Support NeoGAF

[Burger]

You are running out of cash, fast. You've been adding and adding for so long thinking there is time to fix that thing later. Gamers want more, and demand perfection. Marketing starts. Jira board is full of shit. You crunch. You have to hit the date. For the most part it works pretty well. Launch.

That's how it happens.

 

[tr1p1ex]

I guess you never played Stalker.

 

[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.

and it's a 110gb download on steam

LOL what the hell is up with Unreals patching system?

 

[GymWolf]

Starfield was broken? how's so?

It still had a huge amount of bugs and glitches, even if people were going with the narrative that it was the most optimized bethesda game ever (very possible, also the lowest fucking bar ever, and i'm familiar with limbo dance)

I can literally pinpoint and show receipts of a bug so absurd that challenge the laws of times and space like i never seen in any other game before, it's in the cohh streaming, it would be an hassle to search for the exact episode but i can do it if you really care about seeing what i'm talking about.

The bug is 10x times funnier if you actually played the game and that specific mission like i did.


Stalker had probably more campaign breaking bugs, but if we talk about normal bugs and glitches, stalker was almost pristine compared to starfield, at least in my experience (and it run better while looking better), launch vs launch.

 

[Wolves hunt in packs]

It still had a huge amount of bugs and glitches, even if people were going with the narrative that it was the most optimized betheds game ever (pìvery possible, also the lowest fucking bar ever, and i'm familiar with limbo dance)

I can literally pinpoint and show receipts of a bug so absurd that challenge the laws of times and space like i never seen in any other game before, it's in the cohh streaming, it would be an hassle to search for the exact episode but i can do it if you really care about seeing what i'm talking about.

The bug is 10x times funnier if you actually played the game and that specific mission like i did.

ok i'm not questioning if it had bugs, i'm sure it did and still have, but honestly i don't remember it been broken, perhaps we describe broken differently, but broken to me is a game you can't finish, or have severe performance issues, and while it had issues i can't recall Starfield been this bad.

 

[King Dazzar]

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.

In your opinion, was Redfall a broken game or not at launch?

 

[Cyberpunkd]

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

Fixed that for you.

 

[GymWolf]

ok i'm not questioning if it had bugs, i'm sure it did and still have, but honestly i don't remember it been broken, perhaps we describe broken differently, but broken to me is a game you can't finish, or have severe performance issues, and while it had issues i can't recall Starfield been this bad.

I don't remember if it had big game breaking bugs but probably not, i didn't finished the game, my balls were done after 20-25 hours.

But i don't agree with using the term broken only for game breaking bugs, if your bugs and glitches and retarded ia or completely broken economy actively make the game much worse, then a game is fucking broken to me.


You can't tell me with a straight face that a bethesda game and an actually polished game are considered the same only because semantics tell me that i should not use the word broken.

Fuck semantics.

 

[xrnzaaas]

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.

Yeah I know about the Prague studio. The fact that there are still people working from Ukraine during a war is pretty crazy, especially since power outages seem to be affecting a lot of the country these days, not just the eastern parts.

 

[Sanepar]

This game will be good in 6-12 months period, now is just a bug fest and unstable. They fixed 1800 bugs, so 18000 bugs left.

 

[Drake]

I think they heavily relied on player feedback to fix a lot of stuff. Even if the game was delayed they wouldn't have caught it.

 

[adamsapple]

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.

When on GAF, impressions from Gaffers would be more important, no?

In your opinion, was Redfall a broken game or not at launch?

Redfall was a bad game at launch. STALKER 2 had a much better launch and reception comparatively.

I think they heavily relied on player feedback to fix a lot of stuff. Even if the game was delayed they wouldn't have caught it.

Delaying wasn't an option for them anyway, per GSC.

They needed to put it out and recoup money.

 

[Grildon Tundy]

The game WAS broken. I had to use console commands to progress the main quest on ~five occasions. Regardless, I'm glad I played it at launch. And I'm looking forward to playing it again in a couple years when more bugs are smoothed out.

 

[Wolves hunt in packs]

I don't remember if it had big game breaking bugs but probably not, i didn't finished the game, my balls were done after 20-25 hours.

But i don't agree with using the term broken only for game breaking bugs, if your bugs and glitches and retarded ia or completely broken economy actively make the game much worse, then a game is fucking broken to me.


You can't tell me with a straight face that a bethesda game and an actually polished game are consodered the same only because semantics tell me that i should not use the word broken.

Fuck semantics.

I do agree that if some game mechanic like Stalker 2 AI isn't there then the game is in some way could consider somewhat broken.. i would not call it that but everyone has their own definitions, i just don't recall Starfield had that issues like Stalker 2 have/had.

 

[GymWolf]

When on GAF, impressions from Gaffers would be more important, no?



Redfall was a bad game at launch. STALKER 2 had a much better launch and reception comparatively.



Delaying wasn't an option for them anyway, per GSC.

They needed to put it out and recoup money.

The game WAS broken. I had to use console commands to progress the main quest on ~five occasions. Regardless, I'm glad I played it at launch. And I'm looking forward to playing it again in a couple years when more bugs are smoothed out.

 

[Clear]

Its not unusual to have QA databases listing thousands of issues.

Why do you think the normal practice is to categorize by severity and triage? Often leaving huge numbers KS*'d at launch.

Sorry to break this to you, but a single error that can seem harmless and insignificant can manifest in many bugs. Games are extremely complicated things, its about more than simple function its about cumulative, subjective effect.

*Known-Shipped.

 

[Edmund]

I love stalker but I'll only buy and play it 2 years later when most of the bugs and stability issues are fixed.

 

[GymWolf]

I do agree that if some game mechanic like Stalker 2 AI isn't there then the game is in some way could consider somewhat broken.. i would not call it that but everyone has their own definitions, i just don't recall Starfield had that issues like Stalker 2 have/had.

I guess it's a matter of luck, some people think that cyberpunk was the most borken game they ever played, my first run on pc was around 80 hours and i had way less glitches compared to your average ubisoft\bethesda game and not even close to the most broken game i ever played in my life, the fucking avengers game from some year ago.

You can go thorugh a very broken game and being lucky to not see much, it doesn't change the fact that for the majority of people, that game was broken.

What term would you use for launch skyrim or just a game with a tons of bugs and glitches but with no game breaking bug? Would you say it's polished? English is not my native language so maybe there is a word inbetween broken and polished.

 

[MacReady13]

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.

Better to be able to play a game in ANY state as opposed to 1 day not ever being able to play that game I suppose...

 

[Black_Stride]

They self published this title right?


Yeah they for sure could have delayed it a month, but im guessing at some point they need to get some money back.
Maybe they could have called the game Early Access the way Balders Gate 3 was and then have an official launch later when the game is in a stable state.

 

[LordCBH]

OP, have you ever played EuroJank before? Just be glad they’re fixing the game. Most EuroJank never gets fixed.

 

[Luipadre]

Gonna play this on the Pro fully patched out and beta tested

 

[Auto_aim1]

I almost reached the end without all these patches. Also, the game is huge and things can go wrong.

 

[Black_Stride]

I almost reached the end without all these patches. Also, the game is huge and things can go wrong.

Some of these fixes are literally like:
increased value of item x
increased/decreased rewards for mission x
adjusted damage for weapon x
improved facial animations


Then a shit ton of scripting fixes.....with a game this large you are bound to have scripting issues that need to be resolved.

Them listing so many of them is commendable for their transparency, but also kinda overkill, who is gonna read all the issues they fixed(me).

 

[poppabk]

In your opinion, was Redfall a broken game or not at launch?

There is borked and then broken.

Redfall was borked for sure, with shitty AI, bullet proof leaves but at least in single player it was playable.
Stalker launched both borked (AI issues) and somewhat broken (crashes, game halting bugs). They are trying to unbork and unbreak it currently.
I mean the Last of Us isn't broken just because Ellie will run right in front of enemies and they won't react. Some stuff is just borked and you have to accept it.

 

[King Dazzar]

There is borked and then broken.

Redfall was borked for sure, with shitty AI, bullet proof leaves but at least in single player it was playable.
Stalker launched both borked (AI issues) and somewhat broken (crashes, game halting bugs). They are trying to unbork and unbreak it currently.
I mean the Last of Us isn't broken just because Ellie will run right in front of enemies and they won't react. Some stuff is just borked and you have to accept it.

I like the term, janky as fuck.

 

[Wolves hunt in packs]

I guess it's a matter of luck, some people think that cyberpunk was the most borken game they ever played, my first run on pc was around 80 hours and i had way less glitches compared to your average ubisoft\bethesda game and not even close to the most broken game i ever played in my life, the fucking avengers game from some year ago.

You can go thorugh a very broken game and being lucky to not see much, it doesn't change the fact that for the majority of people, that game was broken.

What term would you use for launch skyrim or just a game with a tons of bugs and glitches but with no game breaking bug? Would you say it's polished? English is not my native language so maybe there is a word inbetween broken and polished.

For sure not polished, playing Indy now on SX, and that's polished. Umm i guess it depends on the game issues, to me both Starfield and Stalker 2 aren't "broken", Starfield in particular was a more smooth ride (as much as you can say smooth for 30fps at launch lol), Stalker 2 i would say is kinda have broken things for me, the repair costs and respawn issues were distracting me from enjoying the game at times. I guess "broken" isn't some universal term for every game that has issues.

 

[GymWolf]

There is borked and then broken.

Redfall was borked for sure, with shitty AI, bullet proof leaves but at least in single player it was playable.
Stalker launched both borked (AI issues) and somewhat broken (crashes, game halting bugs). They are trying to unbork and unbreak it currently.
I mean the Last of Us isn't broken just because Ellie will run right in front of enemies and they won't react. Some stuff is just borked and you have to accept it.

Ellie dancing around enemies was a gameplay design choice that only look dumb, redfall ai being retarded was definitely not on purpose and they tried to fix it.

Nd said that they had to chose between having a non-human ai that can fuck up your stealth or a dumb looking one that doesn't ruin your stealth, they chose option 1 (and thank fucking god, many devs prefer to ruin your experience even if they know that their companion ai is dogshit)

So yeah i think we need more tiers other than broken and borked.

 

[SlimySnake]

OP, have you ever played EuroJank before? Just be glad they’re fixing the game. Most EuroJank never gets fixed.

I avoid them with a passion. But I have played them before because i always fall for Eurogaf's hype.

 

[AMC124c41]

There is absolutely no piece of software out there that is bug free and that's just reality. I am a massive Stalker fan but I agree the game was rough day 1, so much so that I stopped playing and left it to get patched. However, there is always the very sombre reality when making any game of the budget you have which in turn mandates how much time you have. They pushed it back a few times but after such a long development cycle and the effects of the war they probably had to ship something or risk running out of money and therefore time.

At the end of the day it's up to you the consumer to decide if a product is worth your money and time indifferent of the state it's in on launch or later. Personally, I can let some issues slide if a game makes up for it in other ways but I'm aware that the standards are different for everyone. Finally, my quality expectations also differ depending on the developer and publisher. This is a relatively small Ukranian studio so my expectations are not the same as they will be for Intergalactic from Naughty Dog.

 

[adamsapple]

Honestly, going through the OT it seems like people playing on consoles had a much more stable experience than PC.

So I guess I lucked out there.

edit: same as what Wolves hunt in packs is describing I guess. In my 40~ hours with STALKER 2, outside of some open-world jank kind of bugs and only one side quest having scripting issues, it was a decent experience start to finish.

 

[GymWolf]

Honestly, going through the OT it seems like people playing on consoles had a much more stable experience than PC.

So I guess I lucked out there.

edit: same as what Wolves hunt in packs is describing I guess. In my 40~ hours with STALKER 2, outside of some open-world jank kind of bugs and only one side quest having scripting issues, it was a decent experience start to finish.

Matter of luck, i played on pc and had a pretty good experience all considered, but i'm also veeeery lucky.

But yeah, console version should be more stable given its closed ecosystem nature.

 

[Ozriel]

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.

The game isn’t being published by any multi-billion dollar corporation. Microsoft is paying some money for exclusivity, but the bulk of development costs would have been born by GSC Game World themselves. Based in Ukraine.

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.

User reviews on Steam stands at 84%. Seems even outside GAF, the majority had a good time.

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.

Hand waving away the fact that nearly 40% are still in a war-torn country, and even the western side is subject to conscription and missile attacks. Not to mention the impact on morale when you have family and friends impacted and killed during the war.
You guys are strange.

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.

the complexity of modern open world games is NOT comparable to older stuff like Donkey Kong country on the SNES. Of course massive open world games with multiple systems will have bugs at release. You’re never going to be able to test for all edge cases, there’s a whole lot more hardware variety and unforeseen bugs will always creep up. Some would be known pre-release, but usually not enough to delay the launch.

 

[ToughestSoul]

because people complain but they still buy

it's a tradition in gaming

 

[March Climber]

I avoid them with a passion. But I have played them before because i always fall for Eurogaf's hype.

Over the years I’ve learned to wait a year+ for eurojank titles to hit their peak, then finally play them.

If you can resist fomo, I’d highly suggest this.

 

[M1chl]

As much as I agree, there is a related point of view to this. And that's if this will cause an outrage, we will get more sterile generic slop, which has zero bugs, but zero ambition in the future. Because nobody is really critising lack of ambition, yet everyone has a ton of comments about bugs. In general Stalker 2 does not felt nearly as buggy as first one (which wasn't really ever fixed). Many of 1800 bugs could very well be related in the codebase, like you fix one thing which then subsequently fix 100 others. Its not like these are discrete bugs, living in their own bubble.

I think when refunds works as they should and you are informed about how buggy game is at launch, these things are largely non issue*. Bigger issue is, how safe every game is and basically all cult hits and games which has any legs, were released in broken state, because ambition takes time and nobody wants another Star Citizen, which is using macro transaction money to be kept in development and its in the stars if they ever release it in version 1.0

*This is why I think that release of Cyberpunk 2077 was scummy, because allowing review on PC, while old consoles basically did not run game at all, that's a shitty thing to pull off. As much as I think that Cyberpunk is the best game this gen.

 

[Sophist]

thanks to all the day one buyers for beta testing the game for us.

 

[Mayar]

thanks to all the day one buyers for beta testing the game for us.

Don't worry, it won't be out of alpha for another two years, so you'll have time to test it too.

 

[KungFucius]

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.

Its not the developers' fault. They would like the time to make it as close to perfect as possible. The publisher is pushing them to meet a date and even then it is possible that they can squash the worst bugs in a day 1 patch.

Look at this another way. Some games get significantly better after release with new features even if they are top notch when released. BG3 is a good example of this. Day 1 is missing out on all of that. Should that be considered acceptable? Most players will miss the best experience. Why release a game when you will keep working on it for another 12-18 months?

Seems like all complex games should be a wait for the definitive patch regardless of whether they are fixing bugs or adding/improving features.

 

[mdkirby]

Normally I’d agree, but if any games deserved a pass, it’s stalker, they are literally at war, and most the devs have to do tours.

That said, one of my fav dev studios is frogwares, who are also in Ukraine, and they made and released sherlock chapter one dlc, and an entire remake with Sherlock awakening in super fast time, and pretty much bug free, all done during the conflict.

 

[Branded]

You'd rather it doesn't get fixed?

 

[YeulEmeralda]

BG3 had 15 patches despite being in early access for 2 years.

Anyway https://www.reddit.com/r/patientgamers/

 

[Dirk Benedict]

That's his most recent level, too.

 

[Fake]

Generation z devs. Thats why.


Optimization was never their strong.

 

[Pandawan]

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.

Why didn't people overlook the Cyberpunk's bugs because of the scope and ambition, that is not fair! Cyberpunk had much less bugs than Stalker 2 and was completely destoryed.

 

[RobRSG]

I guess they did well given there’s a war going on as we speak.

 

[PeteBull]

We are all veteran players here, guys, we knew open world single player game is almost always infested with bugs at launch, not to mention when its not big studio but more of an AA dev
Just let it cook for a bit and play finished product then ;')

In 2009, GSC began work on S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2.[5] The company officially announced the game on 13 August 2010.[citation needed] During development, the company shrank from 200[7] employees to 50.[5]

 

[EviLore]

Ambitious game, Russian invasion, etc. At some point you need to ship. It’s good that they’re squashing the bugs and handling post-launch support well. I will definitely buy once it’s patched up.

 

[vaibhavpisal]

Why didn't people overlook the Cyberpunk's bugs because of the scope and ambition, that is not fair! Cyberpunk had much less bugs than Stalker 2 and was completely destoryed.

If I remember correctly, CDPR was struggling with making a GTA lite 20 yrs after GTA 3 release. They had to reform dev team with ppl who had experience.

Issues were much deeper than just a few bugs. That situation is similar to Redfall launch where game didn’t work as intended.

 

[DanielG165]

It’s good to me that GSC are patching and continuously working on the game, and with it now having turned a profit, hopefully they’ll have more resources to continue doing so.

I haven’t seen any real bugs during my playtime on Series X, thus far. I haven’t tried Stalker 2 on PC yet, so I can’t speak ingeniously on that, but the game feels stable on console.