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Is it just me or are Japanese games less buggier than Western games...

levyjl1988

Banned
Japanese games from my experience are less buggy and game-breaking than Western titles.
I'm comparing games like Monster Hunter Rise, Resident Evil Village, Japanese titles and I rarely discovered any glitches or bugs, compare that to Marvel's Avengers, CyberPunk, Skyrim, etc and the game is literally broken on launch. Sometimes so broken that there are data save corruption.
Marvel Avengers is so broken that even 1 year on there is still persisting bugs that haven't been addressed.
The customer support in Western games is so shit, here is an example of how terrible support is for that game:
They literally give you the fucking run around.

Now I don't know what the reason is? Is it that Western developers are incompetent compared to the Japanese?
Where the Japanese hire based on experience and competence, the Western market hires based on hitting a gender quota, ref:
I rarely have any problems with Japanese titles, they seem quite refined, and when there are bugs, they get addresses pretty frequently.

What the fuck is wrong with the Western Game Industry and why do I see more bugs compared to Japanese titles? Are the Japanese that much better at programming or what?
Is Woke Culture hindering the gaming industry that we get shit titles compared to Japanese titles.
I mean I prefer manga over western comics, just because it gets to the heart of the story and characters, where western comics just feel like shit.


Anyway, I just want fewer buggy games at launch and I'm finding Japanese games less buggy than western titles.

/rant
 

Guilty_AI

Member
this is just some sad attempt at another thread of yours ranting about the woke boogeyman and bitching about muh diversity, while propping up japanese exceptionalism as a canadian (?) despite having nothing but anecdotal 'evidence'...
97555393a85396b1243f05e965956da7.jpg
 

Tschumi

Member
I'm sure there are heaps of howlers, but I also think it might help Japanese games that they're about... 7 years behind? In terms of graphics... only with a shiny coat... and their gameplay is often simplistic too... i'm generalizing but since you're also generalizing i figure it's stacks on the mill
 
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There's a multitude of factors regarding how polished a game is by the time of its release. Scope and budget are a couple big ones.

Geographic location of the developers is probably a small factor, unless there's a lot of outsourcing.
 
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TheInfamousKira

Reseterror Resettler
Japanese games always seemed to me to have glitches and exploits more than bugs. Zelda was a treasure trove of the shit back in the day. Final Fantasy had item duplication exploits and all of that. It's probably down to their more focused, linear scope than anything. Open world games are still pretty new ground for Japanese developers, and the smaller game world and more scripted content allows for better refinement and polish.

I'm not weebing out or anything, I think a fair bit of jank is excusable in western games that have literal continents of exploration and quests, assets, character and enemy AI and effects, weather, etc. to try and run flawlessly all of the time. I've only ever been really frustrated with glitches that are like "you're stuck in this tire because you accidentally jumped into it," or "this solid field you're walking on randomly opened up and you fell below the map into hell,"
 

TGO

Hype Train conductor. Works harder than it steams.
It is kinda true, most of my Japanese games never receive a patch or update unless they've added DLC.
And the ones that do have bug fixes are far and few between

But there are some that do, and some that have a lot like FFXV.
so depends on the developer.
But there no denying many Japanese games that launch on 1.00 or 1.01 stay like that.
 

Arsic

Gold Member
Japanese companies are usually technically behind and have much smaller scope.

The most comparable would be Death Stranding or Final Fantasy 14/15. Which are very well done and I had zero bugs in any of those 3.

Curious to see if Elden Ring will have a big scope to its large world.
 

Larxia

Member
I think this is mostly related to the fact that most japanese games are "simpler", smaller.

For example in most japanese games, environments will have tons of invisible walls everywhere, in many of them you can't even jump, so this alone heavily reduce the amount of possible bugs related to collision and such. Many japanese games have this "dated" feeling, they don't try to push the tech, so obviously they stay in a safer space, with less problems.

Obviously there are many exceptions and different situations, but most western games known for their bugs are usually open worlds doing stuff that japanese games usually don't do.
 
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It’s true. Japanese games generally have less glitches and bugs. Japanese developers focus more on polish and gameplay while Western games usually focus more on scope and size. IMO, I think Japanese developers just have a better eye or talent for spotting glitches, imperfections and adding polish to their games.

Yeah, I know Japanese companies normally make smaller games compared to Western, but to my experience, I even experienced less glitches on larger games like Death Stranding, Yakuza, Mario Odyssey, Zelda: BOTW, MGS5, FF15, etc.
 
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Id even say they put way less effort in graphical department. Graphics arent everything but I feel Japanese games are stuck in this arcade-look and dont want to push any boundaries. Love the Yakuza games but after 7 sequels...you'd think they would add more than the same 2 micro cities or actually add a real open world. Judgement comes and does the same exact thing. Yet people bitch that Uncharted 3 was more of the same and didn't innovate enough lol.

Facts:

Tekken 7 uses Unreal 4
Mortal Kombat 11 uses Unreal 3 - ends up looking a whole generation ahead of T7 AND plays at 60 fps as well.
 
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Aion002

Member
I think that most Japanese devs tries their best to deliver a polished experience, even if they have to make the games smaller or less graphically impressive. While most of the other developers keeps pushing more and more stuff, making games bigger and prettier regardless of issues.


Bloated world's, glitches, incomplete stories, unbalanced mechanics, repetitive gameplay and so on.

Obviously not every dev outside of Japan does that and not every Japanese dev delivers polished games ( FFXV and Left Alive for example)... But thats the image most have.
 

Brofist

Member
I think this is mostly related to the fact that most japanese games are "simpler", smaller.

For example in most japanese games, environments will have tons of invisible walls everywhere, in many of them you can't even jump, so this alone heavily reduce the amount of possible bugs related to collision and such. Many japanese games have this "dated" feeling, they don't try to push the tech, so obviously they stay in a safer space, with less problems.

Obviously there are many exceptions and different situations, but most western games known for their bugs are usually open worlds doing stuff that japanese games usually don't do.
Exactly this. Look the at scope of the type of Western games that have bugs. Cyberpunk 2077 and Skyrim for example. Way more ambitious than the typical Japanese game.
 
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anothertech

Member
I would argue it's more about complicated features but GTAV throws that argument out the window.

Sometimes, it embarrassing how broken things can get. I mean, Outriders had people unable to log into the game for MONTHS. Entire characters were deleted, gearsets and progress lost. ON A REGULAR BASIS.

There's broken, and then there's BROKENHOLYSHITFUBAR

I think it's probably more about the time period than the location
 
I just recently finished Psychonauts 2 and was kind of Shocked that I didn't run into any bugs or glitches or crashes, or hangups or game design issues. This was on Series X I hear that PC is having issues with judder.
But Yes Western games need more play testing and time in the oven.
 

MrA

Banned
maybe today, but let me tell you about this company called micronics, back in the 80s and 90s they could give tiertex a run for their money in terms of ultra trash
 

Mozzarella

Member
In their defense, some western games (some not all) do have complex system running so that kind of excuses the existence of bugs/glitches. Mostly open world RPG like Skyrim, KCD, FNV and Witcher 3 and Divinity OS2.
However your point is still valid, most Japanese open world games, high budget or not are almost bug free. Rockstar games also have few bugs for some reason.
The only solid excuse you can find is those open world rpg complex games i mentioned, otherwise games like Cyberpunk have no excuses for all the bugs cause its not complex at all. And many other buggy games are also not really complex so i guess there is some truth to your points.

I guess that is one of the main flaws in Western gaming.
1- Chasing after Hollywood (games that try hard to be movies)
2- Microtransaction and online gaming focus.
3- Bugs
4- Too much emphasize on realism and due to that high budget and a lot of time to make games.
5- Too much unnecessary pollical correct appeal and shove, by that i mean most games will try to play it safe and not anger the twitter mob.
6- Lack of inspiring game design outside of indie titles

Japanese on the other hand.
1- Reliance on over-used Anime tropes that are childish or silly or cringy or just badly written.
2- Weird DLC skin and unnecessary over sexualization on them.
3- Fetch side quests and heavy grinding focus.
4- A lot of remakes and uninspired sequels, few new ip
5- Lack of voice acting and good production values
6- Lack of indie titles

Both have their own issues but Western gaming industry issues imo at this day and age are worse, the eurojank industry is getting better but bugs are still huge issue on it.
 
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Western games tend to go for the open world aspect of thing and in a open world or sandbox style type of game the amount of problems that can go wrong will always be massive. You cant test everything and some people will do stuff that the devs dont think that you the player would do you also need to add in the amount of what if, if and exponents and variables that are being calculated on a constant bases Vs a game thats in a pretty liner environment. For example there are multiple ways to beat missions in skyrim, cyberpunk 2077 ect there are way more ways for things to go wrong or break in this certain situations because the missions are open ended DMC,Godhand Monster hunter has pretty clear cut objective and most of the time very little wiggle room that isnt as open ended as a open world game.
 

Futaleufu

Member
In Bethesda RPG games each NPC has its own routine, even if he/she is kilometers away from the playable character. In Fallout sometimes NPCs fight each other, some may die without you ever noticing it unless you happen to find the bodies and all the items they were carrying, you can even fail a sidequest because the NPC associated to it got killed fighting Deathclaws or Supermutants. The travelling merchant in Fallout New Vegas may also get killed this way.

I have yet to see a japanese developed game attempting something like this.
 
I think that most Japanese devs tries their best to deliver a polished experience, even if they have to make the games smaller or less graphically impressive. While most of the other developers keeps pushing more and more stuff, making games bigger and prettier regardless of issues.
This. And it's a cultural thing, I'd argue. It's not just a difference in project scope. This is the country that practices zen, shinto and a thousand other customs that promote attention to detail, mindfulness and deceleration.
 

GeekyDad

Member
If they're less buggy, it's because those companies "are not in-step with how the rest of the software industry works," and therefore we must suffer a superior experience. :(
 

Rickyiez

Member
You literally just stated two big open world games in Cyberpunk and Skyrim compared to linear and smaller scoped games like RE Village or MH Rise . Pretty sure it wouldn't be pretty if Japanese made Cyberpunk or Skyrim , or you should just compare linear Western games like Uncharted , Tlou or God of War because they can be very polished too given the scope . Not that I wanted to defend buggy releases but you should have compared the Western vs Japanese teams fairly .
 
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You literally just stated two big open world games in Cyberpunk and Skyrim compared to linear and smaller scoped games like RE Village or MH Rise . Pretty sure it wouldn't be pretty if Japanese made Cyberpunk or Skyrim , or you should just compare linear Western games like Uncharted , Tlou or God of War because they can be very polished too given the scope . Not that I wanted to defend buggy releases but you should have compared the Western vs Japanese teams fairly .
tumblr_lxels9BoVU1qff8too1_r1_400.gif

Bravo, thread's done.
 

sublimit

Banned
Japanese developers design their games very differently than Western developers. For them the gameplay and game concept are their priorities while Western devs think first about the story,world and art style.
This results at much more solid games from Japanese devs and games like Anthem,Fallout 76,etc from Western devs.
 

GymWolf

Member
Japanese games are usually smaller than western games, how many massive japanese open worlds we have?!

Let a japanese team make something like rdr2 and let's see how bug free it's gonna be.

The biggest japanese game i played in recent years was mh world and that one is smaller than the smaller open world game in the market, pretty sure that the sandbox section in tlou2 is bigger than any mhw map.

People think that souls games are super polished but these games have severe camera\lock on and compenetration problems, not to mention framerate on the lesser consoles, you can bet your ass that a spidey\horizon game on a vanilla ps4 runs smoother than a ds3\bloodborne (while looking like shit in comparions aside from the art design).

Do people really think that elden ring is gonna run at locked 30 on vanilla consoles?! Think again...
 
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I think it's more the types and scopes of the games. Western-style RPGs are much more susceptible to bugs than more linear types of games.
 
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