muxec
Prince
Hey. The game is about to be released on Sept 24. Only 2 months left. Do you think that in case of need the publisher will delay the release rather than publish something that needs 4 patches to become playable?
Release date and patch-thirsty version 1.0.0
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Aeon221
Lord of the Cheese Helmet
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No, because that would be stupid. Delaying release is expensive, downloadable patches are cheap.
Besides, most of the post-release patches have to do with issues discovered after release. QA teams might do every funky thing they can think of, but it's nothing compared with what us customers can do.
Besides, most of the post-release patches have to do with issues discovered after release. QA teams might do every funky thing they can think of, but it's nothing compared with what us customers can do.
Ddude97
King
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These days they can and do send the product to the distributors with known bugs, because release-day patches have become the norm. A problem would have to be pretty catastrophic to force a date change.
I assume the game is pretty much complete, and what's being done now is performance tweaks and polish, and the addition of art and music assets.
I assume the game is pretty much complete, and what's being done now is performance tweaks and polish, and the addition of art and music assets.
DarkMaster
Warlord
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- Jan 6, 2006
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Also, one of the advantages of Steam is that patching is so easy that you can release zero day patches and most costumers won't notice.
CanuckSoldier
Emperor
Yes I would expect to see a 0 day patch, Steam makes that even easier than Gamespy would, and there is no reason that they can't keep the dev team working on non-core features right upto Sept 1st or so, that gives T2 time to QA the patch and we all get a better game on release day for it.
CS
CS
Aeon221
Lord of the Cheese Helmet
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Right. Which do you prefer? A delay of a month to fix some bugs that got caught right before it the game goes gold, or a day 0 patch.
UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUH.
Back in the bad old days, you'd have just been stuck with a borked game. Possibly forever. Now, day 0 patches and continuing support mean even a turd sandwich of a product like Civ4 was, on release, can be turned into a thing of beauty.
And if you don't remember the tidal wave of fury that hit the forums back when Civ4 came out, well, just go back and look. Now there's a game that was literally unplayable on release.
UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUH.
Back in the bad old days, you'd have just been stuck with a borked game. Possibly forever. Now, day 0 patches and continuing support mean even a turd sandwich of a product like Civ4 was, on release, can be turned into a thing of beauty.
And if you don't remember the tidal wave of fury that hit the forums back when Civ4 came out, well, just go back and look. Now there's a game that was literally unplayable on release.
largedarryl
Prince
Civ IV suffered from some of the worst memory leaks I have ever seen in a game. And if anyone ever recalls encountering the perpetually broken save games, sometimes I wonder how I wasted so much time playing CivIV.
For PC games, patches have been pretty common place for a little over a decade.
Commander Bello
Say No 2 Net Validations
Except for sitting in front of the the screens and studying the progress bar.
They will fall asleep, get drunk or get laid. Though some might just wait and wait and wait
Surely they would more likely be playing another game
, though probably not a steam game since that would pause the patch download IIUC.
Alsark
Noble
thats why serious games have intensive betas, like blizzard does
its hardly acceptable that civ still does sort of internal, limited betas...
aziantuntija
Prince
Im sorry if you are disappointed by this muxec but its 3 months to release date not 2 months
GoodSarmatian
Jokerfied Western Male
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- 9,408
It will come out on time, regardless whether it's finished or not, I just hope it won't be a debacle like unpatched Civ 4
Usually I add three months to release dates, by that time there have usually been three patches and games are largely playable as intended, but Civ5 will be realeased during the last three weeks of my semester break...
Usually I add three months to release dates, by that time there have usually been three patches and games are largely playable as intended, but Civ5 will be realeased during the last three weeks of my semester break...
Well if you want an example where a game should simply not be sold until fixed properly, a good example is spore. It was an absoulete nightmate, everybody had a different bug or problem, near enough everyone would need to re-install the game, and when you were limited to 3 installs due to Blizzards noobocracy, using up the first 2 of this limit within a day isn't nice. And then the game was still broken with other bugs and you needed to wait for the game developers to actually bring out a patch before you could play again, if you still had the interest too by then.
Hopefully CIV5 will be in either perfect working order, or nearly perfect when the game comes out. Nobody want to have the game crash each time they try to build a road :O
Hopefully CIV5 will be in either perfect working order, or nearly perfect when the game comes out. Nobody want to have the game crash each time they try to build a road :O
