• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Who releases the buggiest, and least-buggiest games on day one?

Ebris

Member
When was this about flawless records? Or a single yet loud dud? What about the 13 (or maybe 12, I don;t know about XI) FF games before 14, how buggy were those? Or the other non FF Square games? People aren't thinking "inside the box" they're actually responding to the questions which suggest a recurring phenomenon.
What makes FF14 so exceptional is that it was by the exact same team that has made FF11 into an excellent MMO, and yet it failed so miserably. One might let the bugs slide because of the new engine, but all the other problems that should not have happened due to prior experience make it into a very notable blotch on their record.

Not to say that in general, western games are less buggy, but that eastern games don't have a perfect record, either.

@ jman: Yeah, older PC devs were just...hnnngh @ testing. The remake of Pool of Radiance had a bug that deleted Windows files from your computer. There was some REALLY bad shit back in the day.
 
I was going to put Obsidian, then I thought, well, publishers probably have a significant part to play in QA and such, right? Publishers seems fairer.

I was really close to saying Obsidian also: but then I remembered Alpha Protocol was fine.

New Vegas was riddled with Bugs, Fallout was riddled with bugs, Alpha Protocol was solid.
 
Nintendo had to recall Super Paper Mario in Europe due to a bug, no matter how good their track record..when you have to recall a game, you're now bottom of the league.
 

Semblance

shhh Graham I'm still compiling this Radiant map
Troika is a good one. Oh man. Their games are worth it though.

Anyone who is saying Bethesda hasn't played an Obsidian game. New Vegas was hands down the buggiest game I've ever suffered through to completion. Skyrim in comparison seems like the most polished game in the universe.

New Vegas was significantly more stable for me than Skyrim, actually. Skyrim silently crashes on me at least once an hour.
 

Alexios

Cores, shaders and BIOS oh my!
What makes FF14 so exceptional is that it was by the exact same team that has made FF11 into an excellent MMO, and yet it failed so miserably. One might let the bugs slide because of the new engine, but all the other problems that should not have happened due to prior experience make it into a very notable blotch on their record.

Not to say that in general, western games are less buggy, but that eastern games don't have a perfect record, either.
When was this about flawless records? Or a single yet loud dud? Oh wait, I'm having a déjà vu moment here... GLITCH IN THE MATRIX! I bet Bethesda made that too btw.
 

Durante

Member
Buggiest?
Troika, Obsidian and Bethesda. Incidentally also some of my all-time favourite developers. I buy all their games at full price, since they're worth it.

Another interesting fact:
Bioware games were much better when they were buggier.

Edit:
Oh, and one of the eastern devs with the most bugs has to be Gust. Also incidentally probably my favourite eastern development studio at this point in time.
 
I vowed to skip all future Lionhead games after playing 12 hours into Fable 2 and encountering a bug that prevented story progression. Communication out of Lionhead was very poor and infrequent, but they did promise a patch, so I contented myself doing sidequests and buying up houses. Finally the patch comes out and I'm actually 20 hours in now. Having fun with this game and ready to continue.

Hey, wait a minute. The patch doesn't fix my broken game. It only prevents the bug from happening on a new game. !%#$!%!! I think at the time I expressed an interest in punch Molyneux square in the face.

It's the worst when you are excited about a game only to find the dev/publisher didn't care enough about your experience to thoroughly test before release or to respond rapidly to major problems after launch. You know what? I really liked Fable 2; especially its magic mechanics. Agh, dammit. I sold it but I almost want to double dip, and that is the exact opposite of the message I want to send to Lionhead.
 

Mxrz

Member
Obsidian, and it isn't even close. KotoR2, NWN2, AP, and NV. Like the games, but they were all horribly buggy to start. KotoR2 was hardly finished, NWN2 couldn't be finished until I used the console to spawn a boss, and so on.

Dunno about this gen, but Nintendo's Japanese releases used to be rather glitchy. They'd fix them up during localization apparently.
 

whitehawk

Banned
I'm tempted to say Epic for #1 because of Gears 2. But Gears 3 was pretty much bug free.

Nintendo is the least buggiest, since they don't have the option of updating and fixing bugs after release.
 

wiggleb0t

Banned
Not a bug but huge design flaw and terrible support for such a respected developer & supposedly a big title 'RAGE' ( think it bombed in sales though?)

To this day it does not support crossfire. Carmack is dead to me and his disappointment with the pc userbase reaction of a sloppy console port was hard to understand/swallow.

Still waiting to play it, and hopefully AMD drivers correct ID's shoddy work as it seems it was never tested on an ATI card to begin with.
 
In my personal experience:

1) Bohemia Interactive Studio. For you guys complaining about Obisidian/Bethesda bugs, my gosh, you just have no idea.

2) I'd be remiss to pick a developer like Nintendo; how many bugs can you really pack into hack n slash/platformer/kart racing games? Nah, I'll say that Relic produces top notch releases of fairly sophisticated games that feature very very few bugs.

3) I bought ARMA2 on Day 1, and in 2 years have been able to get through a total of 5 hours of gameplay: I'm done with BIS. Bethesda's games are notoriously buggy as well, but I'm usually able to workaround whatever comes up.
 

Khezu

Member
It would be unfair of me to say paradox since I don't really play there games, so out of stuff I play and enjoy, either obsidian, or trokia.

Least buggy would be like 80% of japanese games, especially nintendo, only glitch I ever had in one of there games was falling through the wold geometry in OoT, and apparently I am the only person this has EVER happened too, lucky me.

As for question 3, it depends, if there games are good enough, ya I'll keep buying them. There are exceptions though, like the fable series, which is buggy and shit, and boring as fuck.
 

Emitan

Member
1) Bethesda or Obsidian for sure. Due to the scale of Beth's games, and the dev hell almost every Obsidian game goes through, it's somewhat understandable.

2) Nintendo. The only real major glitch I can think of in a recent Nintendo developed games was the canon room glitch in Twilight Princess.

3) Never. I wait for impressions first.
 

Kinyou

Member
Question 1: In your experience, who releases the buggiest games?
Piranha Bytes, the guys who made Gothic 1-3 and Risen.

Jesus Christ, those guys really need to get their shit together.
 

jackdoe

Member
Obsidian, Bethesda, and Bioware come to mind mostly for the fact that they don't have "amusing bugs" but bugs of the "quest breaking, no earlier save SOL" variety. Hell, some of these bugs have never been fixed officially.

As echoed earlier, definitely Nintendo EAD titles.
 

Card Boy

Banned
Q1) Without a doubt Tripwire and Paradox, each individualy is worse than Bethesda as far as i'm concerned.
Q2) I can't decide. I would of said Square Enix but FF14 disqualifies them. Maybe Valve or Nintendo?
Q3) Yes, see Tripwire and Red Orchestra 2, Slant 6, Zipper for SOCOM and MAG. Banned forever when it comes to future purchases.
 

gabbo

Member
2. ... Valve have a pretty good track record.

You must not have played Half-life 1 multiplayer at launch. That was a mess.
It's harder to tell now because as soon as you've installed a Valve game with Steam you're almost always hit with a patch or update. Does that count in this instance?
 

Jarmel

Banned
Obsidian

Nintendo

Also applicable:
tumblr_lf5lp9nfRz1qz75dlo1_500.jpg
 

ghibli99

Member
1. Bethesda & Obsidian. I haven't read this thread, but I'm guessing they've come up a lot.
2. Nintendo. Always clean.
3. Can't think of any examples, to be honest.
 

jeremy1456

Junior Member
1. I kinda avoid Besthesda, but I remember the buggiest, glitchiest game I've ever purchased was KOTOR, so I have to say Bioware. Marvelous Entertainment also releases their games (Harvest Moon) with tons of glitches. I ran into a bunch of glitches in Valve's The Orange Box on 360.

2. I have never ran into a glitch in a Nintendo game.

3. WRPG seems to be a genre particularly prone to glitches, so I tend to avoid them.
 

Reuenthal

Banned
In my experience Divinity 2 and the company behind it Larian Studios are the buggiest. It does use the Gamebryo engine. Maybe I was more unlucky with that game and lucky with other ones such as Oblivion, Fallout 3. Though Fallout I only played a few weeks ago and not near release. Bethesda games also can be pretty buggy.
 

Dead Man

Member
Agree with Bethesda for worst. And probably Nintendo for best. And no, unless I know of a specific, frequent, or game breaking bug before hand, it won't put me off purchasing for PC. Might for consoles.
 

Foffy

Banned
I bought ARMA2 on Day 1, and in 2 years have been able to get through a total of 5 hours of gameplay: I'm done with BIS. Bethesda's games are notoriously buggy as well, but I'm usually able to workaround whatever comes up.

Yeesh, what the hell is up with your game? I've easily clocked in over 40 hours into that game with very little bugs. I know the game was buggy as fuck when it launched, but it's been absolutely playable for a long time now.
 

Angry Fork

Member
If Bathesda made a linear platformer it would probably have little to no bugs either.

Just saying it's kind of lame to call them out on that given the scope and freedom of the games they make.
 

Yagharek

Member
Question 1: In your experience, who releases the buggiest games?

Bethesda games. Had way too many hard crashes (360 Oblivion, PS3 Fallout 3) so I took both games back for a refund. Also the funniest one I had was in FO3 where none of the characters in one area had facial textures, just teeth. So every encounter was with a floating pair of gums etc. It looked ridiculous.

Question 2: In your experience, who releases the least buggiest games?

Nintendo, no question. Though equally, Konami, Valve, Capcom, Treasure, Hudson and Platinum Games. You can tell these companies do QA.

Question 3: Have bugs in previous products ever put you off purchasing a developers future products, even in established franchises?

Yep. I refuse to buy anything by Bethesda or Bioware. These two companies cannot make a game that runs semi-competently, and I find it offensive how bad the condition they release their games in. Haven't touched either since FO3 or ME1. Personally I think both should have to go through an extra layer of certification until they prove they can code, somewhat like a learner's license.
 

water_wendi

Water is not wet!
Bethesda by far but i dont care. If Daggerfall had been a 6-hour Playstation game i would have been angry but the scope of their games (even the bad ones) brings a large amount of forgiveness.
 
Nintendo rarely has bugs in their games, but when they do it's usually something huge, like the Super Paper Mario recall or transferring an FE9 easy mode save to FE10 would brick Wiis.
 
BioWare and Nintendo were my thoughts before opening the thread. And for the third question, the answer is yes, I'm done with BioWare thanks to their stupid bullshit, which is took bad because I love the Dragon Age franchise. But the fact that to this day you can't play Awakenings without a guide to help you avoid the game breaking bugs and DA2 spent a month with crippled Hawke before they got around to patching it means I'm done with them completely.

The only big Nintendo fuck up I can think of is broken Euro Minish Cap.
 

Woo-Fu

Banned
This is one of those times when Nintendo being in the dark ages in terms of online is actually a good thing. They're still afraid of a landfill full of cartridges. Instead of being able to patch after release being a useful ability, it is something for them to avoid at all costs.
 
Nintendo has released hundreds of very polished games that are bug free, or extremely close to it. Their track record is fantastic.

Bethesda games have a lot of bugs (understandable considering the size and scope of their games.)
 

geebee

Banned
I was going to put Obsidian, then I thought, well, publishers probably have a significant part to play in QA and such, right? Publishers seems fairer.
Since I work in QA I have to respond. True, it's up to us to find and report bugs, but after that, it's ultimately up to the game's producer and developer on whether or not a bug is even worth fixing.
 

UrbanRats

Member
I'm considering waiting to play Skyrim, for a patch (even an unofficial one) after the countless CTDs and missing textures bug (among many others).
 

shintoki

sparkle this bitch
If Bathesda made a linear platformer it would probably have little to no bugs either.

Just saying it's kind of lame to call them out on that given the scope and freedom of the games they make.
When I played Gears 3, UC3, and MW3 over the last month. I didn't expect to encounter any bugs. Regardless of how I say it, its not going to sound nice, but these titles lack ambition. Very large budgets and linear in scope. They don't aim high, so I expect them to be relatively bug-free.

I played a bit of the Precursors earlier in the year and it did take me quite a while to even start the game(an additional half hour of tinkering to run it). Started up with Mount and Blade:Warband also. Another smaller budget game, but both titles have ambition that far exceed the other three mentioned above. Even with larger budget titles like Witcher. I seem to expect the crashes, bugs, lost saves, etc. I'm not going to excuse it either. I won't buy most of the games till later down the road after some patches, but I can't entirely blame them either, when they are reaching for stars far above most other developers. And in many cases, ones who are very much well more financed.
 
Grasshopper Manufacture. Even if I love their games, they do need better QA.

I'll never forget getting knocked off of the building in the first area of No More Heroes 2 and having to reset the console to progress.
 
Top Bottom