Skyrim - Day 1 Patch, Werewolves, More

guenthar said:

Actually there was a patch for Ultima 9 and I was sent a cd with the updated version back then.

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I still have mine sealed up somewhere. I was curious to give it a try but it was long after I had lost interest in making it playable (which it became sort of) or even just worth playing.

But this wasn't a case of patch delivery before mass internet usage, just an attempt at good will from the developer/publisher, a "final" version with all cumulative patches.

Couchpotato said:

I see it as good or bad. If a company knowingly ships a bug ridden game shame on them. We had a couple this year. That's what a beta test is for.

On the other hand its more likely they fixed more bugs after the game goes gold. A failing in the system not a developer.

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Skyrim is going to have some bugs, certainly.

You can QA test call of duty thousands of times but this is not practical for such a large 300-500 hour open world RPG. Bethesda could hire a team of 100 to QA test the game for years and still not catch everything. A few bugs and glitches come with the territory.

Couchpotato said:

I see it as good or bad. If a company knowingly ships a bug ridden game shame on them. We had a couple this year. That's what a beta test is for.

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Well, every developer knowingly ships their games with bugs. It's silly to think you'll ever get a perfect game and never need an ounce of support for it.

Unless you're talking about coming face to face with a bug and giving the "OK" to release the game anyway. On that note, some times I do wonder what these developers do during the beta testing phase.

BillSeurer said:

You're new to gaming, right? Day one patches have been around for years.

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Oh? Patching certainly has been around for years, but day-one patches seem like more of a recent development to me (as in, becoming more common in the last few years). Or at least I personally don't recall many day one patches in years past, and even now it's not that common - unless I'm just forgetting more examples.

Ragnaris said:

Well, every developer knowingly ships their games with bugs. It's silly to think you'll ever get a perfect game and never need an ounce of support for it.

Unless you're talking about coming face to face with a bug and giving the "OK" to release the game anyway. On that note, some times I do wonder what these developers do during the beta testing phase.

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Yes I wonder about that also. We had a few this year that made me shake my head and wonder how it was even released on there broken state. Needing money now is not a excuse since there funds were used up.

You can QA test call of duty thousands of times but this is not practical for such a large 300-500 hour open world RPG. Bethesda could hire a team of 100 to QA test the game for years and still not catch everything. A few bugs and glitches come with the territory.

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I know games have bugs but when your game is unplayable there is no excuse.
I'm not talking of simple bugs where you can still finish the game. I never got any like that from Bethesda except random ctd's.

Couchpotato said:

I'm not talking of simple bugs where you can still finish the game. I never got any like that from Bethesda except random ctd's.

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So far there seem to be only reports of minor glitches from all the thousands of people who pirated the game. I highly doubt the game will be considered "unplayable."

As for previous Beth games, despite playing for hundreds of hours, I have never experienced any CTDs with the vanilla versions. Even Fallout New Vegas, which used the Gamebryo engine, I experienced a number of cosmetic glitches, like things getting stuck in the terrain, but no CTDs.

As for my heavily modded version of Oblivion (around 200 mods), it crashes at least once during every gaming session, but I still enjoy the game enough to play it.

There is only so much you can do to QA test a massive game like this. At some point you have to release the game or you will never make your money back.

However, the devs have mentioned in interviews that they have learned from previous games, for example paying close attention to avoid things like the A-Bomb bug in Oblivion that caused everything to go wonky after 300 hours.

CountChocula said:

So far there seem to be only reports of minor glitches from all the thousands of people who pirated the game. I highly doubt the game will be considered "unplayable."

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Yeah the Atomic Gamer december issue review (95/100) cited a few odd glitches and inconsistent behaviors but nothing major. Perhaps those are what the 0-day/day 1 patch will address.

CountChocula said:

You can QA test call of duty thousands of times but this is not practical for such a large 300-500 hour open world RPG..

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Wait... now it's up to 300-500 hours?

Skyrim gets longer every time you post, Count.

JDR13 said:

Wait… now it's up to 300-500 hours?

Skyrim gets longer every time you post, Count.

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Well I mean I guess depending on how OCD you are, most Elder Scrolls games could be infinite hours of gameplay.

BillSeurer said:

Sure.

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I'm just questioning the fact that patches are common, but not so common at day one, as Nerevarine too stated out (btw there are still magazines with the latest patches on DVD).
And to be clear, your joke wasn't funny, and being a moderator doesn't give you the confidence to say that: even if I registered here few months ago, I've never write something stupid like that. Now, have you finished? Or do you have to continue?

JDR13 said:

Wait… now it's up to 300-500 hours?

Skyrim gets longer every time you post, Count.

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jhwisner said:

Well I mean I guess depending on how OCD you are, most Elder Scrolls games could be infinite hours of gameplay.

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This one actually can last for "infinity" as the Story Manager continues to generate quests forever if you are into that.

However, the devs have said the game provides 300+ hours.

After watching a lot of gameplay this week, it is clear that this game has much more content that Oblivion, for which a single playthrough typically lasts at least around 300 hours for me, even without completing most of the questlines or finding most of the locations on the map, let alone exploring all the dungeons.

So I'm now predicting around 300-500 hours, for myself at least or for anyone else playing on a harder difficulty setting who enjoys the exploration side of things.

I watched one guy work his way through one truly massive Skyrim dungeon for about 10-12 hours, and he was not even completely exploring it. There were a lot of parts of that dungeon he completely skipped. Playing that on hard difficulty and actually exploring it would probably take two or three times as long.

It probably took more work to QA test that one dungeon than to QA test call of duty.

And there are 150+ other dungeons! Granted, most are not as big as that one, but they all seem to have a lot of content and none of them felt like any of the other dungeons I saw. They are designed in a way where the art direction tells a sort of story.

There are 350+ primary locations and 200+ secondary locations, for a total of 550.

CountChocula said:

This one actually can last for "infinity" as the Story Manager continues to generate quests forever if you are into that.

However, the devs have said the game provides 300+ hours.

After watching a lot of gameplay this week, it is clear that this game has much more content that Oblivion, for which a single playthrough typically lasts at least around 300 hours for me, even without completing most of the questlines or finding most of the locations on the map, let alone exploring all the dungeons.

So I'm now predicting around 300-500 hours, for myself at least or for anyone else playing on a harder difficulty setting who enjoys the exploration side of things.

I watched one guy work his way through one truly massive Skyrim dungeon for about 10-12 hours, and he was not even completely exploring it. There were a lot of parts of that dungeon he completely skipped. Playing that on hard difficulty and actually exploring it would probably take two or three times as long.

It probably took more work to QA test that one dungeon than to QA test call of duty.

And there are 150+ other dungeons! Granted, most are not as big as that one, but they all seem to have a lot of content and none of them felt like any of the other dungeons I saw. They are designed in a way where the art direction tells a sort of story.

There are 350+ primary locations and 200+ secondary locations, for a total of 550.

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The problem isn't the quantity, but the quality of the dungeons: I prefer much more to have few dungeons, but full of shortcuts, traps, riddles, puzzles, etc. instead of 150 or whatever narrow tunnels full of enemies.
I hope that Skyrim makes things differently from Oblivion in this regard...

I'm confident Skyrim is going to have higher quality dungeons, etc., compared to Oblivion, but I seriously doubt it would be enough to make me play it for more than the 200 hour range.

I don't care how good a game is, there's a limit to how long I can enjoy any given setting before I start to yearn for a change.

JDR13 said:

I don't care how good a game is, there's a limit to how long I can enjoy any given setting before I start to yearn for a change.

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That's true. Not a videogame, but a movie rather, I'm finally tiring of Star Wars Episode IV.

Well If I get more than the 30 hours I got out of Oblivion (about 20 of them actual fun).
I'll mark this one as a success.

I too like to spend many hours with my favorites (spread in many replays over several years usually), but the only Bethesda game that kept my interest for any significant time
was Morrowind. Lets see if they can surprise me this time...

Ball_Breaker said:

The problem isn't the quantity, but the quality of the dungeons: I prefer much more to have few dungeons, but full of shortcuts, traps, riddles, puzzles, etc. instead of 150 or whatever narrow tunnels full of enemies.
I hope that Skyrim makes things differently from Oblivion in this regard…

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I think you will be pleasantly surprised, if the various dungeons I saw are any indication.

CountChocula said:

I think you will be pleasantly surprised, if the various dungeons I saw are any indication.

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I really hope so Count but it seems that Friday never comes...

Nerevarine said:

Oh? Patching certainly has been around for years, but day-one patches seem like more of a recent development to me (as in, becoming more common in the last few years). Or at least I personally don't recall many day one patches in years past, and even now it's not that common - unless I'm just forgetting more examples.

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I think it's been a gradual change that goes along with studio philosophies. It used to be that you'd often have one studio concentrate on one game, then when it was released you'd have a big party/holiday and either get laid off or have a royalty funded bender until you started on the next game. With the increase in game complexity and studio sizes you have people come in and out at all stages of the project, and when their job is done they might just move to another project in the same company. The studio doesn't shut down and party after gold, so the QA/support group might as well get a head start on/continue fixing things that come up in testing of the gold code.

kalniel said:

royalty funded bender

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I would like to go on one of those

kalniel said:

I think it's been a gradual change that goes along with studio philosophies..

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Exactly ... I see it as the confluence of a few things:
- More of a 'cradle to grave' responsibility for a game.
- Rush to prep for release involving console tests means a game is 'frozen' earlier and the 'release patch' is worked on in parallel.
- Leaked games resulting in DRM cracks available day of release can get whacked.

The last two are obvious, but the first one is needed (a) to maintain interest for the game the studio releases next year and (b) to keep interest high for the stream of DLC to leech out as much cash as possible.