Don't Buy Monopoly On Switch, Unless You Like Waiting

They're aware of the "issue" but decided it was good enough to sell to people... Alrighty then...

@Rika_Yoshitake Totally. I'm always baffled by day one patches. Do they not test these things before selling them? Day one it should be ready to go, not every game should need the devs racing out to fix it the moment you buy it.

@CCore28 It's really pushing it too, seeing how much harder it is to gather people around a video-game board game than a physical one.

"Hey, wanna play monopoly?"

"Yeah sure."

"Cool. Lemme get the switch hooked up, and everyone pick a joy-con."

"What?"

"Yeah, it's a video game now. That way we don't need to sit at a table and talk to eachother."

"Oh."

I was interested, had a lot of fun with Monopoly Wii with family, despite the physical board game never getting played. There doesn't seem to be that much content in this version, however, there's only 3 boards.

Isn't the real version of Monopoly basically just sitting around waiting for something to happen? Seems like the Switch rings true...

Ubisoft already screwed up Tetris, so how were they expected to handle Monopoly ?

I always power down my Switch after playing, because why wouldn't I? Is this really so big of an issue that you suggest not buying the game?

I had the issue with the physical version so, ya.

But rebooting did fix it

That is just bad.

This is the era of necessary [usually day one] updates because developers don't even bother to properly test that their games are working on the hardware they've been made for before release.

So sad that this is a thing.

@nayfz if you read the article it does say that only the downloaded version suffers with this

Our physical copy of Monopoly had terrible load times. We've now rebooted the switch and it seems to load in 10-15 seconds

If all you have to do is turn the Switch on and off to fix it, AND it only seems to happen with the download version - that really doesn't warrant a "Don't buy" title... Double when they are aware of it, and already fixing it.

@Bunkerneath The article is wrong. I bought the physical version of the game and had the exact same problem. I had to turn the system completely off and restart to get the game to load quickly. I didn't bother to time the loading before that as after a minute it was obvious that there was a problem.

I encountered this problem on my digital copy and powered down my console and restarted and haven't had the problem since. I really like video game versions of board games because not everyone likes them, and you always have an opponent in a video game. The new boards (3 3D boards in total and two standard ones) are nice and objective goals and rules enable much shorter game lengths as well.

The $40 price tag is a bit much, but that's what Ubidoft launched Monopoly at on other consoles before coming down to $20 a few months later.

@FTPinkRabbit @Rika_Yoshitake This gets me every time too. I used to work as a localisation tester and it was the same deal every time a big release rolled around. Some day one patches were so substantial that they included entire portions of the game. The builds barely had to be playable to pass final submission, they just had to reach basic functionality and legal standards.

$40 for Monopoly and it isn't even very functional. How do you mess something this easy up.

Btw, how much for Real Monopoly board ?

Come on, we're Nintendo players. Waiting is our bread and butter.

I can't believe enough people buy Monopoly, that it continues to get a release on every console in existence since the NES. Like why? It's Monopoly lol. The only reason I can come up with is because of the convenience of it. Don't have to mess with money or the cards.

"You take it on faith.
You take it to the heart.
The waaaaaaaitin' is the haaaardest part...."

I thought nobody would buy this.....

I’ll get it once it’s patched. I have to have access to monopoly every gen.

@FTPinkRabbit because producing physical games takes even months ask beforehand, limited run games even said that.

@nayfz So you bought the RETAIL version of the game and didn't experience any issues?

Yeah well the problem is just with the digital version. Too bad most articles don't point that out in the headline.

@nayfz From the article:

"It should be noted that the physical release of the game doesn't seem to suffer from this issue, just the download version."

Your reply was relevant as hell.

Ouch... glad I'm not in a hurry for this.

I am still getting the game in December after the November onslaught of games.

@nayfz Don't you have much more important things to get TRIGGERED over?

Sheeeesh!

How the heck does Ubisoft mess this up?!
It reminds me of how they managed to botch their version of tetris a few years ago which had massive slow down issues. I repeat, slow down issues, in a game as basic as tetris. WTF

@GC-161 Hey - sorry, not having a great day so snapped at you. Deleted my comments as they weren't needed. Sorry again and have a nice evening

@nayfz No apology needed. And sorry if my comments made your day worse. Hope things get better.

My original comment was just trying to point out that if the headline made it specific that this issue affects the digital edition, maybe people wouldn't need to do what you did, which was to jump in and say that the retail version apparently worked fine.

So my sarcasm was directed at articles that do not include that important info in their headlines. Not at you. Again, sorry for not being clear.

I'm looking at a topic at what is left of neogaf, and no one seems to be aware that the issue is mostly to be found in the digital version. They're too busy calling Ubisoft a lazy developer.

Just to mention it.
People who own "Fast Racing" on Switch had/have a similar problem in that they couldn't get past the vehicles screen as the game seemed to hang (happened to me, too). Solution: the same as here - power the system down and reboot it. So it's not necessarily UBIsoft to be blamed.
It seems to me that the Switch's memory management needs an overhaul.

As a gamer, I’ve never said in my entire life “you know, I feel like playing a game of Monopoly!” What makes you think I’ll get it on the Switch? I won’t even care about the waiting part anyway (I’ve played Final Fantasy II, I’ve endured much worse that my patience is already nonexistent.)

Another bad ubisoft port... no shock here...

I've experienced this bug and found it really unusual, because when I booted up the game after buying it (both with and without the day 1 update), I didn't experience any issues. When I tried it again one or two days later, I experienced the issue, and I figured that it was a bug. I quit and reloaded the game, and the bug persisted. Rebooting the system alleviated the problem.

One of the more irritating things about the game is its slightly sluggish (albeit consistent) frame rate (docking doesn't improve performance) when playing the game in its default dynamic viewing angle. Playing from an overhead POV alleviates this, resulting in a much smoother experience, but the dynamic viewing angle is nicer to look at.

The game as a whole is sluggishly paced and there is support for only up to 6 players (why they didn't allow for 8 players for this sort of game is beyond me). It's worth knowing the flaws and knowing whether they are stomachable enough for those considering a purchase.

Each save file includes three slots each for a separate game of Monopoly. And the game auto-saves after each turn so you can split up your Monopoly sessions to your hearts content (seeing as the games take so damn long). And you certainly won't have enough battery to play the game in tabletop mode unless you choose a quick play mode that will end after a player fulfills a certain condition.

@PLATINUM7 : There's also the Classic board and a variation of the Classic board with a Rabbids theme (there are no extra animations or sound effects in this mode from whatever little I have played of it, and it just looks like a superficial variation of the classic board).

I rented this and gave up because the loading was so long. I have read if you reboot your system it fixes the problem but I don't really care at this point. Crazy, a cartridge with insane loading times, for only $40!

@Fuz
I agree with you on the rising complexity of sodrware development of console games and how this breaks the plug and play guarantees of console games.

However, this does not look like a 0.001% issue to me. Remember, as others have pointed out, this is the same Ubisoft that put out those unplayable Tetris games. I wouldn't be surprised if it was a case of cutting corners and seeing what you can away it.

However, I don't think that's the real issue here. The fact that this thing costs 40$ is worth more attention I think

@Fuz @TheGameSquid actually, it's even more likely in this case that the system updates on the switch that came out since the game was in processing/packaging/shipping/waiting is what caused the problem. Had the system been the same as it was when the game was still in development, I'm quite certain the game would have played with no slow load times from day one. I'd blame Nintendo for this. If they would make a stable operating system that didn't need such frequent updates, then the developers wouldn't have to scramble to get their games to be compatible with those changes. I see this constantly on tablets and phones too. iOS and android especially are notorious for these same issues and it's much more frequent for them too than game systems.

@Fuz I agree with you 100% especially in the likely scenario of the game development/testing on the system software available at the time, as I'd mentioned before. That just makes so much sense - I was a dev myself, as well. And at no point ever would a company laugh at the idea of sending an "incomplete" or faulty game out to the public. That would be a PR nightmare and potentially cause the company to tank due to a bad reputation from that one mistake.

Wouldn’t buy it anyway, £30 for a mobile port. When I was young I had a electronic version of Monopoly so my bro and I could play it during trips, it was only £15...

Lol the fix sounds like it takes at least 10 seconds to do. Is it really a fix? I think not

@Hughesy I know the ones with bank cards instead of money, but do you mean a dedicated electronic hardware monopoly?

Just to be clear do you only have to completely shut down once after you install it or every time you want to play. If its just the once I will download the game because 10 second load time is acceptable to me.

Poor qa/qc processes at Ubisoft I think.

@LemonSlice It was dedicated hardware. It was about 16 years ago, but I remember loving it. It had a screen similar to the original game boy but bigger, good times haha.

Ah, poop!

@Fuz While you make some good points, you're forgetting two things. First of all, this particular bug affects a very large percentage of the user base. There's no way they wouldn't have come across it given proper testing.

Second, day one updates are different from updates provided after release in that they're already aware of the problem even before the public can find it for themselves. That means that unless it was something caught only shortly before release, they should've been able to fix it in the initial version of the game before releasing it. Well, maybe if it's a complicated last minute fix that can't be done before the SKU needs to be finalized, it may be worth doing a day one update; but if it's a major bug like this one, they should go ahead and delay the release date for a couple of weeks to get it right. The lousy PR from a last minute (figuratively and comparatively speaking) delay is still preferable to the lousy PR from releasing a clearly unfinished game.

Although, in this particular case, they caught themselves in the middle by releasing a day one partial fix to tide us over until they can give us the complete fix. That just proves that they were aware of the issue before release, couldn't fix it in time, yet they purposely and stupidly stuck to the release date to give us an unfinished product rather than just delaying the game, while the public is perfectly aware that they made such a bonehead move.

@HydroTendonMan and @Rayquaza2510 I've heard that the reason is because they're rushed, so the fixes have to be developed after the game ships and added as a patch later. That said, it's super sloppy and it means the people who buy on day one get punished with a buggy unfinished game for supporting the publisher.

@Jop You can, but there's less eye-contact, direct interaction, etc. I've noticed that for awhile now. Tabletop games are generally inferior, but they still have a place because they can facilitate conversation so well. That, and I find people who aren't game-savvy are often very resistant even to basic party games. It's a small sample size of friends though, so maybe most people are more eager to explore the medium.

@Rayquaza2510 I'm aware of that, but it doesn't make it okay. Rushing a game to release and then packing the fixes into a day one patch might be more efficient but evidently the customer still has issues with it because we're always here talking about it. Old way was you finish the game, then you ship it.

Day one DLC on the other hand, I'm totally cool with. That's new content, so I say bring it on.