I’m not bashing them for it… yet.
I would prefer not to bash them at all, but if that single patch we’re probably going to get doesn’t live up to expectations then it’s real hard not to say something snide about their methods.
I actually lost count of how many times we got a copy pasta’d “We’ll be focusing on that in February’s bugs bots and balance update” as our only response when there were hundreds of bugs and issues brought up in threads on this forum for the last many weeks.
It started to feel like they were just waving their hands and saying “this is all a dream, there are no issues, it’ll all go away when you wake up in march”
If we wake up, its march and all the issues are still there, it’s going to be real spicy around here.
For now I’m just highlighting the apparent fact that they are putting a lot of eggs in one basket and that, for a variety of reasons, this is usually a bad idea. I’d much rather be 100% wrong than right in this case, because right means I have to deal with game breaking bugs for another month.
I want them to do well, but they are not setting themselves up for success by sticking to a static patch schedule and jamming everything into one go.
Its not like this is a console game where its going to cost them thousands of dollars for every patch they push because of the various software delivery services being involved, and Sony or Microsoft having to vet stuff.
There’s not a compelling reason that I know of to stick it all in one package at the end of the month, instead of rolling out a group of smaller patches over time intended to target specific issues.
One method would give them much more flexibility when dealing with bugs and more insight into what change caused what problem. When you jam it all into one big omnibus patch, you’re left with a lot of code changes that could have been the culprit and this impedes you when it comes to fixing stuff that didnt work perfectly on the first try.
When it comes to coding, nothing comes out perfect on the first try. The more complicated it is, the more often it comes out far from perfect.
Splitting out the issues into smaller manageable chunks helps keep it simple. And keeping it simple is the only way to deal with spaghetti code unless you want to tear out your hair and not sleep at night.