RainSong said:
DU getting EE will cost you 40$? You live on Mars or something?
You know, I've actually been costing broadband plans of late so let's have some fun here. Here's my situation, I currently pay $70 AUD per month for the priviledge of having 12 GB of bandwidth. If I download anything over that, I'm throttled down to
so fucking slow, I wouldn't even bother speeds (ignoring the fact that right now, it takes me about a day to download 1 GB). Now I have the 12 GB plan for a reason. Mostly because in any given month, I usually hit it with the normal stuff I do (I already cycle certain website backups every other month deliberately to avoid hitting my limit).
That plan works out to about $5.83 AUD per gigabyte. Now for argument's sake, let's say all the free Enhanced Edition stuff comes in at 5 GB (which I think would probably be a reasonably conservative estimation given the audio tracks in multiple languages, re-done graphics and not forgetting the making of DVD and other stuff like that). $5.83 * 5 GB = $29.00 AUD. So if I download the patch, my hidden cost (and yes kids, it is a hidden cost) equals about what the patch will be in store (which I said would likely be around the $40 AUD mark). Given the in-store patch includes other fun stuff and saves me 5 days of downloading (make that 10, it actually took me a week to download WOW's 2 GB patches), I'll pay the extra $10.00 (or whatever it'll be sold for) and save myself some time (and give the developer money as opposed to my ISP). Of course, if the patch is more than 5 GB (or the in-store cost is only $30 AUD), then paying for it in-store is potentially cheaper for me anyway.
So I either pay for it in my download plan or I pay for it in the store for a game I've already bought. Now I think I have a perfectly reasonable expectation that when paying the full purchase price for a game, said game will be free of issues which make me want to "blow my head off" (CD Projekt's words, not mine) and have me wait a year for the new patch which will fix said "blowing head off" issues.
I'm glad you guys are getting your "free" patch. I really am and yes, it is nice that a developer who made a lot of money out of a game is working to actually make it playable for the rest of us but I'm stuck paying here and I'm one of those people who was pissed at the loading times enough that he did uninstall it and played something else. Whatever happened to getting it right the first time?
And hey, you know what? I actually would've preferred CD Projekt made a full-blown expansion pack. Throw in the bug fixes with that so when I buy it, I update my game. Release the patch
as normal for those who don't rely on
Telstra and I'd be happy. The actual new game content in The Witcher EE tops in at 5 new quests and an estimated 2 - 5 hours of game-play (IE: Not much). The other stuff is so minor (multi-coloured peasants and "Quick, to the laboratory!" done in a different voice) that I really see it as nothing more than a patch for a faulty game.
Mareus said:
Give me 5 games where developers gave new content, fixed the game with patches and then went even further to make it even better by making new patches, then they increased graphics, voices, fixed the dialogs, made new quests, mods, etc... and offered it all for FREE? Even Troika, which we all love and worship here just made good games and left them half broken.
Ahhh... but you see. Troika's games had bugs in them which were referenced in every review and lead to poor sales. The resulting poor sales meant Troika went bust before they could really fix the bugs. The Witcher on the other hand, was a buggy product which sold quite well (around 600,000 copies I believe). It's that money which gave the developers the cash to fix the bugs.
The moral of the story? Release buggy games. See if they sell well enough to warrant a patch. If they do, re-release the same game a year later with the patch. If they don't sell well enough though? Don't worry about it. Just make something else. It's bad enough we have a market that's flooded with buggy, faulty product every year. The last thing I want to see is marketing department's getting ideas and planning more "Enhanced Editions" (read: Working version). Particularly when the fans are already falling over themselves on the official forums vowing to "buy the full version all over again". $$$
