Quality control

Started by Mr Party Hat
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Mr Party Hat

Has anyone else noticed that games are getting a bit… janky? I don't play as much as I used to, but in the last 12 months I've played:

– Deathloop. Got stuck when the game crashed every ten minutes.
– Dreamlight Valley. Stopped playing when the game crashed every two minutes.
– Fortnite. Tried to play my first game (inspired by feltmonkey's… heroics) and the game never loaded past the intro screen.
– Overwatch 2. Servers didn't work for 2 weeks, and when they did work, the game crashed every time an achievement popped up.
– Forza Horizon 5. Didn't work for a full month after launch.

Is it because games are getting bigger, more complex? Did covid do a number on them? Or has it always been this bad?

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martTM

The world of 'We can fix it in post' is videogames now. Updates are a thing, so they can just fix anything later… doesn't matter once they got your money.

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Garwoofoo

I think it's always been this way, at least since the 360/PS3 generation. Maybe it's more noticeable now because games have more online components, and thanks to things like Game Pass we're all jumping between titles and trying them out on day one before moving onto something else.

Of your list above, Fortnite, Overwatch and Forza Horizon 5 will all be related to server issues. I'm not sure why every big game has server issues on launch still but it seems to be almost guaranteed. The other two are just launch bugs that will almost certainly have been ironed out already.

Basically if you buy something on day one these days, you're a bit of a mug. It'll be half the price and twice the quality in six months' time. Even on Game Pass I find myself playing stuff that's been out for a while, and generally have a nicer experience doing so.

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aniki

I'm not sure why every big game has server issues on launch still but it seems to be almost guaranteed

As someone who's worked on the server side of these things before (not for games, but just website load), this can be an incredibly difficult thing to predict, and as a result extremely challenging to budget accurately enough to convince the people holding the company credit card. Most of these games aren't just running one service, either – they'll have separate APIs for matchmaking, gameplay, potentially even scoring/achievement tracking, all probably but not necessarily connected to a unified database, and if any one of them hiccups it can have knock-on effects to the others (and that's assuming you don't have a memory leak or connection bottleneck somewhere that wasn't caught during beta testing).

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Mr Party Hat

Dreamlight valley update:

  • The game launched at 30fps on Xbox. A bug, which took them two months to patch.
  • When they patched it, they introduced a new bug that caused the game to crash every two minutes. This took two weeks to patch.
  • When they patched it, this introduced a bug that meant the game wouldn’t load, on any platform, for anyone, for a week.
  • They’ve just patched that, people can now get back into the game… and it’s back down to 30fps.
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martTM

You're confusing 'It took them two weeks to patch it' with 'It took two weeks for the patch to be created, processed and distributed'. The fix might have been easy, the system to get patches out on consoles isn't. On PC, sure, it's the wild west and developers have the ability to go straight to the source because Valve et al don't give a shit. That's not the case elsewhere.

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JDubYes

I’m (perhaps oddly) really enjoying hearing about all the weird bugs and idiosyncrasies in the new Pokemans. Highlights so far:

  • “unclimbable” slopes can be traversed by turning around and jumping backwards up them.
  • you can double the run speed of your character by plugging in a second controller and pushing the same direction on that too.
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Alastor

Oh man, Pokemon is the perfect game for this thread. I've been lucky and just suffered from a shitty framrate but I was unable to explore the School without seeing some shit happening (100% if it was polished and had more time for the devs to bug test people would be saying it's a contender for the best Pokemon game…)

I dunno if it's a bug or oversight but the fact that your co-op partner can invade your pokemon battles by just running around is fucking hilarious. Pokemon can crowd around you in the field as you battle so I guess it makes sense but fucking hell.

As far enjoying games without having played them though I don't think I'd ever enjoy Mass Effect Andromeda as much if I actually played it, like Cyberpunk glitch compilations were pretty funny but not 'Character pulls a gun on someone but has the gun facing themself' levels of funny.

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Mr Party Hat

Still holding out hope that this next Pokémon direct has some sort of performance patch announcement. I managed to play an hour or two of the new game but couldn't get any further. Shockingly bad.

Incidentally, the latest Dreamlight Valley patch came out the other day. Still no fix for the Series X game running the Xbox One version instead. It says Series X optimised on the store and it's just… not. Five months it's been broken, and multiple patches. Crazy they can legally promote the game that way. Especially considering they haven't actually acknowledged the issue.

(I'm probably too invested in a kid's animal crossing rip off, but it was a surprisingly good game before they broke it!)

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big mean bunny

Keep me updated on the Pokemon thing. I am considering getting that for the Easter hols for me and the little one, I think she would be most interested in that one due to being able to see the Pokemon rather than just random battles.

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martTM

Keep me updated on the Pokemon thing. I am considering getting that for the Easter hols for me and the little one, I think she would be most interested in that one due to being able to see the Pokemon rather than just random battles.

If that's the case, surprised you wouldn't consider Let's Go Pikachu/Eevee. That's definitely more small child friendly and not broken.

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Mr Party Hat

And another one. Hogwarts Legacy is rough on Xbox. Juddering, low framerate, weird lighting glitches, fog everywhere. It's not even pretty enough, or big enough, to excuse the issues. Although apparently it's fine on PS5.

But this game has been in development for about seven years, hasn't it? How did it launch in this state?

Grumble.

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Cheddarfrenzy

It runs pretty well on ps5, framerate seems solid but there is still some texture pop-in on occasion, especially when it rains. Definitely only minor irritations though, nothing that impacts on gameplay.

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Mr Party Hat

Yeah the Digital Foundry video is pretty telling tbh. Solid 60 on PS5 (30 with ray-tracing) – juddery 50s on Xbox (sometimes as low as 20 with ray-tracing). Plus every time I go through a door in Hogwarts on Xbox, there's a little loading icon on the door and the game freezes for a moment.

It's becoming a bit of a pattern, with games running reliably better on PS5, despite Xbox being the 'more powerful' console. I wonder whether the PS5's faster SSD is paying dividends, for tech reasons I'm too thick to understand.

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Garwoofoo

I suspect the Series S is partly to blame here, it can't be easy having to get the Xbox version running acceptably well on two different machines and it's a requirement that games launch on both. I see the launch of Baldur's Gate 3 (which I was really looking forward to) is currently delayed on Xbox because they're having trouble getting co-op running acceptably on the Series S.

To be honest I find VRR on the TV smooths out frame rate drops on games very well indeed (Digital Foundry were howling in outrage about the ray-tracing modes on the Resident Evil remakes and I thought they were fine, better than fine even, they ran great) so I'm certainly not considering the Series X underpowered or anything but it is interesting.

Of course the real question here is why the hell is anyone playing Hogwarts Legacy but that's more for the politics thread I guess.

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martTM

Digital Foundry were howling in outrage about the ray-tracing modes on the Resident Evil remakes

Gotta love a bunch of middle-aged white men all howling into the void about shit that isn't important at all.

Wait a minute.

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cavalcade

The Xbox is more performant on quite a few titles (I'm fairly sure Callisto Protocol was a garbage fire on PS5 at launch), I suspect it's just whatever the dev teams are using as an internal lead platform, or what they have more familiarity with. On paper the Series X is more powerful, and you'd have thought the PCness of it would make it normally the better of the two by familiarity alone. By and large though there isn't a lot of differences - recent DF videos have been hilarious. The Witcher 3 one has screenshots that would pass muster as a spot the difference puzzle while they wail about major differences in shadows and textures.

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Mr Party Hat

Also, I do think we should have a chat about Hogwarts.

Based on the last few months, I'm not convinced that's possible without it turning into a dumpster fire.

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martTM

I guess it depends… I mean, we're all vaguely civilised here and there's not enough of us to really go off the rails. Maybe?

I don't want to play Hogwarts because:

a) fuck Rowling, but also
b) it's such a gamey game (mini map, icons everywhere, too many cutscenes, press A to do quest, magical trail leading me where to go) and that kills it dead for me. Everything I hate about AAA design in one overly brown bucket of shite.

Oh, and fuck Rowling too.

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Garwoofoo

JK Rowling is a hideous bigot who is using her unfathomable wealth and high public profile to punch down on one of the most marginalised groups in society right now - and encourage others to do so too. Not only do I not want to give her a single penny of my money, she's also stated publicly that she believes her continued high profile demonstrates that people agree with her beliefs, so as Mart says, fuck Rowling.

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Mr Party Hat

I completely agree with the above, aside from I don't care whether my money trickles down (erm, up) to her.

I should care. I know in a perfect world she'd be punished financially for using her platform in such a shitty way. But I only have room in my head for so many principled stands, and if people don't pick their battles they'll go mad.

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cavalcade

I think I've largely settled there (I won't buy it myself, but won't judge anyone who does) - as if we pick out and dispose of the hate filled shitwads who are involved in game dev then there'd be about 9 people left.

But there's something uniquely shitty about Rowling's behaviour that really rankles with me. With a lot of shitheads you can see they're either disingenuously presenting how they really feel, or are just overt twats (Scott Adams for example). Rowling's mix of wealth, privilege, inability to see her own blind-spots, litigious behaviour and army of devoted twats (see also Gervais and Glinner) cheering her on mean she's way up my priority list for a principled stand.

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Cheddarfrenzy

I completely agree with the above, aside from I don't care whether my money trickles down (erm, up) to her.

I should care. I know in a perfect world she'd be punished financially for using her platform in such a shitty way. But I only have room in my head for so many principled stands, and if people don't pick their battles they'll go mad.

Yeah this is where we ended up too. I'm not proud of it, but I'm frankly too tired to fight the good fight for everything all the time.

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Brian Bloodaxe

There's only so much any of us can do. I'm an occasionally active member of the green party, I donate to charity and to food banks. I still eat meat though and I still shop at Amazon occasionally.

But there is no way that I am supporting Rowling any more. I won't buy a game which adds to her wealth, I won't read or watch any reviews or plays of it because it's quality is entirely secondary to the fact that it is the most prominent HP product at a time when parts of America are doing everything they can to make it illegal to exist while trans and there are clearly plenty of people in the UK who, with Rowling as their figurehead, would like us to do the same.

I don't really care if any individual buys the game, but be aware that announcing on Twitter or Facebook that you are playing it is effectively an announcement that you care more about your own entertainment than you care about the lives of trans people. Here in the society it's just us, we are not the wave of social consensus and I think mostly we are good people.

I have unfollowed a couple of people on Twitter who decided to tell everyone that they were playing Hogwarts. Either they are idiots who think it's just another game or they are bigots enjoying the new anti-trans dogwhistle. Either way I am done with them.

I have no sympathy for the twitch streamers who decided to play it after being asked not to. At that level, playing to a hundred or a thousand people, after an entire community has asked you not not to do exactly that, it matters.

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Prole

Ah, okay. If we're going to have that discussion I guess I need to say where I am with this. I'm going to try and do this as simply and as straightforwardly as I can.

Everyone should be allowed to express themselves without fear of consequence as long as that mode of expression does not cause, contribute, or pose risk of harm to any other person peacefully living their own life. The trouble is that Trans Rights, as a movement, seems to be in direct conflict with Women's Rights.

I accept that choosing to live a life where you do not conform to expected gender roles does not come without risks, and that this obviously needs to be resolved. (My formative years were spent in a mining community in the 70s and 80s FFS! If I exhibited any behaviours that weren't considered typical for boys or men at the time - and I did, often - then it was usually trouble. This is why I had to learn to fight.) However, when these harms are discussed and examples cited, it appears to largely follow behaviours of male-pattern violence. It also appears to be that the go-to solution is for men to be allowed to access female spaces in whatever capacity as long as certain (possibly arbitrary?) conditions are met. Essentially, the solution for solving overwhelmingly male behaviours and attitudes to violence can only be solved by women giving up rights to single-sex spaces. I do not think that addressing underlying issues around male behaviours and how men are socialised will be resolved in any real way by asking women to accommodate men further.

My understanding of Rowling's stance appears to be that women should not be expected to give up any of the things which have been hard won over the course of decades because some men feel like they are more 'womanly' than 'manly'. She is not calling for people to be othered or demonised because how they choose to live does not confirm to restrictive gender roles but there are people who are prepared to attribute things to her based on extrapolations or her stated position because that position does not accommodate the potentially unchecked access of men to women's 'spaces' based on someone being in 'girl mode' for whatever period. Where she is being slandered, libelled or her privacy is otherwise impinged upon she is taking steps to protect that. You can argue whether the steps she takes legally are disproportionate or not, but she has the right and means to protect herself in whatever way she feels fit. As she's a billionaire, the legal means available to her are going to far outstrip those available to most of us and it might not be 'fair' to the general population that she can afford to keep very expensive legal teams on retainer for just this sort of thing. Ask yourself, though: if your name, reputation, right to privacy, etc. was being tested daily would you feel that you'd want to fight fair? (I learned to fight, What I learned was that there is no such thing as a fair one. In my experience, this is true regardless of how or where a fight happens.)

So. Do I feel that men should have access to spaces that - until very recently - were regarded as for women only? No. Do I feel that there is room for negotiation on this issue? No, not really. That implies that women have too many rights and protections and, historically, I think we can say that this has never been the case. Should women advocate for their own rights and protections? Absolutely. Should trans people advocate for their own rights and protections? Yes. Should women's rights and protections make way for trans activism? No. Should men learn to grow the fuck up and accept men expressing themselves in a feminine way in 'male spaces'? Yeah, I think so.

TL;DR - Not buying the Hogwart's game because it doesn't interest me in the slightest. If it did, JK Rowling being 'problematic' would not stop me.

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Brian Bloodaxe

So it's pretty clear from that that you don't consider trans women to be women. I do and do I pretty much disagree with everything you have written.

Women should have safe spaces, but that includes trans women. Allowing trans women into those spaces is not allowing men, and all associated threats, in. That's an anti-trans talking point and that demonising of an entire class of people is what makes it illegal for trans people in Arkansas to use any public bathrooms.

Your arguments all make perfect sense if you don't believe being trans is actually a thing. If it was all just men playing dress-up then sure, fuck off back to the gents with them. But being trans isn't just sone modern fad. Historically there have been trans people the world over for centuries. Medical consensus is that people can be trans and should be provided appropriate treatment. It's similar to climate change, 99% of experts agree and they get argued with by people with an agenda, so there is a lot of misinformation flying around.

You should do some more reading Prole, you are on the wrong side of this one.

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Prole

I'm not sure that I am, Brian. I have done the reading. I started it a long time ago (before the birth of my child, even) and continue to do it. These are the conclusions that I drew some time ago and I've seen nothing since to convince me otherwise to date.

I don't believe that trans women are women. I don't believe that trans men are men. I don't believe that either should be made to suffer for how they feel and their modes of expression. I don't believe that you get to identify into another sex, no matter how strong your feelings. I also believe that there's a profound imbalance that needs to be addressed when talking about men identifying as trans women and women identifying as trans men. Men are able to tolerate women in their spaces even when women are expressing typically 'masculine' behaviours because it's fundamentally not a threat. For women, the presence of men (even if they are presenting as very feminine) in spaces where they can reasonably expect to be with other women only is a strong cause for concern or outright threat. I understand that some women are OK with this, but not all are and while some women object I don't believe that anyone else gets to consent on their behalf.

I also don't believe that gender = sex. The two terms have been conflated for a very long time but they represent fundamentally different things. One is a social construct, the other is a biological reality and for women that biological reality has formed and continues to be the basis for oppression by men. For men to then make women a sub-category of their own sex (by demanding that trans women are just the same as women and should be considered as such) is a cause for concern and undermines the basis for the protections that are afforded to them. I believe that it is reasonable that they are concerned and pushing back.

I appreciate that the nature of our disagreement on this is profound and probably can't be reconciled. I'm sorry about that. However, as much as I might sometimes like, I can't pretend that my position is anything other than it is.

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martTM

Okay, and NOW we move it to the politics thread.

At least we all agree that none of us want to play Hogwarts.

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big mean bunny

Keep me updated on the Pokemon thing. I am considering getting that for the Easter hols for me and the little one, I think she would be most interested in that one due to being able to see the Pokemon rather than just random battles.

If that's the case, surprised you wouldn't consider Let's Go Pikachu/Eevee. That's definitely more small child friendly and not broken.

Cheers, I own and have played that and don't even remember that. Will start there then.