Topic: Episode 269: Doin' It Like We Do

[Yoshidious]

This week, RFN returns to the classic format... and it's super effective!

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/rfn/28599

This week's show starts with Great Big New Business. Greg got an early copy of Mario Kart 7 and has a lot to tell us before the American release (same day as this episode drops). James gets another chance to describe his Zelda experience, which launches us into a super-sized group discussion of the game now that all four of us have played quite a lot of it. Jonny was traveling most of the week, and that means he played a lot more Super Mario 3D Land. Jon wraps up this half of the show with a sneak peek at Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Then, we make an epic return to Listener Mail with your much-appreciated kudos and questions about a killer app for the Wii U launch, disappointment with Zelda's graphics, the effect of bug-testing on game prices, and smudges/scratches on the 3DS screen. We absolutely love getting your ideas and questions, so please keep sending them!

This was one of our most heated and fun episodes to record, so hopefully you'll enjoy it as much as we did!

[Killer_Man_Jaro]

I think my Legend of Zelda tastes are most aligned with Greg. I agree that the de-emphasis on exploration is a bit of dampener, but as a fan of the puzzles, I really, really enjoyed Skyward Sword. Each section was like playing an open, sprawling dungeon in order to access a smaller, tightly focused dungeon.

Anyway, I feel obligated to advocate Rayman Origins. I doubt it's on anybody's radar, but if you like beautiful 2D platformers that get challenging fast, put this on your Christmas list.

[Crimm]

I don't allow advocating for Ubisoft properties.

[millerball]

I think there's a very high possibility that Monolithsoft will have a big game ready for Wii U lauch. The last game they released, Xenoblade, came out in june 2010. If you look at their output in the years before that, the only year where they had no game releases was back in 2007. One might think that they have staff working on another licensed Namco project, but that seems unlikely now that Namco has finally sold their last 16% of the stock to Nintendo.


It seems like they're confident in HD development, and they're even talking about taking on Bethesda. A launch game from them could potentially turn some heads.

[Killer_Man_Jaro]

I don't allow advocating for Ubisoft properties.

You suck.

Seriously, give it a try. It's really good.

[Crimm]

No.


Not until I get to punch the person who ported Rayman 2 to the 3DS as many times as I want.




and I do mean "as many times as I want." Their safety has no role in the discussion.

[leahsdad]

Okay, just finished listening to the episode, and have a few thoughts about the cases/screen scratching/hardware revision:

I've got a Hori clear case around my 3DS, and I think one of the advantages of it is that it feels better to hold it during long play sessions.  I've tried it both with and without the case (cuz sometimes I'm lazy and leave it off after charging) and my large 30-something hands feel discomfort without it.  So besides protection for the 3DS, the clear case might help player comfort.  It only adds a millimeter of thickness on each side (if that) but it seems to help me.

And when Johnny was going on about hardware revisions and nintendogs, I think he really hit it on the nose, because the day the next revision comes out and I buy it (which will be at launch), I'm getting a copy of plus cats, moving off all of my digital downloads to my new 3DS, and handing my original 3DS to my daughter.   She's starting to become less and less enchanted with her DS lite and her Ipod touch and is asking for my 3DS more and more.  Coincidentally, ever since I got Freaky Forms.

[Ceric]

My Son wants mine for Skylanders. :/

I've got to weigh in on the Patch thing.

As a developer as well, I feel terrible if a bug goes out with my code that I didn't catch.
Patches are great for Consumers.  Patches that add new Features are great and justified.  All that being said the Mere existance of a patch that isn't to add new features is just shameful.  Its like needing your wife to drop you off some pants at work because you forgot to wear any.

[KDR_11k]

Patches from indie developers are great because they do it to make the game better. Patches from big publishers aren't good because they're used as crutches to let them rush through the QA process. Big publishers don't want to pay for content patches, they'll only develop additional content in order to sell it as DLC.

[ejamer]

Count me in with the camp who prefer to see games released as finished products (even if that means delays) instead works in progress. Patching games to fix unexpected issues isn't a bad thing, but the culture some companies have fostered of releasing software before the QA process has finished is shameful.

[happyastoria]

What to hear something funny? I bought Skyrim day one, and guess what? There's a bug preventing me from finishing the main quest. I've spent about 60 hours in the game, and I'm not doing the whole thing over again just to fix the bug!!!! Ugh, I want to finish the main quest, but I can't! This pisses me off! I'm with James on this one!

[broodwars]

What to hear something funny? I bought Skyrim day one, and guess what? There's a bug preventing me from finishing the main quest. I've spent about 60 hours in the game, and I'm not doing the whole thing over again just to fix the bug!!!! Ugh, I want to finish the main quest, but I can't! This pisses me off! I'm with James on this one!

Out of curiosity, what was the bug? We've been having a rather lively discussion of just how completely broken Skyrim is in its own thread, and I don't recall seeing you list your bug there.

[NWR_Lindy]

I don't think it's coincidental that Fallout: New Vegas and Skyrim are two of the most notoriously buggy releases out there, and they come from the same publisher (Zenimax).

Somebody really needs to re-examine their QA practices.

[broodwars]

I don't think it's coincidental that Fallout: New Vegas and Skyrim are two of the most notoriously buggy releases out there, and they come from the same publisher (Zenimax).

Somebody really needs to re-examine their QA practices.

The thing is, having worked in QA, I can tell you vaguely that if the public finds an issue, it's extremely likely that a QA tester found it as well and it was waived by Dev (either for being too risky to fix, or because Dev simply couldn't devote the time to it in favor of other things).  People throw the QA department under the bus when more than likely QA tried to fight to get these things fixed and Dev told them it wasn't going to happen.  Then (my personal belief, not anything I actually know) some money gets slipped to Sony and Microsoft, and suddenly their certification QA people don't see these issues either.  So these games with massive issues pass through certification so the consumers can deal with the fallout (pun intended) via patches.

It's worth noting that this game was released less than a year after it was announced, so I'm curious how tight a schedule was forced on the Devs to get this thing out by 11-11-11 for marketing purposes (to the detriment of the product's quality).

[Crimm]

I don't think it's coincidental that Fallout: New Vegas and Skyrim are two of the most notoriously buggy releases out there, and they come from the same publisher (Zenimax).

Somebody really needs to re-examine their QA practices.

They're notorious for bugs, but let's be clear: this is a Bethesda problem. Zenimax also does id and I don't hear about their stuff being broken as hell.


Oh wait...Rage.


****

[NWR_Lindy]

It's a Bethesda problem, but Zenimax (publisher) QA has the final say when it comes to submitting it for certification.

[Chiramii]

Wanna know who have made level creation fun? Nadeo with the Trackmania games, and that community is huge.

[Chocobo_Rider]

These days when I make RFN posts, I am trying to keep the talking points well under 10.  Let's see how we do...

1. Thank you, James for bringing up the obvious shooters if people wanna talk about recycling gameplay. Thank you Greg for pointing out that Kart shouldn't be hit for coming out every few years compared to games that are on a truly annual schedule.  Thank you, Jonny, for acknowledging that Nintendo gets an unbalanced number of gripes about it - and in all fairness... you're right, a heavier emphasis on story could really help Nintendo in that regard.  However, they tried that with Other M and (regardless of any one person's view of the game) the more vocal members of the gaming community (audience AND media) threw a straight up hissy fit.  So, sadly, I don't think Nintendo will be motivated to go that route for a long time.


2. I won't have Skyward Sword until after Christmas, but I've been playing Okami, and I'm glad to hear the items in SS don't take a long time to use!  Also been playing Phantom Hourglass, and I'm glad to hear the dungeons are not deep mazes!

Also, I think that if Skyward Sword lacks the feeling of a grand adventure then it will feel like a breath of fresh air!! Every flappin' game, movie, comic book has the hero saving the whole flappin' universe.  I think we've all become desensitized to it.  I think it will be more powerful, in this day and age, to have an adventure that feels more personal in scale.

3. The shiny "crutch" you mentioned? see: HD gaming. (human skin is not shiny like a snake's!!!!!!!!!)

4. I enjoy Nintendo's philosophies regarding DLC nickel/diming and bug patching.  In regard to those two issues, I hope they dig in their dragging feet, stick their head in the sand and their fingers in their ears yelling "la la la" and all the other metaphors they usually get slammed with.

That said, yea, if they can find a way to better facilitate bug-fixing without encouraging bad developer habits? I'd obviously be for that.  The problem isn't with the bug-fixing service, merely with people's temptation to abuse it.

On a related note, I would also rather a game get delayed and work out of the box than get it sooner and not be able to play it in 10 years.  I mean really, who needs games sooner with the backlogs we all tend to sit on??

Lastly, patching/upgrading/updating firmware (in this case, the 3DS) is apples to these oranges.  I'm with ya on this one, James. 

5. Greg - thank you for explaining the 3DS "scratch" complaint.  I have no idea how so many people could get confused on that.  I guess it just shows the power of suggestion since gaming media ran that story so early in the 3DS' life and with such fervor.

[Plugabugz]

Patches themselves aren't the problem but the implementation of them by the backend systems is poor. I started playing Uncharted 2 and had to wait 40 minutes for it to update patches. I fell asleep waiting.

I then popped in Portal 2 and it wants to install the DLC, but the PS3 won't do this while i'm in-game. I've played it for about 3 hours, and it's done about 1% (of 1gb!) as a result. This should be a behind the scenes process that installs upon completion and requests a reboot of the game and ideally a mandatory save beforehand to keep any progress.

[ejamer]

Hmm... A few additional thoughts about patches and bugs: Twilight Princess, Skyward Sword, Other M.  Three major games that all have potentially game-breaking bugs, with no way to patch or fix the issue.  Not having any way to fix these games is a real shame.


Not trying to compare Bethesda games (which consistently are accepted and praised for their scope despite being buggy messes) to Nintendo games (which tend to be much more focused and include few meaningful problems)... just agreeing that having a way to patch games is awesome, but having developers count on releasing regular patches for many months after release is a ridiculous business model for gamers to support.

[NWR_Neal]

Madden is the same game every year, but for the bigger fans, the roster update is enough to keep it fresh. I find that true with every real sports game.

Examples:
I'll totally get a FIFA game every now and then, but I don't care about the rosters, so I'll get an old one.
I routinely live in the past in the MLB, so I just keep playing MVP Baseball 2005.
I follow football religiously and need to get the most updated rosters for Madden.

[KDR_11k]

Buggyness depends strongly on the policies of the developer. E.g. aircraft control systems get extremely tough quality testing because if they fail then people die.
Generally more complex logic has more potential for bugs (HD doesn't play into that much, I remember massively buggy games back on the original Pentiums). However it's also the way a developer handles coding and QA that influences it. E.g. by now I expect German-developed games to be extremely buggy and I suspect that's because of demoscene-levels of code quality (highly optimized, impossible to debug) that leads to pretty games and tons of bugs (notorious examples would be games like the X series, Crysis, the Rogue Squadron games on the GC (Factor 5 originally came from Germany), etc).

Minecraft is really damn buggy and that's not even close to AAA HD graphics.

I don't think it's coincidental that Fallout: New Vegas and Skyrim are two of the most notoriously buggy releases out there, and they come from the same publisher (Zenimax).

Somebody really needs to re-examine their QA practices.

The thing is, having worked in QA, I can tell you vaguely that if the public finds an issue, it's extremely likely that a QA tester found it as well and it was waived by Dev (either for being too risky to fix, or because Dev simply couldn't devote the time to it in favor of other things).

I'd count the handling of the found issues as a part of the QA process that the company has set up.

[Chocobo_Rider]

plugaboyz - Yep. That sucks.
ejamer - Just saying ... what percentage of folks do you think have experienced those game-breaking bugs? less than 10? less than 5?
Personally, I've apparently been very lucky with all my gaming (not just from Nintendo).  I can't even think of the last time I experienced a true bug/glitch.  I had Horizon Riders freeze up on my several times.  So much so that I couldn't get past the third level. I called Nintendo customer service and they said to re-download the game.  I did and I never had another issue.  Beat the game several times over after that.

Before HR, I think the next major issue I had was back in the PS1 days.  This only happened once or twice, and I can't even remember the game... but it was a third person action game and I remember I fell "through" the floor and got stuck in this trippy kind of limbo where I could move around but the environment looked like an infinite cycle of the backsides of the game textures..... ah, it's funny in hindsight.

Neal - When it comes to Madden, couldn't that be one of the few times when paid DLC makes sense? In other words, what if instead of selling you a full-priced game that is essentially a roster update, they sold $5 or $10 roster updates every year?  They could wait to release a full game until the technology or programming could allow them to make something truly new.

I think 5 or 10 bucks from every Madden fan would still make them a boatload of money if they didn't have to pay hardly any production costs.

KDR - As Jonny said, any game can have bugs.  Even small-budget games.  Again, the time when people are justified in being upset is when a company that has the resources chooses not to use them for silly reasons like: "eh, we can do it later, let's go have a beer" or "the foolish execs would rather it be out by Week X than work well" or whatever other lame scenario you can imagine.

[NWR_Neal]

NinSage - From a fan perspective, of course. However, it sells very well every year. EA would be dumb to do that.

Also, Silent Realm was one of my favorite parts of SS. I felt they really improved that type of gameplay (which I hated in earlier games) because they make you do them after you're already familiar with the locations. It was a really awesome type of fast-paced strategic exploration.

[broodwars]

It's funny that people are talking about Nintendo titles not having game-breaking bugs when allegedly Skyward Sword has one.  Considering I was thinking of visiting that character first in the storyline, I was close to hitting that bug myself.