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[FSLink]

Capcom? Seriously? UMVC3 might as well have been called "Marvel vs Capcom 3: Online Edition".

Huh? This doesn't make any sense to me. I mean yeah, their games can be a bit glitchy (MvC2 anyone?), though they're usually the amusing or interesting kind, not the game literally breaks kind.

And I'd agree with Nintendo for least buggy games. Though Pokemon Red/Blue is hilarious and probably one of the buggiest games of all time.

 

[bj00rn_]

Bethesda / Obsidian

Yeah, I wonder why the biggest open world RPGs tend to have the most bugs/glitches

 

[DeliciousDoc]

Yeah, I wonder why the biggest open world RPGs tend to have the most bugs/glitches

Everytime I see something like this I want to choke the poster (one less supporter of lowered expectation games). NO, no, it's not ok.

 

[Durante]

Everytime I see something like this I want to choke the poster (one less supporter of lowered expectation games). NO, no, it's not ok.

There are multiple ways of having lowered expectations, and the one where games have some bugs in corner cases is preferable by far to the one where we just expect games to be completely "streamlined" and devoid of depth.

Let me present a more cogent argument. Assume we have 3 different explanations for why some games are more error-prone than others. All of these explanations are often brought up on this forum:

A) Their developers are less competent, or their testing procedures are not as successful
B) Some engines are just prone to faultiness by design
C) Higher levels of complexity are inherently more complex to implement

There are many data points that indicate that both A) and B) are, quite frankly, wrong, and that C) is a far more likely explanation. Here are some examples:
- Obsidian Entertainment is widely accused of releasing very buggy games. Then they went ahead and developed a rather standard action-RPG following the Diablo formula (DS3). The game is basically bug-free at release.
- Piranha Bytes made their largest, most complex game by far in Gothic 3. It was only playable after years of modders fixing it. In their next project (Risen) they downsized a lot to a single, relatively small island, and the game was a lot more stable at release.
- Regarding the engine issue, Gamebryo is often blamed for some problems. People never seem to realize that a lot of very stable games are based on that engine, for example Civilization IV.
- When Bioware made large, complex games such as Baldur's Gate, they were riddled with bugs (look up the change logs and community fix packs). Their corridor shooters with selectable level order are lauded for their stability.

Even more persuasive should be the fact that no one has ever made a game as complex as the TES titles, or Arcanum, or BG2, or Gothic 3 and perfected its stability at release.

Thus, it seems that in the real world we have 2 possible ways of dealing with this issue:
i) Reduce the complexity of these games to a point where it is possible to perfectly polish them
ii) Deal with some niggles at launch and wait for patches and the community (on PC) to fix them

I for one greatly prefer the first option.

 

[Valygar]

1:Bethesda

2:Nintendo

3: Yes, I didn't buy Fallout 3 or Fallout: New Vegas in day 1 for that reason. When a patch of adequate quality was out (and the game was a bit cheaper), that was the moment to buy them. With Skyrim I didn't read much about bugs in the reviews, so I decided to bite, and I have not encountered any bugs yet, only 4-5 CTD in 44 hours, and once my character got stuck while descending a mountain.

If I had known about Magicka bugs, I would have probably waited as well.

 

[Cow Mengde]

Hey guys, how buggy is this game?

 

[Durante]

Hey guys, how buggy is this game?

Not particularly, since it's also quite simple in design.

 

[rvy]

Question 1: In your experience, who releases the buggiest games?

Rockstar, Bethesda and Digital Illusions.
Battlefield 3 is a sight to be seen pre-patch. Hell, it still is even post-patch for the SP campaign.
Bethesda is just downright awful. I don't think they have a debugging department by the looks of it.
I very much doubt that there's a single gamer who hasn't experienced a bug in a Rockstar game.

Question 2: In your experience, who releases the least buggiest games?

Itagaki's Team Ninja, before NG II. I don't remember a single bug in any of their games and I played all the DOA games and NG/NG BLACK extensively.

Question 3: Have bugs in previous products ever put you off purchasing a developers future products, even in established franchises?

I don't buy Bethesda games. Never have, never will. Loans suffice. Was on the fence about getting BF 3, a friend loaned it to me, so that saves me the trouble. If I know that the developer has a track record of shit debugging, I don't buy the game.

 

[TheBanditKing]

Question 1: In your experience, who releases the buggiest games?

Bethesda is clearly number one, no one can match their ship it now patch it later track record. Rockstar is a close second in my book (the flying cars in GTA 3 were hilarious though).

Question 2: In your experience, who releases the least buggiest games?
Nintendo, Naughty Dog, Santa Monica Studios, Retro Studios, Team Ninja, Kojima Pro.

Question 3: Have bugs in previous products ever put you off purchasing a developers future products, even in established franchises?

Yes absolutely, I won't buy games from companies that have a proven track record of making broken games. Often because bugs in today's games are not like they were in the past. I'm not talking about level skip glitches or being able to walk through walls or physics making enemies fly hundreds of feet when you hit them. Rather bugs today crash games or worse, corrupt saves, broken quests you can't quit and other rage inducing problems. I will skip why I think this is so common today but I don't think anyone can disagree this gen is by far the worst for these issues.

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

No Obsidian/Black Isle votes for buggiest?

Utterly stunning that Bethesda got three mentions before Obsidian got one.

More like pre-Alpha Protocol, miryte?

 

[TheBanditKing]

Utterly stunning that Bethesda got three mentions before Obsidian got one.

More like pre-Alpha Protocol, miryte?

I would have mentioned them if I even remembered them, I honestly forgot they existed. Though given how bad Alpha Protocol was I was probably better off not remembering.

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

I would have mentioned them if I even remembered them, I honestly forgot they existed. Though given how bad Alpha Protocol was I was probably better off not remembering.

AP has an inexplicable following on GAF, so you better not say that too loud.

 

[jsnepo]

Kojima Productions for bug free single player games.

Never experienced bugs with MGS, ZOE, MGS2, ZOE2, MGS3, and MGS4. MGO (Subsistence and MGS4) is full of bugs though.

 

[BurntPork]

1. Obsidian and Bethesda for the tie, I think.

2. Nintendo and Valve have a pretty good track record.

3. It depends. I said Obsidian and Bethesda, but in truth I usually end up playing their games anyway. Elder Scrolls: Oblivion was a bit of a mess, but I still loved it, and I'm currently VERY MUCH enjoying Skyrim.

Ha ha, WHAT!?! All Valve ever does is release games full of bugs, then tries to fix them, them makes more bugs in the process. Part of the reason they're so good about releasing patches is that there's always something to patch! They're one of the worst offenders easily, and this is coming from someone who LOVES their games!

 

[Risk Breaker]

Bethesda is maybe the most popular one that releases buggy games, but c'mon, play some east europe developed games if you want to see the buggiest.


iirc Twilight Princess had a game breaking bug, and it was used to hack Wii consoles. but for the amount of games Nintendo releases, it's surprisingly little.

And it also tells you the value of specials rupees every time you boot up the game, but people forget very easily...

I'd say the developer team with less bugs in their games is KojiPro.

Shit, beaten

On the other hand, both Epic and Codemasters are serious offenders in the "we know it's buggy but we don't give a fuck" department.

 

[kyubajin]

FROM's Souls series isn't without its terrible bugs and glitches until patched.

 

[Raiden]

Haha yeah gotta say Bethesda. After about 20 minutes of gameplay in Skyrim, i encountered a mammuth that skyrocketed upwards and plunge to its death. An hour later i was fighting a giant and somehow i skyrocketed up in the air as well, i think i was in the air for a good 20 seconds.

 

[King of the Potato People]

I remember a glitch in Fallout 3 where sheriff Lucas Simms is just walking around Megaton and dies with no explanation, but Lionhead will get my vote for buggiest games.

Fable had that glitch where voice acting just turned off occasionally, Fable II had that glitch where I couldn't rescue my child from goblins because he refused to follow me no matter what. According to the Fable III map, my character had a dozen wives in Mistpeak when he only got married once, or the other one in this game where after finishing it as evil, the whole world will screw up and there's a few golden trails leading to nowhere.

As for least buggiest, another unoriginal pick Nintendo so when they have a glitch it becomes kind of a legend in itself (see MissingNo.)

Being a sandbox game is no justification for these disasters, they should just spend more time making it better, simple as.

 

[markao]

Kind of hard to pick dev studios, so I stick to the two games that fit the question.

Most bugged game I played, or I could not even play because the menu wasn't even working for (new) ATI card owners, was Saboteur (Pandemic). I mean you do test if your menus work in a game before releasing it, right? They did release a temp fix before closing down and the game was more then ok, but seriously no working menu.


I have still not encountered a single bug in Starcraft 2 (Blizzard), its level of polish is beyond any game I played in the last decade

 

[ScOULaris]

This is too easy.

Buggiest: Bethesda beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Least Buggy: Nintendo.

That seems to be the consensus in the thread, which is probably because it's 100% factually accurate.

 

[Tuck]

Nintendo is pretty good at finding bugs, aside from a few notable screw ups, as they should be since they don't do game updates.

 

[Aizu_Itsuko]

1) Probably some small studio that releases a game a month. When it comes to big companies: Bethesda.
2) Any high quality studio like Nintendo, ND and many others.
3) Bethesda because... fuck you Bethesda, seriously.

 

[Rad-]

Yeah, I wonder why the biggest open world RPGs tend to have the most bugs/glitches

Only 1 Obsidian game is open world.

 

[Saiyar]

1. Bethesda, Obsidian, DICE
2. Valve, Kojipro
3. I will probably never buy a DICE or Obsidain game again and will wait for the re-release before getting Skyrim.

 

[Dorrin]

Bethesda hands down and lets be clear here these are not just cliping bugs etc but the kind of shit that is extremely nasty, game ending, save corrupting bugs. Anyone remember Fallout New Vegas game ending bug with the ghouls and the rockets.? I actually was watching a live stream of a play through when that hit the caster.

I'd also like to take a moment to slam Bioware who took 6+, yes 6+ freaking months to patch a merchant bug in Dragon Age which corrupted all saves. They were dumb enough to outsource their console ports and then basically abandoned it. Disgusting.

 

[Corky]

Worst : Bethesda
Best : Nintendo/Valve

 

[miksar]

If you think that Bethesda's games are the buggiest, you probably never played some Eastern European games that are literally broken on the release day.

 

[Raitosaito]

Question 1: In your experience, who releases the buggiest games?

Bethesda, and more specifically Fallout 3. That or that Lego Bionic game on the Ps2..

Question 2: In your experience, who releases the least buggiest games?

Everyone already said Nintendo, and I'll agree. Square Enix is usually bug free for me. Probably nature of the genre with Square, but hey, still barely any bugs.

Question 3: Have bugs in previous products ever put you off purchasing a developers future products, even in established franchises?
I wouldn't buy New Vegas considering my Fallout 3 crashed right before the ending sequence. Obsidian is the developer, but is the Bethesda engine. (Or gamebryo with their code) And loading all 3 saves in that area didn't work, so I'm at a loss with them. I bought Skyrim, had the same problem, but the autosave kept like 8 files so I lucked out there.

I'm known as the bug finder to my friends though. I never look for them, but a lot of games I've encountered them. AC:Revelations I encountered a lot of weird mission bugs that fail me 3 or 4 times before I can complete it. Now I'm thinking of skipping onto n the next AC, idk. The worse thing is showing people when they at first don't believe me. They usually just laugh at me.

 

[IOnEI Falcon]

Oh man! Techland and their Dead Island steam mishap!

 

[Apath]

Buggiest: Dunno. Probably some shitty lesser known dev. Of games I've played, I'd say Bioware and Bathesda games, but mostly because of how big they generally are. In the case of Gears of War, I always expect Epic to release a glitch-fest of a multiplayer component.

Least buggy: Blizzard, Valve. Bungie always seems to do a good job as well.

 

[RukusProvider]

1. Dice. I laugh when people complain about BF games for the first 3months or so.

2. Bungie. To me, they've done a very solid job with the Halo series

3. No. I'll play BF games to death. I just know what I'm getting at this point.

 

[Corky]

If you think that Bethesda's games are the buggiest, you probably never played some Eastern European games that are literally broken on the release day.

If you think dominos pizza is bad then you haven't eaten fermented goatfeces. Am I doing it right?

 

[Leckan]

Obsidian and Nintendo.

 

[M3d10n]

Ha ha, WHAT!?! All Valve ever does is release games full of bugs, then tries to fix them, them makes more bugs in the process. Part of the reason they're so good about releasing patches is that there's always something to patch! They're one of the worst offenders easily, and this is coming from someone who LOVES their games!

I partially disagree. Their games are very clean at release. It's the big updates and balance patches that always contain bugs. TF2 is a big offender here: there's always a bug-fix patch a week after the big updates. Sometimes I've seen bugs that were fixed in the past return with new updates.

 

[VeryGooster]

Buggiest? Bethesda and Obsidian...
Least buggy? Nintendo.

 

[Jokeropia]

1.) Bethesda
2.) Nintendo
3.) No. It just makes me hold off the purchase for a while so that the bugs can be discovered and patches can be released.

 

[Trike]

Huh? This doesn't make any sense to me. I mean yeah, their games can be a bit glitchy (MvC2 anyone?), though they're usually the amusing or interesting kind, not the game literally breaks kind.

And I'd agree with Nintendo for least buggy games. Though Pokemon Red/Blue is hilarious and probably one of the buggiest games of all time.

MvC2 on the XBLA had some game breaking glitches for me, at least at launch. Vanilla Marvel vs Capcom 3's online mode seemed so broken unless you were doing a non-ranked match. It always seemed to failed unless you hosted. I think Street Fighter IV or something had similar issues?

 

[Laughing Banana]

I'd be more inclined to be "hard" on Bethesda, Obsidian, Piranha Bytes or even (retroactively) on Troika if someone could point out games that are actually similarly complex and bug-free. Basically, if my choice is either getting these games in a slightly buggy state or not getting them at all, I'll emphatically choose the former every time.

The problem with your statement is in the case of Bethesda and Obsidian there is no 'slightly'. Try 'very'.

 

[Somnid]

I'm pretty much in line with every one else.

1) Bethesda. I do fogive them a little because their games are orders-of-magnitude more complex than other devs. The fatal crashing is unacceptable, as are the gamebreakers. They're lucky their games are good.

2) Nintendo. I thought about this all day and the only glitch I can ever remember in a Nintendo game was a fatal crash in Metroid Prime which happened once in roughly 60 hours worth of play-throughs. Aside from that I can say to my knowledge I have never once encountered a glitch in regular play of a Nintendo game, only when trying to induce one.

3) Glitches don't always bother me if the content is good, I'll suffer a little bit of pain. What I do not forgive is game-killers. GFWL in Bioshock 2? Killed the game for me, I can't play it because it doesn't work and I can't save. Lockup glitch in Crysis also killed that game, I can't play past the first 10 minutes of the game or my entire PC crashes. I certainly will not buy any more games that use GFWL and I don't have a very high opinion of Crytek. Luckily both were $5 or so on Steam so I didn't lose much. I may buy future games from them but I certainly won't pay anymore than that.

 

[Criminal Upper]

Bethesda/Ubisoft for most.

Nintendo for least.