Quality: Not a Patch on the Old Days?

How many of you out there have played a game with a glitch? Show of hands.
...
Okay. Those of you who raised your hands, please leave the internet. Why would you even do that? You have to know I can't see them. I think it's just better that we cull you from the herd while we still can.
To everyone else, I'm going to guess that-- Hey, what are you doing? No, not the sad face!

Tch. Fine. You can stay.

Where was I? Ah, yes.
I'm going to guess that it hasn't been all that long since you encountered your last glitch. Were you wandering the desert of New Vegas when you suddenly fell through the world? Perhaps you had been cruising the galaxy in Mass Effect 2 for about 30 hours when your save file got corrupted. Maybe an NPC refused to acknowledge that you were dangling the Bloodgrass she wanted in front of her, and so had to roam Cyrodil (minus 1 NPC) as a vampire, permanently unable to interact with most "normal" people. Or you may just be a member of the CoD Glitch of the Month Club. This month it's free kills from attacking corpses. Yay!

Glitches know no boundary. They can hit any game in countless ways. Some can be dealt with by clever means on the part of the player. Others will put an end to your adventures, leaving you with nothing but the dull glow of the cursor sitting on the New Game option.
But what's this? Riding in on the wave of the future, Online Gaming, it's *dramatic pause*

Patch Man!

With this new hero in town all the old frustrating glitches are a thing of the past! In the event a nefarious bug infiltrates your machine, wrecking your saves and putting your digital damsels in distress, you can rest easy knowing that Patch Man will soon be there! Just raise up a cry to the afflicted game's developers and they will chant a mystical code that rolls out their champion to rewrite all wrongs. Yes, life sure is great now that no one's seen a glitch in years...

Oh, wait a second. All those examples up there near the top are from pretty recent titles. What terrible fate has befallen our hero? Is Ash from the Evil Dead movies the one they have chanting the code?

Okay, so maybe I didn't pronounce every single syllable...

No, I'm afraid the reality is much worse. Turns out that instead of using the option to patch a game after release as a way to correct oversights, many companies are using it as an excuse to release unfinished or untested work. Not all of them, of course, but too many.

Let's look back to the old days for a moment. Many games back then had glitches, but how many were the kind that could really take the fun out of a game? You could be pretty certain that if a glitch made it's way into the final product it would be either very minor like the odd clipping issue, or even entertaining like the ungodly amount of things you can do in Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

The point is that if a game came out back then you could be certain it's company's Quality Assurance team had put it through the wringer with beta testing, feedback groups, and hours upon hours of play testing. That's not how it is anymore.

So, who's to blame? Well, everyone really. The developers for making the game wrong to begin with. The publishers for not giving devs the time they needed to make things right, and instead rushing title after title out the door. And lastly, all of us for supporting this type of business model by constantly buying these titles one after another. After all, why would Activision waste time beta testing Black Ops when they can just move on to Modern Warfare 3 in a year's time and collect another $650 million a week after launch?

Corporate greed and our own willingness to jump on the next big thing are the heart of our problems, my friends. If we can conquer our own tendency to head toward the cliff like lemmings whenever a launch day is set, then we can send a message to the publishers that just want the games out as fast as possible. They won't listen to angry rants or sensible criticism. Only the siren's song of Ben Franklin gets their attention.

You know you want me.

Do keep in mind that not every company is like this though. For example, Media Molecule delayed the release of LittleBigPlanet 2 to make sure it was done, even though they said they could have just patched it. Way to go, guys. Quality and customer satisfaction before quick profit. The ball is in our court now. Let's do our best to give support to the companies who care.

Black Ops: Thoughts on the Prestige System

Well, it's the future now. 2011. Still no flying car. Sure, swinging from vine to vine is okay for local travel. But what about when you want to visit places outside the jungle? What's a monkey to do? Oh, well. At least there are some new things. You're looking at one of them.
Hello and welcome to the first ever blog post from the Sixth Nation of Gamers. What's the purpose of this blog, you ask? Well, it's mainly to give you some opinions on various aspects of games and gaming. Because if we all know one thing, it's that the internet is sorely lacking in opinions. Other than that, I'll be posting various reviews for games I play, as well as anything informative or amusing I happen across in my online wanderings. I've already got a bit of a backlog on reviews for games which you can find here.
I decided to open with a few thoughts about a popular game these days, Call of Duty: Black Ops. Now, I know what you're thinking. "This is just going to be either another list of complaints and whining, or someone telling everyone to stop complaining. If I wanted that, I'd visit the official forums." Well, you're wrong. Mostly.

Let me start by saying, I've played a good bit so far and enjoyed it for the most part. I could babble on complaining about the host migrations, the hit detection issues, trouble with the party system, and other technical problems that can get in the way of the fun, but ultimately I'd just have to admit there's a reason I've put more than 80 hours into it so far.
It's fun.
Yes, I hope these issues get resolved, but that's not what I'm talking about today. No, today's discussion is about the Prestige feature.

God no, not that terrible electro-clone movie. *shudders*

I mean the option to reset to level 1 once you complete level 50. I've done it myself and intend to do it several more times. I probably would have shelved the game by now without this feature. It's a great way to keep the game fresh. It makes me use guns I would otherwise ignore. Grant you, I still usually make my way back to my trusty AK47 because it fits so well with my play style. Still, I wouldn't have even touched LMGs or sniper rifles if I hadn't had my assault rifle security blanket taken away. I would have missed out on trying to learn new ways to play.
So, is there something I take issue with? Well, here's a chart straight from the CoD Wiki:

Prestige Level Unlock
Prestige 1 Prestige Leaderboard, Prestige Team Deathmatch, Custom Class 6, New Emblem, New Background
Prestige 2 New Emblem, New Background
Prestige 3 Custom Class 7, New Emblem, New Background
Prestige 4 New Emblem, New Background
Prestige 5 Custom Class 8, New Emblem, New Background
Prestige 6 New Emblem, New Background
Prestige 7 Custom Class 9, New Emblem, New Background
Prestige 8 New Emblem, New Background
Prestige 9 Custom Class 10, New Emblem, New Background
Prestige 10 New Emblem, New Background, Prestige Hardcore
Prestige 11 Face Paints, New Emblem, New Background
Prestige 12 New Emblem, New Background
Prestige 13 Clan Tag Colors, New Emblem, New Background
Prestige 14 Golden Camouflage, New Emblem, New Background
Prestige 15 Prestige Pure, New Emblem, New Background

You get new emblems and backgrounds each time, other than that you have to prestige 10 times to get anything other than an additional custom class out of it. Now, I'm not exactly the most competitive player, so maybe there's some reason to keep 9 additional classes on hand that I'm unaware of. I only keep two set up myself. One for Run & Gun and one for full on Anti-Air. Now, I can fully understand wanting to keep an extra class for large and small maps specifically, or to just be able to change up what your enemy has to deal with. Even then, how many do you really need? Five or six? So, why do we get ten? They may not be much, but I'd really rather have some of the other stuff earlier, like clan tag colors, or face paint. And really, how many people are going to get to 15 and play Prestige Pure? How hard would it be to actually find a game on there? I'd expect anyone who reaches that level to spend quite a long time searching. And when they did get a game, what are the odds that they'll get it with an acceptable amount of lag?

It occurred to me that the devs already have a solution to this problem. It just isn't applied to this aspect. Like with weapons and perks, why not let the player choose what they unlock? Leave the Emblems and backgrounds be, but let us decide whether or not we want another class or an additional camo option? In my humble opinion, I think giving each person a choice in this matter would make the most players happy. You see, the hardcore players will still fight their way up to prestige 15 no matter what's there, and they still get their emblem to show off. The casuals might only prestige once or twice, but can snag the stuff that makes them happy. You leave an overall positive impression on everyone.

Well, that's it for this fist look at the View from the Treetops. Thanks for reading, and let us know what you think in the comments.