The Hottest Video Games Have Better Graphics and More Bugs

[Manmademan]

Demon's Souls also has bugs.

But it's probably worth mentioning that these are huge games that HAD to meet Holiday deadlines to justify their budget.

 

[KORNdog]

My random, potentially irrellivant thoughts on this...

The media need to incorporate performance metrics in their reviews and stop having a single review that covers all versions. It's not only to prevent a game being wrongly praised despite running like shit on 50% of the hardware it's on. But it would also stop games being wrongly criticised when the reviewer happened to play a version that had the worse performance.

It might make devs like CDPR pause for a second if they know their game is going to be reviewed on a system by system basis.

If that's too much work for reviewers (which it likely is) Then the overall, singular score they give a game needs to reflect the product as a whole, across all platforms. A game running fine on PC but running like shit on all base consoles should not be recieving 9's and 10's, even if that one platform is a 9 or 10 experience. Devs would think twice about releasing turds like cyberpunk on base systems if they knew it would dent their metacritic.

It's mostly about getting the information out to people that the game they are buying for their machine is potentially going to be shit. Because right now I think most people see a trailer running on the lead platform and looking great, and then see a review score and just assume it's all roses for everything...I mean...why wouldn't you? It has been released on your platform of choice. You would assume it was in a playable state.

The more people know this information the less likely they are to buy buggy messes day 1 and instead wait for fixes....which results in games reducing in price and developers making less money....which they won't want and might actually take the time to optimise all versions of their games for each platform. Or they'll just find other ways to pull the wool over people's eyes...who knows.

 

[Transistor]

It might make devs like CDPR pause for a second if they know their game is going to be reviewed on a system by system basis.

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No it wouldn't, because then reviewers just wouldn't get review copies. In fact, that already happened in some cases. Instead they'll just use "influencers" to prop up and market the game and nothing would change.

 

[werezompire]

I feel like if all the major review sites panned the AAA game that were incredibly buggy at launch instead of giving them 90%-100% scores, publishers would be much less likely to release broken games.

 

[Nuclear Muffin]

Stop buying AAA shite, and you'll stop getting AAA shite.

If you keep buying this crap, you will get what you deserve.

 

[nilbog]

As long as the bugs aren't game-breaking, I'm okay with them.

I'm impatient and want to play these games now.

 

[jschreier]

I feel like if all the major review sites panned the AAA game that were incredibly buggy at launch instead of giving them 90%-100% scores, publishers would be much less likely to release broken games.

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Too bad reviewers are terrified to give low scores to highly anticipated titles because of gamers (and the YouTubers who whip them up into a frenzy). Look at what happened to the GameSpot reviewer who gave the game a 7/10.

 

[IMCaprica]

Pro tip: just stop playing games at launch. In six months it'll be half the price, content-complete, and bug free.

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I bought Master Chief Collection a year and several "we fixed, it's good now" updates later and Halo 4 had a game breaking bug that halted my progression in the exact same spot no matter how far back I restarted (including just restarting the whole game over).

Sometimes not even that is enough.

 

[garion333]

Games have bugs for different reasons.

2020 sucks, cut em some slack.

Also, Fenyx Rising is bug free. Some large games can be bug free!

 

[Gunny T Highway]

Games, in particular AAA games, have become more and more complex that bugs are bound to happen even with plenty of playtesting.

 

[-Le Monde-]

Even worse is the fact that reviewers look past all of it, and reward them just for getting it out. Really crappy for unsuspecting consumers.

 

[kiguel182]

The games should be smaller.

 

[Deleted member 40853]

I am not a game dev, but I do work on lots of large complex software, and something that is frequently said is how it is not possible to create software without bugs and there will always be production issues no matter what you did. AAA games have now gotten so large, complex, and expensive that's it not possible to meet consumer expectation on both how the game should perform and how soon they should be able to play it after hearing about it. I can't fault these studios for prioritizing getting the game out the door when most consumers don't care about some bugs, and the people who complain the loudest are probably enthusiasts who are gonna play your game anyway. Do we really think that if they delayed Cyberpunk for another year - a year where they just worked on tech debt and didn't produce any new content for the game - would actually result in more sales? Because it could definitely result in less if the game gets delayed forever or something new and shiny steals your thunder.

I'm not saying the complaints aren't valid but people need to have some perspective on what they are asking for. A lot of this is attributed to lazy devs and greedy corporations when really developing large software is just hard. Jason and some of the posters in this thread keep repeating that they should delay these games until the bugs are fixed, but some of the bugs are never going to be fixed no matter how much time you spend and there will always be more. Are you just going to keep rewriting everything until it's perfect or ship what you have that is 95% fine and keep it moving? It's not just a "spend more time on it" problem.

Like you could double the development time for every game but there's still going to be bugs and development costs will explode. Only now the consumer is going to be apoplectic if there is as much as a stutter, and they are going to expect that the game you said took 7 years to make has 500 hours of content and is one of the best games ever. You don't get to explain to the consumer that half the dev time was spent on tech debt, and they don't care anyway.

 

[Tiago Rodrigues]

As much as I'm loving Control lately, I can't help but question why:

The map doesn't load half of the time
The audio log dialogue doesn't play half of the time
The cutscene dialogue is muted half of the time

And this is with an ultimate edition or whatever you want to call the post-launch patched edition.

Click to shrink...

Understanding that map was harder than any boss battle in that game. Seriously.

 

[Lobster Roll]

Understanding that map was harder than any boss battle in that game. Seriously.

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Haha I was gonna say. Even when the map loads I'm constantly stuck trying to figure out Point A to Point B.

 

[Tiago Rodrigues]

Haha I was gonna say. Even when the map loads I'm constantly stuck trying to figure out Point A to Point B.

Click to shrink...

"i'm right where i should be!! there's nothing here!" "wait why is there a wall here? nothing about a wall on that damn map. is it a different floor? why is the game breaking after pausing from the menu?"

Still loved the game though, lmao.

 

[Jiraiya]

The games should be smaller.

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Small games have bugs too. Programming stuff is hard.

 

[FullNelson]

Too bad reviewers are terrified to give low scores to highly anticipated titles because of gamers (and the YouTubers who whip them up into a frenzy). Look at what happened to the GameSpot reviewer who gave the game a 7/10.

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It is certainly ironic that the same people that complain about "journalist are all paid shills" are now being weaponized to achieve the exact samer goal: not letting journalist be sincere about games.

 

[wingkongex]

 

[Kholdy]

Part of the problem is that people keeps buying anyway.

The last couple of years I drew lots of lines for my purchases. It saved me money and time.
Developers that are in this "whitelist" have a greater chance of being rewarded with a full price purchase from me.

 

[ChristianM]

Agreed, I think putting Valhalla in the same boat as Cyberpunk is a little disingenuous.

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When it comes to the amount of bugs maybe. But Valhalla has several game breaking bugs that requires you start over from the beginning if you have no prior save that maybe can help you. Not sure if Cyberpunk has these as well though.

 

[Marcus Aurelius]

I've been lucky enough to find a niche with Cyberpunk where I am experiencing very little bugs and no crashes, but I completely understand people's frustrations. When it is functioning properly, it is a great game.

 

[Tbm24]

Calling these games early access because of bugs is real silly to me. What's the expectation? There will always be bugs, throughout the lifetime of a game nowadays, hopefully just smaller ones here and there. At what point do you stop calling it early access?

 

[Angst]

Tbh I very rarely have issues with any games at launch. Must be the games I'm playing. I don't play Bethesda games, Assasins Creed, or cyberpunk though.

 

[Lobster Roll]

"i'm right where i should be!! there's nothing here!" "wait why is there a wall here? nothing about a wall on that damn map. is it a different floor? why is the game breaking after pausing from the menu?"

Still loved the game though, lmao.

Click to shrink...

Yep, that's my prevailing attitude through the entire game. There are bugs and annoyances everywhere, but I'm having too much fun to care.

 

[Annihilator]

Pro tip: just stop playing games at launch. In six months it'll be half the price, content-complete, and bug free.

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100% agree there is no reason 8 million people need to play cyberpunk day one. Sure it needs to sell some copies but that is insane. All games have numerous patches now after being released just wait a month or two to play it and I'm sure the biggest bugs/glitches will have been ironed out. If you blaze through the game on day 1 then you might not get a chance to play through the game when it is actually done and mostly bug free and you will have enjoyed it much more in that state then the games day one state. This isn't the case with every game coming out of course but cyberpunk is on a million different systems and ways to play it plus the numerous reports of issues at cdpr in general you know there is going to be a ton of jank. No developer these days is releasing a game and it has 0 patches to it. Like name a big AAA game that has come out and had literally no fixes or patches done to it at all? You can't name that game it doesn't exist anymore.

 

[carlsojo]

I feel like if all the major review sites panned the AAA game that were incredibly buggy at launch instead of giving them 90%-100% scores, publishers would be much less likely to release broken games.

Click to shrink...

So like Anthem