A rational response to the "Bethesda is Incompetent" comments.

[fix]

Make sure you're giving credit and blame where it is due. Bethesda isn't one person, and missteps like those we see in this update aren't one person's fault.

In many hours of several Fallout games and several Elder Scrolls games, I've discovered that Bethesda uses very talented artists, writers, hired voice actors, UX/UI designers, and developers to craft these games. This is the creative talent, and none of these people want to make a bad product. They do their best with the time allotted to them for their work. The problem we're seeing is in the very last part: the time allotted.

I'm simplifying this, but there are generally three types of people that worked with the creative talent to make this next-gen update.

Executives. These are the higher-ups who made the decision to invest time into a next-gen update. They saw some value in investing time into an old game and set aside an amount of money to get it done. They expect it to pay for itself in game sale to new customers, hype for the show or next game, or hype for other Fallout games. Revisiting games this old is rarely a pure expression of goodwill.

Product Managers. This person or group is responsible for the lifecycle of the game. They oversee it from concept to release to post-release support. They take the resources and requirements from the executives and coordinate it into individual projects. For this update, the Fallout 4 Product Manager (Product Managers?) were in place.

Project Managers. These people are the bridge between the product manager and the creative teams. Creative teams say they need a certain amount of time and money to meet all their goals, and project managers decide which of those goals are higher priority and which can be skipped. Very rarely does a creative team get all the resources and all the time they want, but sometimes they get close. (For example: I am betting the Tears of the Kingdom creative teams got very generous time/budget allocation.) There will be multiple creative teams all looking for resources or more time, so the Project Managers need to work with everyone to find the right compromises.

In that structure, there will be a struggle for Creatives to convince Project Managers to fight for the time/budget from Product Managers. Meanwhile, it's up to the Product Manager to try to give Executives (plus stockholders) realistic expectations of investment, time, and return.

Extremely talented people over at Bethesda are creating things, but all creations take time and money. That money is granted by executives and divided up through a couple layers of management. The developers qualified to work on fixes for (non-Deck) PC users were assigned to other duties by project managers, to meet requirements of product managers. I am sure all of these project and product managers did the best they could to appease their only customer: the executive.

I'm betting nobody at Bethesda is truly incompetent. They just have priorities that do not match the priorities of Fallout 4 players on PC. They know they're squandering goodwill and reputation, but also are gaining new players on other platforms and keeping the hype train going. I guess all we can do is remind them (and tell our friends) that Bethesda is full of talented people, but their executives do not prioritize PC gamers.

If they don't change their priorities, we can choose to not buy their future products or pay for their in-game sales or subscription services. I know I will. I love Bethesda worlds, especially Elder Scrolls and Fallout, and I talk about them and play them for many hours over many years. I love all the creative people who put in so many hours of work. I was even sad when Tim Russ didn't show up as Lancer Captain Kells on the show. I don't believe they are incompetent. They just won't get any more of my money until their priorities change.

(Again, this is greatly simplified and is an extrapolation from years of software development in non-gaming fields. I am sure I will get replies below correcting me, and I welcome correction where I am wrong. Just don't go calling people names, ok?)

[G_Moneh]

I'll just add it took 10 years to release bug fixes they knew were a problem and in some instances, game/quest breaking. Ten Years.

Had the TV show not come out, they would have never gotten fixed (except by dedicated modders working for free).

[fix]

Originally posted by G_Moneh:

I'll just add it took 10 years to release bug fixes they knew were a problem and in some instances, game/quest breaking. Ten Years.

Had the TV show not come out, they would have never gotten fixed (except by dedicated modders working for free).

Yep! And Fallout 3 was broken from when "Games for Windows Live" was shut down (July 2017) until they finally patched out the requirement in October of 2021. Guess what? That patch also broke mods. I could be wrong, but I think it was still posted as available for sale for that WHOLE TIME and the only reason it was patched is because it was literally impossible to sell more copies or they were getting returns on purchased copies.

The executive priorities are out of whack for my needs and for the needs of so many PC gamers. If they continue this path, I hope they lose enough money to realize they need to change priorities.

[kkitts]

When you fire your experienced devs, and let new, inexperienced devs work on something like this, yes, you will have incompetent people. The botched rollout of this patch is living proof.

[Hammer Bear]

since this thread is about bethesda game company
how about we discuss starfield and fo76?
they are indeed competent dev team, right?

[kkitts]

Originally posted by Hammer Bear:

since this thread is about bethesda game company
how about we discuss starfield and fo76?
they are indeed competent dev team, right?

If you followed F76 from its inception, you wouldn't have even asked that question. YouTuber YongYea cataloged all of the stuff F76 and Bethesda did wrong, and stopped at around his 20th video or so. It was the gift that kept on giving for YouTubers.

[TemplarGR]

Originally posted by kkitts:

Originally posted by Hammer Bear:

since this thread is about bethesda game company
how about we discuss starfield and fo76?
they are indeed competent dev team, right?

If you followed F76 from its inception, you wouldn't have even asked that question. YouTuber YongYea cataloged all of the stuff F76 and Bethesda did wrong, and stopped at around his 20th video or so. It was the gift that kept on giving for YouTubers.

There is a reason modern games suck. Why become a game developer, study hard computer programming and then get paid for peanuts while working hard hours to produce quality games while on the other hand a talentless m0r0n with a smartphone can sit on his bedroom and spam videos complaining about your game and become filthy rich....

[Zuleica]

Two things would have greatly eased this unrest;

1. Provide the update a few weeks ahead on a beta branch so modders, especially F4SE, could get a headstart on understanding what needs to be done and identify issues.

2. Provide the legacy version on a 'legacy' branch for those of us that don't follow news of ancient games and got caught with auto updates on. Now we have to go through a rather complex revert process when Bethesda *could* have made it very simple.

[Jimmi Stixx]

Originally posted by TemplarGR:

Originally posted by kkitts:

If you followed F76 from its inception, you wouldn't have even asked that question. YouTuber YongYea cataloged all of the stuff F76 and Bethesda did wrong, and stopped at around his 20th video or so. It was the gift that kept on giving for YouTubers.

There is a reason modern games suck. Why become a game developer, study hard computer programming and then get paid for peanuts while working hard hours to produce quality games while on the other hand a talentless m0r0n with a smartphone can sit on his bedroom and spam videos complaining about your game and become filthy rich....

Sounds like incentive to make better games or get a different job.

[ShadwDrgn]

Originally posted by fix:

Make sure you're giving credit and blame where it is due. Bethesda isn't one person, and missteps like those we see in this update aren't one person's fault.

In many hours of several Fallout games and several Elder Scrolls games, I've discovered that Bethesda uses very talented artists, writers, hired voice actors, UX/UI designers, and developers to craft these games. This is the creative talent, and none of these people want to make a bad product. They do their best with the time allotted to them for their work. The problem we're seeing is in the very last part: the time allotted.

I'm simplifying this, but there are generally three types of people that worked with the creative talent to make this next-gen update.

Executives. These are the higher-ups who made the decision to invest time into a next-gen update. They saw some value in investing time into an old game and set aside an amount of money to get it done. They expect it to pay for itself in game sale to new customers, hype for the show or next game, or hype for other Fallout games. Revisiting games this old is rarely a pure expression of goodwill.

Product Managers. This person or group is responsible for the lifecycle of the game. They oversee it from concept to release to post-release support. They take the resources and requirements from the executives and coordinate it into individual projects. For this update, the Fallout 4 Product Manager (Product Managers?) were in place.

Project Managers. These people are the bridge between the product manager and the creative teams. Creative teams say they need a certain amount of time and money to meet all their goals, and project managers decide which of those goals are higher priority and which can be skipped. Very rarely does a creative team get all the resources and all the time they want, but sometimes they get close. (For example: I am betting the Tears of the Kingdom creative teams got very generous time/budget allocation.) There will be multiple creative teams all looking for resources or more time, so the Project Managers need to work with everyone to find the right compromises.

In that structure, there will be a struggle for Creatives to convince Project Managers to fight for the time/budget from Product Managers. Meanwhile, it's up to the Product Manager to try to give Executives (plus stockholders) realistic expectations of investment, time, and return.

Extremely talented people over at Bethesda are creating things, but all creations take time and money. That money is granted by executives and divided up through a couple layers of management. The developers qualified to work on fixes for (non-Deck) PC users were assigned to other duties by project managers, to meet requirements of product managers. I am sure all of these project and product managers did the best they could to appease their only customer: the executive.

I'm betting nobody at Bethesda is truly incompetent. They just have priorities that do not match the priorities of Fallout 4 players on PC. They know they're squandering goodwill and reputation, but also are gaining new players on other platforms and keeping the hype train going. I guess all we can do is remind them (and tell our friends) that Bethesda is full of talented people, but their executives do not prioritize PC gamers.

If they don't change their priorities, we can choose to not buy their future products or pay for their in-game sales or subscription services. I know I will. I love Bethesda worlds, especially Elder Scrolls and Fallout, and I talk about them and play them for many hours over many years. I love all the creative people who put in so many hours of work. I was even sad when Tim Russ didn't show up as Lancer Captain Kells on the show. I don't believe they are incompetent. They just won't get any more of my money until their priorities change.

(Again, this is greatly simplified and is an extrapolation from years of software development in non-gaming fields. I am sure I will get replies below correcting me, and I welcome correction where I am wrong. Just don't go calling people names, ok?)

When people refer to bethesda to criticize them, they're referring to the company, not it's people. This seems obvious to me and everyone i've ever spoken to that I ask seems to confirm this. Bethesda (the company) REALLY dropped the ball for a lot of people on this one, and for many of those people an EXTREMELY brief and relatively even more extremely inexpensive QA process would have prevented it.

People are perfectly justified in their criticism.

Also assuming NO ONE at bethesda is incompetent is a bold claim. I find that at any one company there are often many incompetent people. It's probably fair to say that many people at bethesda aren't incompetent, but that doesn't excuse this failure. Besides as I said, people are referring to the company, not any individuals at the company. Even when people say "The devs" they generally actually just mean "the company that makes and/or publishes the game" not the ACTUAL coders.

This should be well understood.

Edit: I would add that EVEN when people single out todd howard, they're STILL usually using that to represent the company itself.

[Major Spliff]

TLDR

Shill

[peon]

Op has a point, but OP you got to realize.

What exactly was "patched". Most of what they added was creation club content, which is created by the community is it not?

The weapons debris is crazy, I figured they would just remove it instead of fixing it, and they didnt even do that!

Funny thing its pretty simple to update the library if you have the source code, I could do it in a weekend prolly...

[soulshiver]

well this is a scary thought .. for all intent and purposes Bethesda is one entity when you complain .. if you start finding individuals to single out you've effectively lost the argument ..
their team is just that a team .. when someone complains about a bug .. it's Bethesda's fault .. and that's the end of that line .. you take success as a team, you take responsibility as a team
you weren't there during discussions/meetings/behind the scenes .. you're believing what people drum up about indiviuals on the internet and throw blame at specific people is dangerous and will make that persons life difficult when they were part of a team

[Lucifronz]

A company rots from the head. Everything is tainted at Bethesda, just as the whole of Blizzard is tainted or the people at Gearbox Software. They are irrevocably ruined and you want us to start specifying that it's not the artists we're mad at?

Obviously we're not annoyed with the person who shades in the color of your power armor. Get real.

[fix]

I'm loving these replies because it's really showing us what people are passionate about. I really hope Bethesda execs and product managers get a chance to read these suggestions and adjust their behavior.

I am so disappointed in this patch, Starfield, Fallout 76, and Fallout 4 VR. The only reason I keep coming back is that I am so enamored with the Fallout and Elder Scrolls worlds that I hope to feel again as immersed as I did in those earlier games. Skyrim VR (after a TON mods) is the best experience I've had in VR besides Alyx - and Alyx is tied because it has better tech and immersion, but a very linear story.

The reason I wrote this up is because 1: I saw people saying the developers sucked. I honestly believe they could have done better with more time and resources. 2: This patch is not the whole game, and the failure of this patch is eclipsing what is good about the game. Fallout deserves better, and we want Bethesda to hear it. 3: I wanted to hear what people who disagree with me say. On a topic like this, it's really important to see things from someone else's point of view.

Thanks for all your contributions.

[SkunkPlaysGames]

So who's the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ responsible? Any ideas? What's his/her email? /jk