To Patch or Not to Patch?

This is mostly my thoughts on fighting games but, the idea of patching could be discussed in any genre.

Aside from game breaking glitches and exploits aside, should a game be patched? And if so, how long after a game has come out should it be patched? In the past we've had games that were never touched and we still played them even if we thought things were broken. And now a days we get a game, find something that feels "cheap" or "broken" and we start complaining for it to be patched, fixed, or getten rid of, without putting any effort into trying to find a way around it.

Marvel vs Capcom 2 was played competitively for over 10 years. Sure, in the end, at high levels the game was essentially just 6 or so characters, it was still loved and respected by the players. In the beginning of the game's life it was thought that Ice Man was completely over powered, because he didn't take chip damage, but over time the game evolved and Ice Man became obsolete.

Now we have Marvel vs Capcom 3 and Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3. The time between both Vanilla MVC3 and UMVC3 was exactly 9 months to the day. And since the launch of UMVC3 there have been complaint after complaint that there should a patch. While most of what the people want patch do seem to be game breaking, like the ability to mash grab at any point of any move to tech any attempt to grab the opposition (which in turn makes throwing to punish near impossible), but some of the stuff people want patched seems a bit unwarrented. The one subject in particular being Wesker. It's only a been a little over 1 month into the game's life and we are already complaining that a single character needs to be patched, without looking for answers to our problem.

That's what I feel is the main difference between MVC2 and MVC3, time. We have given so little time for MVC3 to even start evolving. While I do feel that Wesker is a problem in itself, I still feel that we should give the game time to breathe or else it's going to die competitively. When Vanilla MVC3 came out everyone thought that Sentinel was completely overpowered. Within a month there were countless strategies to defeat him and even still through all the complaining and such, a patch was later released that lowered his health, which wasn't one of the biggest issues with the character.

Even as I write this, a new patch was released for UMVC3 with the launch of the Heroes and Heralds mode. While mashing throw during moves is still viable, Capcom nerfed Pheonix Wright needlessly, imo. The nerf itself was to his assist "Press the Witness". Prior to the patch, if Wright was in Turnabout Mode (a mode which he gains through obtaining evidence and hitting the opponent with the objection), the assist was completely invincible, it went through anything. After the patch, "Press the Witness" is no longer invicible. You must be asking, "why would that be a needless patch? Isn't that a good thing?". Well, the truth is prior to the patch the assist was annoying to fight against, however, it was extremely difficult for Wright to even get into Turnabout Mode, he had to fight for that assist. It was the most appealing aspect about the character for most players and now the tool that appealed the most about the character is needlessly taken away.

Now I love Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 and I agree there is some stuff I don't agree with however, I feel that we we need to give the game some time before we complain about every little thing. We had 10 years of MVC2, why not 10 years of UMVC3.

Interesting discussion point.

I'm going to use a game I'm familiar with, in terms of a competitive scene -- League of Legends. It's a PC MOBA-style game, 5v5 with a nice competitive following. The gameplay is almost identical to that of Defense of the Ancients. Every two weeks, there is a patch that comes out for it. This patch will always, without fail, have a set of "buffs" and "nerfs" for multiple characters in the game.

There are plenty of professional gamers that play League of Legends in tournaments. Some of these tournaments are as big as the World Cyber Games in South Korea and MLG here in the States. With money and reputation on the line, the teams of course try to find the "perfect" team composition. There are well over 80 characters to play in this game (with a new one every 2 weeks), so finding "perfect" teams often meant a lot of characters never saw competitive play. With this, tournament games began to grow stale in entertainment factor.

Due to the nature of the game, the "best" way to play is passively -- farm up money on the best characters, get high in level. Play safe. Don't take risks. The game itself is very fun to spectate for those who know what is going on, but watching the same group of champions farm for upwards of 20 minutes at a time is really boring to casual spectators, taking away interest from potential new players. So, the developers started making changes through patches in order to influence the "metagame." They'd throw a buff on this character, and nerf that other character. Things would shift up. New choices would be made. Instead of waiting for the game community to naturally evolve and change on its own, the developers took an active, influential role. I don't think I'd actually enjoy watching MLG streams for the game if there weren't patches shifting everything up every couple of weeks. It keeps things fresh and exciting for me as a player and fan.

I could go on about further reasons why they do so many patches, but that's where it stands from a competitive standpoint. Overall, I think it's an interesting way to go about patching.

I do gotta say, though, that I do miss the days where patching was impossible. I've had way too much fun messing around with bugs and glitches on old Nintendo 64 games with buddies. Man, that console had some of the buggiest games ever for a Nintendo console. Good times.

The way that LoL functions, patching seems like the way to go. With an addition of a new character every 2 weeks if there were no patches the game would be completely imbalanced and not all that fun.

Having a game that enables almost every character/weapon to be playable at a competitive level is near impossible. The only game that could possibly have every character do so would have been Super Turbo, excluding Akuma who is banned, every character has a chance.

I honestly don't agree with Phoenix Wright's patch. Getting into turnabout mode is a challenge in and of itself (if you are playing against someone who knows what they are doing) and I honestly think the reward should be an invincible assist and a godlike mode.

As far as patching throw teching and changing PW's last line of his hyper to "Take That" I am happy about that.

However...I am not a wesker player, and I never really had a particular hard time against wesker players (maybe because I use a teleport character as well) but even when I get my butt handed to me by a wesker I do feel that I lost fair and square because that's what Wesker is as a character, that's how he plays and I gotta learn to counter it. I feel that by nerfing Wesker it would be taking away a great experience of learning how to counter such character if they just nerf him away.

I do feel that after a year or maybe 6 months a balance patch is not a bad idea. But I can't stand that only a few weeks after the games' release people are already complaining about ONE character instead of just trying to overcome such obstacle. SSFIV:AE had some time to grow before the 2012 edition came and nerfed Yun and Yang but I feel that patch was efficient because it affected the whole cast not just 1 character.

so in short I am ok with glitch patches, and balance patches that take place after 6 months or longer because it gives players the ability to experience the game a bit further.

I'm ok with patching game breaking stuff, but (as an MMO player myself) I really dislike "balancing" patches. That is, only if it isn't like game breaking.

I'm gonna use the one example I know well. :lol WoW. In low level PVP, hunters are soooo overpowered. But if they did much to counter act that, they would affect the end game stuff (cause imo hunters in end game are kinda meh). So you just gotta deal with it / try to avoid them / etc. :lol

On one hand I like it... On the other hand I don't. Ie making long time characters and having a patch come through and ruins your build... Sucks. Or getting used to a starcrat 2 strategy and then having an update mess up that strategy due to a rebalance... Sucks.

On the other hand, it is cool because some rebalancing is very necessary to fix exploits in a game... Glitches and other items as well.

What I don't like it when I buy a game and there is a 400 MB - 1GB patch. I question why this game was released early and required an immediate patch that is so large! Imo it allows companies to rush games out.

Another example is plants vs zombies... They took out the michael jackson zombie with an update. Games shouldn't be able to change a game that drastically... But it does avoid multiple versions like NES's punch out vs Mike Tyson's Punch Out.

So... It's hard for me to say i don't want patches... But there are BIG annoyances that come with them as well.

Thoughts?

BV :hat

I feel the patch to Plants vs Zombies wasn't as much of a problem, as it was only a change to how a single thing looked.

Patches for SC2 come out after a long process of which Blizzard actually takes in consideration of what is going on at a higher level. They don't just release the game and after a month or so change something irrationally due to complaints.

The idea around a patch immediately after launch is sadly becoming more and more of a common practice.

At the risk of echoing already stated ideas, I think patches are necessary for fixing bugs in games. Exploits and bugs SHOULD be patched because it is a developer's responsibility to make sure the product works.

Rebalancing patches are SO annoying. Nothing is worse than having your characters or strategies nerfed by a patch when so much time was dedicated to perfecting a character or strategy.

Grindspine said:

Rebalancing patches are SO annoying. Nothing is worse than having your characters or strategies nerfed by a patch when so much time was dedicated to perfecting a character or strategy.

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But if not patched and a tactic has a clear advantage over everything else then you would only see said tactic. And creates a state of staleness and ultimately makes it less fun to watch/play.

At the same time, I personally believe that most of the time patches shouldn't just nerf the top. I would love for the top tactics to be untouched and everything else be brought up to, if not around, the same level as the top. This would solve the issues that top had the advantage previously while still enabling the people that used said tactics to not be punished in a way. This is what I wish Capcom would have done with AE2012. In AE Yun, Yang and Fei Long were clearly the best characters out of the entire roster. What Capcom did was nerf the crap out of all 3 of them, while they are still mid-tier characters, and thus the people that used to play them no longer do. This rebalance also nerfed rushdown players in general, completely changing how the game plays altogether.

Fr0dus Maximus said:

But if not patched and a tactic has a clear advantage over everything else then you would only see said tactic. And creates a state of staleness and ultimately makes it less fun to watch/play.

At the same time, I personally believe that most of the time patches shouldn't just nerf the top. I would love for the top tactics to be untouched and everything else be brought up to, if not around, the same level as the top. This would solve the issues that top had the advantage previously while still enabling the people that used said tactics to not be punished in a way. This is what I wish Capcom would have done with AE2012. In AE Yun, Yang and Fei Long were clearly the best characters out of the entire roster. What Capcom did was nerf the crap out of all 3 of them, while they are still mid-tier characters, and thus the people that used to play them no longer do. This rebalance also nerfed rushdown players in general, completely changing how the game plays altogether.

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I felt that hit pretty badly when I went online. =/ I didn't even play them much but I noticed my Sagat and my Juri were doing consistently better than my Dudley and I realized Zoning had taken a step up. Or it might just be me.

Zidart said:

I felt that hit pretty badly when I went online. =/ I didn't even play them much but I noticed my Sagat and my Juri were doing consistently better than my Dudley and I realized Zoning had taken a step up. Or it might just be me.

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Well Dudley always had a problem with Zoning. He wants to be in there. And since zoning and being lame is more viable in 2012 it's even harder for him.

Fr0dus Maximus said:

Well Dudley always had a problem with Zoning. He wants to be in there. And since zoning and being lame is more viable in 2012 it's even harder for him.

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Yeah for a while I also wanted to try out Abel since a friend of mine said I was pretty good with him, I saw he had a lot of buffs in 2012 but when I started playing him again I dropped him just as fast because I was just doing terrible. I guess I'll Stick with Juri like I've been doing since SSFIV times

I try to avoid any games where it is possible for my character or strategy to get "nerfed." That seems like cruel and unusual punishment for being successful. That doesn't make any sense to me. Why would you penalize the players who found an excellent formula for victory?

I've never really considered those sorts of things "exploits" in games, just good awareness. The example I'm familiar with right now is BF3. Supposedly the flashlight flare is going to be "nerfed" in an upcoming patch (or it has already), which I think is ridiculous. Within the context of the game world, I've accepted that this is simply how flashlights work, and if I don't like it that's just too bad for me. I have the flashlight option available to me at any time, so I have no reason to complain if I choose to not give myself a tactical advantage.

Plus, I don't think they are overpowered. Players who use them are easier to spot, and they have to give up other useful gun attachments for them. But whatever.

But I digress. Basically, as long as it makes sense within the context of the game (like don't expect to win one on one battles with a tank, which is another thing they're looking at patching...), I don't really have a problem with it at all. Good on the person who figured it out. Either find a way to beat'em, or join'em.

Agreed. They nerfed a lot of things in Starcraft 2 by rebalancing. Changing build times and unit strengths really messed with peoples strategies. And they did it a lot. Mostly just small changes here and there, but still. Stupid.