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Do you mind when a game is released broken or in a bad state?

Do you mind when a game is released broken/in a bad state?

  • Yes

    Votes: 226 89.0%
  • No

    Votes: 14 5.5%
  • No opinion

    Votes: 14 5.5%

  • Total voters
    254

KyoZz

Tag, you're it.
The recent release of BF2042 has been...eventful to say the least.
But what's surprising me is the amount of people defending it with all their heart, and that bring a question: do you care when a game is released broken/unfinished?

I'm only talking about performance, bugs, netcode etc... Not counting missing features here, just the stability of the final product.
Cyberpunk 2077, GTA Trilogy, BF2042, AC Unity, Fallout 76 are all perfect example of this.

Do you think this trend will end? Is it even possible to release something like BF2042 in a solid and polished state day one in 2021?
Is there something we can do, as not buying doesn't seems to work?
 
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It's awesome honestly. One of the only times that something you buy just gets better and better after launch. Makes every penny spent seem worth it when I pre-order. If you come in late after it's all fixed, you never experience the dopamine hits from all the patches.
 

Con-Z-epT

Live from NeoGAF, it's Friday Night!
No. I love it. It's wonderful. More broken games please.
AdolescentDemandingAmericanpainthorse-size_restricted.gif
 
Would you buy a car and be ok with it crash into lampposts constantly cause the steering calibration software is broken?

Maybe not the best comparison as a car is an appliance/tool.

So let's try something else.

Would you buy a set of golf clubs and be ok with it if the club's snapped in half and required a patch in 2 months time to work as intended?

Would you be ok with a rollercoaster crashing, because the engineers didn't give due consideration to structure and safety because they had to have the ride ready for Disneyland's Christmas event.

All of the answers these scenarios, I hope are a unanimous 'no'.

A game should be functional at its launch. Add features later, sure, but don't promise x and deliver x - 10. If the game is an unplayable broken mess or doesn't live up to the promises made about it in events, trailers and the like, it deserves to be pilloried.
 
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Kuranghi

Member
This year is the worst, I just didn't play loads of games I was really excited for yet due to it, examples:

* Recompile
* The Ascent
* Sable
* Kena (DX11 stutters like crazy on my setup and DX12 is basically perfect but has double input lag, pick your poison, I just stopped playing because it was really affecting my enjoyment of it)
* Exo One

...and nearly gave up on Deaths Door until I fixed it myself + with the help of a guy who told me how to edit one of the games DLLs, its obviously ludicrous I had to do that. There are more examples but I can't remember off the top of my head right now. Oh actually Psychonauts 2 was unplayable for me at 60fps due to some kind of stuttering as well, ended up locking to 30fps and boosting res instead and it was perfect, which is a shame because even 1440p looked amazing due to the art style and not remotely aliased even compared to native 4K with the right engine.ini tweaks. The default TAA was awful without sharpening.

Guess what most of these games have in common. If its not Unity Engine then its UE4 with its PC-only shader-compilation stuttering + asset loading across all platforms. I can't live with occasional stutters, most games are perfect in that regard ofc, but constant hitching or any bullshit like that and I'm out these days, if it can't be fixed or mitigated within a couple of hours I'm loathe to waste any more of my time on it.
 
Do they mind, yes, do they still pre-order, ofc they do and then they have buyer's remorse and say "its fine". Its ok to enjoy and love the game as long as you acknowledge the issues but most idiots don't. I loved CP2077 on PC but damn if it wasnt as buggy as shit and not as they marketed and anyone who said they had no issues were and are lying.
 

Guilty_AI

Member
I never buy games on release either way.

I was interest in Cyberpunk 2077 but it came out broken. So i waited a year, bought it for half the price on PC, still janky but looks and performs fine, installed some mods to make it more to my liking and BAM, slowly becoming one of my favorite games.
 
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KyoZz

Tag, you're it.
Would you buy a car and be ok with it crash into lampposts constantly cause the steering calibration software is broken?

Maybe not the best comparison as a car is an appliance/tool.

So let's try something else.

Would you buy a set of golf clubs and be ok with it if the club's snapped in half and required a patch in 2 months time to work as intended?

Would you be ok with a rollercoaster crashing, because the engineers didn't give due consideration to structure and safety because they had to have the ride ready for Disneyland's Christmas event.

All of the answers these scenarios, I hope are a unanimous 'no'.

A game should be functional at its launch. Add features later, sure, but don't promise x and deliver x - 10. If the game is an unplayable broken mess or doesn't live up to the promises made about it in events, trailers and the like, it deserves to be pilloried.
It's not about how it SHOULD be, it is about how it IS. Of course what you said is right but unfortunately that's not the case.

No. I love it. It's wonderful. More broken games please.
Literally the second sentence you can read:
"But what's surprising me is the amount of people defending it with all their heart"

How could the answer be no if you truly care for gaming?
Same as above
 

RiccochetJ

Gold Member
Outright broken is unacceptable especially if it's something they absolutely should have known about prior to launch.

My tolerance for bad is higher than a lot of people I think. Cyberpunk was acceptable to me, but I was playing on a XBSX but there was a fair amount of jank that happened during my playthrough. It would have been unacceptable if I was playing on last gen consoles.
 

Kev Kev

Member
fuck yes i mind. we all should mind. yet its the status quo of games development atm. lol smh. ridiculous.

I never buy games on release either way.

I was interest in Cyberpunk 2077 but it came out broken. So i waited a year, bought it for half the price on PC, still janky but looks and performs fine, installed some mods to make it more to my liking and BAM, slowly becoming one of my favorite games.

^this. stop buying games on release bc they are going to be broken and youre better off catching it after theyve fixed it (well, hopefully they fixed it) a year or so later.
 
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Evil Calvin

Afraid of Boobs
No, I don't mind. It means I will get it super cheap rather quickly and there will at least be a few patches as well!
 

daveonezero

Banned
There should be like a law every game released has a minimum 90 metacritic.

this is like asking all other genres of music stopped being created because someone didn’t think it was as good as the genre they listened to.

who cares? In this day an Age if you can’t reconcile hype, fomo, and taking risk of being an early adopter and buying day 1 there is no one to blame except the individual.

Eventually enough people get burned or the company gets a bit of pride and something changes or people just buy the same shit out of habit.

Games like FIFA, madden, Cod, BF, etc are all trash now but people just keep buying them. It doesn’t affect my gaming one bit.
 
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KyoZz

Tag, you're it.
Where are they? They haven't shown up here yet.
I'm not gonna point at anyone from here, instead look into those threads:

and


For examples. I'm not saying it's the vast majority of players, but I feel like this is more and more accepted.

It works. You won't have to pay and you won't have to play broken games.
And yet this trend is just becoming more and more present. So no it doesn't work since too many people still buy broken games day one.
 

Robb

Gold Member
I mind, and for better or worse the first impression is usually the one I stick with. I very rarely jump back in to a game after hearing that it has been “fixed”.
 

daveonezero

Banned
What good would that do?
Nothing. I was being sarcastic. We are talking about an team art work project where 100s of people work together to make something.

it’s not like these things work out every time. There is a lot going into it and if it isn’t worth the price of admission there isn’t much anyone can do.

play it or not non of my business.
 
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ReBurn

Gold Member
Nothing. I was being sarcastic. We are talking about an team art work project where 100s of people work together to make something.

it’s not like these things work out every time. There is a lot going into it and if it isn’t worth the price of admission there isn’t much anyone can do.

play it or not non of my business.
Ah ok
 

GymWolf

Member
Yeah sure, like everyone else.

But except for rare occasions, bugs are never severe enough to heavily dampen my enjoyment of a game, also i'm usually damn lucky with not having bugs that many people have (or as many).

Framerate problems are usually the things that bothers me the most, but since i play the majority of stuff on pc i can usually bruteforce the problems by scaling some settings (not always, sometimes games are just broken at birth)
 
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Nope, I always love paying full price to be a beta tester for a broken piece of shit that was pushed out the door by a publisher who couldnt give two fucks...

8hkD4tI.gif
 

Con-Z-epT

Live from NeoGAF, it's Friday Night!
Same as above
Sure people will praise anything based on their subjective biased opinion but i mean how can anyone be, objectively, ok with a broken game?

I play a lot of Diablo 2: Resurrected lately and the game still has some mean bugs that can wipe a lot of progress. I love the game and try to do anything to kite around those bugs but i will never ignore them in a conversation.

Now that i have written it down it seems that i don't mind to play a bugged game. I changed my vote based on my newly acquired perception.

Schitts Creek Comedy GIF by CBC
 

YukiOnna

Member
It's inexcusable and Publishers who don't allow a longer window of bug testing/QA to match the costs and time needed to iron these out as new consoles release/technology progresses sucks. It seems they're not aware at all.
 

GreatnessRD

Member
Who would not say yes?
The continued sales of AAA games, that's who.

Never thought "Day Zero and Day one" patches would ever be a thing. Games are really sold in trashcan states now a day, but I treat them like windows and wait months until I decide to dive in. Because fuck these Publishers and Devs expecting full price for alpha build games. Them days over.
 

Knightime_X

Member
Depends if patches will follow or not.
Would be nice to let players know the game is in early access state.

Developers should offer refunds during this early access time frame for those who are impatient.
 
Unless my save is hardlocked out of completing the game i dont mind the occasional/ semi-frequent bugs and glitches so long as the attempt was ambitious in scope or vision.
 
I mean broken, yes I definitely mind. Bad state? I guess that depends on how bad it really is. Like if there’s just minor performance issues that seem likely to be fixed later, then yeah it’s not a huge deal. Or if there’s a relatively easy workaround.

For example I remember playing Skyrim on the 360 a little while after launch and there was a weird glitch where mountain textures would have blurry LODs up close if the game was installed on the Hard Drive. Since you could play straight off the disc and not have this problem though, it wasn’t a huge deal living with it until it got fixed a few weeks later.
 

DelireMan7

Member
Can't say it never happen to me. Nowadays I don't play games on release anyway.

What is the definition of "broken" ? I have seen so much exaggeration here. Is the loading time on Bloodborne at release made it broken ? I didn't mind it.

Was FFXV broken on release ? Nothing shocked me
 

MacReady13

Member
Maybe it's cause I grew up playing games on the NES/SNES etc, but I am really not used to games being completely broken/unplayable and us gamers being used as beta testers until the games are patched. It's a fucking joke but unfortunately too many gamers are fine with it.
 
I hate it when they improve games after I've completed them. It's like a huge F-YOU to the people who got the game on launch and are already finished with it.

I only got to turn off the film grain in TLOU2 AFTER I finished it. What good does that do?
 

recursive

Member
The recent release of BF2042 has been...eventful to say the least.
But what's surprising me is the amount of people defending it with all their heart, and that bring a question: do you care when a game is released broken/unfinished?
So that is where the BF2042 player base went to. I am fighting bots while they are online whiteknighting for DICE.
 

daveonezero

Banned
I just want a government to make sure no bugs are in any hand even if it means $100 games.
I hate it when they improve games after I've completed them. It's like a huge F-YOU to the people who got the game on launch and are already finished with it.

I only got to turn off the film grain in TLOU2 AFTER I finished it. What good does that do?
that is your fault. Not the developer.
 
I just want a government to make sure no bugs are in any hand even if it means $100 games.

that is your fault. Not the developer.
How is it my fault?

Why did RT mode get added to Guardians of the Galaxy later after the early adopters already finished the game? They should've completed the game before it came out.

I'm not going to buy any games at launch anymore for fear that they'll just improve it a couple months later so that I don't play an incomplete version of the game.
 
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