Poll: Are you tired of Day One Patches

[Mr Binary]

It all really depends on how large the patch is. If it's going to take the length of a PS3 patching... yeah, that'll annoy me. On the 360 and PC though, they usually average at a 30-45 second wait. That doesn't bother me so much.

 

[TaintedSaint]

Silent hill HD collection for xbox never even got patched still broken. I would rather see a day 1 patch then not see any fixes at all. Sadly silent hill Hd collection IS STILL BEING SOLD BROKEN. They did not even bother pulling them. Bad practices add Konami to my never buy games from list.

 

[WanderingFool]

I have the same problem with Day 1 Patches as I do with Day 1 DLC, and that is to say none.

 

[Lucky Godzilla]

Ok first post on the escapist let's do this.

I think it largely depends on the size of the patch, and the severity of the bugs fixed. If I'm reading a day one patch that is fixing over 40 issues with the game in question, I begin to wonder if the game could have benefited from another month or so of development. But hey, if all major issues are fixed with the patch, I see no real reason to complain.

 

[putowtin]

Oh look, this is how this argument looks to the outside world

Before day one patches:
"AHHHH my games broke I hate this game company, they suck! I can't play my new game, boo hoo hoo"

After day one patches:
"Lazy arse game company, why wasn't this sorted out before?! What do I have to wait another 10 minutes to play my new game?!"

 

[Defenestra]

I seldom buy games on day one anyway. I let other people find out of it is good, as a rule. That's what other people are for, testing stuff so I don't have to.


That said, I can only get so annoyed over a dev taking advantage of the size of their testing pool having just increased by three or more orders of magnitude, or just having gotten something functional out the door to shut up the publisher that keeps poking them with the 'we can cut off all your money and you lose vastly more than we will' stick, knowing full well that some of the eleventy billion hardware configurations are going to be unable to render left-handed doorknobs properly and that they'll probably get more complaining over that than they will over the elusive savefile-eating bug they've been trying to kill for three months already.

'course, sometimes it comes across looking like laziness, which is probably more often a function of someone in management having made a string of apallingly poor decisions that are only fully understood by people who will be fired of they try to call 'em on it.


I guess, in the end, I understand that large, complex projects can become somplere fusterclucks, and I just sit back, watch the fireworks, and consider the end product on its own merits as being worth my money or not.

 

[Risingblade]

Naw I'm fine waiting 30 seconds if it makes my game playable.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

I prefer things being fixed over things being withheld. If there's a day-one patch that keeps NPCs or worse yet the player character from falling through the floor then that's all well and good in my books. What I don't like is buying a game on day, week or, month one (for full price, be it $60 to $100) only to find that even if I play the game for 400 hours straight I have to spend an additional $5 -> $25 in order to unlock all of the content on the disc.

 

[DiamanteGeeza]

I'm sorry if you took it as an insult but I am just calling it as I see it. I understand that making games is unpredictable and there are tons of unforeseen problems but when you put a hard date that means the product should be ready by that specific date. There should not be a required patch upon release to make the game playable.

As a consumer I am paying full price for a working product so I expect a product that of course works. It is rather dubious to expect the customer to front the money and you provide a non-functioning product.

No other business I am aware of allows the flimsy excuses that the games industry has. Make no mistake people want to say that games industry is "creative" but they sell their souls to the business side so I expect business results. Indie games on the other hand I am more forgiving as they don't charge full price and are also upfront about the incomplete status of said game.

Hmmmm... not sure where to start on this reply. The 'hard date' that you talk about is not invented by the developer. A publisher goes to a developer and says "we need this game on this date". The developer then makes their best guess - remember, this is absolutely not an exact science - as to what they will need to deliver said game on said date. The publisher will then nickle and dime the developer to reduce the budget. More often than not, the developer will be unable to walk away from the money, and so they do the best they can in the time available with the manpower they have. Nowadays, because publishers know they can patch on day 1, they push and push, and increase scope during the project, until there is no other choice than to defer a large portion of the bug fixing to AFTER submission just so all the features can make it in.

And let's be clear - I'm NOT advocating day 1 patches. I hate them. I'm just trying to explain to you the realities of game development. The world is not as simple as you are trying to make out.

Second: let's be clear about your 'non-functioning product' statement. We're not talking about the patches taking a game that doesn't function to one that does. The patches are bug fixes. Even the first parties won't approve a game that crashes or doesn't function, regardless of a promise of a day 1 patch. If you understand what should go on between the beta to submission period, then that's now what happens during submission to day 1.

Again, I'm NOT advocating day 1 patches. I hate them.

As for your last point - are you kidding me? Books are often late, movies are commonly late and/or massively over budget, have you ever seen a construction project run over time and budget? Yep, of course - it happens all the time. How about when a physiotherapist says an injury will take 'x' weeks to heal, but it then takes longer? Ever set off on a journey and told someone "it'll take me about 2 hours to get there", and then discovered that it took you 3 because of some unforeseen incident?

What do all of these things have in common? They are ESTIMATES of how long something is going to take. Why are they estimates? Because it's IMPOSSIBLE to put an accurate figure on them. A best, well informed guess, sure, but is that always going to be right? No, of course not.

Did I mention that I hate day 1 patches?

 

[llubtoille]

I'd rather have a game patched, especially on day 1
(earlier the better if it fixes bugs and such)
Than play a totally unsupported buggy game

 

[Karfroogle]

It doesn't take that long. If it really takes away from gaming time, you don't actually have enough time to play the game, anyway.

 

[SextusMaximus]

Everyone pissed off at this has no fucking clue of any sort of game development.

 

[Darknacht]

I remember the olden days, when most games shipped with almost no bugs and the bugs that did make it in were often considered a neat little part of the game by those players that found that particular bug, not something that needed to be fixed. I miss those days.

I remember the olden days, when games shipped with tons of bugs sometimes game breaking ones, you had to wait 6 months for a patch, there was no such thing as auto-patching so you had to look for the patch yourself, and some times you just had to wait for years until the community finally fixed the game themselves. I miss those days(No I don't).

 

[COMaestro]

Anyone who has done any type of complex programming can tell you it is nearly impossible to find every bug. Even from applications that have no graphics, a few bugs are likely to crop up that you just can't track down. Multiply the complexity of the code by 1000 (or likely even more) and add multiple people writing the code and it gets so much worse. Different programmers can have different coding styles (although hopefully a team working on a project has worked out some common style to use among themselves), meaning one person looking for bugs in another person's code may have difficulty finding it.

Then you have the QA, say 20 people (random number) looking for bugs in a game, and one person finds one but then they can't make it reoccur. How can you fix something that doesn't happen again?? So nothing gets fixed even though the bug technically still exists and until the stars align in just the right configuration again, it won't come up.

I don't think there is a game in existance that is 100% bug free. It's just that the bugs that remain require such a random combination of variables to occur that they almost never happen. And when they do, we get Freakazoid.

I'm sorry if you took it as an insult but I am just calling it as I see it. I understand that making games is unpredictable and there are tons of unforeseen problems but when you put a hard date that means the product should be ready by that specific date. There should not be a required patch upon release to make the game playable.

As a consumer I am paying full price for a working product so I expect a product that of course works. It is rather dubious to expect the customer to front the money and you provide a non-functioning product.

No other business I am aware of allows the flimsy excuses that the games industry has. Make no mistake people want to say that games industry is "creative" but they sell their souls to the business side so I expect business results. Indie games on the other hand I am more forgiving as they don't charge full price and are also upfront about the incomplete status of said game.

If you just want to play the game without worrying about a patch, then disconnect it from the network. Bet you'll be able to play the game just fine (unless you are looking to play multiplayer). The game will work, it just may have a few issues that would get resolved by patching. It doesn't make the game playable. The game is already playable. You likely would not even notice a difference between pre and post patch 90% of the time. However in that other 10% you could get anything from a crash to random graphical glitches to an invisible wall that shouldn't be there in a level. Even in these instances, the game is still playable most of the time and functions well if not perfectly. The patches are just intended to reach for the unobtainable goal of perfection just a bit more.

 

[Potion802]

I like them. They fix bugs in the game that could sometimes really screw up gameplay. I mean, it's not like they'll release a patch to load dummy files into your system. I like bug-free games,and as long as the patch isn't like 10gigs, I'm cool with it.

 

[Jimmy T. Malice]

I'd rather have a day one patch than a game-breaking bug, but these things should really have been ironed out of the game before release.

 

[ElPatron]

Yeah, it's awesome that games get fixed.

But it's not awesome that many people still have limited bandwidth or download caps and won't see their game fixed at all until they find someone to download for them/go to a place with better connection and download there.

Can't understand why anyone would be tired of something that fixes gameplay issues.

when you become a professional programmer, you can complain about patching. when you do, make a system that allows discs to be magically updated through the air, and make life better for everyone. until then, stop whining about things getting fixed.

Pretty much what others have said above - I prefer the patch to the bugs, or a day one patch to having to put up with bugs for a month before they're fixed.

In a perfect world sure, the game would be right in the first place and we wouldn't need them. But it's not a perfect world, so...

Then I guess we have been living is an almost perfect world for years. If a game needs a 1.7GB patch to fix gamebreaking issues then the product as is is terribly flawed.

Not sure why I would be. I mean, if a day 1 patch fixes a critical bug that the development team was somehow unaware of prior to launch, why would that be a bad thing?

Now ask yourself - what do you think about a professional that releases a product with a *critical* bug that somehow slipped under everyone's noses?

snip

Anyone who has done any type of complex programming can tell you it is nearly impossible to find every bug.

I do understand the difficulties of testing (see STALKER or any other game with a big world, lots of quests, etc) but Medal of Honor had a problem in which players could hear their enemies' VoIP and players could hop on private games uninvited.

That's kind of hard to miss when you're testing the MP.

If you just want to play the game without worrying about a patch, then disconnect it from the network. Bet you'll be able to play the game just fine

Medal of Honor had progression breaking bugs. There were issues that would prevent players from enjoying their product.

Oh look, this is how this argument looks to the outside world

Before day one patches:
"AHHHH my games broke I hate this game company, they suck! I can't play my new game, boo hoo hoo"

After day one patches:
"Lazy arse game company, why wasn't this sorted out before?! What do I have to wait another 10 minutes to play my new game?!"

Both show that the product was being sold as a flawed product ("I can't play my new game" = deeply broken) and honestly that is NOT good in any way, even if there is a fix.