We were hacked. Several times over the past two weeks, in fact.
While all passwords are encrypted and salted, it's recommended that you change your password here when you can.
I'm glad that your company has those standards but not every company does or can afford to. But this is all hypothesising really, unless anyone can give us the inside story on the development of the game we can't label them lazy, cheap or incompetant. It might be that there were larger issues facing Dice and EA than the browser issue I don't know.
It would be cool for all games to be released bug free but that ain't gonna happen.
Not bug free - obvious bug free. We should expect nothing less. One example is the difference in QA between Win98 and winXP. I don't need to remind who ever worked with Win98, how many blue screens he got. And does microsoft lack the funds? (retorical question)
Given that a game of this type is complicated to code, some of the gigantic bugs that were in the first release code only prove that some part of the development process was skipped or done very badly. Beta-testers are obiously not doing thier job as Tom's Hardware also pointed out, my cat would have found some of those bugs in less than two minutes.
EA management is also guilty of pushing DICE too hard, too soon. This bad habbit is only evedent in the PC branch because it is accepted by us - the consumers. In any other branch or market a company selling inferior products will soon be out of said market.
You can't compare game development for consoles and PC's.
When developing games for the PC, the developers are making a game that has to work on literally millions of different configurations. Different hardware components, different boot systems, different programs installed etc. etc.
When developing console games, there's just one hardware setup - and the same bug/problem will show up on all consoles.
Because of this it's "easier" to code out bugs for console games.
You know they were released on PC bug free (with the exception of said VC patch) too, right?
the game bugs are not that bad. i see a mixed team tag once in a while but other than that everyting is fine. and yeah stats might have to update a bit later. quit cring and play your great game :)
You can't compare game development for consoles and PC's.
When developing games for the PC, the developers are making a game that has to work on literally millions of different configurations. Different hardware components, different boot systems, different programs installed etc. etc.
When developing console games, there's just one hardware setup - and the same bug/problem will show up on all consoles.
Because of this it's "easier" to code out bugs for console games.
there is a TON of money to be made in the video game industry. the majority of us gamers do not have the self-control to wait for polished games to be released because we are video game crack whores. we'll throw our money at anything just to get our fix. the industry knows this and companies will make a game and get it out as fast as they can, despite bugs, to grab as much money as they can before some other company comes along with the next big title. it's all about money, corporate greed, and money. companies like EA are in business to do one thing - make money. selling video games just happens to be the way they do it. they don't have to be the best at it to be successful, because us vid game crack whores will pay for anything.
Both, but mostly EA. DICE does the work but EA pays the bills... so if EA says 'release' then its pretty hard for DICE to say 'no' (especially as they have been bought out and can't even threaten to jump to another publisher or something). EA could (and should) have said, "Well, there are a bunch of pretty bad bugs in there, we're going to hold off on release until you have a chance to fix them." Instead, they pushed the game out the door with a lot of components that ran (and a couple that even after a couple months and a patch, still run) more like an alpha build than a beta because of how massively severe some of the bugs are. One of your server builds is widely known to dump everyone when it loads a new map?!?!? I'm sorry, did that get tested *at all?*
Saying "You can't compare console development to PC development, its easier to develop for consoles" is also a load when it comes to a lot of the recent PC release travesties. Yes, console developers have one (wait, three) controlled environment so they don't have to spend as much money on testing equipment and don't have to spend as much time tracking down minor bugs that stem from the fact that hardware manufacturers still love to make sure their products have lots of proprietary bells and whistles. However, that only applies to a small portion of a game (mostly the bit dealing with displaying the engine, which most people don't seem to have too much trouble with outside of what seems to be terrible optimization). Unless you do something crazy, your interface will respond the same on any system. Your program logic will always be the same, your physics model won't change, someone won't suddenly have some new mysterious alternative IP protocol you have to interface with running on their server. This is where most of the game's bugs lie, in the very standard and predictable code which would show the same problems no matter what environment they dropped it into (if you took the code and made only the changes required to translate it to compile for xbox, or ps2, you'd still see the same big glaring bugs we see on the PC and it would be no more and no less difficult to see them, find them, and fix them).
In short- EA/DICE made a big mess out of this one, the kind of mess that would be the end of just about any other firm outside of the games industry (Imagine if the next version of, ohhhhh, Quicken came out, and there was a bug where any time you synched up with your bank it cancelled any checks that hadn't been cashed yet. That's no harder to notice in testing than any of the big gripes people have with BF and should be considered no worse... of course, since for some inexplicable reason the majority of PC gamers don't seem to care how badly they're ripped off by certain companies you have people who show up, try to sound like they know what they're talking about, and tell everyone to clam up because its HARD to make a game! Well, its HARD to make a hell of a lot of things, its hard to write missile guidance code but that doesn't mean the military would tolerate it if they were sold missiles that routinely blew up halfway to their targets just because 'its hard' and 'we had a deadline'). Sure, BF crashing or screwing the team IDs up or blocking out parts of the screen, or deciding it wants everyone off the server, NOW, doesn't cause you financial distress, or ruin your plans for global domination, but when it comes to the question, "Did the development, testing, and management teams do their jobs properly," the answer is a resounding "No," just like it would be if either of those other cases happened. The only difference is that somewhere along the line the gaming consumer has lost their sense of value (and really, of dignaty as well) and accepts shoddy work in even the most high-profile (often ESPECIALLY in the most high-profile) products pitched to them.
EDIT: Aaaand bird of prey comes along and gives a nice quick paragraph summing up the point I was hoping to make in this page-long rambling ;>)
I bought the game, it crashed several times.
2 week later, I patched it and works like charm, so stop crying about bugs, wait for 1.03, play the damn game, even with all the bugs, is THE GAME OF THE YEAR.
Well said TheIron!
For all you saying it takes money to fix bugs, DO NOT tell me that they don't have the money to extend the deadline for a release of the game! They knew this game would be a hit. The amount of advertising for this game was incredible! I saw advertising of this game in many many magazines, newspapers and websites including newsweek. EA has the money to market these things and there is no doubt that they have it to fix a game when it needs to be fixed. It's all about the money to them! Business is simple with this type of stuff. The eralier you release, the more profits you get. One, because you don't have to pay the developer for more time put in. Two, you can drastically reduce the amount of people you need to pay to follow up on the game! Three, EA doesn't care about the consumers anymore! They care about the money before anyone is happy with their product! You could see this in MoHPA! The game was such a flop (you that played it know) because of the same issues we have here if BF2. There were soooo many bugs that no one wanted to play.
You all who are saying just play the game are those people who get sucked in by the companies to buy an expansion pack to include stuff that should have been in the original game! Heck, if EA thought this game was going to be a flop, they would not have been working on an expansion pack BEFORE the game was released!!! Maybe a game isn't as important as our missle defense system but in the programming part of it; if you were to show this off to people to buy and let them test it first, you would look like a FOOL with the bugs in this program. Who would want to buy a program that had so many bugs! I know many companies that would not tolerate this and I don't see why we as consumers should have to put up with it either!
Before you spend too much time slamming QA at EA and/or DICE it is importnat to note that the decision to release code is not in the hands of the QA department. No matter how serious a bug all QA can do is report it-- it takes a manager to decide if its serious enough to hold up a release candidate.
And no, I don't work for EA or DICE but I do QA work.
Have most of you noticed a trend with EA games where they actually decrease the services and options in games. I mean battlefield 1942 had a server browser that worked, now it does not for BF2???? Nhl2005, want to know how many people play online every night for that game worldwide? 6 to 10 people. They took the stats leaders out of the game. Plus you can only use ea severs or direct connections? Can you believe that, a historic sports franchise title and you cannot see who the stats leaders are for your league???? They also took create a player out too? These are options that had been developed and and tested and worked, but they took them out? Why to make more money. Less work, less pay, more money, more profit.
Reminds me of the evil NIKE empire except NIKE puts out a good shoe!
And, to make it clear, I don't think anyone is just after the QA departments here, its the whole organization that is fubar as far as what got through the door (I'd imagine that at EA the QA folks can't refuse release like they would in some sectors, but they can send a lot of memos in the hopes that someone realizes "Hey, this is a show-stopper!") (that, and that is an 'L' in my name, not a capital 'i').
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