Why EA is not entirely to blame for the lack of foresight that is BF2

[Jesse]

Re: Why EA is not entirely to blame for the lack of foresight that is BF2

They might release a few mods, expansion packs, etc making the game's lifespan longer.. but I wont be buying any of them..

Mods are free and better quality. What's to lose?

Vasquez, I couldnt agree more with your last post..

I second that.

[Capt.Hook]

Re: Why EA is not entirely to blame for the lack of foresight that is BF2

But all this said, one thing I have not heard asked/mentioned/flamed;


What if… just what if the add-on is in its self a game fix. What if buy lining EA’s pockets just a little more, you get all that lovely extra goodness and a refreshing nourishment of a fixed original game to boot?


Is it just another rough rushed patchwork quilt or smooth sexy silk sheets

[Jesse]

Re: Why EA is not entirely to blame for the lack of foresight that is BF2

But all this said, one thing I have not heard asked/mentioned/flamed;


What if… just what if the add-on is in its self a game fix. What if buy lining EA’s pockets just a little more, you get all that lovely extra goodness and a refreshing nourishment of a fixed original game to boot?


Is it just another rough rushed patchwork quilt or smooth sexy silk sheets

Then you'll see a lot of people angry, and I would hope a major boycott instead of increased sales. I'm not buying the thing either way because I have the self discipline to stand up for myself. As for the rest of the community, I guess we'll see in November.

[Thameth]

Re: Why EA is not entirely to blame for the lack of foresight that is BF2

If I had to guess here..I'd guess that DICE wasnt exactly ready for
full release while EA was pressuring for its completion.. "Oh we'll
release a patch fixing those things.." mentality..

3 months later, that patch is FINALLY released fixing most of the major
bugs and flaws.. Like I said before, my local gamestop had 45 returns
of BF2 within the first 30 days after release.. Having worked at this very
same store years ago, I cannot remember EVER seeing such a return
rate of a game before..

They might release a few mods, expansion packs, etc making the game's
lifespan longer.. but I wont be buying any of them.. The memory leak
issue affected me for weeks after this game came out.. dozens and
dozens of crashes.. I wont give them the benefit of the doubt next time,
because there wont be one..

Vasquez, I couldnt agree more with your last post..

I can't beleive there are still people around on these boards that still don't understand that the memory leak was SERVER SIDE. Unless your running a server you weren't having memory leak problems.......

[Keith Maniac]

Re: Why EA is not entirely to blame for the lack of foresight that is BF2

I think that most of the computergame sales comes from an "average-JoeBlow Consumer wanting to buy a wargame" sales. After a hard workday, Joe just wants to buy a wargame for his pc and he finds a game from his supermarkets gameshelf that has an Abrams on the cover and he buys that game.

We, the internet forum-crybabies who cry for boycots against evil EA, are just a minority. There is no need for EA to care about "the community", which will NEVER be satisfied to the game that they've just bought.

Many new games also benefit from extra 0,5-1gig of RAM if you're using high quality textures/details. Bitching about memory requirements in pc-games is just useless because memory requirements have gone up ever since the first DOOM.

I can't understand why you compare BF2 requirements to other games. Especially to games that are a lot more small scale tuberunning compared to the 64 player open terrain BF2 game. Of course, HL2, q4 or FEAR (etc) can have more details into their graphics when the game takes place in small scale hallways where you can easily optimize memory usage (and network code) more efficent than in large terrains.

[WarGimp]

Re: Why EA is not entirely to blame for the lack of foresight that is BF2

Hmm... skimmed through the thread just now and find there's somethingt that really needs saying.

A lot of folks need to pull their heads outta their arses and realize that there's a real world going on!

Does EA like to make money?
Yes.
Is that the most important thing to them?
Yes.
Do they look for ways to save money while producing products?
Yes.

It's called being a business. EA is a BIG business, complete with all the BS that goes with being one of the biggest. The deal in bottom lines and returns. They employ more people as clerks than codies. It's not possible for them to micro-manage communities the way that smaller development houses can. The vast majority of employees work under non-discloser agreements and are not alowed to say anything on forums or to the press.

Then theres Dice. A small dev house who is paid by EA to produce stuff. Dice is tiny compaired to EA and entirely dependent on their income in the form of EAs checks. When EA says "make a patch", they make a patch. When EA says stop working on the patch and get that expanssion pack out, that's what they do.

That said, I guarentee you that there are people at both Dice and EA that really do care about the community and the game itself. Most people who get into the industry do it because they are gamers and they love creating. You can't do that well if you don't care about your product. I feel for those guys.

Example:
I am willing to bet that whoever wrote the AA missile tracking code is kicking himself. I'd further bet that he has likely already written at least fix in his spare time. He doesn't have the freedom to say "here, community, I made you this fix. Sorry about the hassle!". He has to file a bunch of papers to apply for an application to make a fix for a patch that will be released at an indetermined date. Further, if that's not what he's been assigned to work on, at the moment, he is not alowed to do it.

I also wouldn't have wanted to be around when the deadline for release was comming and it became apparent that features would have to be cut (actually, I would have but that's 'cause I'm sick that way).

Dice Dev: "What do you mean, cut the buddy list?? The fans are gonna be p!ssed!".
EA Producer: "Can you get it done and stable in a month?"
Dev: "No."
Producer: "You know what would happen if we miss the release deadline, right?"
Dev: "Yeah."
Producer: "So?"
Dev: "We'd better dump the friends list too. We can patch it in, I guess."
Producer: "Good. My boss will send you the check."

Realize that the producer wants the Dev to do well too. His career with EA depends on it.

Then there's the community...
Someone mentioned that no matter what they do to make a great game, it's simply never going to be good enough. The fan base all wants different things. Some want fast paced action, some want an ultra-realistic sim. Some want cool ground combat, some want to fly planes. None of them want the other's tastes to interfear with their own.

Then ofcource we all want stunning graphics, huge (or small but "cool") maps, large numbers of players, tons of options, and all this has to run on as little hardware as possible.

Ouch!

Quite the demand we put on these guys!
What's worse, is since they don't meet all of our lofty requirments, we get mad and vent and steam. We call the developers a$$holes and threaten to boycott EA. We send them a message... "We don't like this game!!".
So they fire Dice and hire someone else to make "Need For Spead 32" for X-Box-Portable.

And what do we get?

Nothing.

Why?

Because we asked for it.

/rant

[Thameth]

Re: Why EA is not entirely to blame for the lack of foresight that is BF2

Well FREAKIN said Wargimp!!!

[Blak_Phoenix]

Re: Why EA is not entirely to blame for the lack of foresight that is BF2

Excelenty put Wargimp!

I agree totally, and people should realy take this into concideration when ranting.. and i will from now on thanks mate.

[-=SiN=-Broown]

Re: Why EA is not entirely to blame for the lack of foresight that is BF2

Dice Dev: "What do you mean, cut the buddy list?? The fans are gonna be p!ssed!".
EA Producer: "Can you get it done and stable in a month?"
Dev: "No."
Producer: "You know what would happen if we miss the release deadline, right?"
Dev: "Yeah."
Producer: "So?"
Dev: "We'd better dump the friends list too. We can patch it in, I guess."
Producer: "Good. My boss will send you the check."
/rant

So when do they patch it in..... heh.

[Thameth]

Re: Why EA is not entirely to blame for the lack of foresight that is BF2

I have a question, is any of the games code encrypted or something?

If not why doesn't someone come up with a full out super mod that adds in everything we've ever wanted including stuff outside of gameplay?

Stuff like:

Buddy list
Better server browser
and so on........



I wish i could, but i'm not a game programer.

[vbl]

Re: Why EA is not entirely to blame for the lack of foresight that is BF2

What's worse, is since they don't meet all of our lofty requirments, we get mad and vent and steam. We call the developers a$$holes and threaten to boycott EA. We send them a message... "We don't like this game!!".

So they fire Dice and hire someone else to make "Need For Spead 32" for X-Box-Portable.

And what do we get?

Nothing.

Why?

Because we asked for it.

/rant

EA isn't going to fire anyone - they own more than 50% of the DICE (someone on these boards mentioned as much as 65% ownership).

BF2 has already made too much money, nevermind the console port, for EA to think that DICE somehow isn't effective or that the title doesn't have any longevity.

[The Question]

Re: Why EA is not entirely to blame for the lack of foresight that is BF2

The company love flows like blood.

[sdm151]

Re: Why EA is not entirely to blame for the lack of foresight that is BF2

EA is not supporting BF2 like they should.. its on the bottom of their list, apparently.. if this was Madden 06' we were playing right now, Im guessing we would have seen much more and much quicker support.

Not necessarily. The PC version of Madden '06 is having the same problem as BF2, i.e. no patch, not even a roster update (which is a big no-no among sports-games enthusiasts). I think the issue may be PC vs. console related. The PC market is dying (not just my opinion) and the cash-cow is in the console industry. It appears that EA is merely diverting resources (time and money) away from the PC market to the console market. This is probably the reason you find other game companies that do not produce console titles giving better support to their games.

[vbl]

Re: Why EA is not entirely to blame for the lack of foresight that is BF2

Not necessarily. The PC version of Madden '06 is having the same problem as BF2, i.e. no patch, not even a roster update (which is a big no-no among sports-games enthusiasts). I think the issue may be PC vs. console related. The PC market is dying (not just my opinion) and the cash-cow is in the console industry. It appears that EA is merely diverting resources (time and money) away from the PC market to the console market. This is probably the reason you find other game companies that do not produce console titles giving better support to their games.

I read a snippet from a Madden 06 review where the reviewer said:

"It's like being kicked in the nuts and going unconscious from the pain, and then dreaming about being kicked in the nuts."

[Donkey]

Re: Why EA is not entirely to blame for the lack of foresight that is BF2

Wargimp is the man...someone who must actually work in the real world with real deadlines and real budgets

I love all the bitching done by people that dedicate most there waking hours to playing such a horrible game...The game has its flaws I will admit but none the less it is still one hell of a good GAME and no one can deny that...especially with some of you and your hours played