Information vs. Information Blackout

[Heavy552 AWG]

Re: Information vs. Information Blackout

I read it all twice.

I'll pick on the Cartillery. I recall prior to the Car Drop Patch no one was clamoring for the ability to drop vehicles. In fact the Vehicle drop patch was instantly used to destroy snipers, wreck emplaced positions and destroy arty and a number of other ways unforseen by DICE.

We dont enjoy the luxury of finding out who fell out of bed full of inspiration to code the vehicle drop into the game. We dont learn about why it was forced into the game. We dont know anything except that lo and behold... the Monarchy DICE The GREAT has decreed that there will be vehicle drops availible in the game and it is done.

We gathered at the gates to the ivory tower with signs, placards and loud bullhorns in the forums with a variety of expressions of discontent towards teh vehicle drops.

Did we expect to hear anything from the tower? no. They finally wants to fix the vehicle drop by disallowing "Precision" drops.

In the meantimes the Senate parties while Rome burns and citizens dig at the foundation of the tower looking for the 1.4 patch hoping to get the goods ahead of everyone else.

The only thing we hear about 1.4 in all this time is that it was taken back to the workshop because of problems. We are not trusted to understand the exact nature of the problem. Therefore speculation and rumors rages like a forest fire. It must be getting pretty hot in the tower by now.

Provide adequate infomation regarding the game and actually fix the problems like say.. the Aircraft pilot eating Tk negative points all the way down the runway becuase he got to the cockpit while 20 others did not. Plenty of information has been offered by us "Serfs" in form of the ideas such as protected runway areas that enforces "Suicides" against the one who tries to block a Jet to force a tk against the pilot.

Im sure those and other great ideas reached the top of the tower and replies filter down in the form of pod casts, dedicated forums that supposidly provides feedback both ways but instead is filtered down to one or two "safe" questions that provide no traction for anyone to work on.

Im happy to buy a computer game and play it. Im happy that work is being done to see game work well without too many problems. In fact everything is going great. Now that it is 30 years later in my gaming life I learn so much about developers, technology of the net, servers, other gamers and literally have forums and other means of learning a status of a game within the hour... I dont need all of that.

Just dont ask the powers that be in the tower specific questions that cuts straight to the meat of a problem. They tend to squirm and maintain silence as if it is a great secret of the state locked away in the holies of holies.

Bleah.

We are a free people. Information is power. Knowledge of a problem will help greatly towards harmony in the community. That grumble of discontent you hear from the citizens at the tower gates means either the Ale has run out and the bread gone bad or that someone has not properly fed a steady stream of reliable good quality information to the people.

I use patch 1.4 and the recent efforts by the hundreds to get to it. The silence was too protracted and the people felt the need to get pick axes and dig for the patch themselves and along the way learn how the EA downloader and associated files work.

There are some who appeal for calm and to wait for EA and DICE to release the offical patch. I think the number of these few Knights are too few compared to the impatient masses who clamor for the goods.

The community is a very demanding group because they are potential customers ready to buy another good product. But only if the current game is good and well taken care of. BF2 has not been well taken care of this year.
Maybe one day you might look out upon a silent and desolate city populated with just a few loyal gamers who are absloutely refusing to leave the rotten product regardless of it's condition.

Toss the 9 commandments of gaming and keep this one:

"The Gaming Experience is subject to change in multiplayer"

that is written next to the barcode of virtually every multiplayer game product.

Everything else we are expected to operate in a vacumn. Freedom in form of Mods or other better quality games awaits the faithful few who suffer the problems for a year or more.

[~WPN~Major Ursa]

Re: Information vs. Information Blackout

That was a nice picture of what might happen in a perfect world. Fact is, in the real world a publically traded company is held accountable for EVERY public declaration of ANY deadline. Make it, all is great. Miss it and stock price falls, investors smell trouble.

Any company will tell you that providing constant updates on progress slows down a project because time is spent on progress reports instead of project work. This climate also creates a false sense of urgency and often leads to shoddy work from racing to meet an update milestone. I have been on both sides of that coin and I promise you that contant updates require an insane amount of time and really grind the project down to a crawl.

About everyone's comments on "new material" instead of fixes, has anyone ever thought that the "new material" isn't really new at all? I would like for everyone to recall the early adverts for BF2. There are STILL features that were advertized initially that we don't have today. Maybe these "new" features are just things that were left out at first for whatever reason and are being added back in through the patches.

Just a thought

[Heavy552 AWG]

Re: Information vs. Information Blackout

That was a nice picture of what might happen in a perfect world. Fact is, in the real world a publically traded company is held accountable for EVERY public declaration of ANY deadline. Make it, all is great. Miss it and stock price falls, investors smell trouble.

Any company will tell you that providing constant updates on progress slows down a project because time is spent on progress reports instead of project work. This climate also creates a false sense of urgency and often leads to shoddy work from racing to meet an update milestone. I have been on both sides of that coin and I promise you that contant updates require an insane amount of time and really grind the project down to a crawl.

About everyone's comments on "new material" instead of fixes, has anyone ever thought that the "new material" isn't really new at all? I would like for everyone to recall the early adverts for BF2. There are STILL features that were advertized initially that we don't have today. Maybe these "new" features are just things that were left out at first for whatever reason and are being added back in through the patches.

Just a thought

That is a wonderful post. Should be a sticky.

I point to the various mods like DC combat, POE and even the small Civil War Modders who have faithfully executed screenshots, updates and fed a constant stream of information that is like a river clear of contaminants of public corperations.

How is it that a tiny Developer writing mods in a basement can update us all on the wonderful and good things coming and a gigantic Comapny like EA and DICE lumber and show very little agility on something as simple as a game update that requires a little more than a few minutes worth of HTML Texting at the game's official website?

Answer me that.

[sknight]

Re: Information vs. Information Blackout

Heavy, nice post (#16 on this page). Completely agree.

Major URSA, I think you have the wrong idea in your first paragraph. The guy in the OP's article (don't remember if it is actually the OP or not) said we don't need the 'When' so much. Just a small update, or what this bug was that delayed the patch a week and a half now. Into your second paragraph. He also mentioned the PR folks that Dice hired to keep the community happy, but these people seem to have dissapeared and from what we can tell, they don't exist any longer.

[Heavy552 AWG]

Re: Information vs. Information Blackout

Heavy, nice post (#16 on this page). Completely agree.

Major URSA, I think you have the wrong idea in your first paragraph. The guy in the OP's article (don't remember if it is actually the OP or not) said we don't need the 'When' so much. Just a small update, or what this bug was that delayed the patch a week and a half now. Into your second paragraph. He also mentioned the PR folks that Dice hired to keep the community happy, but these people seem to have dissapeared and from what we can tell, they don't exist any longer.

PR Folks dont work well.

Novalogic hired a "Community Manager" to help manage the damage after the famous winter of 2004 patch that nerfted the snipers. Eventually that Manager left without having done anything to silence the jeers and hoots of derision.

In the meantime the few snipers left continue to snipe in the game while BF2 snipers need several shots while I flee thier killzone safely thanking DICE and EA for making crappy sniper rifles. In the meantime to watch war videos from Afghainstan where our enemies vanish in a spray of Red Mist of blood a mile or more from a mighty Barret. And expect that same performance only to be presented with a 200 yard draw distance limitation because some people cannot handle snipers.

No wonder I like Artillery so much, it works.

Yes tease me about whining about snipers or tell me that there is no problem and you might be correct, there is not a problem worthy of the attentions of the powers that be intent on the next Income generating product in time for Christmas.

[~WPN~Major Ursa]

Re: Information vs. Information Blackout

That is a wonderful post. Should be a sticky.

I point to the various mods like DC combat, POE and even the small Civil War Modders who have faithfully executed screenshots, updates and fed a constant stream of information that is like a river clear of contaminants of public corperations.

How is it that a tiny Developer writing mods in a basement can update us all on the wonderful and good things coming and a gigantic Comapny like EA and DICE lumber and show very little agility on something as simple as a game update that requires a little more than a few minutes worth of HTML Texting at the game's official website?

Answer me that.

Ok. It is simple really. EA is HUGE and therefore has a HUGE payroll and is actively working on project for every game platform in every genre and even teams working on creating something totally new for the future. So? you say.

Well, that means that BF2 is no longer the primary concern. You don't have the massive manpower heaped onto the project anymore. You have a maintenace team, who may or may not have other responsibilities. EA makes money on volume sales, not repair.

Do you notice a difference when you shop in a large chain store, like Wal-Mart or CostCo vs. a single proprietor locally owned business? You should. The large chain stores make money on volume sales and sell at a lower price because they can take advantage of huge discounts on stock because they buy in bulk. The mom and pop store can't buy 100,000 units of anything in order to price their goods as low as the chain store. So how do those mom and pop stores compete and why do they even try?

They compete with customer service and a personal relationship with their clientel. They really care about you feeling good about your purchase because they really need you to come and shop with them again. They stay in business because that is what they want to do and that is what the love doing.

So, EA = Wal-Mart/CostCo. Profit through volume, volume = lower consumer price. Volume = less concern over losing a few customers from poor service or cheap goods.

Mods = Mom and Pop locally owned store. Profit from dedicated customer base who don't mind paying more for goods because of the excellent customer service and higher quality goods.

The mod teams make their mods because they want to play them. The mods are usually free and often only get by on a few donations from fans. The mods take pride in their pet projects and also want more folks to play their mod so the gameplay and mod don't go stale. Also, more mod fans = more potential donations. Mods update to keep the fans attention.

EA has you already and can't afford to divert resources from new projects to speed up maintenance for an existing product that may or may not receive any further support beyond this next patch.

I hope I explained this well enough for you.

[BryanG]

Re: Information vs. Information Blackout

Smackdown on EA.

And as for the aobve post, it doens't matter how large EA is. If anything, because of EA's massive earnings they should be able to get someone to give quality information such as the John Carmack example for every game they have in development.

[Heavy552 AWG]

Re: Information vs. Information Blackout

And that Sires, will be a lesson to EA if they fail to return to the old 80's games with the quality that they once had other than Madden.

I have a hobby that requires me to pay a premium for small quanity of quality products each year. The people and the stores involved in this hobby stay open because the product is very good in quality and there is a small profit to be made with every sale, large or small. I depend on these small shops to provide me with the tribal knowledge and understanding of these products that you will NOT FIND AT WALLY WORLD.

Wally World employs an army of college students who watch the clock and plan what they will do once quitting time arrives and for wages that does not foster the old time loyalty to the company and retirement.

In fact, wallyworld did not exist 15 years ago. We actually went to regional malls or downtown to do our shopping. Today those stores are boarded up buried by walmart and thier minimum wage workers who cannot afford to stay in that area and 400,000 dollar homes that suddenly sprang up.

Much less play video games. I think paying 50 dollars for a video game that works is a good thing. I recall DOOM swept the world because it worked very well. COD honored our WW2 Vets with it's quality work. BF2 is arcade. It will always have a desire to try to give us a glimpse of modern day war. That will not succeed.

Why? We went thru the cycles of evolution where we were snipers, then armor whores then blackhawk whores, C4 whores and finally cartillery, prone whores and on and on ad nauseum.

In fact... I think we are experiencing a kind of warfare between us the gamer and the developers right now that is really hurting everyone.

Kinda hard to make a quality war game of any era when so many people tk other people because they can or use methods designed to generate very large and shiney stats to show off to the world. They are like smoke in a forest fire, if that is made to go away or is not part of the game, we wont have a problem now will we?

[~WPN~Major Ursa]

Re: Information vs. Information Blackout

Heavy, nice post (#16 on this page). Completely agree.

Major URSA, I think you have the wrong idea in your first paragraph. The guy in the OP's article (don't remember if it is actually the OP or not) said we don't need the 'When' so much. Just a small update, or what this bug was that delayed the patch a week and a half now. Into your second paragraph. He also mentioned the PR folks that Dice hired to keep the community happy, but these people seem to have dissapeared and from what we can tell, they don't exist any longer.

No, I was just speaking to encompass the referenced article in the op as a whole. My point was meant to cover all forms of update. This includes time tables, w.i.p. screenshots, potential readme patch logs or anything else that the community and the writer of the referenced article in the op define as updates or communications. It all applies.

PR people work for two reasons, one to sell the initial release and two to spin any blunder. BF2 is one year old. New copies will sell because a mod comes out or because somebody's buddy finally convinces them to get the game and join in on the fun. You don't need PR for patches. PR is insanely expensive and won't be wasted on soothing ruffled feathers of impatient gamers that constantly spam the forums with threads concerning the patch delay. Why? Because the forum posters are doing the PR job by keeping BF2's next patch in the forefront of everyone's mind. You MIGHT see updates and PR if nobody gave a damn about when the next patch came out. Lack of interest in BF2 would be bad for EA because there is nothing to take its place ready yet.

[Batausu]

Re: Information vs. Information Blackout

Not really on topic, there is a newer version in testing: 1.1.2963-795.0, so probably is going to take more time until release.
Now on topic, it seams that people are always on the run finding information about what they want, regardless of it being public or not.
That's how we got an early 1.4 patch.
It's a shame you have to dig out information on your own, instead of being officially informed.

[~WPN~Major Ursa]

Re: Information vs. Information Blackout

Smackdown on EA.

And as for the aobve post, it doens't matter how large EA is. If anything, because of EA's massive earnings they should be able to get someone to give quality information such as the John Carmack example for every game they have in development.

I don't want to sound mean here, but I can not explain to you how large corperations work if you don't already have some basic knowledge of the corperate world. Seriously.

[Heavy552 AWG]

Re: Information vs. Information Blackout

Not really on topic, there is a newer version in testing: 1.1.2963-795.0, so probably is going to take more time until release.
Now on topic, it seams that people are always on the run finding information about what they want, regardless of it being public or not.
That's how we got an early 1.4 patch.
It's a shame you have to dig out information on your own, instead of being officially informed.

Erm, I feel that this thread is trying to teach us that information flows at the grace of the Highness DICE and the Courts of EA down to us grubby gamers who are too low respected to be worth more than a few sentences using words that are not controversial once a month.

Kind of tough to keep the Horses calm at feeding time with all the cooking going on getting the product ready. The aroma is driving us all nuts and perhaps some to dig for the patch itself... we can hardly blame DICE for that now can we?

[LahLahSr]

Re: Information vs. Information Blackout

Some good points and a well-argued appeal to EA/DICE there.

Unfortunately the whole premise is false. The premise of the appeal is based on ignorance about how businesses work and the premise of the answer from EA/DICE is based on the fact that they can't be truthful.

It's a simple cost-benefit analysis. What is more profitable?
1. Building comprehensive community-relations and engage gamers in a dialogue, give access to progress details an otherwise widen and deepen the connection between buyer and seller

OR

2. NOT hire or assign anyone for more tha cursory answers to a minute fraction if the inquiries.

In this particular case, EA/DICE have found that not building these relations is the better of the two options.

This is not at all surprising - the BF franchise is no longer for a niche-crowd, nor is the concept at all pioneer country anymore. The upcoming releases, Huxley, Quake Wars etc. are in many respects overtaking the BF series in sophistication/features/gameplay. All in all, BF is a mainstream franchise - they do not have to cater to special-interest groups (the military buffs for example). It's a mass-market product that no longer have to prove itself to get customers. It's like selling milk.

So they have made the right decision not t owaste time & money by responding to a few whiney gamers who are impatient with patches/disagree with design-decisions etc. etc. BF is so over all that nonsense.

Sorry, but that's just the way it is...

Cheers :-)


PS: If it's too much for you to read, you need to stop playing games and finish elementary school or you will be stuck in a poor lonely place...

[Heavy552 AWG]

Re: Information vs. Information Blackout

Some good points and a well-argued appeal to EA/DICE there.

Unfortunately the whole premise is false. The premise of the appeal is based on ignorance about how businesses work and the premise of the answer from EA/DICE is based on the fact that they can't be truthful.

It's a simple cost-benefit analysis. What is more profitable?
1. Building comprehensive community-relations and engage gamers in a dialogue, give access to progress details an otherwise widen and deepen the connection between buyer and seller

OR

2. NOT hire or assign anyone for more tha cursory answers to a minute fraction if the inquiries.

In this particular case, EA/DICE have found that not building these relations is the better of the two options.

This is not at all surprising - the BF franchise is no longer for a niche-crowd, nor is the concept at all pioneer country anymore. The upcoming releases, Huxley, Quake Wars etc. are in many respects overtaking the BF series in sophistication/features/gameplay. All in all, BF is a mainstream franchise - they do not have to cater to special-interest groups (the military buffs for example). It's a mass-market product that no longer have to prove itself to get customers. It's like selling milk.

So they have made the right decision not t owaste time & money by responding to a few whiney gamers who are impatient with patches/disagree with design-decisions etc. etc. BF is so over all that nonsense.

Sorry, but that's just the way it is...

Cheers :-)


PS: If it's too much for you to read, you need to stop playing games and finish elementary school or you will be stuck in a poor lonely place...

Lo and Behold, the Meat and Potatoes is served.

It is getting kind of thick for the Elementry School Kid around here isnt it?

Yes QW:ET and other games have better physics, quality etc.. and that is what I am trying to use the next game dollar for. Quality games not crappy arcades.

Maybe EA and DICE are wise beyond thier years to shut off the leaks of money that siphon manpower and energy from a dying game in a effort to get the next new product ready. That next game will probably suffer the same old song all over again.

I point to Soldner sitting in the bargin rack because everyone knows not to buy it at least in my area. I fear that BF2 will join that game in a year or so and modern day military war games will fade forever into the land of "Could have been"

what a waste.

[~WPN~Major Ursa]

Re: Information vs. Information Blackout

Lo and Behold, the Meat and Potatoes is served.

It is getting kind of thick for the Elementry School Kid around here isnt it?

Yes QW:ET and other games have better physics, quality etc.. and that is what I am trying to use the next game dollar for. Quality games not crappy arcades.

Maybe EA and DICE are wise beyond thier years to shut off the leaks of money that siphon manpower and energy from a dying game in a effort to get the next new product ready. That next game will probably suffer the same old song all over again.

I point to Soldner sitting in the bargin rack because everyone knows not to buy it at least in my area. I fear that BF2 will join that game in a year or so and modern day military war games will fade forever into the land of "Could have been"

what a waste.

I think you underestimate the ability of the mod teams out there. Once BF2 is up for grabs (completely and not the limited use like now), you will see what a quality game is. No, the mod community will keep BF2 selling just like they did for BF1942. BF2 will eventually fade away when a newer engine with more promise comes along and makes everything played at that time outdated and unloved.