Lately i found myself getting bored with games if i check every update, because it's usually mean replaying same quest lines over and over... sooo i start finding inner power to hold on until game is 1.0 ...or, at worst, abandoned. So now i kinda curious what the rest of you prefer - play every update, or wait until something similar to full release?
Complete vs Update
- Thread starter Bars_III
- Start date
- Jun 10, 2017
- 10,293
- 15,152
It totally depend of the game, its story, its game mechanism and of the author abilities to release compatible updates. Oh, and also of the author abilities to not restart his game every six months.
If the story is interesting and the updates compatibles, I'll play every updates, or at least one over two updates.
If the game massively rely on free roaming, I'll try it once, then generally wait 4/5 updates, playing it (if it fit the criteria above) once you don't pass half your time visiting empty rooms.
In all other case, including interesting game restarted more than once, I'll perhaps play it when it will be completed, if I remember that it can be an interesting game.
My main concern with the "update" model is the number of devs doing it purely for money with little to no passion for the actual work. Even from a purely economic standpoint releasing a completed product represents a decent investment of time and effort so there is at least some incentive to offer a reasonable level of quality in order to recoup said investment. Also far fewer opportunities for scam-like behaviour and other questionable business practices. Mind you the same goes for non-porn games, the present-day AAA studios are utter trash for the most part.
Those frustrations aside there is also the question of compatibility anne already mentioned, my memory usually is good enough to continue where the previous update ended IF the game allows me to do so. Having to redo grind or manually skip through large blocks of text (or walking...) is not particularly entertaining, especially since the cumulative repetition grows compared to the amount of content in the new update.
Finally there is the structure in which updates expand the content. Sometimes you get a fully fledged Chapter 1 with all the bells and whistles which just suddenly cuts off, other games basically start off as a giant empty ghost town with nothing to see or do and each update fills in more of the proverbial houses. A branching sandbox is far easier to cherry-pick new content from compared to a mostly linear story.
Honestly the only real benefit I see to continuous updates is the potential for genuine crowdsourcing, basically how Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead and Violated Heroine operate to some extent, plus a plethora of modding communities of course. Even the potential for supporting genuinely passionate devs who need the money to develop their project has a major downside in directly exposing said project to the prude assholes of mainstream finance.
Those frustrations aside there is also the question of compatibility anne already mentioned, my memory usually is good enough to continue where the previous update ended IF the game allows me to do so. Having to redo grind or manually skip through large blocks of text (or walking...) is not particularly entertaining, especially since the cumulative repetition grows compared to the amount of content in the new update.
Finally there is the structure in which updates expand the content. Sometimes you get a fully fledged Chapter 1 with all the bells and whistles which just suddenly cuts off, other games basically start off as a giant empty ghost town with nothing to see or do and each update fills in more of the proverbial houses. A branching sandbox is far easier to cherry-pick new content from compared to a mostly linear story.
Honestly the only real benefit I see to continuous updates is the potential for genuine crowdsourcing, basically how Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead and Violated Heroine operate to some extent, plus a plethora of modding communities of course. Even the potential for supporting genuinely passionate devs who need the money to develop their project has a major downside in directly exposing said project to the prude assholes of mainstream finance.