An Open Letter To EA/Dice From StrafeRight

[Revoluti0n]

Re: An Open Letter To EA/Dice From StrafeRight

Great letter indeed. I was very relieved that a an entire community would actually be honest and open enough to state their reaction.
10 months ago, I would have told you that BF2 would have the popularity and longevity that Counter-Strike or Unreal Tournament has shared over the years. It does indeed possess those basic elements that can make it a winner. Unfortunately the way it is being treated along with the content of the patches and the amount of time that has passed is ruining it at a break-neck pace. Apparently someone is convinced that a patch will cause people to stop being idiots when they play. You cannot fix a gamers idiotic behavior or lack of game ethics with a patch. It is a game in case someone along the line forgot.
How can someone make such drastic changes to a game after almost a year being on shelves and still say that it is what the community wanted? Obviously it is not, because there are more and more proponents everyday. When a game patch is made, it is supposed to take care of certain bugs within the game that create technical probelms for the client/end user. Patches should add to the game play, all I have seen Dice/EA do in some form or another is take away more and more from this game with each patch.
Sadly many server owners will be revisiting the "should we pay for a ranked server" issue. Our clan will be cancelling our server within a weeks time. NOT because of the squad cycling changes, but merely because it's too difficult to keep a server full for the reasons stated by the original poster.

[lmimmfn]

Re: An Open Letter To EA/Dice From StrafeRight

Id just like to thank all server owners/server investors for their contribution on this thread, the server side of things is something a lot of us non clan guys take for granted and we spend a lot of our time moaning about crappy client side problems, which in essence is the small picture.
I myself maintain server code so i know how important it is( and that crashes are unacceptable ), but im glad with the community update that at least there is some weight in the BF2 community and it shows promise

[TheEn|gma]

Re: An Open Letter To EA/Dice From StrafeRight

Thank you for creating this thread. It needed to be created and I'm glad to see that people are contributing to it intelligently rather than starting an outright flame festival against EA.

I help out at MoonGamers as an admin and as a financial contributor. Since the release of patch 1.3, I can personally attest to the fact that the MoonGamers Mostly Oman server (which is a 60 slot server that is nearly always full - server monitor link) has crashed many times. Yesterday afternoon (around 1PM EST), the server crashed not once, but 6 times within an hour. Before the patch, the server would routinely reboot twice a day but normally fill right back up. But when it crashed over and over again, we had trouble getting people to come back and stay to fill it back up.

I know that I am not alone when I say that I'm starting to become fed up with the lack of "real" support that Battlefield 2 has been getting. Rather than fixing bugs that have existed in the game since its inception or bugs that are brought in by faulty patches, EA has decided to either implement new functionality that was never asked for or adjust game mechanics that they felt needed adjusting. I believe that these adjustments were done as a way to mask the real problems that many players have been encountering.

Here's an analogy of what I think EA has been doing to the Battlefield 2 community...

If you owned a sports car and it had a flat tire, what would you do? Fix the flat tire. EA, on the other hand, might sooner decide to install aftermarket parts that could potentially make the car go faster- but the car still has a flat tire rendering the car, as a whole, completely useless.

And now that EA has been promoting BF2142 with such fervor yet seemingly ignoring the pleas of the BF2 community to fix long-standing bugs, I cannot see myself buying into this new product. There are going to be many games released in the near future that are going to cater to the Sci-Fi market that I think EA is going to have a very difficult time persuading the BF2 crowd to buy in. And, assuming that the alternative products offer better customer support, I believe that many loyal supporters of the BF series will simply move to those alternatives instead.

I'm personally very sad to see the BF name be tainted in this fashion. I was an avid supporter of the BF series since BF1942 and have had many great experiences in BF2. But the game has changed so much since June 2005 that it is merely a shadow of its former self- it seems to have become watered down for the masses of people who found it to have too steep of a learning curve.

And, if EA does not fix issues that have arisen with the advent of v1.3, I can personally say that I will no longer be financially supporting the Battlefield series or a server that runs BF2. I would sooner give my money to id Software in hopes that they continue their tradition of actually listening to their customers.

And, for those that have never read this before- I suggest you read it. It sheds light on what working for EA is really like.

EA Spouse: The Human Story - http://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html

I used to play a lot on Moongamers Mostly Warlord/Ghost town, Pre 1.3 I'd noticed that the server was almost always full, and on only two occasions can i remember the server being empty, however post 1.3 its been a Ghost Town (bad pun I know) I havn't seen enough people in there to start a game I'm presuming that its due to servers crashing, its frustrating to see such a good server get all but killed by a pool put together patch.

[Heavy552 AWG]

Re: An Open Letter To EA/Dice From StrafeRight

Great letter!

I have played often on your server and found it to be one of the best out there.

I cannot add to any of the numerous posters on here who have stated everything I think should have been said long ago to EA and DICE.

I do have a feeling that BF2 is now at a decision point in it's lifetime. Will it be allowed to fade into oblivion like so many other games or will the game be properly fixed and be a-glitter in illumiination of what glory on-line gaming can be?

I can tell we are losing servers at a rapid rate on the game broswer screen.

I for one will not be purchasing 2142 because I feel it will not be complete and refuse to be drawn in by the hype that apparently is building on that game as EA's Marketing kicks into high gear. You might see alot of younger gamers run to the store eager to spend money on a brand new game, but I have gotten a little older and wiser over the years.

Our Clan at one point maintained a server for a period of time and we found the game to be rather flawed to the point of not having enough people to support the expense of that server each month. We do enjoy some of the best server and connections that we are allowed to have. Sadly our BF2 server dreams did not come to maturity because of the problems within the game itself.

I will be purchasing the AF when it comes out and feel that it may be the end of the BF2 series we have spend almost a year of our lives enjoying.

[Revoluti0n]

Re: An Open Letter To EA/Dice From StrafeRight

A little something we received from our server provider earlier today. We unfortunately had to cancel our ranked server so, I guess the end is upon us...

BF2 1.3 Major Stability Issues and Other Nasty Bugs

There exists a major stability issue with BF2 1.3, as many of you are
already painfully aware, because you have seen it yourself or you have kept
up with our 1.3 patch forum thread here:

https://secure.trinitygames.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1510

You can read mass worldwide reports of this in any major gaming forum.
There, you'll find reports of widespread crashing and reports of the
numerous other nasty bugs that 1.3 has introduced.

Server crash rates have soared from 1.2 avg. per day to well over 4 crashes
per server daily.
100% of BF2 providers worldwide are reporting this problem and others, on
all platforms, all operating systems.
What is amazingly disappointing about this is that 1.3 was supposed to
correct these issues, not make them worse.

Without finger pointing, ranting, and calling into question Dice's testing
procedures and EA's decision-making, I will go out on a limb and say that
one of the following need to occur in short order:

1. Rollback to 1.22 OR
2. 1.31 Hotfix (ASAP)

But, a full day has gone by with absolutely no guidance or direction from EA
or Dice. I have to equate their reaction to that of a deer in the
headlights at this point.

I have asked EA and Dice repeatedly for direction or resolution during our
rather lengthy patch process here (all of us are rather short on sleep and
patience at this point, as you can imagine), even temporarily halting our
main patch operations very early this morning pending the initial reports of
the problems.

At this point we are in a holding pattern awaiting official guidance from
EA. As soon as they release news, we'll take quick appropriate action to
hopefully return all servers to a more stable operating condition. We are
not able to roll servers back to 1.22 until such guidance and patch reversal
(roll-back/backout) patch is issued by EA.

Unfortunately, there is nothing we can do to improve server stability at
this time. We'll be happy to refer you to this information and any
additional information since its writing if you open a server trouble ticket
regarding increased crashing.

Rest assured that we stand ready to do whatever is in our power to improve
the situation as soon as the opportunity is made available to us.

Thank you,
---
Scott Taylor
Network Administrator
Trinity Gaming

[old sch00l]

Re: An Open Letter To EA/Dice From StrafeRight

roll back so normal play over the weekend.. go go go

[kiss my RICE]

Re: An Open Letter To EA/Dice From StrafeRight

gay nutz

[InsaneKitty]

Re: An Open Letter To EA/Dice From StrafeRight

i'm realy realy realy ****ed off at ea/dice for screwing arround with the people that bring in their money.
i installed the patch and the blody game crashes tot the desktop every time i load it, i stoped playing a while ago coz of school, now i have time to play again, but it simply doesnt work, i don't see any reason to continue playing the damn game if it isnt working propperly.
allso i dont see any reason for buying future EA games, goz of the horrible aftersales services and the low quality of their products.
EA takes the fun out of gaming, and i'm not prepared to waste my money on anything they sell if this doesn't improve.
I hope Quake wars will be what ID and Activision promise it to be, looking at the quality of their previous games i think its going to be allot better than the dirt EA comes up with.
We are not being taken serious, and whats the use of a bloddy patch if it doesnt patch anything?
Its the same as going to the garage coz your car has problems starting, and they put a new set of tires on.

[kiss my RICE]

Re: An Open Letter To EA/Dice From StrafeRight

someone had to say it...too serious

[*FMJ*Bird]

Re: An Open Letter To EA/Dice From StrafeRight

someone had to say it...too serious

When the big $$$ comes out of your pocket its serious.

[TheEn|gma]

Re: An Open Letter To EA/Dice From StrafeRight

someone had to say it...too serious

You've clearly never paid for a server of any kind when your paying large amounts of money monthly, you expect it work for one and at a decent standard, start renting your own Ranked server then you'll become as frustrated as it apears these server admins are.

[TomGazpacho]

Re: An Open Letter To EA/Dice From StrafeRight

snip ... CAL teams are disbanding over the squad jumping fix(which in our opinion is an exploit and SHOULD have been changed a long time ago)

Who are CAL teams and why are they whiney babies?

[TokenBrit]

Re: An Open Letter To EA/Dice From StrafeRight

Who are CAL teams and why are they whiney babies?

CAL teams are players better than pubbers who compete in matches.
Because they play better than pubbers, pubbers hate them and call them childish names.

[Revoluti0n]

Re: An Open Letter To EA/Dice From StrafeRight

Who are CAL teams and why are they whiney babies?

http://www.caleague.com/

From someone that calls themselves a CSS fan it's surprising that you would even ask this question. What else would anyone expect from someone that enjoys listing "candles, cheese and crock-pot cooking" as interests. I digress, impossible to have a decent thread about a valid issue without the "trekkies" chiming in...

[funksoulbrutha]

Re: An Open Letter To EA/Dice From StrafeRight

ok.... what if....

EA/DICE are just upsetting us again, but this time so badly, to such incredible lows and to a point of complete BF boycottage, just to see/read our reactions so that they can release the single most finest peice of programming, patching, bug fixing, jeep dropping, squad hopping stopping, server list scrambling, pc crashing, red name teaming, what happened to my rank and unlocks, how am i blamed for hitting that guy when i take off in the jet... blah blah blah.... one final patch to end all patches... what if.... they get it right?

is it just my imagination?