What is up with the game breaking patches?

[Rocking Thunder]

Honestly, almost every patch nowadays ends up breaking games, instead of fixing glitches. Just in the last couple of days, I can name three, the Shogun 2 patch, the Minecraft 1.6 patch, and the Fallout: New Vegas DLC patch. I mean what is up with this, are they not play testing games within the reasonable range of conditions? Is it justifiable, should they spend more time working on the patches instead of trying to get them out as fast as possible, or should the glitches not be there in the first place?

TL;DR They need to stop putting out game breaking patches.

So, what are your thoughts on the subject?

 

[TheYellowCellPhone]

It's not like you could do any better, that's why I'm not complaining. It's their job to fix their games, and when they mess it up it's not like they're going to shrug it off, they start working on a new patch.

 

[Dannohawk]

"It's not like you could do any better"

What? I'm assuming he's not a game designer so of course he can't, but that doesn't excuse game companies rushing out half finished games that don't work, thinking "oh well, we'll just patch it later."

And then to go on to break their half finished product even more months later is like rubbing salt into the wound.

I've given up on total war games, they just don't work.

 

[Littlee300]

It's not like you could do any better, that's why I'm not complaining. It's their job to fix their games, and when they mess it up it's not like they're going to shrug it off, they start working on a new patch.

Yeah, I will just not complain and hopefully they will assume that the patch sucks.
___________________________________________________________________________
Didn't the Escapist use to complain about some starwars MMO that was patched into crap?

 

[TheShogun]

How was Shogun 2 broken? I still play it fervently and have encountered no problems.

 

[Zaik]

It's not like you could do any better, that's why I'm not complaining. It's their job to fix their games, and when they mess it up it's not like they're going to shrug it off, they start working on a new patch.

If I could do better, I wouldn't have paid for them, i'd do it myself.

Being actually on topic, code does weird ass shit sometimes. I dunno how many times I was writing something, even simpler stuff, and a combination of whatever methods i set out on will invisibly clash for some reason i never figure out and the whole thing goes from a virtual calculator to an etch a sketch with busted knobs. I go back and just un-do stuff until it's back in working order, then do that specific thing differently and continue on.

Yes, playtesting should find a lot of these issues fairly quickly, but you've already paid for it so they're pretty much fine with shitting all over your face. It won't stop people from buying the next whatever, so justifying paying people to find the broken crap is a bit difficult.

 

[TriggerHappyAngel]

People make mistakes, even game developers.

 

[Rocking Thunder]

How was Shogun 2 broken? I still play it fervently and have encountered no problems.

If you bought the ikko ikki clan DLC, and downloaded the patch, the game would not work for som people. Need evidence?
http://forums.totalwar.com/showthread.php/18830-IKKO-IKKI-Crash-Update.

 

[cookyy2k]

It's not like you could do any better

Ah yes the usual cover all statement against any critisism. "I don't like such and such a band" "oh you couldn't do better" "oh yeah, I forgot, now I love them" it just doesn't happen.

Anyhoo OT; games shouldn't need patches in the first place, glitches (especially on consoles) are fairly unforgiveable. It hardly happened in the days before they could bring out the game then patch the glitches in a couple of weeks so it shouldn't happen now. Patches to ballance gameplay against something they didn't consider fair enough but glaring glitches any decent play tester should be uncovering instantly means the game should not be released then patched, it should be fixed first! I would hapily wait an extra couple of months for games if I could be certain all bugs have been reduced to their least game breaking possible.

 

[mjc0961]

It's not like you could do any better

A worthless strawman argument. I don't need to be able to do something better than someone else to know when what that person did is bad. I don't need to be able to draw to point out that a bad drawing is bad. I don't need to be able to be great at designing websites to point out that a bad website layout is bad. And I don't need to be able to code game patches to point out that having a game I paid $60 for become broken due to a patch sucks ass.

 

[TheShogun]

Thought, you

How was Shogun 2 broken? I still play it fervently and have encountered no problems.

If you bought the ikko ikki clan DLC, and downloaded the patch, the game would not work for som people. Need evidence?
http://forums.totalwar.com/showthread.php/18830-IKKO-IKKI-Crash-Update.

Thought you meant the Directx11 update, apologies.

 

[.No.]

People make mistakes, even game developers.

This is what a lot of people seem to be forgetting. Game devs aren't perfect.

 

[cookyy2k]

People make mistakes, even game developers.

This is what a lot of people seem to be forgetting. Game devs aren't perfect.

However there are huge issues that a little time spend playtesting would point out, tiny bugs that are easily missed arn't at issue here. It's things that break games. Like play F1 2010, when you go into the pits in first and come out last and a lap down you can't tell me that couldn't have been spotted and fixed before release.

 

[.No.]

People make mistakes, even game developers.

This is what a lot of people seem to be forgetting. Game devs aren't perfect.

However there are huge issues that a little time spend playtesting would point out, tiny bugs that are easily missed arn't at issue here. It's things that break games. Like play F1 2010, when you go into the pits in first and come out last and a lap down you can't tell me that couldn't have been spotted and fixed before release.

I never stated that all bugs should be forgiven because game devs aren't perfect. I meant that bugs shouldn't be unforgivable. An example of this not occuring is Russ Pitts on Obsidian.

 

[Rocking Thunder]

Thought, you

How was Shogun 2 broken? I still play it fervently and have encountered no problems.

If you bought the ikko ikki clan DLC, and downloaded the patch, the game would not work for som people. Need evidence?
http://forums.totalwar.com/showthread.php/18830-IKKO-IKKI-Crash-Update.

Thought you meant the Directx11 update, apologies.

Not a problem, but honestly, whats with the bugs?

 

[Kevonovitch]

i do agree there seems to be a "trend" if you will, that more major bugs in games, over the last 2 years especially, uppon releases of games/new content. but also, generally (not always unfortunately), they get fixed, nobody is in fallible we all make mistakes, aswell as, it seems to me that one major element has been forgotten, especially by consumer's it would appear.

developer's only have so much money, and due to most deadlines (instead of taking the time to weed problems out. thanks capitalist buisness model.) for pc's, you only have so many variesties of hardware and software to work with, to test bugs and problems, and considering the growing speed of both hw and sw being produced, and used, and the uncountable number of updates, vertions, and modifications, it's realistically impossible to make a singular game, tested, on every singe possibility. the best they can do, is try the most common from the main hw and sw companies, and hope for the best. so far, they've done pretty good, and hopefully, they keep it up, but, they do seem to test it on fewer and fewer configs and rigs since around '04-'06 aswell. so that is rather worrying.

anyways, point is, chances are, yeah, there's gonna be major bugs, completely unavoidable as a whole and majority, and yes, everyone will run into them, it's just a matter of "when".

oh, and to thoes of you that say "think you can do any better?" and for the nay-sayer's,

Google: Unofficial Oblivion Patch.

YOU may not, I may not, but THEY ^ clearly CAN. so yes, people out there CAN.

anyways, just my 2 cents worth.

 

[AnAngryMoose]

While I understand that mistakes are made, it's incredibly annoying, particularly F:NV's DLC patch and Minecraft 1.6.

I'd love to be able to play some New Vegas DLC, but the most recent patch broke it for the 360. And don't get me stared on Minecraft 1.6. It's been causing some serious framerate problems for my LAN server that were never there before the patch and are still there, albeit a much lesser extent.

Am I the only one getting these issues except for the people on my LAN server (all three of us)?

 

[viranimus]

You know, from my exp in writing code, I know first hand, that sometimes such things happen. Code is one of those things where very frequently you can have unintended results.

So you know, either cut the devs some slack and have a little patience. or never update the software and only play the official release version.