I keep hearing about " Other games are buggy when they come out "

[tater]

Pre-day one ww2oler here as well. release ww2ol was version 0.64 or so as I recall. It's come a long way.

tater

[fastfed]

I loved that game because of the flight sim, but it was pretty weak last time I played it..

I told myself I WILL!!! Get into the game AGAIN when you can enter and leave vehicles, Tanks,planes,boats..

I understand a tanker is a tanker, but I should be able to jump out if my tracks arre broken.

[modisch]

I'm not going to say "unplayable" bugs... because most people disagree on how bad something has to be to be unplayable.

But in terms of "significant" bugs that affect core gameplay, a few come to mind.

Raven Shield (the third Rainbow 6 game):

Also by UBI. Years after the release of the game, the notorious "nade bug" was still unfixed and the SDK, which was promised, never, ever was released. The nade bug basically meant when you pulled out a grenade to throw, it got stuck and you couldn't remove it, throw it (it wouldn't explode in your hand, at least), switch to another weapon, interact with objects (ladders ,doors)... you were just a walking target. Another bug that persisted for a long time was in multiplayer where it looked like you were shooting, but it never registered with the server or other players. Your only indicator that something was wrong was your ammo count didn't change. So you could open up on someone and think they should be dead... but nope, they're fine, no actual bullets fired. In fact, this game was so buggy (and long after release) that most leagues and ladders had a 30 second "bug" redo... up to 30 seconds into a round, if you experienced a bug, you could call it out and get a restart. Everyone had a sort of "pre flight checklist" to run through to make sure any of a number of bugs wasn't affecting them. Bug redos often resulted in doubling the length of matches...

Battlefield 2:

The "red friendlies" bug. This bug took a LONG time to be fixed (actually, I don't know that it was ever fixed). Teammates would appear as enemies on the minimap and with red (indicating enemy) text overhead. Resulted in a LOT of teamkills. BF2, in fact, had so many bugs that the devs had to hold press conferences saying Bf2142 would be better. Yet some issues that were around back in BF1942 are still present, like the grinding server lag when moving titans or aircraft carriers. In 2142, rather than fix it, they simply made titans immobile after the shields went down (when most people were fighting on them).


A small list of other games that were basically rushed to market and failed as a result:

- Asheron's Call 2
- Soldner
- Operation: Flashpoint
- Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines (most of the bugs were fixed by the community patches after the developer went bankrupt)


So the better question isn't, was this game rushed to market... It was. There's no denying that. Just going through the files and seeing the volume of stuff left from sh3 which is no longer used... and the multitude of complaints due to bugs and shortcomings... shows they rushed to market. But the question should be, where will it go from here? Some games are rushed to market and die as a result. Some games survive despite their bugs. And some games get patched and community support and turn into real gems (anarchy online, even though I'm not much of a fan, is DRASTICALLY better than it was at release and has a very good community).

I'm concerned based on the track record of Ubi that rather than patch and build on community support, they'll just release a couple of inadequate patches and move on to a sequel. This is the pattern they showed with many games. The rainbow 6 series is an example. Despite very loyal community following, after the unfixed bugs of Raven Shield they released Lockdown, which basically was dead on arrival... and then followed less than a year later with Vegas. Along the way, become more arcade-y and console-y. The upside is, this game is moddable (as we can see by the thriving mod community), albeit less easily than SH3, and there is no console version.

So.... where is the game going? Too soon to tell. I just hope it doesn't end up leaving the gamers high and dry.

-m

[Mud]

My first computer game was bug free , Pong

Mud

[macky]

I loved bf1942, great game, had bugs but no biggies. Didnt like bf2, couldnt get into it (like my ww2 theme) but it was still playable.

Have to agree tho with the op, most games have bugs, yeah, but very few I have played (or wanted to buy) did not have as many as this.

However, I also think the problem is the enhanced graphics of this game which has added to the fustration. Yes, the other games puished the boat out, but perhaps sh4 pushed the boat out too much for the majority with medium to low systems.

The game bugs could have been resolved by good beta testing and its not an escuse to say the management pushed the game out too early, its just not an excuse. Its just bad management.

SH4 will get better as more high end systems appear - i know there are some high end problems, but nowhere near the amount of the lower ones. Truth is it would have been better to wait. Halflife 2 is the classic example, thought it was never coming out! But when it did, boy was it worth it. Only problem there was the length, but hey, we cant have it all

You can blame the corporation, the devs or whoever. Truth is everyone must share the blame. But all we can do now is wait...and wait...and hope

[WFGood]

I can name two WWII Online and Pacific Storm. They were bad, but they also managed to redeem themselves through patches for the most part.

[Ragtag]

Talking about "bugfree" games released, Command & Conquer 3 should be an example for every developer on how polished a game should be when released. This game has to be the most polished game i've taken right out of the box since i began playing games in 1979
Yes, 2 patches has been released for it but check the patches readme files...it's just smaller issues fixed and jesus they fixed them within the week. 2 patches in a week. That's what i call REAL support.

[P_Funk]

Originally Posted by mookiemookie

Knights of the Old Republic 2 was ridiculously buggy.

Another Ubi game. In fact is everyone aware of the fact that they rushed Obsidian so much in this game that they had to remove an entire PLANET? After release the modding community found huge stores of game files that had just been cut from the game: voice edits from character development, rooms, an entire part of the story arc missing. All so it could be rushed to shelves. And to this day Kotor 2 fans feel cheated by it.

Kotor 2 has 2 possible endings. There were supposed to be 13. Think about it.

[malkuth74]

Black And White 2 (POS still to this day)
The Movies (read forums, had alot of same issues SHIV have)
Star Trek Legacy (dont even ask)
Pacific Storm (awful AI, only 1 patch so far and didn't fix AI)
Midevil Total war II (AI lackluster, Two handed sword bug still not fixed ETC ETC)
BattleField 2 You so proudly bost about
Patch 1.1 Readme

Patch v1.01
================================================== ======================

Fixed an issue that caused the Multiplayer Browser to become unresponsive.

Fixed an issue where some game controls were not available to be rebound within the Options menu.

Fixed an issue with increasing performance degradation on servers.

Fixed a problem with shader caching on client/host : after the first
map in a rotation, shaders would be loaded on the fly during gameplay.

Fixed a crash with rebinding LMB

Fixed a problem that caused environment mapping to not appear on
reflective surfaces.

Fixed a crash that happened when a client picks up a kit that doesn't
exist anymore.

Fixed a problem with AI when the game was paused for a long time: bots
would become unresponsive and also shoot more accurately.

LOD distances tweaked on certain objects.

I stoped playing after Patch 1.4 (sure thier are more now.)

World Of warcraft Patch notes (IE ITS AT 2.0)
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/


And by the way SHIV is playable out of the box just like all the others.

[Forlorn]

With the widespread of internet and the whole industry looking for money I see that the quality of release versions is getting lower and lower. Companies can release an unfinished piece of software - since patches could be easily made public and available for everybody. Depending on the amount of sold copies they can fix something or not.

I bought NWN2 when it was released. I expected it to be unfinished but also expected quick fixes. All the balance stuff with that content of NWN2 is really complex and probably most of the unbalancing stuff will probably found and noticed by the thousands of hardcore gamers. No problem with that. Was is playable and stable? YES. edit: especially with thousands of different objects

Falcon4 or Falcon Allied Force - I expected issues on FalconAF, since tons of opensource changes were included in a company product and calculating of 500,000 objects in realtime is really hard work. Was is playable and stable? YES.

Gothic III - I expected issues from complexity... and from Gothic II. Was is playable and stable? NO. Current patch size is about 1GB, but not released yet after a fix small patch right after release. Is it playable now? NO. After months and millions sold copies. I never buy Gothic ABX again.

Anno 1701 - I expected issues from complexity. No issues at all. Working fine even with a small miny patch it works fine out of the box.

SH4 - actually just a 20 more new models, a new engine ( but that's actually just an upgrade to 2004 tec ) - I didn't expect that many issues. Stable? YES. Playable? Sort of (if you mark your "A" with a big red X). To me SH4 is just a replacement of the theatre, especially when you look on the scheme of the files etc. Most models are available in the internet for free or a small fee. That's why the SH4 vs SH3 come up again and again. There shouldn't be year 2005 errors again.

[minsc_tdp]

Originally Posted by fastfed

LMAO!! Even WW2 online right out of the gate was more playable IMO.

Now that's a low blow. Can't say I disagree, but a low blow.

It's hard to compare FPS bugs to this sort of game. Especially not the level of HL2/COH/WOW which are much, much larger projects.

Hopefully Ubi will step up to the plate and resolve this.

[RedHammer]

all TW games, for me, have been just.. wonderful from version 1.0, never had A SINGLE problem with them. The only of theese games I have upgraded to newest patch is Rome Total War, so that I can play online with most other people.

GRAW, to me, was running like a CHARM, no lagg or anything, it`s smooth as glass.
Rainbow Six Vegas.. I went as far as never patching it, to avoid loosing certain visual effects.

Stalker? Runs like a clock, never updated. Battlefield 2, perfect from day one.

Same with Pacific Storm and Silent Hunter 3, which I am still running at., yep, 1.0..

Battlestations Midway.. A huuuuge disaster, after 2 mins of playing the game is completely lagging, then i have to click esc button to get the menu up, then esc button again to resume, it goes smooth. I cant believe they havent even patched it yet??? I`m not the only one with that problem.

Armed Assault.. It has to be the most.. I never even.. Ok il put it straight, the graphics sucks utterly, even Stalker runs just as smooth with just as much landscape and even yet TONS better graphics, not a single glitch. But Armed Assault.. just because some Bloom and a little AA.. its ugly. laggs. and I have tons of bugs with it, cannot even go into a APC?? whats that about :S

Call of Duty 2.. Relatively bug free game.. But put on a little AA and a little more textures? LAGG FEST

1701 AD.. please.. dont talk about it..



Silent Hunter 4: Wolfes of the Pacific. It`s a medium range buggy game. a few obvious bugs, but in return, those bugs are so immensily and incredibly annoying.. Sure, it can be played. But would be an advantage to clear all obvious bugs in the first patch? But then again.. yeah.. alot of time would surpass until that happens, etc etc. Let me just conclude with: It is still in my dvd-rom..



S! to all

Your friend in the Pacific

RH

[Zengaze]

The original Poster stated that he was 27 and in all his time he has never seen a buggier game, well i am 29 and apart from my time in service (r/l FFL) I have been a gamer my whole adult life. And whilst i agree there are serious "game hurting" bugs in this release i will also answer the challenge to his demand and point out ONE other; X3.

The reason bugs seem greater in this game is that it is a sim and simmers tend to be perfection freaks. THIS GAME WILL ACHIEVE OUR EXPECTATIONS. Stay the course, support the genre.

[swash]

Fighting Steel was horrible at release. The best feature was the 15 minute auto save so the whole battle wasn't a total loss when the game crashed or locked up.

Gunship II had issues I never got around to solving. Twas back in the days of 14.4 modems and the internet wasn't what it was today to just go download a patch.

Within the past couple of years, I've shelved Pacific Fighters and Lock On due to bugs, even after patches. Both UBI games.

Not a game, but Windows 95 almost drove me bonkers with all the bugs, lockups and crashes

also:

B-17 The Mighty 8th
Destroyer Command
Fleet Command
Sub Command

SH4 was released ready or not for the first business quarter of 2007. I'm sure if the programmers had the extra time to polish it more they would have. Business is business. But after getting Fighting Steel the day of release, I'd be totally suprised at any new sim or game that hit the racks bug free at this point.

PS... hi guys. My first post.

[StandingCow]

I gotta tell ya.. I don't think ANY games are released without bugs, and most are very obvious, things they absolutly must have found during testing, but didn't want to wait on.

BF2 had tons of bugs, in fact one big one still exists.. the friendly team members being red...