# Games that got substantially better after launch, talk some about those you experienced.



## mightymuffy (Feb 25, 2018)

Good topic, even better read!  ...In fact a bit too good a read, as there's nothing really to add, short of naming and shaming a few games... Rolling out unfinished after unfinished is kind of a two-edged sword: I like the fact we're getting games (probably) earlier as a result, and the ease that game breaking bugs can now be dealt with, but if the game is SO unfinished, as was the case with Battlefield 4 which I grabbed at launch, and it was that bad it put me off the series for life..

But yeah, my additions:
Obviously Bethesda stuff! Fallout 3, 4 and The Elder Scrolls (I originally typed 'Edler Scrolls' and almost left it, fittingly, like that!  ) - surely a months extra playtesting of these would work wonders?!
Burnout Paradise - Wow the amount of stuff that wasn't originally in this game at launch..
Breath of the Wild - Even Nintendo are at it these days..


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## blackwrensniper (Feb 25, 2018)

Terraria is the big one for me. Got it right after The Hallow was added which was a big content update and it doesn't come close to the stuff they have added/are still adding to the game. Quite possibly one of the greatest games of all time now, can't wait to see where else it goes. Beyond that pretty much every Souls game, each patch adds just a little more polish and the dlc tests you.

Another game that continues to impress is Wayward. Very frequent updates, always working to reach their vision... it's impressive how much the devs care. Gotta finish off with Subnautica, my god that game has been an experience to watch change.


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## leon315 (Feb 25, 2018)

OVERWATCH! EVEN 2 years after launch devs still keep improve/balance their heroes and they also constantly produce/create new contents to support this game, guys it's so hard to find a company nowdays that keep alive its game like their own children.

I FUKKING LOVE BLIZZARD! LONG LAIFE OVERWATCH!


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## APartOfMe (Feb 25, 2018)

*asks me to name games that got better after launch

*Proceeds to list all the games I can think of that got better after launch


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## Ryccardo (Feb 25, 2018)

None that I know of, unless you count the "expansion pack" that is Animal Crossing New Leaf 2.x (which happens to have ADDED mistranslations, especially in the new missions-for-tickets system). I also think it was moral compensation for the magically disappeared Animal Crossing U...


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## Treeko (Feb 25, 2018)

Rainbow six siege takes the cake for me, the game had a lousy launch and mediocre reviews, made one of the best comebacks ever, its only getting better and better with each update.


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## Deleted User (Feb 25, 2018)

I heard from a friend that_ No Man's Sky _is actually pretty decent these days, with most of the bugs fixed and issues regarding the empty worlds being taken care of.  I haven't played the game at all, so I can't really give my own opinion on this, however.

In addition, my friend also noted how _No Man's Sky_, despite all the various improvements, additions, and fixes that were made to the game, is still considered a laughing stock by the general gaming public, making the game a bit of a cautionary tale regarding strong launches.  Gaming consoles can have relatively weak launches, yet are able to recover and become strong platforms (the 3DS is generally considered to be an example of this), yet games themselves are less fortunate, as people are more than willing to move on to the next big game without even thinking to look back.


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## eriol33 (Feb 25, 2018)

B_E_P_I_S_M_A_N said:


> I heard from a friend that_ No Man's Sky _is actually pretty decent these days, with most of the bugs fixed and issues regarding the empty worlds being taken care of.  I haven't played the game at all, so I can't really give my own opinion on this, however.
> 
> In addition, my friend also noted how _No Man's Sky_, despite all the various improvements, additions, and fixes that were made to the game, is still considered a laughing stock by the general gaming public, making the game a bit of a cautionary tale regarding strong launches.  Gaming consoles can have relatively weak launches, yet are able to recover and become strong platforms (the 3DS is generally considered to be an example of this), yet games themselves are less fortunate, as people are more than willing to move on to the next big game without even thinking to look back.


I have been following news about no man's sky lately and I am actually still quite curious. has anyone on this board played this? I have never played it before .


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## FateForWindows (Feb 25, 2018)

No Man's Sky for sure. It's been getting a lot of amazing updates lately and I'd consider it to be a good game. They've even added things that people had expected the game to have but never ended up having in the first place.


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## smileyhead (Feb 25, 2018)

Ryccardo said:


> I also think it was moral compensation for the magically disappeared Animal Crossing U...


There was an Animal Crossing game in development for the Wii U? 
(Well, apart from Amiibo Festival...)


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## FAST6191 (Feb 25, 2018)

mightymuffy said:


> Good topic, even better read!  ...In fact a bit too good a read, as there's nothing really to add, short of naming and shaming a few games...





epickid37 said:


> *asks me to name games that got better after launch
> 
> *Proceeds to list all the games I can think of that got better after launch



I do sometimes pause for a moment when making threads like this as I have before run into the "asked and answered" issue.

Anyway it was less name some and more "talk about" -- lists are easy which is why there are a billion websites using it as a format. In the case of Battlefield 4 I knew it was a thing, another in the long line of modern feel shooting games (this following similar trends for futuristic and world war 2) and promptly went back to ignoring it. It was a £10 on PSN affair that my brother got for his PS4 as a gift one day (him and his friends were seeking some multiplayer action) that saw me play it later on.
If you were there for the updates as they happened then your experience might be somewhat different to mine.

Similarly I once saw


Were I designing a game that would mean a lot to me, from the perspective of my head when playing games it means nothing (and also a reason I have serious misgivings with that guy's approach to the world). Similarly I much prefer hardcore mode on the PS4 in European servers, a small enough "community" that something like what is described for some of them should happen but does not.



B_E_P_I_S_M_A_N said:


> is still considered a laughing stock by the general gaming public, making the game a bit of a cautionary tale regarding strong launches.  Gaming consoles can have relatively weak launches, yet are able to recover and become strong platforms (the 3DS is generally considered to be an example of this), yet games themselves are less fortunate, as people are more than willing to move on to the next big game without even thinking to look back.



I don't know if I would go there for the 3ds.

Anyway I don't know if No Man's Sky is the best example of this. Small indy game dev attempts overly ambitious project and gets massive cash injection later in the day, said injection however effectively forcing a release date. Many called the resulting effects at the time. Going further we need look no further for overly ambitious stuff than those pretenders to World of Warcraft's throne.
A bit less considered is stuff like when smaller devs make games to go up against Call of Duty and Battlefield at their own game -- for all the ways they might "ruin" that year's offering their collective stationary cupboards probably have a higher budget than some of those that thought to go up against them.

That is not really what I wanted to say there though. Consoles can do the turnaround thing for obvious reasons, might we then be entering a time when the software can as well? An aspect I had not considered as part of this might also be would the rise of downloading games (then not having to keep stock on shelves wherever games are sold) and devs maybe moving away from the "the first month is the only month" model many had used prior to then have impacted this?


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## WiiUBricker (Feb 25, 2018)

SAO: HR on PS Vita. It was a slide show fest at launch. Playable after a few updates.


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## Taleweaver (Feb 25, 2018)

Hard to say. Nowadays I hardly ever buy stuff at release date anymore. I've got a backlog to maintain, and by the time I get a game it has already lowered in price and at the very least has some bugs fixed. But here are a few I recall:

-UT3: like its predecessors, quite some extra maps were released. Unfortunately, UT3 had a HORRIBLE user interface at the start. And while you wouldn't think that matters much for an FPS, it just illustrates how horrible it was. Still...the "black edition" made it better, but I had moved on to other games by that time.

-UT2004: strictly speaking, this was an update to UT2003, but though it contained all its maps, it more than doubled them. But this game in itself got quite some officially made map packs with some gems among them. Onslaught was its main casual part of the game, and it got 3 new vehicles that blended really well with the other maps. It also brought in some quality maps among all other gametypes as well. Finally, there were some needed tweaks to onslaught vehicles (though the manta was still overpowered after that).


...and a few I want to add under the "maybe/probably" category:

-starcraft 2: wings of liberty. I'm not sure if I'm illegible to mention this, as it wasn't unbalanced or broken to _me_. I mean...I was a casual protoss player. But for the first months, zerg was seriously underpowered compared to the other races. I watched a lot of online videos at that time, and it really stood out that there were hardly any matches with zerg. As blizzard was blizzard, they slowly but steadily upgraded, fixed, patched and so on for literally YEARS (I still get patches for legacy of the void). But I'm not professional enough to really notice a difference in whatever it is they're doing.

-anno 2070: again...I can't really say, as I bought this years after release date. The steam reviews REALLY piss on this game for using uplay (which is ironic, as steam itself is also an extra layer on top of games). I can't but assume that uplay got introduced somewhere during its life cycle and horribly messed up player interactions. In any case, I had no problems playing this game, so it must've gotten fixed in the end. Of course, whether the inclusion was for good or for worse compared to the release state, I cannot say.

-no man's sky: it's been mentioned a couple times (like in the OP itself), so I can't just repeat it: that has gotten quite some extra free bonus content over time. There are quite some youtube vids out showcasing the improvements (and they're substantial). Still haven't played the game itself, though.

EDIT: I knew I forgot an important one: Duke nukem 3D. It originally had 3 episodes, but they later added a fourth one...and not that long ago also a fifth one, though I'm not sure if that's still free of charge to original owners.


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## Silverthorn (Feb 25, 2018)

My usual go-to example for games that had terrible launch but got better is Batman: Arkham Knight.
The PC release was so bad both bug and performance wise they pulled it from Steam. 
It's been back for awhile and is a pretty good game (some Batmobile annoyances aside), but I'm not sure the game will ever get rid of that initial stigma.


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## Ryccardo (Feb 25, 2018)

smileyhead said:


> There was an Animal Crossing game in development for the Wii U?
> (Well, apart from Amiibo Festival...)


Yep, it was shown at, iirc, E3 2013


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## RedoLane (Feb 25, 2018)

Enter the Gungeon.
I mean, it was pretty good at launch, but after tons of updates, the arsenal became MASSIVE, there's more stuff to find, and replay value is more worth it.
I'm not sure if Dodge Roll are planning to release more updates, but everything they released for it until now never disappointed me.
It's been out since April 2016 and I still play the heck out of it!


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## AmandaRose (Feb 25, 2018)

The best example of this for me would be Final Fantasy 14 the game was so bad that they scrapped it after a year or so and made a totally new game that turned out to be pretty damb awesome.


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## Lukerz (Feb 25, 2018)

I would say ARMS pops out for me. It was realised under splatoon 2's shadow but has grown into my favorite switch game. Heck, right now the ARMS top 8 is going on at Winter Brawl.


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## Jayro (Feb 25, 2018)

Doom for Switch is much better now than at launch. Audio glitches we're fixed, many laggy choke points we're fixed, and motion aiming is an amazing addition.


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## Qtis (Feb 25, 2018)

AC Unity. The game's launch version was horrible, but they fixed most if not all of the issues in the following patches. I played the game with full graphics settings and had only a few days, which happened only when playing via the steam link (no crashes during native PC play). Sadly the game itself was not up to par with Black flag or AC2.

Ironically I could say original RuneScape, which evolved a lot during the years I played it. Sadly my account got hacked and I lost most of my items and interest to play the game. Not to mention better games popped up and most of my friends also migrated to other games and platforms


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## AkikoKumagara (Feb 25, 2018)

Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 (Steam version)

Game was better optimized after a few months to lower hardware requirements.
Character roster was expanded via DLC and expansions.
Story mode was expanded via expansion.
Pre-order bonuses (A few bonus characters and a costume for another) were made available to everyone via expansion.
Stages were added post-release via expansion.
60FPS lock (as opposed to original 30FPS lock) was added as an option for the first time in the series post-release.
Multiple anti-aliasing modes were added post-release.

The game honestly barely resembles what it was upon release, and it wasn't even bad then. It's improved leaps and bounds and is often on sale for cheap now.
I don't play a ton of triple A titles, so this is one of the few games I can think of that changed to this degree and evolved as I played it.


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## brunocar (Feb 25, 2018)

Rainbow Six Siege, when the game came out it was a mess, some characters like tachanka were so bad they literally could end up making things worst for your team, but it has improved so much.

i still think it shouldnt be considered a mainline R6 game, but as a sort of counter strike 2, its one of the best multiplayer games atm


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## shaunj66 (Feb 25, 2018)

I remember Uncharted 3 on launch had severely broken aiming that wouldn't even let you move your reticle in a circular motion - it would move at right angles which severely hampered aiming and made the shooting a huge step back from Uncharted 2.

The issue blew up online and basically twisted Naughty Dog's arm to fixing it and while it did improve a lot after a few patches, in my opinion the accuracy never quite matched the precision you could find in Uncharted 2 on PS3.

Thankfully the issue is completely moot on the superior PS4 remasters of the trilogy which are the preferred way to play the games IMO.


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## andeers (Feb 25, 2018)

Mario Maker


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## CeeDee (Feb 25, 2018)

Nintendo's been doing this well. 
MK8 on Wii U had its great post launch DLC, for a rather cheap price too. 
Smash Bros. had some cool DLC additions, albeit with some odd roster choices.
Splatoon, Mario Maker for Wii U, and ARMS had free post launch content, and Splatoon 2 and Mario Odyssey are looking to have more to offer as well.

It's rather nice so far!


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## Idaho (Feb 25, 2018)

Diablo III is the best example I can give for this, the game that we got nowadays has nothing in common with the game that we got on release, Blizzard really listened to the players while also going in their own new direction for the game that made it really great, it began with patching the original game and modifying the gameplay and with the addition of the paragon system, then they revamped the paragon system and released the extension and ever since the extension is out they're releasing more content that fits the new gameplay paradigm they created and that the player like...


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## fatsquirrel (Feb 25, 2018)

I must mention Splatoon 2. So much new stuff getting added after release. They really love this game and keep updating and improving almost on monthly basis


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## ov3rkill (Feb 25, 2018)

Diablo III and The Division. Those games just went from worse to better.


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## Foxi4 (Feb 25, 2018)

I will sound like a broken record here, but Rainbow Six: Siege is a true phoenix back from the ashes story to me. The game was panned at launch, but over time it evolved into one of the best, if not *the* best competitive shooter on the planet. I returned to it after a long hiatus and the sheer amount of content players get for free in addition to the base game is off the charts. Every new Operation brings something interesting to the table, I just can't get enough of it now.


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## FateForWindows (Feb 26, 2018)

Sonic Boom is another example. A patch came out that fixed a lot of problems plus made some graphical improvements, but I'd say the game still sucks.


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## Xabring (Feb 26, 2018)

personally I have experienced No man's sky and 20XX
No man's sky got dull at first but then it became more cool since now you can call any planet your home and roll around in a in planet vehicle to appreciate the (buggy) Creatures that each planet has.
Then there's 20XX but I don't know if early access count, but BOY that game changed from when I first played it to it's current state. First there where boss rants, then there aren't, then there are the (at last) final levels after you beat all other bosses and well...even after officially releasing, it stills get improvements.


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## gameboy (Feb 26, 2018)

Zelda BotW, Splatoon, Splatoon 2, Smash Bros 3ds/Wiiu, Mariokart 8, Assassins Creed Unity was broken on release same with Skyrim for ps3 so those qualify and major updates lol

The xbox1 has surpassed the ps4 IMO, for console capabilities as an entertainment unit not a graphics thing

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

I remember there was a Call of Duty for ps3 that kept getting better and better then when they revealed the one after it they also revealed the plan had the schedule for its future along with the prices of the dlc and Call of Duty has just been a money grab since


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## KingBlank (Feb 26, 2018)

For me, Terraria and Path of Exile are the big ones.
It feels like the content in Terraria has easily over doubled since launch.
Path of Exile most notably added 6 new acts ( to the original 4 ) in a single patch, but that is one of many huge updates that this free game has received.
https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Version_3.0.0

And I just want to call out the people saying Diablo 3 is a good example... updates to Path of Exile completely overshadow even the paid expansions for D3.
But D3 Did do one huge and awesome patch that removed the game breaking auction house.


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## Taleweaver (Feb 26, 2018)

CeeDee said:


> Nintendo's been doing this well.
> MK8 on Wii U had its great post launch DLC, for a rather cheap price too.
> Smash Bros. had some cool DLC additions, albeit with some odd roster choices.
> Splatoon, Mario Maker for Wii U, and ARMS had free post launch content, and Splatoon 2 and Mario Odyssey are looking to have more to offer as well.
> ...


Erm...no offence, but I don't think you've understood the intentions of this thread.  I'm sure we can all name a long list of games that had great (if not fantastic) DLC, expansions and/or large content updates for games with a monthly subscription fee. In fact, quite some games are scolded for that very reason: if the paid extra's are too good quality in relation to the base game, then it's assumed that the base game is meant as a cash grab or to sucker you into paying more than intended.

The rolling model @FAST6191 is talking about, is more of a "what free extras are added to the base game after release?" model. It's a model where developers add free content in the hopes of upping their reputation, apologizing for sub-par releases and a hope to keep their playerbase from fleeing to the next game on the horizon. It's not always sustainable (after all, your programmers won't work for free), but this thread aims to collect examples of this practice.


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## AzerothArg (Feb 26, 2018)

Besides Battlefield 4, only Rainbow Six Siege comes to mind


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## Xabring (Feb 26, 2018)

I can cite another example: Warframe.

While I have not personally knew about it's existence in 2013, I have heard only good things about Warframe, to the point that it's one of the most played games on steam daily.

I started it to play on 2018 and I can say it's awesome!
A free play 3rd person shooter with RPG elements and Diablo-like levels that it feels good to play with.
It started as a sub-par title, but with time, the developers went all in with the game.


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## UltraHurricane (Feb 27, 2018)

definitely Tom Clancy's The Division. thou it was more of a roller coaster of quality with a pretty rough launch, but was marginally good for awhile but then REALLY sucked with botched updates and shoe-horned lootbox mechanics, and then it pulled an FFXIV and made a ton of improvements that brought me and my friends back into the game

speaking of FFXIV, i have to say that's probably the prime example of a game that's gone up most in quality from launch, and ohohohoh boy... did we all remember what that was like at launch


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## codezer0 (Mar 2, 2018)

If you need a case in point to a game that got better after launch? Kotor 2.

Started out incomplete, buggy, and ill supported compared to the first kotor on PC. That said, some very dedicated fans kept working on it, at it, to find and assemble the missing content accordingly. Most recently the update for it on steam not only patches it to work on modern operating systems, it also enables it to support the workshop to automatically handle mods and the like.

What was maybe a functional 20hour slog becomes a 40+ hour masterpiece of a galaxy you can get lost in. On record I've put in nearly 300 hours that steam itself has logged, not counting the extras with the original CDROM release i own. And awkwardly, finding myself wanting to hunt down the copies for original xbox now that i own a modded unit to see if i can implement at least some of these mods into theit respective games.


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