A 'Fallout' over in-game glitches

Glitch Glitch.

Earlier this month, the sequel to 2008's game of the year hit store shelves. Fallout: New Vegas had plenty of hype and high expectations. Plenty of people pre-ordered the game ready to take another trip into the wastelands.

[Shield]

I can deal with some of the games bugs and glitches but the corrupt save files have stopped me dead in my tracks. I lost hours of gameplay and I am now afraid to continue out of fear it will happen again. The corrupt save file is THE one problem that needs to be fixed post-haste.

Before "patches" were an option games were much more polished.

[NotSoSilentBob]

Patches are what is causing a decline in Developers Q&A. Why should they have to spend Hundreds of hours play testing a game for bugs when they can just release it and have the Q&A testing done by the people stupid enough to buy the game. Bethsada has the WORST record for bugs in games and they continue to just make games and people are stupid enough to buy them and then they bitch and complain about it.

The online aspect of games in todays communities is the decline of Good devs. For those who disagree why do 90% of games have to be patched with in the first month of release? 9 times out of 10 again it is because the game is buggy and didn't have proper Q&A. I have yet to see a game released and then Patched when DLC is actually available and not patched first due to bugs and then patched again for DLC release.

[Basjohn]

You make a solid point. I'd like to add a little to it however.

The real decline in my eyes is that beta tests have become marketing material. Giving away a beta invite with a pre-order or subscription or well, ANYTHING is non-sense. I miss the days where blockbuster titles had in-house long running betas (Blizzard still do this thankfully, but Blizzard don't currently milk us through the ass for DLC either) before even considering a invite-only beta.

Longer running, more controlled (with the marketing aspect most beta players are more the "OMG! CAWD X!" type than the technical or diverse) and less public betas are what we need again.

This is what happens when the people in charge of advertising think they're also in-charge of development.