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

Holammer

Member
Complexity = bugs.
CyberPunk & Skyrim have more systems vulnerable to failure than most Japanese games that are just a bunch of linear corridor by comparison.
 
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Neff

Member
Japanese games development was primarily borne from arcades and consoles, ie PCBs and cartridges. Because the games were hardware-based, they had to be in good shape at launch because the manufacturing process was high. This added risk and competitive corporate approach resulted in a discipline and commitment to quality which endures to this day.

Early Western games development historically relied on cheap floppy discs and cassettes, which meant it wasn't the end of the world if you accidentally produced a bad batch of inventory. Also the games themselves were cheaper to develop and were made in a less professional manner, often by one or two people working from home. And since they were also cheaper to buy, the customer wasn't too upset if they got stung by a piece of crap. As such, the Western approach has always tended to be a little more relaxed in comparison.
 

brian0057

Banned
I think it's more of a cultural thing.
Hell, the developers of Final Fantasy XIV apologized so hard when it first came out, you almost expected them to pull out a tanto and commit sudoku live on stage just to atone for the state of the game.

But then you games like Deadly Premonintion and D4 where the game would be boring without all the technical issues.
But that's more of a subjective thing.
 
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Well the biggest thing from graphic perspective Japanese games are not as high tech. They much more concern about gameplay part more than graphics.
And that what's matter lol
Videogames are about gameplay, fun and challenge. (Imo)
 
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Saber

Gold Member
I don´t remember any japanese game anywhere near to the complexity of stuff like skyrim, even simpler things like assassin´s creed or the witcher are several leagues beyond those other games you mention.

You can't seriously believe Skyrim has complexety when a shout(or vomit) is considered magic, 90% of enemies has frost resistance and naked enemies can tank your weapons because they either has tons of health or has hidden npc damage reduction skills, rendering your piercing weapons useless. And this is me ignoring thousand of bugs.
 

PSlayer

Member
To be fair most japanese games are not as ambitious in scope than the typical AAA western game. Not that i mind tho, i only play japanese games.

Japanese developers care more about gameplay and aesthetics than photorealism and presentation. Take Elden ring for example,graphically speaking it looks like an open world dark souls 2(a game that came out in 2014). But art direction makes it look pretty and judging by From's track record,it will be fun to play. Games like that are less buggy because the engine is simpler,older and more battle tested. On the other hand, EA games use cutting edge engines like frostbite and are always trying to push the envelope of what can be done with visuals. As a result,the games looks amazing,but full of bugs (i'm not trying to excuse anything,developers should have more time to polish).

Honestly Unreal engine seems to be the sweet spot for japanese developers. It allows them to push the visuals without having to worry about bugs. I wonder if From will one day jump to it...
 
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FStubbs

Member
You can't seriously believe Skyrim has complexety when a shout(or vomit) is considered magic, 90% of enemies has frost resistance and naked enemies can tank your weapons because they either has tons of health or has hidden npc damage reduction skills, rendering your piercing weapons useless. And this is me ignoring thousand of bugs.
I'm a fan of jRPGs, enjoy them much, much more than wRPGs, but you've got to be kidding. Skyrim is way more complex and interactive than any non-MMO jRPG ever made.
 

Danjin44

The nicest person on this forum
And that what's matter lol
Videogames are about gameplay, fun and challenge. (Imo)
I agree, western devs much more about give you “immersion” even at cost of gameplay, this was R*’s number one priority when making RDR2 and it gameplay took back site.
 
XqjKdwQ.jpg
 

Saber

Gold Member
I'm a fan of jRPGs, enjoy them much, much more than wRPGs, but you've got to be kidding. Skyrim is way more complex and interactive than any non-MMO jRPG ever made.

Wheter you like or not it wasn't the point.
You still didn't explain the complexity in a lazy and stupid mechanic on Skyrim.
 

FStubbs

Member
Wheter you like or not it wasn't the point.
You still didn't explain the complexity in a lazy and stupid mechanic on Skyrim.
Huge game world, pretty much every item and NPC can be interacted with, random loot, open world.

That is MUCH more complex and difficult to balance than, say, Dragon Quest 11. I think that's an objective fact, regardless of what you think of it subjectively.
 

junguler

Banned
japanese games are usually less mechanically involved and more iterative than western games, makes sense for them to have less bugs.
 

Saber

Gold Member
Huge game world, pretty much every item and NPC can be interacted with, random loot, open world.

That is MUCH more complex and difficult to balance than, say, Dragon Quest 11. I think that's an objective fact, regardless of what you think of it subjectively.

Huge empty world of nothing. Random generated dungeons, with random generated enemies and random generated loots that even though scale your level are still random(meaning level 100 can give you iron quality equips). Random encounters that makes no sense or doesn't work at all. Npc "complexity" that ranges from hunters that are capable of hunt docile city animals from Mailik the Liar that even though is a easter egg, it serves for nothing and keeps appearing over and over.

DQ simply destroys Skyrim, as its encounters are more alive and feel like into world, different from stationary NPCs that keep waiting there either to do nothing or attack you on sight(note that the sole function of those npcs is to attack you, they won't attack anything in the world).

And LOL at difficulty balance, the game relies on a stupid level scaling, reducing your damage while increasing npc damage(its so stupid that works on ally npcs, making followers stronger than you) and hidden npc skills.
 

Shouta

Member
Japanese games tend to have really robust testing for the size and scope of the game they put out so issues tend to get ironed out very well.
 

coffinbirth

Member
Kinda silly comparisons in the OP, but there is some truth to this. Nintendo, at least, tend to have pretty polished games at release, with many only ever receiving content updates as opposed to patches.
 

killatopak

Gold Member
The era of release broken and patch afterwards definitely benefited western devs a lot.

For the most part, Japanese games tend to still have the old practice of being completely playable without patches. While bugs or glitches are there, most of them require actual knowledge of the bugs themselves to encounter normally and only through some intense testing would a glitch occur.

While it’s not as prevalent as some would think, Western games do tend do require patches to fix some minor, some major bugs.

The major difference between the two seems to be that bugs are encountered through normal gameplay while the other seems to require very specific circumstances to trigger. At least, in my experience, that tend to be the case.

I don’t believe any recent game is absent of bugs. The complexity of Western games just exemplifies them and whether it’s by design or by development style differences, it doesn’t make a difference when asking the question which game is more buggier.
 

Faithless83

Banned
It isn't just you, just look at capcom releases since RE7.

Western gaming is a lot more on "we'll patch it later" side of things, while japanese games are playable day one without a patch most of the time.

They're also woke free, which is a great bonus IMO.
 
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Stooky

Member
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

My head hurts from reading this. Woke culture hindering western games industry? You need a better super villain.
 

lukilladog

Member
You can't seriously believe Skyrim has complexety when a shout(or vomit) is considered magic, 90% of enemies has frost resistance and naked enemies can tank your weapons because they either has tons of health or has hidden npc damage reduction skills, rendering your piercing weapons useless. And this is me ignoring thousand of bugs.
I am talking about what is going on the backround at the code/script level. Having a bunch of enemies sharing the same attributes for example, is the result of devs using templates because of time, performance, and/or predictability reasons, but the game still has to execute their ai packages independently, for every enemy, every hour, every day, while at the same time keeping track of the consequences of such packages, daily routines, sand boxing, interactions, patrol scripts, conversations, and a huge bunch of possible sub-packages. Game could care less if want to put together custom ai packages for every enemy out there, it can handle it, it actually does for most npc´s that are not generic enemies.
 

Amiga

Member
I think Japanese devs put more time on post production testing. western devs who commit to testing also release stable games. buggy games like Cyberpunk from some PC studios used to be a common thing 15 years ago. CP is kind of a throwback to the old normal.

'release then patch' is originally part of PC games culture. online on consoles came way after PC gaming. so console devs had to release a stable game day1. and consoles used to be a Japan primary thing, so the habit persisted thank God.


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. :(
I see what you did there :messenger_beaming:
 

LiquidMetal14

hide your water-based mammals
I love Japanese games but let's be clear and clear our foggy glasses.

Japanese studios are not as advanced and pushing the boundaries of tech like a lot of wester studios. The days of Japan leading the industry in software/games are gone. They've been gone since the PS2 era.

Japanese studios aren't pushing as many new technical game play advances overall and you can play a game that looks modern enough yet can be realized on a PS1.

The software powerhouses are mostly outside Japan. Studios working on new software and hardware tricks that are game changers.

Barring a few exceptions, Japan is still serving the same audience and I'm a fan but are a shadow of their former self.

Sorry.
 

Saber

Gold Member
I am talking about what is going on the backround at the code/script level. Having a bunch of enemies sharing the same attributes for example, is the result of devs using templates because of time, performance, and/or predictability reasons, but the game still has to execute their ai packages independently, for every enemy, every hour, every day, while at the same time keeping track of the consequences of such packages, daily routines, sand boxing, interactions, patrol scripts, conversations, and a huge bunch of possible sub-packages. Game could care less if want to put together custom ai packages for every enemy out there, it can handle it, it actually does for most npc´s that are not generic enemies.


Code script is nothing but trigger over trigger events. And random encounters are nothing but fixed location scripted events. The place where you find Mailik will be of that random event and can be repeated spam of Mailiks.
And the AI is nothing but the same ai, with different "types" of weapons. Even the monsters themselves could be tagged as having weapon, as their claws and bites works pretty much the same. The only difference is that Skyrim uses classes to distingish which attribute the NPC gonna have higher. Again nothing dept, the devs wanted to use this to make easier for a ranged enemy to simply be ranged or a mage to be a mage. They don't even do this properly lol

Really, I fail to see any kind of complexity in this.
 
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Marvel14

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

Less buggy not less buggier....

It's buggying (sic) me that your Opening Post's grammar is fine but your thread title's is not.
 
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Yup, good soundtrack can make you love the world and get immersed, more than high tech graphics can most of the time.

It's a marriage.

When the sound/ost shines more than what u see, it turns out of place.
Atmosphere is nothing without sound/ost.

When u feel just one thing together, that's the X factor.
U need to feel both as one.
 
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If you pay attention more on the music than the graphics, or when u pay attention more on the graphics than the music, something is wrong.

When u feel both in synch, it's when was done right.

That is valid for everything audio/visual related. Movies, games, trailers etc etc...
 

Guilty_AI

Member
If you pay attention more on the music than the graphics, or when u pay attention more on the graphics than the music, something is wrong.

When u feel both in synch, it's when was done right.

That is valid for everything audio/visual related. Movies, games, trailers etc etc...
Thing is, being in sync doesn't mean the graphics have to be good.
In fact, sometimes "bad" graphics alongside some really good sound design can create far more immersive spaces than games with state of the art visuals.

I think Sillent Hill 2 or Source maps are perfect examples of that. Those can still feel a lot creepier (thus immersive) than modern horror games with top visuals.
 
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Danjin44

The nicest person on this forum
Thing is, being in sync doesn't mean the graphics have to be good.
In fact, sometimes "bad" graphics alongside some really good sound design can create far more immersive spaces than games with state of the art visuals.
To me good art direction can surpass high tech graphics any day.

For example, NMH3 is no technical marvel, even for Switch standard but the game has so much style and combined with killer soundtrack, made really one of kind experience.
 
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Guys, in any moment i mentioned "good graphics"

Look Silent Hill 1...

I just said the two magic ingredients must be together to create a good atmosphereric game! (Or movie or whatever audio/visual lol)
 
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Danjin44

The nicest person on this forum
I just said the two magic ingredients must be together to create a good atmosphereric game! (Or movie or whatever audio/visual lol)
And I agree, my point was you don't need to spend fortune in high tech graphics to get good visual design. Most Ubisoft games have expensive tech and yet the actual visuals so very dull in my opinion.
 
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