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Are buggy games a cultural phenomenon?
fizzle32
Member Posts: 171
If you look at the European MMO's, you notice they are the most buggy.
Funcom's Anarchy Online was the buggiest POS when it first came out, in fact I consider it buggy as hell today and refuse to play it.
Eve Online, the markets are always down, the jumps are always slow, feels like the servers are always on the verge of crashing.
Neocron, the concept is wonderful but the implementation is a disaster. This game has more bugs in it than a roach motel.
By comparison all the American MMO's are relatively clean. WoW, EQ, EQ2, Asheron's Call, etc.
I feel that European companies and people have a more "socialist" work ethic, and basically don't work as hard. I mean German workers are used to an 8 hour workday and full benefits, do we really expect them to be workaholics when it comes to MMORPG's?
Comments
Please put down the crack pipe. All MMoRPG's have bugs. What culture they come out of doesnt make a difference! American ones are clean? wtf are you talking about. Clearly the smack when right to your head. Must have been a pure cut as well. Have you played EQ, EQ2, WoW, SWG? They are full of bugs. Some bugs in EQ are 6 years old! MMoRPG's are some pretty complex games. Your going to be dealing with bugs as long as your playing them.
I play Eve-online and compared to WoW , EQ2 and SWG its pretty clean. If you zone slow its your pc because i barely notice zoning. CCP is probably one of the best game companies running an MMoRPG atm.
Make a difference!
Actually that can have effect on quality. If in somones culture doing minimal work and great salary/hours/benefits and not being fully motivated then yeah it can have a major effect.
See the reason why American games Are so Clean is that when we realize what working in the U.S. entails, you have 2 escape options: 1. work for the goverment 2. develop games
Capitalism drives competition.
Other things such as Communism and Socialism, everyone is equal so u can slack da hell off and not get in trouble :P
On the Never Ending search for a satisfying mmorpg.
On the Never Ending search for a satisfying mmorpg.
Hmm... EQ2 was buggy... and so was Star Wars Galaxies. But that's just cause it's Sony Online Entertainment... they suck as a company all together.
And please don't put WoW into this either! This is Blizzard we're talking about here!!! When they make a buggy game, THEY FIX IT ASAP!!!
Other companies... if it ain't broke, don't fix it! As long as the game still runs and doesn't affect more than just 25% of the community, leave the bug as it is. Then you start wondering why the community for games like Star Wars Galaxies seems to be dropping by 25% every month.
___________ ___ __ _ _ _
Stealth - Ambush - Hemorrhage - Sinister Strike x2 - Cold Blood - Eviscerate - Vanish - Preparation - Cold Blood - Ambush - ... you're dead! :P
Oh my god, that's frickin' hillarious! You, sir, are in serious need of a reality check.
You really need to be careful saying that. The permanent FUBAR situation that is Battle.net and the Diablo franchise is grand testament in glaring contradiction to what you are saying.
As a LONG time software developer myself (over 27 years), Bugs in games are NOTHING new.
Any computer program of ANY major size has lots of bugs in them.
Some software makers are better when it comes to fixing bugs in their software.
Have seen many really good games and some very very poor games.
Attention to details is VERY VERY important.
It isn't culture that has ANYTHING to do with it.
It is the people involved and how well they handle things.
Making a "broad statement" like "everybody is doing it"... Frankly doesn't make it so!
none
If the cultural differences between the US and Europe were all that significant, I might be inclined to agree. However, in terms of cultural positions, MMO designers and coders are in very similar situations the world over: they have high-level white-collar jobs in a very competitive field. Regardless of the level of socialism in their home nation they have a lot to lose if they get fired, and a pile of people looking to replace them, so competition is fierce.
On the other hand, the policies of the company one happens to work for has a HUGE effect on the quality of any engineered product. Add to this that there are only a very few companies in the world that actually finance the production of games on the scale of an MMO, most of which concentrate their influence over small geographical areas, and you might be able to find a link between geography and game quality. Unfortunately, stifling corporate environments seem to be able to pop up anywhere, so we'll not soon see an end to sub-standard production!
Lastly most professionals take a great degree of pride in their work, regardless of the conditions of their job. Buggy products are pretty unlikely to be the result of developer laziness (particularly games - game programming is a dream job!). Much more probable causes are lack of experience, late recognition of design errors, tight budget and time restrictions, or communication problems between technical and management staff. This has at least been my experience, as a simulation programmer who's worked with people from a variety of backgrounds...
SOE is an american company. So i guess american companies suck because of the culture. WoW had one of the worst roll outs ever. Blizzard is an american company.
Every company tries to fix bugs. WTF would they go through the effort of putting out a product to never support it. SOE tries very hard to fix bugs.
Name an mmorpg that has no bugs? You cant. Bugs are usually relative to the amount of creativity going into a game. Blizzard offered nothing new with WoW and since there was nothing new there really shouldnt have been half the problems there was/is. EQ2 on the other hand implemented several new features to the mmorpg genre and hence had more issues, but even EQ2 had a smoother rollout than WoW. I'm not saying which is a better game. IMHO they both suck so bad i'd like my money back.
To make baseless blanket statements such as this is clearly a sign of your ignorance about other cultures. We dont shit diamonds in america. The french don't shit coal. Bad companies make bad games. Stupid people make stupid statements.
Make a difference!
SOE is an american company. So i guess american companies suck because of the culture. WoW had one of the worst roll outs ever. Blizzard is an american company.
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I haven't noticed many bugs in WoW. Been playing it since first week of release, other than the server being rebooted twice, I've noticed no problems.
I also play Eve, and the servers constantly feel like they're about to crash. Nodes and markets are down almost every day. The graphics consist of a very nice space wallpaper with average looking objects being moved around in it. When you warp, you literally see the sun being dragged across the wallpaper along with other objects to make it feel like movement.
The PvP in Eve is %90 gate ganking, %5 pirates attacking miners and %5 fleet battles. The fleet battles are laggy as hell despite the fact that nothing really technically complex is going on graphics-wise.
You see some ships (oooh aaaah) shooting beams at each other, you see missiles, explosions, smart bombs, the space wallpaper background, the space objects like the sun, maybe a nearby planet. Basically nothing special just basic graphical elements, and yet the lag is horrendous.
Zoning is like a 3-5 second wait for the new zone to load, and another 5 seconds before the warp drive kicks in. I have always wondered why it can't preload all the zones connected to the system, since there's so little graphics, and a grand total of what, 100 objects per solar system not counting the players?
I put Eve in the same category as Neocron and AO. Great concept. Very nice artwork. Just a disgusting technical implementation and bloated code. The courier missions have been bugged for the past 4 weeks, you'd think they'd simply shut down the escrow system until they can fix it.
I see no reason for any of these problems with these games, other than European socialist attitude. Like "oh we'll get it it someday" or the current CCP motto of "Soon" (tm.)
By contrast WoW, EQ1, EQ2, DAOC, AC1, AC2, COH etc all of them are extremely playable and technically complex. Its not objects moving around a wallpaper, everything is textured with birds and small animals running around. If the server is down for hours, heads will ROLL, if the market doesn't work, heads will ROLL, bugs get patched almost on a daily basis.
To me, that's a testament of one thing : American work ethic. We have no safety net here, if you dont work hard you dont eat. If you dont work for a good company, your kids get no health coverage. So yeah American coders work their buns off, and it shows in the technical achievements of American games as opposed to European ones.
the cultural differrences between the US and Europe are no where near as big as you, or your media have led you to beleive. a few good things to remember: Europe was capitalist before the US was colonized, in fact the leading force of colonization was mercantlism - the predecesor to the capitalist system, therefor unless the US has somehow radicaly adapted a new system (which it hasnt) they are essentialy the same. The socialism you mention is not Soviet or Chinese style Communism, so please attempt to keep the two seperate, people in Europe still earn a wage, like their american counterparts and yes they can get fired for sloppy code.
to take your arguement and spin it, the us coders, hell bent on only making money would code poorly as all that mattered was making the sales after release which could be entirely done on godo marketing, whereas the europeans could make an excellent game as money was not the object but the creation of a work of art.
i am biased towards european games, i find that they are more creative and likely to be innovative and imaginative. games from us creators tend to be more straight laced, cookie cutter (if it worked before then lets redo it, or it worked in europe so lets copy it).
but as you can see i have a cultural bias against the US so i shouldnt argue that were the same too hard.
Tacklebury --}>>>
Explorer 93%
Achiever 53%
Socializer 33%
Killer 20%
Tacklebury --}>>>
Omg you are the stupidest f**k I have ever seen right a god damn post on the internet. You think you are smart by using large words but man, you are one dumb fu*k.
1: most europian countrys are not communist
2: Americans are the biggest slackers in the whole entire world, ( small exageration)
3: omg are you really that stupid? You think if you live under communist control you can slack off? That is total bullshi* why do you think you buy your products from China so cheap. Cause the people have to work hard and they get payed little. If they slack off, they will probably not be able to feed there familly.
So please, never post again!
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www.fomportal.com
Best game EVER.
Even though its not out and I havent played it
Nuffsaid
no.
Eve has lag because it has 5845(av.) users simultaneously in one universe, and 80% of them stay in 20% of the systems. For some unbeknowst reason, it also doesnt have level of detail on the ship models (bad, bad idea CCP). Very few of the bugs you mentioned are anything other than 'annoying', and it seems that you simply didnt like the game.
wow, the height of technical complexity...moving some npc animals around the screen... now, if those bunny rabbits (or whatever they were) were moving at 320m/s firing an uber weapon of doom (transversally), calculating fur impacts and having collision detection with nearby rocks that comment might have been relevant.
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PvE in general is pretty lame, if you think long and hard about it. You are spending your time beating a severely gimped AI that would lose to a well trained monkey. Best not to think too long and hard why you are wasting time playing games in general actually...
wow, the height of technical complexity...moving some npc animals around the screen... now, if those bunny rabbits (or whatever they were) were moving at 320m/s firing an uber weapon of doom (transversally), calculating fur impacts and having collision detection with nearby rocks that comment might have been relevant.
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First of all, there are no physics involved. The game isn't calculating the speed of a projectile moving through space, it's generating a random number and calculating a hit or miss depending on optimal range, transversal velocity and turret tracking speed.
Computers are designed to do millions of these calculations in the blink of an eye, the video game industry is all about the packaging, making the UI pretty, making the market database seamless, presenting information in convenient ways, making sure the servers can handle these thousands of transactions, and lastly (and most importantly) presenting the video and audio in a manner conducive to entertainment.
So yes, a cute little bunny rabbit hopping around, then getting chased by a leopard as lunch with the snow splashing, that takes infinitely more computing power to render than calculating whether or not you got hit by a railgun. The average home PC has more than enough power to do all this and much much more, it's just a matter of having good, tight code.
In the end in comes down to BUSINESS. Who is going to pay for that tight code? Maybe instead of tight code, we put out sloppy code and make everyone buy a new computer. Maybe we put out sloppy code and make everyone lag.
And business is influenced by national policies, they dictate the culture of the country. Here in America the standards are high, people don't put up with second best, or amateur work, every product has to compete in the marketplace and livelihoods depend on it, we don't have a national health care system, we don't have any meaningful safety net. You cannot live on public assistance or unemployment benefits. Either you produce, or your kids go without. This is why our culture is like this, and this is why the games produced by American companies are simply cutting edge.
As far as China is concerned, I dont consider them socialist at all, they treat their citizens worse than we do, that's why they put out good products so cheaply. If they ever got into the video game market, you can bet your a$$ the code will be tight like prom night. Asian cultures are smart and work their nuts off.
Europeans are very nice ppl with potential. Simple fact is their culture is laid back. In Greece they work from like 9 to noon, then take a 4 hour break, then work from 4 to 8, then usually dinner and family time. In Italy people take 2 hour lunch breaks, and taking 2-3 weeks worth of sick days per year is common. Hey good for them. I *WISH* our conditions were that good. As it is, our economy is in the tank, our president is a moron, our taxes are going up, and we're all working more hours for less pay.
I've never been to Iceland, but I've seen pictures, those guys look too happy to be workin hard.
double post
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PvE in general is pretty lame, if you think long and hard about it. You are spending your time beating a severely gimped AI that would lose to a well trained monkey. Best not to think too long and hard why you are wasting time playing games in general actually...
i never said there were, its still 4 calcualtions the server has to do for every shot. BTW, the bunny animation will be client-side, so will have a neglible effect on the server, therefore is irrelevant in terms of lag (unless there were lots of them and they were high poly, in which case it would be client-side lag similar to eve's fleet battles).
ROFL. If this is what you truly believe, fair enough. Ignorance is bliss.
---sig---
PvE in general is pretty lame, if you think long and hard about it. You are spending your time beating a severely gimped AI that would lose to a well trained monkey. Best not to think too long and hard why you are wasting time playing games in general actually...
I dont think buggy games have anything to do with culture, but i do think the size/support/reputation of a company making a game does have a significant influence on the quality of the game. Granted, all games will be buggy, and its up to their quality control to knock out as many bugs as they can before release. There hasnt been a single mmorpg released yet that doesnt have bugs, however some have way more than others.
I think the bigger companies like SoE or Blizzard get the resources, man-power, and overall $$$$ to spend on hardware to accomodate the players. Whereas a smaller company doesnt have the $$$$$, so they tend to get by as best as they can. They also answer to investors and their timetables, and in that respect i think the smaller companies get less leeway where the investors/publishers wont give them the benefit of the doubt to release later, as opposed to a smaller company with no real reputation.
But i think the bottomline is the company itself, and to what degree theyre willing to release before its ready. Blizzard is top dog in terms of quality games, no company that makes games tests or releases games like Blizzard does. Even then Blizzard doesnt release bug-free, but their willing to spend money(or rather lose money) waiting for it to meet 'Blizzards' standards more than every gaming company i can think of would. Blizzard could've released WOW months earlier than they did and made months of revenue, which equates to millions of dollars, but they didnt. And as far as i'm concerned, i've never played a just released game w/ more content or as finished as WoW. In fact they set a standard that i'm pretty sure any other company will be hardpressed to meet at release.
I think the smaller game companies just dont have the clout or resources to do what some of the bigger companies do. I wont say never, because Cryptic, who did CoH made a fairly bug-free game and they were a small company, but i dont think CoH is as complex as your typical mmorpg either.
Do this...
Create a world with infinite possibilities, just make sure none of those possibilities can screw anything up. When you're finished, email God the source code and make me a GM in the next life.
True Knowledge is Knowing that you Know Knothing!
ALL MMORPGS HAVE BUGS
I guess it's about time to point out that no game is made in a vacuum. Engines (pathing, scripting, graphics, AI, etc, etc) are traded like candy between companies. Companies exist solely to create game sounds, pics, or music. Talent is outsourced, consultants are hired. Server technology (hard and soft) is an accumulation of work by a myriad of organizations.
I have something shocking to reveal: all of these companies WON'T be in the same country. Finding the "all-american" game is about as likely as finding the "all-american" car. And I don't think I need to point out how many people are driving european cars with japanese parts built in the US. Games, like almost anything built using modern technology, are global products.
Combine this with the fact that, as many have said above, white-collar working conditions do not favour any particular nation, and I think the answer here is obvious.
For the love of all things, I'm not an american yet I work for an american company making "american" products. If tommorrow we get bought out by a german company, then tommorrow they'll be "european" products. Welcome to the global village. Try not to be the idiot.
Tacklebury --}>>>
Explorer 93%
Achiever 53%
Socializer 33%
Killer 20%
Tacklebury --}>>>
Tacklebury --}>>>
Explorer 93%
Achiever 53%
Socializer 33%
Killer 20%
Good points definately. I agree. I think the original post is just some unecessary American nationalism being stuffed down our throats again.
Look, I'm an Australian and in terms of "laid back" no other country in the world has a touch on Australia
(massive generalisation). But we work hard and we also produce global village products (obviously). We ourselves are made of a conglomeration of cultures from just about every country in the world. I dont particularly think that the anti-commy-pinko-leftist-right-wing-nazi-anybody-else-in-the-world-is-wrong-and-we-rock out look is a constructive one.
Yes welcome to the Global village and maybe get out and see some of it before you open your big mouth again.
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Captain Drumunki
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oRO:
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Y!PP:
Captain Drumunki
Screaming Eels
Lord of the Flag of Convenience
oRO:
Kahyr Swordsman LVL 50
No Guild