Patches? Another One?

Does that title scream Quake 2 or what? I am not critizing id software's decision to make lots of patches for Quake 2, I actually applaud them because it shows they have pride in their product. What does make me wonder is why all of these patches are needed. It is pretty obvious why, it is because id software shipped an incomplete product to market. That is despicable. There are some game companies which will not send a product to the markey until they are sure it is bug free. There are other companies which will send a game to market just for the fact of making a buck, and if its not finished they can just patch it over the Internet. Patches are fine, but enough is enough. Patches show support for a game, but it is becoming like a monthly event to go and download a new version of Quake 2. We are now at version 3.19, with more coming. What gets to me is that when I first install the game I have to go and download about 3 or 4 patches. Quake 2 was hyped to be the ultimate multiplayer game with many modes of play. This is very true it NOW has many modes of play, when it was first released there was no Capture the Flag, Co-op, or even team play. All of those were promised in the initial release, only plain ol'deathmatch was delivered. With patches Quake 2 rocks, without them it gets boring really quick. Next on my list is Unreal. This game is supposed to be getting a major patch soon to fix up the laggy multiplayer. Remove all of the lag and Unreal still won't be worth playing multiplayer because it is boring and slow. There have been 2 patches so far, and they have done dick all. One was able to launch Unreal from a link on a web page, and the other added Cyrix CPU compatibility. There are few multiplayer servers, and with Cyrix CPU's subpar Floating Point Unit I sure wouldn't want to be playing Unreal. Epic, if you are going to release patches please make them worthwhile downloading. That makes patches sound pretty bad right there, but what about games for which companies refuse to make any new patches for even if they are truly required? A prime example of this is Westwood Studios and Sole Survivor. Sole got some pretty scathing reviews from major magazines, and wasn't recieved that well by the public. Westwood still had a deticated and hard-core group of players for Sole, about 11,000. These players were very deticated to the game, always contributing to forums and other such events. This community is very closely knit, and back in March when they (Westwood) announced that they planned to release a 1.04 patch for Sole everyone was jubulant. What they didn't tell us then, but did 2 weeks later was that it would be the last patch ever for SS. That was the bottom line, if there was anything missing or wrong with this patch too bad because Westwood refused to do anything else to the game. Now due to the lack of new gameplay and players the SS community is dying a slow and monotonious death. Now there are only about 3000 SS players. There is one more group of companies which I have omitted. These are the game companies which make games so that few or no patches are required. Three standouts are Team17, LucasArts and Blizzard, each take the time to vigorously test their title to make sure all or most bugs are squashed before shipping. When patches are required they make sure they address all of the problems with the game. A prime example of this was Team 17's 1.05 patch for Worms 2. Not only did it fix some incompatibilities it fixed some gameplay issues such as Cluster Bomb Abuse. Patches are simply a matter of how much testing went into this game, and how much support does the developer want to give it. You can decide which group you prefer.

The Clair

September 13, 1998