Unable to revert back to previous GAME PATCHES (Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One X|S)

Hello,

I know this may be a controversial theme for discussion, but let's face it. The gaming industry is moving forward maybe at higher speed than we expected and it can bring some issues on the way. And what am I talking about? The game patches.

We know that sometimes, we may pre-order some game or buy it when it's on sale, have a great experience and all of a sudden, new patch came along and now the game is bugged and even the support of that game will listen to our problems, there is almost no chance of fixing it.

And I am not talking about the v1.0 that comes on the discs of that game (in case it's bought physically). I am talking about the patches between the v1.0 and the last patch (and sometimes, the end of life patch). I will give here a two examples.

The first, Mafia 3. I bought a Deluxe Edition of Mafia 3 (new, unsealed) on my Xbox One X few years after it came out. At that time, I seen reviews that there is astonishing graphics and performance on enhanced consoles at that time (Xbox One X, PS4 Pro) and that the game experience is amazing!

So I bought it, spent most of my money I made in Austria on bunch of new games to support some developers (and to have a good time); and the internet wasn't lying!

Loaded the game on my One X, got through the whole story which took at least 50+ hours and I haven't experienced any major bug and the image was a true 4K and it looked amazing. Then 2K announced that the remake of Mafia 1 is coming and at that time, they released like 2 updates for Mafia 3 that literally broke the game (all of a sudden there was a bad performance, too many bugs) and then they made it a "Definitive edition" which has nothing with the word "Definitive".

The game was broken, there was too many bugs from performance issues to gamebreaking bugs like no engine sounds at all (among many players on the forums) and even after contacting the 2K support multiple times, there was no hope for a fix. The game is literally broken for many players and there's absolutely no hope that 2K or Hangar 13 gonna roll the update that worked the best among all platforms as it's actual and current update for the game (and the game is completely offline without multiplayer component beside some DLC's which were paid, but now are free on a broken product).

But the thing is, I got all of the DLC on that best version of the patch as I owned the Deluxe Edition before, so I didn't need the "Definitive edition" update with all of the DLC's for free as I was already enjoying them in a full quality.

I would rate the game at that time with the best update at 9/10 (game felt bland sometimes like melee and interactions with shops compared to Mafia 2, but that has nothing to do with the QA testing and stuff).

And after few of these updates rolled and last update on July 2020, I would rate the game 1/10. Unplayable.

The worst thing is that I didn't know it will mess up the game, or I would keep the unpatched copy on my HDD on Xbox but even then, what if I wanted to update to Series X?

So I got a Deluxe edition which I bought for like $60 on sale, then I sold it for few bucks after that update rolled out and few months of headaches of what I experienced (for like $10), then I bought like a year or two later Mafia Trilogy physical copy for like $30 (I knew that M2E runs like sh**, and M3:"DE" would be probably in the same state, so I bought it mainly for M1E which was a good experience) and I wasn't wrong...

The M3E was still in unplayable state for me and for many other players as well (even for Series X, PS5 and PS4 Pro players as well).

Okay, so I spent almost $100 which in some countries is not like "just a few cents", and I literally got screwed over, because they sold me a functioning and great product and now, I got unplayable piece of sh** (sorry for my language).

Now the same thing happened with RDR2. I tried v1.0, it has pros and cons, but my Xbox just transformed into a jet and I couldn't stand it anymore. Plus there are some bugs that got fixed in like v1.0.1 or so that are pretty big. So v1.0 in kinda unplayable until you want to melt down your internal parts in your Xbox, and last update has people sitting on each other in camp, sacks in chores that wouldn't bend, quiet dialogues that shouldn't be quiet (literally no sound playing, just animations), falling under the map once robbing some drawers or trains, gamebreaking bugs like being stuck in a place (from what I seen on reddit from other users), disappearing horses, so your main lvl4 bonded Rare horse you really liked can magically transform into some generic Morgan or Tenessee Walker (starter horses) and so on...

Bugs upon bugs that will never be fixed...

So I am asking. If there's a way to roll out a specific update on Jailbroken PS4 (and maybe PS5 in the future), why there's no way (the official one) on Xbox?

I mean, I love gaming, it's an interesting way how to not spend all your money on bad things after 10pm, but what about this?

And I am not talking about exploits and glitches and that's why I want to revert back to specific update between v1.0 and the last patch of the game.

I am talking about simple QA stuff that in this day and age wouldn't be tested because devs are only focusing on online modes and microtransactions.

I know that keeping every update of every game would be pretty hard and it would need kinda big servers or HDD's or whatever it needs and terrabytes of free space; but I can assure you, it will make the experience of many players already on the board much better..

If I knew this is a thing, I would buy that damn' Mafia 3 for a 3rd time and just roll out some update that the community would say that it's the best one (like as less bugs as possible, DLC's working, best performance and image) and I would even buy it digitally as there's a tiny chance I will get a game this old with Deluxe Edition (complete season pass) as a physical copy. Maybe there would be some used ones on the internet, but also with used season pass which is worthless.

So that's my 2 cents for this discussion. I was just playing RDR2 v1.0 now (like 1 hour ago) and experience in Ch.1 was great.

But my Xbox tranforming to jet isn't a great experience (and yes, I am taking the dust out and on the last update of RDR2 and in any other game, my Xbox is completely quiet).

I bought RDR2 when there were almost no bugs for me. And after completing the game, new patch rolled out with "You gonna catch a chill" dialogues in camp that were unpleasant. Every player with a last patch had them and it took R* at least 6-9 months to fix it after players were spamming their social media and support page with that issue (and I believe if we wouldn't do it, it would never be fixed).

Since then, few updates rolled out and there's still some stuff like quiet dialogues or things I already mentioned above that bothers many players. And we know that if we could download a patch from a year or two, we would have an experience thanks to which we bought the game.

And this isn't just with these two games. I believe problems like these can be in many other titles as well and possibility to play on any update that was once out can solve this.

And what to solve? How people view and appreciate game developers and at the same time, Microsoft or Sony. I think if we bought something on a promise that it's great and few months later, we have a unusable and bad product, then it's a scam...

Sorry that I said it like this, but it's true in some way...

So if you really want to enhance player's experince, do this. We don't care about streaming and Phil Spencer inviting "interesting" people to talk about internet speeds and stuff and how streaming is the future. We want to play in our free time to forget what may happened in our days and maybe to stream the best and stable patches for the games we already own to our consoles.

And not to be frustrated when the new update for our game comes and what can it bring; sooner or later...

Sometimes, it's a win-win situation and the game is much better than it was yesterday.

But sometimes, it's not a win-win situation and then we're screwed and the only game we were playing in our free time is, unplayable..

Some of the games have these problems nowadays and there are many discussions on various forums like reddit and such where the players are angry that their favorite game got destroyed because there wasn't enough QA testing and there's no chance that the developers gonna admit it and fix it (sometimes).

And I am not saying every game is like that. Most of them are working well on last patches, but there are some games that may really benefit from an option like this.

That's all I got for today. Anyway, have a great day and thank you for reading this long message.

:)