My view on the Patch vs. Expansion issue

[Darkrenown]

YES absolutely if they release a game that doesnt work as it should then they MUST fix it.

That's not true, they don't have to fix it. You buy what's in the box, if you don't like it you can return it. which is what you did, so I'm not sure why you're upset about it?

Now you could argue they should fix it, but I'd say they already improved it a lot with patches. I won't say 1.4 is perfect, but it's totally playable.

And for the record, there were no free addons for ETW that I know of, the units packs and Warpath you had to pay for, and NTW was a standalone expansion, that base game was abandoned at that point leaving some terrible bugs. You can't play a GC with NTW.

 

[Darkrenown]

That is not entirelly correct, based on the country you live in. And im not talking about adding Gamefeatures, but about fixing the game into a state it was advertised.

§434 BGB (Civil law) would be the case for germany.

Does that apply to software? I only took a quck look at an english translation, but I noticed:
http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_bgb/englisch_bgb.html#BGBengl_000P90

Only corporeal objects are things as defined by law.

If it did, then surely no one would ever release software in Germany, because at any point you could be locked into a never-ending cycle of patching it for free until everyone who'd bought it was 100% satisfied with it.

 

[The Witch-King]

There does seem to be bigger problems with the Hearts of Iron series than with other Paradox games, in terms of polish, bugs, and just failure to check that things work before releasing them. Hearts of Iron 2 had some very serious problems too, if I recall correctly, specifically with some important event files and also air AI (the latter more of a design failure than an actual bug).

And I don't see why it should be so controversial for a customer to complain if she feels that she's being sold a broken product and then having to pay for getting it fixed.

In my opinion, SF offers very little in the way of expansion material, most of the stuff is just fixes. Yes, some nice minor features have been added. But compare with the EU3 expansions, which all offer new gameplay and dimensions to the game.

Now I HAVE pre-ordered the expansion. But I do feel that I am paying money mostly for a patch with fixes, and worse, that I previously paid double that money for owning an in-development beta version of a game.

For me Paradox is a bit like a really bitchy girlfriend, you hate her but you still love her. You are willing to forgive her a lot of things, but in the end you feel that one day you will get tired of it all and say goodbye.

I am a long-time fan of Paradox games and the Hearts of Iron series, but since several years I have stopped playing their games on release - I buy it on release just to have a look, and then I wait the one year required to fix the AI and sort out other problems present in the release version. I don't want to ruin my experience by playing a bad "version" of the game. With HoI3 however, this went to new heights, I was frankly a bit shocked - the game was really not finished on release. It's improved with patches, and now I have been playing, but I'm still not really hooked in, still waiting for problems to be fixed.

But I have faith in you, my love. I am still hoping things will get better. Because despite the frustrations, you still often manage to make me happy in the end. But please, dear, please - FINISH BETA TESTING BEFORE RELEASE!

 

[Darkrenown]

Well those two statements were from pages where you can buy the game.

You know various retailers write their own sales pages, right? Assuming you bought it from, say, Amazon, and Amazon wrote "100% realistic WWII game!" and you found it wasn't 100% realistic your "claim" would be against Amazon and not Paradox. Although as I said in my last reply to you, I know think the law you quoted applies to software anyway.

 

[King]

Good Lord people. Here is an interesting story for you. I was sitting alone in the office on the Friday afternoon after HoI3 went gold. Playing HoI3, and I was actually quite enjoying playing HoI3, I though ok this isn't 100% perfect but it is quite fun. Now here is an interesting point, I thought the game was quite fast. However, this is because I had being playing debug builds upto then so when you fire up a release version it goes about quite a few times faster.

 

[King]

*must* *repress* *sarcastic* *comment* *gland*

There is no need for sarcastic comments. That afternoon I was free to leave the office, we had worked long hours on HoI3, but I stuck around and played the game because I enjoyed it.

 

[King]

Please do not hijack my thread with all this release jabbering!

This is our forum so I can pretty much post what I like.

 

[King]

Well, sometimes you cant see the forest, because of all the trees, as we say here, i guess.

But i am with those, who are for a post-final patch for vanilla, back-engineered from SF. If somehow the ressources could be mobilized that is. If at all possible, 1.5 should happen some day - it´d consider it a matter of honor (and an issue of costumer service) kind of.

I don't think you understand. Enjoyment is a personal thing, what I enjoy you may not. The fact is I did enjoy 1.0 HoI3. It was not perfect, but it wasn't unfun either.

There will be no 1.05, let me make it clear on that front.

 

[King]

Wouldn't it be nice if I could first play the original game in a "finished" state and then decide if I want an expansion or not?

1.04 is the final patch this is the finished state, now you can decide if you want an expansion or not.

 

[King]

A sensitive man you are ;o

No I am giving time on my day off to answer a few questions. I certainly do not have to and will not accept insults from the likes of you.

 

[King]

If you really took that as an insult and not an amusing jab then you are way too sensitive man.

but I'm interested in knowing what the likes of me are?

People who keep on flogging dead horses. We've been straight up and honest with you over what we are doing. You seem to think that for a few threads more you can get us to change our minds, but we aren't. There will be no 1.05 patch for HoI3. If I am going to spend time answering questions, why don't we all start asking different ones.

 

[King]

Then a different question ... I just wondered it has been stated you budget for 3 patches on games. How does that differ in expansions?

Because the wages for those people that patch the game need to be paid for from the main sales of the game. Expansion wages can be paid from projected future sales of the expansion pack. If no one had bought HoI3 then there would of been no Semper Fi, because no one would buy it.

 

[King]

Did I misundesrtand the question or did you? He asked if you budgeted more, less, or the same number of patches for Semper Fi as for the original?

I am not sure. It is not just the number of patches but the time we spent on patching. We prefer to go for bigger patches, because creating an installer and testing and then finding a problem and creating another eats into the time we could be spending doing stuff to improve the game. Still we could create a small number of big patches or a large number of small patches. HoI3's patching time was closer to the development budget for HoI.