Uncharted 4: A Thief's End Has a Huge Day One Patch on PS4

Seriously, they didn't have concept art galleries in mind until after the game went gold?? I'll not be downloading, not that I could immediately anyway, without internet access. But I'm sick to death of day one patches...take Ratchet & Clank, that game was stated to be ready last year, but that release was held back to match the film's release. It comes out last week and there's a patch for it! Madness!

And the sky is blue.

Time to play the what shall I delete off my hard drive game.

Not really huge compared to other games which i have had to download 12gb+ when i first got the games. I do not mind day one patches you can always play something else while the patch loads.

I thought delaying it 3 times would prevent this. I guess most of May 10th will be me waiting for my crappy internet to download it -_-

@Quintumply That would be really handy. For me, downloading 5GB takes ages.

Patches are always making the game run more smoothly or adding features so its a good thing. On most games unless its online only you can play the game without the patch. Then just leave the PS4 in standby overnight to download the patch

@Draythedestroyer I play that all the time!

@get2sammyb
Sorry, I just think developers these days are using patches as a crutch. Have a realistic deadline, and get it finished by then, and don't uses customers as bug testers. Plus with Ratchet and Clank they had ample time to include any fixes before the game went gold since they'd been sitting on it since last year.

Anyone who doesn't understand day one patches has clearly never written any kind of script or program. You meet a deadline with a working version, then you look at your code and go, "Ooo, could do that", and then "That would make it much more efficient". Within 2 days, you're sending out an updated version. It's just how these things work.

@Draythedestroyer lol right

@kyleforrester87 I agree it's a plus, but it's the only plus. It only benefits people who plan on getting it as it releases, then they can't even play it immediately as they have to wait for the patch to download. They take up additional space on an already small harddrive, and people who buy the game post launch don't benefit at all. It helps get the game out slightly quicker, but I think it's bad for players in the long run.

Post launch will still have to download patch if you purchase the hard copy. Anyway, if they fix it, they will come! Patch away!
The Division is the buggiest game I've ever played and they have yet to address most of them... it's playable, but I still get complete game crashes.

@feral1975 @ThroughTheIris56 @kyleforrester87

We all have differing opinions on the patching subject, I'm unsure where I stand. We have the facility these days so yeah lets use them, but what will the games run like if the patches ever stop being uploaded or taken off the Internet? When all said and done Im not too bothered, but I have a decent internet connection. I would like games to just play though, that would be nice.

@professorhat I dont think that's the quarrel of the against patches side of the argument. What they are saying is - can we just have a finished code / program / game / experience. The code can be changed up until it goes gold, then that's it. That's the finished article. Of course you can compress code and rework better efficiencies into the programming, but there is always an end point - why cant that be prior to the disc being printed?

@themcnoisy let me ask you a question? Do you write code as a job or even as a hobby? If no, then I'm afraid you just have to accept that that isn't how the vast majority of developers work. Sorry, it's that simple. And if they therefore can make the code better in the ensuing weeks after the disc has gone gold, why the hell not release that optimised code / extra features as a day one patch?

If you do write code and you're able to do it as you say, then you're a very rare beast indeed sir. Take pride that project managers the world over love you 😊

@professorhat Not as a job, or even as a hobby anymore. The program it yourself Amstrad codes from the 80s made me realise how terrible I am at it. Although I've played around with Ruby, Python and various compilers - I dont get much of a result and give up pretty quickly.

I knew Mike Singleton who was big on code optimisation. When I mean big, I mean ocd levels of making the shortest code possible, I had a ton of deep conversations on the subject and a lot of the stuff we chatted about was making the system do as little work as possible. Its a pity I'm a gamer and he was the game maker and if he was around today would make a better fist of having games completed than most in this day and age.

To summarize I think there is a need for patching, especially when unforseen issues arise. However patches are being misused to add in stuff that should already have been completed prior to disc pressing - obviously a bigger issue for people on bare bones internet than for myself.

Awful.

I trust ND that their initial release is solid and these are just tweaks. I think that is great, making sure we get a better version than was shipped.

What isn't acceptable, in my book, is issuing a release knowing it is not solid and has debilitating bugs or major functions missing and then issuing several patches days/weeks/months after it releases. I ship code and a day one launch with serious bugs shouldn't happen.

@themcnoisy there's two options with your proposal:

1. At the point of producing the gold code, forbid the development and optimisation of it from that point on. The product is good enough, so that's it. In the past, that was the only option, but given that the guys are still being paid and there is a perfect delivery system for patches now, I'd argue why? Does it hurt to allow development to continue beyond the gold date, and ship it to consumers through a patch? A line in the sand has to be drawn for shipping code to be pressed on a bluray, but that doesn't mean any more that development should stop on that date, so why not carry on?
2. Move the shipping date until no more meaningful development can be done. End result, people get pissed off due to constant delays, and I'm sure there are financial implications for constant delaying of the manufacturing of the physical discs. Not a good option.

Thing is, games now are upward of 20GB of code (and media obviously). That's huge!! When games could run in 512k (or even 64k!) of Ram, there wasn't so much of an excuse, but now, they're so complicated, I honestly think it's not unreasonable for developers to rely on patching to fix things and add extra features they just couldn't get done in time for release, so long as they're not releasing a buggy unworkable POS and then fixing it afterwards. That is taking the pee, and I think we'll all agree on that!