Carelessness in game design

[Puncia]

So this is not a personal thing, no need to worry. I'm not even angry or frustrated. I simply want to see if I'm the only one bothered by the sheer carelessness in video and computer games.

I play World of Warcraft. I'm very interested in CGI and computer graphics. And I am a perfectionist. These things seldom go together well. For I have noticed these little annoying details in things that could have been easily avoided if the creators of the game did a better job. Take a look here:

This is a random screenshot I took just to show you guys what I mean. It's by far not the worst one and it's only one in a sea of them, but a good example. What you see is one of the new playable characters in the game. a female Worgen Hunter. She is showing her "idle animation", the looping movements she does whenever you're not moving her around. Her teeth are pointing out of her lip constantly, making the character design look unfinished or even crude. This is what I am talking about; little details that only specially interested notice, things that could be very easily avoided if the creators gave it a second glance.

For the game itself was released Nov. 2004, and new contents came in 2007, 2008 and 2010. Worgen are completely new to the game and had a brand new design, barely finished in time for its grand release in December. The new things are always of better quality and have, for the trained eye, a better mesh. I'll explain (so everyone can understand).

A low poly count (click for image, I'm trying to save space) won't look as detailed as a higher poly count, naturally. Compared to the original playable characters, the Worgen are of another level with a MUCH higher count, more natural and smoother animations. Still, it seems that they are all full of these little errors that no one have fixed. Things such as ears going through their heads, teeth pointing out of their face, tails disappearing through the floor or the mount they are riding, it wouldn't be hard to just alter it slightly so it wouldn't happen. And this is exactly why it's so irritating.

I'm not saying that they should edit their characters now that they're out, but they had the chance before they came out, when they were first created. They spend days and weeks just planning the design and then months, I'm sure, creating the character mesh and animations and then adding texture on top. All this time staring at the same creature. Why is it that they go through all the trouble of giving the female Worgen a Lady Gaga /dance move (many characters have dances you'd recognize; like Britney Spears, Michael Jackson, MC Hammer, Napoleon Dynamite, PBJ time banana...) and then they let them have their teeth protruding through their face, in the position they're in the most (idle)?

WoW gamer or not, if you have any opinions regarding this, feel free to add something.

[Vosur Aekira]

As with many games (and CG movies out there) there will be flaws since they are still made by humans. No matter how algorithmically correct you can get with a character or how many times you compare code with graphics, there'll still be flaws that can be seen.

Now, as per the editing after the release for games, most games remain in a "Beta" stage for a very long time. This means that the product is not complete, but it is able to be sold. In this stage, updates to the game: cannot be sold and have to be distributed for free, cannot contain intentionally-malicious code, and belong to the main product (in this case if an update to the character design for WoW) as if you had bought them as one item. Usually in this stage, they often ask the users to let them know of any flaws through a "Report a bug" setup.

[Puncia]

Then why didn't the people assigned to creating one item for example lift its tail a few inches so it wouldn't clip through the saddle of every mount it's on when it's so visible and they were already working on the animation and pose when mounted?

[Vosur Aekira]

Main thing would be: budget. Assigning a quality-control team (or even just one individual) costs money that they can't afford to spend very often. That's why they make a game a "Beta" and why they have the consumers (those of us who play the games in Beta stages) quality-control for them.