Well movie watchers tend not to pretend to know anything about proper lighting, framing and cameras nor do they blame the camera as the root of all things they don't like about a film.
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The Controversy Over Bethesda's 'Game Engine' Is Misguided [Kotaku]
- Thread starter ToddBonzalez
- Start date
The key difference being that the idTech3 engine had a fantastic base to start with, and each studio has taken great care to ensure it remains viable, performs well, and is stable. Those games aren't marred by bugs.
Whatever Gamebryo was built on, however, was a pile of dog shit, and Bethesda has taken zero care, and has just mashed in new technology with it, introducing more and more bugs as time has gone by. They absolutely deserve to get shit on at each and every opportunity (at a management level, clearly not everyone has a say in the matter). It doesn't matter how you define "engine"...what matters is the studio has CHOSEN to maintain support for clearly broken (and degrading) software platforms as their base, and it has become more and more problematic as time has passed. With every new game, there is a mountain of new bugs because the foundation was built on dog shit.
When Bethesda decides to create a new base or use a 3rd party engine like Unreal, I'll come back and play one of their games. Until then, I have zero interest in supporting their bullshit, semantics be damned.
What exactly has Bethesda done since TES Oblivion to convince you that they'll put out a product that won't have the same problems and bugs? The games haven't been getting better with each release...the bugs have been getting worse (though I guess they did get better for PlayStation owners, considering you can actually play the games on PS4 now without game crippling bugs).
Good posts here. Hate articles written on the back of semantics like they are some revolutionary idea.
Another one.
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Depends. I think acting gets criticised plenty when bad direction or bad material is just as likely to be the source of problems with performance.
People can be right about identifying flaws, even if they're wrong about why those flaws exist. This doesn't diminish the validity of complaints about the flaws.
if you think that their next few games won't have mostly the same issues as fallout then take that position. otherwise complaining about people misusing the word "engine" is literally semantics, you know what they're talking about and that they are probably right.
That's not what this article is trying to do, however. Schreier literally says in the article that complaints about bugs and glitches in the game are legitimate.
When I complain about the game engine in Bethesda's case, I'm not complaining about graphical fidelity or sound design or even its netplay capability. I'm referring to parts that are much more core to the actual base logic of the game; things like collision, load times, model animation, general stability. When the same sorts of problems with these and similar systems appear regularly in Bethesda games and we're told they're the same or more refined versions of the same "engine", I'm forced to assume one of three conclusions.
1. The developers are incompetent and don't know how to fix these bugs.
2. The management is incompetent and refuses to put resources into fixing these bugs.
3. These repetitive bugs and issues are caused by portions of the engine that are so core, so foundational, to the entire engine's design that to fix them in a way that doesn't break everything else would require massive rewriting close to the scale of building a totally new engine anyway, and no game using this "engine" so far has sufficiently justified spending that many resources.
Obviously, 1 & 2 are silly to assume, so 3 ends up being the only sane possibility. The only problem that then raises is, if their current engine stack has so many problems, why continue dumping resources into that instead of switching your development processes to ID Tech 7 and maintain as few engines as possible across your organization?
1. The developers are incompetent and don't know how to fix these bugs.
2. The management is incompetent and refuses to put resources into fixing these bugs.
3. These repetitive bugs and issues are caused by portions of the engine that are so core, so foundational, to the entire engine's design that to fix them in a way that doesn't break everything else would require massive rewriting close to the scale of building a totally new engine anyway, and no game using this "engine" so far has sufficiently justified spending that many resources.
Obviously, 1 & 2 are silly to assume, so 3 ends up being the only sane possibility. The only problem that then raises is, if their current engine stack has so many problems, why continue dumping resources into that instead of switching your development processes to ID Tech 7 and maintain as few engines as possible across your organization?
Youre forgetting 4.) Both the Developers and the Management are competent and make a conscious decision to keep moving forward despite all these problems existing and repeating themselves across every title theyve ever made.
That is the case, in my opinion, and things arent going to change until one of their flagship titles crashes and burns.
Yes indeed but I'm not the one making declarations and comments about things they fundamentally don't understand.
You can my total description of game developmemt in this conversation so far right here
Yep that's all.
What do I fundamentally not understand. You have not drawn any contrast to anything I have said other than one liners without any substance to the contrary.
Semantics the thread.
Consumes will use the terms they here by developers/studios/publishers, whether they're using the accurate term to describe an issue only comes second to the issue being raised.
At the same time it's good to try to explain what industry terms actually refer to so that people have a better understanding of what they're actually talking about. I just feel that framing that discussion around a particular game, let alone one from Bethesda, to be counterproductive.
Consumes will use the terms they here by developers/studios/publishers, whether they're using the accurate term to describe an issue only comes second to the issue being raised.
At the same time it's good to try to explain what industry terms actually refer to so that people have a better understanding of what they're actually talking about. I just feel that framing that discussion around a particular game, let alone one from Bethesda, to be counterproductive.
This just reinforces his point that an engine isn't a monolith. Destiny is a case where the technology generally worked very well for the end user but had problems with the authoring tools.
There's been so much hyperbole in FO76 criticism. The whole Bethesda has a bad art style thread was ridiculous when the large majority of posters were mixing up what art style and graphics tech are. So many people jumped to criticize 76 despite not knowing what they're talking about or even having played the game as the netcode thread demonstrated. Also somehow Skyrim has retroactively become a bad game because Fallout 76 is using a dated engine. The thing is there are plenty of reasons to criticize the game (performance, mission design, no NPCs) yet people are misinformed, exaggerating or making things up.
I don't think it's as misguided or harmful as Schreier suggests. When people refer to the game engine, they refer to the toolset used to build the game, features like the renderer, the lighting engine, and systems that handle he games physics.
From an outside perspective there's never going to be a single, key issue that we can identify as the cause of the problem. If it's the renderer that's causing slow load times, as opposed to the lighting system, then an outsider has no real way of determining that. At least from my perspective, it's fine to refer to the 'engine' in a broad sense.
Additionally, in Fallout's case, Bethesda's games have suffered the same problems for years. It's not just a single, isolated game that suffers the same problems, therefore its logical that people point fingers at the tools used to build each game, rather than qualities of the individual title.
Of course, to say Fallout 4 and Fallout 76 use the same engine, isn't strictly true. However, it's hard to argue against the idea that the engine is the cause of its problems, rather than the explicit features of the game design, or how it's coded. Blaming the engine is actually a pleasant alternative to blaming the explicit implementation. Saying it's an engine problem is more pleasant than pointing fingers at the gameplay programmers, for instance.
From an outside perspective there's never going to be a single, key issue that we can identify as the cause of the problem. If it's the renderer that's causing slow load times, as opposed to the lighting system, then an outsider has no real way of determining that. At least from my perspective, it's fine to refer to the 'engine' in a broad sense.
Additionally, in Fallout's case, Bethesda's games have suffered the same problems for years. It's not just a single, isolated game that suffers the same problems, therefore its logical that people point fingers at the tools used to build each game, rather than qualities of the individual title.
Of course, to say Fallout 4 and Fallout 76 use the same engine, isn't strictly true. However, it's hard to argue against the idea that the engine is the cause of its problems, rather than the explicit features of the game design, or how it's coded. Blaming the engine is actually a pleasant alternative to blaming the explicit implementation. Saying it's an engine problem is more pleasant than pointing fingers at the gameplay programmers, for instance.
People who are claiming this is just semantics are wrong. If Bethesda announced tomorrow that they were unveiling a new engine, it would appease people who truly believed "the engine" is the problem. But what if the problem is structural?
Because what we do know, is that the games sell like hot cakes anyway. So who can blame them for not shifting their priorities. Clearly what they're doing right now is working. Instead of shaking your fist at an imaginary engine in the sky, maybe make it clear that you won't buy Bethesda games until they add more polish and remove more bugs.
Because what we do know, is that the games sell like hot cakes anyway. So who can blame them for not shifting their priorities. Clearly what they're doing right now is working. Instead of shaking your fist at an imaginary engine in the sky, maybe make it clear that you won't buy Bethesda games until they add more polish and remove more bugs.
Yup all these verafied accounts saying it kinda is semantics and arguing over it is missing the point. But I'm sure you know better than those people.
it wouldn't if it still had all the same issues as before.
people complain about the problems these games have, if they use the engine as a technically incorrect shorthand that doesn't actually change anything.
developers are supposed to take things like this and work out where they're coming from whether the language used is strictly correct or not. if someone who misses a tutorial section and complains that a game is too hard, sometimes the solution is to guide players toward understanding the game's systems rather than just making it easier.
That would mean taking their ten fingers writing a letter putting in the effort and therefore behaving like an adult consumer rather than an unruly kid thorwing a fit ...
And they don't know how to do that , because nobody told them how ...
Words have meanings.
It's been a pet peeve of mine for years that so many people use "engine" as a catch-all term for every tool in the development chain of a game.
It's been a pet peeve of mine for years that so many people use "engine" as a catch-all term for every tool in the development chain of a game.
It would at least show some sort of willingness in the company to change up the games they are making, which I would think a lot of their fans would appreciate. At least for me personally it isn't even about how their games look or how buggy they are, but about them being seemingly so incredibly content with the mediocre games they've put out in the last years. Their games need to fundamentally change if I'm going to be interested in them and them seeing no problem with their engine doesn't fill me with confidence in that they'll actually change anything.
I know. I wish game companies would stop doing this causing customers to imitate the language. Bethesda itself is a prime example of doing this.
This is fully a "you played yourself" thing.
I was trying to write a post yesterday referring to this, but couldn't quite word it right. You nailed it. I don't think that referring to the "engine" at all is a bad or misguided thing. If anything, in this case, you could just point fingers at a toolset, really just a matter of misusing a word but ultimately pointing fingers at the same thing. A lot of issues that happen in Bethesda titles over the last 10 years have cropped up in repeat titles despite toolset changes to accommodate better rendering pipelines, fancier graphics, better aiming... the list goes on. But what hasn't changed is the basis of Gamebryo. From me, an outsider who plays these games for 100s of hours over the course of years who experiences the same problems over the course of multiple titles is left with pretty much no other choice but to point fingers at the thing running the game, and I don't mean the box I'm playing it on.
I'm not so sure about this. I buy a phone that has some faults with it, I then buy another newer phone a year later from the same manufacturer using the same factory with similar faults. I do that another three times, same issues despite the phones being different. They announce two more phones that will be made in the same factory. Okay, yeah, if they changed factories, they could mismanage it again and produce the same problems, but it being the same factory doesn't exactly fill me with confidence. Changing the factory might be the only way to give me some hope.
But anyway, the whole thing feels a bit like fool me once, shame on you, fool me five times, shame on me.
But anyway, the whole thing feels a bit like fool me once, shame on you, fool me five times, shame on me.
and it bothers me that people use "meme" to describe any image with text on it instead of its original definition but what can you do, words evolve
Not really. It's just... if you wanted to play Big Time Architect you'd definitely start babbling on about design patterns. In our context here, I consider it a mark of inexperience.
I myself had a period of "wasted youth" where I discovered and read the Gang of Four as a young man and became enthusiastic about design patterns and OOP. I found my way out of that quagmire eventually.
(I'd almost say that Visitor, to use the pattern that was name dropped for no particular good reason, is almost an anti-pattern if you're trying to write performant code. It heavily implies a hierarchy of assorted derived types that you'll be walking (likely all over the heap because you're using patterns so you don't understand CPU caches :-p) doing at least two levels of indirection. It's just.. no.)
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Because it is semantics. And how is it misguided to talk and speculate about the tech issues that have been persistent in Bethesda's top games for years, using colloquial terms people are familiar with. It feels like an attempt to police discussion for not particularly very good reasons. It's a topic worthy of discussion.
"Don't say Bethesda's game engine is bad...!"
"Ok. Bethesda's use of technologies; their toolchain, 3rd party and otherwise, is flawed."
"There, that's better. Please proceed"
That's what this thread is essentially about, and it's silly. It's detracting from the actual issue.
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I mean, he's not wrong, but at the same time what people are complaining about is entirely justified. It's not necessarily due to the game engine, but when you compare Bethesda open world games to other open world games it's...jarring. And while I understand the difference between the physics and memory issues in Bethesda games and he scope of their world and all of that, it doesn't mean the state of their games are acceptable.
Morrowind was fine because of the technology. Oblivion was fine because it was the start of the generation, although there were problems many of us had even then. But how ugly and janky the games are isn't acceptable in 2018.
But honestly, I'm still going to be excited for the next Bethesda open world game because there's nothing really like them on the market. Doesn't mean I will shy away from criticizing them.
Morrowind was fine because of the technology. Oblivion was fine because it was the start of the generation, although there were problems many of us had even then. But how ugly and janky the games are isn't acceptable in 2018.
But honestly, I'm still going to be excited for the next Bethesda open world game because there's nothing really like them on the market. Doesn't mean I will shy away from criticizing them.
Jason Schrier also has a verified account, but clearly you don't think that makes him automatically right.
But that doesn't make accuracy any less important. People can dismiss criticism that is aimed at the wrong place and can placate critics without actually fixing the underlying issues.
Right but in that case, the problem is their priorities, not "the engine." If there are enough people who don't care about the bugginess and lack of polish, and will buy the game regardless, why would they shift their priorities towards resolving those issues?
It tends to when those people start Geri g aggressively stupid solutions.
"Just change the engine lol"
Gamers tend to hate it when the fact that they're insanely ignorant about game development is pointed out. Like more than half this forum doesn't even know what a prefab is yet they think they can offer devs tips on what to do with their tech.
"Art direction and creative had nothing to do with it. The engine literally makes men buff."
if they're dismissing criticism about their game's jank they'd be doing the same even if people never used the word "engine"
and they tried placating engine criticism by marketing the "creation engine" as a whole new thing with skyrim, which obviously didn't work because they didn't fix anything people were actually mad about
all this language prescriptivism is a red herring
I might be missing some context here...But are you saying the Gang of Four is a bad thing? Because a lot of those concepts make up the tenets of good OOP. Along with Robert Martin's Clean Code.
Yes, the catch all term of 'Game Engine' as a way of summing up issues with a developers titles is indeed misguided...
However that doesn't change the fact that people have voiced the same complaints with said developers going from title to title:
- Telltale had their performance and and quality issues.
- Bethesda with their numerous bugs, clunky controls and first person combat.
- Bungie with the way they can't roll out patches and balance fixes in a quick manner.
- Rockstar with the way their characters controls and their aiming system still relying on lock on.
And the article does nothing to address these issues that have persisted from title to title when it comes to these developers.
However that doesn't change the fact that people have voiced the same complaints with said developers going from title to title:
- Telltale had their performance and and quality issues.
- Bethesda with their numerous bugs, clunky controls and first person combat.
- Bungie with the way they can't roll out patches and balance fixes in a quick manner.
- Rockstar with the way their characters controls and their aiming system still relying on lock on.
And the article does nothing to address these issues that have persisted from title to title when it comes to these developers.
I mean that's cool and all, but the PS3 version was even more buggy than a normal Bethesda game. The night it came out I had a game breaking bug an hour in, and was forced to start a new game because the auto save system put me in a place where it was impossible to avoid the game breaking bug and progress.
And months later a patch made it so touching water broke the game for everybody.
Respectfully, but some anecdotal evidence has a little credence and some looks like willful ignorance.
Plenty of casual gamers can play a Bethesda game and not realize how antiquated it is because they don't have the same reference points as us or don't care because they want to zone out and mindlessly mash away at draugr or radroaches, but that doesn't mean they don't also experience these same bugs. They may just not care enough to get on the Internet and complain.
It's an education piece on what a game engine is for those that are misinformed. And also a call out for content creators to stop misusing the term. Not in anyway cutting Bethesda slack for their buggy games.
He's just saying blaming the "re-use" of an engine for their issues is misguided. Assuming TES VI will have the same bugs as FO4 because of the "same" engine is misguided. The engine will most certainly be improved, just not in the areas that folks on this forum want. The market in general asks for better graphics, bigger worlds, and more interactivity so they give us that instead of improving the engine in the area of bugs and jank.
He's just saying blaming the "re-use" of an engine for their issues is misguided. Assuming TES VI will have the same bugs as FO4 because of the "same" engine is misguided. The engine will most certainly be improved, just not in the areas that folks on this forum want. The market in general asks for better graphics, bigger worlds, and more interactivity so they give us that instead of improving the engine in the area of bugs and jank.
Skyrim on PS3 is the game that made me finally say goodbye to Bethesda and their buggy games. That whole "framerate tanks because the save file gets too big" was too much. But hey I could fill my house with cheese so it was worth it!
This is not the thread for this, but let's say the area of what I consider "good OOP" is very very small.
It's not langaue prescriptivism. This is a debate about ideas, not words. When there are issues with several games produced by a company, do you blame the technology, and assume incompetence? Or do you blame the leadership, and assume misplaced priorities (at least from your perspective).
One is just another version of the lazy devs argument, dressed in pseudo-technical language. The other is actually a stronger critique, not just because it's more technically accurate, but because it holds the leadership of Bethesda accountable to their decisions.
I do think it's largely semantics, but it's being exploited by people to fan the flames. That's really what's at issue. It's about the exploitation of rage.
so do you actually think that if everyone criticized bethesda the "right" way they'd suddenly see the light and fix the issues people care about? that they're just confused and constantly upgrading their tools because people say their engine is bad, and they can't figure out why that hasn't satisfied anyone?
Good post.
Also, If devs and journalists dont like us using the term engine they should stop using it themselves. i can list a million articles where Naughty Dog, GG and other devs have talked about their 'engines' as a layman's terms. its condensending to talk down to gamers when they are using the terminology given to us by devs themselves.
https://kotaku.com/naughty-dog-to-retain-the-uncharted-engine-for-their-ps-510638202
No. I think that understanding what you don't understand about the game development process can shift how you relate to these sorts of engineered controversies. Why bother getting yourself worked up about every quote out of Todd Howard's mouth? It's a waste of your emotional energy. If Bethesda games aren't actually living up to your expectations of a AAA game, then don't buy it and tell your friends not to buy it. Don't act like theres one simple fix that they can make that will make their games good, and you know what it is, and why are they too stupid to make it?