Assassin's Creed

[Seik]

Fuck this game. I can't even finish the march towards the last area(the one southeast of Acre) due to some kind of massively huge bug that continually "gives me the honor" of falling through the game.

Now that wouldn't be a big deal, but after I die...I respawn with TWO OF ME. Both can be controlled by my one controller, as all inputs are mimicked. Attack to much? Fall through game. Go to fast on horse? Fall through game. Fight with yourself? Freeze game. Stealth kill/counter kill? Camera warps to the 'other you'. Go really fast on horse? Pass through "memory blockade" and have fun walking around being hit by invisible soldiers(while doing damage to you, which doesn't involve the "im hit" animation either).

And yes, you can assassinate yourself...and accidentally fight yourself in combat with bad guys(and in turn, accidentally counter yourself/grab yourself/grab counter yourself/throw daggers at yourself; all which do damage).

Been dealing with this for an hour now(rebooted the game, the system, etc multiple times) and it just won't stop happening. So...expect a video of this by the end of the night as my final "fuck off" to Ubisoft's shitty group of Quality Assurance testers.

Dude. That BLOWS. Wtf. Hopefully my copy does alright. I haven't really had any bugs yet with this game. Seemed pretty solid to me, especially compared to something like Mass Effect. Which I've been getting a bunch of bugs in.

[MrWhitefolks]

I'd personally love to hear an explanation for all the wonky bullshit I've encountered by Jade and her "team".

'oh....well....yeah....uh....I'm hot and you should buy my game!"

[Seik]

I'd personally love to hear an explanation for all the wonky bullshit I've encountered by Jade and her "team".

'oh....well....yeah....uh....I'm hot and you should buy my game!"

Yeah. I'd be too busy looking at her boobs. And if she told me that....I would TOTALLY buy her game. And I already bought it once. I'm half way through it. I'd buy it again though, a whole new copy.

[Compass]

Been dealing with this for an hour now(rebooted the game, the system, etc multiple times) and it just won't stop happening. So...expect a video of this by the end of the night as my final "fuck off" to Ubisoft's shitty group of Quality Assurance testers.

I've worked in the game industry for several years now, and have had a few close friends who worked in QA specifically.

I can tell you, the Testers nearly always find and document every major issue (and the majority of the minor ones for that matter). Every single one. Not surprising since they play one game all day for months on end. It's highly unlikely the consumer will run across an easily reproducible problem that wasn't found -- at some point -- by a Tester (unless it's a rare situation in which a brand new issue was introduced in the submission build).

It's the publisher's call as to whether or not they want to ignore a bug, and pray it isn't found by the First Party. And to get a game out on time, you'd be surprised at what they deem "Acceptable," "By Design," or "Not a bug" (the latter two occasionally being applied to crash bugs for much amusement).

[MrWhitefolks]

Seriously, I really want to know how shit like this gets through their testing phase. It's repeatable(I've done it 3 times on command, with some other attempts just randomly resulting in me falling through the map), which means someone should've caught it and been able to fix it.

What a bunch of lazy fucktards. "Oh, let's just let the hype sell our game! Who cares if it works, people are believing all the bullshit magazines and online sites are saying about it to begin with! YAY!"

Worst thing is that I was thoroughly enjoying this game, and it was a full on blast all the way up until this 'premature' end of the title. Guess that 20+ hours(I was getting everything in each area finished before assassinating the mark) and $60 resulted in a glitch video. :P

[MrWhitefolks]

I've worked in the game industry for several years now, and have had a few close friends who worked in QA specifically.

I can tell you, the Testers nearly always find and document every major issue (and the majority of the minor ones for that matter). Every single one. Not surprising since they play one game all day for months on end. It's highly unlikely the consumer will run across an easily reproducible problem that wasn't found -- at some point -- by a Tester (unless it's a rare situation in which a brand new issue was introduced in the submission build).

It's the publisher's call as to whether or not they want to ignore a bug. And to get a game out on time, you'd be surprised at what they deem "Acceptable," "By Design," or "Not a bug" (the latter two occasionally being applied to crash bugs for much amusement).

90% of all the bugs i find in games are repeatable and easy to figure out when I go looking for them. Whoever these guys you're talking about are must be the patron saints of the QA industry.

[Compass]

90% of all the bugs i find in games are repeatable and easy to figure out when I go looking for them.

Exactly. So, do you really think a group of people who get paid to play that game every day, for months at a time (up to a year or more on really complex games) won't find the same problems? They do. The bugs are found and documented.

The devs then fix what they can/have time to, and the publishers ultimately roll the dice that Sony/MS/Nintendo won't find the rest of the serious issues (if they still exist) during submission (or pay them off to waive the issues they do find), and that the majority of consumers won't find them in a normal playthrough, all to push the game out in order to make their quarter.

[MrWhitefolks]

Exactly. So, do you really think a group of people who get paid to play that game every day, for months at a time (up to a year or more on really complex games) won't find the same problems? They do. The bugs are found and documented.

The devs then fix what they can/have time to, and the publishers ultimately roll the dice that Sony/MS/Nintendo won't find the rest of the serious issues (if they still exist) during submission (or pay them off to waive the issues they do find), and that the majority of consumers won't find them in a normal playthrough, all to push the game out in order to make their quarter.

If what you are saying is true, then this is just another thing about the game industry that pisses me off. Alot of the bugs I personally find BREAK the respective title's(either in balancing[fighting games], graphically, or the overall enjoyment) experience in a way that shouldn't even remotely exist. I think it's worst in fighting games more than anything else, as those bugs/exploits have the possibility to ruin the balancing...but in other titles(Mercenaries, for example) the bugs can be of beneficial use to the player.

Now, I don't want to discredit the abilities of QA testers here. These people do their jobs and do them amicably(a bunch of people that I used to hang out with awhile back are now full time testers at MS). But I sincerely doubt they find even half of the bugs that are found by players after any given title's release, as you can only have so many people working on a game at any given time, while after it's release you have the entire general public playing it.

Now couple that with the ideal that if you have like-minded players working on testing a game, then they won't think outside of their respective boxes. When a game hits the public market, so many different people with different ideas are playing a game that there's bound to be mind-blowing issues found in short order. I'm sure the QA guys look for basic shit, like "can you fall off of any cliffs we've locked down with invisible walls", but I'd wager that they don't go out of their way to see if they can climb on buildings using ragdoll physics and random articles of garbage(re: Saints Row).

[MechDeus]

If what you are saying is true, then this is just another thing about the game industry that pisses me off.

It's true, and has been documented year after year for god only knows how long in many articles, interviews, and developer blogs. Companies don't have endless supplies of money, that's just how it works.

I'm sure the QA guys look for basic shit, like "can you fall off of any cliffs we've locked down with invisible walls", but I'd wager that they don't go out of their way to see if they can climb on buildings using ragdoll physics and random articles of garbage(re: Saints Row).

Yes they do. I know that (at least years in the past) they were given sheets that included things like pressing a button over and over while jumping in certain areas and weird things like that. In an interview with Rare regarding Blast Corps they discovered a wall clipping glitch because a tester left one of the vehicles driving up against a wall when they went to lunch and when they came back it had driven through. They don't just make sure the game runs in the specific way it's intended to be played, they check whatever they can. But ultimately it's not in their hands, it's in those of the developers who are under the pressure of the publishers and investors.

And you're the only one I've seen that's encountered that glitch in Assassin's Creed. Frankly, I think one out of 500k or whatever is pretty acceptable odds and would've passed over that issue for more widespread problems as well. It's shitty sometimes but all you can do is refuse to support the games that allow major glitches to get by. The developers don't want a shitty product to hit shelves, but when people buy it regardless then the ones who give the developers their paychecks don't give a shit how many bugs it has. Email them with your issues, send them letters, and don't buy the product. It's all hinged on your dollar.

[Compass]

Now couple that with the ideal that if you have like-minded players working on testing a game, then they won't think outside of their respective boxes. When a game hits the public market, so many different people with different ideas are playing a game that there's bound to be mind-blowing issues found in short order. I'm sure the QA guys look for basic shit, like "can you fall off of any cliffs we've locked down with invisible walls", but I'd wager that they don't go out of their way to see if they can climb on buildings using ragdoll physics and random articles of garbage(re: Saints Row).

Yes, that's precisely the kind of thing good Testers test for and find. Looking for "basic shit" gets old after the first couple days. In order to keep themselves entertained (not to mention do their job well), they will go way out of their way to find the craziest shit they can possibly dream up. A single reproducible crash bug -- no matter how obscure -- can fail a game if it's found during submission. And this is arguably the main reason those bugs are sought out -- not to protect the consumer who usually won't travel off the beaten path to find these weird bugs, but to increase the chances of the game making it through the submission process.

And that's where your Tester friends at MS would come in. I've never worked at a First Party before, so it's a bit of a black box, but from what I can tell, they'll usually devote a few people to each submitted game for anywhere from a couple days to a few weeks. These Testers most certainly will miss a lot of issues. But they are only meant as a last line of defense, looking for really obvious functionality problems and "Standards" (save/load, legal, naming convention issues, etc.).

And you should hate this part of the industry. The consumer really is the one short-changed. So many games could benefit SO MUCH from an extra month or two, or even an extra few weeks, of polishing, but they are rushed out to make their quarter.

[Edit]: Mech beat me to most of my points it seems.