my feeling is that any game should not really include any pathes outside the official orignal patches at all, so the user can decide for themselves which pathes they would like or not like to play with. as it does change some gameplay mechincs and add others, it means that if a patch like this was inclided as a default, it means no player could ever experience the original game again.

edit - i even have some problems with MoK's patch being included.... if it was my choice, then any game should not come with any patch, but there could be a sticky in the game forum with the most used / best liked paches

What kind of improvements?

I agree, even if community patches would still be a nice bonus\extra.

There should be a difference between strict bugfixes and patches that also make other changes, even if condoned by the devs or it's a matter of implementing content present in the game files but inactive in the original game. A strict fan bugfix that's checked and approved would count just like a patch created by GOG or any other entity dealing with the relaunch of an old game, which may well include such patches as part of the effort to make the games work properly. But anything past that definitely has no place in the actual release, though if checked and approved by GOG it'd be nice to have it as an extra for those who want it, so people will know it's sort of official for this release and not need to grab it from other sources, which they may be wary of and which may vanish at some point.

My heart skipped a beat, thinking this was about Heroes... of might and magic. For a second I thought GOG managed to free them from Ubisoft's servers...

For those who don't know, there's a progression system, including the heroes' level up status, that is maintained on external servers. So if you try to play the campaign offline, you always start from level 1.

https://grayface.github.io/mm/MM6PatchReadMe/

I have to admit, it's a good patch, the changes are just quality of life improvements, I'm totally on favor of this but probably some users want a more purist patch with just bugfixes.

As a non mods fan I must recogniza that Greyface patch is a must have. It is basically a bug fixing and improvements patch. What it does in MM7 is amazing technically, it lets you play in proper widescreen in your native res and even makes changes in the UI for it. Indeed it adds some details but they are welcome additions. polishing and qol things. There is even an external spanish translation that only works with this patch. Considering that the GOG version is only english it could be a plus for anybody interested in the dubbed version because the spa translation does not work properly without it

The only problem I see in the Greyface patch is that it use to add little bugs in every patch, bugs that are fixed i the next patch. They are not gamebreaking afterall and imo it is worthy.