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Ever played a game where bugs seriously prevented you from enjoying it?

Jazz_

Arcane
Joined
Jun 13, 2016
Messages
1,069
Location
Sea of Ubiquity
I can honestly say I never played a game where bugs were game-breaking or even that much of an annoyance really, yet in almost every review of a game I happen to read the thing most people complain about is ''bugs'', it's like the most important issue for Steam commoners and magazine reviewers when it comes to videogame criticism. Don't get me wrong, I had some bugs in some games where I had to reload a bunch of times or saw some graphical glitch here and there etc, but for me it doesn't even factor in when it comes to judging a game really, unless they are game-breaking, but then again never played a game with game-breaking bugs, maybe I was just lucky. What's your experience/opinion?
 

Ezekiel

Arcane
Joined
May 3, 2017
Messages
5,374
I usually have a bigger problem with game design than bugs. Bugs seldom prevent me from playing. I'd rather have a few bugs than a boring game. It doesn't surprise me that reviewers put so much importance on bugs. They don't like criticizing mechanics and design the majority of players are used to and accept, so all they have left to complain about is bugs. If I were a reviewer completely honest with my biased opinions, people would quickly grow to hate me and start ignoring me. My boss would probably tell me my reviews are unprofessional and fire me.
 

Deflowerer

Arcane
Joined
May 22, 2013
Messages
2,052
The more complex or novel the game is, the less I give shit about bugs. But if it's a linear corridor shooter, then it becomes an issue for me. Should actually be the opposite, since well, bugs will fuck up the enjoyment of more complex interaction, but I am willing to forgive because I realize how difficult it is to squash bugs with increasing interactions between different parts.
 

Morkar Left

Guest
Absolutely! E.g. the most annoying bug I remember was in Oblivion which prevented me to play further. As far as I know it never got fixed by Bethesda. The more I leveled up enemies seemed to follow along with my level. Even highway robbers started to run around in Daedric armour after a while.
 

Unkillable Cat

LEST WE FORGET
Patron
Joined
May 13, 2009
Messages
27,091
Codex 2014 Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy
Hoo-boy, you're opening up a can of worms here. I've played enough games, with some serious bugs, for long enough a time, that it takes a special kind of bug for me to throw in the towel and give up. While I'm gonna name some big examples, I can also name cases where the bugs improved my experience of the game, as they accidentally created new content and required bizarre feats of metagaming to circumvent. Except I don't feel like it right now, so you're just getting the regular examples.

Example #1

2423347-dos_quest_for_glory_iv.jpg


Hands down THE best game in the series, with an awesome setting, memorable characters and moments... and the biggest gathering of game-crippling bugs since Joe's Apartment. I struggled for months trying to find ways around those bugs, and that only got me as far as to be able to beat the game once, while I've beaten QFG1-3 more times than I can count. I haven't played QFG4 since I did a full QFG series playthrough around the year 2000, because despite every patch, every fix and every documented workaround, this game will find a way to not only crash to desktop, but destroy a couple of your savegames in the process.

You're gonna have to bring me certifiable proof that the game is 100% playable today without crashing for me to even consider installing it again. The pain and frustration is still there.

Example #2

u9cover2.jpg


We all know the story behind this one, but one aspect of its tragic tale that often gets left out are the sheer amount of bugs in the game. Even with the 1.19 patch it was far too common for the game to crash for no reason. It was painful enough to beat the game in its released state, but the bugs only made it worse.

Example #3

maxresdefault.jpg


I'm just gonna say it outright: The game's camera is so bad is has to be due to a bug. I perservered long enough to reach the first boss fight, but no further. It was one of the first times when I put a game down and gave up on it. I haven't touched it since, and I recommend you lot all do the same.
 
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Zenith

Arbiter
Joined
Apr 26, 2017
Messages
296
Usually it wouldn't matter, even in quite egregious cases. Like with Bloodlines on release, you get a Johanssen crash, you find some workaround through a friend, then continue through the rest of the game without your fists, whatever. Or AI getting disabled every map change or so in pirated Half-Life 2. Part of the experience.

But recently I tried replaying ToEE with Co8 patch. Money would reset to random amounts on loading a save, you could easily wear shields and weapons that should be incompatible, some other quirks - that's before even starting the game proper. Then there's no fog of war in Hommlet - and turns out, that's a 'feature'. I dunno, somehow the first 10 minutes of this "patch" made me uninstall it, even if it otherwise fixes something important.

With regards to reviewers and bugs, on one hand they're expected to report if the game is even functional (and more recently, people also expect graphical downgrades to be reported on). Sure, you might think a complex game being unpolished is fine, but if a reviewer just skipped over all the bugs, even you would find that suspicious. On the other hand, in a world where a journalist getting the worldwide exclusive first look at Thi4f or Skyrim hasn't played TDP and Morrowind (in case of Gameinformer), bugs might be the only tiny bit of objectivity they can hope to maintain. Fully applies to steam user reviews.
 

Erikolaiz

Educated
Joined
Jul 19, 2017
Messages
81
header.jpg


All the broken quests probably bothered me the most.

Thankfully it's very playable with the community patch.
 

Modron

Arcane
Joined
May 5, 2012
Messages
9,939
Prelude to Darkness, it was a wonderful game but finding whatever version worked best on your system was basically trial and error, I remember settling on an earlier version something like 1.41 because it just gelled with my computer back then, I should replay it one of these days but I fear windows 10 has probably just exacerbated issues even more.

That said I guess the answer is no because I powered through it just fine.
 

octavius

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Aug 4, 2007
Messages
19,185
Location
Bjørgvin
Bard's Tale 3, I guess. Enemies lacked all kinds of special attacks, which made all that combat rather pointless.
It took about 25 years before the UOP finally made it playable.
 

SCO

Arcane
In My Safe Space
Joined
Feb 3, 2009
Messages
16,320
Shadorwun: Hong Kong
The more autistic you are, the more bugs annoy. Bugs, cargocults, bad weeboism or other pandering and bad features piss me off immensely because i go right to thinking: this would work better if [....]
 

SCO

Arcane
In My Safe Space
Joined
Feb 3, 2009
Messages
16,320
Shadorwun: Hong Kong
It's not considered a bug but it fucking should be. Games that allow me to invert the x-axis but not the y-axis. Or the opposite of that.

Fucking why? :hmmm:
Why would you want to invert the x-axis? Are you secretly a Mirror world infiltrator?
 

Jacob

Pronouns: Nick/Her
Patron
Joined
Dec 24, 2015
Messages
3,336
Location
Hatington
Grab the Codex by the pussy
When a game crashes while you are trying to save your progress there is no way to enjoy it, no matter how good the gameplay is.
 

Jokzore

Arbiter
Joined
Mar 18, 2017
Messages
623
Can we count Uplay as one massive bug ? If so, then yes.

edit: and lets not forget blizzards brilliant idea of making Diablo III always online so you can experience the joy of lag even in singleplayer.
 

Mojobeard

Augur
Joined
Dec 12, 2010
Messages
393
Twitcher 3. That bug where the screen stays black after a loading/save/whatever screen and wolves eat you. I had it happen so many times that I just dropped it.

Lords of the Fallen. Actually managed to bear with the game somehow. But then a boss kept pummeling me through the floor, as in hit me with a downwards swing that made me fall through the map. This happened about five times, boss was at 20% every time.
 

octavius

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Aug 4, 2007
Messages
19,185
Location
Bjørgvin
edit: and lets not forget blizzards brilliant idea of making Diablo III always online so you can experience the joy of lag even in singleplayer.

Lag was already present in D1 and D2 when most of the game data was not installed on your HD, but had to be read from the CD. And CD players were slower (and NOISIER) back then.
 

Delterius

Arcane
Joined
Dec 12, 2012
Messages
15,956
Location
Entre a serra e o mar.
edit: and lets not forget blizzards brilliant idea of making Diablo III always online so you can experience the joy of lag even in singleplayer.

Lag was already present in D1 and D2 when most of the game data was not installed on your HD, but had to be read from the CD. And CD players were slower (and NOISIER) back then.
In that case I commend them for recreating the experience.
 

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