This week I decided to rant... just a bit. While I'm waiting for such games as Arx Fatalis, DAoC: Shrouded Isles and Morrowind: Tribunal to hit the shelves, I'm still enjoying the games that are already out. But in today's PC Gaming market, games are never really finished, or so it often seems. Patches take on the form of elaborate add-ons that add many features, free of charge. These add-ons come, of course, complete with a nice patch to fix bugs.

Now this has some good in it. It shows how much the developer still cares about their game even after it goes on sale. Generally patches add things to the game, features that make the experience better and more enjoyable. One thing that sometimes come with patches that makes my skin crawl, though, are more bugs...

Nightly woes
Our weekly Neverwinter Nights (NWN) game was plagued with crashes last Tuesday after we patched to version 1.26. Just to give you an idea of how careful we've generally become when it comes to this game, we usually let at least 2 weeks pass before we grab the latest patch just to make sure that it won't spoil our fun (because it has in the past, sometimes severely). When the server crashes this game gets very frustrating for everyone, and so we try to not change anything if it's working. When the server crashes you lose everything: the progress you made in your session is lost, the players' XP is gone (unless they saved just before the crash) and everything is ruined.

When a NWN module is carefully built and managed, the immersion attains great heights, and so players will forget that they need to save their characters every once in a while. This level of immersion is a very good quality in this type of game, but it transforms into a terrible Achilles' heel when the server crashes and no one saved. The DM (Dungeon Master) then has to transport the party back where they were at before the crash, killing the encounters that were already dealt with so that they don't have to do everything over. Granted, the process of getting back to where the players were before crashing is not very complicated, or very long, but the aggravation remains important.

Give me my patch or I quit!
I fail to see the rush in which developers are sometimes to come out with patches for a game that is already on the shelves unless the game is severely unplayable… NWN's version 1.24 was solid. Version 1.26 was rushed out because the previous one (1.25) was apparently so bugged that it was almost impossible to play. I would have waited one whole month for them to get a good, solid and stable version 1.25 rather than get two bugged patches in the span of two weeks!

I know players complain and get impatient about upcoming patches and fixes, and even promised features. Gamers are like that, there's no denying it. Sometimes it probably gets to the developers and they rush things out to appease the masses. I know that if they ask us to wait a while more, some of us will cry out, threaten to stop playing, etc… But, let me tell you, those are all empty threats. The most likely people to quit playing a game because of unhappiness have quit long before we ever even heard about them. Those who eagerly cry out won't quit. So why do developers not take their time? Why not polish things a little more? The game is in our hands already, we will enjoy it regardless of whether we have the latest and greatest patch. We might look forward to the upcoming features the patch will be adding, but for heaven's sake please make sure everything is in order before giving it to us!

A new form of hype
This situation is not only specific to NWN, it applies to many games out there. The problems that arise from trying to please the gamers as quickly as possible are still the same. I once pleaded with players to try and be patient and not give in to hype. Now I would plead with developers not to give in to player-hype either, because sometimes that can be even worse than any marketing hype!

All that being said, as a gamer I am ready to accept a minimum amount of bugs in a game when it comes out. I accept this up to a certain delicate degree. But when I install a patch, I also expect it to actually fix, not break anything… I really don't think that's too much to ask. And even if I know the above rant has been told about again and again by many others before me, it has to be repeated once more because it seems like a few people are not getting the point out there...