Poll: Are you tired of Day One Patches
- Thread starter Ironbat92
- Start date
Come on, I remember the good old days you are talking about and I remember having to patch the crap out of some classic games. Master of Magic (1995), considered by many a strategy genre classic (myself included), had quite a few patches to fix up bugs and balance issues. Quest for Glory IV (1993) had a game killing bug that a lot of people encountered, back in 1993 having the internet at home wasn't common so even when they released the patch you might not be able to get it. I remember sneaking into the uni computer lab to download it because my home access was to slow. To give you an idea of how slow that was, I downloaded the patch onto a 3.5 inch floppy. Ultima VII (1992), another of my favourite games, had some very odd bugs that could crop up, generally requiring you to go back to an earlier save. That's just a brief few, I could go on. Games did have bugs. They often just didn't get fixed or if they did they weren't exactly what you would consider easily available. While I do agree that it's better if games aren't shipped with game crippling bugs, with high speed internet readily available, I don't have a problem with any that make it through being stomped as quickly as possible. The dream time you speak of where there were no such things as bugs in games never existed.DracoSuave said:
OT: As others have pointed out you can't catch everything in QA, no matter how many people you have testing there is no way they are going to recreate the variety of situations that people are going to get into once the game is released. Say you have a team of 50 doing testing, the game is released and the game sells just a 50,000 copies. That's 50,000 people doing shit you probably didn't get a chance to test, without the controlled environment of QA. When talking PC games there is also a virtually infinite variety of hardware combinations they could be using. So you know what, they can't catch everything. What they can do is patch shit that crops up as quickly as possible. All this is further hampered by QA getting hamstrung by publishers wanting the game out the door and making a profit as soon as possible, and stability be fucked. So better day one patches to fix the stuff they have found between going gold and hitting shelves than no fixes at all. At least I don't have to ninja them from a uni comp lab anymore.
Finish the game before you release it. Remember back when console games couldn't be patched? Developers had to ensure that the game was as bug-free as possible by release because they didn't get that second chance. With the safety net of patching, they all feel free to release broken and sometimes unplayable games. I NEVER experienced a game-breaking bug on my Super Nintendo or N64 and saw very few bugs in general. Hell, even on the first Xbox when they could patch games I rarely had problems. Now I can barely play a game for a couple of hours without something breaking.
I realize that part of this is the fault of the higher ups who push and push for a specific release date without allowing for delays, but it's still simply not acceptable. If I spend that much money on something, it better damn well work.
I realize that part of this is the fault of the higher ups who push and push for a specific release date without allowing for delays, but it's still simply not acceptable. If I spend that much money on something, it better damn well work.
It's nice that the developers care enough to fix things, but day one patches are ridiculous. The developers should have had all of the bugs worked out by that time, considering that most games take two or more years to make. It's still not as bad as when devs don't patch their shit (Cough Capcom cough), but it's still pretty bad.
I completely agree with you - I hate day 1 patches. My game development career began back in the days of cartridges, so what you submitted was what people got to play. And, because of that, the development process was more cautious - there was no last minute scramble and pressure from the publisher to add pointless feature 'x' at the last minute that GTA 8 just shipped with.GAunderrated said:
And, again with the insults - until you've tried to schedule the development of a game, please stay off your high horse. It isn't incompetence, it's just incredibly hard to accurately schedule a creative process such as making a video game. Especially bearing in mind that not only do you not know exactly how long each task will take, you also don't know whether you'll have to scrap your amazing gameplay idea 'y', that looked great on paper but turned out to be crap, and completely rework it. And then throw in the last minute features that the publisher is insisting on because their marketing department have decided it's crucial, and you have some idea of what I'm talking about.
Because publishers know they have this day 1 patch safety net now, they make sure they push the developer right to the wire - this is not the developer's doing. We want a nice 6-week beta period, where all features are locked and it purely bug fixing and polish, but that doesn't happen these days because publishers now see 'submission' as 'beta'. It's horrible.
Creating a video game with a team of 100 people is hard and unpredictable. Dismissing this as 'lazy' or 'incompetent' is incredibly insulting, and I truly hope you end up getting a job at a developer one day so you can experience just how difficult it is.
Bugfixes out of the box? Not a problem, I piss away time online while shit downloads and I'm installing games anyways, a little more time for my shit to run right is a minimal inconvenience to me and enhances my gameplay experience.
Paid for DLC shit that is part of (meaning an addon, amy not be needed for it to be cohesive, but still) the main story? Fucking unacceptable, I did not just drop $60 for a publisher to lowball me with not releasing the whole goddamn story.
Paid for DLC shit that is part of (meaning an addon, amy not be needed for it to be cohesive, but still) the main story? Fucking unacceptable, I did not just drop $60 for a publisher to lowball me with not releasing the whole goddamn story.
Let me put it this way, I would rather have a day 1 patch than not.
I don't want a day 1 patch 'cos it means I have to wait longer to play the thing but if it means a few bugs get ironed out, then peachy.
(So I like to contradict myself, what of it?)
I don't want a day 1 patch 'cos it means I have to wait longer to play the thing but if it means a few bugs get ironed out, then peachy.
(So I like to contradict myself, what of it?)
Sadly, what you describe is a fantasy world. Real life doesn't work that way. Publishers don't give us adequate time to implement all of the features they want and, because most developers don't have a choice whether to accept the work or not, they end up getting shafted with too much work in too little time, and with a team that's too small. It usually goes something like this:Sangnz said:Day one patching is probably not due to being lazy it is however probably caused by poor project management, giving publishers unrealistic time frames and insufficient prep work and planning.
On a side not while games are a lot more complex now, the game being complex isn't an excuse, PLAN for it being complex allocate time accordingly, don't give time frames you cannot meet.
Captcha
Let it be
So I won't rant any further
Dev: "This is going to take us roughly 16 months, and we need 8 more engineers."
Pub: "There's no more budget, and we need it done in 11 months to coincide with the movie launch."
Dev: "Oh. Okay."
"Allocate time accordingly" - yeah, we'd love to.
Just for the record (again): I hate day 1 patches.
1) I'm not sure what bug free olden days some people are recalling here but unless your childhood was spent playing nothing but Tetris I can't imagine that you never ran into a problem on either a console or PC game that would have been nice if it had gotten patched out.
2) I'm fine with patches if they fix the issues. I, and likely everyone else, have little tolerance for incompetent patching OR worse patching that takes 1 step forward and two steps back, i.e. fixes one thing while introducing more issues. Sadly that is becoming more common.
3) To this day I have no idea what the music for the aforementioned Master of Magic sounds like as I've never gotten it to exist concurrently with the game on any PC.
2) I'm fine with patches if they fix the issues. I, and likely everyone else, have little tolerance for incompetent patching OR worse patching that takes 1 step forward and two steps back, i.e. fixes one thing while introducing more issues. Sadly that is becoming more common.
3) To this day I have no idea what the music for the aforementioned Master of Magic sounds like as I've never gotten it to exist concurrently with the game on any PC.
Programmers and designers work on a game for two to five years and because they make you wait one to ten minutes to patch problems they found after it went gold, you call them lazy?ShadowRatchet92 said:
If your ceiling developed a crack in it you wouldn't call the architect lazy. Plus, if your ceiling did have a crack the architect doesn't offer to repair the damage free of charge at an extremely MINOR inconvenience to you.
So instead of complaining you should actually be thanking the developers for supporting the software they created after they've already got your money. That's dedication.
Well i would preffer Day-0 patches over Day-1 but day-1 over Day-NEVER.
I like they fix bugs that managed to get discovered past gold, altough it does worry me that GOLD no longer has a real meaning in the gaming industry its just "sell-able" ... maybe this is food for thought but, i would rephrase the question as?
"Do you hate that publishers ship games with obvious bugs and issues?"
I like they fix bugs that managed to get discovered past gold, altough it does worry me that GOLD no longer has a real meaning in the gaming industry its just "sell-able" ... maybe this is food for thought but, i would rephrase the question as?
"Do you hate that publishers ship games with obvious bugs and issues?"
Other than being a mild nuisance by fooling me into thinking I'm about to play the game before I get hit with a four minute (maximum) download, I've got no problems with Day One patches. What gets my goat is when the patch doesn't fix the game, but breaks other stuff as well.
I'm looking at you, Bioshock Two.
I'm looking at you, Bioshock Two.
Yep, I'm really sick of them actually fixing a game the first day its out instead of a few weeks or months later. Laziness? You do realize that it takes time for the code to get on the disc, get mass produced, distributed, and sold to you, right? They do just take the code and magically get it to you in 30 seconds.ShadowRatchet92 said:
On the development side (and I know this from experience since I am a software developer), it can be really easy to miss pretty big bugs. We've been working on the page for a website for a year, and just found this huge issue a few weeks ago, that could have been happening for months. Problem was, we never tested that certain functionality because it was already in place and working, and had been, for maybe 8-10 months. Not sure why or how it broken even. And it's not like you can extend QA and push back the release date without having tons of people who understand absolutely nothing about the software development process throwing a fit.
If it fixes any kind bug then I don't see a problem in them since some notable bugs can gett past beta/testing etc. And even then waiting a couple of minutes more when launching a game is hardly annoying.
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.DiamanteGeeza said:
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.