Patches are a way of life. Either the company gives free patches - or we are back to other ways - ie they make us pay for the upgrades (another word for patches).
Even outside computers - look at ships, I've seen a ship brought out brand new, the 3rd one in its class, and you would have thought they would have had all the problems wrinkled out - oh nooo, off the slip and into drydock to sort out the problems.
Military jets are the same, so is you car - they find a problem on a certain bit and do a recall.
So patches are here for life, and I welcome them
They ensure that the game runs with the newest graphics card, stops stupid errors etc, and I agree, 100 people playing the game for a day produces more data than the testers. Not only on the time issue, but we all play the game different - and this produces the unseen errors!!
Cheers
Steve