mjk45 said:
While there are some who use patching as a cop out it's not all negative, as to buggy games pre patch there were plenty but since the world was less connected you didn't have the awareness that you have today or the critical audience feedback,I started gaming on a secondhand C64 moved onto Amiga then PC and consoles, so I have been gaming for over 30 years and I recall bugs ranging from nuisance value up to game breaking ever since I started, now whether it is worse or better today, I don't know. What I do know that the more complex the system the more things can go wrong and with today's games becoming more complex as well as more open and less linear, the chances of bugs have increased, the numbers of bug testers you see in game credits is a testament to that, the response of using day one patches and patching when necessary to fix the problem seems to me to be driven by publishers preferring not to hold back releases when a day one patch will do the job. |
I honestly can't remember many major releases back in the day suffering from major game breaking glitches. Even up to the Wii, where Nintendo didn't really patch stuff. There were some odd things here and there that activated in weird circumstances, (like something in Skyward Sword if you talked to a particular NPC at a weird point where you probably wouldn't) but I can't recall that many truly bugged out games.
Obviously patches could be a good thing, but the original point that was brought up still stands. I can still to this day bust out my SNES and play my favorite games. What happens in a couple of decades when patches are not supported, I don't have access to a patched system, or deleted the data due to limited hard drive space years ago, and I want to play a game that was reliant on a day one patch? This trend is fine for now, but its very not future proof.
