NIS America Outlines The Patch Plans For Ys VIII

Nice to see they are addressing the early complaints but those things should have been ironed out before the release.

This is the pathetic result of the gaming world of today !
I blame not only devs and publishers doing that, I blame first the gamers...

Yeah, the gamers because they are "the WHY" this happen.
The young generation of gamers is totally OK with DLCs, with patches which patch itself a previous patch and blablabla...

Result : games are crappier than ever, totally unfinished, full of bugs etc...

It's an utopia but I dream of a day where players will realize how better it was some decades ago. NO DLCs, NO LOOTBOX, NO PATCH, JUST A GAME COMPLETE AND FINISH !

PS : including the japanese voices after the release of the game is just a disgrace for a game like Ys... :/

PS2 : I'll get it on PS4 then, 30 fps against 60, 60 wins espacially when the price is divided by 2...

Easy, if you still want to buy this game...

Buy it a month from launch not at launch.
Once all the patches are live then buy it.
I know I will.

I want this game but I'll wait to get it. Not because of the patches but because of the games coming out soon, Mario Tennis and Crash Bandicoot. It looks so cool and a good way to pass time.

Good to hear. I'm glad NISA addressed these issues quickly and transparently. Looking forward to playing it on launch day!

From what I've seen of the game I'm most likely not picking it up. This just adds fuel to the fire for me. I'm tired of psvita ported ps4 and switch games. I'll stick to games like Xenoblade 2 to get my jrpg fill until they actually start coming out with something impressive in the rpg category again.

Sweet. I shall pick this up in August.

@Cobalt

How are gamers to blame, exactly? People were EXTREMELY vocal about their disdain for lootboxes, and companies have acknowledged the backlash and seem to be shying away from that kind of malpractice. I'm not excusing what's happening with Ys, as it does seem quite lazy on the developers/publishers' fault. However, I think patches are ultimately a good thing. If not for them, the developers wouldn't be able to respond to complaints and address these issues. There's a number of buggy and broken games from the 80's-90's that ultimately could've been saved from shovelware status if post-launch updates were available at the time.

There's an infinite number of variables that could result in a game-breaking glitch for any title, and sometimes one may slip under the radar even with thorough debug testing. Nintendo's first-party titles are almost always at the pinnacle of quality, but even the likes of Skyward Sword and Tropical Freeze needed patches to rectify glitches that haulted game progress. Obviously those kinds of patches are different from a developer lazily leaving the translated text unpolished. Even so, this sort of thing happened all the time in the old days of gaming (infamous examples: "CONGRATURATION!!" "A winner is you!") But at least now, things like that can be fixed instead of tarnishing a game forever.

As far as DLC goes, I and many others see nothing wrong with it, so long as the base game has a substantial amount of content already. I'll readily admit it kills me when DLC is announced before a game even releases; I think it should be solely an after thought after developing the main game. Mario Kart 8 is a game that had phenomenal DLC that increased the amount of content by almost 1/3 and at an extremely reasonable price. If gamers like me are responsible for those kinds of DLC, I will happily accept that fault.

Again, I'm not excusing what's going on with this game. I'm glad the developers are working on the issue, but it really shouldn't have been an issue in the first place, and I'm just as ticked as you. I just feel like you may be over-generalizing a little in saying all downloadable content and software updates are bad and that the gaming community as a whole is to blame for lazy developers, as I feel like both those statements are simply untrue. I can respect your opinion and I'm not saying there aren't those who will happily buy every lootbox offered to them, but I think that's a small minority in the grand scheme of things. I hope this doesn't sound overly critical toward your original post; this is just how I feel on the matter, but we each have our own opinions. At the end of the day, we're all just here for the love of gaming!

@JaxonH @Agramonte Well, there it is.

I thought they already ironed out any translation issues from last year's mishap? XSEED shouldn't have let this go.

It's funny how they said the new localization patch would be on the Switch version Day 1.

Then the game releases and it's not like that.

Ah well, I still pre-ordered so I won't be losing too much sleep. I'll just wait for the first patch by playing Mario Tennis Aces (which is in one hour 30 minutes, hype!!!!)

I'm excited for this game, been listening to some of the music, it's pretty good

I alway find it hilarious when people act like companies releasing broken games hasn't been happening since the original Atari. At least they usually get fixed now.

Glad to see that they have a plan already in place and they are transparent with the consumer. It really outlines for the customer when they can expect it to be good enough to purchase. It’s much better than saying “we’ll patch it...eventually” and gamers are left in the dark.

@rjejr 🤣Time to go into a holding pattern - They been "fixing" the PC version for 2 months now with patches. This smells like Black Friday at this point. PS4 Used $80 on amazon and new $145.

@Not_Soos

WAW, that's a freaking well done answer !

I understand totally what you explain above but my point was more about the causes and results.

Yes we had buggy games too in the past BUT because of the non-possibility to rework them, companies (the serious one) were more focused on their titles. I mean, it's like now, they don't care. Like they know they can patch as much as they want so why losing time to debug properly ?

In the case of Ys, why they don't delay the release date for some weeks and give a clean version to the players ? Is it abnormal to think like that these days ?

Another point, do you think those patches will be available in 10 years still ?
So what, if I want to play my games in a decade ahead but I have to buy a new console because the one that I had is broken for example.
I cannot experience my games like I did in the past ?
That's a shame if you want my advice...

@Agramonte

Better to live in Europe then ! 29.99€

https://www.dealsdugamer.fr/ys-viii-lacrimosa-of-dana/

@Cobalt Oh nice!... well the way we going $29 Euros will be like $80 dollar soon 😉

Looks like only Amazon because they ran out - Best buy still at $59US

Transparency is a good thing! But as I wanted to play in Japanese voice, I'll have to wait for the patches.

I've never played any Ys game, but this looks fun and I have it pre-ordered.

@Cobalt

Haha, thank you! I try to be as thorough as possible when I give a rebuttal to people's comments, but I'm always worried I'll come across as rude, so I hardly do it. It's so easy to miscommunicate information online, and as someone who frequently reads the comments of NL and YouTube and the like, I know how sensitive some users can be when they have a misunderstanding. I'm glad you weren't offended, lol.

Anyways, back to what you were saying, I think it's important to note that in the age of HD graphics, game development surely requires more time and resources than ever before. Bigger file sizes also mean for much lengthier experiences per game, as well as more code to sift through when looking for bugs.

Taking that into account, I think it's at least somewhat understandable why games might not get the same quality assurance at launch as they used to. Melee almost got delayed for bugs until the great Iwata intervened, but imagine how much more difficult it would be to debug Smash Ultimate, with approximately 3 times the characters, an unearthly amount of stages, online functionality, wireless cross-play and 8-player Smash, all HD assets, etc.! (Granted, Nintendo are the kings of polished games, so maybe this isn't the best example.)

I should note I'm almost exclusively a Nintendo gamer, so I don't really see firsthand too many instances of developers leaving their games ridden with bugs that need post-release updates. While I haven't played them, I'm certainly not taking up for the likes of WWE 2k18, which is fundamentally a broken and unplayable game that frankly shouldn't have been put on the market in its abysmal state, based on what I've read about it.

I think you can rest assured that decisions like that generate a lot of negative press and have no doubt hurt the game's sales on the Switch, even in the wake of subsequent patches. But instead of putting out a good Switch port this year in response to overwhelmingly poor reception, it looks like they're completely skipping over the Switch this year. This is a great example of how I don't think it's consumers to blame, but rather the developers, contrary to your original post.

I completely agree with you that Ys VIII should have absolutely been delayed at least a month to iron out these kinks. (Unless perhaps Nintendo was pushing the developers to get this game out to fill up their third-party lineup for the summer after Dark Souls' delay or something.) I think it's a bit inexcusable on their part.

As far as the last point you make, that's a very interesting and valid concern I've never really thought much about. Personally, I wish for a future where discs and cartridges have extra memory, so updates and DLC can be installed directly into the game itself and not on the console. That way, if you purchased a used copy of the game somewhere 10 years after its release, surely one of the previous owners would have installed the updates.

Also, as it currently stands, if you purchase DLC for a game and then sell your copy, you still have that DLC stuck on your system with no way to play it and the buyer wouldn't have access to it. With my idea, you could hypothetically sell your used games at a higher price if there's a buyer who wants to have the DLC, and you both profit off the exchange. As it stands, though, there really isn't a workaround for this, which is a real shame. Again, that's an excellent point, though!

(Goodness, I type far too much...)

I really like how they’re handling this
Go NIS America!!

And thats my preorder cancelled, why buy it now if it isn't even completed! I'll wait till then.

Just when I thought I couldn't be more excited about this game. I applaude them for thier efforts.
Also...some of you people need to add a table of contents to your novel-length comments. There have been broken, buggy games on the market since the dawn of video games. RELAX!

Wait, since when was this to come out next week? I thought it was this week and already pretty excited about it.

@Agramonte '$29 euros'

So sad.

It’s sad how the average gamer has no clue about development nowadays and rushes to conclusions... day one patches often aren’t there simply because they didn’t care to release a working product, didn’t test it enough, or knew about the issues in development yet released it anyways. They’re there because of HOW development works. After a game is finished and playtested in multiple phases, it has to be submitted to the rating boards (ESRB in America). From that moment nothing that will be on the disc can be altered for legal purposes. ESRB (or other boards depending on region) reviews the game extensively to produce a rating. After that (and possibly also submitted it to the platform companies, such as Nintendo, to get their approval, that can vary depending on platform), they then send the finished product to the producer... who handles actual production. The game is mass produced and shipped to stores so the stores will have it ready for the street date. This entire process (from the moment they send it to the ratings board until release) can take months and, to make alterations, it has to be started over which not only delays the launch, it can be pricey especially if production started (which once again is not an instantaneous process).
Now games are incredibly complex, millions of lines of code is an understatement, and that’s not getting into models, textures, audio, etc... each generation they get exponentially larger, and this means exponentially more complex. Even after lengthy debugging and testing, games on primitive consoles had bugs (as we continue to find them to this day). Now multiply this as things get more complex... it’s near impossible to find all the bugs, and the fact remains that no matter how many testers you have, they’re a sliver of the number of actual players you’ll have so bugs the testers could never find will inevitably be found... and rather quickly given how large the audiences for these games are.
So back to the developers. They just sent their game into ESRB. They could relax now that they’re done with the stress of crunch time, they could start a new product... or they could focus on the game that isn’t even out yet and try to see if the testers missed something (they did, it’s impossible not to). They have months to dig for bugs now... lo and behold, they find them, they tried their hardest but that wasn’t good enough. Do they stop production, update the game file, and notify ESRB who has to reevaluate the updated file to make sure a naughty dev didn’t sneak in something that would change the rating? That’ll delay the game (upsetting players) and cost a lot more money. Do they ignore it? Yeah, players REALLY don’t like buggy games nowadays, they’ve actually become less tolerant over time BECAUSE they can be fixed later. The smartest thing to do is fix the issues now so the players will have less bugs to deal with from the start, and the only option to fix the copies that have already been reviewed by ESRB and are in production is to patch it. THIS is primarily why day 1 patches exist. Unfortunately it’s a lose-lose because people get upset over day 1 patches.
The games back in the day before patches existed? They are plenty buggy, the only reason newer games are buggier is because they’re exponentially more complex. More code and assets are more areas things can go wrong and it’s not always easy to find an error when it involves doing something in a very particular manner (and looking at the code itself won’t tell you much, you could even know what the problem is but finding it in the sea of text is a nightmare because while it breaks at file 2,006 on line 554, that’s because that line references file 1,602, so it can be anywhere in the file, but that file references another 105 files so it could be in one of those... and so on). Patches are a godsend because things caught too late can be fixed.

Note: this doesn’t excuse issues like the recent Tennis game that got pushed out that was a broken mess. Some developers DO release crap, that’s always been true even since the Atari days. But companies like this who actually tell players what they found that needs fixing and when they’re doing it... that should be applauded, plenty of companies just sit back and ignore the bugs and churn out DLC instead of fixing crap. Good on NIS America!

@feder After Xenoblade Chronicles 2 it's hard to like another jrpg.

XC2 is one of the best games I have played in a long time. Especially the story is so amazingly done, with incredible voice acting! I am unable to put the game down at the moment and can't wait for the upcoming story DLC.

The only other story that comes close, is the Heavensward expansion in FFXIV. That was amazing too.

@ShadJV

PS4 (oct-2017)
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/publisher-apologizes-for-bad-localization-in-ys-vi/1100-6453953/

PC (april-2018)
https://www.destructoid.com/nis-america-has-issued-a-statement-on-ys-viii-s-poor-pc-port-498973.phtml

Switch (Jun 2018)
https://www.usgamer.net/articles/nisa-ys-8-switch-localization-patches-launch-details

I’m a big Y’s fan going back to the TG16 days, so I will definitely be picking this up in the future. Just got a bunch of the older titles on steam dirt cheap though, so I’ll be playing through those for now.

I hate how NISA treats a lot of the games they release. Usually got some major problems leading to game ending crashes.

Ar Tonelica 2 was one I'll never forgot, untranslated text, a hard crash at a boss fight that someone from the public actually managed to fix.

This didn't start today with NISA, this goes all the way back to PS2 generation games and that's not even counting how badly they translate all the games they've handled.

Wish they didn't take this from XSeed as they show so much more care and love for Ys.

Should have been fixed before release. Especially as this is a port of a game. Oh well, no sale from me.

Better wait to play it a little bit then, but it's really good to hear they have listened!

Too many games are released now requiring quick patches, but things weren't perfect back in the day. I have games stretching back to the Master System that could REALLY have used a few post-release patches. Before online patches games weren't perfect, they just stayed in whatever semi-broken state they launched in forever.

I agree that far fewer games were released in a state like NBA 2K18 on Switch, but there were still a multitude of small fixes that would have improved them. And games are obviously far more complicated now than they were back in the day.

This one irks me a bit though as the game has been out on Vita and PS4 for ages so the Switch version should have been near perfect at launch.

This game is $40 dollars on Vita. 3 RPGs are coming out all back too back on Switch in the coming month. I love this series and will put it on my wishlist until I finish the others. Maybe the price will reduce, I know one thing. I have my games for the summer.

"with things like text issues and poor translation breaking the immersion."

Wait, so they didn't even include the already released patches in the base Switch version? NISA always finds new ways to show off their incompetence it seems.

@ShadJV I couldn't have put it better myself.
I think that most people who complain about day one patches are not aware of how long and costly the release process actually is, particularly when the release involves physical media.

@Galenmereth As a developer, surely you're also aware that porting a complete product to a different system involves changes that may both introduce new bugs and/or cause unexpected behavior in the existing "stable" portions of the code.
Which also hints at one of the reasons why Nintendo games are usually less buggy on release: They only produce games for one console at a time (or at most, two of them). And its their own console, which they know inside out. And both the development and the localization process are both usually done by Nintendo teams, which surely helps to smooth out the process.
Of course, NISA has a history of less than perfect localizations, which suggests that maybe they should try to improve their QA process in that area, but comparing them to Nintendo seems a bit unfair. For starters, I'm willing to bet that the prospective sale figures for your average NISA release are quite lower than their equivalent for a Nintendo title, which means their budget will probably be lower too, which means less money for localization and QA. Also, many NISA releases are RPGs, which are usually games with higher than average word count, longer than average playing times and where substantive portions of its texts may only appear in a playthrough depending of the player's actions. And as I said, Nintendo usually does the whole process in-house, while NISA has to work with code produced by a different company.

@Zyph It was out of their control sadly, hopefully Falcom have been well aware of the blunders of VIII's localisation and reverts the rights back to XSEED.

This game has been out for 2 years now and has seen patches upon patches upon patches on every system it’s been ported to. But sure, they’re being “transparent” here, praise their generous and kind heart.

I was going to pick this up next week, but I think I'll wait now. Not having these ready for launch day looks bad and certainly not worth my money until it's all sorted out.

@Orpheus79V Would definitely like XSEED to handle any future Ys games.

Hopefully we'll see Ys Origins soon and maybe even Seven, Felghana and Napishtim down the line. I would also be very surprised if they didn't announce a Ys V remake pretty soon and that would likely make its way to Switch if it does appear.

Ugh, such a disappointment. I speak Japanese and really hoped the game included its native voice track. Patching it in is better than nothing, but that won't help much if I want to play again years from now and can't update because servers are shut down.
I hope the game is for sale in Japan.
So boo to NISA, yay to Nintendo for removing region locks!

Mmn, "optimization was the top priority during development, and continues to be our focus." It's the apparent lack of optimisation that lead me to cancel my pre-order.

I like the look of this game with it’s quasi mix of Suikoden, Bayonetta and Xenoblade, but so far no where is showing it will be for sale apart from amazon or the e-shop in the uk. It isn’t even on Ninty’s website. May wait for an e-shop sale.

@BensonUii The biggest gripe with the game though was the translation being somewhere between substandard and horrible. The patch notes and review suggested even this has not been implemented into the base game.

Also yes I prefer Japanese. Besides, with Octopath and Shining Resonance out this paycheque period it was the perfect time for some mass cancellations / delays.

I don't care about framerates as my previous experience with this game was on Vita and the framerate didn't bother me there. I am concerned about the other things like the text refinements and icons. I have no interest in playing it with Japanese voices; I always choose dubs anyway. I guess I'll wait to buy, but I'm definitely going to buy.

@Agramonte "The PS4 version shot up to $80 used and $149 new on Amazon."

I'm guessing NIS America didn't manufacture too many copies of their Vita port on PS4. I'm holding out for a sale on PSN. Everything goes on sale on PSN within a year, YS 8 is getting close to that.

Wouldn't be so bad if there was a way to ultimately get the fully-patched version on the cartridge. Instead, now your "physical version" is nothing more than a hardware DRM key for temporarily-downloadable software and of no value later in life when the servers are gone.

This is how the game should been launched.

This localisation is an abomination

At least, unlike other companies, NIS actually released a patch schedule, that's seemingly unprecedented. I'm still unsure if this or Xenoblade 2 is the next thing I should play!

@Hikingguy First ship to manufacturing. THEN test the beta while you wait for it to ship. Deliver final game after point of sale. Isn't progress wonderful? I'm so glad we developed the internet and computers so we could progress into a wonderful future where everything is worse than it was prior! It wasn't us early tech advocates that broke it....we always focused on quality. Something changed in the mid '00's when the suits were all talking "Web 2.0".....the whole direction of tech changed into a corners-cutting and value extraction tool rather than a new better way to do things.

@rjejr You and your "I don't play handheld.".....You need to become near-sighted like me. Then the handheld is the only screen you can actually read

Already ordered this and will get it next week, but I'm still working through Persona 5, so more than likely any hiccups will be patched by the time I actually start playing it since I won't play it right after I get it more than likely.

@Hikingguy Indeed, worse, if you challenge something as bad you get a million violent reactions of "why cant you just do what everyone else is doing?" "Why do you have to create a problem?" "Just deal with it, it's just the way it is!"

I recall as story where early in the TSA's creation someone questioned the obvious violations of constintutional law taking place. It was not the armed guards. It was the other PASSENGERS who accosted him, and ultimately physically altercated with him because he was making it take longer for them to be constitutionally violated and have their freedom of movement restricted to governmental permission. Nobody cares what's good or bad, they just want fast and convenient. "Give me my daily beating faster, I don't want to have to wait!"

Yeah, it's of course, not developers that do that, but management that sets goals and budgetary goals with targets (because that's "how business is done") without accepting the changing and unpredictable nature of the output. They love to have, and need to (for their world) have drop dead dates for everything. Which means whatever state it's in by that date, if it took longer than expected, it still has to go out. "Good enough" is fine to them, they'll meet sales targets. And worse, features and grapics are a selling point, so emphasis is put into these time consuming things where "stable" isn't marketable. Look at Fallout and Skyrim. It was just plain old broken software, but everyone praises Bethesda incredibly. Their games are incredible. But only after 2 years of fixes post launch.

Suits always look to just "buy a little more time" to get the money now, deliver the product later. They don't even see it's a ponzi scheme. They're selling the next game to pay for the last one.

Sadly it's not just video games getting a pass. Look at all the Amazon reviews for "it's actually a decent product after a few modifications" and then you get these pictures dissecting removing the casing, inserting other supports, objects, (WIRING!), etc and hacking the product to make it work the way it was supposed to out of the box. People are now used to "get half designed, half broken things from China, then finish making it yourself."

Something has truly broken in the world's mentality, and I dont' see a way to fix it.

I'll still be getting this day one. The game is playable as is otherwise it would not have been scored so highly by reviewers. I look forward to an enhanced experience with the updates.

They're fixing the game? Better act like a 12 year old tool. B O Y C O T T

@NEStalgia "You need to become near-sighted like me"

Buy a bigger tv, problem solved.

My kid and I were in Target yesterday, maybe it was Wednesday, looking at the big screen tvs. We both decided we didn't like the curved tvs and the OLEDs were nice but expensive. Probably settling on 65" next time we need one. With any luck not for another couple of years when OLED and good HDR has had a chance to come down in price.

My kids still play in handheld mode though, usually when the other wants to play on the PS4. They also did that w/ Wii U and the Gamepad. Sony and Nintnedo play well together in our house if not online.

@rjejr I have a projector going to a 100" output on a wall. Still can't read squat without glasses. Maybe in 8k Otherwise I'll look at the pretty moving color-shapes

Ralek and I were talking HDR yesterday. If you thought Thanos and I have text walls you ain't seen nothin'!

Well, I have Team Red, Green, and Blue all playing nicely, but they all play alone

@Hikingguy I think you need to take a look back to the past. Remember E.T.? A game so infamously buggy that it (and many others like it) led to a complete lack of trust in video games, crashing the market. And it's not like it ended there. In Twilight Princess, it was incredibly easy to lock yourself into an unwinnable scenario, ending your game file. Same went for Prince of Persia (Sands of Time if I remember right? Might be the Warrior Within). Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine back on the N64 shipped in worse shape than many modern games. Of course, N64 games only got patched if you were lucky to get a version from a later production batch. Then of course there's Elder Scrolls: Morrowind with all it's bugs that have still never been fixed. And looking further back in time, Kick Off 96 was a football game that it was literally impossible to actually finish a single game due to bugs. I remember Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 was well known for constantly falling through the floor and ending runs.

Of course, as games get more complicated, there are more potential bugs that need to be found as well. But shipping games as buggy messes to meet a schedule is DEFINITELY not new. Luckily these days the internet makes it easy to find out ahead of time, rather than just hoping for the best when you buy off a shelf, or searching through magazines.

Can someone please recommend a good for beginners RGP game? One that teaches the basics of the genre for example. If you want to share why you love these types of games, pretty much welcome. Will help me understand what I am missing.

@Hikingguy Well, when was the last time you played one of these "modern" games without the day 1 patch? I've played a few while that I got without traveling, without encountering any major issues. Even look at the game in question, Ys VIII. All the reviewers made it through the whole game without a problem. Yes there were small glitches that are going to be fixed, but it's not like the game is unplayable. Same went for Doom on Switch without it's day 1 patch, and probably many others. The fact that it's being patched doesn't mean the game is unplayable, especially since most reviewers review the games before Day 1 patches are even in place.

If the game hadn't already been shipped, I would have waited until patch 1.0.4 was released. But seriously though, this should have been addressed BEFORE the game was released. I know most people could have waited for another month.
And no Japanese voice track at release? So NIS just blatantly lied then...
They effed this up royally...

Xseed better not lose Trails of Cold Steel 3 to them or I'll be pissed.

@Cobalt when did anything under 60fps became garbage, Destiny 2 runs at 30fps, Goldeneye N64 ran at like 15fps. makes you sound like a snob.

@Manaphy2007

I know instantly just by reading what you wrote above that you don't understand the basics about framerate and game development.

There are games built with a 30fps in mind from the begining THAT'S NOT THE SAME AT ALL when a game like Y's VIII runs at 25/30fps because this game was made with a 60fps target...

You loose the entire dynamic of the game at 30fps and below....

So let's be honest, if you can choose between a game running at 60fps stable or 30fps not stable, whaat would you choose ? Seriously Nintendrones are incredible sometimes....

Original voices should be always included in original game cartridge/cd/whatever. If there is no space left, the dub should be distributed as dlc, not original voices.