Legendary Bugs & Flaws

[Monte Carlo]

Please list the most annoying, flawed, shoulda-seen-em-coming and game-stopping bugs and design decisions here.

 

This is inspired by my experience of a classic example of the genre last night. I'm playing MTW:2 using the Grand Campaign Mod, and I'm playing England in Turn 132 or something. One of the fun things about MTW:2 is using spies to spot much bigger enemy armies, then setting your smaller army in a tactically advantageous position to ambush them. You then decimate hundreds of hard-arse enemy knights with your hidden longbowmen as they scurry out of column and into a battle line.

 

However, generals with the "Good Ambusher" trait seem to auto-ambush armies that aren't allied who wander into their path... and when you're both on a Crusade that means one thing and one thing only... Excommunication.

 

So it was that my three full-stack armies led by my faction leader and heir, all galloping off to conquer Cordoba under the flag of the Holy Cross, cack-handedly ambushed the Teutonic order crusader army somewhere near Valencia. BONG! The (English!) Pope excommunicates us, all my crusader troops desert, my heavily religious home regions start revolting and it's too late to use the auto-save function.

 

That's a really, really avoidable, frustrating and annoying bug / design flaw. After 132 turns of carefully managed gameplay I'm screwed.

 

Can you name yours?

 

Cheers

MC

[Rosbjerg]

Hah, never tried that before.. How annyoing..

 

I've encountered so many bugs and design flaws in games over the years that I honestly can't remember that many - I totally forget about 'em until new and similar problems arises.

 

The most annoying design desicion, that I remember, however is something adherent in the Europa Universalis Series.. the so-called Ping-Pong armies.. Basically the problem is that rebels/enemies will come into your land with huge stacks - then be defeated to only a fraction of their size, but their morale is now so low that they will instantly loose and flee if they meet one of your armies (wihout loosing soldiers). So you can't destroy them (unless you know the tricks), they will just roam your country until they die from starvation, which takes a while.

 

In EU2, I once had a huge empire that engulfed much of Europe, America and Asia, when suddenly rebels started becoming a problem.. I had huge armies stationed around the globe, so this wasn't a big problem (I thought) until 10 years later - when my armies were still chasing the 25+ small bands of rebels roaming and fleeing and causing more unrest.. until finally my entire empire crumbled before my eyes as new and huge stacks of rebels joined their ranks (rebels cause unrest by their presence). In less than 20 years my Empire was totally destroyed - simply because I couldn't, by design, encircle and destory the first dissident armies.

 

This was later fixed, so now it isn't that big of a problem anymore - but I was quite furious at the time!

[Gorth]

X-Com 2... if you researched the wrong alien at the wrong time late in the game, you couldn't finish the game

 

Edit: I've never been the luck owner of Pools or Radiance 2, but I think the uninstall "feature" must count as legendary.

[Monte Carlo]

I owned POR:2 but, luckily, was spared the hard-drive apocalypse feature.

 

I was thinking about my post - of course that bug is hilarious when AI factions fall foul of it, which they do. What a hypocrite I am

[Kaftan Barlast]

Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines - Remember that it actually shipped with a system-wide gamestopper bug crash? About halfway through the game you were supposed to exit some caves in a small boat, but the game crashed when attemtping to load the next level. You had to download a hack some ambitious fan made to be able to finish the game, because Troika didnt release a patch until a week or two after.

[Pidesco]

In Daggerfall, you basically could get stuck in almost anything. Also, in The Elder Scrolls games, in general, falling through the ground was always a distinct possibility.

[SteveThaiBinh]

Ifnkovhgroghprm

[Rosbjerg]

^ Eh?

 

Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines - Remember that it actually shipped with a system-wide gamestopper bug crash? About halfway through the game you were supposed to exit some caves in a small boat, but the game crashed when attemtping to load the next level. You had to download a hack some ambitious fan made to be able to finish the game, because Troika didnt release a patch until a week or two after.

 

Oh yeah .. I used the console command to get around that.. but yes, that was very stupid!

[Calax]

How about Myth 2 where if you didn't install to the default location, when you uninstalled it'd wipe your hard drive?

[Meshugger]

Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines - Remember that it actually shipped with a system-wide gamestopper bug crash? About halfway through the game you were supposed to exit some caves in a small boat, but the game crashed when attemtping to load the next level. You had to download a hack some ambitious fan made to be able to finish the game, because Troika didnt release a patch until a week or two after.

 

Yup, can't figure out anything else for that matter.

[SteveThaiBinh]

^ Eh?

I think there's a point, even in point and click adventure games, where the solution to a puzzle is so ridiculously obscure and illogical that it can be considered a design flaw. This is the worst I've ever come across, from King's Quest I.

[Monte Carlo]

^ I'm also wondering where the line is drawn between cheese and design flaw?

 

for example, the Infinity Engine games all allowed you to Cloudkill groups of enemies just out of view. Cheesy? Design flaw? Both? Min-maxing stats without tangible penalties was another one in IE games (a 2E design flaw more than anything).

 

Another one is in MTW (again) where you can build a fort over a valuable commodity (i.e. silk or sugar) and fill the place up with merchants, all of whom will turnover the 600 florins+ value per turn.

 

How about rush tactics in RTS games like C&C? They always work if you're prepared to waste the resources.

 

Cheers

MC

[Lare Kikkeli]

^ I'm also wondering where the line is drawn between cheese and design flaw?

 

for example, the Infinity Engine games all allowed you to Cloudkill groups of enemies just out of view. Cheesy? Design flaw? Both?

It was a design flaw for sure, and one that the recent Sword Coast Stratagem-mods fix. No more cheesing!

 

Min-maxing stats without tangible penalties was another one in IE games (a 2E design flaw more than anything).

 

This I actually don't regard as a flaw, since every one of the IE games (with maybe the exception of IWD2, since I haven't played it) are very beatable with any character, and having high or low stats didn't really change the role playing experience either. I guess dnd geeks find that a flaw, but IMO it's a great thing since when I first played them, I was in my early teens and knew basically nothing about dnd, and that didn't hamper my experience at all.

[Zoma]

Quest for Glory IV. Despite being what I feel is the best in the series for its storyline and voice acting (God, I love the narrator's voice, it gives the game so much personality), the glorious bugs in form of error 47 and others simply made the game incompleteable. In fact, with newer windows system it introduces even MORE bugs, which fails the game into becoming a classic because the new generation layers could not play and finish the game.

 

Sad day for the hero series.

[Pop]

I was playing Arcanum and having a good time of it when I got to that point where your cultist friend (the one who you begin the game with) had a BG2-esque "my planet needs me now" revelation and ran off from the party. He did not come back. I looked online for the triggers that would cause him to reappear but no matter how hard I tried I could not cause him to spawn. And so I finished the game without that guy.

 

That's not even getting into the game-breaking bug that was Arcanum's design.

[Azure79]

^ I'm also wondering where the line is drawn between cheese and design flaw?

 

for example, the Infinity Engine games all allowed you to Cloudkill groups of enemies just out of view. Cheesy? Design flaw? Both?

It was a design flaw for sure, and one that the recent Sword Coast Stratagem-mods fix. No more cheesing!

 

 

I love Sword Coast Strategems. Makes the combat much more interesting, though I regret having installed the option where certain spiders can shoot webs at you. It would be ok if it just entangled one character, but run into three of those spiders and they shoot 3 webs at you simultaneously getting your entire party webbed and you're pretty much screwed.

 

The combat with mages can get pretty tricky too. I installed the option where mages can use BG2 spells in Tutu, so they have contingencys and spell triggers along with Stone Skins. My low level party doesn't have access to counterspells yet so even one mage poses an incredible threat...as I think they should.

 

Unfortunately, this means I've had to resort to some cheese. I usually scout ahead with a hidden thief or ranger and when I see a hostile party with a mage I make myself known then immediately run away to hide in shadows again. This usually results in the hostile party scattering with the melee fighters chasing after me while the mages prepare spells. I lead the over zealous fighters away from their group into an ambush with my fighters, mages and bowmen, quickly dispatch them and then scatter my party before the mages arrive. Then I scout out each individual mage with my hidden character waiting until their protective spells have worn off. Then I reveal myself and have them chase me, hopefully making him waste spells on the way, into another ambush where they are quickly surrounded by my melee fighters and cut down.

 

Its cheesy because a smart mage probably wouldn't go chasing willy nilly after a one rogue who is obviously leading him into a trap. This doesn't stop the mage from unleashing a fireball centered around him while stoneskinned and still taking out half my party, but my bowmen can usually hit him with fire and ice arrows to disrupt spellcasting.

[Gorgon]

Another one is in MTW (again) where you can build a fort over a valuable commodity (i.e. silk or sugar) and fill the place up with merchants, all of whom will turnover the 600 florins+ value per turn.

 

Lol, I never noticed that.

 

Another thing is how one priest, emissary, whatever can cut off an entire army trying to reach a settlement under siege if the passage is only one tile wide, because one tile can only hold one entity at a time.

[Shryke]

Also, in The Elder Scrolls games, in general, falling through the ground was always a distinct possibility.

 

yeah morrowind was a ***** for that

[Kelverin]

POR:2 but, luckily, was spared the hard-drive apocalypse feature.

I got that.

 

 

TOEE is a bug riddled mess, still without the circle of 8 patch I can't loot items from fallen foes.

 

MLB 2K9 - The outfield play is a bug ridden mess, players disappear in the ground, first baseman always miss the bag, player's get injured, stay injured on the depth chart it say's 1 day left until the player can return, but it say's it everyday!

[Blarghagh]

I don't know if anybody else had this, but before Knights of the Old Republic was patched, overloading any computer terminal would also overload mine, making it crash.

[Pidesco]

I don't know if anybody else had this, but before Knights of the Old Republic was patched, overloading any computer terminal would also overload mine, making it crash.

 

That's, actually, an awesome gameplay feature.

[Kaftan Barlast]

No, I dont think that was a common bug.

 

 

One thing with the Kotor series that was more common was that, in an effort to save texture space, they cut the faces in half and used the same half mirrored on both sides. Depending on your gfx and drivers, faces would show a black line in the seam where the texture was split. More of a glitch than a bug, but it was annoying

 

 

here you can see it in the background

[Rosbjerg]

snip

 

Hmm, never saw that - I thought they were "individual" as characters could have seperate movenment on either side of the face - like raising the left eyebrow etc. But I guess that doesn't have anything to do with textures?

[WILL THE ALMIGHTY]

Well the UVwrap (read, texture) around the character geometry is mirrored, but the geometry/animation itself isn't.

Edited March 29, 2009 by WILL THE ALMIGHTY

[Amentep]

I was playing Arcanum and having a good time of it when I got to that point where your cultist friend (the one who you begin the game with) had a BG2-esque "my planet needs me now" revelation and ran off from the party. He did not come back. I looked online for the triggers that would cause him to reappear but no matter how hard I tried I could not cause him to spawn. And so I finished the game without that guy.

 

That's not even getting into the game-breaking bug that was Arcanum's design.

 

I had a bug in Arcanum that once the cultist left my party my inventory was FUBARed making it impossible to continue on as I lost main quest related items to the ether.