I'm not even sure if we are arguing here, lol. I'm not waiting for patches.
It is 2 weeks and less than 2 hours (which steam will sometimes waive if a game is particularly broken although you can't use the automated return system in that case). I'm summarizing here which isn't painting me in the greatest light. I'm not a person who per-orders months in advance with no information...there's no point (the times that i do pre-order games it's always when the pre-order period is virtually over and only if there seems to be enough information to do so). When I did click the per-purchase button on Sunday there was already decent information out there. It's not the wall of silence that was 2k20. And I did watch videos on the 8th that seemed to show that game-play wise it was decent this year. Anyway my plan was to boot the game up for less than 2 hours during the 3 day trial period and quickly go through the create modes as there are things in there that are problems year to year to year. I could quickly go through these to get an impression if an extra year of development resulted in any more polish and base my return decision on that. The create modes are rarely talked about in reviews (any year). Obviously I would play one match as well.
But I was given pause when 99% of the threads in the steam forum were crash reports, serious bug reports and very few actual impression threads. But it's steam forums so you have to take that with a grain of salt. I haven't had time to check the 2k forums yet. So I'm waiting to do my 2 hour trial until after release day.
I will concede though now having read through my own logic that per-ordering probably wasn't a great idea. Of the released reviews out there currently only one is PC specific. But like I said I have no problems with returning it.