I had initially intended to send this to the bombcast e-mail address, but as it grew in length, I decided that its purpose would be better served as a blog post:
 
 Hey guys,

I'm writing in to express my frustration with the bugs in Fallout: New Vegas.  I know it's like beating a dead horse at this point, but as someone that works in software quality assurance and that has tested games in the past, I can't express how utterly frustrating it is to see a game released in such a sorry state.  I picked up the PS3 version today knowing full well the myriad bugs that have been found and posted on Youtube, but I wanted to see the game for myself.  As a reward for my curiosity, the game completely froze on me during the tutorial within the first twenty minutes.

This doesn't come as a surprise to me.  I played the PS3 version of Fallout 3 as well, and just like New Vegas, experienced a lock-up within the game's opening minutes, among numerous other bugs and weird glitches that cropped up.  All I can say to this is shame on Bethesda and Obsidian for continuing their legacies of horrendous coding and poor quality assurance.  Yes, games like New Vegas and Oblivion are large, open world games where a lot can happen, but even a decent level of QA and attentive pre-release bug fixing could uncover and resolve some of the most glaringly obvious, damning and simply idiotic bugs that have existed in all of these games.  Hiding behind the Gamebryo engine shouldn't be an excuse anymore.  Yes, it's old.  Yes, it's buggy.  Why is it still buggy if it's this old?  You'd think someone would have patched this kind of crap out of the engine by now.

More than anything though, shame on me.  Shame on me for buying this buggy piece of shit and rewarding Obsidian for their incompetence.  I am a fucking moron, but so help me, I will never buy another Bethesda or Obsidian RPG ever again.

God damn it.

Elder Scrolls V will prove you in the end.

Yea, New Vegas is everything I love from a Bethesda style RPG, but it should not have been shippable product at this time. The bugs are unbearable, I picked it up on the PC, and even that version for me, is unplayable. Even with all the bugs happening in-game, the game itself crashes every 30 minutes or so, I dont know if its my computer or if its the game, but its really annoying and making the experience miserable.

" @Hailinel:  Firstly I'd like to say if you aren't saving every 5 to 20 minutes you're doing it wrong. Secondly there's an autosave function in case you're too stupid to save every 5 or 10 minutes. We learned this as early as grade 4 word processing on the school computers. Why are you acting like you know what would make the game bug free? Why are you bitching about harmless bugs?  Oh no you lost 5 minutes of gameplay two times over 20 hours. Oh no, you had to fast travel to make your companion re appear so you could tell it to "Wait here" while you go see "Ceasar". It's a potentially 70 hour game, what are 10 minutes?  You know what happens when you make a bug free game? Hallway simulator 2010. Your bitching is unreasonable. "

" @Hailinel:  Firstly I'd like to say if you aren't saving every 5 to 20 minutes you're doing it wrong. Secondly there's an autosave function in case you're too stupid to save every 5 or 10 minutes. We learned this as early as grade 4 word processing on the school computers. Why are you acting like you know what would make the game bug free? Why are you bitching about harmless bugs?  Oh no you lost 5 minutes of gameplay two times over 20 hours. Oh no, you had to fast travel to make your companion re appear so you could tell it to "Wait here" while you go see "Ceasar". It's a potentially 70 hour game, what are 10 minutes?  You know what happens when you make a bug free game? Hallway simulator 2010. Your bitching is unreasonable. "

@Hailinel

" I had initially intended to send this to the bombcast e-mail address, but as it grew in length, I decided that its purpose would be better served as a blog post:   Hey guys, I'm writing in to express my frustration with the bugs in Fallout: New Vegas.  I know it's like beating a dead horse at this point, but as someone that works in software quality assurance and that has tested games in the past, I can't express how utterly frustrating it is to see a game released in such a sorry state.  I picked up the PS3 version today knowing full well the myriad bugs that have been found and posted on Youtube, but I wanted to see the game for myself.  As a reward for my curiosity, the game completely froze on me during the tutorial within the first twenty minutes. This doesn't come as a surprise to me.  I played the PS3 version of Fallout 3 as well, and just like New Vegas, experienced a lock-up within the game's opening minutes, among numerous other bugs and weird glitches that cropped up.  All I can say to this is shame on Bethesda and Obsidian for continuing their legacies of horrendous coding and poor quality assurance.  Yes, games like New Vegas and Oblivion are large, open world games where a lot can happen, but even a decent level of QA and attentive pre-release bug fixing could uncover and resolve some of the most glaringly obvious, damning and simply idiotic bugs that have existed in all of these games.  Hiding behind the Gamebryo engine shouldn't be an excuse anymore.  Yes, it's old.  Yes, it's buggy.  Why is it still buggy if it's this old?  You'd think someone would have patched this kind of crap out of the engine by now. More than anything though, shame on me.  Shame on me for buying this buggy piece of shit and rewarding Obsidian for their incompetence.  I am a fucking moron, but so help me, I will never buy another Bethesda or Obsidian RPG ever again. God damn it. "

Looks like I'm better off waiting for a GOTY version of the game, hopefully it'll be playable by then.

2 things:
i wrote or replied a long time ago about how this is the new VG buiness model. No matter what, hit the release date window. You know why? Developer can still release patch(es) and no matter what gamers, fans, or newbies will still buy the name/title.
 
Know for FNV i have about 30 hrs in story and have not had any major hiccups. I have not had any lock ups or major game play flaws. Now there are clipping issues but nothing that is continuous or causes any frustration. Would also stress i have not entered the city yet.

It has crashed on me eight times in the past two days and I am still enjoying the fuck out of it.

@keyhunter:

Ive put almost 30 hours into the game and I havent had one single problem. The only thing ive noticed is the main menu was a little slow and you know what? A patch just fixed that right up and now the game is perfect. Maybe i just know how to take care of my stuff... whatever.
 
Edit: I got mine on the 360.

"Maybe i just know how to take care of my stuff... whatever."

 It sucks the game came out in such a state. Rather than saying you'll never buy one of their RPGs again maybe you should just say you won't buy one until you know it's been patched and not going to crash ever 5 minutes? 
 
Also, don't waste your breath on SeriouslyNow. You should know better than that.  
 
But daaaamn, Keyhunter gets the Retard of the Thread award. Wow. @.@   

I also bought NV knowing well of its jank, crashes on me every so often and people do stuff like this^. Kinda funny but also tragic. I am a fool basically. But I still blame the developers almost entirely, if the engine is buggy, make it not buggy or make a new engine.

" @Mr_Faraday said:

"Maybe i just know how to take care of my stuff... whatever."

Pray tell, how do you "take care of your stuff" in order to prevent bugs from occurring? Do you give the game a blessing and a sacrifice before popping it into the drive? "

  In fact it's console games that, up until a generation or so ago, have been incredibly stable and virtually bug free. "  

 A certain level of bugginess is to be expected with a game that is so open ended and has so many variables of things that can happen.  That said, I don't think there's any excuse for not fixing the problems with late game loading and frame rate.  It's really frustrating because in my head I can see some executive deciding that if just the beginning of the game works, they'll still make their money.  There are early game bugs too, but things get insanely crippling the more you play which is the real issue for me anyways.

"  It sucks the game came out in such a state. Rather than saying you'll never buy one of their RPGs again maybe you should just say you won't buy one until you know it's been patched and not going to crash ever 5 minutes?  Also, don't waste your breath on SeriouslyNow. You should know better than that.    But daaaamn, Keyhunter gets the Retard of the Thread award. Wow. @.@    "

" @SeriouslyNow said:

" Neither of you two, vidiot or Madd, are console casuals.  I know all about Gamebryo and I have discussed its issues at length here on the forums, that doesn't change the fact that this experience with F:NV isn't a solitary one.  There are many console games which are poorly made and perform poorly operating at well below what's expected of a game in the AAA standard.  This is issue is now bleeding into the PC realms too, due to the port nature of so many PC games

As if bugs in PC games are anything new. I've played PC games since 1990 and they have ALWAYS been buggy as fuck   In fact it's console games that, up until a generation or so ago, have been incredibly stable and virtually bug free. "

@hailinel I guess you kinda still are rewarding something you don't want to by purchasing it at all, but I'd say you could just make it from this point on to never make that mistake again I suppose. If you're interested in other games from either Bethesda or Obsidian in the future, maybe at least wait until you know they are patched and fixed their main gamebreaking bugs and such. Not sure if you have to go as far as to completely never play their games again, you know, if you have the slightest interest in checking them out at some point. That's even less fair to yourself, but yeah, there really is no excuse for coming out in this state. 
 
As Jeff said in his quick look,  you would think Microsoft etc. wouldn't allow them to be released in this state, but its a big game so I'm sure they overlook it conveniently because it will sell. Also the whole "well, the gamebryo engine is just like that" doesn't work at all for me, because after an engine has been out for such a long time, you don't expect the same fucking problems from it. You expect by now they would of fixed problems they had with it a long time ago, so that's kind of a retarded excuse that some people are trying to give.  As if it justifies anything.

I find it odd how some people are ranting about this game being unplayable while others, myself included, have played 20-30 hours without a single crash on the same platform. Can't help but think Q&A on a game like this must be a bitch.
 
Probably tempting fate with this post but my PS3 copy has been perfect, no glitches, bugs or crashes and very smooth menus with no hangups or load times taking longer than 5 seconds. I guess my luck can't last forever.

Well everything that needs to be said has already been mentioned but I might as well point out how I feel via SymphonyQuotations™
@Symphony said:

"It sucks the game came out in such a state. Rather than saying you'll never buy one of their RPGs again maybe you should just say you won't buy one until you know it's been patched and not going to crash ever 5 minutes?  Also, don't waste your breath on SeriouslyNow. You should know better than that.    But daaaamn, Keyhunter gets the Retard of the Thread award. Wow. @.@"

Had to clean this topic up a little after numerous complaints and flagged posts were sent our way. 
 
Lets stay on topic and stay civil about it.

You aren't wrong. At all. But a more applicable thing to say would be: I won't ever buy a Bethesda or Obsidian game again until they patch the hell out of it in 3 months in order to make it less broken. Don't let the inherent jank of the gamebryo engine, combined with the most certainly incompetent bug testers of Obsidian bring you down. Personally, I'm waiting at least until they get that initial patch through before I even think of buying it.

Wowee. Everyones got such high expectations for games these days. I guess I'm just used to it after 20 years. Honestly I'm suprised any games these days are as bug free as they are.

" @keyhunter said:

" @Hailinel:  Firstly I'd like to say if you aren't saving every 5 to 20 minutes you're doing it wrong. Secondly there's an autosave function in case you're too stupid to save every 5 or 10 minutes. We learned this as early as grade 4 word processing on the school computers. Why are you acting like you know what would make the game bug free? Why are you bitching about harmless bugs?  Oh no you lost 5 minutes of gameplay two times over 20 hours. Oh no, you had to fast travel to make your companion re appear so you could tell it to "Wait here" while you go see "Ceasar". It's a potentially 70 hour game, what are 10 minutes?  You know what happens when you make a bug free game? Hallway simulator 2010. Your bitching is unreasonable. "

If I need to manually save every five minutes just to ensure that I still have my progress in anticipating an inevitable crashand loss of progress, I'm doing nothing wrong.  The game is doing everything wrong and so are the people responsible for its development.  To pin any blame for this on me, outside of my own blame for buying the game in the first place, is unfathomably absurd. "

" @keyhunter said:

" @Hailinel:  Firstly I'd like to say if you aren't saving every 5 to 20 minutes you're doing it wrong. Secondly there's an autosave function in case you're too stupid to save every 5 or 10 minutes. We learned this as early as grade 4 word processing on the school computers. Why are you acting like you know what would make the game bug free? Why are you bitching about harmless bugs?  Oh no you lost 5 minutes of gameplay two times over 20 hours. Oh no, you had to fast travel to make your companion re appear so you could tell it to "Wait here" while you go see "Ceasar". It's a potentially 70 hour game, what are 10 minutes?  You know what happens when you make a bug free game? Hallway simulator 2010. Your bitching is unreasonable. "

If I need to manually save every five minutes just to ensure that I still have my progress in anticipating an inevitable crashand loss of progress, I'm doing nothing wrong.  The game is doing everything wrong and so are the people responsible for its development.  To pin any blame for this on me, outside of my own blame for buying the game in the first place, is unfathomably absurd. "

" Ive put almost 30 hours into the game and I havent had one single problem. The only thing ive noticed is the main menu was a little slow and you know what? A patch just fixed that right up and now the game is perfect. Maybe i just know how to take care of my stuff... whatever. Edit: I got mine on the 360. "

I think you're either taking this way to far or there is something wrong with your hardware.  I've played almost 20 hrs. and only crashed probably 3 times.  We all knew there was going to be bugs, if you thought you could make it through the game without it crashing especially now before any patches your a fool.  the game isn't that bad I've run into several 5-10 gliches, people stuck in places or not moving but have only crashed a few times. 
 
check your machine

Sometimes I think I am the only person in the world who hasn't seen a bug in New Vegas yet, played for over 22 hours or something on 360.
 
I am fully aware that when I turn it on later the torrent of bugs and glitches that come my way are entirely because of me tempting fate just then.

Well, i bought the game today played it for an hour or so before my friend came by. He saw me playing it and bought it too. So totally i have probably played 4-6 hours today. 
 
And i have to say Obsidian has done it again, why i even bought this game, i really don't know, i got burnt with KOTOR 2 back in the day, so why i thought this would be any different, is just pure stupidity on my part..  
 
The game runs poorly, i'm running it on a PC by the way, and its up to date. So its not a piece of shit old computer, neither is my friends. 
 
But holy shit, there are so many bugs from the get go, and it seems the performance of the game is pretty spotty too. Even if you scale your setting down from the recommended ones, which in my cause was Ultra. 
 
I really hope we will see a plethora of patches for this game, and fast. And for my sake i hope in the future that i'm not brain dead enough to buy another farmed out game from Obsidian.

I actually do not understand why people get angry over these bugs. You knew that there would be bugs. I buoght it because I knew there would be bugs and I enjoy the game MORE because of them. Keeps it different and entertaining.
 
However, I'm playing on PC and haven't experienced any lockups. Maybe it's a console thing.

20 odd hours in, and you can add me to the list of people who haven't experienced any problems.
 
I can see why so many bugs are supposedly still in the game to be fair to Obsidian, not everyone is having the same experience. They may have had the same luck that a lot of us have had when testing.

Most ppl playing NV haven't had these game breaking bugs, it's just the spoiled brats like the TC that are most outspoken. And do you really blame QA for this? Really don't think people playing this everyday aren't seeing issues? Not very smart for claiming to be in QA. Obviously, the developer's fault and Gamebryos. 

" Blah blah blah, but as someone that works in software quality assurance and that has tested games in the past, blah blah blah "

" @Hailinel: 
 
Really? I'm inept because the game freezes, leaves that one fucking message untranslated for no reason, and is a dick? It's probably the only strategy RPG I've ever truly hated. "

" @Hailinel: 
 
Really? Nobody else?
 
Granted, I have beaten Persona 1 and did play the first Shin Megami Tensei, but those were unintuitive, at worst. I can still kinda enjoy SMT, and Persona at least provided me with a blog I had fun writing; there is nothing good about Devil Survivor. "