Respawn Considered Delaying Jedi: Fallen Order to Smooth out Its Rampant Bugs

giallo · Feb 21, 2020

That's all well and good, but could you at least continue to patch it so it doesn't run like hot garbage on base consoles ie, the game's largest player base?

I appreciate his honesty, but he's just stating the obvious. The game is no technical marvel, and should not run as poorly as it does on the base PS4. It's a low benchmark for a AAA game, just sitting above Just Cause 3 as the buggiest AAA game of this generation. I waited for over two months for them to fix it, and it still ran just as badly. I finally just threw my hands up in the air, and finished it, but it wasn't an enjoyable experience; input lag, tanking frame rates, pop in, graphical glitches, environmental snags, button commands not registering. It goes on and on. I ended up lowering the difficulty, not because the game was challenging, but because of the myriad of problems the game had.

If this is how the company responds to the game months later, not with an apology, but with a "Yeah, we know it ran like shit, but money", I'll definitely be wary of the sequel in the future.

Zombine · Feb 21, 2020

I am just glad that it was good and made it out the door...

Blackleg-sanji1 · Feb 21, 2020

These same ppl was probably killing days gone for its bugs

ForgedByGeeks · Feb 21, 2020

i-Lo said:
No. Unless you're being facetious, then yes.

Literally every software project I have worked on over the last 2 decades have had these kinds if discussions. All software and game projects have hundreds if not thousands of known bugs when they ship. Almost all have many that are high severity that sometimes the potential fix is just too risky to consider late in release and the question then becomes whether or not it is worth delaying the product for the fix.

He'll, I just had similar conversations last week about a couple of bugs.

super moustique · Feb 21, 2020

Did they patch it in the end ?

Deleted member 56752 · Feb 21, 2020

Can you imagine if every game decided to not put out a game because of a bug. We would get exactly zero games

Blackleg-sanji1 · Feb 21, 2020

super moustique said:
Did they patch it in the end ?

I played the game in late December it was still having problems

giallo · Feb 21, 2020

super moustique said:
Did they patch it in the end ?

I beat it last month, and it looked and felt just as bad as day 1.

I also want to add that I feel the reviewers out there really did a disservice to the customers. I realize most of them play on PC, X1X and PS4 Pro, but most of us own a base console (100 million + of us, in fact), and almost every review I read or watched mentioned the glitches and unfinished state of the game in passing or not at all. It was the first time in awhile that I was generally shocked by how poorly the game ran once I started playing it. Usually, there's some kind of heads up, but not this time. Resetera, on the other hand, was on it, and let everyone know as soon as the game was released.

My lesson out of this is that I should always wait for Era impressions.

Sordid Plebeian · Feb 21, 2020

I can totally understand why they wanted the holiday 2019 sales window

KORNdog · Feb 21, 2020

While obvious it's still a bit of a dick head statement. "We could have made the game work properly...but we decided it was best to just get as much money from people as possible!"

The only game in recent memory that has left as bad a taste in my mouth for similar reasons is just cause 3, a game where they favoured the sale of DLC over fixing the core game. It's a game that on its own has pushed me away from ever buying an avalanche product ever again. The same is now true for respawn.

Hey Please · Feb 21, 2020

ForgedByGeeks said:
Literally every software project I have worked on over the last 2 decades have had these kinds if discussions. All software and game projects have hundreds if not thousands of known bugs when they ship. Almost all have many that are high severity that sometimes the potential fix is just too risky to consider late in release and the question then becomes whether or not it is worth delaying the product for the fix.

He'll, I just had similar conversations last week about a couple of bugs.

Fair enough. However, I only had games in mind with blatant issues which include notable bugs that many users have faced and some have cataloged on social media outlets.

And proceeding along the logic of your post that a potential patch might inadvertently cause more issues, is quite plausible. Only Respawn know the ins and outs of their game code on that UE4 and we can only speculate.

Nonetheless, I do not recall EA charging people any less for the game despite the inaugural performance issues. In a world where expectation of patches can be compared to taking a leak, i.e. eventually there'll be a time for it, their inability to sell a comparatively polished game amidst so many other AAA productions at launch or even months after, does not inspire confidence, mitigating factors notwithstanding.

That said, as I had mentioned in my review, the roots of game's issues go far deeper and are beyond the purview of this topic.

boxingiscool said:
Can you imagine if every game decided to not put out a game because of a bug. We would get exactly zero games

Except, we do get games that are polished enough to not attract unwarranted criticism because it is a matter of magnitude. So, what's the point of this misrepresentation?

thatmustbyogurt · Feb 21, 2020

Aurc said:
So it's as people predicted: they rushed it out the door for Star Wars season so that they could have The Rise of Skywalker, The Mandalorian, and Fallen Order out all at once.

Pretty disgraceful.

yeah soooo disgraceful. omg so much shame boooo hooooo. ooohhh. boo hoo

Dennis8K · Feb 21, 2020

"Yeah, it was a conversation that we had and we decided that we wanted the game out there, we wanted to get it, you know, being out for the holiday," says Zampella

Ahahaha refreshingly honest.

Aurc · Feb 21, 2020

thatmustbyogurt said:
yeah soooo disgraceful. omg so much shame boooo hooooo. ooohhh. boo hoo

Nida · Feb 21, 2020

Have they smoothed it over with patches?

Ra · Feb 21, 2020

Nida said:
Have they smoothed it over with patches?

I honestly need to know this.

zoodoo · Feb 21, 2020

DriftingSpirit said:
Which will make my wait to play it on PS5 all the better.

That wont fix the assets not loading, game freeze, ennemies not being animated properly. Maybe the stutters will be reduced if you are lucky.

Blackleg-sanji1 · Feb 21, 2020

zoodoo said:
That wont fix the assets not loading, game freeze, ennemies not being animated properly. Maybe the stutters will be reduced if you are lucky.

Hopefully by than the enemies on dathomir don't randomly all spawn around you out of nowhere, the game doesn't freeze for a good 5 seconds when you grab a ledge and the fps doesn't drop to shit when the smallest of set pieces happen

redflamingolingo · Feb 21, 2020

Replaying God of War and I am simply in awe of what SSM achieved. I think the game was playable from start to finish over a year before it released.

It is polished like a fucking diamond.

Basileus777 · Feb 21, 2020

They wold have shipped a better game and sold less. They made the right choice. Reviewers and the market rarely punish games for shipping unfinished.

DriftingSpirit · Feb 21, 2020

zoodoo said:
That wont fix the assets not loading, game freeze, ennemies not being animated properly. Maybe the stutters will be reduced if you are lucky.

It will probably be patched and the SSD on PS5 will certainly help with loading. Performance gains as well.

Either way, it will unquestionably be in better shape than it is now.

noyram23 · Feb 22, 2020

They should've, it's the buggiest game I played last year and even for quite a while. Nothing huge game breaking but definitely constant small glitches, bugs and general jankiness.

ElBoxy · Feb 22, 2020

I'm surprised by how buggy the game is. Titanfall 2 and Apex Legends are such smooth experiences.

Deleted member 36578 · Feb 22, 2020

I didn't buy the game because it was so buggy. At this point I'm just waiting for a super sale.

Deleted member 2379 · Feb 22, 2020

Aurc said:
So it's as people predicted: they rushed it out the door for Star Wars season so that they could have The Rise of Skywalker, The Mandalorian, and Fallen Order out all at once.

Pretty disgraceful.

I have a feeling that at some point the entire reason that the video game industry exists is because "gamers" have never actually been running the show on these decisions.

Much of the time pushing a game out that is 90 percent of what you want to hit a hot time frame so that you sell a bundle and can make another game is more important than having a perfect game.

I wonder how strong this industry would Be today if "licensed" games didn't exist through the 90s and other properties that release annually minimal changes and all.

sometimes you have to realize that there is a good enough release point where the inflection of sales matters more than the forum warriors.

I would rather get to make a sequel than have what I deem a perfect game lead to unemployment.

this industry survives on mediocre annual games catering to the masses. The sooner you realize these existing is the only reason any other games exist the easier your life will be.

Aurc · Feb 22, 2020

Gamechanger87 said:
I have a feeling that at some point the entire reason that the video game industry exists is because "gamers" have never actually been running the show on these decisions.

Much of the time pushing a game out that is 90 percent of what you want to hit a hot time frame so that you sell a bundle and can make another game is more important than having a perfect game.

I wonder how strong this industry would Be today if "licensed" games didn't exist through the 90s and other properties that release annually minimal changes and all.

sometimes you have to realize that there is a good enough release point where the inflection of sales matters more than the forum warriors.

I would rather get to make a sequel than have what I deem a perfect game lead to unemployment.

this industry survives on mediocre annual games catering to the masses. The sooner you realize these existing is the only reason any other games exist the easier your life will be.

That's a lot of words to defend a game shipping in a much more broken state than your average AAA game... and this one has Disney, EA, and Respawn (an otherwise talented developer) all involved, so there should be no excuses made. They didn't even really do much to fix it post-launch. Trust me: I want everyone to keep their jobs, and it seems like people are getting hung up on the word "disgraceful" here (fair enough, a different word would've gotten the point across better), but still: you don't need to defend this. Something went wrong in their project planning, and the game didn't reach the level it needed to be at before launch. Don't blame the dreaded "gamers" (apparently a word with negative connotation these days??) for noticing.

gaugebozo · Feb 22, 2020

Honestly, I can't believe the studio that made Titanfall made a game where you run like this one. They should have given it more time.

Khanimus · Feb 22, 2020

They struck right when people were getting into a big Star Wars mode and the game sold real well. I don't think they're fretting too much.

Trike · Feb 22, 2020

Wish Disney delayed Rise of Skywalker for similar reasons

Decarb · Feb 22, 2020

I had experienced few bug at launch and honestly it felt like a 6 month old preview build that you play at conventions. It felt like the game would fall apart any time now. The hitboxes are also atrocious at times.

OléGunner · Feb 22, 2020

Playing through it right now on PS4 Pro and for sure the game, even updated, still has a ton of bugs, visual glitches, frame rate hiccups and freezes.

But I'll be damned if this isn't my favourite Star Wars game I've ever played, Respawn did a fantastic job creating this.

The combat system and story have me hooked especially.

Peter Ian Staker · Feb 22, 2020

Nida said:
Have they smoothed it over with patches?

K.Jack said:
I honestly need to know this.

I was playing it on PC a couple of weeks ago and while I didn't encounter anything game breaking there are still a lot of jank. Also the stuttering when going from area to area was horrid.

VaporSnake said:
Game was pretty unplayable on the hardest difficulty because of these kinds of bugs (at least at launch, haven't revisited)

Game felt pretty bad to play on the hardest difficulty for me but I am not exactly sure if it was because of bugs or because the game was balanced for a difficulty set a notch or two down from the hardest.
For example I wasn't exactly confident parrying would work well on Grandmaster difficulty but also some enemy attacks that can't be parried are pretty cheap.
I am not that good at From games but almost every time I die in their games I can see why it was my fault and undortunately that wasn't always the case in Fallen Order.

zoodoo · Feb 22, 2020

DriftingSpirit said:
It will probably be patched and the SSD on PS5 will certainly help with loading. Performance gains as well.

Either way, it will unquestionably be in better shape than it is now.

Assets not loading is not related to hdd speed. It's a bug in the game. I am not talking about texture popping. Also we are in february and those issues are still there. Don't expect a patch when ps5 comes out. They are probably knee deep into the sequel so I doubt anything will change for that game. It's an unpolished game and fixing it now is probably not worth the time and effort for them and is not a wise business decision. Expecting fixes now is wishful thinking.

I have no doubt Respawn wont make the same mistake with the sequel unless EA mess up again.

Lexad · Feb 22, 2020

I am sure I had some issues but it mustn't have been big for me because I don't remember anything at all being off with the game.

dsk1210 · Feb 22, 2020

I have not fully played through the PC version yet but luckily I have not encountered any bugs at all.

Strings · Feb 22, 2020

XandBosch said:
And they should have.

Take notes from Nintendo (and others), folks. Look at the Animal Crossing hype - everyone has completely forgotten that it was delayed because it looks so damn good.

That could've been this game. This game played like an alpha demo in MANY places throughout my playthrough. Did I still enjoy it? Hell yeah. Could I have enjoyed it WAY more? Most definitely.

Nintendo is in a uniquely great position when it comes to this sort of thing because they're the publisher, platform holder, major tentpole releaser all in one, etc. Not to say their stance isn't super admirable anyway (and that they haven't pushed a couple less bulletproof franchises out to hit a date (Xenoblade 2 could have definitely used more polish)) or that Star Wars couldn't have survived a delay (would have been bad for optics because the game was already getting a bit of shit pre-release / wouldn't have landed at the same time as all the other media), but yeah.

GiantEnemyCrab · Feb 22, 2020

Snake__ said:
I think they made the right decision

the game was buggy but I thought it was fine

They definitely can't get away with the same amount of bugs for a sequel though

They learned their lesson.

Deleted member 42055 · Feb 22, 2020

These are some of my favorite threads to read, with every " verified" account falling over themselves to tell everyone here and elsewhere that they're wrong or exaggerating

Bradford · Feb 22, 2020

Part of the reason I am dubious about split/mid generation upgrade models is because it puts devs in a tough spot when deciding what to target. Do they lower the fidelity of the game to cater to the base models, which are now buckling under the weight of advancing tech, or do they try to make the experience boundary pushing on even the highest spec models? Either way people will be pissed. Especially if it doesn't meet an arbitrary visual fidelity bar. Maybe in the future devs should just release only for the upgraded models if there are issues running it to target?

I personally encountered no bugs outside of the occasional funny animation here and there, but nothing that would cause me concern. I was also playing maxed out on PC at 144hz, and the game was incredibly rock solid for me. Even throwing it on the CRT didn't give me any bugs or artifacts, and it natively supported 5:4. I feel like games like this and Control really need to be judged on how they perform at the high end rather than the low, especially this late in the generation. It sucks that the base model variants aren't very good but, aging hardware and all that.

I completed it on Jedi Grand Master first ploythrough and had a total blast, and was shocked townee how many people who thought it was buggy trash.

Agar25 said:
These are some of my favorite threads to read, with every " verified" account falling over themselves to tell everyone here and elsewhere that they're wrong or exaggerating

Seriously lol.

FallenGrace · Feb 22, 2020

I haven't played it but that quote really seems like semantics for "we rushed it out knowing it had issues"?

Chamon · Feb 22, 2020

They can still patch it...

ps3ud0 · Feb 22, 2020

Cool I'll won't be buying it then...

If you have no respect to provide the consumer something that isn't knowingly buggy then I have zero reasons to purchase this.

A publisher like EA should not be rewarded for hitting a release date as they can easily afford the delay. Yet another SW game they've known they can get away with due to the license...

ps3ud0 8)

Nihilistic Monk · Feb 22, 2020

Chamon said:
They can still patch it...

Yeh... this far past release, will they though?
I'm playing through on PS4 Pro and I've had it do all the below in a 3 hour play session

Stall loading assets
Boss characters t-pose animation scenes
Game freezing repeating the same sound for a good 20+ seconds
Game totally lock up twice forcing me to quit and restart.

Phil me in · Feb 22, 2020

Is it even fixed yet? I'm waiting for it to be fixed

RowdyReverb · Feb 22, 2020

Phil me in said:
Is it even fixed yet? I'm waiting for it to be fixed

Nida said:
Have they smoothed it over with patches?

K.Jack said:
I honestly need to know this.

I'm near the end on Xbox One X. I honestly haven't encountered a single bug that I can recall. I didn't even know the game was regarded as being buggy until this thread! The only thing I've noticed is sometimes enemies survive falls to unreachable areas and keep talking, but that's more of an issue with polish than bugginess

cowbanana · Feb 22, 2020

But they didn't, so now it's just that janky-arse, bug-fest Jedi game that was almost good. Not the quality I expected from Respawn, but certainly the lack of quality I expect from EA. Fuck shoveling unfinished garbage out to paying customers because "It's a game that really fits that timeframe." The fucking disdain you show paying customers is utterly appalling, you corporate shitheels.

Kerotan · Feb 22, 2020

Blacki138 said:
Well. At least he is honest.

But fuck that anyway. Game was a bugfest.

That's why I'm waiting for it to hit EA access then I'll sub for a month and play it on the ps5.

FlintSpace · Feb 22, 2020

Depending upon how much they earned they must be very pleased with their decision to not delay it.

I mean the game sold really really well and review score wasn't pegged down because of messed up animations. By their finances, not delaying was the right choice.

Sucks for us though and the precedent they created for themselves like Watch Dogs 2.

SolidChamp · Feb 22, 2020

giallo said:
That's all well and good, but could you at least continue to patch it so it doesn't run like hot garbage on base consoles ie, the game's largest player base?

I appreciate his honesty, but he's just stating the obvious. The game is no technical marvel, and should not run as poorly as it does on the base PS4. It's a low benchmark for a AAA game, just sitting above Just Cause 3 as the buggiest AAA game of this generation. I waited for over two months for them to fix it, and it still ran just as badly. I finally just threw my hands up in the air, and finished it, but it wasn't an enjoyable experience; input lag, tanking frame rates, pop in, graphical glitches, environmental snags, button commands not registering. It goes on and on. I ended up lowering the difficulty, not because the game was challenging, but because of the myriad of problems the game had.

If this is how the company responds to the game months later, not with an apology, but with a "Yeah, we know it ran like shit, but money", I'll definitely be wary of the sequel in the future.

This is the shit that gets me. Like, fuuuuck Respawn for stating this without having shown a modicum of dedication to updating the game and fixing the shit.

Take Bend Studio, for example. They didn't have some crazy high-profile release with a big name attached to it, but they showed so much dedication to their new IP and supported that game from launch till present. (They also released a much better game in general)

Respawn could stand to learn a thing or two from developers like Bend.

cognizant · Feb 22, 2020

Had such a bad time on PS4 Pro a few months ago, truly a buggy piece of shit. I'm never paying for their games ever again.

Respawn Considered Delaying Jedi: Fallen Order to Smooth out Its Rampant Bugs

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