Dishonored 2 Has a 9 GB Day 1 Patch

[Steven Bogos]

Dishonored 2 Has a 9 GB Day 1 Patch

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Make sure you set aside some time to download the Dishonored 2 patch tomorrow.

Dishonored 2 [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/168800-Dishonored-2-Launch-Trailer-Shows-Gameplay-and-Story] launches tomorrow for PC, Xbox One and PS4, and like a lot of games these days there will be a quite hefty day 1 patch. 9 GB to be exact (9.1 GB on PS4), so make sure you allow yourself enough time and data allowance (if you are one of those unfortunate gamers on a metered connection) to download it.

The day 1 patch was several other outlets [http://press-start.com.au/news/playstation/2016/11/08/dishonored-2-9gb-day-one-patch/] have since corroborated the story. We've reached out to Bethesda for official comment but they have yet to reply.

The good news is that it is actually possible to play the game without installing the update, if you are really desperate to get into it. Doing so will sign you out of PSN and Xbox Live, however, and you'll of course be playing without the benefits of the patch itself, which improves loading times, texture streaming, audio mixing, frame rate, and shadow quality.

If you're purchasing a digital download version of the game, you'll have to set aside 60 GB [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/168741-Dishonored-2-Goes-Gold-PC-System-Requirements-Detailed] for the download of the game. I suppose when compared to that, 9 GB doesn't seem like much?

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[Dragonbums]

I will just never understand this concept of Day 1 patches. Like if you have the time to piecemeal a patch for release date of the game, you should also have the time to actually fix that and implement it into the game before shipping it to stores.

Is this a case of the debugging team having the luxury to slack off on their job to the point where this is the norm?

 

[Chronologist]

I will just never understand this concept of Day 1 patches. Like if you have the time to piecemeal a patch for release date of the game, you should also have the time to actually fix that and implement it into the game before shipping it to stores.

Is this a case of the debugging team having the luxury to slack off on their job to the point where this is the norm?

If I remember correctly there's usually a fair amount of time between when the game has gone gold (physical copies ready to be made and distributed) and the release date. If the devs work on patches to improve the game in that time, and it's not something they're charging extra for, it's really more like a bonus service they're providing the customer. Instead of thinking of it like a quick fix for shoddy work, perhaps view it as the team going one step further to make their product even better, like free DLC.

 

[Riddle78]

I will just never understand this concept of Day 1 patches. Like if you have the time to piecemeal a patch for release date of the game, you should also have the time to actually fix that and implement it into the game before shipping it to stores.

Is this a case of the debugging team having the luxury to slack off on their job to the point where this is the norm?

If I remember correctly there's usually a fair amount of time between when the game has gone gold (physical copies ready to be made and distributed) and the release date. If the devs work on patches to improve the game in that time, and it's not something they're charging extra for, it's really more like a bonus service they're providing the customer. Instead of thinking of it like a quick fix for shoddy work, perhaps view it as the team going one step further to make their product even better, like free DLC.

Day one patches are actually rolled out to fix issues that were identified during development and testing,but they didn't have the time to fix before the game went gold. Timelines and deadlines are a huge factor in this.

 

[Dragonbums]

If I remember correctly there's usually a fair amount of time between when the game has gone gold (physical copies ready to be made and distributed) and the release date. If the devs work on patches to improve the game in that time, and it's not something they're charging extra for, it's really more like a bonus service they're providing the customer. Instead of thinking of it like a quick fix for shoddy work, perhaps view it as the team going one step further to make their product even better, like free DLC.

Day one patches are actually rolled out to fix issues that were identified during development and testing,but they didn't have the time to fix before the game went gold. Timelines and deadlines are a huge factor in this.

Ah, well that makes a lot more sense then. I always just figured it was a shod job before the disk popped in to the console and started playing. Then again it's not like gamers usually have a choice to play the game WITHOUT the patch to see how much that makes a difference. From what I remember they are mandatory?

 

[Chronologist]

Ah, well that makes a lot more sense then. I always just figured it was a shod job before the disk popped in to the console and started playing. Then again it's not like gamers usually have a choice to play the game WITHOUT the patch to see how much that makes a difference. From what I remember they are mandatory?

Well, this article discusses a patch that isn't required to play the game. It's a texture / audio / loading fix but the game's playable without it. So, uh, they're not mandatory.

 

[Dragonbums]

Ah, well that makes a lot more sense then. I always just figured it was a shod job before the disk popped in to the console and started playing. Then again it's not like gamers usually have a choice to play the game WITHOUT the patch to see how much that makes a difference. From what I remember they are mandatory?

Well, this article discusses a patch that isn't required to play the game. It's a texture / audio / loading fix but the game's playable without it. So, uh, they're not mandatory.

I'll admit I kind of skimmed the ending part there.
So eggs on my face for that.

 

[MoltenSilver]

I will just never understand this concept of Day 1 patches. Like if you have the time to piecemeal a patch for release date of the game, you should also have the time to actually fix that and implement it into the game before shipping it to stores.

Is this a case of the debugging team having the luxury to slack off on their job to the point where this is the norm?

Blame the certification process of getting on to various platforms, especially consoles. Everything that goes on to, say, Xbox for example has to go through an immensely long and expensive certification process to ensure it meets whatever requirements Microsoft says something must meet to be allowed on its service (for example, one common requirements across platforms is load screens cannot be completely static for longer than X number of seconds, to make it easier to indicate crashes or if the game is still responding). If the tester finds even a single thing doesn't make this list the entire entry is rejected and has to start the submission all over again. Because things can't be changed while this process is occurring (even patches can't be issued without Microsoft/Sony/whoever say-so) this means the developer now has time they don't have tasks for their employees to do, leaving them with 3 choices:
1. Pay everyone to do nothing
2. Fire everyone
3. Have the employees work on something that can be added later. This is why most day 1 dlc is cosmetic, because there is a huge gap of little else for the art team to work on towards the end of development.

I'm not necessarily defending this system (it was created following the shovel-ware market crash to prevent that from happening again, but in exchange brings its own problems), but there is a reason for it.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Does anyone remember the days when you could be playing a game within minutes of buying it? Those were glorious days.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

So you're saying that the total download amount for the fixed game is... 69GB.

Heh heh. Heh heh.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

I will just never understand this concept of Day 1 patches.

It's the new DRM. Sure you can play the game, but you won't get the best experience.

 

[Hawki]

Dare I say it's...dishonourable?

Well, maybe not. As has been pointed out, there's a fair amount of time that passes between a game going gold and actually releasing, so as long as the base game is fine, I'm okay with that. Still miss 'plug and play' though.

 

[devilmore]

This makes the pre-purchase bonus of playing one day early look a bit shitty...

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

Hence why pre-ordering just for the extra day early access (or should I say to not be the normal peasants with a day's access delayed?) is not a good idea. And considering their new "only sending review copies a day before release" ...doesn't that technically make it so they're sending them out to the press on the day it should have released anyway? Am glad I'm not one of those impatient types who need everything to be experienced the second it's available, but such a tactic is pretty much taking advantage of those that are. Especially kids and teens and various other people who feel rather dedicated to being in the first wave.

 

[Zulnam]

9GB!? Bloody hell! What did they do, forget the cinematics?

 

[Thunderous Cacophony]

Does anyone remember the days when you could be playing a game within minutes of buying it? Those were glorious days.

It's funny. We went from having to drive out to the store, get it off the shelf, drive home and start playing, to a brief but glorious moment in early digital delivery when we could see a game in the online store, download it, and start playing it within minutes, to now starting a massive download (often needing to do start that at night so all the many gigs drip in) and needing to confirm after a couple hours that we want the Day 1 patch with all that extra time.

An interesting parabola, and one I don't see swinging back up anytime soon.

 

[ShakerSilver]

9 GB? Last gen that would be the size of a game, before devs became obsessed with uncompressed file formats.

Of course the greatest irony in this all is that while the file sizes grow, the games themselves don't seem to be. It also makes buying the games well after launch a much better option than preordering like the publishers keep desperately pushing.

 

[enginieri]

9GB!? Bloody hell! What did they do, forget the cinematics?

9 GB? A last gen that would be the size of a game, before devs became obsessed with uncompressed file formats.

Of course the greatest irony in this all is that while the file sizes grow, the games themselves don't seem to be. It also makes buying the games well after launch a much better option than preordering like the publishers keep desperately pushing.

Because We the developers (or steam/origin/ubiplay...) are to lazy to employ a simple technique known as DIFFERENTIAL PATCHING, to only include in the patch what bits are different, no no you already pay for the game, we don't care less, suck it up and download the entire files.

 

[AzrealMaximillion]

Because We the developers (or steam/origin/ubiplay...) are to lazy to employ a simple technique known as DIFFERENTIAL PATCHING, to only include in the patch what bits are different, no no you already pay for the game, we don't care less, suck it up and download the entire files.

Or, (and this is the more likely reasoning) because physical copies on console are still king in terms of sales and you can't pre-load a physical copy of the game to avoid this.

These companies would rather have everyone get the game and have to patch it at the same time as opposed to utilizing common sense practices for just the PC gamers.

As a PC gamer this upsets me, and as an occasional console gamer it upsets me more. More people would buy digital on consoles if the consoles came with bigger hard drive capacities and if places like GameStop didn't put so much pressure on physical pre-order culture and special editions.

 

[ShakerSilver]

Or, (and this is the more likely reasoning) because physical copies on console are still king in terms of sales and you can't pre-load a physical copy of the game to avoid this.

These companies would rather have everyone get the game and have to patch it at the same time as opposed to utilizing common sense practices for just the PC gamers.

As a PC gamer this upsets me, and as an occasional console gamer it upsets me more. More people would buy digital on consoles if the consoles came with bigger hard drive capacities and if places like GameStop didn't put so much pressure on physical pre-order culture and special editions.

I believe he was referring to how patches are delivered, where devs will just make you redownload each whole modified file again and overwriting preexisting versions of them, rather than modifying the files based on differences thus only needing you to download the difference in data. This would be the same process if you got the game physically or digitally.