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Shipping Unfinished/Unpolished Games Now, Apologizing Later With Patch Roadmap

How does that make the current state of affairs excusable?

It doesn't, but shit like this:

It's disgusting, absolutely the worst aspect of modern day gaming. In the "good old days" you had to ship a working, functional, and complete game since pubs didn't have the option of patches, dlc, adding missing content, etc. This shit needs to stop ASAP. Just delay the game rather than release it half finished.

Is laughably wrong.

Don't compare it to the glory of yesteryear because we had just as much unfinished buggy garbage coming out.
 
...and now maybe Persona 5 of all things, this is now officially a trend that publishers are taking with their games. I now think it is the single worst thing to happen to videogames.

Wait...what's going on with Persona 5 now?

I don't want to have to wait like I did with FF XV...
 

dracula_x

Member
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Replace "games" with "software" and you'll get the answer.
Never.

It's disgusting, absolutely the worst aspect of modern day gaming. In the "good old days" you had to ship a working, functional, and complete game since pubs didn't have the option of patches, dlc, adding missing content, etc. This shit needs to stop ASAP. Just delay the game rather than release it half finished.

on consoles maybe, but not on PC. Win 95/98/ME, Buggerfall, and many other examples from "good old days".
edit: and if you notice, most broken games is developed by western devs. Majority of them were "PC only devs" in the past, and that explains a lot.
 
Had NMS released as an Early Access kind of thing, a fairly polished and moderately bug-free one that, they'd have avoided so much bullshit and ill-blood. Conversation about the game would most probably be completely different, now.
 
We've been having this discussion since 2014 with the holiday fiasco that was the release of The Master Chief Collection and AC: Unity.

The practice of releasing an unfinished game and then finishing (or not, in some cases) it up through patches in the following ~6 months is nothing new. No one that has been following games the past 3-4 years should be surprised anymore.
 
The state that Andromeda shipped in is completely bonkers. Sure the series had its fair share of issues but not like what we saw with this one.
 
I agree and really the only easy answer is to not buy into day one culture. Let devs focus more on the lifespan of a game rather than treating it like a front loaded movie release.

Reviewers can help this by focusing more on bugs, issues, and lack of polish. Though, you can't expect anyone to do anything including not giving into excitement for a beloved franchise. Some people are ruled by their preferences and emotional attachments.

It's an uphill battle OP and one you can do your own part for. Don't buy into preorder and day one culture and leave room for healthy skepticism.
 

SOLDIER

Member
Had NMS released as an Early Access kind of thing, a fairly polished and moderately bug-free one that, they'd have avoided so much bullshit and ill-blood. Conversation about the game would most probably be completely different, now.

It would have also helped if the head honcho of the studio didn't literally lie to people's faces.
 

Admodieus

Member
We've been having this discussion since 2014 with the holiday fiasco that was the release of The Master Chief Collection and AC: Unity.

The practice of releasing an unfinished game and then finishing (or not, in some cases) it up through patches in the following ~6 months is nothing new. No one that has been following games the past 3-4 years should be surprised anymore.

Yup, if you didn't learn the lesson about not pre-ordering games after MCC and AC:Unity, you'll never learn

Until people stop pre-ordering and blindly purchasing games on Day 1, this trend will continue
 

BigEmil

Junior Member
Final Fantasy XV is the biggest one regarding this.

Wholly incomplete and they're now completing it with updates and charging some of it with paid dlc.
 

Stumpokapow

listen to the mad man
Doesn't apply here.

It does apply here -- the concept of the experiment is to test delayed gratification. Stop stepping on a rake. I don't know what to tell you. A person who leaves rakes lying around is a mean person, but stop stepping on them.
 
Dishonored 2 shipped in a terrible state compared to the first one and it was a huge bummer for me as it was my most anticipated game of the year. Decided to wait for patches. It's mostly pretty good now but it did dampen my excitement with the series.


Not much you can do other than just wait, which is probably the best thing to do anyways.
 

Glix

Member
I like the OP but I think it missed a big part of this.

"Lets not sink any more money into this project. Ship it! If it sells well, we will apologize and patch. If not, we will just fuck over the few who bought it."
 
I'm not too worried about it. There have been bad and broken games since the dawn of video game history. If you're concerned about any given game wait for impressions. And for the record I think NMS was great at launch and has only gotten better with each big update.

People need to stop buying games on day one, it's the only way this stuff will stop.
I do what I want
 

Sylas

Member
It's definitely irritating and has led to me getting just about every open world game a significant amount of time down the road (seeing a trend wth the OPs examples). What bothers me more are the games that come out with their patch plans after the game has launched and after there was a community backlash. It always makes me think of that they either thought they could get away with it or they were happy with what they released.

Now, I do understand that's it's up to the publisher, but my stupid lizard brain immediately leaps to the conclusion that they'd have been satisfied to dump a partially-finished product on consumers and leave it at that. NMS and Andromeda feel like the most egregious examples of this. If you want to fix something, come out ahead of the pack and say you're aware of the issues.
 
Makoto walk animation levels of slow updates

Okay, that one got me. XD

But yeah. It's especially galling because other series (MK, Tekken, SC, Guilty Gear) ran circles around SFIV last gen in both content and features. Yet Capcom still charged $60 for the skeletal, laggy horseshit that SFV was at launch, and pat themselves on the back for fixing what shouldn't have been wrong to begin with.

It speaks to a larger contempt for the audience, in which the company expects to get away with the bare minimum (if that) then acts shocked, SHOCKED at how poorly the game is received. There are only so many times that can happen before it's not "on accident" anymore.

Despite being a fan of SF for decades, I was glad that sales tanked on SFV. It was entirely deserved after what Capcom tried to pull with it.
 

Sulik2

Member
The solution to this is easy and a lot of people I know have started doing it. Don't buy games at launch or preorder them. If reviews say they are unfinished wait a year for the patched version with DLC. If the reviews say the game isn't a buggy mess feel free to buy it. Its not that hard to avoid paying full price for an unlabeled early access game if you can exercise a little bit of patience. Its a terrible practice, but its really not hard to avoid being burned as a consumer.
 

PSqueak

Banned
Mass Effect: Andromeda's awful character faces weren't a bug either.

It's still yet another thing that they have to go back and fix, because it wasn't a problem until the internet mocked them for it.

The P5 no-streaming thing is also scummy for a similar reason, because people are now being spoiled by Twitter bots (happened to a buddy of mine yesterday in fact) and other retaliatory measures.

While it is kind of a dick move, i think putting that issue up with NMS or ME:A is also ridiculous, not being able to stream or screen cap does NOT impact the enjoyment of the game as much as ME:A's shitty face animation, not to mention that was one of a sizeable list of problems Andromeda currently needs to fix.
 
Persona 5 is a completely different issue that you should not expect to be reversed.

^^^This. P5 is neither unfinished or unpolished. The streaming policy is dumb but bad policies don't fit into the category of unfinished or unpolished. Also, disliking the translation is a matter of personal taste not the result of the game being unfinished or unpolished.
 
Besides the blocking of the share button absolutely nothing. It's way more polished than something like fucking NMS.

You mean Persona 5 got lumped in with No Man's Sky, Final Fantasy XV and Mass Effect Andromeda because some dimwits at Atlus' end decided to act like dimwits about streaming?
 

Kinyou

Member
Mass Effect: Andromeda's awful character faces weren't a bug either.

It's still yet another thing that they have to go back and fix, because it wasn't a problem until the internet mocked them for it.

The P5 no-streaming thing is also scummy for a similar reason, because people are now being spoiled by Twitter bots (happened to a buddy of mine yesterday in fact) and other retaliatory measures.
I'm pretty certain EA was well aware that the faces looked off and decided to ship anyway. If the devs had more time they would have fixed it eventually.

It's completely different from Atlus intentionally deciding to remove the ability to stream. That didn't happen because the devs had to ship the game early
 

Not Spaceghost

Spaceghost
OP almost derailed his own thread by mentioning p5 didn't he?

It's seriously an annoying trend but i would say that it goes beyond broken releases. It goes as far as releasing broken updates.

The CSGO devs for example almost never release anything for public testing which means most of the time they release a bad patch that makes the game frustrating to play or in some cases unplayable for a week, then they fix the bad patch and say "sorry lol".

There is just waay too much "get paying customers to beta test a good enough version for us" going on in games now.
 

Madness

Member
I mean, is it really? You mentioned 5 games out of literally thousands that are released every year.

I mean, I get the frustration, but, I don't think it's nearly as prevalent as you're making it out to be.

What about a game like Halo 5? Extremely barebones at release and 'content' updates 1.5 years post launch have it finally feature parity if not exceeding previous games. A lot of games are going this route. Massive day one patches, promises of content that they just didn't finish on time. It isn't just 5 games. Games like AC: Unity, Just Cause 3. So many games are releasing with substandard technical issues, let alone flat out broken like MCC, Driveclub.
 

Jakoo

Member
Between No Man's Sky, Street Fighter V, Final Fantasy XV, Mass Effect Andromeda and now maybe Persona 5 of all things, this is now officially a trend that publishers are taking with their games. I now think it is the single worst thing to happen to videogames.

I agree that it's a crummy trend, but also one you can easily plan around given how many great games there are out there in general.

I have stopped buying games at launch unless their is a high-level of confidence they will stick the landing and the publisher has allowed reviews to go up before launch. For example, the only games I've bought at launch as of late are Nier, Horizon and Titanfall 2, and all of those games have had excellent day 1 experiences.

I feel like it's very easy to just defer playing a game if it's looking questionable. No one can claim to know what they weren't waiting into with Mass Effect: Andromeda--there were tons of warning signs leading into it. If a publisher is stonewalling critical content from being released, it's easy enough to just wait a week until after launch until people get their hands on it.

Personally I haven't purchased FFXV, No Man's Sky or ME:A, but I look forward to getting them during a drought once they appear to be a bit more content complete. The best part is that they will likely be bomba-priced by the time I do.

I feel like once you get comfortable moving past the gaming zeitgeist of having to play something as soon as it comes out, it becomes a lot easier (and more frugal) to not deal with half-baked launches.
 
You make great points OP, and I too am annoyed with the whole "We'll fix it later" thing that has been going on for a while now. I just wish you hadn't put Persona 5 in a list alongside NMS because it really undermined the point you were making.
 

Fbh

Member
Lol if you think Persona 5 is unfinished and unpolished because of some localization issues I assume you think the same of 99.9% of Japanese games from the "good old days".

Anyway. No, I don't see it as something negative or "the worst thing about gaming".
Some games are released unpolished, unfinished or with other issues. There is nothing new about that and it has been happening since the early days of gaming.
At least devs have a chance to fix their games now. ME Andromeda might feel unpolished now, but mabye in 6 months that will no longer be the case and I can play a more polished game...And pay like $30 for it. I'm not seeing how this is bad for me.

I could see your point if this was happening with every other game that's being released. But I'm looking at my purchases from the past year (10+ games) and can only see one single game (FFXV) that needed a "roadmap of patched" for being released in an unfinished state.

Oh and most of these games are paying for releasing in the state that they did.
No Man's Sky became a joke all around the internet and the dude behind it either ruined or severely hurt his career. SFV failed to even get close to the sales or popularity that IV had when it released. The gifs and jokes about ME Andromeda have even reached "mainstream" (as in not game focused) sites and you can bet your ass that all the bad PR before release did hurt their sales.
 
SF5 was finished , it was just not complete. It was meant to be a game that would be evolve across it's life. Are MMO not finished ?

At release SF5 main goal was met ( a glitch free fighting game ) and while it had not much modes , the core game was working but fighting games never stay in the same state after the initial release.
 

Serick

Married Member
OP, you derailed your own thread. IMHO you should remove the P5 references as this thread will never go the way you intended it to otherwise.

P5 isn't even remotely in the same boat as NMS or MA:E let alone the same ocean.
 

Zakalwe

Banned
When you've been waiting for a game for a long time, jumping in day 1 is a big deal, so reading impressions telling you to wait for months until it's fixed can be very frustrating.

More frustrating than multiple delays, imo.

Saying that, we rarely know what caused a delay or game to release in a bad state, and if it's not the deceloper's fault I wouldn't want to berate them for trying to fix what they can.

They MAY but they havent said anything and theres no day 1 patch.

Lumping Persona 5 in with trash like No Mans Sky and Mass Effect Andromeda is quite frankly insulting and an easy way to discredit any valid argument OP might have had.

Only if you're being petty about it..

OP said "maybe P5", and he's been corrected multiple times now. We can all move along with the discussion just fine.
 

dose

Member
It's disgusting, absolutely the worst aspect of modern day gaming. In the "good old days" you had to ship a working, functional, and complete game since pubs didn't have the option of patches, dlc, adding missing content, etc. This shit needs to stop ASAP. Just delay the game rather than release it half finished.
Unfortunately until people stop preordering, assuming they'll get a great product, and people buy on release day, that won't happen.
 

kyser73

Member
Software isn't perfect, get over it.

Some of you are going to have a real shock when you start dealing with commercial and Enterprise grade software.
 
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