25th April 2011, 4:54 PM
Right. QFG has a fair-sized fan community, if those timing fixes actually did anything like that people would know. They don't.
And yeah, fan patches are usually clearly marked. The fan patches for Baldur's Gate, Baldur's Gate II, and Torment should all be considered essential, and all very clearly list what they do -- I always recommend enacting all bugfixes, but not any of the other changes that actually alter the game. Troika's games also generally need fan patches too, as you say GR. And again, what each thing does is well marked.
As for "but can people find them", I think that people who are going to play PC games know that patches are likely to exist, and probably will search the web for patches after they get a game... it's the only sensible thing to do. Some people won't, but then if they have problems then they'll likely do it, and hopefully find the places with the fixes. Some people might not be able to handle that, sure, but many will. People don't expect PC games to work perfectly right out of the box, particularly older ones.
And yeah, fan patches are usually clearly marked. The fan patches for Baldur's Gate, Baldur's Gate II, and Torment should all be considered essential, and all very clearly list what they do -- I always recommend enacting all bugfixes, but not any of the other changes that actually alter the game. Troika's games also generally need fan patches too, as you say GR. And again, what each thing does is well marked.
As for "but can people find them", I think that people who are going to play PC games know that patches are likely to exist, and probably will search the web for patches after they get a game... it's the only sensible thing to do. Some people won't, but then if they have problems then they'll likely do it, and hopefully find the places with the fixes. Some people might not be able to handle that, sure, but many will. People don't expect PC games to work perfectly right out of the box, particularly older ones.