| Sky Render said: The patch mentality has always had its downfalls, such as those who use it as an excuse to release an incomplete product to market and make people download the last part. That use is especially inexcusable, but even the intended use (to give users the option to fix game-breaking bugs) is still questionable at best and suggests that proper testing was not done on the product. The excuse that games are getting more complicated doesn't fly; one of the responsibilities that comes with increased complexity is increased need to test the product to iron out bugs. You cannot simply increase the budget for one part of a game and expect to let the other parts just slide by on their old budget levels. |
There is only so much testing that can be done, and even then people can find exploits that break the game.
A good example is BF2, if you've ever played the game then you would know about dolphin diving, if you don't then I'll briefly explain it, it involves running up to an enemy, jumping and then in mid air going into the prone postilion and then as soon as you land repeating the jumping and proning, hence the dolphin diving name, mind you this was done at the same time as shooting. now trying to shoot a target like that was near impossible and most often than not you would simply lose to another player doing this.
Now this wasn't a bug, but an exploit that could be done, and of course it become to wide spread that it started killing the fun for many, even to those that did the said dolphin diving, the exploit was then crushed in an update later on.
Now if exploits like this one aren't removed or fixed in online games, then it can become detrimental to the game it's self as well as the people who play the game online.
I do however agree with you on the part about certain developers releasing a half completed game, and then patching it to fill the rest of the content, and what's really inexcusable is if they charge for it as well.
