As a lot of people have said, yes it CAN be justifiable for minor tweaks that slipped through but not for a mentality of "ship now, fix later". One example of the latter was Red Alert 3. For those of you unaware, the game was in such a horrible "release" state that there were 3 patches within 24 hours of launch fixing major bugs that should have easily been caught and fixed before the sign off. this doesn't include the other later on.
Poll: Day-One patches...is it justifiable?
- Thread starter FakeSympathy
- Start date
Yeah. I also remember the days when games were released in a broken/unplayable state, and when you "just played the game" you could find yourself in a no-win scenario. I remember this as early as the NES era and as recently as the PS2 era. I'm assuming you're talking consoles, because I go back to the days of DOS and all the work yu would have to do sometimes to get even the simplest game to work on your hardware.sgy0003 said:
Given the options between an update and major glitches, I'll take the update.
Games have to go gold well before the game is released, so those discs and carts you want can be printed. There has to be a final point at some point, and the thing is, you don't necessarily know what's coming next.
Yeah, don't you also hate it when you get a new table and suddenly you find it doesn't have friction on the surface when you put cups on there, and it turns out it's because you painted your walls yellow? That's annoying. Oh, and the other thing I find irritating is when the table is actually physically larger or smaller, depending on whether I have glasses on or not. I really cannot understand why they keep making these tables.CannibalCorpses said:
Day 1 patch? C'mon. That's fine. That's perfect. I'm downloading the game anyway. I don't mind the day 1 patch.
I mind the bugs that the day 1 patch still hasn't fixed.
I mind the fact that I will seriously consider waiting an entire year - or several - before getting a game. I want ALL the patches. Even the community patches to fix the things the developer never got around to fixing.
If there was a day 1 patch and it fixed everything, I'd call that a win.
I mind the bugs that the day 1 patch still hasn't fixed.
I mind the fact that I will seriously consider waiting an entire year - or several - before getting a game. I want ALL the patches. Even the community patches to fix the things the developer never got around to fixing.If there was a day 1 patch and it fixed everything, I'd call that a win.
To be fair, bugs can still be missed by even the most experienced QA teams and make it past the Day 1 patch. As long as they're not glaring "you can't miss this shit" bugs, I can live with a few subsequent patches to fix stuff. And if a company abandons further development before the rest of the long-term play messy bugs are fixed and have to be by the community? Shame on the devs. Look at CDProjekt, they're very pro-consumer and try to release games that work and even they miss things in development and post-release but still make the effort to fix everything that comes up. Thats the standard IMO. I can't rightly say that a perfect patch can ever be released, as some situations may not creep up until a player performs specific action-chains that trigger a bug that only happens when one does said action-chain. Its inconceivable to think even the best QA teams can do everything the wider player-base will come up with.Pyrian said:Day 1 patch? C'mon. That's fine. That's perfect. I'm downloading the game anyway. I don't mind the day 1 patch.
I mind the bugs that the day 1 patch still hasn't fixed.
If there was a day 1 patch and it fixed everything, I'd call that a win.
I'm going to be the one that argues the opposite side here...I'm afraid I don't agree with day 1 patches and I think accepting this kind of stuff is propagating the concept further.
I get that in the past occasional issues slipped notice and sometimes this even caused entire games to be impossible to complete...but people make it sound like this was for the majority games...but in the majority of cases the games were perfectly fine and are still playable today. Some minor gripes may have popped up that avoided notice, but they mostly were just that...incredibly minor.
In fact, I'd argue some of those little nuances defined certain games and patching them out would have make the experiences worse as a result. Imagine patching out move cancelling in Street Fighter 2? An accidental oversight which defined the gameplay of the series and has since become a mainstay.
Or something that would have been more likely to be patched out if possible...item cloning in FF7 or Pokemon. Sure they're game breaking, but isn't that part of the fun? It even provides additional challenge in trying to accomplish task whilst avoiding things like that.
I get that in the past occasional issues slipped notice and sometimes this even caused entire games to be impossible to complete...but people make it sound like this was for the majority games...but in the majority of cases the games were perfectly fine and are still playable today. Some minor gripes may have popped up that avoided notice, but they mostly were just that...incredibly minor.
In fact, I'd argue some of those little nuances defined certain games and patching them out would have make the experiences worse as a result. Imagine patching out move cancelling in Street Fighter 2? An accidental oversight which defined the gameplay of the series and has since become a mainstay.
Or something that would have been more likely to be patched out if possible...item cloning in FF7 or Pokemon. Sure they're game breaking, but isn't that part of the fun? It even provides additional challenge in trying to accomplish task whilst avoiding things like that.
Yeah yeah substantial software is never finished there's always one bug hidden away somewhere yadda yadda yadda. I'm not talking about that; nothing's perfect but there's "imperfect" and then there's just messed up. Here's my standard: If your average normal typical playthrough encounters an average of one noticeable glitch or more, you shouldn't be calling it 1.0 yet.Imperioratorex Caprae said:
I agree with that, absolutely. I grew up with PC games since the 80s and the quality of releases has dipped since the idea of the day 1 patch has been introduced. Its the gaming equivalent of Hollywood's "fix it in post" rather than reshoot a scene laziness. Some companies are guilty as hell of this and some aren't. I don't think we need to point out who... who... whobisoft.Pyrian said:
I don't see anything really wrong with day 1 patches, though developers are relying on them perhaps a bit too much. I have a problem when a day 1 patch is 10gb+. On people with slow internet or no internet access at all that's ludicrous, especially on consoles with limited HDD space.
I will say the fact such large patches and installations are so common on consoles mean they no longer really have their plug and play factor any more.
I will say the fact such large patches and installations are so common on consoles mean they no longer really have their plug and play factor any more.
Are you saying that the games get packaged and shipped intentionally with flaws, so the devs have something to do? Because the only reasons for games to require huge day-one patches is that they are released full of flaws or incomplete (something that shouldn't be accepted in certified games)Lightknight said:
I've never had an issue with day 1 patches. I recall when NWN came out, the day 1 patch caused quite a stir. Players bemoaning the state of a game that "needed" one. Games are programs, written in one language or other full of if statements, while/for loops, functions and mathematical operations. They are meshes, maps, sounds and textures. There well inevitably be issues in the code that QA simply can't fix. (One dev have a great statement on this. If you had 100 QA testers (hah!) each putting in 1,000 hours, that's 100k hours of testing time. If 500k players each played for 2 hours, that's 1mill hours. Players will inevitably find things QA couldn't.)
Add others have mentioned, games go gold quite some time before release. Now in stupid arsehole companies, they start working on day 1 dlc. In fucking arsehole companies, they remove content made before the game went gold and include it in the same bloody disc or sell it on day 1. A good company however, spends post-gone gold, pre-release time polishing and bug fixing further so that the day 1 experience is better for players and at no extra cost. The price of the full game should get you a full game on day 1.
For players with slow or capped connections, I sympathise but I'd rather a day 1 patch than fixable bugs.
Add others have mentioned, games go gold quite some time before release. Now in stupid arsehole companies, they start working on day 1 dlc. In fucking arsehole companies, they remove content made before the game went gold and include it in the same bloody disc or sell it on day 1. A good company however, spends post-gone gold, pre-release time polishing and bug fixing further so that the day 1 experience is better for players and at no extra cost. The price of the full game should get you a full game on day 1.
For players with slow or capped connections, I sympathise but I'd rather a day 1 patch than fixable bugs.
That's like saying a bus card is less efficient than a sack of pennies because you have to reload it every now and then.baddude1337 said:
No, it means that in most cases a game is judged to be good enough to publish without it crashing constantly, that looks good, plays well, and that the consumer can purchase and enjoy it the way it currently is. Yes, you have some crappy publishers willing to go gold on a game with known bugs and just intend for the developers to fix them all for that day 1 patch, but I like to believe most companies don't do that and just go on to put a bit more shine on the game or resolve any new flaws that are discovered before the game releases.CaitSeith said:
With the complexity of games these days, it is impossible to find every bug before release, and for that matter many bugs may never even be found at all. Imagine trying to discover a bug that crashes a game when the character is wielding one particular weapon and is fighting one particular enemy during the nighttime phase of the game and both have their attack animations happening at the same time but the enemy is on a lower step than the character in water. Even with the hours and hours that go into QA, it's perfectly reasonable to think this particular convergence of events may not happen and the developers would never know it's a problem.
Even if it did happen to someone in QA, replicating it could be next to impossible to do, especially when you may not be sure what part of the scenario triggered the crash. Maybe it was having a particular item in the character's inventory and wouldn't happen if it wasn't there. Maybe the character has too much in inventory. Maybe there are too many monsters on the screen, or there's something wrong with the attack animation when going for an enemy at that angle with that weapon, or any combination of these things. Even if it gets discovered, try figuring out WHY the game crashes under those circumstances!
A day one patch is far less inconvenient than a day one bug.
Yes, in an ideal world, the bug would be caught and fixed during testing, but this isn't an ideal world, and there are many reasons for this which have already been mentioned.
Yes, in an ideal world, the bug would be caught and fixed during testing, but this isn't an ideal world, and there are many reasons for this which have already been mentioned.
They need to consider the people with download caps and put a stop to huge patches, day one or otherwise. On consoles there is a known environment and it should be well tested before they release it, it's just that damn simple.
Older games were made in assembly so I would think those would be just as complex to debug as modern games with modern tools. Either way, test your damn game on the target console and fix it's bugs BEFORE you send it to press.
Older games were made in assembly so I would think those would be just as complex to debug as modern games with modern tools. Either way, test your damn game on the target console and fix it's bugs BEFORE you send it to press.
As the scale of integration of modern video games becomes ever larger, it's inevitable that there are some bugs, errors, and glitches that can only become apparent when the game is out "in the wild", so to speak, because a Q&A testing environment can never fully subject a game to what it will have to deal with in the full implementation. So day-one patches are just something that we're going to have to live with.
To me, they are "justified" when it barely takes any MB... It becomes a problem when it's starts going into the GB territory...
Other than that, it should only apply to the disk version than the digital version because, at least, the digital version can be tweaked to prevent the need of downloading any [past] patches and shit...
Other than that, it should only apply to the disk version than the digital version because, at least, the digital version can be tweaked to prevent the need of downloading any [past] patches and shit...
When it goes into GB territory they can't really claim it's a few last minute bugs.FPLOON said: