Rant against bugs in games (Fallout 3)
Nov. 27th, 2008 01:38 pmAs I suspected, Fallout 3 does indeed have its share of problems.
(Bug issue, since it seems like that thread linked above is no more: As the player progresses in level, stronger and stronger enemies get spawned. However, non-enemy NPC characters do NOT level up. Therefore, if a stronger enemy spawns near an open bordered town, and the PC is not there to deal with it, the enemy is capable of slaughtering the entire town. This is particularly bad for the merchant NPCs that just roam the wasteland.)
I completely agree with the creator of that thread in that it is totally bad game design that, though enemies get stronger as you level up, the roving NPCs don't and, thus, end up quickly and easily dead due to random encounters with these stronger enemies, without you even being aware of it until it is far too late (in-game days or weeks could pass before you find out about it), which basically breaks quests and screws you over. Dammit. -_-
I won't even talk about the NPCs clipping through geometry and disappearing and such, because it's a given that those things are bugs.
(EDIT)
Just to see what was going on with Crazy Wolfgang (one of the roaming traders who Uncle Roe in Canterbury Commons said he'd lost track of), I used the console cheats to teleport myself to his location. The game dropped me near his dead body, out in the middle of the wasteland, whereupon I was immediately attacked by two Giant Radscorpions and a few Mole Rats. I didn't see his pack brahmin or guard anywhere. I teleported to the location of the brahmin, and it was alive and well just outside of Canterbury Commons, which was miles away from the corpse of Wolfgang. As for the guard, nothing I tried allowed me to locate him (or his dead body, as the case may have been). Trying to teleport myself to him did nothing, nor did trying to teleport him to me, so I'm guessing he just "vanished" like some of the people in that thread were complaining about NPCs doing.
Speaking of that thread, the people in that thread who were saying things like "Oh, but it helps immersion. It's a nuclear wasteland. People should be able to just randomly die like that. They shouldn't change it." are completely full of shit in my opinion. They either don't understand the issue at hand (that non-level-scaled NPCs will almost inevitably be killed by level-scaled enemies), or they don't think that this is a bug/design flaw (even though it obviously is), or they do think it's a bug but don't think it should be fixed because they personally think it does somehow "help immersion" or some such crap. For me, personally, no it does not help immersion. It is a design flaw and needs to be fixed. Period. However, given the fact that the same damn level-scaling crap was in Oblivion as well (and is one of the reasons I eventually stopped playing that game before I finished it), I doubt it will be addressed.
Over in a comment on![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
owsf2000's journal, I was talking about how I often stop playing so many games half-way or most of the way through without actually finishing them... well, the fact that a lot of them are filled with bugs and become no longer fun to play is a big reason for at least some of those games being abandoned. I'm now seriously considering doing that with Fallout 3 as well, same as I did with Fable 2, despite having put several weeks (IRL) into the game, at least until a patch or workaround or something comes about. As awesome as a game is, it only takes one game-breaking bug (or even simply becoming aware of the potential for a non-avoidable game-breaking bug, which in Fallout 3 is the potential for entire towns to be wiped out due to the level-scaled enemies) to make me not care so much about playing it anymore.
(/EDIT)
(Bug issue, since it seems like that thread linked above is no more: As the player progresses in level, stronger and stronger enemies get spawned. However, non-enemy NPC characters do NOT level up. Therefore, if a stronger enemy spawns near an open bordered town, and the PC is not there to deal with it, the enemy is capable of slaughtering the entire town. This is particularly bad for the merchant NPCs that just roam the wasteland.)
I completely agree with the creator of that thread in that it is totally bad game design that, though enemies get stronger as you level up, the roving NPCs don't and, thus, end up quickly and easily dead due to random encounters with these stronger enemies, without you even being aware of it until it is far too late (in-game days or weeks could pass before you find out about it), which basically breaks quests and screws you over. Dammit. -_-
I won't even talk about the NPCs clipping through geometry and disappearing and such, because it's a given that those things are bugs.
(EDIT)
Just to see what was going on with Crazy Wolfgang (one of the roaming traders who Uncle Roe in Canterbury Commons said he'd lost track of), I used the console cheats to teleport myself to his location. The game dropped me near his dead body, out in the middle of the wasteland, whereupon I was immediately attacked by two Giant Radscorpions and a few Mole Rats. I didn't see his pack brahmin or guard anywhere. I teleported to the location of the brahmin, and it was alive and well just outside of Canterbury Commons, which was miles away from the corpse of Wolfgang. As for the guard, nothing I tried allowed me to locate him (or his dead body, as the case may have been). Trying to teleport myself to him did nothing, nor did trying to teleport him to me, so I'm guessing he just "vanished" like some of the people in that thread were complaining about NPCs doing.
Speaking of that thread, the people in that thread who were saying things like "Oh, but it helps immersion. It's a nuclear wasteland. People should be able to just randomly die like that. They shouldn't change it." are completely full of shit in my opinion. They either don't understand the issue at hand (that non-level-scaled NPCs will almost inevitably be killed by level-scaled enemies), or they don't think that this is a bug/design flaw (even though it obviously is), or they do think it's a bug but don't think it should be fixed because they personally think it does somehow "help immersion" or some such crap. For me, personally, no it does not help immersion. It is a design flaw and needs to be fixed. Period. However, given the fact that the same damn level-scaling crap was in Oblivion as well (and is one of the reasons I eventually stopped playing that game before I finished it), I doubt it will be addressed.
Over in a comment on
owsf2000's journal, I was talking about how I often stop playing so many games half-way or most of the way through without actually finishing them... well, the fact that a lot of them are filled with bugs and become no longer fun to play is a big reason for at least some of those games being abandoned. I'm now seriously considering doing that with Fallout 3 as well, same as I did with Fable 2, despite having put several weeks (IRL) into the game, at least until a patch or workaround or something comes about. As awesome as a game is, it only takes one game-breaking bug (or even simply becoming aware of the potential for a non-avoidable game-breaking bug, which in Fallout 3 is the potential for entire towns to be wiped out due to the level-scaled enemies) to make me not care so much about playing it anymore.(/EDIT)
