Do it like I usually do (WGEE was an exception to this): buy games about a year after the release for about 10 bucks a piece. By that time they are usually patched out to pretty polished state and have a lot of nice mods. At the same time you are also not forced to use top-notch hardware and can safe a lot of money on that end, too.

Sorry dude but the industry has always been like this, except that in the begining they didn't even bothered to release patches (probably because of the lack of apropriate medium) and that there wasn't any actual open/closed "beta test".
If you want some quality, the dev need feedbacks, that's the only way and it's pretty good that game devs now understand this and use beta to polish their game during its life cycle.

Think about it, how many games were whithout bug or imbalance, day one ? The right answer is probably Pong or Tetris. Even on console ( some relatively closed systems), there aren't any.

And why should you get paid to access exclusive contents, whithout any constraint beside being able to give feedbacks ? You aren't even obliged to do it and still you want to be paid to entertain yourself freely ?

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I've grown resentful of the new breed of 'privileged' PC gamers who demand perfection from day one and when it doesn't happen, start post such worthless trollop on forums :p PC as a platform is way more complex than consoles so if you want to be a PC gamer, deal with the fact that bugs happen and it can often take some time for games to be polished through the patching process. Some of the most successful games of all time (Starcraft, WOW etc) took a long time to fix/polish/balance but are better for it. I agree beta testing needs to happen to weed out the obvious bugs but you can't get everything sorted before release. And IMO this game was relatively bug free at release compared to some of the trash that's been released in recent years from other devs.

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No, the problem is that people accept sub par production values and that they accept that they are going to pay to be beta testers. There was a time, perhaps before you were born, that video games were released pretty much bug free. In the days of cartridge based console games, releasing a game with crippling day zero bugs was unheard of due to the impossibility of patching the game. I just want devs to go back to that mentality, pay "play testers" (something that i'm not sure even exists anymore), and release games that work as advertised.

As for me being a new pc gamer..... Umm no. Been playing video games on PC since the Vic 20 and Tandy TRS-80. And due to the lack of ability to patch games back before the internet, games for PC were also released for the majority of the time mostly bug free. I am sick of "new" pc gamers that don't know thier history, and have accepted the corporate profit maximizing line that "games can't be released without bugs". They can, the fact that SOTS2 was released a year or two before it was ready is testament to your philosophy.

lol, TRS-80...dear or dear. Somehow I imagine developing games today is far more complex than 'in your day', so the chances of more bugs being present is probably a lot higher. And these days we as consumers have more than enough tools at our disposal to determine, before we make a purchase, whether a game is bug laden or not. Read some reviews/forums etc and if its clear the product is not up to your standards, don't purchase. Pretty simple. Lack of sales will hurt game devs more than people cribbing on forums about the old days.

And I'm hardly a 'new PC' gamer (15 years PC gaming). Not as old as you, mind you I don't accept product either, but the difference Is I won't just cry on the forum about how it used to be, I simply don't purchase it when its below par.

Following the delightful edit of the admin, that should have read: I don't accept sub par product either'.

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Being an apologist for the game corps isn't going to make anything better. And that is exclusively my point. I do read reviews, and scan forums for dissatisfied customers. They still insist on making us beta testers.





Yeah, so which is it? Go back under your bridge troll.

Sorry, there's a conflict in what I wrote there or something?

First quote = sick of listening to people like you whining about how it should be. If it falls below you standards, don't buy it. Saves you the annoyance and us from listening to your rants.

Second quote = Again, if you think the product sucks, don't buy it as for form of protest. Don't keep harping on about how it used to be.

Clear enough for you? Old people...

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I also go back as far as jeraldjunkmail and do remember when games shipped much more stable, mainly for the reasons he stated. But once modems became common in the late 80's and you could patch from BBSs, things changed. Small at first but Pandora's box was opened.

But as it's been about 15 years of the "public test group", I learned long ago to just accept the fact that there will be patches and initial launches will never be perfect. Things change and I'd say that in this example, it's neither better or worse...just different.

Some really need to drop their nostagia glasses.

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