How about making a game that actually works on release?

Here's my idea for Anet: stop using your update system as a crutch and try releasing a game that actually works when it's released.

Nightfall is full of bugs. I'm not talking about minor henchmen AI glitches or text display errors. I'm talking about a primary quest not being available. I'm talking about party splitting and game crashes in missions. I'm talking about not being able to even connect in certain areas, and therefore being locked out of the game.

I don't mind minor glitches, every program has those, and plenty of games need patching. But Nightfall isn't even playable in certain instances, and that's just not acceptable. People paid money for a working product, not for a broken game that forces people to sit around waiting for patches to even play.

It's impossible to release a game and have it work 100% without ANY errors..

Want a tissue to wipe away those tears? Get over it, every game has hitches like stated just be thankful its not sony or microsoft..they are the worst for releasing utter crap

Would you rather it have such bugs and have it so that those are much harder to fix, with a longer wait for a patch? Boo hoo.

@Both of you: please re-read the following:

I'm not asking for 100% working game. Imagine if Blizzard released Starcraft such that, once you got to some mission, the game just crashed. Or imagine Diablo 2, where once you got to a certain area, half of your party is teleported to a holding cell, unable to do anything, while the other half has to beat the rest of the area alone.

Nightfall is *full* of bugs. Not glitches. Full-out, gamebreaking bugs.
A lot of these bugs are unavoidable if you actually play the game, making me wonder if Nightfall even underwent any QA. It's not like these bugs are the result of obscure and rare circumstances.

Uh, no. I would prefer that the game be QA'd before it's released, so it doesn't have these bugs in the first place.

Shit happens, if it goes down like it did earlier take a break it won't kill you.

I'd rather have them to release the game a bit bugged, then wait longer and play it unbugged.

Besides, there will always be bugs in games.

Every single release for GW has had game breaking bugs. They are adding content on top of all the other updates and changes while the servers are live.

Its going to be just about impossible to predict what is going to happen. If the update system wasn't there they would have to take all the servers off line to get the new content added. Then they could bring the servers back and still have the exact same issues. Want to guess what happens then? Yup they have to take the servers down AGAIN to add more patches and fixes. Rinse and repeat till game is fully stable.

The best aspect of GW is the update system and it always will be.

I challenge you to name one product released without bugs in the history of software. Ever.

Yeah this was a bit buggy compared to normal. But hell I'd like a buggy version now rather than a good version a month from now TBH. Got too bored of factions

Solitaire

as you have said it is impossible to cr8 a game with no bugs at all

but really!! primery mission which is not working is very BIG bug its not something that can be avoided accidently.

minor bugs are always there but no game get released with major bugs that makes you wait for patch to progress more in the game..

and i think there is a bug in solitare.
i am talking about the windows version- in the options draw 3 cards and now
press alt+shift+ctrl and hold them while drawing the cards..
u should take 3.. but only 1 will come out

ArenaNet is a small company that needs to make money, and they do so by sticking to their release schedule. They don't have the time or the resources to go through and find every major bug, they rely on the players to do that. And then once a bug has been reported, they go test it and once they've verified it exists, attempt to fix it.

That's the issue with Anet's business model (though I wouldn't have it any other way). They have to spend time developing new games, adding new content for the current game, and fixing bugs with all the games with less than 100 people, not all of which are programmers.

Oh, and about the primary quest thing, could someone enlighten me on that? I haven't had a problem but I may not be far enough. While I agree this is an issue that should've been caught, I can see why it wasn't, and I'll wait patiently for Anet to fix it. With all the new Nightfall features, they've more than earned my trust.

It's our own fault we have to deal with games that have more bugs than lines of code. There are mainly two reasons for this:
1) We want the game now
2) No matter how bugged the game is, we allways see "well, every game is bugged"

Somewhere in time our tolerance for bugs went from "Not acceptable / Boycott" down to "Meh / Apathy". We soak up all those bugs in the games with the same old stupid explanation that every game is bugged at release while fact is - we shouldn't have to. Atleast not with the amount of money we're paying for the products of the gaming industry.
You know, a few years ago, games with lots of bugs were not accepted. They were simply marked as what they are - unfinished. I don't know why we now all bow our head in humbleness and let the gaming industry get away with it. They will release even more bugged products. It's a downward spiral until the gamers finally say "Nay, that's not a game anymore".

And yes, i'd rather wait a long time for a game than to have it unplayable because of an armada of bugs. And sorry, Nightfall has many many bugs and they're obvious enough to run into them îf you're just playing the game.

So simply, there are NO excuses for gamebreaking bugs. Those are the result of a rushed schedule and lack of communication or downright human mistakes. We're simply talking about bugs here that are impossible to miss if anyone had actually tested things. Things like letting a cutscene end normally will bug the mission so you can't complete it. Bugs where quests just don't trigger the next event and you'll have to re-do it from scratch. Bugs where the game just goes moo. Bugs where the all fabled Hero AI just gets caught in an endless loop.
Those are obvious, downright blatant obvious bugs. And yes, they shouldn't be in the game first hand and we shouldn't have to deal with them. It's our own fault that we have to.
I can accept lag and instances being down because the servers are currently at full load. I can understand translation mistakes. I can't however accept unfinished translations. I can understand bugs in skill or overpowered combinations. I can't accept skills that are not even remotely doing what they should. I can understand graphical glitches. I can't accept getting stuck every now and then.

Small to medium bugs -> who cares
Gamebreaking Bugs -> Nope. We shouldn't have to deal with them. And no, Prophecies and Factions were nowhere nearly as bugged as Nightfall is.

P.S.:
I wonder why companies manage to do it when there is NO buffer for mistakes. Strangely however, as soon as some buffer for mistakes is okay, the whole bug buffer gets filled to the brim and then some more. Speak about lending a finger and getting your hand chewed off.

Seriously, if you really find this a problem, I wonder if you are part of the MMO crowd that got into the genre around the release of WoW, and thus are used to the more bug-free MMO. If you'd spent much time with earlier MMO games, you'd see that GW is up there with the best of them, games such as EVE, in terms of it's stability. GW may have some problems, but conversely, in a year of playing it, for me GW has never crashed - not ever - it's as solid as a rock. You should have tried playing the likes of Star Wars Galaxies at release; it'd be an eye-opener for you if you genuinely think GW is buggy.

I have. I have also seen UO. UO Third Dawn especially which had still "Beta" in their Eula. I know what i'm talking about and i'm still not accepting gamebreaking bugs. Why should i?
If you want to forfeit your rights as a customer, hey more power to you! Oh yes, you have rights as a customer. For example one of which is that the product you purchase must work. Wait, it doesn't? Oops, guess what the topic is about.

/edit:
If someone were to hire a lawyer about this matter- chances to win for him would be almost 100%.
And yep, another...

P.S.:
If you buy a machine and it doesn't work. You go all berserk.
If you buy a game and it doesn't work. You tell everyone it's okay and meh, everything is bugged oO
That's schizophrenia to the max.

I have had problems too, the third portion of the second mission would not trigger, so I just had to quit. But that is what happens when you buy a brand new online game, it isn't complete, and they will always be changing things, even a year from now.

If you are so concerned about game functionality than just wait a month before you try a new game, they will knock out most of the red flags by then.

Those of you who are saying, "all programs have bugs, get over it" are completely missing the point. All programs do have bugs, I've said that myself twice now. But there is a huge gap between minor glitches or bugs that occur from a rare combination of circumstances, and gamebreaking bugs that happen during normal play. It is impossible not to catch these bugs if you just play through the game - you don't even need a professional QA team to do it. People are following mission objectives and crashing the game. That's defined as a non-working product.

Some of you also seem to think that I take issue with their update system. This is incorrect. I take issue with their use of the update system as an excuse to release unfinished products. "Oh, it's okay if we put out this buggy software, we can just patch it later." That kind of attitude pisses me off. I'd much rather wait for a polished, tested game than play some half-assed thing that needs to be patched a dozen times before it's functional. Nightfall has amazing content, but the best content in the world doesn't matter if you're getting game crashes from missions and being locked out of random towns.

I'm surprised that some of you don't think it's strange that Anet has players QA their product after release, as opposed to having their own QA team. Keep in mind that this is the actual Nightfall release, not some kind of open beta. People paid $50 to play this game, and I think they have a right to expect a working product.

I honestly like Nightfall. I think that, from a content standpoint, Anet did an excellent job. But I find their release practices unprofessional.

Don't feed the troll.

Sure, maybe Arenanet wanted to test it more and release it somewhere in december. But do you think ncsoft would have accepted that? no way.

if you think about it, they cant replay the game every time they fix something. for all you know, which isnt much, while finding a glitch later in the game and fixing the code they may have accidentally dominoed and messed up code elsewhere, shit happens. if they noticed a bug 2 days before launch, its not possible for them to fix it, then replay everything to make sure it all still works. yeah i was pissed that it was broke too, but they fixed it in a timely manner and i got over it. so let me just say this, build a damn bridge and get the frack over it.

Saying that "all games are released with bugs" is a blanket generalization that could be used, in the way you guys are using it, to excuse even a game that has NOTHING but bugs and is virtually completely unplayable.

Surely there are degrees of acceptability here. I haven't personally come across any of the gamestoppers yet (haven't gotten very far in NF), so I'm not in a good position to judge. But while it's clearly impossible to release a complex game without ANY BUGS, that should not be an excuse for any and ALL bugs. Surely there is a level of bugfree that should be strived for and acceptable. It's just a question of what that level is. From what I've seen/played so far, NF seems good enough to me. It just bothers me that so many of you are complete and utter fanboys and yes men and just accept anything and everything without question.

uhh, I haven't run into a single bug yet. Bought it the night it came out and have been playing it since. No idea what you're talking about.

and to the guy with the solitaire comment: that's not a bug, that's a programmed cheat, congrats.

Well, i defense of Anet and Ridicule of Anet, here are some of my flamable words.

NC Soft is the publisher of GW correct? I may not be a game designer, or a publisher, but i beleive that to stay afloat in buissness money has to be made at a certain time, yes? NC Soft (in it's generousity) accepted the terms to publish GW with no fees, but with optional exp packs (like the episode system for Half Life 2) that come out regularly. Every six months is the deadline set for these exp packs by NC Soft (i believe). This contract is to be held by Anet, and Nightfall is their product. Miscommunication? Maybe, but it may not be Anet's fault entirely.

This does not entirely take them from judgement, the game should have no gamebreaking bugs due to testing in the beta event. Please, take some time to read the Nightfall FAQ on the GW website. It states that the preview event was the beta....Notably it did not expand past Istan, bad move Anet....Due to this not all of Nightfall was tested, so this might actually have been expected.

Well, what's done is done, and cannot be undone. Lets just go and play the game now....

I love how people have never wrote a program in their life and expect something to be bug free. Guess what sometimes even if something is well tested there are bugs even major ones that can pop up. Guess how many bugs can come up even after something has been tested for the 100th time and works fine but then later down the road something else gets updated in the engine and bam you have a bug in that area that you tested 100 times and knew it worked.

Programmers = Human

Humans make mistakes and when you have a full team of people working on something there is bound to always be miss communication. Games like WoW were tested way before they were ever released because guess what they had the time to fully test it before they ever threw the game out the door, they also have boat loads of money from previously written games/titles to support this. A-Net wants things released every 6 months and to be honest Nightfall changed a hell of a lot of things compaired to Factions and also Prophocies cannot be compaired because prophocies was written and fully tested before shipping. Nightfall on the other hand has been receiving many updates throughout the whole time between the preview weekend and the release date and I bet even the night before it was released things were updated and guess what some stuff didn't get tested.

And for my last note, I haven't really seen as many game breaking bugs as you people keep saying there are but I also haven't been that far through the game yet either. Even if their is a "game breaking bug" I'm sure Anet will get it fixed in a real big hurry because people paid money for the game and they don't want to lose money because of something like that.

This isn't a constructive suggestion; if you want to contribute, go find a bug thread and talk there. Closed.