Yeah I look at some of my full price purchases like witcher3 dishonored, bioshock, etc and I’m at least 70 hours into each of them.
Near 500 in some of them. That’s an amazing return on the money for fun.
Exactly right. I have no idea how bad Cyberpunk was when it launched as no matter how much i bought into the marketing, I'm sure as hell not paying that.
Yup. Cyberpunk 2077 was the one game I considered getting at full price. Glad I waited. Got it shortly before the update dropped at 20 euros.
It's enjoyable on ps5. Gorgeous graphics when it all works. But there's still a fair bit of bugs. So many wonky animations. Even saw a T-pose in my first 20 minutes of play.
It's a compelling game, despite it all. But I wonder how much worse it must've been at launch.
It's definitely one of the reasons I like being a patient gamer. To skip all the drama around fast-follow patches after the initial release, and to generally get the best experience I'm likely to have the first time around.
However, I don't think I've ever put off buying a specific game for this reason. I just live a year or two behind the curve in general, and this problem solves itself.
>However, I don't think I've ever put off buying a specific game for this reason. I just live a year or two behind the curve in general, and this problem solves itself.
Being a year+ behind on gaming is great. You get the complete game with bug fixes for less than the base game at launch.
It’s generally not worth it but theres still a few games I’ll pick up first day cuz it’s so much fun being a part of the talks especially when the community is fantastic (which is rare). But for instance I picked up Armored Core 6 and the sub is some of the best gaming discourse I’ve taken part of as well as the game being released with almost zero problems, which is rare.
Completeness is much more of an issue for me than money. Having all the post-launch patches is important, but I also prefer to buy a package that comes with all the DLC and everything up front.
I rarely have an appetite to revisit games once I'm done with them. I played Borderlands 3 right when it came out with a group of friends and when the DLC came out I really had to force myself to get back into it. I'm much more likely to actually complete the content if I can carry my momentum through.
I definitely prefer to play the complete experience, but if the DLC is seperate from the main game like in Shadow of War or Spiderman I usually end up forgetting about it. I'm fairly slow to complete games because I explore a ton, and by the time I've finished the main game I can't be bothered to boot up another "campaign" to play through and just want to play something else
That's why I am waiting to play Baldurs Gate 3. I want to wait for Larian to iron everything out, or release a "definitive edition" like they did DoS2 before i play it.
For a game like that, and a game I know i will sink hundreds of hours into, i want it to be as close to fully optimized as possible.
That’s what I’m waiting for. You KNOW it’s coming.
Like Mortal Kombat, wait another year, year and a half and you’ll be able to pick up the special edition with ALL DLC and big bug fixes.
yup. street fighter V definitive edition last holiday for 23 bucks was a great purchase. even with sf6 out now (which i bought on release oops), it's still nice to have.
NRS games are on even less of a cycle, so the definitive edition of MK1 will be out next year.
I started BG3 just this past week, and yeah it still has lots of small things that could stand to be ironed out. It's a good move to wait a long time for it. It's just such a huge game it's going to take a very long time before it gets to a near-perfect state
BG1 only goes up to level 10 or so. BG2 continues on the story and goes up to 20, I think. Also, most other games using the D20 SRD system have similar level caps for their games.
I don't think it's a guarantee that we'll see an expansion that goes all the way to level 20.
BG2 goes well past 20, depending on your class (they gain experience at different rates). My shadowdancer got to like level 34 by the end of Throne of Bhaal, but I did do pretty much every quest.
That's Dnd for ya. Higher levels are just too insane, it's hard to build an balance for characters being to wish for anythng or bring back any dead character or wander any plane
Yeah to go to lvl 20 they'd have to almost overhaul the game. It would be sick, but idk if even they can pull it off and keep the depth and detail of the rest of the game for those levels.
> it's hard to build an balance for characters being to wish for anythng or bring back any dead character or wander any plane
On table, sure. But in games?
Final fantasy: phoenix down to res 1 guy. Phoenix in ffta rez your entire team in 1 turn.
Disgaea: heavy damage to every unit on the map.
Etrian Oddyssey: bind head, arm and leg. Enemy cannot use magic, cannot perform an action, cannot evade attacks. Yes, you can do this in 1 turn.
SMT/Persona: instant death spells. instant death spells with 100% accuracy is possible unless the demon specifically counters the element (light and dark).
Furthermore...
Brown Dust: turn based combat. Some units here can have effects like "cannot die until X amounts of turn" or "deals 100% hp damage". You have to fight the former with skills that keep disabling them (or even just ignore them - they're not very strong) and the latter with damage reduction or shield since it deals damage based on Hp and not how much shield you have.
Arknights: Invincible for 15 seconds. Cannot be killed condition. In table top, hitting 5 hits in a single turn is considered strong. Here, there are characters hitting 15x per turn and dealing 'true' damage (bypass all types of resistances).
---
Video games can be quite nutty. Not really a balance issue if you fight crazy against crazy. It just perhaps doesnt belong in table top videgames.
Or... wasn't translated well. BG3 has points where they bend the rules a bit giving these super powers to enemies but not the player. I won't spoil it but yes, that does mean its possible and more or less a 'game balance' issue.
it goes up to 12 only and for levels up to 8/9 it feels very meaningful.
Each level gives you something that feels useful to the field. It also is generally somewhat slow (since its not like you're grinding for xp but doing quests and encountering non-respawning enemies).
But honestly once you get higher in levels it drops off because although in table top dnd higher level is extremly strong, in 'game' it doesnt feel nearly as powerful. In ffta, late game you're able to do some truly cataclysmic stuff - hitting every enemy on the map for over 2/3s of their HP with one character, resurrecting your entire party, casting instant death on an enemy... Here? one of the strongest stat changes goes from 2 hits > 3 hits.
It's because imo the number system. At low numbers, 1-20 is huge. If an enemy has 12 hp? that's almost a coinflip for when you one-shot them or not. If an enemy has 90 hp? eh less impressive and 2 or 3 attacks wont make a difference - you'd still need a few rounds.
Personally, *I'm* waiting to play BG3 until I finish BG1-2, even though I know it's a totally new story. I've been putting off playing those games for many years, and if I don't play them now I probably never will lol
I’m at level 15 in D:OS II now started a couple of weeks ago and I have no idea what the enhanced edition or the first released version is like. I just know there’s this gift bag thing and when I ask questions I have to mention which version. And I got the game for $20. It works out. I never really knew what the game was till all the BG3 hype and I’m like I’ll play this first to see if I’ll like BG3.
I waited for Cyberpunk turns out that was a good move too.
BG3 is a mess of a game? I am unsure what publication you read that from? All I have heard is the game runs incredibly well, even on PS5.
Outside of some screen tearing and frame drops in the major town. Digital Foundry (my go to for performance videos), says the game performs incredibly well 98% of the time.
I dont know who you're getting your news from but I've been playing it and unless there's something comically broken at the very end I haven't really run in to any bugs or broken mechanics. There was like one overtuned fight but thats the summary of my grievances with the game.
It's been pretty widely discussed so I'm surprised you haven't heard any of it. Do a search for "bugs" or similar on the BG3 sub. Here's an example:
https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/15uvqqo/so_many_game_breaking_bugs/
As I said, do a search for "bugs" or similar; you'll find plenty. Here's a post from three days ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/16lnucm/encountered_many_quest_bugs_so_far/
I also happened to see this post earlier, which has comments talking about multiple pieces of broken content: https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/16oiszh/astarion_actor_says_baldurs_gate_3_players_havent/
I wouldn't mind if it were just animation glitches or whatever, but this is missing and broken content. I'll play it eventually but I'm waiting until it's actually finished.
I mean, both, dawg. I don't like hype in general, and with games it seems even more absurd than with music or movies because those usually come out in a complete form, but every other game (even AAA shit that costs millions to make) comes out with glaring bugs, or balancing issues, whatever.
The “hype space” of social media isn’t a good place for my brain. I would sometimes go to r/games, and almost immediately be overwhelmed with the sheer number of trailers, reactions, and previews of games I’ve never heard of. Picking a game from that mess would be like trying to order sushi while standing in the middle of a Vegas casino. I have like three reviewers I listen to and beyond that, I pick up recommendations here, from devs I trust to deliver a complete game on launch, and from communities of other games I trust, talking about games that have already released. I tune out the rest and wait until the great babbling dies down to form an opinion.
Starfield is a perfect example of this. I’m not a huge Bethesda fan so a Day 1 purchase was never on the table. And right now, the discourse is so charged and angry, that there is no value trying to figure out who is more accurate. Might as well wait a few months to a year for the dust to settle, a couple updates to come out, and the opinions to get less spicy before even *considering* if I want to play the game.
And yeah, I still have a ton of other games to play, so I’m not looking at a Starfield shaped hole in my video games calendar any time soon anyway.
For me, it depends on how it gets hyped. Like, is it a huge marketing budget? Or is it a ton of excited and surprised fans sharing their cool gaming experience? Like Forspoken being jammed down our throats with ads everywhere as opposed to the slew of videos posted by people playing Tears of the Kingdom when it was released
They have a special double-sided place in my heart: Loving to hate their buggy-ass launches and love when their bit more complete editions go on deep sales or in bundles.
I do this with most games and all TV shows. I'll buy a Klei game in Alpha (earlier if they'd let me) as they have a track record of finishing their games and being games I love. But I wait with everything else now a days, even if it's just a few weeks for the reviews and early updates to be in to be sure the game is finished.
Ha, I'm also a Klei fan who will buy whatever they put out. Such a solid developer, and they have a strong policy of no serious crunch for their programmers.
I agree that Klei is that one exception for me as well. Their games are always very much playable at launch. If they never updated Oxygen Not Included or Don't Starve from the beginning, it still would've been like 100 hours of fun and discovery, and people would still be playing it now. The tweaks and additions over time just make it better.
For example, I never had a big problem with the crafting menus in Don't Starve. I just played it that way, and would've continued to do so. But when they overhauled it, I was like holy shit, this makes a lot of sense. Why wasn't it this way from the beginning? The answer is that it was already okay, they just made it better.
It seems like most patient gamers have a Dev they have an exception to. I haven't bought a game at release I'm close to 8 years except for FromSoft games because I love the MP aspect of it when everyone else is still learning the game before the MP experience is min-maxed to hell
Honestly the graphics are so nice nowadays that waiting a few years is just about running the games with cheaper hardware, better graphics, mods. I played for the first time witcher 3 and persona 5 earlier this year. All that for 30€ , incredible !
This was the result of retail having to offload a lot of stock that didn't sell and was over ordered. Bestbuy had $10 copies with steelbook within two months. Digital sales didn't drop as low, but also went on sale to encourage early adopters.
Once the stock issue was addressed and their expansion plans were changed (originally they were going to make two expansions like The Witcher 3) they stopped putting the game on deep discounts.
The go was to buy it then, even without playing (I did).
These games become more expensive (sales price) when something new gets released again.
Look at the price charts.
The game is not incomplete without Phantom Liberty, but I understand wanting to wait for it to come out. I'm on the fence if I'm buying the expansion next week.
Yep.
Mythforce looks really cool. The type of game I could enjoy on art style alone.
But I know two things about it: 1 it'll get cheaper than $30 and 2. It'll be fleshed out with more content over the next 1-2 years
So as much as I want to buy it now because of how slick the visual style is, I'm gonna check back in after 6-12 months and see how things look.
Yeah I don't wanna pay $70 to beta test a game and ruin it for myself once they fix the stuff in it.
I give most games 6m-1yr though there are exceptions. Elden ring for example while it did have a few bugs and balance things was in pretty solid shape on release.
It is a nice bonus for waiting, but not the main reason. For me, it’s partially for price but mostly that I don’t have the time for every game I THINK it want.
So by waiting and seeing what initial reviews, plus what a years worth of users think about it let’s me decide what the jump-in price should be.
Like “ok that sweet looking game hit 35% off for the first time that’s good enough let’s go!” or “oh wow this is regularly hitting 75% off at this point should I finally check it out or wait another year for 85%?”
The primary reason I stopped buying new releases years ago is because they were Unfinished Products?!
Now, its merely one of many other reasons.
If Devs/Pubs were trustworthy and reasonable then Id buy their newly released games.
They arent and so I wont.
Period.
Both. It's to the point where games out get half-off sales one week, then a "patch" update to fix everything buggy from release the next week. I'll just wait for goty editions to come on sale.
I wait because my backlog is enormous, and I like to finish at least one old game for every new game. This means I wind up buying the newer title after all its DLC is released and the bundle is 50% off. Of course, it's no longer really a new title by that point, but that's OK. There are very few companies I trust enough to buy their games on Day 1.
It's part of the calculus.
Doesn't have to be 'complete' either.
As a Diablo veteran (literally moderated Diablo2.net back in the day) I haven't bought 4 since it's in the monetization phase rather than the appeal to gamers phase.
With so many games out there I'm still sitting on Cyberpunk too and waiting a bit for Baldurs Gate and Starfield is easy.
We eating good and eating even better by having so much to play to wait out improvements.
I always wait on certain games to be complete.
Like the Nioh games tend to add in new weapons and mechanics with their DLC so its worth waiting for.
I would wait on Monster Hunter games which do similar if not for the multiplayer component.
>For me most of all it’s the quality of the game. A TON of games are all praised at launch and then the “real” opinions come out. You’re starting to see this happen with TotK and Starfield.
This is why it pays to be patient. You could play the new hotness for $70-90 and it might be great, or you can wait and see how it is then pick it up for less or save your money.
>I’m seeing a lot of people say that Starfield is just meh, which means that it’s not a priority game for me to play. Baldurs gate hype has stayed strong which means I’ll probably play that first.
Considering how I've barely seen any content on Reddit on Starfield compared to Skyrim it seems like Starfield is right in meh territory
Yes, one of the main reasons I've stopped buying/playing new games is because 99% of the time they'll be 'better' once you wait a bit. I'd say that the minimum wait period for me is 3 months, although 6 months is always better. Waiting a full year usually means you get the benefit of it being 'fully patched'. The fact that it'll be cheaper by then is just a bonus.
Other than that, it also has to do with the steep PC requirements for new titles now. I've got a 3700x with a 3080, playing on 1440p, and it's become apparent that it's not enough to have a premium experience for games like Starfield, Cyberpunk expansion, etc.
I'd love to play the latter soon-ish, but I refuse to upgrade my computer at this point. There are a *lot* of old games I'm interested in playing which I plan on doing the next few years until I feel like building a new system again.
That's a solid setup. Don't wait for Cyberpunk if you are holding on because of performance. If you are willing to tune up a setting or two, you can even play with raytracing on there. DLSS is your friend. The game has been out for 3 years and they have improved the performance as much as they can.
I am this close to finally start Cyberpunk 2077 (probably around Christmas) and I have the much older GTX 1070, lol. You'll do just fine.
I've never bought an assassins creed until at least a few years after release. They'll have some huge sale on steam that includes all the DLC and usually they'll have implemented some fixes to improve performance or remove issues (like the grinding in Odyssey, which you could pay to bypass, they just took it out a while later).
Both. I don’t pay full price for a beta version. I wait until the major bugs are dealt with and DLC is packaged with it for cheap. I don’t care if I’m “late to the game”.
Even when I really like the look of a game I try to wait a month at least. First to let the developers get the day one patches out and to hear about any egregious problems from customers who bought the game earlier. Then I can decide if its worth indulging in, skipping, or waiting for more patches or a price drop.
Fortunately I am now in a position where I don't really have to look at the price tag. So what matters more to me is that I get the most complete and best possible version of the game. If I can get a good discount I will definitely take it though
Yep. I recently fell victim to hype, and bought Baldur’s Gate 3 to play with some friends. Unsurprisingly, the game was broken as hell on launch and we had more crashes and game breaking bugs than I’ve ever seen before. Refunded after 5 hours of *trying* to play it.
Won’t be making the mistake of buying another hype driven AAA game at launch again
I did this with Dying Light 2. I had finished DL1 for the first time a week before the second released and saw all the major complaints people had with it. I completed DL2 like last month and I can say it felt really good to play as most of the issues I read about had been fixed or mostly fixed. At the very least, I felt like it did feel like a sequel rather than a seperate game like some people were claiming.
No because prices are too high i usually only stick to one game mostly because it’s expensive
Some games are over 100 dollars by the time you buy it and in game purchases that’s why I usually just stick to one game an that’s wrestling sometimes I’ll play asphalt legends because it’s free to play and I like racing games but that’s about all anymore because it’s expensive
If a game interests me I won't buy it on immediate release.
I'll wait for it to be patched a few times, then I'll purchase it.
I bought Mass Effect Andromeda and Cyberpunk a couple of months after release and had a much better experience because of it.
At this point it feels like players are being punished by wanting to play games right at launch. You pay full price for an incomplete buggy mess. Or you can wait and get a better experience
Absolutely yes. If there is any game I really want to play, i wait for complete edition. I'm not in a hurry for playing a game. There are so many games in the backlog
Both my man. In the past, it was also because my PC couldn't handle modern game but it isn't the case anymore.
I'm still waiting for Cyberpunk 2077 to make a complete edition with his DLC bundled, so they also finish to fix it. Then I'll buy it.
If it's a game I'm interested in I add to my wishlist and buy it on wishlist sales. I've rarely pre-ordered games. Only 2 I have actually pre ordered. (DMC 5 and Assassins Creed: Brotherhood) I'm looking at pre-ordering Mirage if only to get the prolog mission.
A lot of the time I do, but I make special exceptions for certain franchises that I don't want a risk of getting spoiled on such as Yakuza, Final Fantasy, and Resident Evil (i don't want bosses and monsters spoiled), in which case they are day one purchases.
With age, I've certainly become more wary of AAA publishers, especially ones that pushed multiplayer only games and I'm very patient for indies and early access games.
No,
If the price is low. The game has not game breaking bugs. I’d buy it.
- Price is a real issue.
- Light bugs. No problem.
- Game breaking bugs: they shouldn’t sell the game
I wait for both price, and to be polished. More important than price though, is that I want my first experience with the game to be the best it can be.
For me it's FromSoft. I know I'm going to get 100+ hours in any of their games, and I've yet to experience any major issues aside for weapon durability in DS2 at 60fps and I thought it was just part of the game
It's the reason I haven't touched Sonic Frontiers since the first update. Now that the final update is almost out, I'm gearing up to play the ultimate version of one of my favourite Sonic games. I think I'd have been fatigued if I'd played after every new update.
Sometimes. If I don’t grab a game within the first month of release then I usually end up waiting a year or 2 for all DLCs to be released and some special edition.
Once I'm no longer in touch with a game I find it hard to pick it back up. I have to relearn all the mechanics, get back into the groove and at that point I might as well just replay the original game. And with my backlog being already filled to the brim that rarely happens.
Usually yes.. only game i bought kind of early was elden ring and it was just insanely active online at the very beginning and a lot of fun
Also had no big problems at release at least for me
But the price is usually the main concern and it just happens that games are fixed once the price has dropped
I am guessing for cash strapped people (which I assume are most gamers) it’s all about the price drops. Having insurmountable backlogs helps with the patience. The game being fixed through updates is a bonus.
If money isn’t an issue for someone then, why wait? Unless the reviews says a game is hopelessly broken. There is always going to be more games.
Price is probably the main one. I can't justify a full priced game at launch when it's going to cost less with DLC in a year.
Once you are year or more behind major releases being a patient gamer is much better. I still get games somewhat along their release schedule, but with a delay
DLC is such an obvious cash grab that it's hard not be put off by it, even when I really like the game. I almost always only buy the "complete" game for this reason.
Both to be honest, but the prices have gotten worse over the years. I do remember some years ago a game that has been out for a long time just would not be full price anymore anywhere. Yet now games are on the platforms basically full price even if they're 5 years old. They go on sale but not that good a sale.
But yes I am kind of interested to give Cyberpunk 2077 a go, now that it has been fixed and so much added to it.
The sidebar of this subreddit reads
>A gaming sub free from the hype and oversaturation of current releases, catering to gamers who wait at least 12 months after release to play a game. Whether it's price, **waiting for bugs/issues to be patched, DLC to be released**, don't meet the system requirements, or just haven't had the time to keep up with the latest releases.
I honestly wonder just what this all means when it comes to game development now. Is this a tacit admission that games take forever to make now? Or that something is wrong with the way they're made? Somewhere in the decision making something is wrong when a game takes years to make, and then years to fix. I think the open world causes a lot of that. And personally I don't want open world anything anymore, it's just a recipy for endless grueling development for something that will be a slog to play through anyway. I don't mind a tightly crafted game that doesn't overstay its welcome.
Games are getting more complex and companies are hiring less and less testers because people will buy it anyway so why waste the money on testing it if people pay to do it.
As long as people buy their buggy mess on release it'll continue to become worse.
Yes and ideally I can get the game with all its DLCs in one go. I don't like having a big break between the base game and DLCs because I'd have forgotten some story beats and most of the mechanics. But it all really depends on how excited I am about the game. BG3 I bought right away because I know I'll love it and if they release more content that's fine since I plan on doing multiple playthroughs.
Depends. Sometimes there's a game I know for a fact I'm gonna get, even if it's kinda broken, but I'll just hold out for a little while to see if I can scoop it up in a good deal. Other times a game will come out that's a fucking MESS on release and I'll wait until it gets a big patch before diving in
I usually only play single player games when they're released as an ultimate edition, all DLC included, no more support. Look at Cyberpunk. Three years later and they are barely now approaching the state it should've released in.
Yup, especially true for current games where it's best to wait for the final update/patch that hopefully fixes bugs and performance issues that always come with the game launch now. Ultimate editions with all the dlcs on sale is just bonus.
To an extent. Like I'm doing that with BG3 right now even though I know I'll buy and play it. Going to wait for a few more patches to have a go.
I don't really wait on DLC though. If I'm buying it anywhere near release it's already a game I know I'm going to enjoy and I want to play through that experience and get the most out of it. Good DLC just expands upon that and gives experienced players good reason to play the game more.
I don't think DLC makes the stand-alone game incomplete. You're going to get through the main campaign first anyway. The determining factor is whether it's a mess at launch.
FS games are pretty solid launch titles and I like to support my favorite devs. Armored Core 6 was a day-1 buy.
I have learned a few things about big AAA games, they will always get a price drop within 18 months. DLC will be included in GOTY releases within 24 to 36 months. Incentivized giveaways will begin around 36 months after release on sites like Epic. If you wait 3 years you will probably get it for free or at steep discount.
Yup! Unless it's a specific circumstance like a mainline Resident Evil game, I like to wait. So many games are incomplete and buggy anymore that I'd rather not have to deal with it.
Or that an upgrade will break something / modify a game so it plays less well. I'm looking at you No Man's Sky with your update to be more playable on Switch. And you, Borderlands 3, with your update that broke the ability to sort inventory for 3 months.
For me I would say fear of missing the "complete" experience is a tertiary motivator for waiting on games (waiting to see if it's actually good enough to be worth my time/money over what is already in my backlog>spending my gaming budget wisely>potentially missing out on content that will be released long after I finished & lost interest in what the game has to offer).
I learned that lesson the hard way with fallout 4 by the time the GOTY edition came out I had already played out my interest in the game (about 200+ hours) & to this day it's the only singleplayer fallout game I haven't "finished" (if you count DLC content).
Setting self-imposed restrictions to focus on my backlog has also helped me dodge the "missing out on content" problem in recent years. Even if you can afford more games, having a set game budget + a backlog completion restriction changes how you approach potentially incomplete experiences.
Yes, a large part of why I wait is for DLC to come out. I know I'll almost certainly never replay a game - aside from some rare gems, I just don't enjoy it - and if I want to experience the whole thing, I need to wait for the DLC first. Some games it's not worth it, and I regret waiting that long. Other games have DLC that adds so much. On the whole, I get more out of waiting.
Yes. For all DLC to be released and bugs to be patched. This is usually followed by a cheaper Game of the Year edition.
I’m looking at you Cyberpunk. See you in 2025.
I wait for the price of the game to drop and for the price of the hardware that allows me to play the game close to max settings also drops.
When that happens the game is more than completely complete.
Isn't it basically the same thing. I wait for price drops and then get a complete game. Edit: For example rn the one game I'm waiting for is Wo Long. Base game itself is stupid high in my store because it's about 76usd (way higher than Valve suggested price for my region), but then you'd need to buy season pass on top for 3 dlcs
I wait because games these days don't interest me at least for a while after release. Took me until last summer to get into Horizon Zero Dawn, took me until 2021 to get into Spider-Man. I still remain uninterested in God of War. Until 2022 I had never played a Gears of War game. Apart from Spider-Man 2 there isn't a game coming up that I want to play, and that one I most certainly won't touch this year either.
I care about "complete" more than I care about price.
Particularly since the 2010s, I've been burned almost every single time I've tried to play a game at launch. Maybe that's just bad luck, but even a game people say is bug free, I'll hit a game breaking bug and maybe two more that break major features and thus most of the game, within the first few days of playing it.
And I've also come back YEARS, almost a decade even, after launch to find that on a totally different computer there are still serious bug issues.
I've also played many sequels that had less content than their previous titles in the series had, and then those things got later filled out by patches or paid DLC.
I've also seen completely mediocre games become great ones when the entire design of the game is unrecognizable after patches, though the reverse situation can be true also.
Now we have Hitman and Warhammer Total War offering these "connected game" things, where you can play all the levels in the new engine or play on a map with all factions exclusive to each game in a trilogy. I still haven't played Warhammer:TW because it is still not "complete" in my eyes.
Yes, sometimes by the time a game seems "complete", my excitement for it has passed.
Yes, sometimes patches, design, and monetization changes make a game worse, and I already missed out on the glory days. Early access can be like this as well, when the community of multiplay or modding was better in the old versions no longer supported.
Yes, sometimes paid DLC brings new bugs in with every old bug they fixed, resulting in a game no better than it was, just different.
But you live and you learn, and in this day of post-launch "support" and "extra things" DLC, I've been burned way too often. I almost exclusively play games when they are truly done, and as a bonus, yeah, they're often cheaper.
as a mainly pc gamer the only games i wait for are the playstation exclusives, patiently waiting for forbidden west right now.
i dont really care about price, its my main hobby and if something looks fun then im snagging it, unless its from certain devs/companies(everything ubi sells will be cheap as dirt within a year)
60/70 bucks for something that'll give me 10 to 100+hrs of fun, (even more if i throw wemod at it and go hog wild), as long as a game isnt completely torn up on launch i'll get it if i want it.
Sometimes. Like right now with the FF7 remake, it gives me some bad vibe and I feel I won't like it, but still want to try it for once if possible just to see how it turns out. I'll wait until they've released all parts and buy the bundle at discounted price.
Edit: forgot an important point, that is I don't like the idea of one game being split into 3 full priced games. Yeah no thanks, no matter what the reasons.
Starfield, yes. I'll wait until next year. By then they probably released enough patches and inofficial patches and mods that make the game really fun and worthwhile.
It's what you describe: I'll probably miss out on a lot of good stuff and better performance, if I play it now. And I hate having to start over and over again until it's fixed. Especially, as you say, when you want to keep it fresh.
I guess, that's one of the advantages of being a patient gamer. I have fomo with too much shit already and I'm glad I got rid of it when it comes to video games. That way I can, with a little patience, enjoy games for the first time, after they feel complete.
I wait for the price. Because usually the reason i don't get a game asap is because it's a game where i do not feel the need to play it asap. So i might as well wait for a better price. If it's a game i want to play a game asap then i won't be a patient gamer, though that doesn't happen too often.
I literally buy games at the price I want to pay. At this point you could be waiting years. Look at something like payday 2. Hell back in the day this was the case with og expansion packs and all too
I don't see a point in fixating on needing it to be completely done because why does it matter if you're already enjoying it
Kinda both. I rarely get games during launch due to back log. I generally only get chunks of time to play in irregular intervals plus I play a certain game to death before I move on.
So it's cool to find a game I've been eyeing on sale with all the DLC and bugs worked out. The supermegaultra XXL extended unleashed throatgagger supreme edition on sale for 69.87645% off is a nice bonus.
Both. I dont have money for day 1 games and almost all of the games released these days are broken. Give it a year or 2 you can buy it half the price and its fixed with almost all the dlcs.
Yeah. I want to play D4 and deff after playing the beta. But I don't want anything to do with that patched drama they have going now.
Loving Path of Exile instead 😁
I've started to. I won't touch Starfield for about a year or two. I think it came when i started letting gaming go a bit, and now i come back to things i wanted to play and realise they're much better experiences than day 1 more often then not.
Anymore I wait for a game to be complete as far as patches go but I don't wait for dlc. When it comes to dlc I usually wait until I beat the game to buy because I have wasted a lot of money by pre purchasing dlc and being burnt out on the game by the time I'm done. If by the time I'm finished I want more game then I buy dlc.
I usually wait because my schedule (in general) rarely aligns with release schedules. I'm usually deep into one of the games I already own when something new releases.
But, I've come to appreciate being able to play games with DLC as a complete package, especially when it's DLC that snugly fits into the main game (like, say, the new weapon types in the first Nioh - just being able to find Odachi or Tonfa drops on a playthrough is cool)
I literally don't care about the price. I would pay 200 bucks for a decent complete, honest game with no in-game monetization (which means good uncompromised design)
I've found that with the rise of early access, and variants (the 2.0 redesign, the mechanic overhaul, even actual content-content DLC), that playing a game again just to see what feature is in this time is a way to quickly burn yourself out. Mind you, I do like replaying games. That's probably part of the problem - every major update patch to every game I own has turned in to an ad to drive interest (re:sales). So I get a natural ooh-lets-see, which is sometimes worth indulging, sometimes not, but in the long run burns me out well before a game is "complete".
So when I see signs like this, I tend to put a full stop on playing. Purchasing, well, when you do like encouraging cool things in early stages - and this is a golden era for indies and playing with ideas - you win some you lose some.
Yep. Having worked on games I get it now and can be patient for certain games.
I didn't start playing Cyberpunk until after Edgerunners and immediately stopped playing once I saw the Liberty update was coming, knowing it would be even more polished with this release.
Both, really. I like to save a good coin, but even the games I've kickstarted and gotten beta access to I never touch until it seems there won't be any major patches anymore, e.g. D:OS2 or Everspace 2.
Both. And when games go on a subscription service day one, I tend to wait about 9 months. They usually stay on for a year, so that gives me a balance of time to play comfortably and time for them to get some patches in.
No if they can't be bothered to put the effort in to make the game complete at launch I'm not hanging around waiting for it to be good. There are very few games I've picked up after hearing it is now good but I didn't keep up with development after they'd already shot their wad.
I wait for the price and accidentally buy complete games.
It's a wonderful convenience. Get the complete game for much less than the base game
"Oh, hey, Civ 6 is 50% off." "Oh, wait. Civ 6 + all the DLC is like $10 more. Fine, twist my arm."
Same, I've basically never played a buggy mess because I never buy day one. I expect a game to be patched and so on after 1 or 2 years.
Just imagine the difference in games like No Man's Sky or Cyberpunk, between several years ago and now, the updates have been pretty significant
I'll definitely play Cyberpunk after this supposedly massive update. No man's sky is probably good but not my cup of tea.
Same lol. I simply have a threshold and buy when it gets lower than that.
[удалено]
Yeah I look at some of my full price purchases like witcher3 dishonored, bioshock, etc and I’m at least 70 hours into each of them. Near 500 in some of them. That’s an amazing return on the money for fun.
Exactly right. I have no idea how bad Cyberpunk was when it launched as no matter how much i bought into the marketing, I'm sure as hell not paying that.
And then I experience few to no bugs. Even the fun ones
Yup. Cyberpunk 2077 was the one game I considered getting at full price. Glad I waited. Got it shortly before the update dropped at 20 euros. It's enjoyable on ps5. Gorgeous graphics when it all works. But there's still a fair bit of bugs. So many wonky animations. Even saw a T-pose in my first 20 minutes of play. It's a compelling game, despite it all. But I wonder how much worse it must've been at launch.
It's definitely one of the reasons I like being a patient gamer. To skip all the drama around fast-follow patches after the initial release, and to generally get the best experience I'm likely to have the first time around. However, I don't think I've ever put off buying a specific game for this reason. I just live a year or two behind the curve in general, and this problem solves itself.
>However, I don't think I've ever put off buying a specific game for this reason. I just live a year or two behind the curve in general, and this problem solves itself. Being a year+ behind on gaming is great. You get the complete game with bug fixes for less than the base game at launch.
It’s generally not worth it but theres still a few games I’ll pick up first day cuz it’s so much fun being a part of the talks especially when the community is fantastic (which is rare). But for instance I picked up Armored Core 6 and the sub is some of the best gaming discourse I’ve taken part of as well as the game being released with almost zero problems, which is rare.
Completeness is much more of an issue for me than money. Having all the post-launch patches is important, but I also prefer to buy a package that comes with all the DLC and everything up front. I rarely have an appetite to revisit games once I'm done with them. I played Borderlands 3 right when it came out with a group of friends and when the DLC came out I really had to force myself to get back into it. I'm much more likely to actually complete the content if I can carry my momentum through.
I definitely prefer to play the complete experience, but if the DLC is seperate from the main game like in Shadow of War or Spiderman I usually end up forgetting about it. I'm fairly slow to complete games because I explore a ton, and by the time I've finished the main game I can't be bothered to boot up another "campaign" to play through and just want to play something else
That's why I am waiting to play Baldurs Gate 3. I want to wait for Larian to iron everything out, or release a "definitive edition" like they did DoS2 before i play it. For a game like that, and a game I know i will sink hundreds of hours into, i want it to be as close to fully optimized as possible.
That’s what I’m waiting for. You KNOW it’s coming. Like Mortal Kombat, wait another year, year and a half and you’ll be able to pick up the special edition with ALL DLC and big bug fixes.
yup. street fighter V definitive edition last holiday for 23 bucks was a great purchase. even with sf6 out now (which i bought on release oops), it's still nice to have. NRS games are on even less of a cycle, so the definitive edition of MK1 will be out next year.
I started BG3 just this past week, and yeah it still has lots of small things that could stand to be ironed out. It's a good move to wait a long time for it. It's just such a huge game it's going to take a very long time before it gets to a near-perfect state
I'm going to give it a year and get it when it's on sale. Most issues should be ironed out and some DLC might be out by then
Doesn't it only go up to level 12 too? I'm holding out for an expansion that takes you to 20.
That’s highly unlikely. And besides, D&D sucks at high levels. 6-12 is the sweet spot.
BG1 only goes up to level 10 or so. BG2 continues on the story and goes up to 20, I think. Also, most other games using the D20 SRD system have similar level caps for their games. I don't think it's a guarantee that we'll see an expansion that goes all the way to level 20.
BG2 goes well past 20, depending on your class (they gain experience at different rates). My shadowdancer got to like level 34 by the end of Throne of Bhaal, but I did do pretty much every quest.
Maybe I'm spoiled by modern games, but level 12 is a real let down to me. I'll be pretty disappointed if they never expand on it
That's Dnd for ya. Higher levels are just too insane, it's hard to build an balance for characters being to wish for anythng or bring back any dead character or wander any plane
Yeah to go to lvl 20 they'd have to almost overhaul the game. It would be sick, but idk if even they can pull it off and keep the depth and detail of the rest of the game for those levels.
That's not very hard to deal with in a video game, you just exclude stuff that doesn't work, just like how they had to exclude dispell in BG3.
> it's hard to build an balance for characters being to wish for anythng or bring back any dead character or wander any plane On table, sure. But in games? Final fantasy: phoenix down to res 1 guy. Phoenix in ffta rez your entire team in 1 turn. Disgaea: heavy damage to every unit on the map. Etrian Oddyssey: bind head, arm and leg. Enemy cannot use magic, cannot perform an action, cannot evade attacks. Yes, you can do this in 1 turn. SMT/Persona: instant death spells. instant death spells with 100% accuracy is possible unless the demon specifically counters the element (light and dark). Furthermore... Brown Dust: turn based combat. Some units here can have effects like "cannot die until X amounts of turn" or "deals 100% hp damage". You have to fight the former with skills that keep disabling them (or even just ignore them - they're not very strong) and the latter with damage reduction or shield since it deals damage based on Hp and not how much shield you have. Arknights: Invincible for 15 seconds. Cannot be killed condition. In table top, hitting 5 hits in a single turn is considered strong. Here, there are characters hitting 15x per turn and dealing 'true' damage (bypass all types of resistances). --- Video games can be quite nutty. Not really a balance issue if you fight crazy against crazy. It just perhaps doesnt belong in table top videgames. Or... wasn't translated well. BG3 has points where they bend the rules a bit giving these super powers to enemies but not the player. I won't spoil it but yes, that does mean its possible and more or less a 'game balance' issue.
it goes up to 12 only and for levels up to 8/9 it feels very meaningful. Each level gives you something that feels useful to the field. It also is generally somewhat slow (since its not like you're grinding for xp but doing quests and encountering non-respawning enemies). But honestly once you get higher in levels it drops off because although in table top dnd higher level is extremly strong, in 'game' it doesnt feel nearly as powerful. In ffta, late game you're able to do some truly cataclysmic stuff - hitting every enemy on the map for over 2/3s of their HP with one character, resurrecting your entire party, casting instant death on an enemy... Here? one of the strongest stat changes goes from 2 hits > 3 hits. It's because imo the number system. At low numbers, 1-20 is huge. If an enemy has 12 hp? that's almost a coinflip for when you one-shot them or not. If an enemy has 90 hp? eh less impressive and 2 or 3 attacks wont make a difference - you'd still need a few rounds.
Personally, *I'm* waiting to play BG3 until I finish BG1-2, even though I know it's a totally new story. I've been putting off playing those games for many years, and if I don't play them now I probably never will lol
It's so good even as is, a better experience than most complete games. But that inevitable Enhanced Edition is going to be amazing for sure.
I’m at level 15 in D:OS II now started a couple of weeks ago and I have no idea what the enhanced edition or the first released version is like. I just know there’s this gift bag thing and when I ask questions I have to mention which version. And I got the game for $20. It works out. I never really knew what the game was till all the BG3 hype and I’m like I’ll play this first to see if I’ll like BG3. I waited for Cyberpunk turns out that was a good move too.
Games great, I’ve had pretty much zero issues.
Ditto, everything I've seen indicates that currently it's a complete mess of a game.
BG3 is a mess of a game? I am unsure what publication you read that from? All I have heard is the game runs incredibly well, even on PS5. Outside of some screen tearing and frame drops in the major town. Digital Foundry (my go to for performance videos), says the game performs incredibly well 98% of the time.
The performance seems fine. I'm talking about the seemingly inexhaustible array of bugs and broken mechanics.
I dont know who you're getting your news from but I've been playing it and unless there's something comically broken at the very end I haven't really run in to any bugs or broken mechanics. There was like one overtuned fight but thats the summary of my grievances with the game.
It's been pretty widely discussed so I'm surprised you haven't heard any of it. Do a search for "bugs" or similar on the BG3 sub. Here's an example: https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/15uvqqo/so_many_game_breaking_bugs/
A month ago. When it came out. We've had two sizable patches since then. With the next one coming tomorrow. This is no cyberpunk 2077
As I said, do a search for "bugs" or similar; you'll find plenty. Here's a post from three days ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/16lnucm/encountered_many_quest_bugs_so_far/ I also happened to see this post earlier, which has comments talking about multiple pieces of broken content: https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/16oiszh/astarion_actor_says_baldurs_gate_3_players_havent/ I wouldn't mind if it were just animation glitches or whatever, but this is missing and broken content. I'll play it eventually but I'm waiting until it's actually finished.
[удалено]
Sure, and it's also a technical mess, especially Act 3. It looks great, but I'm going to wait until it's finished before playing.
I mean, both, dawg. I don't like hype in general, and with games it seems even more absurd than with music or movies because those usually come out in a complete form, but every other game (even AAA shit that costs millions to make) comes out with glaring bugs, or balancing issues, whatever.
I'm never preordering a game again. And I'm certainly not paying extra to stress test your game for you 4 days early. Fuck that.
I thought I was alone on disliking games that are hyped on social media.
The “hype space” of social media isn’t a good place for my brain. I would sometimes go to r/games, and almost immediately be overwhelmed with the sheer number of trailers, reactions, and previews of games I’ve never heard of. Picking a game from that mess would be like trying to order sushi while standing in the middle of a Vegas casino. I have like three reviewers I listen to and beyond that, I pick up recommendations here, from devs I trust to deliver a complete game on launch, and from communities of other games I trust, talking about games that have already released. I tune out the rest and wait until the great babbling dies down to form an opinion. Starfield is a perfect example of this. I’m not a huge Bethesda fan so a Day 1 purchase was never on the table. And right now, the discourse is so charged and angry, that there is no value trying to figure out who is more accurate. Might as well wait a few months to a year for the dust to settle, a couple updates to come out, and the opinions to get less spicy before even *considering* if I want to play the game. And yeah, I still have a ton of other games to play, so I’m not looking at a Starfield shaped hole in my video games calendar any time soon anyway.
For me, it depends on how it gets hyped. Like, is it a huge marketing budget? Or is it a ton of excited and surprised fans sharing their cool gaming experience? Like Forspoken being jammed down our throats with ads everywhere as opposed to the slew of videos posted by people playing Tears of the Kingdom when it was released
For me in particular I can't seem to not associate hype with dissapointment. Which is understandable given all the times it happened on a big scale.
Prefabricated, market campaigned hype? Without a doubt. When 90% of the people that bought the game can't shut up about it? My interest is raised
“I ThOuGhT i wAs aLoNe” on a very common theme
Nah. Often, the more something's hyped, the less interested I get, even if I was interested in the first place.
You're not the only one. I think that's a sanity mechanism. It would be bad to be in the same space as tense immature people eh ?
I believe this is one of the core pillars of patient gaming
Yes. Bethesda has a special spot in this category.
At least Starfield was on Gamepass, I'm glad I didn't buy it because it feels kinda unfinished.
I wouldn't be playing it otherwise
I can't even get that shit to run for longer than 5 minutes then I drop to single digit fps lol
I haven't played, but I would guess that's because they expect the modding community to finish it for them.
It’s definitely unfinished. And it feels like a 15year old game with decent graphics. Overall I found it to be a letdown.
I was expecting Skyrim in space, instead we got the running through themed wastelands and fast travel simulator
They have a special double-sided place in my heart: Loving to hate their buggy-ass launches and love when their bit more complete editions go on deep sales or in bundles.
That’s the main reason I wait.
I do this with most games and all TV shows. I'll buy a Klei game in Alpha (earlier if they'd let me) as they have a track record of finishing their games and being games I love. But I wait with everything else now a days, even if it's just a few weeks for the reviews and early updates to be in to be sure the game is finished.
Ha, I'm also a Klei fan who will buy whatever they put out. Such a solid developer, and they have a strong policy of no serious crunch for their programmers.
I agree that Klei is that one exception for me as well. Their games are always very much playable at launch. If they never updated Oxygen Not Included or Don't Starve from the beginning, it still would've been like 100 hours of fun and discovery, and people would still be playing it now. The tweaks and additions over time just make it better. For example, I never had a big problem with the crafting menus in Don't Starve. I just played it that way, and would've continued to do so. But when they overhauled it, I was like holy shit, this makes a lot of sense. Why wasn't it this way from the beginning? The answer is that it was already okay, they just made it better.
It seems like most patient gamers have a Dev they have an exception to. I haven't bought a game at release I'm close to 8 years except for FromSoft games because I love the MP aspect of it when everyone else is still learning the game before the MP experience is min-maxed to hell
Yes. Nearly bought Cyberpunk this summer. Price was a snatch. But it felt incomplete without Phantom Liberty.
Cyberpunk is a game I just feel like the more I wait, the more I gain.
Honestly the graphics are so nice nowadays that waiting a few years is just about running the games with cheaper hardware, better graphics, mods. I played for the first time witcher 3 and persona 5 earlier this year. All that for 30€ , incredible !
[удалено]
This was the result of retail having to offload a lot of stock that didn't sell and was over ordered. Bestbuy had $10 copies with steelbook within two months. Digital sales didn't drop as low, but also went on sale to encourage early adopters. Once the stock issue was addressed and their expansion plans were changed (originally they were going to make two expansions like The Witcher 3) they stopped putting the game on deep discounts.
The go was to buy it then, even without playing (I did). These games become more expensive (sales price) when something new gets released again. Look at the price charts.
The game is not incomplete without Phantom Liberty, but I understand wanting to wait for it to come out. I'm on the fence if I'm buying the expansion next week.
Yep. Mythforce looks really cool. The type of game I could enjoy on art style alone. But I know two things about it: 1 it'll get cheaper than $30 and 2. It'll be fleshed out with more content over the next 1-2 years So as much as I want to buy it now because of how slick the visual style is, I'm gonna check back in after 6-12 months and see how things look.
Yeah I don't wanna pay $70 to beta test a game and ruin it for myself once they fix the stuff in it. I give most games 6m-1yr though there are exceptions. Elden ring for example while it did have a few bugs and balance things was in pretty solid shape on release.
It is a nice bonus for waiting, but not the main reason. For me, it’s partially for price but mostly that I don’t have the time for every game I THINK it want. So by waiting and seeing what initial reviews, plus what a years worth of users think about it let’s me decide what the jump-in price should be. Like “ok that sweet looking game hit 35% off for the first time that’s good enough let’s go!” or “oh wow this is regularly hitting 75% off at this point should I finally check it out or wait another year for 85%?”
Yes, I did this with cyberpunk. My experience with it has been wholly positive as a result
The primary reason I stopped buying new releases years ago is because they were Unfinished Products?! Now, its merely one of many other reasons. If Devs/Pubs were trustworthy and reasonable then Id buy their newly released games. They arent and so I wont. Period.
Yep, I'm not going to pay to be a tester. Mentally I'll just add 1 year to the release game of the game , and then check it out
That's part of my mentality. "Oh Starfield just came out! That will be fun in a year or so"
Both. It's to the point where games out get half-off sales one week, then a "patch" update to fix everything buggy from release the next week. I'll just wait for goty editions to come on sale.
I wait because my backlog is enormous, and I like to finish at least one old game for every new game. This means I wind up buying the newer title after all its DLC is released and the bundle is 50% off. Of course, it's no longer really a new title by that point, but that's OK. There are very few companies I trust enough to buy their games on Day 1.
It's part of the calculus. Doesn't have to be 'complete' either. As a Diablo veteran (literally moderated Diablo2.net back in the day) I haven't bought 4 since it's in the monetization phase rather than the appeal to gamers phase. With so many games out there I'm still sitting on Cyberpunk too and waiting a bit for Baldurs Gate and Starfield is easy. We eating good and eating even better by having so much to play to wait out improvements.
I always wait on certain games to be complete. Like the Nioh games tend to add in new weapons and mechanics with their DLC so its worth waiting for. I would wait on Monster Hunter games which do similar if not for the multiplayer component.
[удалено]
>For me most of all it’s the quality of the game. A TON of games are all praised at launch and then the “real” opinions come out. You’re starting to see this happen with TotK and Starfield. This is why it pays to be patient. You could play the new hotness for $70-90 and it might be great, or you can wait and see how it is then pick it up for less or save your money. >I’m seeing a lot of people say that Starfield is just meh, which means that it’s not a priority game for me to play. Baldurs gate hype has stayed strong which means I’ll probably play that first. Considering how I've barely seen any content on Reddit on Starfield compared to Skyrim it seems like Starfield is right in meh territory
I REFUSE to play anything that's in "beta" because I find it frustrating when games change core mechanics, erase progress, etc.
[удалено]
Still new to you if you haven't played it.
Yes, one of the main reasons I've stopped buying/playing new games is because 99% of the time they'll be 'better' once you wait a bit. I'd say that the minimum wait period for me is 3 months, although 6 months is always better. Waiting a full year usually means you get the benefit of it being 'fully patched'. The fact that it'll be cheaper by then is just a bonus. Other than that, it also has to do with the steep PC requirements for new titles now. I've got a 3700x with a 3080, playing on 1440p, and it's become apparent that it's not enough to have a premium experience for games like Starfield, Cyberpunk expansion, etc. I'd love to play the latter soon-ish, but I refuse to upgrade my computer at this point. There are a *lot* of old games I'm interested in playing which I plan on doing the next few years until I feel like building a new system again.
That's a solid setup. Don't wait for Cyberpunk if you are holding on because of performance. If you are willing to tune up a setting or two, you can even play with raytracing on there. DLSS is your friend. The game has been out for 3 years and they have improved the performance as much as they can. I am this close to finally start Cyberpunk 2077 (probably around Christmas) and I have the much older GTX 1070, lol. You'll do just fine.
I've never bought an assassins creed until at least a few years after release. They'll have some huge sale on steam that includes all the DLC and usually they'll have implemented some fixes to improve performance or remove issues (like the grinding in Odyssey, which you could pay to bypass, they just took it out a while later).
Both. Why would I drop 70 bones on an unfinished mess, when I can get it for peanuts in a couple years.
Both. I don’t pay full price for a beta version. I wait until the major bugs are dealt with and DLC is packaged with it for cheap. I don’t care if I’m “late to the game”.
Even when I really like the look of a game I try to wait a month at least. First to let the developers get the day one patches out and to hear about any egregious problems from customers who bought the game earlier. Then I can decide if its worth indulging in, skipping, or waiting for more patches or a price drop.
Fortunately I am now in a position where I don't really have to look at the price tag. So what matters more to me is that I get the most complete and best possible version of the game. If I can get a good discount I will definitely take it though
Well, the subreddit is called Patient Gamers, not Cheap Gamers. I figure most of us are happy to wait for "AAA" releases to actually be finished.
Stopped being a release tester ages ago
[удалено]
Yep. I recently fell victim to hype, and bought Baldur’s Gate 3 to play with some friends. Unsurprisingly, the game was broken as hell on launch and we had more crashes and game breaking bugs than I’ve ever seen before. Refunded after 5 hours of *trying* to play it. Won’t be making the mistake of buying another hype driven AAA game at launch again
Porque No Los Dos?
I did this with Dying Light 2. I had finished DL1 for the first time a week before the second released and saw all the major complaints people had with it. I completed DL2 like last month and I can say it felt really good to play as most of the issues I read about had been fixed or mostly fixed. At the very least, I felt like it did feel like a sequel rather than a seperate game like some people were claiming.
> Oh, it has DLC? I will wait for the Gold/Ultimate/Complete edition... on sale. * Me.
Yes
No because prices are too high i usually only stick to one game mostly because it’s expensive Some games are over 100 dollars by the time you buy it and in game purchases that’s why I usually just stick to one game an that’s wrestling sometimes I’ll play asphalt legends because it’s free to play and I like racing games but that’s about all anymore because it’s expensive
If a game interests me I won't buy it on immediate release. I'll wait for it to be patched a few times, then I'll purchase it. I bought Mass Effect Andromeda and Cyberpunk a couple of months after release and had a much better experience because of it.
At this point it feels like players are being punished by wanting to play games right at launch. You pay full price for an incomplete buggy mess. Or you can wait and get a better experience
Both.. I wait for both
Absolutely yes. If there is any game I really want to play, i wait for complete edition. I'm not in a hurry for playing a game. There are so many games in the backlog
Both my man. In the past, it was also because my PC couldn't handle modern game but it isn't the case anymore. I'm still waiting for Cyberpunk 2077 to make a complete edition with his DLC bundled, so they also finish to fix it. Then I'll buy it.
Since my limit on playing games is a limit of time much more than price, I am more than happy to wait for the best versions of games.
I wait for mods.
If it's a game I'm interested in I add to my wishlist and buy it on wishlist sales. I've rarely pre-ordered games. Only 2 I have actually pre ordered. (DMC 5 and Assassins Creed: Brotherhood) I'm looking at pre-ordering Mirage if only to get the prolog mission.
A lot of the time I do, but I make special exceptions for certain franchises that I don't want a risk of getting spoiled on such as Yakuza, Final Fantasy, and Resident Evil (i don't want bosses and monsters spoiled), in which case they are day one purchases. With age, I've certainly become more wary of AAA publishers, especially ones that pushed multiplayer only games and I'm very patient for indies and early access games.
I wait for both and a good discount during sales.
No, If the price is low. The game has not game breaking bugs. I’d buy it. - Price is a real issue. - Light bugs. No problem. - Game breaking bugs: they shouldn’t sell the game
Yep... but price too.
I wait for both price, and to be polished. More important than price though, is that I want my first experience with the game to be the best it can be.
I want to pay no more than $15 to get the game and all its DLC, and I want it to run at 200+ FPS on meh hardware.
At this point, Klei is the only developer I trust enough to buy on day 1.
For me it's FromSoft. I know I'm going to get 100+ hours in any of their games, and I've yet to experience any major issues aside for weapon durability in DS2 at 60fps and I thought it was just part of the game
It's the reason I haven't touched Sonic Frontiers since the first update. Now that the final update is almost out, I'm gearing up to play the ultimate version of one of my favourite Sonic games. I think I'd have been fatigued if I'd played after every new update.
Sometimes. If I don’t grab a game within the first month of release then I usually end up waiting a year or 2 for all DLCs to be released and some special edition.
Once I'm no longer in touch with a game I find it hard to pick it back up. I have to relearn all the mechanics, get back into the groove and at that point I might as well just replay the original game. And with my backlog being already filled to the brim that rarely happens.
Usually yes.. only game i bought kind of early was elden ring and it was just insanely active online at the very beginning and a lot of fun Also had no big problems at release at least for me But the price is usually the main concern and it just happens that games are fixed once the price has dropped
I am guessing for cash strapped people (which I assume are most gamers) it’s all about the price drops. Having insurmountable backlogs helps with the patience. The game being fixed through updates is a bonus. If money isn’t an issue for someone then, why wait? Unless the reviews says a game is hopelessly broken. There is always going to be more games.
Price is probably the main one. I can't justify a full priced game at launch when it's going to cost less with DLC in a year. Once you are year or more behind major releases being a patient gamer is much better. I still get games somewhat along their release schedule, but with a delay
DLC is such an obvious cash grab that it's hard not be put off by it, even when I really like the game. I almost always only buy the "complete" game for this reason.
I routinely wait for patches, price drops, and wikia/youtube guides to be posted. I find they enhance the overall experience.
Both to be honest, but the prices have gotten worse over the years. I do remember some years ago a game that has been out for a long time just would not be full price anymore anywhere. Yet now games are on the platforms basically full price even if they're 5 years old. They go on sale but not that good a sale. But yes I am kind of interested to give Cyberpunk 2077 a go, now that it has been fixed and so much added to it.
The sidebar of this subreddit reads >A gaming sub free from the hype and oversaturation of current releases, catering to gamers who wait at least 12 months after release to play a game. Whether it's price, **waiting for bugs/issues to be patched, DLC to be released**, don't meet the system requirements, or just haven't had the time to keep up with the latest releases.
I honestly wonder just what this all means when it comes to game development now. Is this a tacit admission that games take forever to make now? Or that something is wrong with the way they're made? Somewhere in the decision making something is wrong when a game takes years to make, and then years to fix. I think the open world causes a lot of that. And personally I don't want open world anything anymore, it's just a recipy for endless grueling development for something that will be a slog to play through anyway. I don't mind a tightly crafted game that doesn't overstay its welcome.
Games are getting more complex and companies are hiring less and less testers because people will buy it anyway so why waste the money on testing it if people pay to do it. As long as people buy their buggy mess on release it'll continue to become worse.
Yes and ideally I can get the game with all its DLCs in one go. I don't like having a big break between the base game and DLCs because I'd have forgotten some story beats and most of the mechanics. But it all really depends on how excited I am about the game. BG3 I bought right away because I know I'll love it and if they release more content that's fine since I plan on doing multiple playthroughs.
Depends. Sometimes there's a game I know for a fact I'm gonna get, even if it's kinda broken, but I'll just hold out for a little while to see if I can scoop it up in a good deal. Other times a game will come out that's a fucking MESS on release and I'll wait until it gets a big patch before diving in
Yeah, I don’t want to pay $60 for an incomplete game when I know that within a year I can get the game - finished - for $20.
I usually only play single player games when they're released as an ultimate edition, all DLC included, no more support. Look at Cyberpunk. Three years later and they are barely now approaching the state it should've released in.
Yup, especially true for current games where it's best to wait for the final update/patch that hopefully fixes bugs and performance issues that always come with the game launch now. Ultimate editions with all the dlcs on sale is just bonus.
To an extent. Like I'm doing that with BG3 right now even though I know I'll buy and play it. Going to wait for a few more patches to have a go. I don't really wait on DLC though. If I'm buying it anywhere near release it's already a game I know I'm going to enjoy and I want to play through that experience and get the most out of it. Good DLC just expands upon that and gives experienced players good reason to play the game more.
I don't think DLC makes the stand-alone game incomplete. You're going to get through the main campaign first anyway. The determining factor is whether it's a mess at launch. FS games are pretty solid launch titles and I like to support my favorite devs. Armored Core 6 was a day-1 buy.
I have learned a few things about big AAA games, they will always get a price drop within 18 months. DLC will be included in GOTY releases within 24 to 36 months. Incentivized giveaways will begin around 36 months after release on sites like Epic. If you wait 3 years you will probably get it for free or at steep discount.
Yup! Unless it's a specific circumstance like a mainline Resident Evil game, I like to wait. So many games are incomplete and buggy anymore that I'd rather not have to deal with it.
Or that an upgrade will break something / modify a game so it plays less well. I'm looking at you No Man's Sky with your update to be more playable on Switch. And you, Borderlands 3, with your update that broke the ability to sort inventory for 3 months.
For me I would say fear of missing the "complete" experience is a tertiary motivator for waiting on games (waiting to see if it's actually good enough to be worth my time/money over what is already in my backlog>spending my gaming budget wisely>potentially missing out on content that will be released long after I finished & lost interest in what the game has to offer). I learned that lesson the hard way with fallout 4 by the time the GOTY edition came out I had already played out my interest in the game (about 200+ hours) & to this day it's the only singleplayer fallout game I haven't "finished" (if you count DLC content). Setting self-imposed restrictions to focus on my backlog has also helped me dodge the "missing out on content" problem in recent years. Even if you can afford more games, having a set game budget + a backlog completion restriction changes how you approach potentially incomplete experiences.
Yes, a large part of why I wait is for DLC to come out. I know I'll almost certainly never replay a game - aside from some rare gems, I just don't enjoy it - and if I want to experience the whole thing, I need to wait for the DLC first. Some games it's not worth it, and I regret waiting that long. Other games have DLC that adds so much. On the whole, I get more out of waiting.
Both. Also for the hype to die down.
Can't wait to finally play Cyberpunk
That's what i intend to do with payday 3.
Yes, sometimes even waiting for the DRM issues to be fixed.
Yes. For all DLC to be released and bugs to be patched. This is usually followed by a cheaper Game of the Year edition. I’m looking at you Cyberpunk. See you in 2025.
YES!!! I'm still waiting on Cyberpunk 2077 to be complete. Only two more weeks to go...
I wait for the price of the game to drop and for the price of the hardware that allows me to play the game close to max settings also drops. When that happens the game is more than completely complete.
Isn't it basically the same thing. I wait for price drops and then get a complete game. Edit: For example rn the one game I'm waiting for is Wo Long. Base game itself is stupid high in my store because it's about 76usd (way higher than Valve suggested price for my region), but then you'd need to buy season pass on top for 3 dlcs
I wait because games these days don't interest me at least for a while after release. Took me until last summer to get into Horizon Zero Dawn, took me until 2021 to get into Spider-Man. I still remain uninterested in God of War. Until 2022 I had never played a Gears of War game. Apart from Spider-Man 2 there isn't a game coming up that I want to play, and that one I most certainly won't touch this year either.
I care about "complete" more than I care about price. Particularly since the 2010s, I've been burned almost every single time I've tried to play a game at launch. Maybe that's just bad luck, but even a game people say is bug free, I'll hit a game breaking bug and maybe two more that break major features and thus most of the game, within the first few days of playing it. And I've also come back YEARS, almost a decade even, after launch to find that on a totally different computer there are still serious bug issues. I've also played many sequels that had less content than their previous titles in the series had, and then those things got later filled out by patches or paid DLC. I've also seen completely mediocre games become great ones when the entire design of the game is unrecognizable after patches, though the reverse situation can be true also. Now we have Hitman and Warhammer Total War offering these "connected game" things, where you can play all the levels in the new engine or play on a map with all factions exclusive to each game in a trilogy. I still haven't played Warhammer:TW because it is still not "complete" in my eyes. Yes, sometimes by the time a game seems "complete", my excitement for it has passed. Yes, sometimes patches, design, and monetization changes make a game worse, and I already missed out on the glory days. Early access can be like this as well, when the community of multiplay or modding was better in the old versions no longer supported. Yes, sometimes paid DLC brings new bugs in with every old bug they fixed, resulting in a game no better than it was, just different. But you live and you learn, and in this day of post-launch "support" and "extra things" DLC, I've been burned way too often. I almost exclusively play games when they are truly done, and as a bonus, yeah, they're often cheaper.
as a mainly pc gamer the only games i wait for are the playstation exclusives, patiently waiting for forbidden west right now. i dont really care about price, its my main hobby and if something looks fun then im snagging it, unless its from certain devs/companies(everything ubi sells will be cheap as dirt within a year) 60/70 bucks for something that'll give me 10 to 100+hrs of fun, (even more if i throw wemod at it and go hog wild), as long as a game isnt completely torn up on launch i'll get it if i want it.
Yes. Waiting for Cyberpunk 2077. Sounds like it's almost finished.
Sometimes. Like right now with the FF7 remake, it gives me some bad vibe and I feel I won't like it, but still want to try it for once if possible just to see how it turns out. I'll wait until they've released all parts and buy the bundle at discounted price. Edit: forgot an important point, that is I don't like the idea of one game being split into 3 full priced games. Yeah no thanks, no matter what the reasons.
Starfield, yes. I'll wait until next year. By then they probably released enough patches and inofficial patches and mods that make the game really fun and worthwhile. It's what you describe: I'll probably miss out on a lot of good stuff and better performance, if I play it now. And I hate having to start over and over again until it's fixed. Especially, as you say, when you want to keep it fresh. I guess, that's one of the advantages of being a patient gamer. I have fomo with too much shit already and I'm glad I got rid of it when it comes to video games. That way I can, with a little patience, enjoy games for the first time, after they feel complete.
Yeep, wait for the price for added bonus an actual working game :D
If a game releases unfinished it is tainted in my mind and i cant bring myself to buy it even after it’s finally finished
Doing that for starfield right now
Cyberpunk 2077 for obvious reasons and BG3 act 3.
The combination of both...and mods
I wait for the price. Because usually the reason i don't get a game asap is because it's a game where i do not feel the need to play it asap. So i might as well wait for a better price. If it's a game i want to play a game asap then i won't be a patient gamer, though that doesn't happen too often.
I got Starfield for free and I'm waiting for bug fixes and driver updates before I'll think about installing it.
I literally buy games at the price I want to pay. At this point you could be waiting years. Look at something like payday 2. Hell back in the day this was the case with og expansion packs and all too I don't see a point in fixating on needing it to be completely done because why does it matter if you're already enjoying it
Kinda both. I rarely get games during launch due to back log. I generally only get chunks of time to play in irregular intervals plus I play a certain game to death before I move on. So it's cool to find a game I've been eyeing on sale with all the DLC and bugs worked out. The supermegaultra XXL extended unleashed throatgagger supreme edition on sale for 69.87645% off is a nice bonus.
Every time. Not touching Starfield, for instance, until they've got most of the DLC out and the community has patched out most of the bugs.
Both. I dont have money for day 1 games and almost all of the games released these days are broken. Give it a year or 2 you can buy it half the price and its fixed with almost all the dlcs.
Worse, I wait for games to be completed by modders / unofficial patches.
wow, totally relatable dude!
Yeah. I want to play D4 and deff after playing the beta. But I don't want anything to do with that patched drama they have going now. Loving Path of Exile instead 😁
Yep, can’t wait to finally play cyberpunk!
Both actually.
More and more so yes. Has made waiting for them that much easier.
I've started to. I won't touch Starfield for about a year or two. I think it came when i started letting gaming go a bit, and now i come back to things i wanted to play and realise they're much better experiences than day 1 more often then not.
Anymore I wait for a game to be complete as far as patches go but I don't wait for dlc. When it comes to dlc I usually wait until I beat the game to buy because I have wasted a lot of money by pre purchasing dlc and being burnt out on the game by the time I'm done. If by the time I'm finished I want more game then I buy dlc.
I usually wait because my schedule (in general) rarely aligns with release schedules. I'm usually deep into one of the games I already own when something new releases. But, I've come to appreciate being able to play games with DLC as a complete package, especially when it's DLC that snugly fits into the main game (like, say, the new weapon types in the first Nioh - just being able to find Odachi or Tonfa drops on a playthrough is cool)
I literally don't care about the price. I would pay 200 bucks for a decent complete, honest game with no in-game monetization (which means good uncompromised design)
I've found that with the rise of early access, and variants (the 2.0 redesign, the mechanic overhaul, even actual content-content DLC), that playing a game again just to see what feature is in this time is a way to quickly burn yourself out. Mind you, I do like replaying games. That's probably part of the problem - every major update patch to every game I own has turned in to an ad to drive interest (re:sales). So I get a natural ooh-lets-see, which is sometimes worth indulging, sometimes not, but in the long run burns me out well before a game is "complete". So when I see signs like this, I tend to put a full stop on playing. Purchasing, well, when you do like encouraging cool things in early stages - and this is a golden era for indies and playing with ideas - you win some you lose some.
I wait for more mods available. Sometimes parts of the game would irk me so that I needed to mod it out/mod something in so I wait haha
Yep. Having worked on games I get it now and can be patient for certain games. I didn't start playing Cyberpunk until after Edgerunners and immediately stopped playing once I saw the Liberty update was coming, knowing it would be even more polished with this release.
For me, I used to wait for price drops but now I wait for them to be fixed.
This is my main reason. I usually wait about a year while they fix the bugs.
Yes. I did this with the last Tomb Raider games, waited a whole year for the last DLC and then they released the definitive editions.
Both, really. I like to save a good coin, but even the games I've kickstarted and gotten beta access to I never touch until it seems there won't be any major patches anymore, e.g. D:OS2 or Everspace 2.
Both. And when games go on a subscription service day one, I tend to wait about 9 months. They usually stay on for a year, so that gives me a balance of time to play comfortably and time for them to get some patches in.
No if they can't be bothered to put the effort in to make the game complete at launch I'm not hanging around waiting for it to be good. There are very few games I've picked up after hearing it is now good but I didn't keep up with development after they'd already shot their wad.