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[SlimySnake]

I remember getting super upset at these massive patch release notes for HFW back in 2022 when they would release a new patch every week for like ten straight weeks. Each with around 50-60 bug fixes. But this is simply insane. I dont think i've ever seen anything like this. Not even Cyberpunk which was probably the most broken game i've ever seen.

This game has good ratings both from critics and fans, but that also begs the question, did we contribute to games releasing in such a buggy state? Shouldn't we be voting with our wallets? Shouldn't the critics dock points for these bugs?



Fixing this many bugs in a month is an impressive feat of Engineering. But if they can fix 1,800 issues in a month, why not just release the game on December 19th? Is Black Friday really that important?

I personally only played the game for around half an hour before quitting it and setting it aside for a patch like this. The framerate would go from 60 to 20 fps simply by turning the camera in a tiny room with shitty graphics. I am surprised that it has a 'Very Positive' rating on Steam.

 

[Ribi]

Almost like sales = $$$ = work hours

 

[kruis]

Anyone who bought Stalker 2 is basically beta testing the game.

 

[Magic Carpet]

I assume the people who buy the games are now the defacto game testers and bug reporters.

 

[geary]

Question is, in this rhythm, do you all still support physical disk without day one patch or continuous improvement patches? What's the point to make a physical library if you cannot play the games in a decent state.

 

[GymWolf]

People are gonna tell you that it's ok because they are having fun with the game anyway.

Respectable position, but still...

 

[Gaiff]

 

[Denton]

Eh hundreds of thousand bugfixes is nothing new. Most of them are various edge cases that most players did not/would not encounter.

That said Stalker 2 definitely should have been postponed (if it was possible) since it had quite a few actually noticeable problems (the controller deadzone still boggles my mind, but at least it is fixed now).

 

[Exede]

Ask Putin!

 

[Tiago Rodrigues]

Games back in the 00's or 90's could also have patches like these. But they were just released and never fixed due to no internet (90s specially obviously) and we weren't nearly as picky because hair doesn't move the right way or a hand gets stuck in a door when you open it or there was an audio bug somewhere, etc...

Gamers are also much more demanding nowadays. It is what it is.

 

[pudel]

I bought it and just waited for these patches now. Its a Stalker game after all. I exactly knew what I was going to support here.

 

[Buggy Loop]

I'm glad I didn't have day 1 FOMO on this one.

Maybe by mid 2025 we'll have the AI fixed too.

 

[mansoor1980]

 

[King Dazzar]

Its been going on for years. I remember back when Empire Total War (brilliant game) released and you couldn't even complete the main campaign due to AI bugs. Yet it got excellent reviews. I challenged one of the magazines editors and they said "we never encountered any issues during our review time". And then months of patch after patch after patch released. With even the devs admitting in a reflective interview they released it too early. And so here we are.

 

[Chairman Yang]

Reviews certainly were affected by the bugs. But the reception was still positive as a whole because people were willing to overlook the issues, rightly or wrongly, because of the scope and ambition of the game. Should they? I wouldn't; I'd incentivize the developers to come out of the gate with a more polished game. But I don't fault people who feel differently and want to pay full price for a more flawed experience. I'm happy to let them subsidize me when I get the game much later at a cheaper price and with many fewer bugs.

 

[Ulysses 31]

And that's on top of the 100s of bugs the first 3 patches fixed.

 

[SEGAvangelist]

It's almost like something else might be going on where they made the game.

 

[Heimdall_Xtreme]

Zelda Ocarina of time also had bugs and is considered one of the best games in the industry.

 

[Buggy Loop]

 

[s_mirage]

Its been going on for years. I remember back when Empire Total War (brilliant game) released and you couldn't even complete the main campaign due to AI bugs. Yeah it got excellent reviews. I challenged one of the magazines editors and they said "we never encountered any issues during our review time". And then months of patch after patch after patch released. With even the devs admitting in a reflective interview they released it too early. And so here we are.

Oh, I remember that! The campaign AI would be super passive, would build endless navies that it did nothing with, and would never land armies using ships. CA initially tried to claim that it was intended behaviour.

 

[adamsapple]

How did we get to this point?​

By trying to launch a product when a portion of their staff was directly impacted by real world conflict.

It's not a normal circumstance for a game to have come out.

 

[Darkmakaimura]

Question is, in this rhythm, do you all still support physical disk without day one patch or continuous improvement patches? What's the point to make a physical library if you cannot play the games in a decent state.

Yup. I hate digital because DRM unless it's from GOG where the games are DRM free and you actually own the game and not just the license.

But everyone talks about physical media because they'll own the game. What they don't realize is that almost every game that comes out now requires patching so physical media is pretty much a coaster at this point.

 

[Puscifer]

Question is, in this rhythm, do you all still support physical disk without day one patch or continuous improvement patches? What's the point to make a physical library if you cannot play the games in a decent state.

Yes because at least I can still play them. That being said, Microsoft Xbox disc are glorified CD keys, not real physical disc, so this isn't a surprise to me

 

[xrnzaaas]

The game had a very troubled development, being made in a country invaded by a hostile neighbor and engaged in ongoing military conflict. Of course you can always say they could've delayed it by another 6-12 months, but that's always a lot of money and your funds will eventually run out.

Honestly I suspected it would launch in much worse state, I've currently spent 30 hours with the game and only had 2 crashes and one event that didn't want to trigger properly. The only thing that pissed me off was that the preload ended being worthless when a complete redownload popped up like 2 days before launch.

 

[MMaRsu]

Games are complex.

 

[The Cockatrice]

By trying to launch a product when a portion of their staff was directly impacted by real world conflict.

It's not a normal circumstance for a game to have come out.

I got this tag for disagreeing with this so I wont say more on this subject, but there are no excuses for any game development team that are funded by multi-billion corporations and taken care of as well. If they managed to fix so many bugs in a month, the game could've been delayed a month, but the reality is consumers are nowadays beta testers. Corpo rats.

 

[Fess]

I am surprised that it has a 'Very Positive' rating on Steam.

It’s a great game. My #2 this year.

But imagine if the Metacritic score for professional reviews would be updated after release day and actually showed how the game is right now when people look up the score to get an idea if it’s worth purchasing… instead of just showing how it was a week before release as if that would help anyone post release.
How can we get to that point?

 

[Sebastian1295]

It's almost like something else might be going on where they made the game.

Everyone understands that but they're still charging for a product that was broken on launch and essentially shipped it out and said fk it give us ur money. This isn't a charity, it's a product they're demanding money for and people have a right to complain about it. If they don't want people to complain then make the game free and ask for donations instead.

 

[MMaRsu]

Anyone who bought Stalker 2 is basically beta testing the game.

Or wants to support developers who literally went through hell to make this game..

 

[SlimySnake]

By trying to launch a product when a portion of their staff was directly impacted by real world conflict.

It's not a normal circumstance for a game to have come out.

They fixed 1,800 bugs in a month after launch. As far as I know, the war is still going on. What changed in the last month?

This is not directed at people who built the game. It's a publisher issue. The problem is that the studio published the game themselves and they knew they had 1,800 issues that wouldve been fixed in a month. Yet launched the game in that state anyway.

 

[DeepEnigma]

If they managed to fix so many bugs in a month, the game could've been delayed a month, but the reality is consumers are nowadays beta testers. Corpo rats.

You do have a point on this part which applies to all developers/publishers out there. Not this unique situation.

You can tell which games spend on Q&A and which rely on public testing cycles. They done conditioned us well.

 

[Sebastian1295]

Or wants to support developers who literally went through hell to make this game..

Everyone understands that but then make the game free and ask for donations instead. You can't charge alot of money for a product that's unfinished/broken on launch and then expect no one to complain about said product being broken.

 

[pudel]

Everyone understands that but then make the game free and ask for donations instead.

....but its already on gamepass.

 

[adamsapple]

Everyone understands that but they're still charging for a product that was broken on launch and essentially shipped it out and said fk it give us ur money. This isn't a charity, it's a product they're demanding money for and people have a right to complain about it. If they don't want people to complain then make the game free and ask for donations instead.

It wasn't. You haven't played the game, have you?

They fixed 1,800 bugs in a month after launch. As far as I know, the war is still going on. What changed in the last month?

This is not directed at people who built the game. It's a publisher issue. The problem is that the studio published the game themselves and they knew they had 1,800 issues that wouldve been fixed in a month. Yet launched the game in that state anyway.

I see your frustration but it's still a bit overblown, and this is hardly an outlier.

Games with year(s) long early access cycles like Baldurs Gate 3 also fix 'hundreds' of issues in their post-launch patches. The more complex a game, the more issues there'll be.

The first major Baldur’s Gate 3 patch is live with hundreds of fixes

Larian was true to its word and released the first major Baldur’s Gate 3 patch on PC, with hundreds of fixes big and small

ftw.usatoday.com

 

[bender]

I got this tag for disagreeing with this..

Disagreeing isn't why you got the tag.

 

[rofif]

And breaking another 2000 bugs in the process.
in a month? nope. Means they did not cross reference and test the bug fixes.
and it's a 110gb download on steam

 

[Wolves hunt in packs]

They are gradually fixing the issues, the first patches fixed the dead zones and stick drift issues, and some economy balance (still too much expensive to repair gear imo but a step in the right direction).
Later they also added quests and other bugs fixes.
Now with this patch it seems they are jump starting the AI everybody asking for, and from comments on reddit it seem the respawn issue is fixed.

Not optimal for sure, but if after a month they fixed many of the issues, and a big patch will come soon, then it's better then nothing, would be better if they would shipped it with all the fixings already, but i'm glad they are hard at work to at least deliver what fans hoped for.

 

[kruis]

The game had a very troubled development, being made in a country invaded by a hostile neighbor and engaged in ongoing military conflict. Of course you can always say they could've delayed it by another 6-12 months, but that's always a lot of money and your funds will eventually run out.

The majority of the development team has relocated to Prague, Czechia since the Russian invasion. Those are the people who managed to get out of Ukraine at the beginning of the war before the border was closed to men of a military age. But there's still a sizable number of employees still in Ukraine, most of them in the quiet, western part of the country hundreds of miles from the front where the biggest problems are the power black outs.

 

[chakadave]

Shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who played the original. PC gamers are king of used to this. And can look past some bugs and look at the game knowing it will be fixed or hoping it can and will be fixed.

 

[808mate]

I don't know how you would even manage to prioritise that many bugs in such a time frame, let alone fix them.

 

[Alexios]

I mean, this happens with pretty much every big/complex game, from Elder Scrolls to Witcher to this. For most people they play fine and they don't encounter but a percentage of their bugs (way more fixes to come).

Granted this wasn't in the best state it could have been but it's not like it was unplayable for many/most people like Cyberpunk (also fixed since on its major platforms, yay) or whatever. The count doesn't mean much.

 

[GymWolf]

It wasn't. You haven't played the game, have you?




I see your frustration but it's still a bit overblown, and this is hardly an outlier.

Games with year(s) long early access cycles like Baldurs Gate 3 also fix 'hundreds' of issues in their post-launch patches. The more complex a game, the more issues there'll be.

The first major Baldur’s Gate 3 patch is live with hundreds of fixes

Larian was true to its word and released the first major Baldur’s Gate 3 patch on PC, with hundreds of fixes big and small

ftw.usatoday.com

It was definitely broken, unless you think that gamebreaking bugs that fuck your campaign (on top of all the other broken or missing fetures) are signs of a perfectly fine product.

Well look at the bright side, stalker was still less broken than starfield and 10x times the game starfield dream to be.

 

[K' Dash]

Games are too complex now, any person working on Software Development knows that the fact they're able to ship these massive bundles of code in playable state is a fucking miracle.

Also, you could optimize your code forever and not launch your game there's always work to be done, there's always ways to do things better, but you have a deadline and a budget.

 

[adamsapple]

It was definitely broken, unless you think that gamebreaking bugs that fuck your campaign (on top of all the other broken or missing fetures) are signs of a perfectly fine product.

Plenty of people on GAF played through the campaign with minor issues, the kind that plague most game releases anyway.

Broken would imply universal game breaking bugs and locks, which just isn't true.

Well look at the bright side, stalker was still less broken than starfield and 10x times the game starfield dream to be.

 

[acm2000]

how fucking dare they fix bugs instead of spending 12 years and unlimited budget like rockstar do.

 

[winjer]

This mentality of modern gaming studios of releasing a game first, and finishing the game later, is really pernicious.
All the while, charging full price for an unfinished product.

 

[neocycle]

Why I don't play games until at least 1 year after release.

 

[POKEYCLYDE]

I'm probably over 150 hours at this point. I've come across 3 major bugs that have sort of sidetracked my progress.

The first was an artifact called "weird water" which almost doubles carry weight, this artifact spawned under the map. This one of a kind artifact would make the grind of exploration so much more rewarding, and more fun. (I've since used an exploit to ramp up my carry weight)

The second was a very bugged mission, where you have to defend the starter town Zalissiya. I avoided that town like the plague until the second patch was out. Still ran into a bug, but it was something I could live with.

The 3rd is one I'm currently dealing with, a mission where you're defending the Yaniv base. The "fast travel" guide guy disappeared after defending the base. Not being able to fast travel from such a central late stage area in the game would be a huge pain. So I reloaded before the mission and have been avoiding it.

Hopefully this patch fixes that last problem and keeps my carry weight exploit alive, ahaha, but honestly, it's been so fun.

 

[Wolves hunt in packs]

It was definitely broken, unless you think that gamebreaking bugs that fuck your campaign (on top of all the other broken or missing fetures) are signs of a perfectly fine product.

Well look at the bright side, stalker was still less broken than starfield and 10x times the game starfield dream to be.

Starfield was broken? how's so?

 

[GymWolf]

Plenty of people on GAF played through the campaign with minor issues, the kind that plague most game releases anyway.

Broken would imply universal game breaking bugs and locks, which just isn't true.

And plenty of people outside gaf (and someone inside gaf aswell) had problems but sure, the world only care about what happen inside gaf, how did i didn't thinked about that, silly me.