Fallout 4 scepticism...

[brokenergy]

Gamebryo/creation engine, it doesn't even matter what engine that they use (since all engines are optimised to do different things) when we should be worried about Beth's QA, PC port and writing. Skyrim didn't leave anything to the imagination, the PS3 port was crap and let us not forget the horrible optimisation for the PC. People will mark it high because it's a Beth game and after the hype is gone then we'll see it for what it really is.

[Tony the Wookie]

People will mark it high because it's a Beth game and after the hype is gone then we'll see it for what it really is.

 

It isn't just the hype crowd that gives Bethesda games high scores. I was at the Game Developer Conference in San Francisco the year Skyrim was released, and it was held in high esteem by other game developers.

 

It is really just a small minority of whiny little fans who expect to have them both make the biggest game ever and also have it as thorough in every way as the 20 hour videogames they buy for the same exact amount of money.

 

The average person is hyped for Fallout 4, it is going to be huge and bring a lot of joy to a lot of people. You can sit here complaining and be left out of the fun if you like, but is your ego and desire to bring others down so great you want to miss that? Really?

 

 

Seriously, I wish you guys the best of luck. I can't really stick around the defeatist vibe this conversation has brought, so I will leave you guys to your chat while I go rejoin that happy, excited people in the real world.

[JimboUK]

Gamebryo/creation engine, it doesn't even matter what engine that they use (since all engines are optimised to do different things) when we should be worried about Beth's QA, PC port and writing. Skyrim didn't leave anything to the imagination, the PS3 port was crap and let us not forget the horrible optimisation for the PC. People will mark it high because it's a Beth game and after the hype is gone then we'll see it for what it really is.

 

Every game Bethesda has released since and including Daggerfall has been riddled with bugs, Skyrim was worse than Morrowind, the damn thing wasn't even finished. You're right, hype will sell this game, people will believe what Todd Howard and Peter Hines say despite both of them being about as honest as Peter Molyneux. Once fixed the game will be great for those who only want to walk around shooting things, those who won't notice the terrible writing but those who want a well written game with depth, a game like the originals are going to be in for a disappointment, it'll be the usual post Morrowind Bethesda fare, an incoherent world that's a mile wide but only an inch deep.

[Signette]

@Tony the Wookie

That's odd things you say... Some scripted scenes look just fine, I agree, but overall gameplay clunkyness as it was with FO3 is still there. You can't in all honesty compare staging scenes to actuall gameplay, right? I understand what havok is, but it's poorly implemented. Game with such open world, explosive weaponry and etc should have more interactions with enviroment than few cans or other objects being throwable (without any deformation), but wooden table (for example) wouldn't even deform after being shot by nuclear charge!

There are enough games with vast locations on almost any engine, and UE3 CAN handle it if done right. Borderlands locations are pretty big, Rage is also pretty huge (id Tech), Crysis 1 had very big maps. I can go on and on with examples, it's wrong thing to say that only Gamebryo can handle open world games. FO3-Skyrim aren't THAT big tbh, and those still aren't too detailed to put some heavy strain on engine.

 

Another odd statement was your example of Black Ops 3... I dunno how person involved with development and knowledge of some engines can not know, that CoD games are using outdated version of id Tech (3 IIRC) and ALL they have basically done in their games are updated textures and improved lights (barely), no interactions with enviroment, animations are stiff and wooden (exactly same as in CoD4 lol), seriously, CoD franchise is one big laughingstock of gaming industry, how can one bring this game as an example is beyond me, especially when FO basically suffers from the same crap.

 

I got a feeling from your posts that you have spend VERY few time with Skyrim and even fewer with modding it (if any at all?). I bet if you did spend more, you'd better understand what me and others are trying to say here, and certainly wouldn't be too optimistic about it. Even guys who can be named as blind FO4 fans at heart are saying that they KNOW this game will be broken and unplayable on release, and they have to wait uncertain amount of time untill game will be fixed, and Skyrim STILL isn't fixed, it's somewhat brought to decent shape by MODDER community, but long time abandoned by developer. If that's doesn't lead you to any sad conclusions, than I dunno what will...

 

I'm somewhat glad that there are people like you in the world, I'm saying it without sarcasm or trying to offend.

[Tony the Wookie]

There is no way Unreal could handle it or anything close. The games you mentioned aren't even close to the scale of Skyrim... Crysis 1... really... that game isn't even 1/10th the size, and it doesn't even have the kind of scripts that need to run in an open world type game, because it is a simple FPS made to look pretty and not much else. I like the guys at Crytech, real nice people, they gave me lots of free hats oddly enough... but they only really do one thing, and that is visuals.

 

Have you ever opened up the Unreal Development Kit in your life? It is great, but it is a totally different animal from the very start. Assets are organized and optimized for level based building, not open world. It is that way from the very core of how you put together your files.

 

The number or scripts running in Skyrim is staggering, while Borderlands has much less, not to mention they had to break the world into different load areas because it was already too big, and it isn't even 1/4th the size of Skyrim.

 

It seems your problem with Bethesda is the lack of a good physics engine and the fact that they run way more scripts than anyone else and things break as a result. Both valid points, but way off of what you are blaming it on. None of this has to do with an outdated engine or anything close to that.

 

 

 

 

These games aren't broken on release, millions of people buy these games, take them out of the box, and play through the whole thing without any issues and never once mod it. Modders are a huge minority of who plays these games. The non modders are the ones rating these games a 9/10... People don't give a 9/10 to a game that is broken and unplayable.

 

I'm not a fan of the whole dungeons and dragons thing, so I don't play much of TES and I don't mod Skyrim. But I played through vanilla Fallout 3 on Xbox the week it was released and PC not much later and didn't have any problems to complain about. New Vegas was far more glitchy than Fallout 3 ever was.

 

Fallout 3 had a weak engine that needed updating, that's why it was so difficult to make any lighting look good. I know what a weak engine looks like and that was it, Fallout 4 stuff is not. I know fundamentals when I see them.

 

But things are never how you want them to be when building videogames. Do you think game developers always have the most up to date tools they want? No... They work with what they have. Unreal and CryEngine and Unity are no magical fairyland without frustration either, Have you ever tried to program breakable platforms in Unreal 3? It is enough to make you want to hit your head against the wall and pull your hair out. What about working with new animations in CryEngine, does that sound easy? Well, it's not... The whole game industry is duct taped together with whatever they can get to work, you would still be complaining if Bethesda had adopted Unreal 4 and somehow magically made it handle all the open world scripts without burning a hole through your computer, because Unreal 4 would also cause modders problems, just slightly different ones. Go find some stuff to compare modding Skyrim to, and then tell me how busted it is.

 

If you can't understand anything else that I have said, remember this. Making videogames is not easy. At least not if you want to push the envelope.

 

 

 

 

You should be glad there are people like me out there, somebody has to build these videogames so that you can tear them apart with ignorant statements. If tearing other people down makes you feel better about yourself, then I am happy for you. I personally would rather enjoy Fallout 4. To each his own I guess.

 

Sorry, but I don't have any more time to teach you, I must get back to my 3d modeling.

[JimboUK]

There is no way Unreal could handle it or anything close. The games you mentioned aren't even close to the scale of Skyrim... Crysis 1... really... that game isn't even 1/10th the size, and it doesn't even have the kind of scripts that need to run in an open world type game, because it is a simple FPS made to look pretty and not much else. I like the guys at Crytech, real nice people, they gave me lots of free hats oddly enough... but they only really do one thing, and that is visuals.

 

Have you ever opened up the Unreal Development Kit in your life? It is great, but it is a totally different animal from the very start. Assets are organized and optimized for level based building, not open world. It is that way from the very core of how you put together your files.

 

The number or scripts running in Skyrim is staggering, while Borderlands has much less, not to mention they had to break the world into different load areas because it was already too big, and it isn't even 1/4th the size of Skyrim.

 

It seems your problem with Bethesda is the lack of a good physics engine and the fact that they run way more scripts than anyone else and things break as a result. Both valid points, but way off of what you are blaming it on. None of this has to do with an outdated engine or anything close to that.

 

 

 

 

These games aren't broken on release, millions of people buy these games, take them out of the box, and play through the whole thing without any issues and never once mod it. Modders are a huge minority of who plays these games. The non modders are the ones rating these games a 9/10... People don't give a 9/10 to a game that is broken and unplayable.

 

I'm not a fan of the whole dungeons and dragons thing, so I don't play much of TES and I don't mod Skyrim. But I played through vanilla Fallout 3 on Xbox the week it was released and PC not much later and didn't have any problems to complain about. New Vegas was far more glitchy than Fallout 3 ever was.

 

Fallout 3 had a weak engine that needed updating, that's why it was so difficult to make any lighting look good. I know what a weak engine looks like and that was it, Fallout 4 stuff is not. I know fundamentals when I see them.

 

But things are never how you want them to be when building videogames. Do you think game developers always have the most up to date tools they want? No... They work with what they have. Unreal and CryEngine and Unity are no magical fairyland without frustration either, Have you ever tried to program breakable platforms in Unreal 3? It is enough to make you want to hit your head against the wall and pull your hair out. What about working with new animations in CryEngine, does that sound easy? Well, it's not... The whole game industry is duct taped together with whatever they can get to work, you would still be complaining if Bethesda had adopted Unreal 4 and somehow magically made it handle all the open world scripts without burning a hole through your computer, because Unreal 4 would also cause modders problems, just slightly different ones. Go find some stuff to compare modding Skyrim to, and then tell me how busted it is.

 

If you can't understand anything else that I have said, remember this. Making videogames is not easy. At least not if you want to push the envelope.

 

 

 

 

You should be glad there are people like me out there, somebody has to build these videogames so that you can tear them apart with ignorant statements. If tearing other people down makes you feel better about yourself, then I am happy for you. I personally would rather enjoy Fallout 4. To each his own I guess.

 

Sorry, but I don't have any more time to teach you, I must get back to my 3d modeling.

 

FO3 had seven patches and it's still broken, you can't have had "no problems to complain about".

 

Do you have any proof that you're a developer? because I'm seeing a lot of appeals to authority in your posts with nothing to back them up, your inability or unwillingness to see glaring issues rather suggests that you're not.

[Tony the Wookie]

Fallout 3 never crashed on me until I started loading up mods a year later, never once crashed on me on Xbox. Never got stuck in the floor, never had a quest ruin my ability to finish the game, never had anything I would spend even a second complaining about. It worked for me as well as millions of other people.

 

My modded Fallout 3 game got stuck in the ground a few times when I played the Point Lookout dlc, but that has also happened to me in Mass Effect and many other games I have played, nothing that a quick load and 2 minutes of re-playing something doesn't fix. Plus, that was a modded version of the game. Xbox version, no issue.

 

I played that game a lot, it was fun at the time. Hasn't aged well, didn't enjoy New Vegas nearly as much, though that might have to do with me being much more busy during that time in my life. Fallout 3 came out my senior year in highschool, and I was only going to school 2-3 hours a day because I had all my credits besides senior English, so I had time to kill while my band members and girlfriend and other people I hung out with were stuck in class. Left me a lot of time to either play games or play guitar by myself.

 

Didn't play much Skyrim, I'm not really into the whole dungeons and dragons thing, and I spent 2011-2012 working on a now defunct videogame I was really passionate about making. But 20 million people buying it and the average person giving it a 9 out of 10 on Xbox without mods is just too much evidence slapping me in the face to believe it is totally broke and unplayable.

 

 

 

 

But I'm no developer, I have tried to be a developer and have been on many projects that failed because of financial reasons. I plan on being a developer in time, I have worked with many professional developers, I have learned from them, picked their brains, gone to the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco so I could work with the tools and gain more knowledge. I have professional game programmers I eat lunch with and hang out from time to time.

 

I didn't work on Crysis, I ran into some guys that did early in the morning before the actual conference started, and they showed me how to work with their engine at their booth, then I went home and built stuff in the engine for my portfolio so I could apply for a job there.

 

I got lots of free hats and shirts from them, they had too many and didn't want to lug the boxes back across the Atlantic with them. But I was just a guy that was hanging around in the right place at the right time.

 

 

 

 

I am no developer, but I am more than familiar with the struggles of many different game engines, I have poured years of my life into projects that got delayed and eventually canceled because of a snag in the way Unreal can handle stuff. I've had 3ds Max files I spent weeks on get corrupt and become totally lost, I've worked with Zbrush back before it actually worked right. I've made maps that look amazing until I go to compile them and then the whole thing breaks, turns black, and the only way for me to get it to work eventually is to rebuild it in a new file.

 

I've duct taped and patched together and fudged things in so many crazy ways just to get something working that I sometimes wonder how any of it ever stayed together.

 

I am no developer, but I have been around enough to know that the problems you see using Bethesda's creation kit are the same problems you see with any kind of tool you use to make videogames.

 

I can show you a quick overview of what exactly I used to do in Unreal, I won't show any of my team projects on a public forum, but this particular example I made from scratch myself to show to potential employers what kind of workflow I had. It isn't up to 2015 standards by any means, but if you want to see my current work you will have to wait about a month until I announce my current project to the public.

 

 

 

 

So long story short, there are glaring issues in Unity, Unreal, and CryEngine as well as Gamebryo. I am as in the dark as you are when it comes to any of those other engines, but logic would tell me they are probably just as flawed as all the rest.

 

I'm no expert, but that doesn't mean someone like Signette who doesn't even know what a game engine is or does has any authority to tell me how out of date it is and that professional game programmers 'probably' cannot upgrade it.

 

 

 

 

You should really stop needlessly bashing stuff you don't understand and trying to bring others down when all they are trying to do is design a gigantic open world game for everyone to enjoy. Why not join the other 99% of people who buy a Bethesda game and love it, as opposed to throwing a pity party? Why not choose to be happy?

[brokenergy]

@ Tony the Wookie

No one is having a pity party here, some people are critical on how Beth uses it's resources when it comes to developing it's games. To expect that they are absolved of criticism just because that it fared well in a Game Developer Conference or some other game show doesn't cut it. Heck I would be just as critical but more tempered with my responce when it comes to other games, and this is from of a bias Dragon Age fan. I don't want to wait and download a UI mod just because Beth couldn't make a better PC interface, or for people on console to wait for a patch that addresses all the bugs or for a story that is completely from a template from word. If you and other like you are excited, then that's great for you, I'm excited for Fallout 4 too, but even I realise that Fallout 4 will not be the greatest game in this generation, no game will be perfect. We just want a game with few bugs a possible that it lease playable to boot on PC, is that much of a hard ask?

Edited October 25, 2015 by brokenergy

[Tony the Wookie]

I don't think it is going to be one of the greatest games by any reach. I just expect it to be a pleasant game. A pleasant game that will let me mod and do my thing.

 

I just can't see any logic behind calling Bethesda games unplayable on release. I can speak first hand and say that Fallout 3 was very playable start to finish, 80+ hours right out of the box. I played the game, no issues.

 

And there is no possible way in the realm of logic, that Skyrim could have been even half as bad as people on this topic are claiming, because if people were not able to finish it, they wouldn't be online giving it 9 to 9.5 out of 10 reviews. If it wasn't complete and bug free enough for the average person to enjoy it, there is no way that there aren't thousands and thousands of people out there giving the game 2s and 3s and bringing that score down.

 

The simple group sourcing of data makes it incomprehensible that even 5% of the people who played Skyrim found it unplayable.

 

20 million copies, and probably 20 thousand at the very most modded it. The Xbox version averages a 9.4 score from fan reviews. That doesn't mean it is the best game ever, or even a good game. But it is 100% impossible for it to be as bad as these guys claim and still get that high of a score. It has to be at least a half decent game to get that.

 

 

 

So between my first hand experience playing Fallout 3 day one out of the box, and my second hand knowledge of a large database of knowledge of how people responded to Skyrim, and then the fact that I can't find any evidence supporting the fact that the game wasn't playable day one other the the whining of a handful of people who seem to be natural born buzzkills... My logic can only come to the conclusion that the information presented in the topic by the Bethesda hate club is completely inaccurate.

[JimboUK]

The bugs in Skyrim are well documented, Bethesda are even saying they've learned from them and that Fallout 4 will be better, of course they said a similar thing prior to Skyrims release, a game that constantly crashed to desktop without an edit to the executable.

 

 

 

 

But I'm no developer.

 

Then stop the appeals to authority and telling people they should be grateful for the games you make.