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

[SpeedyGonzales]

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

Hey Speedy. Man I'm not trying to tell you that you are wrong for being critical of the game. Again, if you read what I said, my point is that given the way software is built these days (and the complexity), you are going to have bugs at release. You are right, you and I judge a title on a different scale. Same with me and Variable. My only expectation is that the problems get fixed quickly. But quickly to me means within 3 to 6 months. If we don't see some progress soon, I'll be right there with ya. Honestly. But the problem is that PC games are not making as much money for these game makers as console games. These guys aren't writing these games for the greater social good. They are writing them to make money. So they aren't going to spend a lot of time writing code if it doesn't mean that they will make back some of that investment.

This is why I stress with everyone, if you want to send a message to EA, make it MATURE (if that's even possible around here), make it intelligent and KEEP IT SIMPLE. You aren't going to get cooperative play, unless it's in an expansion. They won't be adding any new features, just bug fixes as patches. You aren't going to get 18 new sniper rifles. Sorry. But if you focus on the must haves versus your wish list items and put forth a united front, you might actually get some of the key game play issues resolved that are impacting the game.

But that will never happen around here because few of you actually have the emotional maturity to put your own issues aside and think about what's really important. Just calling them like I see em. Sorry.

As an aside, I've played this game on servers with **64** PEOPLE with little or no lag. Sometimes it's laggier than other times. But when you consider the networking hurdles to make that happen .... whoa. That's an impressive feat. Sure the browser sucks. But at least we have 32 vs. 32 servers running pretty smoothly. That red tag bug needs to be fixed though.

No offense taken..

I am an old progammer myself.. used to be full time, now basically its
on the side.. but anyhow.. BF2 is a good game.. well, perhaps I should
rephrase.. BF2 CAN be a good game.. But what makes a good online
game these days is support for it. I dont consider 3 months for a patch
to fix 150+ items very good support. I had NUMEROUS crashes the first
2 weeks, nearly every other game..And I consider my PC more than
capable of running BF2. What fixed my problem was adding another 1GB
of ram, making my total 2GB.

Now, if the box says X# Ram to play this game..and I have that..and
it crashes 50% of the time AND OTHERS HAVE THE SAME EXPERIENCE,
something is wrong. The 1.03 patch seemed to fix ALL of my issues.
So, now Im left with dealing with the other problems with BF2, some of
which are user created, others are STILL bad code, the server browser
for instance.

Basically, in my eyes, I see the support by EA as a whole slew of problems.
First, as we all know, is the sloppy code, numerous bugs, etc, i.e.
They released an unfinished game. Second, The lack of urgency to
fix them.. 3 months is WAY too long to fix the bigger issues affecting
hundreds if not thousands of BF2 purchasers. The crashes, the incompatability
issues, etc. Third, the control EA tries to put on purchasers. Ranked
and Unranked Servers, Silly Ranked Server rules, No Modifying the game
content to make it better without their permission, etc. This control
monger attitude makes the game WORSE.. empty servers, hundreds of
otherwise good admins wasting their money on servers that they cant
get the limit of players to even start a couple games per day.. Its just
ridiculous.

I'll be honest. I came from the Unreal series games.. I was in that
community for 6 years, hardly played any of my other games. I find
the support that EPIC gives the unreal series to be a total negative
image than what EA does, and without question EPICs is FAR FAR
superior. So, yea, I am unfamiliar with EAs support, a lot of people are
familiar with it, having played their other Battlefield games, etc..

I can tell you this much, and Id be willing to bet a fortune on it.. if EPIC
had been the publisher of the Battlefield series games, the whole
experience would have been 20 times better. They support their
titles. They even tell its community; 'here it is, finished. Now take it
and run with it, make it better, make all the free maps, skins, models,
etc. you wish. And you know what the proof if it is... UT99 is still a
very popular online game, even after 6 years. imo, its the best game
ever made. (for its time..)

I dont want to hear about how hard it is to get it right.. I just want to
hear; 'ok we finally got it finished, here it is..slap down your 40 bucks.'
If not, dont even release it.

And now theyre expecting me to slap down another 20-30 for a
expansion pack? HA.

[ManUK]

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

I agree with the OP as well. Very thought out thread. Thanks for the post.

All I can say is my PC is no where near cutting edge and when I first bought this game I only had 768mb DDR333. the game even on lower visual settings lagged badly. I upped my ram to 1.5GB DDR333 and now I play at med. and high settings, everything turned on, 4xFSAA and 8XAF. I can not remember the last time I saw any lag at all. runs butter smooth.

Specs:
2500+
9800Pro
1.5GB Kingston DDR400 @ 333 speeds.

You do well with your gaming system & BF2. Can't work out what's up with my rig. There is no way i can enable Antialiasing & Anisotropic Filtering, if i do... then i got serious slow performance issues. I did have 2GByte of XMS3200XLPRO @ 2.3.2.5 2T 333, and 400MHZ. Only medium settings for my rig in BF2.

win xp pro sp2
K8T800 pro
4000+ san diego
1GByte TwinX XMS3200XLPRO 400MHZ 2.3.2.5 1T dual channel
6800GT AGP Zalman VF700-Cu+AS5 @ 350/1000 & 435MHZ/1.14GHZ (ok-ish)
10k rpm raptor
Audigy 2zs
Tagan 480W
VP171b-2 1024 x 768 60HZ DVI-D

[The Question]

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

No offense taken..

I am an old progammer myself.. used to be full time, now basically its
on the side.. but anyhow.. BF2 is a good game.. well, perhaps I should
rephrase.. BF2 CAN be a good game.. But what makes a good online
game these days is support for it. I dont consider 3 months for a patch
to fix 150+ items very good support. I had NUMEROUS crashes the first
2 weeks, nearly every other game..And I consider my PC more than
capable of running BF2. What fixed my problem was adding another 1GB
of ram, making my total 2GB.

Now, if the box says X# Ram to play this game..and I have that..and
it crashes 50% of the time AND OTHERS HAVE THE SAME EXPERIENCE,
something is wrong. The 1.03 patch seemed to fix ALL of my issues.
So, now Im left with dealing with the other problems with BF2, some of
which are user created, others are STILL bad code, the server browser
for instance.

Basically, in my eyes, I see the support by EA as a whole slew of problems.
First, as we all know, is the sloppy code, numerous bugs, etc, i.e.
They released an unfinished game. Second, The lack of urgency to
fix them.. 3 months is WAY too long to fix the bigger issues affecting
hundreds if not thousands of BF2 purchasers. The crashes, the incompatability
issues, etc. Third, the control EA tries to put on purchasers. Ranked
and Unranked Servers, Silly Ranked Server rules, No Modifying the game
content to make it better without their permission, etc. This control
monger attitude makes the game WORSE.. empty servers, hundreds of
otherwise good admins wasting their money on servers that they cant
get the limit of players to even start a couple games per day.. Its just
ridiculous.

I'll be honest. I came from the Unreal series games.. I was in that
community for 6 years, hardly played any of my other games. I find
the support that EPIC gives the unreal series to be a total negative
image than what EA does, and without question EPICs is FAR FAR
superior. So, yea, I am unfamiliar with EAs support, a lot of people are
familiar with it, having played their other Battlefield games, etc..

I can tell you this much, and Id be willing to bet a fortune on it.. if EPIC
had been the publisher of the Battlefield series games, the whole
experience would have been 20 times better. They support their
titles. They even tell its community; 'here it is, finished. Now take it
and run with it, make it better, make all the free maps, skins, models,
etc. you wish. And you know what the proof if it is... UT99 is still a
very popular online game, even after 6 years. imo, its the best game
ever made. (for its time..)

I dont want to hear about how hard it is to get it right.. I just want to
hear; 'ok we finally got it finished, here it is..slap down your 40 bucks.'
If not, dont even release it.

And now theyre expecting me to slap down another 20-30 for a
expansion pack? HA.

:cry:

That should change every negative thought out of your heads.