[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.
oni-link said:
Well none of the post you quoted from me refereed to you at all, I was talking generally, and it literally included a part about how you can be a smart consumer or a reckless one, I'm sure you're a smart consumer, but you being informed and making smart choices doesn't mean you're in the majority
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I agree that more users should be more informed about their purchasing decisions instead of pre-ordering on the title alone.

wicko said:
I don't think that's necessary, I mean its not like people who bought a game without pre-ordering have ever complained about it later. Only people who pre-order behave like that.
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Exactly.

TheLostBigBoss said:
s
Pre-Ordering is taking information from the people who are selling the pre-order at heart and hoping they aren't lying to you or going to pull a fast one.

So while you may be making an informed purchase, it doesn't mean that information you used is accurate to the end product.
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Same logic applies to buying a game in the first place. If someone decides to pre-order extremey close to release with the hope that a patch has fixed the issues.
 
Escalario said:
Voted Fallout 4. I mean, it's Bethesda+Gamebryo. It will still be buggy as hell in a decade or two.
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never forget:

slydicks.jpg
 
tough poll

i voted ass creed because i think it'll have the worst bugs, but fallout seems like the main contender for most bugs
 
I'm at the point where I buy games eight months to a year later to get the best experience.
 
Wonder if Fallout 4 is going to continue the age old tradition (on consoles) of having the world get more buggy/ run shitty the longer you go on.
 
Sho_Nuff82 said:
Rule 1: Don't buy any online focused games without a competent public beta at launch.

Rule 2: Don't buy Ubi and Bethesda open world games before the first round of launch patches.

I've gotten by pretty well with those two rules.
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Man stop speaking sense, giving good advise and stuff

that shit is offensive... people do whatever the hell they want with their money! free country!
 
Man, this has to be one of the hardest poll choices I've had to make on GAF.

A choice between Fallout 4, Assassin's Creed, and Battlefront?

Can I pick all of the above?
 
It's gotta be Fallout 4. Not sure if I want to keep my LE. I impulsively pre-ordered because the wristband looked on stage then I learned that it is actually a cheap piece of plastic...
 
Tigress said:
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).
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If Fallout 4 for PS4 is great then thats great. I just don't see why anyone would risk a preorder. I don't even have to single out Bethesda; this applies to multiple developers. Lets let the game speak for itself when it comes out. For a game that takes over a hundred hours, waiting even just a few days for basic technical impressions isn't difficult unless you are super hyped.
 
Halo seems unlikely to be broken. After MCC they have to be extra vigilant. They have to be, right?

Assassin's Creed may be buggy but I suspect Ubisoft will also be a bit more careful.

Fallout 4 will be broken. Bethesda are terrible.

Battlefront seems a good candidate. DICE have a bad reputation for bugginess and Star Wars will probably sell regardless.
 
Not sure why not pre-ordering would have any effect on a company sending out an incomplete game but whatever.

I'm pretty sure it'll be Assassin's Creed, hope not cause I'm actually considering buying it for the first time in a while and it does look pretty neat. I would definitely not be shocked with Fallout 4 being bugged, I feel like they've all had pretty big bugs at launch because they're so huge so I mean I'd rather go with that than thinking it'll be perfect fresh out of the box. Battlefront maybe, I'm honestly hoping they learned a lot from Battlefield which I mean, from what I understand is fine now but you can't release something like that and expect everybody to be cool with it.
 
I won't be preordering anything else this fall besides P4D+Dragon Quest, the two games I know will work since they're already out in Japan. I think I can wait on everything else, especially after getting burnt on so many releases this gen (BF4, FFXHD PS4, Driveclub etc). I'm really hoping Battlefront isn't one of the broken games though, I'll see what Gaf impressions are like before I pick it up.
 
I think it'll be Assassins Creed again after seeing what Unity was like last year.

I don't know why everyone expects it to be Fallout 4, Skyrim ran fine when I played it years back.
 
Jito said:
I think it'll be Assassins Creed again after seeing what Unity was like last year.

I don't know why everyone expects it to be Fallout 4, Skyrim ran fine when I played it years back.
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it still had a ton of bugs/glitches, even though most weren't game breaking, just youtube a skyrim glitch video there's tons of them... some are quite long lol.
 
I'm confident in assuming battlefront star wars, ass creed, fallout, halo, rainbow six siege, at least one ea sports game, mirrors edge are all going to have some substantial issues. Maybe not ongoing issues in all cases, but still major.
 
Visualante2 said:
New year is already feeling crowded. If any games slip then it will be even more painful than usual. You've got Deus Ex, Battleborn, XCOM 2 and Lego Marvel releasing. Wonder if we'll see another Batman type affair? No clients listed on the PoleToWin website but Babel have worked with pretty much every major publisher in the business. I also wonder to what extent outsourcing contributes to this problem. Easy to point the finger at the publisher for managing projects badly but I have to imagine the cost cutting by outsourcing QA around the world doesn't really help.

Can't ever have a news thread without people's lack of surprise coming up.
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Pole To Win (PTW) is a legit, huge QA company that's been around for a long time. They're one of the largest QA companies in Japan, and they relatively recently merged with an Indian company, e4e. Babel and Universally Speaking are also legit localization companies. All of these companies should have global presences, work with tons of clients, and very much know what they're talking about in this area.

Outsourcing at least some of your QA in this day and age is necessary, in my opinion. Games are getting so large and complicated that it's hard for companies to maintain large QA teams necessary to properly test their titles. If you look at a title like Arkham Knight, they used something like ten different QA teams, totaling over a hundred testers, plus Rocksteady's and WB Games' internal QA teams.

A game that size is simply impossible to test completely, so the solution for now is to try to throw as many eyes on it as possible to try to cover most of your bases. This means that you have a few options:

1. Hire, train, and retain a large QA team, which is expensive and will sit there, burning money when you have downtime.
2. Hire and train (or don't train) a bunch of testers to throw onto your game and then let them all go when there's downtime, only to do the whole thing over again when you need testing again.
3. Outsource it and let someone else handle those logistics.

Outsourcing makes the most sense here if you're not a huge company like EA or Activision with tons of money and enough projects to move your testers onto when something else is slow.

But here's the problem with outsourcing: some teams are better than others, and some companies just aren't that good. Everyone will say they're amazing when you talk to them, though, so how do you decide who to use? You really only have reputation and cost to go on, and I'm sure there are companies out there that will promise you the world for a low price and then fail to deliver. The problem is that, by the time you find out you got a raw deal, it's too late, and your game is already in dire straits.
 
While I'm sure Battlefront's launch will be a buggy, laggy, crash-filled mess, I doubt it will hold a candle to garbage people will put up with for another Bethesda open world game.
 
EA got me by the balls by making a limited edition for Battlefront. I just know the game will be broken at launch, but as a hardcore Star Wars fan I gotta preorder for that beautiful box art...
 
I put my money on Rainbow Six Siege. I'd like to think that the Assassin's Creed team learned their lesson after last year, but I'm still skeptical about Ubisoft overall. And Siege looks rough to me.

I think Fallout is going to be buggy but not unplayable-at-launch tier.
 
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