I never really had a problem with day one patches. It was just something that I expected when I installed a new game and I never really minded as long as it made the game run better and hopefully problem free. What I do have a problem with though is this new introduction of these HUGE day one patches. You know the ones that I’m talking about, they’re the ones that take up just way to much memory and take way to long to download. At first it just seemed like a rare occurrence, but now these patches just seem to be getting larger and larger and a little to frequent for me.
The first time I ever really noticed a huge patch that needed to be downloaded when I got a game on release was Borderlands: The Handsome Collection. I install the game into my system and of course there’s a patch. Not a problem right? Wrong. The patch was 8.3GB. 8.3GB! Do you know how much space that takes up on a system that is already way over crowded. A lot, so much that it left me with only a few GB left on my system as a whole. Even though I was annoyed at this I was able to understand why this patch was so huge. A new DLC for The Pre-Sequel, Claptastic Voyage, had to be downloaded. My annoyance quickly faded while I waited patiently, a little over 2 hours, for this patch to download.
After my experience with Borderlands: The Handsome Collection, I once more didn’t have a problem with any day one patches. Nothing seemed overly large or unreasonable until the time came to install The Elder Scrolls Online day one patch. After deleting a bunch of games from my system just to fit the required install size, what pops up? A day one patch. Figuring that it couldn’t be that bad, I check out my download queue to see just how long it’s going to take since I was eager to play and to my surprise, the patch is 15GB. Almost double the Borderlands: The Handsome Collection day one patch. What the hell! After waiting just about 4 hours for this patch to download, I didn’t even want to start the game.
When does it come to the point where day one patches are just too big and in a way ruin the initial game playing experience? I would have to say that anything over 5GB, I’m being really lenient here, is just way to big and just uncalled for. Patches are supposed to fix stability issues, framerate issues, and other technical problems and if a day one patch is over 5GB it makes me wonder what is really going on with the game that I’m so eager to play. Are there going to be a lot of problems? Will the game constantly crash? What’s wrong with the game that it requires that big of a fix on release day.
Huge day one patches also make me think that a game just wasn’t ready for release and should have probably been delayed just a little longer in order to make things perfect. In a time where everything is fixed after release with a patch, when is enough enough? It’s my hope that The Elder Scrolls Online isn’t setting any kind of precedent for other games, don’t even get me started on the latest patch that was also over 15GB, because it sets a bad example. Huge patches that gamers just accept tell other developers that they can be lazy and slack off with fixing problems before a game is released because hey if there’s a problem they could always release a 15+GB patch day one.
1 Broke Gamer Girl 