were to release with a shit ton of gamebreaking bugs where even the tiniest bit of progress is essentially impossible, (think BF4's terrible campaign save bug), then I'd agree.
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My general point was, waiting and seeing is always going to be better than going on blind faith, and pre ordering is going on blind faith

That's not always a bad thing, you can take calculated risks, and in cases where the game has a limited run and you might not get a copy, or in cases when you can make a huge saving, then absolutely pre ordering would be the best choice

I won't tell people to not pre order, because you can be a smart consumer or a reckless consumer (it's also none of my business what others decide to do with their money) but to pretend that pre ordering doesn't have any negative impact on the industry is pretty naive

The fact we have retailer specific pre order bonuses is proof alone. How much of the time wasted on that could have been used on performance or bugs instead?

Burai said:
Don't tell me how to spend my money, but please DO listen to my incessant whining on day one about how the developer is a piece of shit, the publisher is greedy and cares about money before gamers and do look forward to my tearful rant about how games journalists should have done their jobs properly and told me that the game was rubbish even though their embargo lifted two days after Amazon shipped my order.

But still don't ever dare to tell me how to spend my money.
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10/10
 
Sub_Level said:
Staying the hell away from Fallout 4 on PS4.

Bethesda + their PS record + this trend of broken games at release in the last few years = a very, incredibly small percentage of a chance that F4 will work well at launch on PS4. Looking forward to playing it, sure, but waiting a month or two.
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Uh, PS4 /= PS3 (you do realize they are different machines with entirely different hardware?). It's a lot closer to PC architecture and doesn't have a weird processor that they aren't used to... and it has a decent amount of RAM this time (This is what really killed Bethesda games on PS3. THey need RAM).

You can't say that just cause Bethesda did shit on the PS3 means they'll have the same track record on PS4. Plus I seem to remember they were one of the developers Sony talked to when designing the PS4 and asking developers what they wanted.

So, I have faith it won't be near as bad as PS3. Though, as we've seen, xbox will get the neat additions first cause Bethesda does have a better repertoire with MS. Yes, xbox is getting mods first but guess what? Bethesda recently officially said PS is getting them too (just last). So this time around it seems it will probably be less that their games work much shittier on PS and more just PS gets less priority on when they do stuff.

(also, in my experience, at least New Vegas really doesn't run better on xbox than it does on PS3 as much as people make this huge deal that it works better on xbox. It just has different annoying things it does. THough it may at least be finishable as due to having more RAM I'm hoping it can handle the larger save files later in the game... my PS3 eventually couldn't handle the game anymore as my save file got too big. I haven't tried 3 or SKyrim as both ran well enough on the PS... especially Skyrim actually. Took 400 hours before it got really laggy and annoying).
 
Won't be buying Fallout 4 until Christmas anyway. Should be fine by then.

I have a very bad feeling about Battlefront, which already has a content problem. Will play the beta but as much as I want it, I will probably end up skipping it.

Halo 5 is going to be fine. They had a beta last December.

I'm just glad that the Bloodborne DLC is hitting before Thanksgiving. Miyazaki is probably the only person left I can count on.

Dynasty said:
Not going to be Halo5 or Assassin's Creed, last year the releases done damage to the brand. Don't think they are going to repeat that.
Star Wars Battlefront will have a Beta, if the beta work decently then it should be fine.
My money is on Fallout4 being broken.
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Battlefield 4 also had a beta...
 
Using their real names is ballsy. This could be career ending. It's admirable to some extent, but whistle blowing on your clients is not good business.
 
hahaha.

Wether this is true or not, this is the very definition of an article that means nothing at all.

"QA firms saw games that had terrible bugs". Yeah, of course, they're QA firms, they get work in progress games (ie broken games), with terrible bugs, so that they report them to the teams. This is the whole point of a QA firms.

QA firms never get pristine bug-less games.

Not to mention the fuzziest and less clear declarations possible :

“It is getting better, but far from solved,
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seriously, what does that mean ? "overall games are a little less broken I would say", what kind of stats is that ? What kind of "impression" is that ? Which games ? What does "broken" mean ?

"The number of companies that just squeeze QA testing into the remaining period, without sufficient time to then fix the issues and re-test, is hurting their own titles in the long run.”
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This is nothing new and has nothing to do with "this christmas". Could have said that about this spring, or 2 years ago, or the same thing in 6 months, or in two years.

Just taking things we know are true, wrap them up in a headline to make them sound like they're news about "this christmas" specifically, and then find a random person to quote to try give the whole thing some "insider scoop" flavor.


Wether "broken games" are a thing or not I'll let you decide, but this article, it's just empty crap to get clicks, it's ridiculous.


balohna said:
Using their real names is ballsy. This could be career ending. It's admirable to some extent, but whistle blowing on your clients is not good business.
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There's nothing whistle-blown, there are no news. They say nothing new and don't even hint at what games or when. They just say some stuff about the general state of the industry and then mcv's junior clickbait-editor puts the quote in the context of "guys christmas is soon".
 
My bets are on Fallout 4 and Battlefront. AC Syndicate might be broken as well, but I'm not sure if Ubisoft really wants to deal with another repeat of last year.

None of those are going to affect me though, so I'm okay with it. I'll just be playing Xenoblade X this holiday season.
 
I think Battlefront will be okay. It's MP only so that should help. Maybe the first couple of days there will be server issues but you would think that by now DICE has a handle on the situation and they are heavily invested in making this work from the get go.

AC Syndicate might suffer from some of the same issues that plagued Unity.
Fallout 4 will have its fair share of issues almost all open world games do.
Halo 5 after MCC is another likely candidate although I hope not.
 
Isn't it too early to be saying this?

I used to work in QA during the PS2/Xbox days and full on QA testing didn't begin until 3 months before a game shipped. And those days when it shipped there had to be no major bugs at all as patches were not an option (well, with Xbox it was but only as a last resort).
 
Honestly the only reason I'm pre-ordering Battlefront is just for the special edition PS4, otherwise I'd be waiting at least a month before picking it up. I wouldn't trust EA as far as I could physically pick up and throw Peter Moore.

But if godforbid that sells out, I'll just pick up the PS4 standard with revised internal parts and get BF whenever.
 
I'll be buying Fallout 4 on release. I expect it to be full of bugs but it's a single player so hopefully they won't impact the game too badly. I'm going to buy Battlefront but I'm definitely waiting and seeing how it goes. Battlefield Hardline launch was ok, but I don't know, I think a wait and see approach might be best with Battlefront
 
*clicks link, CTRL+Fs "Just Cause 3"*

Whew! I can honestly wait on Battlefront, so that would leave the only two fully retail titles for purchase being JC3 and Transformers Devastation. Everything else I'll be playing will be expansions. I'm good. :D
 
No i can't handle halo 5 broken
MCC was disappointing in that regard
The beta was good, videos look good
Cmon on baby you can do it
 
Any guesses as to which games these will be? My bets are on Battlefront, Halo V and Fallout 4. But honestly, I still don't expect it to be as bad as last year.
 
Fallout 4 will be interesting...

Call me naive, but I think they can do it. The fact that they have said openly that the game was basically finished this summer gives me much more hope than Fallout 3/Skyrim.
 
Xanathus said:
It isn't the lack of QA testing that is causing buggy games to be released. Devs and publishers KNOW that the game is broken and exactly what the major bugs are, they simply refuse to delay the release of the game in order to fix them.
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Yes. Quoting this for truth.

liquidtmd said:
My beef isn't patches to fix bugs day 1, my beef is 5GB + content patches day 1 on principle
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Devs are pretty much forced into these things by absurd deadlines from publishers, though. It's shitty that it's an industry standard.

Cereal Enthusiast said:
Didn't Todd Howard said that Fallout 4 was pretty much done since june and that they are just squishing bugs until release ?

Yep:
http://www.gamespot.com/articles/fal.../1100-6429241/
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This is Fallout, therefore, idontbelieveyou.gif

Burai said:
Don't tell me how to spend my money, but please DO listen to my incessant whining on day one about how the developer is a piece of shit, the publisher is greedy and cares about money before gamers and do look forward to my tearful rant about how games journalists should have done their jobs properly and told me that the game was rubbish even though their embargo lifted two days after Amazon shipped my order.

But still don't ever dare to tell me how to spend my money.
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Hahaha ayup.
 
Strangely enough to, I've got a feeling that AC Syndicate will be relatively bug free, if only if because I can't imagine Ubisoft wanting to repeat the shitshow with Ubity.

I definitely believe that Ubi knows that the technical fiasco with Unity impacted their profits with it, judging from the losses from that free game offer and the fact that they had to refund the season pass and ended up releasing the Dead Kings DLC for free. I would hope that Ubisoft would try at the least to avoid repeating what happened with Unity.
 
It's going to be Fallout 4 and w/e Ubisoft and EA are pushing out.
Edit: Maybe Halo, but I thought MCC was the fault of some other studio and not 343
 
Gonna be waiting to play the big ones this year.

I didn't need QA testers to say so. Getting burned last year was bad enough, and I'm not crazy enough to spend full price again on them.

Yes, even Fallout 4 can wait for me, I've learned my lesson. Hopefully publishers will as well.
 
Fallout 4 is gonna be a mess. No way Bethesda can bolt on that whole base building system to their old ass engine without extreme issues.

And AC Syndicate too. I can already see the gifs of the new "iconic" grappling hook going horribly wrong. Like the character is launched straight through the wall while their hands and head remain stationary in the t-pose or something.
 
Broken games with season passes.....the nerve.

I voted AC Creed Syndicate, because Ubisoft says high quality is of paramount importance! *laughs hysterically*

sW8w5fZ.jpg
 
Ramenman said:
hahaha.

Wether this is true or not, this is the very definition of an article that means nothing at all.

"QA firms saw games that had terrible bugs". Yeah, of course, they're QA firms, they get work in progress games (ie broken games), with terrible bugs, so that they report them to the teams. This is the whole point of a QA firms.

QA firms never get pristine bug-less games.
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Well duh. Thanks, captain Obvious! They're not going to get into specifics because they can't. But there's no one in a better position than a QA studio to evaluate the state of a game versus the development time left on it, and produce a fair assumption of what state that game is going to release in. I've been there before and we could assuredly tell months in advance when a game was going to release in a terribly buggy state if they didn't push it back.
 
Hopefully this is the year reviewers come down harder on bugs though. I'm tired of seeing games that are technical disasters absolved by a single sentence in reviews. Like "we only encountered six game halting bugs but it's just review copy so that'll definitely be fixed by launch."

They gotta get real here.
 
I'm betting on Battlefront, Syndicate, and Fallout being the big losers this year. I have no faith in EA or Ubi and Bethesda's games are always pretty buggy.

That being said, the fact that everyone is trying to guess which games will be busted messes is sad. I can't believe we've reached the point where we now just assume that games won't work out of the gate. I hope that this all comes to bite the publishers in the ass, but pre-order numbers are still good year after year so I doubt it.
 
Was going to go with Fallout 4 at first but I decided to go with Battlefront instead. The history with Dice and BF4 is more telling. Bethesda games are gonna have bugs but they aren't groundbreaking like crashing n stuff. Plus the multiplayer online only stuff is more prone to these types of things.
 
I also gotta say NBA 2K, because they have been stinking up the joint with broken games (servers) for the past 5 years!

Z6AskYb.jpg
 
I think AC will probably be okay technically this year (game play is another story), but I pretty much expect every Bethesda game to be a hot mess of game breaking bugs so put Fallout 4 on my list.


I can only hope just cause is going to be broken in the most spectacular ways.
 
I thought the devs of Fallout 4 QA test their own games... So these QA testers won't actually be talking about that game.


I'm not saying it won't be buggy, maybe they actually need outside QA peeps... But I don't think they were referring to Fallout 4 in particular
 
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