Why is this forums relationship with DICE/EA damaged?

[Hurricane.CAD]

Re: Why is this forums relationship with DICE/EA damaged?

EA and DICE are just... wierd. People say "But teh corporationz need money!!!11". Well look at Valve. They don't treat their community horribly, making major gameplay changes every patch, making major screwups every patch that take forever to fix (yes theyve made some messups in the past but they tried to fix it ASAP). And they're still in business.

So why do EA/DICE take the "lets be assholes" approach? What advantage do they get over Valve for instance by not caring about their community?

EDIT: And what's with Canadians (DICE Canada) having worse coding ability than Swedes?

[Doctor]

Re: Why is this forums relationship with DICE/EA damaged?

what type of game is this ? because the FPS player base is 85% smacktards that's why you get alot of crap on these boards

[Hurricane.CAD]

Re: Why is this forums relationship with DICE/EA damaged?

what type of game is this ? because the FPS player base is 85% smacktards that's why you get alot of crap on these boards

Part of that is true. The other part is that the anger is somewhat justified.

For instance, patch 1.2. A hotly debated topic in its time. You either were for the things it nerfed or against the things it nerfed. But the problem was, DICE took 8 months to release the patch. At that point you really shouldn't be doing so many major gameplay changes. Fair enough, it didnt break too many things asides from Battlerecorder.

Patch 1.3. This was the start of the end. After being put through a rigorous beta testing of "Okay did it install? Good. Does the game start up? Great! Upload it to the servers and release it tomorrow!", the horrid "patch" (an insult to real patches) caused tons of crashes and whatnot. Hardly a good way to appeal to a rather mad community. Mistakes happen, fair enough. But we waited... and waited.. it took DICE nearly a month to admit that they majorly screwed up. Then nearly 3 months to release a fix. I understand they wanted to not mess things up again; but why didn't they just put more manpower to it in the first place? Because DICE SE, the smart coders (it hurts to say this cause I'm half canadian, it is embarassing that my peoples are not skilled in coding) are working on 2142. Which will get given over to DICE CAnada later and go to hell just like BF2 but that's another story.

Patch 1.4. It is released. Cries of "server crashes fixed yay!" erupted in forums and IRC rooms. But all was not well. Not the infantry gameplay nerf (yes its slower). Not infanry only, not Jalalbad. No. It was the non-removal of server crashing and CTDing. It IS less frequent, but that's not good enough. For some reason, 1.22 was stable.. then 1.3 somehow screwed it up majorly. I rarely had server crashing before 1.3. Lame.

So the reasons people are rationally mad at DICE are:

-server crashing (it takes a lot to fill up a server... then to have it crash 2 hours later)

-client crashing

-tons of gameplay changes

I admit I still play BF2. It's an addicting game. But it's just not as fun as it was in, say, 1.12. All the gameplay changes are just annoying now. One thing is adapting, another thing is being arsed to change your entire gameplay approach each time a patch comes out. For instance, on CS:S when they removed quickscoping for the AWP... that's adapting. In BF2, changing the game each time a patch comes out (1.2 onwards of course, before 1.2 the game was almost perfect) is not adapting. It's being a pain in the ***.

It's not about the stuff that never made it in the game. It's not about "not being able to dive". Not about infantrly only or Jalalabad. It's about how DICE has continously tinkered with the game, driving it to hell. Not showing much care about their screw up that was 1.3. It's as if they're trying to kill all their BF2 players off so we get 2142... I see no logic in that. If DICE is gonna treat 2142 like BF2 then my money will be better spent on something else.

The final BF2 patch should be something like this:

-Mix of current and 1.12 AA... make it harder to use but that if you're really good at it, then pilots will be scared

-No noobtoobing but let it be effective against vehicles

-bring back shooting while jumping and dolphin diving and C4 chucking

-current rank and award requirements

-bring back squad hopping

-bring back the old blackhawk miniguns... the current armor and repair rates more than balance out the strength

-slight tweak to the G36E, make it as damaging as the M16 since it will still excel in everything else for instance

And all will be well. The gameplay will be quick and addictive. It will be what got me hooked on BF2. Now it seems like a cheap imitation of America's Army but with vehicles. I doubt this post will ever make it to the serious consideration of any BF2 directors at EA or DICE. But maybe it will. All I can say is that if 2142 goes bad: DICE, you brought it on yourselves. I love the BF series and I want to get 2142, but please dont treat it like you did BF2 and make BF2 more fun again.

[Doctor]

Re: Why is this forums relationship with DICE/EA damaged?

well of course there is anger and frustration I'm just saying... well lets put it this way screwing up somting in a RPG is like hiting a bee's nest, screwing up or fixing anything to do with a FPS is like hiting a killer bee hive filled giant mentaly stunted bee's with emotional problems :laugh:

fps fans tend not to help situations in the least every topic is a war onto its self lacking of any maturity or comon sense. for the most part this is due to the fact that the fps is the most basic of games which tends to lend its self to a younger more imature gamer and we all know imaturity+the internet = smacktard also a fps tends to have a feeling of competitiveness that carries over to forums which also add's to the smacktard factor

[Hurricane.CAD]

Re: Why is this forums relationship with DICE/EA damaged?

well of course there is anger and frustration I'm just saying... well lets put it this screwing up somting in a RPG is like hiting a bee's nest, screwing up or fixing anything to do with a FPS is like hiting a killer bee hive filled giant mentaly stunted bee's with emotional problems :laugh:

Heh, quite true. I just wanna know why EA/DICE haven't learned this lesson yet =p

[Doctor]

Re: Why is this forums relationship with DICE/EA damaged?

who know's all I know is if I was going to put out a FPS id make sure to only patch bug's Id never add or take away parts of the game because from that point on you turn into the communities whiping boy

[lmimmfn]

Re: Why is this forums relationship with DICE/EA damaged?

Good post [DICE]CKMC, nice to hear a more personal post from one of you guys as opposed to the more business orientated ones, and i think these sort of posts will help build up some community support rom the problems experienced after the 1.3 patch

Anyway, i agree with everyone here who says the ranking system is negatively impacting the game. I love sandbox games like the BF series and o course GTA, but to be honest the BF series has a market niche( excluding MTA ) which is why so many of us are passionate about it. Its a logical progression that the latest games are becoming more persistent to draw everyone in and maintain interest, the MMORPG model of WoW is what every company currently strives for( although i hope to god BF never becomes subscription based )

I realise that the past year has changed a lot for Dice, EA aquisition, BF2 maintainence cycle moves to Canada, Console versions developed in the UK, First attempt at online expansion packs - booster packs, first beta test with 1.4 and at the same time development of the the next in the series BF2142 and its beta.

However for the future i hope they will reconsider the booster pack concept, while its similar to the new model Valve have adopted for the HalfLife 2 episodes , and the new business model being adopted due to game development costs.

The problem with BF is releasing a booster pack splits the community between those who buy it and those who dont, if the product doesnt recieve good reviews people wont buy it and those who have bought it find themselves with few servers to play on.
This approach does not work for the BF series, i urge Dice to reconsider this and possibly try something like increasing server rental to include the cost of these packs so everyone can play them.
This may seem commercial suicide, but think about it, with the recent news regarding EA including advertisements in games, then this should somewhat reduce the cost to the consumer, we in the PC world are fortunate to have a great community where clans pay for servers and pubs enjoy the free use of them and both sides benefit.
Now include advertisements and pubbers are still willing to pay the same price for games provided that the cost of server rental is reduced for clans( i.e. pubbers have a large server base to choose from ), if this is the case then releasing booster packs could increase EA/DICE's revenue stream by including the booster pack charge in the server rental. Thus cheap servers for beginner clans due to advertising, and for those large clans/very organised clans have the option of paying the same current price but getting booster packs included and any pubber joining gets to play with these packs. Also for clans who dont have the packs its great advertisement as they get to try them out on another server

Just my opinion and more than likely full of holes and inherant problems :)

BTW guys, best thread ive read in ages

Oh last thing, Dice please make sure when BF2142 enters the dreaded maintainence cycle that the guys in Canada know what they're at