Moderator: Moderators for English X Forum
Yea! Blame it on Bush and Blair..... Maybe you should lower your playing time a bit.mattius wrote:
This man is dead right. People are prepared to put up with shoddiness these days. Guess that's why Bush & Blair are in the positions that they are in. If I had it my way Egosoft would be prosecuted for selling goods that are in effect not uo to the job they say they are. This is contravening the Trades Description Act & The Sale of Goods Act 1984.
Yes and all of those games are based on established game genres whose engines can be easily bought or leased. Some of the titles you mentioned are published by very wealthy firms that have been, for example, making successful shooters for over 10 years. And if I wanted to play a shooter, I would expect it to be bug free. But I don't. So give me some open ended space exploration and building games that are bug free and you will have a point. You do realize, I hope, that a shooter is easier to program than an open ended, multi location universe where unpredictable things can be going on in 6o locations at once?blacktoe wrote:@Darshu - I don't know what games you have installed, but I have played through CoD2, Quake 4, BIA: Earned in Blood, and NFS: Most Wanted. None of these games needed patching to function properly
I don't think complaining will get you anywhere as far as changing the industry. Perhaps if you were to boycott their products, developers and publishers would re-think the way they work, but complaining is really only gonna get you patches. Which, of course, is a good thing, but it doesn't make the industry more responsible.Spektre wrote: I couldn't disgaree more. Whining is absolutley essential. Whining as loud and hard as possible.
The fact is, in any industry, there are many unscrupulous developers, designers, manufacturers, whatever, that will attempt, wherever possible, to cut corners, cut overheads and maximise profits at the customer's expense whenever they can. We all know this, I'm sure we've all been ripped off with something in the past.
As trading laws in the UK state: 'goods must be fit for the purpose for which they are sold' not 'goods may not be fit for whatever purpose they are sold, sell it in whatever state you like and issue some vague promises about fixing it up after you've had the money'.
I don't care whether it's a game or a rogue builder who botched my roof. I paid my money and I want it to work. A free market economy should thrive on a seller meeting a customer's needs, for a profit. This product obviously does not meet the needs of many.
It seems to me the software industry, like other new-tech industries at the moment, needs some far harsher regulation and stiffer penalties to prevent goods like this slipping through the net.
The fact is, the more we complain and insist on quality, the more likely the industry will be to produce quality goods that immediately meet customer needs. The more leeway you give developers to produce shoddy goods by saying things like 'I don't mind wating for a patch for my broken game, because I'm a loyal fan', the more often you'll be buying stuff like this in the future.
I don't think you'll ever see that said on these forums, so you can go ahead and spend your money on something else right now. There will always be someone who isn't happy that their favorite feature from X2 / new idea for X3 wasn't put in by the patches, so they'll get on here and say there are still bugs in it. Also, there will always be someone with a certain combination of software and hardware that causes a problem with the game that's not fixable. If you looked closely enough at bigger games' forums, you'd probably see post-"final patch" bug reports for them too.blacktoe wrote: @Egosoft - Thanx for the update on the patch. When I see, on these forums, that X3 is bug free I'll be happy to lay down my hard-earned cash.
Who said about sue Egosoft, USA and UK can't sue Egosoft due it's in other country, on other hand Happy people or rednecks can sue Enlight since they are in USA, I dont know about Silver Deep, is it in UK or Gemery?Ecthelion wrote:I don't think complaining will get you anywhere as far as changing the industry. Perhaps if you were to boycott their products, developers and publishers would re-think the way they work, but complaining is really only gonna get you patches. Which, of course, is a good thing, but it doesn't make the industry more responsible.Spektre wrote: I couldn't disgaree more. Whining is absolutley essential. Whining as loud and hard as possible.
The fact is, in any industry, there are many unscrupulous developers, designers, manufacturers, whatever, that will attempt, wherever possible, to cut corners, cut overheads and maximise profits at the customer's expense whenever they can. We all know this, I'm sure we've all been ripped off with something in the past.
As trading laws in the UK state: 'goods must be fit for the purpose for which they are sold' not 'goods may not be fit for whatever purpose they are sold, sell it in whatever state you like and issue some vague promises about fixing it up after you've had the money'.
I don't care whether it's a game or a rogue builder who botched my roof. I paid my money and I want it to work. A free market economy should thrive on a seller meeting a customer's needs, for a profit. This product obviously does not meet the needs of many.
It seems to me the software industry, like other new-tech industries at the moment, needs some far harsher regulation and stiffer penalties to prevent goods like this slipping through the net.
The fact is, the more we complain and insist on quality, the more likely the industry will be to produce quality goods that immediately meet customer needs. The more leeway you give developers to produce shoddy goods by saying things like 'I don't mind wating for a patch for my broken game, because I'm a loyal fan', the more often you'll be buying stuff like this in the future.
Can you or someone else explain to me this whole concept of "buying a game that's buggy is the same as buying a car that doesn't work?" I just don't get it. Maybe it's the difference between laws and attitudes in the USA and the UK, but I haven't seen anyone over here sue a company because the game didn't work on their computer. It's hard for me to imagine a judge taking a lawsuit about an entertainment product that cost so little not working very seriously, but maybe I'm behind the times.
I would think even in the UK that those trade laws have probably not been applied to software in court yet (at least not games). Also, it seems to me that Egosoft / Enlight would only have to prove that X3 works on most people's machines (which it does) to prove it is 'fit for the purpose for which it was sold.' As far as features mentioned in the manual but missing from the game, that's a bit trickier to assess. I don't think you can sue a company for misleading information in a manual - more than one prominent business application has mentioned missing features in its documentation, and gotten away with it.
And they got to BE "very wealthy firms" by releasing generally well working, fun to play games. If Egosoft keeps this up, they will never make it to the "very wealthy frim" level. Which is too bad. Because I REALLY like the direction that X took.kmiller1610 wrote:Yes and all of those games are based on established game genres whose engines can be easily bought or leased. Some of the titles you mentioned are published by very wealthy firms that have been, for example, making successful shooters for over 10 years. And if I wanted to play a shooter, I would expect it to be bug free. But I don't. So give me some open ended space exploration and building games that are bug free and you will have a point. You do realize, I hope, that a shooter is easier to program than an open ended, multi location universe where unpredictable things can be going on in 6o locations at once?blacktoe wrote:@Darshu - I don't know what games you have installed, but I have played through CoD2, Quake 4, BIA: Earned in Blood, and NFS: Most Wanted. None of these games needed patching to function properly
Thanks for catching my mistake. You're right, Deepsilver is the UK distributor, and Enlight is the US one. I should have been more precise about not suing Egosoft, although I am not sure people are limited to suing businesses in their own country.Reader81 wrote:Who said about sue Egosoft, USA and UK can't sue Egosoft due it's in other country, on other hand Happy people or redneak can sue Enlight since they are in USA, I dont know about Silver Deep, is it in UK or Gemery?Ecthelion wrote:I don't think complaining will get you anywhere as far as changing the industry. Perhaps if you were to boycott their products, developers and publishers would re-think the way they work, but complaining is really only gonna get you patches. Which, of course, is a good thing, but it doesn't make the industry more responsible.Spektre wrote: I couldn't disgaree more. Whining is absolutley essential. Whining as loud and hard as possible.
The fact is, in any industry, there are many unscrupulous developers, designers, manufacturers, whatever, that will attempt, wherever possible, to cut corners, cut overheads and maximise profits at the customer's expense whenever they can. We all know this, I'm sure we've all been ripped off with something in the past.
As trading laws in the UK state: 'goods must be fit for the purpose for which they are sold' not 'goods may not be fit for whatever purpose they are sold, sell it in whatever state you like and issue some vague promises about fixing it up after you've had the money'.
I don't care whether it's a game or a rogue builder who botched my roof. I paid my money and I want it to work. A free market economy should thrive on a seller meeting a customer's needs, for a profit. This product obviously does not meet the needs of many.
It seems to me the software industry, like other new-tech industries at the moment, needs some far harsher regulation and stiffer penalties to prevent goods like this slipping through the net.
The fact is, the more we complain and insist on quality, the more likely the industry will be to produce quality goods that immediately meet customer needs. The more leeway you give developers to produce shoddy goods by saying things like 'I don't mind wating for a patch for my broken game, because I'm a loyal fan', the more often you'll be buying stuff like this in the future.
Can you or someone else explain to me this whole concept of "buying a game that's buggy is the same as buying a car that doesn't work?" I just don't get it. Maybe it's the difference between laws and attitudes in the USA and the UK, but I haven't seen anyone over here sue a company because the game didn't work on their computer. It's hard for me to imagine a judge taking a lawsuit about an entertainment product that cost so little not working very seriously, but maybe I'm behind the times.
I would think even in the UK that those trade laws have probably not been applied to software in court yet (at least not games). Also, it seems to me that Egosoft / Enlight would only have to prove that X3 works on most people's machines (which it does) to prove it is 'fit for the purpose for which it was sold.' As far as features mentioned in the manual but missing from the game, that's a bit trickier to assess. I don't think you can sue a company for misleading information in a manual - more than one prominent business application has mentioned missing features in its documentation, and gotten away with it.
Actually, that is an excellent point - well made. Many of those FPS used the same engines, just slightly differing in graphics - which may be the reason why we enjoy such a dirth of near identical games these days. Use an engine, make some pretty backgrounds/characters etc - and make stack of cash.Holywhippet wrote: One of the problems with the software industry is reinventing the wheel. There are lots of game engines out there which don't get reused very often. Only a few like the Source engine, Unreal, Lithtech and the Doom/Quake engines get licensed out a lot. Because of this, game prices get pushed up because of the time and money taken to build a new engine for each new game. If engine reuse was more common, costs shouldn't be as high.
As another poster mentioned, these games are based off of extremely play-tested engines that are licensed to multiple developers, so there are very few core bugs to work out anyways.blacktoe wrote:@Darshu - I don't know what games you have installed, but I have played through CoD2, Quake 4, BIA: Earned in Blood, and NFS: Most Wanted. None of these games needed patching to function properly, so I would have to disagree with the assertion that Egosoft maintains the same level of quality control that competing organizations maintain.
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