The Conduit

[Emasher]

why doesnt everything else have that?

 

I don't think depth of field would really look all that good all the time. Most games only use it when zoomed in anyway.

[Zechs Merquise]

New screens look absolutely fabulous!

[Emasher]

Nintendo's Online System Strikes Again:

 

* Proximity voice only applies for Free-for-All games. Team chat is used for Team Reaper and Team Objective game types. You can't, however, talk to members on the opposing team in team games.

* You can only talk to Friends and Friends of Friends with WiiSpeak per Nintendo guidelines. While we would have liked to have been able to open it up to everyone, we're obligated to follow Nintendo's requirements.

* You can mute/unmute anyone, both in the Lobby and in-game.

* There is a ranking and XP system.

* You can add Friends in-game without having to manually enter a Friend Code either through sending a console friend request to a Wii console friend or through our UI if a player is a Friend of a Friend. For everyone else, you'll have to manually enter their Friend Code. Again, we're obligated to follow Nintendo requirements for Friend Codes.

* We won't be supporting DLC or system updates for The Conduit. It?s something that we've looked at very closely and plan to implement moving forward with our future titles.

[Diageo]

Well it's better than I expected it to be

[Kav]

It's better than I expected too considering friend codes are being used... even more hyped for this now!

[Beverage]

Yeah this game looks interesting, i hope i have funz with this onez

[lostmario]

* Proximity voice only applies for Free-for-All games. Team chat is used for Team Reaper and Team Objective game types. You can't, however, talk to members on the opposing team in team games.

 

Excellent, thats the one thing Ive been waiting for confirmation on.

[Noku]

Nintendo's Online System Strikes Again:

 

Your making it sound like they striked out? It's alll good (or edging towards good).

 

Good that finally a dev is aware of the fact that other consoles have something like "game patches," even though it's not yet in place for this one.

[david.dakota]

Good that finally a dev is aware of the fact that other consoles have something like "game patches," even though it's not yet in place for this one.

 

I'd rather a game ship to me fully tested, rather than paying £30 for the dubious privilege of being a beta tester and have to recieve patches to actually make a game work properly.

 

DLC is one thing, but patched games is another.

[Emasher]

The good news is basically all stuff we knew back on the 15th.

[dwarf]

I'd rather a game ship to me fully tested, rather than paying £30 for the dubious privilege of being a beta tester and have to recieve patches to actually make a game work properly.

 

DLC is one thing, but patched games is another.

 

I'm sorry but patches are brilliant. No online game is perfect on release and it can take weeks, even months to iron out issues, which is why there are so many patches on PS3 shooters. It can add other cool features as well as ammendments to the system. I'd rather have patches than not having them. Plus I don't like it when games a delayed.

[Emasher]

Personally, I think that if something in the game is actually broken, they should delay the release. But if they're just tweaking the online modes a bit to make them more fair ect. then patches can be a good thing.

[david.dakota]

I'm sorry but patches are brilliant. No online game is perfect on release and it can take weeks, even months to iron out issues, which is why there are so many patches on PS3 shooters. It can add other cool features as well as ammendments to the system. I'd rather have patches than not having them. Plus I don't like it when games a delayed.

 

Respectfully, i'm on the other side of the fence. I suppose its simply my background, but I think product should be shipped ready and finalised. Fair enough, maybe its unreasonable to expect this 100%, but it seems to become a worrying trend that developers are relying on us to tell them their game is broken- i recall in some instances patches to rectify control issues- Liar and LBP i think. Thats absolutely unacceptable. In my humble opinion.

[Daft]

It depends on the company. Some take liberties with it. When a company does it well (HELLO CRITERION, love you Burnout) then it is fantastic.

 

I'd rather have them than not, though.

[dwarf]

It is unreasonable to expect a game to ship a game that is 100% perfect. If there are flaws with the campaign and menus and stuff then yeah they should finish it off if they know they are there. But some things are untestable. If they get 100 people to playthrough the game to check for flaws it is still possible for a gamebreaking error to be present, and likewise with online multiplayer, glitches are found every so often.

 

Patches are one of the greatest things to happen this generation, but Wii developers seem to ignore it. It would have taken Nintendo seconds to remove the Twilight Princess glitch.

[Noku]

I think I'm on the fence. While I agree that no game should be shipped until fully tested and approved, patches can still finetune the game and provide free DLC (life as it should be).

[Zechs Merquise]

Respectfully, i'm on the other side of the fence. I suppose its simply my background, but I think product should be shipped ready and finalised. Fair enough, maybe its unreasonable to expect this 100%, but it seems to become a worrying trend that developers are relying on us to tell them their game is broken- i recall in some instances patches to rectify control issues- Liar and LBP i think. Thats absolutely unacceptable. In my humble opinion.

 

Spot on. It's for lazy developers who can't finish their product on time. It's also a total piss take that some games have patches ready to download before the game is even released - that's just shipping an unfinished product.

 

I realise there might be the odd bug or glitch that gets through, and in those cases (and they should be rare) a patch is acceptable. But patching things like the controls, that's something that should be 100% right straight out of the box.

 

The other thing that's shite is a lot of the DLC - quite simply it's stuff that could've and should've been included in the main game but now is being offered up 'for sale'. In some instances this DLC is ready and could be shipped on the disk but is cut back to milk more cash at a later date.

[dwarf]

It is unreasonable to expect a game to ship a game that is 100% perfect. If there are flaws with the campaign and menus and stuff then yeah they should finish it off if they know they are there. But some things are untestable. If they get 100 people to playthrough the game to check for flaws it is still possible for a gamebreaking error to be present, and likewise with online multiplayer, glitches are found every so often.

 

Patches are one of the greatest things to happen this generation, but Wii developers seem to ignore it. It would have taken Nintendo seconds to remove the Twilight Princess glitch.

I'm sorry but THIS is spot on.

Patches rarely get launched on release of a game. Without patches the games would all release later than necessary and flaws would never be able to get rid of.

 

DLC is usually done well - Resistance 2 for example, the developers actually asked and looked around to find out what the community wanted and 5 months later they release a good map pack, and patch to add an already full co-op mode an extra difficulty with more levels (for free).

 

Patches are the way forward an in the vast majority of cases are done for genuine reasons.

 

I would understand the 'incomplete game shipping' argument if it wasn't BS.

[Ganepark32]

^ but it's not. Patches are for fixing problems that developers don't fix before going to market for whatever reason. As a result, the game isn't 100% and I have to agree that I'd rather wait the extra couple of weeks/months to get a game in a perfect state instead of one buggy as hell because the developers decided they'd rather make some quick money and then patch up the problems as best they can after release. It's just laziness. I can understand that patches can introduce some new features to games but that then goes on to point out the laziness of developers for making people pay for an incomplete product missing stuff that should have been there from the beginning (a perfect example of this is RE 5 which should have had the co-op whatever mode on the disc from the beginning instead of having to have the game patched). Yes, there will always be things that crop up that may glitch the game but many of these come about as a result of people reversing and messing with the code in the game.

 

By allowing developers to patch games and release the games as incomplete, it's ruining the industry, forceably filling it with unnecessarily buggy games that could be fixed prior to release or have missing modes and content added then (DLC announced after release is fine but announcing it before release shows laziness and greed on behalf of the developers).

Edited April 26, 2009 by Ganepark32

[Daft]

By allowing developers to patch games and release the games as incomplete, it's ruining the industry, forceably filling it with unnecessarily buggy games that could be fixed prior to release or have missing modes and content added then (DLC announced after release is fine but announcing it before release shows laziness and greed on behalf of the developers).

 

I think that's a major overstatement. Most people don't consider bugs when they buy games.

 

Shovel ware, on top of anything, is vastly more decremental to the industry.

 

It's completely reasonable to announce DLC before a game is released. Games take years to make. DLC has to be planned as well. It has to be tested and approved separately.

[Emasher]

Patches themselves are a good thing because the developer has any sort of bug or anything that is found after release. Like the berry glitch in Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire, which was patched by all the newer games that you could connect it to, and it worked fine afterwards. And I'm sure Nintendo was kicking themselves after the Twilight Hack was discovered for not having any sort of patch system in place. It could also be useful if the developer decides they want to add DLC latter on that wasn't originally planned for, or a new mode, ect. Especially with online games, its probably hard to anticipate ways players might abuse it, or it being unbalanced. Or perhaps if the console manufacturer adds some new functionality to the console the developer might want to take advantage of it in an older project, if Mario Kart had a patch system, perhaps it would have been possible for them to enable Wii Speak with it. And when developers abuse it, I wouldn't call it laziness. They are actually fixing the problem. But personally, I'd rather they fix it before releasing it if the game is actually broken.

[david.dakota]

I'm sorry but THIS is spot on.

Patches rarely get launched on release of a game. Without patches the games would all release later than necessary and flaws would never be able to get rid of.

 

DLC is usually done well - Resistance 2 for example, the developers actually asked and looked around to find out what the community wanted and 5 months later they release a good map pack, and patch to add an already full co-op mode an extra difficulty with more levels (for free).

 

Patches are the way forward an in the vast majority of cases are done for genuine reasons.

 

I would understand the 'incomplete game shipping' argument if it wasn't BS.

 

I think we're trying to seperate DLC and patches (although, granted they're the same). DLC is added value, whether it be a new outfit or new maps, its adding something to the experience. What i'm refering to as Patches- those that repair a fault in the game- don't add anything at all- they fix the experience- whether it be controls, textures, whatever- thats something that should be 100% completed by manufacture date. I see no justification for the latter- perhaps, i can give you the online bit, perhaps there's no way of fully testing online components until its being played- but come on, controls? No way. Simply not acceptable. I can't see any reason why you'd be able to justify any other patches.

[Daft]

Lair had controls added but it was a crap game, nothing could have helped it.

 

Killzone 2 got patched for controls, due completely to popular demand. A lot of people, including me, had no issue with the controls in the first place.

 

LBP got a control patch I think. Can't say why because it came out before the game was released.

 

In the end, these patches are absolutely tiny. A couple megabytes in size. I don't see what the deal is.

[Emasher]

Perhaps a Mod should split the Patch discussion into a new thread, as its an interesting topic, but not really all that much related to The Conduit. Plus people who don't read this thread don't have much of a chance to contribute.

[dwarf]

I think we got confused on what the definition of patches can be dakota. Patches aren't just bug fixes but they can add actual features and modes.

 

And Ganepark, have you ever actually experienced a game where you get pissed off because a patch fixes something? After a year of having the PS3 I have not once thought a patch update a negative thing - The games I've had it with have only served as an improvement to what I would have found a complete game anyway - they just serve as enhancements.

 

You could delay Metroid games to add even more scans and enemies so that it releases in 10 years but there would be very little point, patching would be the better option. If it could be done in a short amount of time, then fine, delay it.