As the title suggests this is going to be about a few things in games I am currently playing that frustrate the heck out of me. I will name names and detail what it is that I am frustrated with up to an including shitty customer support.
–
Let’s start with Bethesda and their title Fallout 76.
I have put almost 200 hours into the game at this point. I log onto the game everyday because they started doing this cool thing with it called Seasons which is apparently an online game staple where you can earn free things by just playing the game and completing challenges. I don’t pay for the Fallout 1st subscription because I can’t justify paying a hundred dollars at minimum a year for it when I already paid SIXTY DOLLARS for the game. If it was a free to play like Second Life or Warframe I could understand and justify paying a monthly fee to help keep the game going. This is one of the frustrating things because those that do pay that fee get unlimited scrap storage, private servers, and special cosmetic items for doing so while people who have bought the game but don’t pay the monthly get a 800 pound limit in universal storage, public servers (which aren’t too bad most of the time), and have to pay money to get special game currency to be able to get most of the cosmetics in the game shop. I also forgot to mention that subscribers also get given a monthly game currency stipend to spend in the game store or to save up as they wish. Oh, and for those that defend getting the monthly subscription because you basically get the amount of game currency per month that you would for the amount you pay? IT DOESN’T COST BETHESDA ANY MONEY OUT OF POCKET TO GIVE THAT TO YOU SINCE IT ISN’T A REAL CURRENCY YOU CAN EXCHANGE BACK TO USD!
On top of this the game is a mess. I love playing it most of the time because it is Fallout, but, I have had more issues come up in this game than in any Bethesda title that I have ever played and I have played a lot of them. Yes, the developer is known for the bugs as a running joke but an online game has to be almost perfect compared to single player titles because you can’t roll back to a previous save in order to save your inventory, etc if something decides to glitch out.
A perfect example of this is something that happened to me last night. I was playing the game and trying to get to the nearest area so that I could scrap what I had in my inventory. I was overburdened which isn’t unusual for me in this game. I decided to go to a place I hadn’t ever been to so that it is on my map for the future and since it was on my way anyway. I am in power armor, I am a heavy gunner but none of that matters when the enemies are invisible but are still somehow able to harm you. I didn’t know where I was being shot from, or where I could find cover from it, and so I tried to run but was gunned down from behind. Then it took over five minutes to respawn only to be instantly dead when I did because of the load time so I respawned again. This time it was almost instant. The enemies still hadn’t appeared so I quickly grabbed my scrap and almost died again but made it far enough away that they stopped hitting me. I was almost to my scrapping destination when… I FELL THROUGH THE MAP! I died of course because they set a limit on falling or an invisible floor under the map so of course when I respawned all that scrap that I had been carrying and had worked for half an hour to build up was sitting in my dropped loot bag UNDER THE MAP where I couldn’t get it. I quit for the night in frustration and mild anger. I actually said, “Fuck this shit, Fuck this game, I am done for the night with this shit.”
I have been falling randomly through the map for weeks now. I have already tried to talk to customer support about the issues I have been having with not just that but the invisible enemies, the terrain not popping in properly, textures being blurry and/or flickering, etc. They proceeded to blame my drivers, my graphics card, my graphics settings, and finally my internet. Keep in mind that I have no issues with any of my other games and before they updated the game for the season to start I wasn’t having any of these issues at all. The customer support is so canned and so bad that I finally just gave the fuck up and have just been sucking it up. They blame the response times and such on COVID-19 but from previous experience their support has always been shitty and the tone has always been blame towards the customer instead of a neutral tone like a lot of other places.
Heck, they had to unlock the Twitch Prime rewards for me manually because I still to this day can’t get my Bethesda account to resync up and connect with my Twitch Prime account. They blame Twitch and Twitch blames them so it’s basically a circle jerk of frustration so again I gave up trying to make it work.
–
The next game that I have been having issues with is Dear Esther – Landmark Edition.
I decided to get this game because one of my other absolute favorite titles is Everyone’s Gone to the Rapture. I don’t care if people poo poo it as a walking simulator. If you actually pay attention to all the things you read, see, and hear it is a thought provoking story full of love and hope despite all the fear, anger, and such that was going on.
The love of that game is like I stated why I bought Dear Esther. I was hoping that the story in it would be just as thought provoking and lovely. However, I’ve never been able to even play it.
I started the game up and it was running just fine until I went into the settings. You see I use a 65 inch 4k television as my monitor but see my games better in 1920×1080. It is also less stressing on my video card depending on how new the title is, etc. Changing the resolution made the game go to black which has happened before with other titles, but, the game picture never returned and even with uninstalling and reinstalling it hasn’t come back. This means I can’t play it. The sounds are fine so I know the game is running, but, no picture. I of course went online to search for a solution, but, the only one that I can find requires that I go into my computer’s registry file and alter it. This is actually quite dangerous to do if you don’t know what the hell you are doing because it can nerf your whole system! I don’t have the knowledge to do it nor am I ignorant enough to think nothing bad will happen to try it anyway. I tried writing the developer about the issue and didn’t hear back. I didn’t even get an automated email letting me know they got it. So, I waited a day… still no reply, still no automated email. I wrote them again today letting them know again what the issue is. I also sent them a direct message through Twitter. No response so far. This is pissing me off and frustrating me to no end. The game isn’t new, this bug/issue isn’t new, there are people all over the forums having this same problem but nothing has been done? I did let the developers know that if they can’t be bothered to fix something like this then I can’t be bothered to continue to support their work and will be asking for a refund on the game. The Landmark Edition is supposed to be the newest most complete edition of the game!
–
I know that games can’t be perfect. Even old school titles like Super Mario Bros. has bugs and glitches in it. But why has it in this day and age of being able to digitally update a title to fix them, unlike Super Mario Bros. which couldn’t be updated in the old days, has it become common place to ignore shit? To just shrug customer opinion off like water on a duck?
Derek's Mindscape 