I think part of it might be the price point, budget and team size of PUBG all being much more modest than the latest AAA rpg from the renowned Bioware (not Bioware proper, I know).

But I think a larger thing might be one of expectation.

PUBG is a fairly unique thing on the market, there are some games like it, but not many, and many of them are basically mods. Regardless of all the bugs, I don't think PUBG has very good game design, but it's very unique and that uniqueness is why it is fun. It's a fledgling genre that doesn't bear any expectations. Andromeda has to be compared to the other Mass Effect games, and various games that share a very similar game design, and when it comes up that short in that many ways, it's a big deal.

Part of it is DEFINITELY the game being more budget-priced and coming from, relatively, out-of-nowhere as opposed to Bioware/EA's flagship title, dormant after 5 years and a Dragon Age game that, while being well-received at the time, seems to have left little in the way of long-term impact. And let's not forget that Mass Effect remains the ONLY AAA RPG based in a sci-fi universe created from the ground up and not part of an existing franchise. Those are some HIGH bars to live up to, and frankly stuff like the weird facial animations and delivery of lines like "A riiiiiIIIIiiide?" aren't acceptable, no matter HOW good or bad the gameplay is.

And, it's undeniable, some people were salivating after Mass Effect 3 to prove that idiotic EA meme about how they acquire companies just to murder them right. Because on the Internet: being right is sometimes more valuable than being correct.

My best guess:

PUBG bugs can add to the unpredictability of an already comical game, and give you and some friends an unexpected experience to laugh at.

ME:A bugs further broke your immersion in a single player experience. One that already featured sub-par characters and writing, when it came to comparisons to previous games in the series. Add to that the rare but possible mission and/or game breaking bug in a 50 hour campaign, and you have a rather large difference.

[edit] I wrote all that before reading the whole first post. So yeah, I think we're right.

A couple of things:

Smaller team

Alpha/early access

ME:A had quite the marketing campaign behind it promoting the shit out of it - it also had the pedigree of the previous ME games to live up to - also not acceptable for a big budget game

Price point on release - ME:A is a full price product

Not ragging on the Op, some fair arguments there

I think it's a combo of the stuff above. Personally after playing for about an hour, I found PUBG to be such a buggy, laggy mess, I didn't want anything to do with playing it and refunded. A friend of mine also refused to play more than the first couple hours because it was so unstable. Also part of that is I didn't find the gameplay interesting at all. On the other hand, the WWE games are buggy, laggy messes and I have nearly 400 hours in 2K17 because when it does work, I really enjoy it. It depends on each person's fun/tolerance threshold. It also depends on the type of bug. I really hate slowdown and outright crashes, but physics and ragdolls bugging out always make me laugh.

In Mass Effect: Andromeda's case, it was turned out by a AAA publisher and it's been my understanding that the publisher side takes care of QA before the game ships. For a company like that to toss out a full-price game in that state should border on illegal. For me personally, Andromeda would overheat my CPU and send the computer into a hard shutdown 19 out of 20 tries just loading the start menu. I have the same CPU they listed on the recommended specs. Even after their major patches, it still can't run, so I'm never buying another EA product again.

After seeing how PUBG handles community issues and all their weird monetizing stuff, I have zero interest in ever playing it even if they did tighten up all the lag and bugs. So it's hard to generalize.

One is exciting and very very fun. The other is Mass Effect. The 4th one. In a series with a lot of DLC. And very little changed in the formula along the way.

I think ultimately it comes down to the overall experience. I can tell you all the ways Mass Effect (the original) was buggy and weird and bad but it’s also on of my top 3 games of all time. It’s not that it’s faults were excused, they were just so minor to my experience that in the end I didn’t stop having a good time with the game despite even serious bugs or save system flaws or long load times. Arma 3’s engine is still so funky that turning your character pivots them around a point slightly in front of them, meaning that simply if turning around on a stair case or near some weird geometry can: cause you to phase into a prison of one way walls, damage you until you are dead, or occasionally catapult your corpse into space. I still have thousands of hours logged across that whole series and look fondly back at it.

When you really, truly love something you start to embrace the flaws that make it unique and interesting. You recognize they are problems ultimately but because they don’t bring the experience down in any significant way overall they aren’t treated as game breaking or game ruining. It’s kind of like your buddy that can’t shake some stupid thing he did or does because you and the other guys always rag on him about it. It’s now a ritual that is engrained in your largely positive relationship.

History. Mass Effect already had a history of releases and while 1 had its share of bugs (I never really encountered any myself), I didn't have any issues with 2 and I never played 3.

Because of this history, there's a certain expectation with Andromeda that the game would not come out at a quality lower than any of its previous releases (story notwithstanding) and that simply wasn't the case. The game was tremendously buggy and character models looked terrible even compared with the first Mass Effect game. I feel that this definitely had an effect on how Andromeda was received by the public, while PLAYERUNKNOWN'S Battlegrounds doesn't really have a history (well it kind of does I guess but most people don't know about it) so for many folks it is the "first" and so they're more okay with technical issues. That goodwill and willingness to overlook issues will decrease with subsequent releases/sequels (if they happen) just like with any other franchise.

I also think one core difference is how people would approach these games regardless of their alpha status. Mass Effect would have a more serious and already established tone to expect compared to what is essentially a straight to multiplayer stream fad. The technical funnies are essential to one but shamed in the former.

It's that ethereal "it" factor. It's the same reason why another Mario Kart is lauded with high praise despite minimal differences, yet Call of Duty is the industries whipping boy for too many sequels. Or why Ubisoft games get trashed for having "icon barf" yet the Witcher 3 which can get similarly cluttered gets nary a mention. People tend to take a side when they enjoy something and willingly ignore the same shortcomings that would otherwise be huge bullet points if they didn't actually enjoy the core game. Just recently on one of the Podcasts the gang sang praise for Pyre, and then later on commented how Snatcher is a game that they'd rather watch than actually play because it's too much of a visual novel - yet both titles are basically long stories with bits of action mixed in between.

It's not fair, but I think to a lesser degree we all do it. If you like the game then it's a silly quirk, but if you don't like the game it's a huge blemish. Battlegrounds is full of things that people would rip other games apart for - I mean it has paid cosmetics available to buy and it's still in "beta" or whatever. I'd like to see a big name developer release a game in beta with paid DLC and get a similar pass, although we'll see because Fortnite appears to be doing just that.

Beyond Mass Effect I can think of very few other games that have launched so broken but been so (almost) unanimously accepted. I suppose you could argue that every early access game is effectively the same, but PUBG stands out as a game which has bridged the gap between those "straight to stream" cult games (our generations equivalent of the Direct to DVD?) and the more traditional mainstream titles.

@sweep: Minecraft is a good example of a game that was being sold and played by millions without getting finished for years. In fact each time Notch did actually release an official patch it would set the game back because it would break a ton of things that were working before.

Expectation (and standards set by predecessors).

I think part of the differing reaction comes from whether the buggy game is story centric. If the narrative isn't a key part of the experience (at least not on the game's side) then it's easier to see bugs as comical or endearing. Furthermore, multiplayer games have the added effect of experiencing bugs with friends which can heighten the humour. PUBG also avoids the pitfall of focusing on competitiveness/eSports which would lead to bugs being seen as antithetical to a fair experience. Obviously the fact that it's an Early Access release from a relatively small (and little-known) developer is important for this perception, but I think the type of game is more significant.

Even if the game worked perfectly, in the actual working-as-intended game you have very little control over the outcome of a match. You're going to get shot by someone you don't see, someone with better weapons with you, someone who lucked into the circle better than you, etc. Buggy physics and graphics are just more hazards. The thing that seems to get people raging is connection issues. It seems like that's the problem Bluehole is most sensitive to, and if they weren't I bet it would be the one bug that's offensive enough to kill the game.

Personally, I don't like playing any buggy, laggy mess; but I will put up with it if there's enough other good stuff in the game. For me, that meant I was fine playing ME:A for 70 hours, until a mission that was so poorly written I just couldn't keep going; while I have 0 interest in playing PUBG at all. (The best counterexample for me is Fallout: New Vegas which is a Top-10 all-time game for me despite the terrible bugs; which were eventually mostly patched out at least).

For most people, I'd guess there is a difference though, and its one of expectation.

And then there's me, who hasn't really had any issues with PUBG at all. Granted, I haven't played it very much. Also, as someone who LOVED the first three Mass Effect games, the problems with Andromeda weren't bugs, it was the incredible lacklustre graphics and cinematics, and the story which just didn't pull me in at all.

I think it's mostly bullshit. That's my answer. I can often get annoyed by this double standard. ME:A is a great example because everyone decided to just dump on that game for everything. I don't like to discuss bugs and bugginess in general on message boards and stuff because most things I read just annoy me (thinking back on the fun Fallout 4 times, here and in the GB GOTY and stuff).

It if the flavor of the month so it gets a pass. Zeitgeist trumps all.

Well PUBG is both in Early Access (so you expect bugs), and half the price of ME:A, so that's definitely a factor.

But more broadly it's like any other failing a game has: sometimes a game is still great -despite- the bugs (Fallout New Vegas for example). Sometimes the underlying game isn't great and the bugs accentuate that, which I think is the case with ME:A.

savage

This thread would make more sense if PUBG was fully released. A lot of publications and players are treating the game in an unreleased state (which Alex and Vinny talked about on the Beastcast) so you wouldn't see in depth critiques of it like you would if it was fully out. It'd also make more sense to compare it to a game that wasn't a continuation of an established series. It makes more sense to compare PUBG to the Friday the 13th game.

If Mass Effect Andromeda was pushed out as an "early access" game, people would still criticize it for being a buggy, jarring single-player experience. It didn't do well in the areas the previous games excelled. Soft-locking bugs ruined quests or progression at worst and at best they were Assassin's Creed Unity levels of immersion breaking. Characters, the writing, and their acting were by and large inferior to the high standards established by the series.

Friday the 13th, however, is also a new entry multiplayer game, fully released and buggy as hell. It's gotten fully criticized for it, despite a lot of players enjoying it. It comes across as unfinished and a mess in some areas (last I checked they still haven't added in keybinding?) but it doesn't have an "Early Access" modifier to hide behind. There is no doubt in my mind that reception to Friday the 13th would be higher if it first came out in Early Access.

PUBG has no previous standards to hit beyond the bare minimum the ARMA mods set. It's a new and separate experience that does very well what it sets out to be.

The bugs are annoying, but also a little magical when they enhance the experience. The one Murder Island stream when Vinny couldn't see structures was amazing. Recently I had a game where my buddy died instantly so I decided to kill myself by ramming my car into another parked car and the resulting glitchy mess of an explosion made us both crack up. It sucks when the bugs impede your ability to play the game or when the servers lag, but the majority of my experience remains positive.

There was no way, of course, the game was ever going to release properly in 2017. I'm also skeptical of it ever ironing out all the kinks. But until it gets out of early access, I'm going to treat it as like an unfinished game still in development.

I am not much buying any Early Access excuses anymore either. Games can be in EA for more than a year and have no timetable for release or any clear messaging about what is being added. They can sell DLC and have microtransactions. As a consumer I am not going to bother much with the distinction or excuse anything because of it because that's not how EA is sold to me or how I pay for games in EA. I don't see why anyone else would either at this point.

I've come to distrust Early Access games. It seems that the label has become a free pass for everything negative, while boosting anything positive about the game. If there are bugs in the game, "shut up it's early access" is the go-to answer. But if the game has something good going for it, then AAA developers can learn a thing or two about those scrappy and witty indie devs! Many people are giving PUBG this year's GOTY in a plate, but no one would ever dare to review it as it stands now. It's not fair since, you know, it's Early Access.

I don't know. Maybe I'm completely wrong, since I'm not so passionate about PUBG as many other people here, so I don't feel I need to justify its shortcomings nor praise to high heavens its positive aspects. I think it's a fun game, but nowhere near as good as many games that have been released this year.

This is all that matters. People talk a big game about all the different ways games are assessed/reviewed/appreciated, when deep down the only thing that matters is the gameplay. If the gameplay is there, a lot of other things are tolerable.

Mass Effect would be a bad game even if it were technically flawless.

In a thread about technical issues?

Thread is about why we tolerate bugs and glitchy behaviour in some games, but not others. Battlegrounds is fun at it's core, so everything around is that isn't quite there is tolerable or even funny.

A lot of AAA games depend on everything surrounding the core gameplay to prop it up, whereas stuff like Battlegrounds has the core supporting the rest of it.

@peacebrother: If you want to ignore how much some people love to hate on Electronic Arts or ME:A or all the people who have already used the Early Access excuse in this same thread. And indie devs are not going to get the hate Electronic Arts does. There's more to it.

I don't think any AAA game is good if the core isn't good either. The core gameplay of ME:A was actually the good part (the combat is great) and everything around those basics were lackluster.

Indie developers being a lesser target and the Early Access label (which are bullshit) are big factors in why this game gets a pass. PUBG is a better game too but that's not what this thread is about. It's not that simple.

I'm just speaking from personal experience. At the end of the day, the only thing that truly matters to me is gameplay. I really couldn't care about the perception of the companies producing them, I'm looking at them for what they are. Contributing my theory/idea.

edit: Also it's my reason for why I personally tolerate the bugs in Battlegrounds, but am less tolerant in a game like Mass Effect Andromeda.

@peacebrother: you have a valid perspective and other share it but there's more to it in these kind of online discussions. A lot of people do hang their hat on it being Early Access or like I said loving to hate a big publisher. Those things are definitely factors.

I am a guy who bugs don't really bother all that much so I'm with you. I just get annoyed when some games get killed for bugs and others don't in the discourse and I think these are reasons why people have double standards.

One is the fourth in a series of games that have been relatively polished (at least 2 and 3, 1 was also a bit of a mess but seems to get a pass for being the first game/for the writing) and the other is a new entry from a small team in a genre that is entirely made up of (seemingly eternally) unfinished, buggy games by small teams.

Though I will say, i've been dealing with some REAL annoying bugs in BG, like buildings not loading in. Sometimes they will load in when I land, sometimes it will take as long as 2(!!!) whole minutes for them to load in, meaning for the first 2 minutes of a match I can't enter any buildings to get any weapons. I've already ran into a situation where I landed in an area with someone else, started to chase them, then got stuck outside as they went into a building and armed up. Worst part is how inconsistent it is, sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn't, sometimes opening the inventory while parachuting fixes it, sometimes it completely freezes the game.

Battlegrounds is also a $30 indie game. Mass Effect Andromeda is a full priced AAA title. MEA also has other, non technical issues that prevent it from being enjoyable.

@artisanbreads: I fail to see how the PUBG being an early access game is an excuse.

PUBG isn't trying to pull any wool over your eyes. It isn't masquerading as a high quality, polished title worthy of $60. It's a small studio work of love in early access with a fun gameplay loop. It does one thing (100 people trying to murder each other on an island via shooter and vehicle mechanics) and it does it so darned well that people are willing and able to overlook all the early game, small studio jank... for now. If the jank doesn't go away and the big studios snatch up the gameplay mode idea, PUBG will fade before its time.

Mass Effect: Andromeda was a dumpster fire of bad design decisions and unfocused development. Even if you patched out every stupid animation glitch, npc spawning quirk, infinite loading screen, and so on... you'd still have an uninspired, dull experience with a horrible story, miserable dialogue, an utter lack of respect for established lore, and barren open worlds enriched only by a passable, yet not exceptional, combat system that was only "great" in comparison to the combat in previous Mass Effect games (the weak link of the old games).

This isn't about people irrationally loving to hate EA and / or Bioware. Mass Effect: Andromeda was a disappointment. It was such a disappointment that Bioware Montreal was dissolved and its employees incorporated into the EA support studio Motive. It was such a disappointment that all single player DLC was cancelled and multiplayer support is trickling to a close. It was such a disappointment that people are trying to defend it by comparing it to a buggy, small studio early-access game based off an Arma 2 Mod! Gadzooks. :-(

@lazyimperial: I think it's a pretty good game, sorry. Again, this is a thread about technical issues. You can look at the people using the Early Access excuse above if you want.

absolutely not but that's another annoying part of the ME:A discussion. This is like when people said ME 1-2-3 had good facial animations.

Being a good game made by a small team solves the bugginess problem; also budget disparity and what not. A worse double standard is the shitty reviews for Valkyria Revolution (a totally competent, but too difficult for game reviewers JRPG) compared to Mass Effect Andromeda; where Mass Effect Andromeda will win countless "Most Disappointing" awards but still somehow has 10 more points on metacritic than a pretty good game.

Moral of the story, just put the "Early Access" tag on it and nobody cares. If battlegrounds was marketing itself as fully released then it would be a different story IMO, however it is one of the rare games where many of the bugs add to the fun since it doesn't take itself to serious like andromeda tried to.

Just wanted to add that, while they were* a small developer and technically Indie (as they are publishing themselves), they aren't some fledgling company. Bluehole are the South Korean developer behind the MMO Tera, (2011), so honestly the technical issues relating to the online should be completely inexcusable. Even if the publisher/other companies involved handled the entire online service side of Tera, the studio within Bluehole, Ginno Games (whom they acquired last year) has a past with MMO's too. I remember a developer on Twitter (Rami Ismail I think) talking about the false indie-start-up narrative behind this game and this thread lead me to look further into it. The Wikipedia page has a good overview on the history of the developers of this game if you're interested.

*I say "were" because after PUBG's success they've more than doubled in size to almost 100 developers.

@dixavd: 100 is still relatively small; its no Ubisoft credits that go on for 20+ minutes.

I'd argue that the gameplay in Andromeda is actually quite good. It's the story/writing/characters/world building that are a generic mess. Which, for an RPG, is a far graver sin. It's why a lot of people can admit The Witcher 3 doesn't actually play super well, but it's still one of the best games ever made.

@sweep: On the flipside, all the bugs and poor performance are ruining the PUBG experience for me. The constant stuttering and lag, even on the lowest settings and a powerful computer, turn every close encounter into a slideshow. It's gotten to where I use the frame rate as an enemy detector since it nose dives around other players regardless of what's onscreen.

If PUBG is getting a pass it's only because it's got the "Early Access" tag, from a previously unknown dev, and the current streamers' darling. And even then, I'm not sure people are as tolerant as you think, perhaps there's some confirmation bias at play?

@artisanbreads: The Mass Effect Trilogy had good facial animations for their time, and those facial animations are still astronomically better than the facial animations in Mass Effect: Andromeda... which came out a decade after Mass Effect 1. That's why people are bringing the original trilogy up.

And I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. I don't find PUBG being in early access an excuse in the least, and I did discuss technical issues. *shrug* Technical issues obfuscate the quality, or lack thereof, underneath. PUBG is a pretty good game underneath its small studio jank. Mass Effect: Andromeda... well, you already know my opinion of what lurks underneath its bugs. Truthfully, ME:A's bugs were the part of the game I had the most fun with.

@fredchuckdave: I don't hold 100 people as being small but I tried looking it up. It's fairly difficult but I could find detailed info about game development in America because The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) puts out data on the American gaming industry every year. They say that the average development size is 18 with a very small number having many hundreds. 100 doesn't seem relatively small at all. In fact, it's almost the average number of employers for a publisher (114). (Analyzing the American Video Game Industry 2016 - February 2017, page 15).

While it holds true that PUBG is from a relatively small publisher when compared to the massive Ubisoft or EA published developers (i.e. Mass Effect: Andromeda), for the industry as a whole, around 100 would be considered AAA game development.

I'll just add that developing (and debugging) a networked multiplayer game has very different challenges.

I think there's a major difference in perceived expectations - which at the end of the day is rooted in how enjoyable each game is. Even if the combat is good, the writing and VA in ME:A is pretty hit or miss (and more likely to miss). It gets shit on a lot for the bugs, but the underlying game just isn't that enjoyable. PUBG, on the other hand, is still in EA, so I think it gets a pass on some of the jank and server issues. I definitely think PUBG needs to clean up that stuff by the time it comes out though, especially if they want to bring it to consoles as well.

@sweep: It's a bit of a double standard; you're not wrong about that. I think it's a different expectation when you're playing a story-driven game than an open world online only game. Bugs in PUBG don't add to the game, but they certainly don't detract from it whereas bugs in ME:A will just take you out of the experience entirely. Also it's the 4th game in a series from a big developer and somehow the bugs are worse than they were before.

While I personally am not a fan of the Mass Effect franchise (and ME:A in particular seems to have plenty of fundamental issues beyond stiff animations, poor voice acting and glitches), I think I'd boil it down to how much the bugs actually impede you. Regardless of price and budget and PUBG match is over in 30 minutes, and that's pushing it. Even a major bug would make you lose those 30 minutes at most, but most bugs in the game can be worked around, literally even - considering it's an open world where you can actively avoid most things that you have found to cause issues in the past, such as those houses where you can't lean mentioned in the OP.

Compare that to Mass Effect, which while having some open environments is still a linear series that you'll probably spend at least tens of hours with a single character in. A corrupted save could make you lose hours if not the entire character, and a faulty script trigger can entirely halt your progress (as we saw in Vinny's ME:A playthrough), and you often can't just walk around that part to continue.

They're still so fundamentally different kinds of games that the impact of a single crash to desktop is pretty much incomparable.

But PUBG is technically in alpha.

ME:A earned all the hate its received. Saying people are just hating on it because it was published by EA is some revisionist hooey of the highest degree. ME2 was also published by EA and it's universally praised. Some would even call it the Game of the Generation. Theory debunked.

PUBG gets a pass from players because it's a new game with no expectations. Also it offers a genre that is new to most players (PUBG is much more successful than previous KotH style games), so even though it's a bullshit excuse, I suspect some players give the bugs a pass because this game is "exploring a new genre" or something. Overall I think there is a lot of goodwill earned by it being a "new thing" that they can forgive bugs.

ME:A doesn't get a pass because with 3 prior Mass Effect games, players have expectations and ME:A doesn't meet them in some ways. Plus, it is very much not a "new thing", so players figure that if something is just the 3rd or 4th entry in a series then even if it's not better than previous entries, it should at least be as good as previous entries. But instead ME:A actually had some big flaws that previous Mass Effects didn't have, so it got extra roasted over them.

Overall I think people are more forgiving of bugs and flaws if something appears to be a "new thing", but if something is part of an existing franchise then people will have almost no tolerance for problems because "they should've figured everything out by now." Even if the existing franchise game is under a different dev team or using much different tech or whatever the reason, people will be harsh on it. You only get to make mistakes your first time out with a series.

It's always hard to determine how badly "broken" a game really is.

With PUBG is has sooo many people constantly playing, constantly streaming, and constantly hammering away on it. It also requires a constant connection leaving it even more vulnerable, especially with the large player base, to server issues.

Clearly PUBG has it's problems, and the early access label gives them a bit of a pass. However those problems don't always harm the overall experience.

It really seems like it depends on the kind of bugs and issues that crop up. A bug that makes the game feel unfair to the player almost always produces more anger than a quirky animation bug.