So I saw someone on twitter bring up an old game I used to play called Socom 2. The game was basically a mash up of SnD, demolition, extraction, etc type game modes in a 8 v 8 format, similar to CoD but first person, and no ranked respawn games. To my recollection it was the most popular online shooter for the PS2 of all time, and lasted well over 2 years even with the release of 2 other Socom titles which did not keep the original code/style of 1/2.*

Anyways, the game only had 4 patches in its entire existence, r0001-r0004. I believe 2 of them were minor as well to patch "God Mode" Glitches which allowed a player to rapidly fire rockets and freeze the game. Obviously necessary. But this game still lasted without developers having to nerf the guns, patch glitches and so forth. Sure, gamers back then gamed with a type of code and there were less randoms. One gun I remember in particular was super OP for the SEALs team, but no one used it because you'd get roasted alive. Mics were huge back then, if you didn't have a mic, you literally could get voted out, which yea lol, anyone could kick someone if the team voted to.*

A little off point but here we are in 2017-18, COD WW2 just released, and they've had countless (is it like 10 tho?) patches to the game just to get it stable and playing right. The graphics might be a little bit better and the development team a lot larger, but something just isn't adding up to me here. The money made from videos games NOW a days is astronomical compared to then. Sure some did sell very well like the GTA series, but with the addition of microtransactions it can't even come close. Games like Fortnite I can understand as it is free for Battle Royale, and a similar situation with PUBG where the team started out a lot smaller and is now building its way up after the explosion of it's own original battle royale. But a $60 AAA release like Call of Duty WW2 I just cannot vibe with. I thought the game was fun while I played for the first month, but it just does not have the repetitive playability and seeing all these issues, complaints and suggestions go unheralded is just really strange to me.*

What went wrong here xD Was it that they were planning for AW2 and had to switch up a year and a half through?*

Hm.. but they wouldn't like remaster ps2 games into ps4.

I don't usually buy games until theyre cheap. By then any bugs are usually ironed out.

Games need more patches now because most games are online and they require new content and balance changes to keep them relevant for players.

While studios are larger and have many more resources at their disposal, those greater resources and larger staffing abilities do not all go to the same game and most of the staff have never even met. Attentions are split. Compare the number of games developers released now and then, and recall we're long past the days of a single studio working on a game but instead a developer or several of them coordinating the efforts of multiple studios around the world for the typical AAA title.

Back then, a single developer worked on a game until it was done, then released it. Now, multiple developers collaborate with one parent developer, all coordinating the efforts of studios around the world, resulting in the proverbial "too many cooks in the kitchen" except the cooks aren't exactly speaking with each other in the most efficient or productive of manners because they're many time zones away, speak different languages, and their orders all come from up top instead of resulting from collaboration with each other. Further, the majority of the time the individual studios are developing multiple games simultaneously for their developers, often the same employees working on several games at the same time. It's become less of an artistic endeavor from start-to-finish and more of an assembly line process with different people who've never met each other and never will working on an individual component for a finished product they have little investment in while also doing the same task for a different game or games and losing the sense of cohesion along the way. It's a common complaint from within the industry.

I won't say much about the fact that increasing internet support across consoles, and our combined willingness to accept Day 1 products that still need a great deal of tweaking, including the proliferation of pre-orders, have enabled frequent patching to become the norm, because I'm sure others have. But while you speak of multiplayer games, look at the number of patches so far just in a singleplayer game like the new God of War. Or to take an extreme example, I believe Mass Effect Andromeda received 10 patches most of which were for the SP mode, and the characters often still speak with their heads on backwards. Backwards I tell you.

Probably to fix glitches

Or the mess they made themself

True story! hahaha