Marvel‘s Avengers, which was released just over two weeks ago, is getting its first major patch. While future patches will be much more focused on quality-of-life issues and adding/adjusting various features, patch V.1.3.0 is all about addressing bugs and other other issues. Over 1,000 issues, to be exact.
If anyone finds that hard to believe, they’re more than welcome to take a trip to the official Square Enix site for the Avengers game. There, the Crystal Dynamics Team has whipped up a blog post that outlines issues on top of issues on top of further issues that this patch will rectify.
The team makes sure to thank the players who have already been tearing through the game, finding these issues and notifying crystal dynamics (largely through Reddit). Although none of these bugs seem to be that significant, they certainly add up to a larger problem, and it likely would’ve taken the developers a much longer time to hunt them all down without player feedback.
This is a good example of a middle ground between releasing an early access product and one that’s been painstakingly perfected. Despite the large number of bugs the game shipped with, and Crystal Dynamics’ strategy of using player feedback to find said bugs, this shipped as a complete product.
If the developers had waited until every issue had been hunted down and rectified, it would’ve pushed the release date back significantly. By doing it this way, they were able to get the game to the fans and have it polished to a considerable extent within the first few weeks. There are plenty of gamers out there who are adamantly opposed to purchasing hardware or software before the kinks are worked out. In this case, they don’t have to wait long at all.
While there are bugs and issues in various facets of the game, the large majority seem to affect combat and progression. The progression issues are easily the most worrisome, because that’s where you’ll find your game-breaking bugs. Still, despite the intimidating patch notes list, there haven’t been any widespread issues with players beating the game.
There’s an official Reddit thread for discussion about the current patch and the developer encourages players to post about any issues that still remain after installing this latest update.
It’s good to see Crystal Dynamics letting their player base take such an active role in making the game better. The free quality assurance has always been there, it’s up to developers to utilize it.