Topic: Quality of games declining

Please share your thoughts on the obvious:

- Assassins Creed Unity is a buggy mess upon release
- Smash Brothers Wii U has a game breaking, save deleting, console endangering bug
- Little Big Planet is also riddled with bugs, underutilized secondary characters despite being heavily advertised for being fully usable in coop
- Watchdogs graphical downgrade, bland missions, several bugs
- Driveclub disasterious launch with awful (if at all) online performance
- GTA V a year after original release still no heists (promised to come shortly after launch), horrid GTA Online experience in the first weeks
- FarCry 4 while being a good game is basically the same as FarCry 3
- TheCrew has horrid floaty controls, typical ubisoft bland missions and underutilized actual coop gameplay, no ability to create a "crew". Wtf? Pay2win? Wtf?
- Halo MasterChief collection multiplayer weeks after release broken
- Battlefield 4, rushed bugridden game upon release, horrid netcode for months!
- WWE2k15 actually has LESS features than the year before
- NHL2015 has LESS features than the year before
- Gran Turismo 6 on PS3, a YEAR after release it's still lacking features advertised on the gamebox...
- Destiny being SO NOT what was appreciated, advertised and painted a picture with, being charged for further DLC bolstering only the original content of the game
- Diablo now one of my favourite games was a horrid initial launch and took three years and a jump to consoles to become what it is now.
etc...

At first I avoided and hated EA.
Then Activision. Then Ubi. Im running out of developers and seeing that this seems to be a widespread problem crossing systems and companies and even the holy Nintendo shoots a bugger here and there, I'm asking myself whats going on? I mean that games are being rushed out and falsely advertised in the best possible light is nothing new nowadays, all to maximize profits. But fumbling up big stuff like Halo Masterchief Collection, or (to me it was big) LBP? Driveclub? I'm really wondering whats with the quality assurance nowadays.

Looking upon 2015 and beyond I predict a few more big disappointments:
- TheDivision (because y,know, Ubi)
- Rainbow Six Siege (see above)
- The Order (I got that gut feeling)
- Project Cars (unfortunately)

The only games I have a "good" feeling about at the moment are "BloodBorne" despite Fromsoftware delivering BUGridden games that were falsely advertised in the past and "MGS".

The last games I can remember being almost bug free and highly polished actually are...
... The Last of Us... and... well.

No more preorders from me.
No more money from me for unfinished games.
I'll go back to writing, reading and actual sports for my recreational needs.
Only buying games after long and close inspection, not necessarily for full price anymore.

I'd actually be up for more quality and product control, like a document where it is exactly defined what the game is going to be, what the multiplayer will be like and only upon hitting all the marks described in this document they can charge full 60,- for the game, upon missing those marks the price automatically gets lower. I don't want to pay full price for a 80% game anymore. Of course this is dream territory...

Thoughts?

I think a lot of the problem is a product of the digital age we live in. "It's ok, we can patch it later" seems to be the philosophy and it's pretty sickening. Another I'm not a fan of are constant system updates, even if only 100-200MB it takes up memory and the most recent one for the X1 screwed my console, which I have to say I'm not pleased about. Update 2.00 for PS4 fried some consoles, and I'm surprised, but not surprised to hear about game and console endangering bugs even in Nintendo published games. This is the way gaming is today, you either accept it or move on I guess. I'm struggling with both to be honest. There's days I sit to play something like the inFamous games or GTA V or Sunset Overdrive and I have a blast, then there's other days I download an update that supposed to 'improve stability' of my console but it instead ends up f'ing it over and I just want to throw my hands up in the air and walk away. I could never do the latter but I'd be lying if I said, I'm not increasingly frustrated these days which I know has come across in more than a few of my comments. The main problem is I guess I can't fully let go of the good old days.

While I'm not defending, I think that the other thing you've got to remember is that games are getting bigger in scope. Assassin's Creed Unity is a mess, no one will deny that -- but it's also a massive recreation of Paris, filled with NPCs, online co-op, and more.

We should absolutely expect better, but it's hard to compare a game on the scale with Assassin's Creed to something in the SNES era, for example.

That said, you're absolutely right - this year has been a bit of a disgrace, and I think Gamer83's right that there seems to be a "We'll just patch it later" mentality among most developers these days.

Ture, Last Of Us was bug free. Then again there was no game there to be bugged. Arf.

To be honest the title of this is massively wrong. The quality of games aren't declining, it's the quality control of the games. As the two posts above say it's more the attitude that we're the game testers nowadays. Only way to stop it is to take a stand and refuse to buy the game. But then a little group of voices won't be heard sadly.

Do you notice a trend in your list, Scollurio?

Yes, with the exception of Smash and GT6, all of the other games are not made in Japan. I still believe the Japanese tend to polish more their games, which results in less bugs.

And from what I have heard, the Smash thing seems to be people turning off the console while the game is autosaving, thus corrupting the save file, something that would happen on ANY game. I still trust Nintendo and will buy Captain Toad tomorrow on launch day.

I've noticed that to some degree yes, but don't get me started on Capcom for example who seem to be all over the place with the direction they want to take. They seem to be a bit clueless now. Square Enix? Also worrysome.

But yes, generally speaking I DO have the impression that the japanese developers have more of a work ethic or whatever it might be. Still Kaz from Gran Turismo is the prime lord of over-promising and under delivering, not denying the fact that the game that IS there in GT6 is awesome, but it COULD and SHOULD have been so much more.

Totally agreeing with you and sure games are bigger, but to me it's a simple thing of just releasing the games better and test them a bit longer. When I read things like "Don't get fooled by early reviews!" (Destiny) or similar notes from Ubisoft who released the review-copy of TheCrew ON or even AFTER release day all my alarm bells are ringing and I call bull****. Im not the kind of gamer that's up in all frustration when encountering a bug, I just hate when I smell calculated business tactic behind all this.

For this reason I really embrace the Indy-Dev mentality, most of it is shovelware sure, but there are some hidden gems and I ended up playing some Indies way longer than triple A releases. Anyone remember the abysmal Army of Two III? I spent WAY more time playing BroForce early access on steam to get my "coop dudebro action" fix.

Yes we get you hate TLOU. Fine.
And yes the quality control is lacking and as such the overall quality of the finished (or not finished) game.
The best platforming, cutest characters and most engaging story do nothing for me, when the game is mechanically broken.

Its pretty much down to what @get2sammyb has alluded to I think. Games these days are huge in scope & with it comes countless hours of debugging thousands upon thousands of lines of code for those poor sods programming the engines these days. I remember when I used to be a level editor & I was working on my own project once, which after spending a week building my own texture pack, realised there was a bug in the toolset with regards to skewing custom textures when previewing the game world. I had to manually edit the texture properties for about 70% of the world textures while they were placed one or 2 at a time. I was building a 3D futuristic racer & the level was similar in scope to Vohl Square on Wipeout Fusion. Can you imagine the workload for just me there? It took about 16 hours altogether to fix (the reality factory toolset was updated to v0.69 shortly after that fixed the issue. Much annoyance) so multiply that by a lot and I can guarantee its a hell of a lot more work for the devs working on the big AAA titles.

Although I'm not letting the AAA devs completely off the hook (Just looking at the list & its all AAA games). Not when the likes of Compile Heart/Idea Factory/Tamsoft/D3 etc are ridiculed by the press due to their games lacking the budget of bigger studios, yet its their games that tend to release bug free and rarely needing a patch. If the low key studios on a shoe-string budget can do it, whats stopping AAA studios?

@Scollurio

Agreed. I guess part of Capcom's and Squeenix westernization is also to lower the quality control. I heard Operation Raccoon City was atrocious, Capcom did not make it but they are still held responsible for the studio they chose for the job.

I think alot of it is what Sammy and Gamer83 said.  The games got bigger which need more time to work on but developers are not allowing that time.  They are trying to keep to deadlines that smaller games in the past kept too.  The want to hit that Christmas season so bad cause honestly if your product is not out by that time that is a huge loss of sales for any company for example.   Another problem is technology is moving so fast nowadays that we can't keep up by we are trying.  What is the big deal now in six months is nothing.   If games don't come out when they are scheduled in six months time they are obsolete so to speak.  So in order to make these deadlines developers have got the "we will patch it later" mentality.

As another thing I noticed on some of your games (particularly) Destiny, WWE 2K15, and Far Cry 4 is that there is nothing really wrong with the game it just didn't meet YOUR expectations.  (When I mean your I mean it as a whole not just you).  Gamers today have high standards.  They can't just sit down and enjoy a game without comparing it to something else.  I honestly don't think there was anything wrong with Destiny, except that it was on consoles.  Comparing WWE 2K15 to 2K14 is kinda of pointless since they are made by different developers.  Not many people know this but by the time 2K got there hands on 2K14 it was pretty much done for them by THQ before they went bankrupt, while 2K15 is their first time doing a game like this so of course somethings are going to be different or "missing".

I don't know really these are just my thoughts but for one thing I rarely pay full price for a game so this sort of thing doesn't bother me. By the time I do buy a game I have read the reviews, heard about all the "bugs" which by the time I get are more then likely all fixed.

Destiny and The Crew are MMOs though. They need to actually have more people than about 20 reviewers playing them at once to be experienced
correctly. Those are legitamite claims. It's not like they're doing this with singe-player games that can be experienced as intended alone. The only for a actual day one review for a game like to be released it for to be rushed or faked.

Surely you are right about games getting bigger in scope but you're wrong about one thing. They are NOT keeping the pace of the past. I can remember that games used to stick around MUCH longer than today. I think what's really killing it all is the annualization. Even though its with a rotation in dev studios, this trend has to stop. I can clearly still remember DICE saying in an interview shortly before the release of BF3 that this will be the platform for a long time to come with big DLC support just like Battlefield 2 was. Well and a year later we got a bugged Battlefield 4. Thats the things that get my blood steaming.

About WWE2K15, Far Cry and Destiny, I beg to differ (no offense here). When an annual sports game ends up with LESS features than the game the year before, thats a step back, fact. Nothing to do with expectations. Why buy an inferior product only because its visuals are a bit better? Destiny was clearly marketed as something it is not, just gotta watch trailers of the past and dev commentaries speaking of features that are not to be found in the full game. Thats not my (or anyones) wrong expectations, thats promises not kept. FarCry 4, like you said, nothing wrong with it and sometimes it's best to play it save and don't fix whats not broken, but most player's impression is that FarCry 4 could have easily been a big expansionpack for FarCry 4.

And about technology. You are right, its moving fast, but we're talking games consoles here. Consoles that are tech locked in time for 5-8 years approx. If there is only ONE The Last of Us, ONE uncharted, ONE GTA per gen, so what? Why not build a good, finished game and support it with OPTIONAL DLC to further ENHANCE whats already a plentiful envisioned game for years to come. Anyone remember what the Expansion Packs of the games of yore used to be? Anyone remember the SHEER amount of content in Battlefield Road to Rome or Secret Weapons of WW2 for example?

Again, everyone got their opinion and thats fine, but I guess as a whole we can all agree on 2 things:

1) research and information before buying a game is more necessity than ever, brandname or trust in publisher/developer alone doesn't suffice anymore and pre-order boni are mostly pointless anyways

2) whatever the reason, the times, the pressure from the publisher, this is not a good trend at all.

Right?

Read up on players experiences about TheCrew. You can't even create your own crew, there is no real coop mostly only PVP races with random strangers. That's - to me - contrary to what the NAME of the game makes you believe and what early trailers showed us.

Stuff like WWE 2K15 comes down to an annual production cycle I think. From what I've seen of Ben's coverage on that game, they nailed the engine, but didn't have time left to populate it with content. An extra year of development would have resulted in a much better game.

I'm sure next year's WWE title will be great. Of course, that's not fair on the people that paid $60 for it this year.

You also have to remember that 2K had to create a New engine from scratch since the last game was done by THQ.

I see your point but as a customer I simply say: If you're not ready to release it, don't.
I'm really curious how Blood Borne, MGS, The Division, Rainbow Six and Battlefield Hardline (not that I'd be interested in it) will fare.

I agree.  As a fan of the WWE games I wouldn't have mind waiting another year.

That still doesn't change the fact that the reviewed wouldn't be able to propely judge the game before day one. It can't have day one reviews because of the MMO nature. The games execution, be it good or bad, doesn't change that fact.

The Crew is on permanent Beta for PS4 and is readily available for download now. Check it out for yourselves. IMHO tho the car handling is awful. Esp for a driving game. most game producers are leaving a lot to be admired in game production/release these days. totally agree with OP.

In a digital online age with games, we should be doing away with demos and opening up full betas (hell even alphas for some consistant beta testers)for every game before release. That way everyone gets to try out the overall feel of a game and aid in its development while also confirming for themselves if it is indeed the game they fancy buying before shelling out 100% of the costs for a game that will probably cost the same again in DLC over the life of the game. It's a win win for the companies, we become the testers for the companies and in turn we don't making silly mistakes when buying such titles as we have seen if the game is for us in the long run.